How would you rank the difficulty of the various games’ post game levels?
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Beating Games
- Thread starter Octopus Prime
- Start date
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- Tags
- the end times
How would you rank the difficulty of the various games’ post game levels?
Champion's road is definitely the better level. It requires more exacting play, and each area offers a completely different challenge. You really need to play it over and over to learn it and develop muscle memory. The final 3D Land level is shorter, you can fudge your way through tricky areas, and you only have to beat it twice instead of five times.
Saints Row The Thirds entire finale is just magical
Sarge
hardcore retro gamin'
I finally, after all these years, sat down and finished The Granstream Saga. I enjoyed it quite a bit, even if it had some flaws. I already had the ending choice spoiled for me, because my brother actually did finish it back in the day, but there were some plot details that either I missed the markers for or they were kinda dumped on the player towards the end. Either way, I made sure to get both endings.
Violentvixen
(She/Her)
Beat Spiritfarer. What a lovely game. Looks like there's a little postgame stuff but it's been a very long time since I've been this sad to be beating a game, if they made DLC with more spirits and stuff I'd absolutely get it.
Violentvixen
(She/Her)
I just saw that the first one dropped today! I am very pleased!
FelixSH
(He/Him)
Beat Rayman Legends for the second time. It is a great spectacle, the artstyle is amazing and the level design inspired and creative. I remember loving it, when I played it for the first time, years ago. Back then, I wanted to play something else, so I didn't go for 100%, which I thought I would do another time, because I did enjoy the game a whole lot.
It should have been this time, but, for whatever reason, it just didn't grab me as it did the first time. I have no idea why, and it makes me sad. There is so much to love there, and I want to love it so much, but I don't. There are still a few hidden blue guys, and a few levels where I didn't get 600 lums, and I expected to be totally into doing it. Heck, there are still a few of the levels, where you need to get to the end in 60 seconds, to save all three blue guys. Plus all the levels from Rayman Origins.
Dunno, I know that I should just stop, if I don't want to go on, but something about this one just makes me sad. I loved it, when I played it the first time, and now I don't.
It should have been this time, but, for whatever reason, it just didn't grab me as it did the first time. I have no idea why, and it makes me sad. There is so much to love there, and I want to love it so much, but I don't. There are still a few hidden blue guys, and a few levels where I didn't get 600 lums, and I expected to be totally into doing it. Heck, there are still a few of the levels, where you need to get to the end in 60 seconds, to save all three blue guys. Plus all the levels from Rayman Origins.
Dunno, I know that I should just stop, if I don't want to go on, but something about this one just makes me sad. I loved it, when I played it the first time, and now I don't.
I beat Hyrule Warriors: Age of Calamity! I think? I'm more than a little disappointed that the story mode for this Hyrule Warriors feels a lot shorter than the last game's. I wanted more meat to dig into, but what we got was still pretty good.
Sarge
hardcore retro gamin'
Finished Jessie Jaeger in Cleopatra's Curse, an exploratory platformer for the Turbo CD and coming to HuCard and Genesis cart. I'm not always keen on the homebrew scene, but this one was surprisingly polished and quite fun the whole way through. Got my 100%, too. 
www.kickstarter.com
Jessie Jaeger in Cleopatra's Curse
A new adventure for the Turbografx-16 and Sega Genesis consoles!
It's weird playing an open world game that feels as unstructured as Crackdown these days. The supercop angle is also messed up but I think the game knows it's messed up.
Mundaun is a really interesting black and white folk survival horror game.
FelixSH
(He/Him)
I replayed Celeste, first time I played it since my first playthrough in early 2019. Still really good, but (just speaking for the A sides), easier than I remember. Well, easier is maybe the wrong word, but less hard. I guess there is still muscle memory left. I certainly died way less often than the first time, years ago. Looking forward to finding out, if the B- and C-sides are also less hard, this time.
