Printable View
I think they may have made a mistake positioning XIII-2 as a direct sequel rather than a spinoff. People who didn't like XIII (or didn't even try it based on the complaints) most likely won't even consider getting XIII-2.
That said, reviews have been looking good so far, and I enjoyed XIII, so naturally I picked up my copy yesterday.
20ish hours into the game now.
Much better than FFXIII. Not as linear. Feels bigger, but is smaller.
Finally got to the end of Skyward Sword only to be reminded of how much I loathe stacked boss fights. At this point I'd rather snap the disc in half than do the grinding necessary to prepare for yet another boss battle.
Also managed the 70 gratitude crystals and now the ungrateful demon wants 80... sigh.
What grinding? Through the normal course of play you could probably get enough of the right bugs to fill up at least 3 bottles with the heart potion++. You don't need the Hylian shield to beat him.Quote:
Originally Posted by Yaxa
Spoiler for Demise:
So, I haven't really played much new recently, but the other day I did download Ghost Trick Phantom Detective on the iPhone (it's a DS port) and became hopelessly addicted to the point where I stay up all night playing it instead of just playing one chapter a day like a sensible person.
It's a Capcom adventure puzzle styled game, in which you play a ghost that has to solve the mystery behind his death. You do so by possessing and manipulating objects in each stage. Several people die over the course of the story, and most of the puzzles involve manipulating the environment in such a way that you prevent their death.
It's very simple, but very engrossing, and I like the story (surprise surprise) too.
This is good news for me, AA was one of my favorite games of the year it came out in and I did 100% it (well except for the challenge mode). Good to hear AC is that much better.Quote:
Originally Posted by Yttrium
During my preparations before the final dungeon I stocked up two heart potion ++, a fairy, and a goddess guardian potion (or whatever it's called) "just in case".Quote:
Originally Posted by Thwick
I only needed one of the heart potion bottles, but did end up using the guardian potion because I newbed up and took 5 minutes to figure out the obvious pattern to one part of the fight. If you need breathing room to figure stuff out, it works pretty well. They did a good job making him seem scarier than he actually is, I enjoyed that fight quite a bit.
After my first dismal attempt (which followed several dismal attempts at the previous boss), I had no money, no sacred shield (broke during the previous fight), no potions, and while I had a shitton of bugs, I didn't have the ones needed to infuse potions or upgrade the shield. And the sword controls never did work properly for me, so any fight that required precise hits was an exercise in frustration.Quote:
Originally Posted by Thwick
I never did figure out an actual pattern. I ended up beating the lightning form by simply throwing myself at him and burning through non-infused potions.Quote:
Originally Posted by Wool
That said, I absolutely loathe boss fights in general. Tradition be damned, if it were up to me, they could be done away almost entirely. It's one thing if they're a natural extension of the game, but in most games (Zelda included), boss fights have little to do with what you do for the other 99% of the game. A positive example (to me) were the puzzle-based boss "fights" in Tomb Raider Underworld.
Oh well, at last it's all over now :p
(And of course I neglected to copy my save before the final battle, so I couldn't go back and finish the side quests even if I wanted to.)
Started Uncharted 3 for a change of pace and was greeted with three slow, boring chapters that could've been a 5-minute intro...
Same, that sucked.Quote:
Originally Posted by Yaxa
I've been back to playing Battlefield 3 before I dive into a new game. I'm thinking Gears of War 3 as a total 180 from Zelda.
<gasp> Blasphemy! :pQuote:
Originally Posted by Yaxa
Seriously though, the boss at the end of each dungeon has always been a huge part of the formula. I can sort of see how that would be a downer though, in much the same way some people don't like the shooting gameplay in Uncharted.
That's what I tried at first. I eventually decided it was doable but more trouble than it's worth, then I had my duh moment. If you want to kick yourself, read on!Quote:
Originally Posted by Yaxa
Spoiler for massive end boss spoilers:
Oh man, that would have been a lot easier! I didn't know that was possible.Quote:
Originally Posted by Wool
Spoiler for I ended up going about it this way:
Skyward Sword deviated from the formula in various ways, so I don't see why the boss fights should be held sacred. That doesn't mean they have to eliminate them altogether, but they could at least have tried to come up with something other than the age-old "boss that has to be defeated in direct combat using the toy you just picked up".Quote:
Originally Posted by Wool
That would be me as well. And Uncharted 3 doesn't even seem to have the smooth, cinematic presentation of the first two to make up for it. So far (just got to France) it's been a pain to play.Quote:
Originally Posted by Wool
Spoiler for RE: end boss spoilers:
I've been playing Final Fantasy XIII-2 a bit. I'm not too far into it yet but so far it's decent. My biggest complaint is that they took the criticism that the original was too linear a bit too seriously. I finished the second area and opened up a couple new areas. I went into one and proceeded to get smashed into a bloody pulp over and over again. I looked up a few spoilers and found that I'm not supposed to be in that area until much later in the game despite opening access to it now. So I went to the other area I opened up and the difficulty from where I was took a massive leap. So it looks like if I want to make progress I need to grind... Fun...
It has the potential to be a good game (and I liked the original). It seems that there is going to be a lot to do but the game is supposed to only clock in around the 30 hour mark. Because of that people have been saying it's a bit on the short side.
They'll probably be able to pad that play time with DLC. But I don't think it's fair to call 30 hours "short" either. I believe the Gametrailers review said you could finish the game in 20 hours if you kept following the main storyline, so I guess it's "shorter" on additional content than other JRPGs, but still a decent length.
Resident Evil Revelations is amazing! I haven't had this much fun in a RE game for a while. There are actual tense moments. Time where you can get a little scared even! The control scheme is pretty much the same as ever, and the 3D is pretty nice. The demo, as much as I loved it, really did not do this game justice. I highly recommend picking it up if you like older RE games.
I actually just picked that up. Unfortunately they didn't have the Circle Pad, so I hope the game controls decently without the second nub.
30-40 hours is probably the optimal jrpg length for me. I admit when GT said this could be done in 20 hours I got a little happy though, as there aren't enough short jrpgs in all honesty. Sometimes you want the gameplay and melodrama without dedicating an entire month to one game.
I'm not sure exactly what you mean by this. I thought many of the aspects were more cinematic than before. The bar room brawl for example. It was almost like a cutscene you play, without resorting to quicktimes.Quote:
Originally Posted by Yaxa
It's definitely more of an action game than before though. There are a few things you should probably like in comparison to the older ones though, without spoiling anything.
