Completion List 2015

[Tomara]

It's a new year! Anyone finish any games yet? I did and I need a place to brag (j/k).

1. Long Live the Queen
So many dumb ways to die... that princess deserves her own song. Finding new ways to kick the bucket is a lot of fun, though. Actually living long enough to see your own coronation takes some trial and error, but I didn't mind that very much since you can skip text you've already read (but be careful not the skip anything you haven't).

2. A Bird Story
See, you don't need loads of polygons for emotions! 16-bit style graphics work just fine.

3. Choice of the Deathless
Okay, imagine Ace Attorney set in, I dunno, Shin Megami Tensei and it's not a VN but a digital choose-your-own-adventure book. This is a thing you can play. Isn't it awesome that this is a thing you can play?

4. Child of Light
Charming, but it tried a little too hard. I'm no expert, but half of the rhymes felt off. Flying around, however, was amazing and something I want to do in more games,.

5. The Sacred Tears TRUE
This is some Japanese RPGmaker game recently released on Steam. The art felt a bit retro and basic, but the use of colour was nice. I also liked the battle system, which is based on rock-paper-scissors. The game can be very heavy on random encounters, though, which sometimes sucks the fun out of it. The story is divided into chapters and you choose which one you want to play in a special menu. Sadly, there's no replaying old chapters (what's the point of chapter selection then?) and since many of the side chapters have a good and a bad ending, you might screw yourself over. Perfectionists should stay away until there's a good walkthrough available.

6. Reccetear
Should have played this much earlier, because capitalism is fun! I'd pay good money for a game that's half this, half Atelier.

7. Fairune
This was very much an impulse buy (€2,99 on 3DS, free for iOS and Android), and I planned on playing 15-30 minutes before bedtime, but that quickly turned into two hours and I went to sleep rather late last night. Whoops. What's so great about this thing? It's like a bite-sized 2D Zelda game with some light Ys-like fighting thrown in (you bump into enemies to defeat them and the final boss makes it rain energy bullets and beams while you should magic sword beams at him). If you're looking for something short, cute and fun, this game is great.

[Hathen]

Good a time as any for me to start keeping track of games I finish.

1. Mass Effect 3
As much as I loved the first two games I never got around to playing the third until a few months ago, but it wasn't because of ridiculous backlash about the ending, I just never got around to it. I finished it about 2 weeks ago, and I enjoyed it for the most part, definitely the best gameplay-wise of the three overall, although I did still like the incremental skill boosts the first one had. I had the extended cut and I still thought the ending was bad, but I'm not going to be mad about it for years and years like so many people on the internet seem to be.

2. TES III: Morrowind
About a year or two ago I played Skyrim and it was the first TES game I bothered playing until the end (My first experience being about an hour of play of my brother's copy of Oblivion which I always found myself shutting off after I left the jail cell). I kept hearing people rave about Morrowind so I decided to give it a try. After several hours of tolerating the awful combat I really got into the game. The creativity of the lore and the themes of the story were miles beyond what Skyrim offered so I can definitely see why people love it for that. The gameplay is unbalanced irredeemable garbage though, and I'll never understand why people praise it. It would've benefited from just being an isometric RTWP CRPG or at least had turn based combat since some would argue the first person view is key to the experience.

I only beat the main story but I might revisit it so I can do more sidequests and at least complete the expansions. I really need a break from that terrible combat though, so I'll be giving Cyrodil another shot for a while instead.

[Blace]

1. Kingdom Hearts: Birth By Sleep Final Mix
2. Kingdom Hearts Re:Coded (cutscenes)
3. Batman: Arkham City
4. Middle-earth: Shadow of Mordor
5. Final Fantasy V

[Tomara]

1. Long Live the Queen
2. A Bird Story
3. Choice of the Deathless
4. Child of Light
5. The Sacred Tears TRUE
6. Reccetear
7. Fairune

8. Black Sigil
I don't get it. This game has so much potential, but it's nearly ruined by that stupidly high encounter rate. I really don't get it. This is obviously a labour of love, why get something so basic as this wrong? Sure, I get that the game is trying very hard to win the hearts of retro lovers and some older SNES games such as Breath of Fire had similar high encounter rates, but those games didn't feature puzzle dungeons. Besides, those encounter rates were never a good thing. At best they were something we put up with because there weren't that many other RPGs out there. High encounter rate are what we erase from a memories to make room for warm fuzzy nostalgic feelings. Some of the shoddy programming I can forgive (I got two copies of a legendary unique item and the game accidently skipped the first part of the final boss fight), but the developers clearly skipped Gamedesign 101 and now they need to pay by brushing their teeth and drink a whole glass of orange juice right after.

[Hathen]

1. Mass Effect 3
2. TES III: Morrowind

3. TES IV: Oblivion + Shivering Isles
Mixed feelings about the game. On the gameplay side, movement and attacking feel a lot more fluid than Morrowind, but to compensate for the removed accuracy mechanic they instead gave every enemy 10 billion hit points, which combined with the block/stagger mechanic makes fights drag on forever. At least playing a spellblade isn't a pain in the ass though.
Unlike with Morrowind, I was pretty thorough with this game and completed pretty much every major questline and quite a few sidequests as well. For a game which was praised for having good quests, I still found the majority of them to be pretty straightforward barring maybe 1 or 2 interesting Thief and Dark Brotherhood quests. The artstyle is laughable, especially the elves, no idea what they were thinking with those.
The biggest downfall of the game though, is the world. Cyrodiil is a bore. Putting aside the fact Cyrodiil looks nothing like what it was described as in other games, there's no cultural or religious conflict, no political intrigue- it's like they tried to make it as bland as possible. The Shivering Isles was actually an even bigger disappointment. I kept hearing about how it was interesting, but that's only in comparison with Cyrodiil. After the initial room which turned into a swarm of butterflies, nothing was particularly interesting to me. It's basically just a more colorful Vvardenfell, with mushroom trees on one end and swamplands on the other. You would think a prince of madness wouldn't constrain himself to having a realm that's basically completely coherent to a mortal, instead of just "slightly weird".

