Beat the Switch Library - 231/999

[Ausden | 323]

Sniper Elite 4: Italia

[LifeGame | 760]

Trine 4, not sure why my pics come out inverted but here it is

[Red | 434]

I think Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate can be considered done.  I beat the monster that's considered the main threat in the offline/single player mode and got the credits.  While I had fun with the game, there was something unsatisfying about how my AI controlled palico (cat) landed the final blow on the final boss while I was sitting in the corner sharpening my weapon.

[LifeGame | 760]

Misc category:

The Warlock of Firetop Mountain

[Gaia Gensouki | 1,066]

Just beat Bravely Default II.

Spoiler

I really loved the first game, but I'm very torn on this one. At first it seemed pretty great, but I soon realized that it was marred by some pretty major flaws, like unusually complicated menus, frequent and fairly long loading times for a game on a cartridge (inlcuding enemies or textures visibly loading into higher resolution) and a completely broken balancing.

First off, most enemies or bosses are either way too easy or way too difficult, which can sometimes depend just on equipping certain items, e.g. some boss might rely on confusing your entire party while another boss paralyzes you over and over again. You then just equip certain pieces of armor or accesories that prevent these status ailments from happening and suddenly a seemingly invincible boss now becomes fairly easy. This means that you often have to do a test run against bosses to see what kind of attacks they use. While it's interesting to craft elaborate strategys against difficult enemies here the bosses are usually either too difficult or way too easy with very few in between.

Then there are the jobs that you can find and equip. Some of them are pretty useless while others are absolutely overpowered and completely broken. By the time I got the beast master, which was already in chapter 1, I could have gotten so powerful that I was able to one-shot every enemy or kill bosses with one barrage of attacks. The default class is also pretty OP and the thief, which you can get in chapter 1 as well, might have one of the most powerful attacks in the game. At the beginning I decided against using them or these cheap strategies in order to keep at least some challenge. But the game drags on for way too long with an insane amount of grinding. So by the time that I've crossed the 80 hour mark I decided to scrap that and just steamrolled everything and everyone with the beastmaster class. By then it was so ridiculously easy to get max out all jobs and to get all-powerful weapons pretty quickly. I didn't want to spend much more time on this game.

And it's a huge bummer. Because I love a good job system, but in this game it's just way too broken to the point that it robbed the fun out of me. Near the end I just felt like replaying Final Fantasy V, any of the Final Fantasy Tactics games or maybe even FF X-2, because if nothing else, that game had a great job and battle system. But BD2 felt absolutely broken and unbalanced. Also, some of the skill descriptions were so vague that I could never figure out what certain skills did or what differentiated similar sounding skills.

I was also hoping for some awesome or mind-blowing twist like in the first game, but the end of this one felt extremely underwhelming. Some parts of the ending were even extremely frustrating and I spent hours walking around the world and talking to every one over and over again just to find out how to progress the story. This honestly pissed me off so much.

Then the dungeons in this game are fairly boring as well. They are merely very long pipes/tunnels, that are sometimes intertwined in weird and confusing ways. But at the end of the day you spend a long times walking through mostly straightforward corridors, eventually fight enemies here and there and that's pretty much it. Only one dungeon featured something similar to a riddle, but that was rather annoying since you constantly had to travel so long distances back and forth. Other than that, the dungeons were really boring and uneventful. Lufia 2 is about 25 years older and has just so, so much more interesting and fun dungeons. BD 2 got mindlessly boring.

Not even the occasional treasures in BD2 were anything to write home about. Why? Because the rewards were so laughably shitty that 90+ percent of the times they weren't even worth seeking out or opening them. You could just mow grass and suddenly find strong pieces of armor or weapons that you would usually find one or two dungeons later or so. It's ridiculous. Why even bother exploring different paths when you could just mow down grass and find amazing stuff for free? Why grind for money by fighting mosnters when you can just mow grass for the amazing items that you can't even bus this early? It's just ridiculous! What were they thinking?

Also, the fights in dungeons or on the world map are usually pretty pointless, too, since they reward you with very little  rewards. Instead you're better off using bait which allows you to fight against up to five battles in a row which increases your combat rewards by 2. So why even bother with regular fights? It's just baffling to me how many main stays of JRPGs, like exploring and fighting, are rendered pretty much pointless by some questionable design decisions.

Questionable is also the optional card game. I thought that you would get some great reward for collecting al the cards which took a lot of times. I almost fought 200 games to gather all cards. And what did I get? A shitty item that increases the amount of job points and money you get. Too bad that by this point all of my characters were already completely maxed out. Other than that the card feels mildly amusing, but mostly pointless. Kinda like this whole game.

As you can tell by my long rant I'm pretty conflicted and burnt out by this game. It could have been great, but it's  marred by too many design flaws. And for what it does it's way too long. I wish for the classic RPGs from the 8 or 16 bit era which managed to offer a fulfilling RPG experience in maybe 20 to 30 hours. Not with all this fluff, stupid side quests and so on and so forth.

Anyway, sorry for the long rant.