The XBOX controler is kind of awful for this game, though. A good amount of deaths in the last two levels were just due to the awful d-pad, that would read left or right way too often as up-right, or something like that. Stupid thing.
Also, I remember people having problems with the story, but it still really works for me.
The XBOX controler is kind of awful for this game, though. A good amount of deaths in the last two levels were just due to the awful d-pad, that would read left or right way too often as up-right, or something like that. Stupid thing.
Also, I remember people having problems with the story, but it still really works for me.
A while back I came across this HG101 page on Wachenröder, a late-Saturn TRPG I don't think I'd heard of. I wound up picking up a copy and playing through, despite it being very story-heavy and no translation patch existing. What does exist is a translated written transcript on GameFAQs, and because of the game's entirely linear nature it's easy enough to use. I just kept the guide open while I was playing. Before I talk about the game itself, the FAQ intro is pretty interesting. The author had imported the game, but couldn't read any of the text. He was working in a university library and noticed a Japanese woman who was spending a lot of time there:
The FAQ doesn't provide the translation for ikimasu, but apparently this was the start of a long-term relationship. Since she was interested in working as a translator, he suggested they work together to translate this game. At the risk of getting too invested in the lives of these strangers, I googled them and it appears they got married and had some kids, so good for them.
Anyways, Wachenroder:
Starring:
and
Set on this island:
The premise is that the island is surrounded by fog, nobody can get to anywhere else in the world, and the machinery sustaining the island releases pollution that causes terrible disease in a substantial portion of the population. The main guy Lucian, pictured above, has a sister with this disease. Seeking money to buy her medicine, he enters a fighting tournament and wins, but it turns out she has died while he was away. He swears revenge on the governor of one of the island's cities, Sword Emperor Duran. You might think the tournament would serve as a combat tutorial: it does not. Lucian goes to the tournament, and in the next scene he's coming back from it. The whole narrative is kind of disconnected like this - a lot happens offscreen. There's a scene late in the game where the heroes jump from an airship onto a train. There's an external shot of the train from above, text boxes come up with characters talking about making the jump, then it cuts to the party walking in on the guy running the train.
Anyways, Lucian goes to a bar, picks a fight with a couple of guys, and they take it outside. Meanwhile, outside the bar, Carroll (the woman pictured above) has been surrounded by a bunch of state goons who have just killed her companion. Lucian hallucinates that she's his sister, rescues her, it turns out she's also looking for Duran, and the game is away. I won't go in to the whole story, but it's an odd mix of grim and silly. The setting and aesthetic is pretty dark, but a very large chunk of the playable roster could be considered comic relief. Check out this guy:
This is Chemical, leader of a performance troupe who Lucian and Carroll rescue from thieves in the forest (speaking of which, the thieves have a leader who's invincible and seems like he's going to be a thing, but never appears again). The thing at the bottom left is his weapon. Some kind of laser cannon?
No, it's a giant ball that he rolls over enemies on. Also in the troupe are Fatboy Slim, a skinny dude who inflates into a ball when struck, and Idol Lace, seemingly a child in an animal costume whose special attack involves running up to enemies and pinwheeling her arms at them.
This dude is called Titus Groan. I guess someone on the team had read Gormenghast.
Anyways, here's a gameplay screen. My undoing with games in languages I can't read is often the menus, so it's good to have one that's pictographic. The options here are move, attack, act, and rest. Within attack you've got normal attacks and specials, and the actions are pull switch, something I never used (I think it's a quicksave or something), and heal. For some reason (sexism) all but one of the female characters can use heal and none of the male characters can. At the lower left are your action points, which are consumed when you move, attack, or act. Above the text is the heat gauge - all the weapons are powered and heat up when used. Attack too often, and they overheat, so you're limited in two ways. As the game goes on the AP cost of movement and attacking goes down, but special attacks still cost 50 AP (and 2nd tier specials, which you get at level 20, cost 70). You can also rev up your weapons - hold down on the d-pad while selecting an enemy and it'll move through power levels, which increase the damage done but also cause more heat gain.