[Yoda]

1) Metal Slug on Neo Geo - Feb 7

[Ramza]

1) Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons
2) Bastion
3) KOTOR
4) KOTOR2
5) Jade Empire
6) Enola
7) Final Fantasy Dimensions -- derivative, yes... in some ways... but I really thought this game was a boatload of fun! (I love the Matrix Software additions to the old FF games, so this really worked for me)

I think that's been it for the calendar year thus far. Might have been a point and click adventure in there I forgot about.

I actually really loved everything I played so far. I think I'm intentionally gravitating towards the games in my backlog that I knew I'd love.

[ultra7k]

1.) Brandish - The Dark Revenant


Totally had fun with this, perfect game to pick up and go. It isn't difficult, but it does require you to pay attention. Basically any time I died, I knew exactly why. Great game. Now to decide what to work on next...Tactics Ogre or Neptunia Rebirth....

[Tomara]

1. Long Live the Queen
2. A Bird Story
3. Choice of the Deathless
4. Child of Light
5. The Sacred Tears TRUE
6. Reccetear
7. Fairune
8. Black Sigil

9. Summon Night: Twin Age
Cute game, exactly what I needed. Dungeons got same-y fast, but since they were all fairly short it never got boring.

[ultra7k]

1.) Brandish - The Dark Revenant
2.) The Legend of Zelda -  A Link Between Worlds

Total blast from the past with the latest Zelda game, though surprisingly very, very easy. I did love the choose your own adventure path in terms of being able to grab all the equipment early on, and tackle whatever dungeon you wanted. That being said, I went about 85% of the game before I got the Pegasus shoes (my mistake) but just goes to show how some items aren't necessary at all. I think I beat the game without having encountered the Red Mail either (I assume it's in the game??).

Regardless of it's small faults, it was an absolute gem to play. Coupled with the super stable 3D on the new 3DS, it was even better. Play time was around 16hrs 11min, and I didn't die once.

[Monsoon]

Should this topic (and I guess the 2014 topic as well) be in the Game Journals section?  I dunno, ultimately not very important.  Here's what I have on the year so far: 

Games Beaten: 2014 Edition

1. XenoBlade Chronicles
2. Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney - Dual Destinies
3. Ys: The Ark of Napishtim

XenoBlade Chronicles was incredible, if maybe a *little* too drawn-out.  Wouldn't mind if the level scaling made it 60 hours instead of 70+.  Whatever.  I'm finding it hard to justify playing a single game for weeks and weeks nowadays as I'm getting older and slightly more responsible.  Phoenix Wright was pretty excellent; the visual upgrade was huge, and I liked how they brought together all the important gameplay mechanisms from the whole series into the final few cases.  The late-game and mid-game cases were also very entertaining.  It's probably my second- or third-favorite game in the Ace Attorney series.  Ys 6 was... fine.  Mechanically it's a downgrade from Oath in Felghana or Origin, but I liked the different spells and combos afforded by the different swords, and the dungeons and bosses were mostly okay.  Too much backtracking, awful voice acting, and a sorta small world (five dungeons, two or three field areas) were the only negatives. 

Up next: either Fire Emblem: Awakening or We <3 Katamari.  Keeping it eclectic.  Around midway through Fire Emblem: Awakening, spending time grinding just to recruit all the children.  Not the "right" way to play according to a lot of people, but **** all those people.  I want all the characters.  We Love Katamari is... adorable.  It's been at least eight or nine years since I played the first Katamari, so playing the sequel is almost as fresh and fun as my first time playing the original back in college. 

[Tomara]

Should this topic (and I guess the 2014 topic as well) be in the Game Journals section?

Probably, I think? Just kinda dropped it where the last one was.

1. Long Live the Queen
2. A Bird Story
3. Choice of the Deathless
4. Child of Light
5. The Sacred Tears TRUE
6. Reccetear
7. Fairune
8. Black Sigil
9. Summon Night: Twin Age

10. Time Hollow
It's been a while since I played a game that was so... localised. That took some adjusting, but fortunately it didn't really alter the experience. Time travel is as confusing as always (what with the sending back and forth of people, who'd then get 'stuck' in time and so on) and I'm still trying to wrap my head around part of the ending (I think I missed a thing or two about the extra pen?), but overall I enjoyed it. The pen was a fun way to mess with the past.

Paper Mario
Wow, this game held up extremely well! I know I should have high expectations of Nintendo-games, but this game is so polished it plays like something that could have been released last year on 3DS. Only the resolution and textures hint at its actual age (15 this year!). I guess I could complain about how the game was designed to be fairly simple and straight-forward, but as it happens that was exactly what I was looking for, so whatever. Great game. Should have played this way sooner. Or not. I mean, seriously, it's rare for a game to age this gracefully.

[Maxximum]

A humble list since I don't have too much time to game lately:
1.Detective Grimoire
2.Broken Sword: Shadow of the Templars - Directors Cut