Edited March 28, 2021 by Gaia Gensouki

[Gaia Gensouki | 1,066]

I got the true ending in Xenon Valkyrie +. This game plays a lot like Spelunky, but with additional RPG mechanics. In order to get the true ending you have to play through this game at least four times: once with each character and with two of the characters you have to unlock some sort of secret level where you can get the Xenon Valkyrie Prototypes. After these three playthroughs you have to talk to a specific NPC, unlock the Xenon Valkyrie and beat the game to unlock the final boss fight.

This however was really frustrating since the whole game was an action platformer, but all of a sudden it turned into a bullet hell shooter where a single hit kills you. Then you have to replay the whole game and make your way to the final boss again. He may be way easier than bosses in actual bullet hell shooters, but to suddenly throw you into such a fight without any forewarning is really mean. And i's not like the rest of the game is easy.

You also have to collect specific items that only drop from boss fights and that can occasionally be bought in shops. But this aspect turns this game into tedious grinding which is kinda frustrating since you're constantly going through the samey levels and fighting the same bosses over and over again. I don't quite like this aspect of modern rogue-likes or rogue-lites. This turns them into real grindfests. But maybe I'm just not the type for this kind of game.

[Gaia Gensouki | 1,066]

What are the rules regarding arcade games? Do you have to beat them on a single credit or is it okay to brute force your way with lots and lots of continues/coins? If it's the latter then you can count Caveman Ninja as well as Joe & Mac Returns as beaten. I got both of them during a sale from the Johnny Turbo's Arcade collection and they were nice and bite-sized games to play during commuting.

Caveman ninja, or Joe & Mac, was a nice platformer with some good and creative visuals and enemies. But in typical arcade-like fashion it's insanely difficult and a real quarter muncher. I can't imagine that the average gamer back in the day got a lot of play out of this one.

Joe & Mac Returns is completely different as it ditches the classical platforming of the previous game and turns into a Bubble Bobble rip-off. It plays well and is quite fun, but I don't think it's quite as good as Bubble Bobble or Snow Bros., which I really liked on the Mega Drive. It's just that every levels feels very similar and creating nice combos is very difficult as well. I never managed to clear all enemies in one fell swoop. But the bosses are certainly highlights.

[dvertov | 203]

40 minutes ago, Gaia Gensouki said:

What are the rules regarding arcade games? Do you have to beat them on a single credit or is it okay to brute force your way with lots and lots of continues/coins?

If it’s the former you can strike all of my SNK wins, and then buy me a stiff drink I can cry into

[Reed Rothchild | 9,503]

Play with what the game gives you.  So the SNK games are cleared.

[dvertov | 203]

41 minutes ago, Reed Rothchild said:

Play with what the game gives you.  So the SNK games are cleared.

Good, because the thought of trying to go back and 1 cc a few of those actually makes me nauseous. There are some true classics on that 40th Anniversary Collection, but man are there a lot of stinkers.

[Tantalus | 452]

Another one for the Collection of Mana - Secret of Mana is done. Haven't played through this in about 18 years, so it was nice to revisit it finally. I found the beginning rather dull, I quite enjoyed the middle sections, but then it started to drag near the end. Overall, still a pretty solid game.

[Reed Rothchild | 9,503]

Updated finally, but copying rich text from google docs doesn't seem to work for me right now @Gloves

[BreaKBeatZ | 136]

Empire of Sin

 

[Reed Rothchild | 9,503]

Deadly Premonition 2

[Reed Rothchild | 9,503]

Doom 64

[LifeGame | 760]

misc:

Dex : Enhanced Edition

 

Edited May 2, 2021 by LifeGame
Added pic

[dvertov | 203]

Fight’n Rage, which recently got a Limited Run release. I beat the game twice for endings B-GF and E-RF. Only 54 endings left to go!
 

Edit: Ok, in the four weeks that I’ve had it I have beaten this one 14 times. I was joking about getting all 56 endings but I could probably knock that out in a couple of months. This is a very addictive little game. 

Edited May 20, 2021 by dvertov

[LifeGame | 760]

this one is an international physical release i believe,  so ?

Finding Teddy II

[LifeGame | 760]

Misc :

Barbarous : tavern of Emyr

 

[LifeGame | 760]

Misc :

Savage Halloween

[Ausden | 323]

Resident Evil HD Remake.

 

[Reed Rothchild | 9,503]

Hmm... I guess I never posted my own RE clear.  Oh well, good job regardless.

[Code Monkey | 2,005]

I don't know where to find the list but here's what I've beaten this year:

1. Super Mario 64 - 120 stars
2. Super Mario Sunshine
3. Need For Speed: Hot Pursuit
4. Immortals Fenyx Rising
5. Mega Man Zero
6. Mega Man Zero 2
7. Mega Man Zero 3
8. Super Mario 3D World
9. Pikmin 3

[Ausden | 323]

8 hours ago, Reed Rothchild said:

Hmm... I guess I never posted my own RE clear.  Oh well, good job regardless.

Damn, my bad. Did you complete any others and have posted yet?

[Reed Rothchild | 9,503]

2 hours ago, Ausden said:

Damn, my bad. Did you complete any others and have posted yet?

No worries at all. The only thing that matters is it is checked off.