Height and facing are also big factors in damage done. In the first of these images, the enemy is striking Lucian from a level below. In the latter, Lucian counters from above, doing way more damage.
But still not much by the standard of the game. This one, I think, is the outcome of Chemical's rolling ball special attack from a level above and directed at the side of the enemy instead of the front. So my tactic for pretty much every level was to get into a position to attack the enemy from above (or at least on level ground) and let them come to me. Because of the AP system, if you walk right up to an enemy you risk not having the points to attack them. Plus on their turn they won't have to walk up to you, so they can attack you repeatedly. Better to move to the edge of their range so that they approach you and run out of AP in the process. Usually moving to the edge of their range will be enough to make the enemies approach, but there are also levels where all the enemies rush at you from the start. In something like Shining Force, these would be the hardest levels, but in Wachenroder those are the second-easiest levels because you can set up a good defensive position (i.e., a high one where all your characters are facing the approaching enemies) and slaughter them. The easiest levels are the ones where you start on high ground - there's one in the middle where you're descending a stairway and you'd pretty much have to deliberately try to let an enemy get higher than you. Late in the game you come back through the same stage in the other direction, which requires a bit more throught, but actually it's a pretty easy game overall - I only had one game over on an early level where I knew there was a turn limit but didn't know what it was so I was rushing and overexposed my units.
I'm not sure it's a game I'd recommend - firstly it's kind of a hassle to play in English because it's not translated, and it's definitely not much of a challenge (the final boss almost got me, but I made a pretty bad decision early in the stage that cost me one of my stronger units and I still managed to win, so it's not that hard. Certainly looks challenging, because it's at the peak of a pyramid and doesn't move, meaning you can't use the usual "get above them" tactic), and the AP system while interesting on paper means that you're often issuing half a dozen commands to a single unit in a single turn which can get tedious. I did enjoy it, though.
The cover looks pretty nice, too. Left to right, I think that's Titus, Orange, Bellebete, Lucian, Carroll, and Duran, i.e. most of the non-silly characters in the game. And there's text in another language I can't understand. Google translate gives Wachenroder as "Guard harvester", which kind of makes sense, because almost all of the enemies are described (by the translation at least) as guards. You're fighting the state pretty much the whole way through.
Glenn A. Rudy III said:
The FAQ doesn't provide the translation for ikimasu, but apparently this was the start of a long-term relationship. Since she was interested in working as a translator, he suggested they work together to translate this game. At the risk of getting too invested in the lives of these strangers, I googled them and it appears they got married and had some kids, so good for them.
Anyways, Wachenroder:
Starring:
Set on this island:
The premise is that the island is surrounded by fog, nobody can get to anywhere else in the world, and the machinery sustaining the island releases pollution that causes terrible disease in a substantial portion of the population. The main guy Lucian, pictured above, has a sister with this disease. Seeking money to buy her medicine, he enters a fighting tournament and wins, but it turns out she has died while he was away. He swears revenge on the governor of one of the island's cities, Sword Emperor Duran. You might think the tournament would serve as a combat tutorial: it does not. Lucian goes to the tournament, and in the next scene he's coming back from it. The whole narrative is kind of disconnected like this - a lot happens offscreen. There's a scene late in the game where the heroes jump from an airship onto a train. There's an external shot of the train from above, text boxes come up with characters talking about making the jump, then it cuts to the party walking in on the guy running the train.
Anyways, Lucian goes to a bar, picks a fight with a couple of guys, and they take it outside. Meanwhile, outside the bar, Carroll (the woman pictured above) has been surrounded by a bunch of state goons who have just killed her companion. Lucian hallucinates that she's his sister, rescues her, it turns out she's also looking for Duran, and the game is away. I won't go in to the whole story, but it's an odd mix of grim and silly. The setting and aesthetic is pretty dark, but a very large chunk of the playable roster could be considered comic relief. Check out this guy:
This is Chemical, leader of a performance troupe who Lucian and Carroll rescue from thieves in the forest (speaking of which, the thieves have a leader who's invincible and seems like he's going to be a thing, but never appears again). The thing at the bottom left is his weapon. Some kind of laser cannon?
