sdcSpade

This is completely subjective, of course, but I thought:

1 had the best world, but the worst side quests.

X had the best exploration, but the worst characters.

2 had the best combat, but Gacha.

3 had the best side quests, but the worst world.

There's more I could say, but I limited it to the best and worst of each when directly compared. There's a really good game we could piece together from these four!

I finished Xenoblade X just in time to not benefit from the Switch 2 upgrade! I ended the game with 99% survey completion because the last boss I needed to kill required me to farm too much Bonjelium; the problem being that minerals are the one type of material you can't get with material tickets. I'll grind whatever is necessary, but I draw the line at waiting for the items to come in slowly over time.

About the finale:

spoiler

I expected the big triangle in the sky to be a 'final dungeon' and wasn't looking forward to it at all, because indoor areas were never any fun in the game. Why does the camera get so sluggish in that environment anyway? But to my surprise, the finale was a new open area to explore, playing to the game's strengths! I liked it a lot and luckily I was a high enough level to not get attacked by everything.

I'm not a fan of the ending itself, though. The game made Mira seem like a special place, Professor B hints towards that and the fact that every species can communicate despite their different languages. Because of this, I thought the planet would make it through the final events after all, but it was destroyed and we go somewhere else. This makes everything we did feel kinda pointless. All we got in the end was the friends we made along the way but we're still starting over. Worse than before, because we don't have a city or anything to build a new one with. The ending is just not in the spirit of the game and doesn't really address anything that was left open at the end of the original version.

But overall, this is my favorite Xenoblade, though that's always been hard to say. The series tends to frustrate me because every game does something exceptionally well and is the worst in the series in some other way.

Replacing Xenoblade as my main game is Visions of Mana, a game I was surprised to find in my Steam library a few months ago. I thought it was still on my wish list! The Mana games on the SNES have been a big part of my early years and Visions always looked very gorgeous. I've only played a little bit, but I like what I've seen so far.

Monster Hunter Wilds got its latest (and final?) update. I've only tackled the new side quests so far and they brought back egg carrying for a Monster Hunter Stories collab quest! That was always my least favorite quest type, but they reworked the mechanics to make it much better, tolerable even. Next up is Arch-Tempered Arkveld, the first 10-Star quest. I'm scared...

I'm finally out and about in Fallout 3. I forgot how stressful it can be to be in a Bethesda city with everyone always talking. The desolate wastes suddenly feel a lot nicer~ I also have to get used to Bethesda physics again. I jump-scared myself by stepping on a skeleton and somehow launching it into my face...

Before I started the game, I was wondering if I should wait for a Switch 2 upgrade. I beat the game yesterday...

A few years ago I was hit with the sack of bricks that is all Donkey Kong Country games being released one year apart. I have vivid memories of playing the second game for a very long time and then multiple times after while imagining what a third game would be like and you're telling me that was only one year? There's no way those games would mean so much to me if we had only had one per console generation.

I think I'm closer to the end of Xenoblade X than I expected. I thought there's be new side quests popping up in the new endgame content, but there's been nothing, really. I finished up the Collectopedia today and then I'm off to the third part of the final chapter. After that, it's the last few high level tyrants to finish off the map completion. It might still take a while, Part 2 took way longer than I expected. I'm curious how much of this new endgame they actually had in mind back on the Wii U. I find it hard to believe the Lao tease at the end was always meant to be what we got now. Makes me wonder if they scrapped the original plans or if they never had any to begin with.

Wild Arms 2 is beaten. In the end, I much prefer the first one. It's mostly the story that just lost me near the end of Disk 1. The villains never really did anything interesting while they were around on Disk 1 and Disk 2 didn't really have any villains to begin with. Your main antagonist becomes a part of space that's eating up the world or some-such, which just doesn't hook me. I like my villains to be less metaphysical and more mustache-twirling.

In its place, I started playing Fallout 3! I played it a good 10 years ago but never finished it, because I always stop playing Bethesda games at some point. It's not even the game's fault, the literal last thing I did was find a map with all vaults and I was really excited to go see them, and then I just never did. But I really like the world of Fallout, so I'm recording it now because that's the only way I'll ever stay motivated to finish it.

Oh hey, another reason for me to want the AEW title on his shoulders.

Sorry, the dog ate my homework. :(

I'm doing the story, but I rushed to get all characters, so I had a lot of side quests piled up that I wanted to work through first.

I've only played Monster Hunter Tri, Rise and Wilds, so my exposure to each era of Monster Hunter is limited, but Rise is my favorite of the three. It has all the benefits of the new games with the quest structure of the old games, which is a big win my book. It has its downsides (Spiribirds...) but I'd recommend it over Wilds.

Not sure what to say about World of Light. Most annoying battle effects can be negated with Spirits and if nothing else works, you can always lower the difficulty. I play on hard, but will absolutely lower it for fights like Akuma.