I'm playing Dragon Nest and some SWTOR - but I'm really in a holding pattern for ME3.
*rubs hands* It's going to be aaaawesoooome! :grinyes:
Same here. Especially after the time I put into Skyrim. :pQuote:
Originally Posted by Wool
The brawl felt like I was playing Heavy Rain. Move to predetermined position, hit predetermined buttons, wait for money shot, rinse, repeat. And the "resolution" of that scene later on just cheapened the experience, imo.Quote:
Originally Posted by Wool
The young Nate scenes also didn't "click" for me. Quite the contrary. Tailing Sulli was maddeningly slow, and young Nate climbing like his adult counterpart...
Anyway, it served its purpose as an introduction to the story and the characters (and their relationships), I just think it would have been better as a 5-minute intro.
I haven't picked up the circle pad pro yet and have no issues at all. I probably will to both help with my gigantic hands, and because I can see where it would be useful in Raid Mode. The base story so far has not been very hectic though so it doesn't feel necessary there. The game very much returned to the roots of the series.Quote:
Originally Posted by Yaxa
Yeah... I missed the direct camera control at first, but quickly adapted to it. Quick turn helps.
I have been thinking about picking it up for that and to be able to scan more easily. I think I would miss a lot of the slow pace of the controls though. They fit the game and atmosphere so damned well. It seems odd to me that RE5 would have benefited so much from the extra run and gun ability and it was left out while RE: Revelations just gets rid of some annoyance yet has it. Oh game design.
OK.. seriously. What's with the assholes that take 20 headshots to go down? Are they now applying multiplayer balance to the single player campaign in Uncharted 3?
I've attained 100% of Arkham City, but I don't have the platinum trophy because I can't get "perfect freeflow 2.0" - you have to have a perfect chain in combat, and include all 12 of your possible moves in the chain. It's a lot harder than it sounds. Even after much research and practice, I still screw it up. Bleh.
However, we did order Arkham Asylum for me to play through again :D weee~
We just started Super Mario Galaxy 2, and it's easily as much fun, or better, than the first one. It's a great game to be interactive with another person, too - my wife likes the role she fills. The second player's abilities is increased in this version, which helps.
I got a free month of Gamefly, so decided to rent some stuff I wanted to play but never felt like spending money on.
First up is Heavy Rain. This game does a lot of things right and a lot of things horribly horribly wrong.
Good: Cinematic atmosphere is top notch, and I feel pretty connected with the characters despite the poor voice acting
Bad: I don't mind quicktimes, and the implementation in this is pretty cool, but they get obnoxious as heck. It makes me physically sick to succeed in the button mashing only to have the character fail anyway. There is also a lot of chaff, making me feel like I'm wasting my time and it doesn't matter what I do. Really really sours the game for me. Controls in any tight space are also ridiculously bad, like immersion breaking bad. It took me fifteen minutes to do a five minute sequence because I couldn't control my character down the right corridors.
It's not multiplayer balance, it's enemy variety and progression scaling. You will actually die fairly fast in multiplayer.Quote:
Originally Posted by Yaxa
I'm going to make an assumption based on what you are talking about, and if that assumption is correct you really shouldn't worry about it.
I remember being :wtf: at first too, trying to kill these guys with pistol headshots. Then a few levels later better weapons drop in the levels and you just obliterate those guys.
There is only one enemy that will deserve your scorn, and in single player it only shows up once. The bots in co-op are pretty hard though. The more visible armor the bot has, the harder it is to take down.
These guys are wearing body armor and those retro ski goggles. I never encountered them in high enough numbers to get frustrating... until the ship graveyard where they just kept coming and coming. I actually found them easier to take down in hand-to-hand combat (so fists work better than a full clip to the head?), but with reinforcements coming and getting shot at or grenades hurled at me from every direction, that often wasn't possible.Quote:
Originally Posted by Wool
Took me at least a dozen attempts just to get past the boat-hopping stage of that chapter, and at the end I wasted a good 30-40 minutes trying to get on the large ship because Nate went "getting close" and "Sulli must be around here" at the opposite end of the ship from where I was supposed to get in.
On a positive note: I did appreciate the puzzles in the previous chapters.
Finished Uncharted 3. Overall it wasn't bad, but I still think the second one was the high point. I would have preferred more puzzles and platforming over the constant shootouts, but that's just me. I did find some of the platforming sequences more challenging than those of the previous games because it often wasn't apparent where you were supposed to go (sometimes to a fault). What I found curious is the distribution of checkpoints. It seems that the developers expected people to be good at the shootouts but suck at platforming, because there usually were plenty of checkpoints in the middle of the latter, but dying during the shootouts usually meant starting the whole sequence over from scratch.
Spoiler for desert:
Spoiler for ending:
I noticed that too, I was kind of amused. And I figured you would appreciate the boss system, although I was expecting a little rage over the heavy on the boat level. ;)Quote:
Originally Posted by Yaxa
Quote:
Originally Posted by Wool
Spoiler for boat boss:
That's funny. I blew through most of the game and that was really the only part that annoyed me. That and discovering to my horror that the guy I just sneaked up on could not be melee-ed. Also picking up miniguns and then losing them to open the door to the next area, before I have a chance to use them.
Just started Gears of War 3 last night. So far just have only beaten Act 1 but I'm happy to see Cole Train is back. Story so far is okay, graphically the game is pretty great. I'm amazed at some of the details CliffyB and Epic can squeeze out of the 360.
Just finished up Resident Evil Revelations. I really loved it for the most part. Some definite shitty stages, but they are pretty infrequent. I can think of only 2 that I viewed as really just awful. Still have some more to do in Raid mode too! I managed to beat the 20 normal stages. I am going back through on Trench and I need to finish the bonus stage which is utter bullshit. Final boss was a blast, and so was Raid stage 20. I really wish they would use this game as a model for future RE games. Have the story take place essentially two different ways in order to keep appealing to the survival horror roots while maintaining the action the new people to the series love.
Started Final Fantasy XIII-2. So far it's fun. The combat system was easy to get back into even after almost two years, though I'm not entirely sure I like the idea of having to twitch-switch paradigms. At first I was dubious about the "Cinematic Actions" as well, but I actually like the concept of a quicktime event that you have a certain degree of influence over rather than the usual "press or fail" mechanic.
That said, I find it disappointing that the first couple of hours of the game already exhibit noticeable performance issues.