No, it's a giant ball that he rolls over enemies on. Also in the troupe are Fatboy Slim, a skinny dude who inflates into a ball when struck, and Idol Lace, seemingly a child in an animal costume whose special attack involves running up to enemies and pinwheeling her arms at them.
This dude is called Titus Groan. I guess someone on the team had read Gormenghast.
Anyways, here's a gameplay screen. My undoing with games in languages I can't read is often the menus, so it's good to have one that's pictographic. The options here are move, attack, act, and rest. Within attack you've got normal attacks and specials, and the actions are pull switch, something I never used (I think it's a quicksave or something), and heal. For some reason (sexism) all but one of the female characters can use heal and none of the male characters can. At the lower left are your action points, which are consumed when you move, attack, or act. Above the text is the heat gauge - all the weapons are powered and heat up when used. Attack too often, and they overheat, so you're limited in two ways. As the game goes on the AP cost of movement and attacking goes down, but special attacks still cost 50 AP (and 2nd tier specials, which you get at level 20, cost 70). You can also rev up your weapons - hold down on the d-pad while selecting an enemy and it'll move through power levels, which increase the damage done but also cause more heat gain.
Height and facing are also big factors in damage done. In the first of these images, the enemy is striking Lucian from a level below. In the latter, Lucian counters from above, doing way more damage.
But still not much by the standard of the game. This one, I think, is the outcome of Chemical's rolling ball special attack from a level above and directed at the side of the enemy instead of the front. So my tactic for pretty much every level was to get into a position to attack the enemy from above (or at least on level ground) and let them come to me. Because of the AP system, if you walk right up to an enemy you risk not having the points to attack them. Plus on their turn they won't have to walk up to you, so they can attack you repeatedly. Better to move to the edge of their range so that they approach you and run out of AP in the process. Usually moving to the edge of their range will be enough to make the enemies approach, but there are also levels where all the enemies rush at you from the start. In something like Shining Force, these would be the hardest levels, but in Wachenroder those are the second-easiest levels because you can set up a good defensive position (i.e., a high one where all your characters are facing the approaching enemies) and slaughter them. The easiest levels are the ones where you start on high ground - there's one in the middle where you're descending a stairway and you'd pretty much have to deliberately try to let an enemy get higher than you. Late in the game you come back through the same stage in the other direction, which requires a bit more throught, but actually it's a pretty easy game overall - I only had one game over on an early level where I knew there was a turn limit but didn't know what it was so I was rushing and overexposed my units.
I'm not sure it's a game I'd recommend - firstly it's kind of a hassle to play in English because it's not translated, and it's definitely not much of a challenge (the final boss almost got me, but I made a pretty bad decision early in the stage that cost me one of my stronger units and I still managed to win, so it's not that hard. Certainly looks challenging, because it's at the peak of a pyramid and doesn't move, meaning you can't use the usual "get above them" tactic), and the AP system while interesting on paper means that you're often issuing half a dozen commands to a single unit in a single turn which can get tedious. I did enjoy it, though.
The cover looks pretty nice, too. Left to right, I think that's Titus, Orange, Bellebete, Lucian, Carroll, and Duran, i.e. most of the non-silly characters in the game. And there's text in another language I can't understand. Google translate gives Wachenroder as "Guard harvester", which kind of makes sense, because almost all of the enemies are described (by the translation at least) as guards. You're fighting the state pretty much the whole way through.
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Violentvixen
(She/Her)
This is adorable. And I've never heard of this game, thank you for sharing.
And ikimasu is a form of the verb "go", if you're curious. Probably the characters were talking about where to go next since it's not the past tense.