I finally get to continue the story of Xenoblade X as all side quests up to level 60 are taken care of at last! The Red Lobster quest is very demoralizing. It's no wonder I only found just under half, the other half doesn't appear until you get the first 49! So if you try to do this without a guide and thoroughly comb through every nook and cranny of the city, your reward is getting to do it all over again. If all of the lobsters were available from the start this would just be a normal, tedious quest.

In the late endgame, the lack of any kind of combat log becomes a real problem. There are some rare cases in which I engage a tyrant and just instantly die and I have no idea what even happened. The enemy list in the game shows their stats and resistances, but not what they do.

In Monster Hunter Wilds, I recently realized I really don't need most of the extra rewards you get from Tempered monsters in the field, so I've switched over to grinding materials from lower ranked regular monsters via the quest list. My wishlist is finally shrinking at a visible pace!

I'm about to finish Wild Arms 2. I recently finished adding all regular enemies to the compendium and fought the optional bosses. I wasn't able to beat one of them because it would just require too much grinding. If there's one thing the game is missing, it's a way to reduce incoming non-elemental damage. You have spells that can raise defense and resistance, but they do next to nothing!

I dug out Smash Bros. Ultimate again for the first time in years. I've been doing single character runs of World of Light pretty much exclusively since launch and a list randomizer decided to pick Captain Falcon for this eighth run.

I need a new Decapolice Prayer Circle, the old one clearly wasn't working.

Xenoblade X is being a bit weird right now. It looks like they didn't really update the endgame content from the original game. They raised the level cap to 99, but equipment still caps at 60 for requirements. You can find a level 60 weapon that is the best you've ever seen of its kind and an hour later you find another, also level 60, that is literally twice as strong. I haven't touched the story in a long time either, because all the original game's content is basically available now and there's a lot to catch up on. I think I'll stop when the quests reach level 60, though that means I'll have to deal with the lobster dolls soon. I'm honestly shocked that I only found around half of them on my own! I tend to take all kinds of detours trying to get to quest markers in the city so see if I can find any more but I haven't found any in months...

I'm recording my playthrough if Wild Arms 2, so it would have to have absolutely no redeeming qualities for me to drop it. And I want to play the whole Wild Arms franchise eventually and I've never played past the second game in the past, so I want to get the full picture.

Alright, here we go, let's start the year off with the big one. I've beaten Metroid Prime 4 with 100% items and 99% Scans (because one boss has a scannable projectile, which is just great) and I have to say that it is my least favorite Metroid game (barring the NES and GB titles on account of their age). I'll say this first: The visuals and atmosphere are brilliant. The boss fights are very good. Now onto everything else:

spoiler

When I started playing I asked when the game opens up and unfortunately, the correct answer is never. I've never seen areas in a Metroid game feel more like 'levels' than here. But oh, if it was only that! Nothing crushed my soul more than finding an area map and finding a linear string of rooms that you would expect to find in Final Fantasy 13. If there's ever an offshoot, it's usually one room. TWO if you're lucky! And when you're done, you're done. If you're ever forced to come back for a new ability, it's in a room near the beginning. You never unlock a whole new sub-area.

I didn't even bother backtracking for items until I had all of my abilities because I'd just have to go through the linearity again. There's no "Oh, I'll take a little detour on my way to Area X to pick up items along the way!" because none of the areas are connected in any way! Prime 3 was similar, but it still had good level design and essentially replaced the classic elevators with fast travel. What did Prime 4 replace it with? SLOW TRAVEL! Cue the rant about the motorcycle and the desert...

What on earth were they thinking? I truly wonder if they created the desert first and added the motocycle to make it less painful, or if they added the desert as an excuse for the motorcycle. It's so bland that if it didn't exist at all, it wouldn't feel like anything is missing. I don't even know what else to say, there's nothing interesting to talk about. I can't even rant about the green crystals as a collectable resource, it's plain stupid.

The whole 'Psychic' aspect of your abilities felt a bit forced to me. The Psycho Beam is fun and the ability to throw your Morph Bombs is neat, albeit not used very creatively, but they didn't have to make EVERYTHING psychic. The Psychic Boots give you a double jump... and you can stand on purple Psycho platforms! ...what? And the Psycho Power Bombs which are just Power Bombs that do nothing Psycho-related as far as I can tell.

The story is kinda weird, too. You start out in the prologue, Sylux is there and Metroid are fusing to things and suddenly it's all about Green Energy, Green Energy, Green Energy. All the bosses still have Metroids fused to them but apparently, nobody cares at all! Nor does anyone acknowledge Sylux as a character until the very end of the game.