XIII-2 has the dubious honor of being the first Final Fantasy where I'm tempted to turn off the background music. The looped vocal tracks get quite annoying after a while. And don't get me started on the boss "music"...
STO (the Dominion-starring new Feature Episode started on 2/11, and the second part is available now), Forza 4 (trying to earn some manufacturer affinity with events so I can upgrade for career), Castlevania: Lord of Shadow (brown environments!)
I was probably going to pick up FFXIII for 360, I dunno, don't have much time at the moment now anyway...
With a computer finally able to handle it, I played through the Battlefield 3 campaign last week. Amazon then finally sold Modern Warfare 2 for the price I wanted to pay for it ($5) and I binged that this weekend. On the side I've been playing Space Pirates and Zombies.
Whenever people said EA tried too hard to make BF3 like Call of Duty I scoffed, but now that I've played it myself I think they were right. There are several new mechanics that I really like, and then several design decisions that I do not. For some reason they also decided to add some really annoying quicktime sequences instead of just letting me shoot the target myself. There's one in co-op in particular in which you have to disarm a bomb, on a keyboard it just seems stupid and random, and when the sequence is bugged it kills all immersion.
The campaign itself disappointed me the most, a long series of narrow corridors in which you don't do much but follow around a couple npcs. In big firefights you get focus fired so the AI does all the work, but every so often there is one single guy that you and only you can shoot/knife. It's like they are trying to remind (convince) you it's a game. But it's less a game, and more a showcase of amazing visuals. And they are amazing.
I then played Modern Warfare 2 right afterwards, to compare the two games more closely. (I realize MW3 is the newest one, but it's not like they are doing much to change the series, they even re-use the same assets) I was mildly disappointed by this one too. I don't know if Call of Duty 4 was better, or if I've simply become jaded to the formula. The shooting/guns don't feel right compared to BF3 and the story annoyed me, but Call of Duty is clearly still the king of ambient events. That is to say, all the cool stuff that goes on in the backgrounds of the stages you are playing. The first half of the game was dull, but the second half had some really cool levels.
I still prefer Bad Company 2's campaign than either of these. That game had open environments, you played point (and didn't just follow others around), and had some awesome firefights in which by the end all the structures and cover around you had been destroyed. In BF3 cover disintegrates too fast to have the same value, the areas are smaller, and the levels don't really seem to have design subtlety. Modern Warfare 2 has better areas, but worse enemy behavior. It's just waves and waves of fodder constantly running at you. MW2 does have a challenge mode that is pretty fun though.
I finally finished Batman: Arkham Asylum today. 100% completion (all challenges), including the Platinum Trophy. Between Arkham Asylum and Arkham City, I'd not really separate much between them. The polish is only slightly less on AA, the first of the two games. If you haven't played either/both, I highly recommend them. In fact, I even recommend getting both at once and playing through both as a single game - the story lines merge, more or less.
Super Mario Galaxy 2 is still keeping the (very preggers) wife and I busy and entertained. I am frequently surprised by the quality and consistency of these core Nintendo properties on multiple platforms. If only Zelda was getting the same treatment :(
Next up: Final Fantasy (I) on the DS via GBA cartridge and Uncharted 3.
Still on AC: Revelations... every time I start to play, I get a nasty case of OCD and waste my time sending out assassins, recruiting more, and running around collecting shinies. I should focus on the story missions if I ever want to finish this game...
I beat Gears of War 3 last night, the story was decent. It was a good finish to the trilogy. I felt like this third one had a little too much of Halo's Flood with the Lambent and all of the. It was also kind of formulaic and repetitive. I felt like the cover wasn't realistic as there would be boxes and such set up perfectly for bunkers to hide behind. The boss fights were no where near as epic either. Not sure i'll play any of the multiplayer.Spoiler for minor plot spoiler:
Probably going to pick up AC:Revelations now or start Skyrim.
So... Final Fantasy XIII-2, about 20 hours in. The extreme non-linearity of the game means that there isn't always a story thread to follow. You'll often have to return to areas you've already been to, as well as visit them in different eras or alternate timelines. It's also not always apparent which locations are strictly "optional", so those wishing to simply experience the story without all of the side quests may get frustrated.
At this point I've run out of Wild Artifacts to open new portals, so I can't even proceed in the main story without first scouring old locations again.
One major beef I have with the game is the lack of a centralized quest log. The Historia Crux only shows the number of portals and fragments, but to see any other quests you have to actually enter the area (accompanied by major load times).
So it sounds like they did a complete 180 from FF13 and messed it all up? I was kinda on the fence about this game but this post settles me firmly on not getting it, thanks!Quote:
Originally Posted by Yaxa
The last FF I enjoyed side-questing in was 7. I thought 13 was awesome because they took all the things that JRPGs are good for and ran with them, and left behind all the things that other games tend to do better, rather than try to half-ass compensate for it.
doing some street fighter and just finished up Mass effect 2. time to dome more kingdoms of amular. :)
if anyone is bored here is like a recent arcade run i did to music!
is about a hour long btw lol.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f0usG...ure=plpp_video
Gamefly's queue seems to work a bit differently than Netflix's, they sent me two ps3 games instead of a 3DS game. To my amusement they were both by Platinum as well: Bayonetta and Vanquish.
The combat in Bayonetta was excellent, perhaps the smoothest of any action game I've played, but the game as a whole had a number of flaws that kept ruining my enjoyment. Little things like poor production values weren't as annoying as design flaws that led to frustration. Irritating quicktimes, buggy level design, etc. Much to my amusement I didn't really find the game that weird either, I'm not sure what that says about me. I might have liked the game more if I hadn't played DMC4 first. They had similar stories, but DMC4 held together better. Although Bayonetta did get marginally more epic in the end.
Vanquish left me very little to complain about on the other hand. While it wasn't so amazing that it blew me away, it's an incredibly solid third person shooter with little real flaws, save the fact that it is a very short and basic experience. The story sucks, it's just an excuse to shoot killer robots in a badass power suit. The game plays like any other space opera anime, but they shoehorned Russia vs US politics that have no real world context. It doesn't make much sense, and is so sparse that you go through most of the game wondering what you are doing, then get annoyed when they try and actually tell you.
Been busy lately so it took awhile to beat these. In most of my spare time this week I've been playing Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney on my iphone. Pretty simple puzzle/adventure, but was amusing. Not as good as Ghost Trick, but I might play another in the future.
Still running around in circles in Final Fantasy XIII-2. I'd really like to continue the story but I just can't find the artifacts necessary to open more gates. On the upside, my main characters are close to three mastered roles each.