Back on the previous version of Talking Time, someone (@Peklo, I think) posted about The Demon Crystal, a 1984 action rpg side scroller. I picked it up back then, have had the odd poke at it since, and reached the end just now. I don’t really know anything about the original version, which appears to have come out in Japanese PCs. Most of the results on google relate to the new version, some of them saying it’s an MSX game, but it appears the MSX version came out in ‘86 so presumably there’s an earlier one.
You play a little guy hoping to rescue a woman who’s been kidnapped by a demon. There are 30 levels, each a little house. You can walk, climb ladders, throw bombs, pick up stuff, and open doors if you have the key. At the start, it’s very difficult - walking into the explosion of your own bomb will kill you, for example. Fortunately, lives don’t seem to matter. Lose enough and you’ll be kicked out to the stage select screen, but aside from the continue counter going up there doesn’t seem to be any consequence to it. Certain stages hold treasure, and finding these makes things a lot easier. The first one I got was the armour, which makes you immune to fire, drastically changing the gameplay because you no longer have to wait for your bombs to burn out before you can move past them. Many items are basically keys, allowing you to damage some enemy that you couldn’t before, and a lot of them seem to be single use and quickly gone, like an extra life or protection from one hit. There are also some that didn’t seem to make any difference, like the red shoes which were supposed to make it harder to get slowed down but didn’t seem to change anything. Dunno.
The items are generally hidden, and a big moment for me in the game was when I realised that the clues given by a fairy before each stage were not general “this is how the game works” clues, but specific “this is what you should do in this level” clues. So in the first level you get the item by using up all your bombs, and in the third it will appear if you stand still for a while. The game is not suggesting you throw all your ammo away or stand around all day in every level. I don’t know if these clues were given in the original versions of the game, but they make it way more playable. Possibly it’s a Druaga style situation, where the game playing community is supposed to collectively find everything and spread the word amongst themselves (I haven’t played Tower of Druaga but that’s my understanding of it)? In which case putting in some clues to replace it I found much preferable to me going to gamefaqs for the answers.
I assumed when I was playing that the game had started out in arcades (and I’m not sure now that it didn’t), where you’d be expected to play through from the start and knowing how to get an extra life or whatever could be a big deal, and that’s why there are so many one off items that aren’t that useful when you have access to a save file and level select screen. There’s a lot of stuff that’s not very fair - enemies that appear right behind a door as you open it, and at least one level where you can use all your keys up without opening all the doors - but none of it matters much because the levels are short, you can return to them if necessary, and lives don’t matter.
My final time on the in-game clock was about an hour and a half. The gameplay is fairly simple but engaging, and I enjoyed figuring out the clues. I’ve always thought Druaga style gameplay, hunting for obscure secrets, didn’t sound great, but they’ve done a good job making it accessible here.
You play a little guy hoping to rescue a woman who’s been kidnapped by a demon. There are 30 levels, each a little house. You can walk, climb ladders, throw bombs, pick up stuff, and open doors if you have the key. At the start, it’s very difficult - walking into the explosion of your own bomb will kill you, for example. Fortunately, lives don’t seem to matter. Lose enough and you’ll be kicked out to the stage select screen, but aside from the continue counter going up there doesn’t seem to be any consequence to it. Certain stages hold treasure, and finding these makes things a lot easier. The first one I got was the armour, which makes you immune to fire, drastically changing the gameplay because you no longer have to wait for your bombs to burn out before you can move past them. Many items are basically keys, allowing you to damage some enemy that you couldn’t before, and a lot of them seem to be single use and quickly gone, like an extra life or protection from one hit. There are also some that didn’t seem to make any difference, like the red shoes which were supposed to make it harder to get slowed down but didn’t seem to change anything. Dunno.
