I’ve beaten Route A of Nier:Automata today. So next is Route B, a.k.a. the reason a lot of players missed the true ending of the game. And I won’t blame anyone, I almost stopped playing there, too.
My progress in Sparks of Hope has been minimal, but I hope to finish World 2 this weekend.
There was a time when I replayed the whole Trilogy every year when summer came around. When it gets hot and sweaty, I still get the urge to dig out the Wii Remote and play them again.
Still playing Nier:Automata, still on Route A. I forgot how much the side quests ask you to run back and forth the same few areas, but knowing what the game is truly about, it actually makes a lot of sense, so I’m okay with it.
I’m halfway through the second world of Mario/Rabbids Sparks of Hope and my first impression is that I preferred the first game in every single way. The battles are no longer rated in any way, so you don’t need to try to play all that well, just win and move on. Most of the maps are kinda bland. No weapon upgrades, it’s just cosmetics. having two characters fully voice-acted when everyone else is silent is really jarring and it’s the first time I turned voice volume to 0% in a game, now I can actually enjoy the comedy more.
But the most jarring thing to me is that it seems like Ubisoft tried to make the Rabbids… cool? Thankfully the volume decrease also gets rid of the snippy one-liners, but why do they speak in the first place? Rabbids say Bwah, nothing else. And why am I picking up pieces of lore about the planets I’m on? It’s Mario and Rabbids, I’m here for slapstick, not world-building! I’m not sure where to even begin about Edge…
I’ll keep playing it out of curiosity, but I’m really tempted to boot up the first game again afterwards to see if it’s really the game or me that changed so much.
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The second game has a secret dungeon that is unlocked by collecting all Djinns in both games. No Djinn is missable within their own game, but this obviously doesn’t apply across games. You can miss 1 Djinn of each element in the first game and the second one will give you an opportunity to encounter them there to help you out, but that’s the end of the leeway.
I stand by what I said originally: Shantae is great when you’re in the dungeons, but annoying in the overworld. I’d say it’s definitely worth looking at for the visuals though. The game is so ambitious that I have to wonder why they made it for the GameBoy in the first place. When the game released, the GameBoy Advance and the GameCube were already out for a year, too! I can only assume development took a really long time and the overall bad timing affected sales enough to get the sequel cancelled. Luckily, it’s being revived now, so I might actually wait for that to keep playing the series in order.
New year, new games. I accidentally managed to do a triple-finish, so I really had to think about this.
I finally finished Baten Kaitos’ New Game Minus! All Achievements gotten! The game finally got hard, actually. I expected the hardest part to be the fight against three antagonists at the same time. One of them gets two attacks per turn and the game forces the weakest character into your party, so it’s technically a 4 on 2 fight. Oh, and you have to do it twice in a row. I thought once that was over with, the rest would be easy, but no, the final boss actually smeared the floor with me pretty hard. I actually had to adapt my decks for the first time. I ended up putting two characters on offense only and loaded up my fastest character with light element armor and the best healing items to revive the attackers who would inevitably die to anything. That strategy even worked first try!
I’ll probably replace the Switch-slot with Mario and Rabbids Spark of Hope. I was going to tackle Baten Kaitos Origins next, but maybe I should take a break after everything…
I completed all Challenge Maps in Arkham Origins, too. I still insist that the game is not as bad as people say, but I cannot overlook the amount of glitches. I’m looking forward to my first playthrough of Arkham Knight eventually, but first…
The PC slot has been replaced with Nier:Automata a few days ago. I already beat the game a few years ago, but that was when I was still unemployed, so I wasn’t playing a legit copy. Now I’m going after the achievements on Steam because the game is definitely worth buying.
I’ve also beaten Shantae on the GameBoy. I’m glad I saved all the overworld collectibles until the end, when you can just fly everywhere. That made it much less of a headache. The ending got a bit confusing though. No spoilers, but you’re dropped into a tense and dangerous situation, only to find it’s not at all dangerous and after five minutes of having zero clue as to what to do had to look up a walkthrough. I’m not replacing this one, three games was a mistake, but the Shantae journey will continue eventually.
I know nobody will believe me but I genuinely enjoy Last Christmas by Wham. I used to hate it but it grew on me similarly to Never Gonna Give You Up.