Bayonetta owned. i wouldnt cal it under rated but it probably was one of the best devil may cry combo happy games out there. mix in corny story and a hot brit witch and it's great for what it is.
I had my fun with Bayonetta when it first came out, but as I'm not the type to memorize combos, parts of it were pretty difficult for me.
Also, I'm well past the 30-hour mark in Final Fantasy XIII-2 now and there's still no end in sight. Every time I finally get to open another portal, the new area is either a dead end or has a portal just like it, meaning more artifact hunting. The main storyline hasn't advanced in at least 10 gameplay hours.
Finished assassins creed revelations finally. Lots of stuff to do.
Took up uncharted 3 and.... Well it was short, in comparison. Still great, just 12-15 hours short. And I'm not running through again to hunt the remaining 70 treasures. I suck at the shooting part btw.
Next up: driver San Francisco.
I loved Game Dev Story enough to play through it twice, even making all the "hidden" options come up (Hackers, potato chip, hiring kairobot, etc).
After such a great experience, I snagged Pocket Story (soccer sim). It took a bit to get into, but I like it, too.
On the consoles/PC, I'm between options, at the moment. I finished Uncharted 3, and the wife and I play some Super Mario Galaxy 2 when she's feeling it, but otherwise not much.
Finally finished Final Fantasy XIII-2. In true JRPG fashion, the game culminated in exactly the type of stacked boss fights that I loathe. At least the game doesn't force you to replay all previous stages if you fail on the final one. And while there's no chance to resupply, you at least have the option of adjusting equipment and paradigms.
All in all I spent more than 50 hours in the game, and I still didn't finish it at 100%. There are still areas that I haven't explored (for lack of Wild Artifacts), and my Fragment count at the end of the main story was 123 of 160. Though it should be said that it is technically impossible to get 100% the first time, because certain things (Paradox Endings, in particular) aren't achievable until you've finished the main story.
My final impressions are mixed. Initially the concept of visiting areas in different eras or alternate timelines is intriguing, but often these (up to 4) different versions of an area aren't all that different. I also got quite tired of the puzzle minigames requires to resolve paradoxes.
Most frustratingly...
Spoiler for the ending:
If you're the kind of gamer who thinks the ending should be a reward, consider yourself warned.
I think I'm done with Mass Effect 3 for the time being. Eventually I'm going to come back with my Renegade Shepard and finish the ME2 DLC and play ME3 as pure Renegade to see how her choices affected things.
I'm still working on Final Fantasy XIII-2. I just haven't spent much time on it lately. I put it off to the side for ME3 so that took some time away. Also, my wife HATES RPGs (especially JRPGs) so it's something I really only play when she's working or asleep.
I just started Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood and having fun so far. I bought Brotherhood and Revelations last year during the Black Friday sales and set them off to the side. But with Assassin's Creed 3 coming out later this year I want to run through these.
Funny. I've also had Brotherhood for ages, never got around to it and started it a few days ago. I've only just gotten to the part where you can recruit new Assassins. Seems like I spend more time fixing up Sim Rome than on actual missions.
Since my console playtime is limited:
I'm running a small number of Forza online tracks a week (1-2 a night, if any) and an event or two offline.
I've also played a little Ghostbusters (X360 - not bad, brown environments :( ), Burnout Paradise (X360 - got further in my PC version but cannot find my wired X360 controller), and some Super Mario Galaxy (1, never beat it.)
All told I think there was maybe 4 hours of playtime above in two weeks :D
PC-wise:
Microsoft Flight is nice if quiet and very very slow.
Tried the free week for SWTOR from Nine, but it struck me as "WoW with Lightsabers" and hence was meh.
I've reloaded City of Heroes to run around for a few minutes, but felt very meh.
I updated WoW, but after hearing the "download done, PLAY" zong sound, felt very meh.
Updated Champions Online, LotR Online, and by now I don't even remember the third one, and when trying to log in again felt very meh.
The only MMO I've gotten any enjoyment out of lately has been STO. Even been teaming up with my brother here and there for a half hour or so late evenings.
Otherwise, I've been working on Dwarf Fortress and on the mobile: Dungeon Village, and Angry Birds: Space.
Lastly, I've been trying to do at least one geocache every other day - I'm lovin' the weather.
When I heard about Dungeon Village, it sparked an interest in Kairosoft games for me. "sparked an interest" is a gross understatement. I've driven my (new-mother) wife nuts with Game Dev Story, then with Pocket League Story - and I don't even *like* soccer or soccer games. I keep thinking about Dungeon Village, but I read some buggy/difficult scaling problems with the game. What's been your experience, Mileron?
We, uh, found a discount CD bundle in the Computer Games section of Half Price Books, so, ./cough, I'm playing Farm Frenzy 2, 3, and all the 3-expansions. Cost $5. Totally worth it.
./hands in gamer creds
./sob
I'm only about 7 years in (out of 16, from what I've read) with my two-star (out of five) town, and I've only run into two problems:Quote:
Originally Posted by Yttrium
1 - In the beginning, running quests costs more gold than you can obtain consistently, which I would understand, except when you start running into problems like bosses that kick the shit out of your adventurers and basically prevent you from earning gold for 2 months straight
2 - Even with as updated-as-possible gear bosses are capable of one or two-shotting most adventurers.
I like it though, and I can't wait to see how the back half of the game turns out.
I'm up to year 66 and have almost maxed out all my adventurer's in all classes. I have a total of 25 (which I think is all of them, unless there are some special ones you can unlock somehow), about 5 of them are maxed in every class and the rest have 2 or 3 classes to go to max out.
I plan on restarting afterwards to try to get a higher score, now that I understand the mechanics a bit more.
I'm also thinking of buying mega mall story and/or asking my fiance to get it for her iPhone, thinking maybe she'll enjoy it.
Speaking of Kairosoft games, I've been enjoying Oh Edo Town. Although at this point the strategy seems simple enough that I don't feel like I'm playing a town simulator as much as I'm playing Tetris with combos. Luckily Angry Birds Space just came out. Yeah it's ridiculously overhyped and I shouldn't be excited about it, but the gravity mechanics in this new one look fun, so :p.
I've played through Game Dev and Pocket League - both of those are worthwhile, as well. I tried Hot Springs, but I couldn't dig into it. Bleh.Quote:
Originally Posted by Delaregar
I rebuilt Rome and all I got was this lousy cape...