The items are generally hidden, and a big moment for me in the game was when I realised that the clues given by a fairy before each stage were not general “this is how the game works” clues, but specific “this is what you should do in this level” clues. So in the first level you get the item by using up all your bombs, and in the third it will appear if you stand still for a while. The game is not suggesting you throw all your ammo away or stand around all day in every level. I don’t know if these clues were given in the original versions of the game, but they make it way more playable. Possibly it’s a Druaga style situation, where the game playing community is supposed to collectively find everything and spread the word amongst themselves (I haven’t played Tower of Druaga but that’s my understanding of it)? In which case putting in some clues to replace it I found much preferable to me going to gamefaqs for the answers.
I assumed when I was playing that the game had started out in arcades (and I’m not sure now that it didn’t), where you’d be expected to play through from the start and knowing how to get an extra life or whatever could be a big deal, and that’s why there are so many one off items that aren’t that useful when you have access to a save file and level select screen. There’s a lot of stuff that’s not very fair - enemies that appear right behind a door as you open it, and at least one level where you can use all your keys up without opening all the doors - but none of it matters much because the levels are short, you can return to them if necessary, and lives don’t matter.
My final time on the in-game clock was about an hour and a half. The gameplay is fairly simple but engaging, and I enjoyed figuring out the clues. I’ve always thought Druaga style gameplay, hunting for obscure secrets, didn’t sound great, but they’ve done a good job making it accessible here.
I actually grabbed that game on Switch a while ago when it went on deep discount, I think on the same recommendation. I've played it a little, but at some point I'll go back and give it a real go. The very poorly translated English text was a turn-off, so I think I was going to change the language and play that way, but reading Japanese is much slower for me, so I ended up putting it off.
jpfriction
(He, Him)
Oh yeah, that's why this sounded familiar. I've apparently played through this game too. I bet it was fun!
Purple
(She/Her)
That was... kind of an ordeal.
I was in it mostly to see how the whole "no you have to play every character in every level" thing shook out, and see how the original physics play for Mama in particular as Luigi isn't quite a direct one to one conversion. I really had no idea though going in that YOU CAN'T RUN and what a profound effect that has on the gameplay.
Nor, honestly, did I really realize how draining it would be to play this 4 times back to back.
I was in it mostly to see how the whole "no you have to play every character in every level" thing shook out, and see how the original physics play for Mama in particular as Luigi isn't quite a direct one to one conversion. I really had no idea though going in that YOU CAN'T RUN and what a profound effect that has on the gameplay.
Nor, honestly, did I really realize how draining it would be to play this 4 times back to back.
Credits rolled on Saints Row 4, but I was also skipping most of the side missions (except for the one that gives Infinite Sprint) Just so I could do them all at my leisure with proper in-game lighting (making that the only thing limited to you until you beat the game is... a choice).
It’s rare that I feel the need to replay a sandbox game, rarer still that I would finish it twice. This was my... fourth or fifth run through this game. It’s just so accommodating.
The game manages the incredible tightrope of not only making absurdly overpowered right from the jump, but giving you a sense of progression as you continuously get even stronger still as you play and yet never making you too powerful so that the game stops being fun. All of which plays nicely with the games goofy sense of humour.
Also, the Switch port is vastly better than the SR3 port from a couple of years ago, and is in fact probably the best the games ever been presented.
It’s rare that I feel the need to replay a sandbox game, rarer still that I would finish it twice. This was my... fourth or fifth run through this game. It’s just so accommodating.
The game manages the incredible tightrope of not only making absurdly overpowered right from the jump, but giving you a sense of progression as you continuously get even stronger still as you play and yet never making you too powerful so that the game stops being fun. All of which plays nicely with the games goofy sense of humour.
Also, the Switch port is vastly better than the SR3 port from a couple of years ago, and is in fact probably the best the games ever been presented.
Dolphin Blue really does feel like a spiritual follow-up to Metal Slug. It was nice to finally play thanks to the Dreamcast Atomiswave ports. (This particular game originally had a bug that prevented clearing stage 3, but it's been fixed.) I probably like it more than at least Metal Slug 6? Maybe also MS5? Anyways, if you like Metal Slug games, it's worth a run.