It’s a Steam Deck, not a Game Deck!
Origins isn’t part of the Arkham Trilogy that is on the Switch. It’s the awkward black sheep that isn’t as bad as people say, but deserves most of the criticism.
It’s the weekend, my dudes.
Baten Kaitos New Game Minus progress is slow. I don’t play it very often right now but when I do, I get a lot done. Some enemies have begun to outspeed me, but I’ve only had a character die to bad defense RNG once so far.
I’ve spent most of my time with Arkham Origins lately. I’ve 100% the main game and New Game Plus (which is an odd name for hard mode), I’ve beaten the Cold Cold Heart DLC and have just begun the Challenge maps. When I started the game, I completely forgot it takes place during christmas, so it’s an accidentally fitting game.
I’m deep enough into Shantae on the Game Boy to have more of an opinion on it. The game has two faces: The dungeons, which are a joy to be in and the overworld which is an awful slog. The game has fast travel, but it takes a long time to unlock it. And the constant back and forth makes me impatient enough to just jump into a pit and be reset to the beginning of the area. I probably could have beaten the game by now if I played it more, but I’m playing too many games at once…
Speaking of too many games, I dug out my save file for Pokemon Infinite Fusion again and finally finished off most of the post game.
I can’t pick only one, I have to name three:
Moon Knight.
That’s what I was wanting to hear after the Trials of Mana remake! The renaissance was long overdue!
It doesn’t help that the games you constantly see ads for are the dumbest, most brain-dead crap imaginable. I’m sure there are decent games for phones, but they don’t seem to invest in advertising.
I expected it to be a more simple platformer, since it’s on the Game Boy, but it’s actually a lot more open the same way future games in the series are. But I can’t say much more than that yet. Like I said, I’ve been mostly grinding money because just getting to the second town with just your basic attack was an ordeal.
I’ve made little progress in Baten Kaitos’ New Game Minus. Skipping past all cutscenes and dialogues and still being able to oneshot every boss is just not particularly interesting. The game truly starts when enemy encounters start to outspeed me, I guess.
This week, I also got my new PC up and running. And so I do what anyone with a beefy new PC would do: Play an older game I could have played on my old PC whenever I wanted to! I’ve been playing Batman: Arkham Origins. I’ve played the game and its predecessors on console already, but for completion’s sake I’m doing them again on Steam before eventually playing Arkham Knight for the first time, which would not have run on my old PC, at least not well. I love this series. Origins isn’t very well received, but I think it’s underrated. It definitely has flaws, but it doesn’t deserve that much hate. But to be honest, all it takes to make me happy is a set of Predator Maps with a varied group of playable characters. It’s just a shame that, unlike the previous Arkham titles, I can’t really complete the game. Some achievements are linked to a long-defunct online mode. It’s been restored by the community, but I really don’t care about it.
I also want to eventually get into the Shantae series. I’ve played one of them on the Wii U (Pirate’s Curse, I believe?), so I’ve gone back to the very beginning and started Shantae on the Game Boy! The spritework and animations are quite impressive for Nintendo’s old handheld brick, though I’ve run into some issues differentiating between foreground and background objects. The number of times I’ve fallen through a platform that was actually in the background is too damn high! I’ve only made it to the second town because I stopped to grind the money necessary to get some expensive items that unlock new moves. I’m sure I would get the money eventually, but armed with just the hair whip alone I find the game difficult in a way that’s not fun.
New Game Minus is its own achievement, so I might as well try.
A normal playthrough should take ~50 hours.
New Game Minus disables levelling up for the game. But since it carries over most of everything else, like a New Game Plus, the raw strength of my cards is still going to carry me through most of the game anyway. And when it does, I can adjust my deck for whatever the boss is weakest to, which you never have to do in a normal playthrough because it’s rather easy if you can play your straights consistently. I’m mostly worried about a fight against three antagonists at the same time, because defense is the awkward part to optimize for me.
Techically 3, I would say 2 and a half. Route B is mostly the same as Route A, except you play a different character. Many people stopped playing, thinking it was just a bonus, and completely missed that Route C afterwards is a continuation of the story.