OK, so the bonus on this thing is pretty cool, but after all the time and money spent renovating an entire city, I can't help but feel a bit disappointed.
I broke down and bought the strategy guide for Final Fantasy XIII-2. It's not that the game is difficult (I haven't had problems with level appropriate bosses or encounters yet) but it's a VERY complex game that doesn't often give you good information on where you need to go next or what you need to do. Pretty much everything Yaxa said a few posts up holds true for me as well and I just got tired between flipping between various faqs trying to find the information I need.
Finished Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood with a pathetic total sync of 56%. That's hardly surprising, though. I'm not one to replay individual missions for a better score, so most of the memory sequences are under 100%, and I skipped most of the extra guild missions (thieves, mercenaries). I also never found the components for many of the shop quests.
Originally I was going to jump right into Revelations, but the formula seems to be getting old. I was pleasantly surprised by some of the more challenging platforming passages, though.
My wife was off work this weekend so I took to the PC and put in a good amount of time on Skyrim. I'm playing as a pure Mage and things have gotten much easier after finishing the Mage Guild questline. 100% rmagic regen from my head slot with the one boss's mask, 100% regen from the Arch Mage robes and another 25% regen from an Amulet of Akatosh. That makes things MUCH easier since prior to this I ran out of magic and died pretty quickly since it took forever to regen enough. Now I can keep pushing out spells and keep going.
Working my way through the Imperial Questline before returning back to the main story (I visited the Greybeards and left off there for the time being).
My wife works the next few days and next weekend so I'll probably head back to finish up FFXIII-2 and Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood.
After pushing myself so hard to finish ME3 at the expense of all other types of entertainment, I temporarily burned out on video games. Binged Archer and Game of Thrones for a few days and now feel ready to start something new again.
Started Folklore, which I bought and meant to play a very long time ago. It's actually pretty decent (so far) when you consider it's age. I'm willing to forgive the awful cutscenes since the story is actually marginally interesting so far. Ignoring the whole "I can't remember anything before I was 5" being an excuse to suspect a dark past nonsense. I can't remember anything before I was 5 either, clearly I need to go on a quest to speak with the dead and get to the bottom of this mystery! :wtf:
I choose you Bug-a-boo! Gotta catch em all!
I have a ... unauthorized method to play a lot of retro stuff. And this is much more complicated than emulators + roms. Anyway, I've been showing the wife the joys of RPGs on the SNES, so I'm working through 7th Saga, and I'll go through FF2 (FFIV) after it finishes. I may also give a short pass to Super Mario RPG, since I've wanted to play it for years.
Any recommendations for Sega or SGenesis RPGs of value?
The 16bit era is what got me into (j)rpgs. Off the top of my head:
Genesis:
Phantasy Star series was the Sega equivalent to Final Fantasy, not as good but pretty solid. 2 was the first time I ever discovered the magic of grinding in a video game,as just getting to the second town was a huge ordeal for me as a kid. 4 was the first time I remember production values being good enough that I actually cared about the story. 3 was the worst of the bunch but had a novel branching dynamic where you made choices that changed what characters you play as in future chapters.Spoiler for spoiler:
Land Stalker is a solid action rpg, if you can get used to the crazy awkward platforming.
Shining Force I and II are the first srpgs I ever played. Diverse fantasy units, pretty cool.
Genesis version of Shadowrun was pretty awesome.
Beyond Oasis is a kickass action rpg.
I'm sure there were others, but these are the best ones I can remember. I didn't have a snes as a kid, so the above are why I am addicted to the genre to this day.
If you get into the Sega CD stuff too, Lunar is good. I played a remastered port of it on the PSP last year and it still holds up pretty well.
Flash cartridges and original hardware?Quote:
Originally Posted by Yttrium
FFV often gets overlooked as the SNES version was never released outside of Japan. But it's actually quite good. More traditional fantasy than FFVI. I'd suggest playing the fan translation of the Japanese SNES version, as it's much more accurate than the official PS1 and GBA releases.Quote:
Originally Posted by Yttrium
Unfortunately, I can only offer SNES suggestions, as that's really the only system I had throughout the 90s. Some are action RPGs.
FFIV (2), FFVI (3), Lufia + 2, FF Mystic Quest (Come on, the story is fun), Secret of Mana, Secret of Evermore, Super Mario RPG, Earthbound, Breath of Fire + 2, Robotrek, Chrono Trigger, Shadowrun, Soulblazer, Link to the Past, E.V.O.: Search for Eden, Illusion of Gaia...
I'm sure there's more that I'm not thinking of.
Oh wait, I did play one of the Shining Force games for a whole ten minutes... I guess that wouldn't count.
The Phantasy Star games come up often, I'll make sure to check them out.
Heck, I'll check all of the items you have all listed. Mileron, it turns out that I've played all of those on the SNES (and owned most of them), excepting Robotrek and EVO.
I have created a soft-mod Xbox, using the guidelines at a location I will reveal in PMs, to load a custom dashboard onto an Xbox. It's an old hack, well-established, and only set me back $75 (w/ extra controller to mod and a memory card and the one required game). I can put an emulator on it for anything 16-bit (SNES/Genesis/TG16/NeoGeo/Saturn) or older, and I have the giant dump of ROMs available in torrents. So, I'm using a comfortable controller, the Xbox S-controller, to play these games on the BIG screen with save states, fast-forward and rewind, and nice software filters to "help" the graphics along.
Everything you guys have listed are in the ROMs I have. Thanks :)
*if this violates our posting guidelines, I'll gladly revise the post to exclude references to illegal activity*
I'd be surprised if anyone still cared about hacking the original Xbox. But since most emulators are available for Windows, using an old PC and a wireless 360 controller is a far more flexible (if less sleek) solution, imo.
What I don't get is why so many people use smoothing filters (the same can be observed with ScummVM). If I'm playing old school games, I want the old school, pixelly look. I don't want some algorithm trying to fake details that were never there.
Well, two things, Yaxa:
The controller solution is what I started with : a relatively recent laptop running a clean Linux install with the emulators. I was using a wired 360 controller-for-PC, and the output was going to the big TV via HDMI. The delay introduced from controller->USB->OS->graphics response in emulator->OS->HDMI->TV was enough that I missed jumps in Super Mario Bros. consistently. I tried again with my primary machine, a near-new lappy with Win7, and had *worse* results. Switching to the hardware interpretation of the Xbox allows for a seamless experience, without the penalty of having to hook up and tear down my lappy attachment every time.