I finished up The Witness. I had 10 lasers - I understand there are 11? - and there were a bunch of environmental puzzles I knew about and probably tens upon tens that I didn't, but I wasn't really feeling it. A lot of the puzzles were really hard and it made me feel kinda dumb! Even when I did well at solving a bunch of others! That's a thing I have with puzzle games in general, but I can unpack that some other time in some other place, or not. I didn't get all the videos or recordings either and frankly had absolutely no desire to since it just struck me as pretentious babbling shoehorned into a game pretending to Deep Statements about Truth that when so many puzzle games are already about epiphany and learning and searching but without the philosophy 101 textbook added on top.
Good puzzle game; a lot of really good puzzle design, very nice visual design, overall enjoyable. Also some Blowhardiness in there that is luckily easy to overlook.
Good puzzle game; a lot of really good puzzle design, very nice visual design, overall enjoyable. Also some Blowhardiness in there that is luckily easy to overlook.
Double-post for double-victory, but later that night I finished Superliminal. That was a neat little first-person 3D physics puzzler that played with perception (e.g. pick up a small block, move your camera so that it's at the far end of the room, then put it down; it will now be the size it appeared to be at the far end of the room. Pick up anything, look up at the high ceiling, and let go and it will drop to the floor, now gigantic.) There were a lot of cool and fun applications of the principle, but not too many of those "A-ha!" ephiphany moments; I think it had the same issue as Portal 2, where there were fewer elements in each room so the problem and what lines the eventual solution would follow were always pretty clear. i.e., Instead of "I have this tool, how can I use it in this environment...?" the issue becomes "OK, I can only interact with these two items, and there's the door. How do I arrange these two items?" Another minor drawback was that there were a few times a new puzzle concept was introduced for a single room, then never appeared again; that's always unfortunate, because either it speaks to unrealized ideas, or the puzzle engine wasn't as versatile and powerful as it seemed in the first place.
That said, I enjoyed the back half of the game a little more. Then design kind of takes a left turn and starts messing with perception in different ways; instead of you playing with perception, it plays with you. This has a very different feel than the first half of the game, almost like a different game entirely. And while there's a lot less actual puzzling to solve, it gets trippy and exploratory in ways that I found just as interesting as the first half.
Overall, a solid "not bad!"
That said, I enjoyed the back half of the game a little more. Then design kind of takes a left turn and starts messing with perception in different ways; instead of you playing with perception, it plays with you. This has a very different feel than the first half of the game, almost like a different game entirely. And while there's a lot less actual puzzling to solve, it gets trippy and exploratory in ways that I found just as interesting as the first half.
Overall, a solid "not bad!"
I finished up CrossCode.
Whew! I didn't expect that game to be quite so long, nor so challenging, nor so emotionally satisfying. It sold me at "hello" with its PS1 vibe, and I stuck with it for nearly 50 hours of fake MMO worldbuilding, convoluted movement puzzles, and very excellent music which is all still stuck in my head even a couple days after the credits rolled. Some of the puzzles really made me feel like an idiot, but then I felt like a genius when I figured them out (though some had me reaching for my phone). The common consensus seems to be that this game drags a bit in the final third (looking at you, Gaia's Garden), but I encourage anyone to see it through to the end. It's a great ride.
Whew! I didn't expect that game to be quite so long, nor so challenging, nor so emotionally satisfying. It sold me at "hello" with its PS1 vibe, and I stuck with it for nearly 50 hours of fake MMO worldbuilding, convoluted movement puzzles, and very excellent music which is all still stuck in my head even a couple days after the credits rolled. Some of the puzzles really made me feel like an idiot, but then I felt like a genius when I figured them out (though some had me reaching for my phone). The common consensus seems to be that this game drags a bit in the final third (looking at you, Gaia's Garden), but I encourage anyone to see it through to the end. It's a great ride.
Sarge
hardcore retro gamin'
I really ought to go and do that myself. I only had the crash mode stuff left to finish, and, uh, burned out on it.