Now, for the other characters in the game: I kinda like them. They get annoying when they're with you and comment on everything you do (the first guy in particular) but I have no problem with them existing in the game. What I hate is Samus' general apathy towards them. No matter what happens, she just stares at them. I know developers are deathly afraid of making her talk at this point, but a word of affirmation every now and then would work wonders. I didn't believe for a second that Samus cares at all about any of them false-sacrificing themselves in the Mines. Or for real at the end. If that even is the real ending, I feel like I got the bad ending for pushing the button, but I genuinely don't care.

At the end of the day remains the question: So it's a bad Metroid, but is it a bad game? I have no idea. Without the Metroid, it's not a game I would be interested in playing in the first place, so I have no scope of reference.

I'll be back in Xenoblade X for now. I've played it for the first time in 2 weeks and got my level 60 Skells made. Next stop, proper weapons!

i haven't updated on this one regularly, but I've been playing more Wild Arms 2 on and off this whole time. It does some good things gameplay-wise, but I'm not really feeling the story anymore. The localisation doesn't help, there are quite a few very awkwardly phrased lines.

Slow progress on Xenoblade X. But that's fine, I still boot up the game to get my 300 material tickets per day to lessen the grind for the level 60 Skells. I didn't think the jump from level 50 to 60 was going to be that great, but just looking at the raw defense of the default armor tells a different story. I'm level 59 right now, soon everything will die...

That being said, I'm past what was the ending of the Wii U version. I forgot exactly what it was, but I'm mad all over again that they thought it was a good idea to end the game there. You finally get some answers, but then they change the questions! Curious to see where this goes now.

Still playing Metroid Prime 4. I'll withhold any comments until I'm done, just to be sure I've seen the whole picture. As it stands, it's en route to become my least favorite Metroid game, barring the NES and GameBoy games on account of their age, and I don't want to say that too lightly. Let's see where else this goes first.

Title Update 4 for Monster Hunter Wilds is here and the Switch Axe got some unexpected buffs. Being able to dodge-cancel the charge of the Full Release Slash is huge! They added Gogmazios as the game's first Elder Dragon. (Editor's Note: Its definitely not the game's first Elder Dragon) It starts out as a normal fight, has an interesting interlude and then goes to shit in its third phase. Packing away your weapon and repeatedly shooting it with what is basically a slingshot is just not fun, especially when the ground keeps exploding while you have to look up!

But I'm super motivated to play again regardless, because they added a way to boost lower rank armor to endgame levels. My set has been stagnant for more than half a year and now I can finally work on that again!

'New path' makes me think it's a reboot and that's why it's not called Mega Man 12.

You'd think one look at the state of America would be enough to render their propaganda completely meaningless. You'd really think. You would really have those thoughts running through your head. But here comes reality with a steel chair to give you a concussion.

They don't get BP if they haven't joined the party yet. Mia had ~100 when she joined compared to the several thousand points the early characters have by now. But I've prepared for that for a while. I tried to save the BP reward for Cauldros survey completion, but you need 65% for the Mia quest to pop up in the first place.

I'm closing in on what was originally the end of Xenoblade X on the Wii U. I still have a bunch of side missions to do, but now that I have all but one character unlocked, I will probably rush to the new part of the story that gets me that last one so he can start collecting BP for his skills. I haven't picked up any treasures in a while to save the BP for the final characters so it doesn't become a stupid grind at the end. I need to play more though, I need to finish this so I can play Metroid Prime 4. I prefer to only play one Switch game at a time, because I really don't like removing and inserting tiny cartridges with my gigantic hands.

...but I've started Metroid Prime 4 anyway. I couldn't resist! I love hoe much you can configure your controls. I've spent quite a bit trying to recreate the controls of the Wii versions. I tried playing twinstick for the first Prime's remaster, but it never felt right to me. I've never played the games on the GameCube, the Wii Trilogy version is all I know, so I need pointer controls! I can't play for very long though, after about an hour my hand almost falls asleep and it's probably because the JoyCons are so much smaller than a WiiMote. That's fine though, Metroid is never a long game anyway, so this keeps it going for longer!

I have to say though, the game starts very, VERY slow. I thought the game would open up after the prologue, but there was more prologue with Lieutenant Tim Talksalot (who doesn't stay with you all the time, thank GOD!). I thought the game would open up after that second prologue, but that's when the game really wants you to get your motorcycle. That was about 2 hours of very linear gameplay that's probably going to stop now, but I'm not going to count my Metroid babies before they hatch.

I have reached Disc 2 of Wild Arms 2. It genuinely feels like season 2 of an Anime, I did not remember every villain introduced on Disc 1 to be defeated by the end of it, leaving us with something completely different to do now. And the game finally upped the damage numbers by the end of Disc 1, it was about time I had to try a little harder!

Hat "Hütchenspieler" eine versteckte Bedeutung oder ist das so doof wie es klingt?

sdcSpade

@ sdcSpade @lemmy.zip

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sdcSpade

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