As for the smoothing filters, you make a point - for small screens. However, for a large screen and high resolution, most of these games weren't designed for the graphics to be scaled like this. It smooths out the edges for some of the fonts, for example, and that makes it easier to read. There are no fewer than a two dozen filters on the SNES emulator, for example, and it's easy to switch through them and find the best option (for me, SuperScale2x). Some of them even add scanlines, for that REAL RETRO LOOK. Apart from graphical smoothing, none of them "add" anything to the graphics. Occasionally, some of them even create visual glitches in some games, based on the integrity of the images that shipped. YMMV.
The Original Xbox stopped shipping sometime in 2006 or 2007, I think, and the Xbox Live support for it was disabled in 2009. Those numbers are off the top of my head, they may be off slightly. Regardless, there's not a big demand for the units, so hacking one up seemed like a great idea to me. I never owned one until now, and I just have the one game (there are three options for the softmod hack, and I went with Splinter Cell, the most reliable option).
I used to be really big into the whole emulator scene and still have a bunch of burned DVDs with tons of ROMs, images and emulators stashed away somewhere at home. However I haven't really done anything with it all recently. I remember getting MAME to work correctly was something of an artform especially considering how often it was updated.
I haven't had any issues with input delays despite using a wireless controller. I'm using an old Athlon XP 2400+ hooked up via VGA, with the TV set not to do any post-processing on the image (the main source for delays).Quote:
Originally Posted by Yttrium
Any kind of interpolation attempts to add details. Look at edges of the Yoshi sign in these examples. What used to be simply a lopsided board now suddenly has wobbly edges because the interpolator tries to be smart and guess what goes in between the black and white pixels. I'd rather have straight up pixel resizing. Even on a large screen.Quote:
Originally Posted by Yttrium
FFV has an awesome fan-made translated version out there. I think there may have been an official release of FFV at some point on playstation or something, I forget. But I agree, FFV was released in the golden age of Final Fantasy and is on par with IV, VI, and VII for overall quality.Quote:
Originally Posted by Yaxa
One thing about FFV though is that it can have one of the more difficult endgames. There's no easy place to grind out massive amounts of xp as in FFIV, and you don't have the genji/offering/dice, Quick/X-magic type combinations that could end 99% of the battles in the game in a turn or two. It's still the same old ATB system, though, so it's not all that hard.
It's also a lot longer than FFIV, I would say it's closer to FFVI in terms of length and amount of content.
Ah, Phantasy Star 2 (I think), must have been over 20 years ago that we played it on a friend's Genesis.
We never finished it (sadface)... final boss always kicked our junk.
I'm nearing the end of Lego Harry Potter: Years 5-7 and the further I get, the more that typical Lego humor feels out of place. The second half of the Potter series just seems too serious for the levity of Lego games, which cheapens the overall experience.
As far as mechanics go the game doesn't divert much from the first installment. Giving Ron and Hermione their own character-specific items (the put-outer and the bag of deus-ex-machina items, respectively) brings them up to par with Harry and his cloak, but ultimately only serve to slow the pace by making you switch characters more frequently.
As in the previous game, you will have to re-play each area with a different choice of characters in order to uncover the many hidden items that are inaccessible with the default, story-mode characters.
It didn't take me long to get tired of Folklore. :p
The base of the game is still fine, but it gets kind of old/repetitive, and has a few annoyances that are driving me crazy. I've set aside my obsessive compulsive tendencies and have refused to do any more sidequests. They are abominable.
The sixaxis controls that Sony shoehorned into all their early games gets more and more obnoxious as the game continues as well. Why is it I can kill a boss, and the hard part being not tearing out all my hair while trying to catch it in my ghostbuster pokeball?
The plot also drives me crazy. I can't decide if it's interesting or not because for the entire game each npc I have talked to has known the answers my character wanted, but would tell her/him to go ask the next person instead. Who would repeat the pattern. Waste my freaking time man.
This game could have ended in the first chapter if these npcs weren't such assholes. There mystery solved, was that so hard? Now that I'm near the end, stuff is finally happening, but I still conveniently don't know what is going on. The game tells you different things, and still deliberately withholds information from you, argh.
I never finished it either actually. I beat all the others, but Phantasy Star 2 shares the distinction with Final Fantasy Legends (not sure which one, the gameboy ones) as being the only game I ever got lost in and didn't know where to go next. Pretty sure I was near the end though. You know who you know whats and you know what you know whats, and the world gets all you know whatty.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ronaan
I recently started Assassin's Creed: Revolutions... what a disappointment. The main game seems to be a carbon copy of Brotherhood and the Desmond back story is heavy exposition packed into a puzzle mini-game. And while the series has never been that big on realism as far as the acrobatics go, the idea of a middle-aged, grey-bearded Ezio pulling off all those moves is somewhat laughable.
The setting is, of course, a matter of taste. But it's definitely not my cup of tea. I'll probably finish the game anyway, but so far my motivation is approaching zero.
I finally finished the main game of Final Fantasy XIII-2. Overall I think I liked the first one better. About halfway through the game I broke down and bought the strategy guide and I have no idea how anybody would be able to beat the game without it. It's not that the game is hard. It's just VERY complicated and VERY confusing. Even with the guide it took some time to figure out how things are all connected and how to unlock everything.
I went into the final fight with 142 fragments. I guess that you can, in theory, collect 151 of the 160 prior to starting the final fight but some are going to take some time to finish up. The final fight took a bit of time (the last phase took me 15 minutes on my successful attempt, previously I had a 5 minute attempt in which I didn't switch paradigms fast enough and died). My target time was 11 and a half minutes so I didn't come anywhere close to getting 5 stars. I have some ideas thought and I'm going to look up some strats.
My plan is to get 100% completion on the game (all trophies) but not sure if I'll take a break for a bit or just plow ahead and try and do it now.
Edit: I read that you can beat the final boss on Easy and still get the Trophy. I had no idea there even was an Easy setting prior to reading that. I promptly set the game to Easy and beat the crap out of him for my Trophy.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Silke
Spoiler for boss fight:
Phantasy Star 2 was awesome, but it was a bit gimmicky IMO. You HAD to have a specific spell, that was the only way to actually win. If you didn't have that spell, you couldn't kill the end boss fast enough to actually win.Quote:
Originally Posted by Ronaan
All of the Phantasy Star games (well, 1,2, and 3 anyways) were so open ended you could easily get lost. Which I find funny as there was only one way to win them.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk, cause I was lonely being the only one without it!
I decided to just try and finish FFXIII-2 to 100% and I'm pretty close. I unlocked all of the Paradox endings (except the secret) and have 158 out of 160 Fragments. The two I'm missing are the Monster Bestiary fragment and the Slot Machine Fragment. Neither are difficult but both are VERY time consuming. After those two I just have a couple more time consuming things to do (finish 10,000 steps on a Chocobo, replay and get perfect on a couple boss fights cinematic actions and get the 99,999 damage trophy).
I've clocked in around 41 hours on this game (compared to nearly 90 on the original). I figure if I quit now I wouldn't even come back and do it.
Also, I've got to say that the ending sucked hardcore.
Spoiler for The End:
I started playing FEAR 3, because I was in the mood for something short and simple. Unfortunately I ended up wasting half my allotted play time trying to fix the abominable fov.
I'm not unsympathetic to console ports. I don't really care if the menu screen says press start to play, but the fov is kind of important. It can't be something that hard to fix, so why do they almost never fix it? Apparently at release players couldn't either, you were only able to edit the config file some time later. But to the game's credit (I guess) even after I did so, I still felt nauseous. Oh well.
I've only played the first level, so it's really too soon to judge, but I get the feeling this will be my least favorite in the series. The shooting is competent, but some of the gameplay can be cumbersome. For some ungodly reason they decided to add a cover mechanic to a bullet time shooter. And it has it's own dedicated button press. While sure, context sensitive commands can be a problem, I find having too many buttons to press incredibly annoying, especially in a cover shooter where you die in a couple of seconds out of cover. You might as well add a cover mechanic to Doom.
Again, too soon to judge, but it doesn't seem very creepy. It's funny really. The series always depended on those moments where you had to be looking in just the right spot to see what they wanted you to see. I never really had a problem with that before, but I keep getting the off chord piano cue that something spooky just happened, but I was looking in the wrong direction.
The saving grace seems to be that you can play it co-op, although it's unlikely that I will, alas.
Currently playing through Clive Barker's the Undying. The game had been sitting in a box at my house collecting dust, and I had never played it because it was so old. Dang! This game is genuinely good. Easily one of the best horror PC games I have seen, and with great gameplay. Also, it has what might be the creepiest weapon in any game - the Tibetan War Cannon.
My only complaint are the dated graphics, but hey the game is dated.
I've heard good things about Undying, but with one fatal flaw, which I can no longer remember. Never got around to trying it myself.
Fear 3 ended up getting better, but generally only in the combat side of things. Almost all of the horror was gone, with only the background to the plot retaining a few amusing aspects (the plot itself was ridiculously thin). There was also a co-op mechanic where the game keeps track of how well you each do, and the person with the most "points" at the end determines the ending. I thought that was kind of neat.
Been toying around with the tutorial to Shogun 2 Total War. It's neat, but some of the UI mechanics feel backwards to me. Rotating your troops with the mouse for example does not work the same way it does in any other game I've played, so I find it difficult to get my units into the formations and directional facing I want.
Thinking of playing Bulletstorm over the weekend. Xenoblade still hasn't arrived. Turns out I chose the slowest shipping speed.
I picked mine up. ;)Quote:
Originally Posted by Wool
Only 2-ish hours into the story (9 hours playtime, natch) and I'm enjoying it so far more than Star Ocean: Lost Hope. I need to find my Classic controller, though, as using the Nunchuk is killing my left hand.
Did you have it shipped via an injured donkey?Quote:
Originally Posted by Wool
Just finished the Platinum Trophy for Final Fantasy XIII-2. It's only my second Platinum with the other being from the first Final Fantasy XIII. Neither Platinum was overly difficult but both time consuming. The first took me around 90 hours but this one only took about 45.
I think I'm going back to Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood now. I didn't get very far when I started.
I've done a few platinums, recently, and it's a new sense of accomplishment. I was close to the FFXIII one, but gave up when I got to the end and saw another 30+ hours to do a few things. I did chase down all of the hunts, though, and that was entertaining.
I'm in the midst of a huge retro-gaming phase. I've recently re-run through: The Goonies II (NES), The Goonies (PC10, ostensibly NES), Gradius(NES), River City Ransom(NES), Super Dodge Ball (NES), 7th Saga (SNES), Castlevania X (SNES), Super Metroid (SNES), and Adventure (Atari2600). I'm in the midst of going through all three Eye of the Beholder games (PC - DOSbox).
If I were doing any gaming on modern PC/console, it would be vague references to Super Mario Galaxy 2 and the Farm Frenzy series, but I haven't tinkered with them much lately.
If you're interested in retro games might want to check out one called Battle of Olympus. I don't know how popular it was but I really enjoyed it. It's a side scrolling adventure game not unsimilar to Links Adventure, only a lot more fun than that.
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
Finished my first playthrough of Skyrim. I went a pure Mage build which worked for me (at least after I finished the Winterhold questline and gained access to some powerful Mage items). There were a lot of questlines I didn't do (Thieves Guild, Companions and Dark Brotherhood) as they didn't feel appropriate for my character. And it got to the point where I just wanted to wrap things up.
I'll probably go through again soon and do the questlines I missed the first time (and go with the Stormcloaks over Imperials). But right now I'm thinking of playing Aion during my PC gaming time.
Bulletstorm is so great.
Now, it had a case of consolitus, but I got it worked out. The fov wasn't as bad as Fear 3's, but it had a lot of stupid console options that get in the way of keyboard and mouse (aim assist, mouse smoothing, etc).
Once you get past that it's great though. My only complaint is my obsessive compulsive nature demands I try and get all the skillshots, but there simply aren't enough guys to kill. And of course, instead of simply enjoying killing dudes, I'm constantly stressing over killing them in ways I haven't done yet. :p Sure kicking a guy into a cactus is fun, but I haven't killed a guy by causing the guy next to him to fly up into the air and explode yet. Must obsess over accomplishing this before I'm comfortable to just play it naturally!
The weapons are great, and the different ways you can kill people are great. I just need more people to kill dangit.
The game is also hilarious if you don't mind gutter mouth talk. I imagine this is how people felt about Duke Nukem's crude humor a long time ago.
Guy meets girl: Hey, can you help us get off this planet?
Girl: F you, $*(&# %##, if you try and follow me, I'll kill your dick!
Guy is flabbergasted: W-what does that even mean?
Guy gets angry: Oh yeah, we'll I'll kill your dick!
That might have been an upgrade. Still don't have the package, and don't have tracking. This is what happens when Gamestop and Nintendo have the exclusive and you don't feel like paying ten dollars for shipping.Quote:
Originally Posted by Silke
My only two "real" platinum trophies are for the two inFamous games, although I have a few PSN platinums too (flower, etc).
My next gaming sessions shall be spent playing EQ. Might even spend a few bucks in the store.
Just finished 2 play-throughs of Mass Effect 1 and downloading 2 now.
:grinyes:
Saw an article "10 Best Action RPGs that came out between D2 and D3" and got inspired to give Titan's Quest another spin last night.
Saw mention of an Underlord mod for TQ elsewhere. Anyone familiar with this?
Picked up Storm of Zehir for NWN2.
Trying to play through that campaign with my brother - Having a few audio difficulties we haven't been able to sort out yet.
I finished Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood and have moved on to Revelations.
I started Brotherhood trying to do everything but about a third of the way into the game I happened to look at the achievements and saw that a good chunk of them were multi-player. As soon as I saw that I stopped trying to get 100% synch on everything and stopped doing a lot of the little sidequests. I still made sure to get all the big stuff like Subject 16 memories though.
Revelations, so far, is beautiful. They really did an outstanding job with the graphics and textures and the game looks amazing compared to the earlier AC games.
I cannot stop playing ME3 multiplayer. It's like a disease. Feels as bad as when I was playing Magic!
I, literally, just finished Assassin's Creed: Revelations. The game was beautiful but it was also, easily, the worst in the series. It was a bit too short and really didn't do anything new. It was also pretty short all things considered. Luckily I got it cheap so I'm not too disappointed and I'm still really looking forward to part 3 later this year. I like Ezio but I think he's a bit played out at this point.
I bought Might and Magic 1 thru 6 on GOG.com and I'm slowly making my way through the first. Back in the good old days of PC gaming, I played 3 thru 6 but never really got the chance to play the first 2. They're very dated at this point and they also suffer from the RPG game design philosophy of the late 80's where you really don't get a lot of information to go on so you just wander around from fight to fight exploring. Even the later ones have this but I remember that the story does start to come together.
I've also started my Renegade playthrough of Mass Effect 3. Even if the ending wasn't the greatest, the remaining 99.5% of the game is really good. My only complaint is that my Renegade Shepard is significantly less Renagedish than in previous games. I'm also disappointed that my actions in previous games don't have the same impact as a Paragon Shepard (like giving Cerberus the Collector Base).
Resurrecting this old thread.
I forgot how much I loved the Might and Magic series. I bought a pack that included 1-6 (and the fan made Sword of Xeen) a few months back. I finished M&M1 and am nearly done with M&M2. The last dungeon is just kicking my butt so I need to go grind some more Cats From Hell for levels and Doomsday treasure chests.
As I mentioned a few posts up, the first games are VERY dated. The graphics, by today's standards, are beyond terrible. The games also suffer from a severe lack of direction. Without a walkthrough, I don't know how people finished these games. I think the idea was to simply go out, level and see the entire world and eventually you would stumble on things. The first one was worse than the second in this regard. Once you're high enough level, you can finish the game in under a couple of hours if you know what it is you're actually trying to do. M&M2 is a bit more complex and you need to gather a lot of items, combine them. Gather more items, combine those. And eventually you will get to the end of the game. There's also Time Travel involved but it's poorly implemented and not explained at all. You only need to do it twice (once to get 4 elemental discs and again to re-write history by altering the outcome of an important battle in CRON's history).
Despite all of that, I love these games. They're just a lot of fun going around, building up my characters and exploring. Once you realize that there is, in fact, a storyline, the plot is a lot of fun. I still remember playing Darkside of Xeen and finding the downed spaceship and realizing that everything I thought I knew about the game was completely wrong. Back in the day I started with Might and Magic 4, then 5 and I, finally, went back and played 3. It wasn't until recently that I got to play 1 and 2. And despite not having a lot of screen time, Sheltem is a bad ass villain. I mean his hobby is to go around and throw Nacelle Worlds into their suns for fun.
Everquest.
I even subscribed. And I'm having fun!
Went from 76 to 82 so far, got epic 1.5 last saturday, 2.0 today.
I'm back to xcom: apocalypse :p
I'm a huge sucker for Final Fantasy music, so I picked up Theatrhythm: Final Fantasy the other day. Gave me an excuse to dust off the ol' 3DS. It's actually a pretty fun game. The songs are kind of hit-or-miss. Some feel perfect, in others I never get the feeling that I'm playing along with the music. I've never played Guitar Hero, Rock Band or anything like it so I can't comment on how Theathrythm compares.
Song selection is all over the place. Each game (main numbered titles I through XIII) has three songs (field, battle, event) plus an intro and ending song that you don't have to play along to (but can for extra points). Battle tracks feel the best as far as rhythm goes. Some choices are simply mind-boggling -- how can the event music for FF6 not be the opera scene? That has to be the most iconic event scene of the 16-bit FF era. Instead, they opted for a simple rendition of Rosa's Theme.
As far as music quality goes, Theatrhythm does benefit from the 3DS's enhanced audio capabilities. But the game uses neither the original renditions of the songs as featured in the first releases, or the modern orchestral scores (Distant Worlds et all), but instead opts for its own interpretations, most of which simply don't compare. In all fairness, the game is cartridge-based and there simply isn't enough storage space for dozens of songs in full CD quality (supposedly over 70 in total counting unlockable music). But for a music game to make compromises on the quality of the music just seems wrong, no matter what the platform is.
Theatrhythm is also the first 3DS game to offer DLC in the form of downloadable songs. Those aren't integrated into the main game but are available only in the game's challenge mode. They're also, in true Square Enix fashion, ridiculously expensive at €1.00 for a single song. I thought Dissidia was already pushing it with 3- and 5-song packs for €0.99.
On a positive note, some songs are accompanied by screenshots and videos of their respective games, so it's hard not to get extremely nostalgic as you're playing through them. Makes me wish at least of them were included as an unlockable extra.
I've so far ignored the RPG aspect of Theatrhythm and treated it simply as a rhythm game. But you actually have control over your party (there are 29 characters available, some of which have to be unlocked) and their equipment. I guess this may become more important at higher difficulties.
That said, it's a fun time killer, but unless you're a huge fan of Final Fantasy music, it's a questionable investment at full price (€40).
Just picked up the Uncharted trilogy.