What Games Are You Playing?

NormanicGrav · 4 February 2017

I have acquired not one, but two Platinum trophies in one single day!

Amplitude [PlayStation 4]
This is a music rhythm game from the creators of Guitar Hero and Rock Band, and Harmonix basically brought this IP back thanks to a successful kickstarter as the original was released on PlayStation 2. Amplitude is a really fun game but the trophy list is another thing - it is torture. The concept is simple; get through the songs on the harder difficulties and get the maximum bars for each song (like Rock Band it's basically the equivalent of 'get 5 stars') but the biggest killer is essentially beating the story campaign in one go without failing, retrying and quitting. The issue here is that you have to unlock the bonus songs along the way and in order to do that you need 10 bars out of 12 for each 4 songs you encounter. The first two sections aren't an issue but the third one is where it throws everyone off. I was able to do it but I kept messing up, forcing me to waste an entire hour as a result.

And once I managed to acquire it I immediately was able to finish off the game a day later. This is by far one of the hardest Platinum trophies I have acquired so far. If you like a challenge, get this game it's good fun.

Root Letter [PlayStation 4]
A short visual novel I decided to tackle next. After going through all of the endings, I felt this had a good concept but the endings felt like a joke (minus the True Ending, which was rather satisfying imo) and as the story continues it felt daft at times. It's not a bad game but not a perfect one either, but thankfully it's a short visual novel and if you're after the endings you can skip the chapters after making your choices to save you tons of time.

Next up on my backlog I have:

Akiba's Trip 2: Undead & Undressed
Final Fantasy Type-0 HD (On-Hold as the disc is at home)
Gravity Rush Remastered [Aiming for Platinum!]
JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Eyes of Heaven (On-Hold due to not being caught up with the manga)
Steins;Gate 0 [Aiming for Platinum!]
Sword Art Online: Lost Song

I also picked up PlayStation Plus so these games I have considered for potential completion:

Day of the Tentacle Remastered [Aiming for Platinum!]
Ether One [Aiming for Platinum!]
The Unfinished Swan
Valiant Hearts

ShipTeaser · 5 February 2017

Nice going. You'll have overtaken me soon heh

Still banging away at Umbral Star. Not too far off the Plat so maybe next few days or so.

bakum4tsu · 5 February 2017

I've been playing Yakuza 0 since launch day. Actually I got the game the day before so since that day. Getting better and better the franchise.

ShipTeaser · 7 February 2017

And lo and behold Fate/Extellia The Umbral Star is Platinum. So 29 in the bag now.
Anyway, here is the Grind Report.
Pretty grindy. You need to complete every mission on the hardest difficulty and most of the main story missions on hard (in fact it's probably easier to do them all on hard first and get the perfect EX rank, as you need an EX rank on most story missions too) as well as a smattering of easy/normal completion story missions if you want all the trophies.
There is also a 5,000 enemy trophy for killing agressors (a type of boss enemy i guess) which is also a hell of a lot of effort, luckily mine popped just 4 missions before i was done with the above grind though, but i did fail a lot of missions going for EX rank so if you are more effecient than me you have some catching up to do at the end. You are looking at 50-60 hours of effecient grinding all told, reckon i spent about 90.

Gameplay difficulty-wise it isn't so bad. The game plays pretty much like Senran Kagura Estival Versus, just without stripping. (which is a killer shame as there are some female servants i could do with stripping down... and even a male one, after all, who isn't GAR for Archer, right? *wink*)
The gameplay is fun up until you've cleared everything two or three times for the trophies, by that point it starts to grate a touch.
Using noble phantasms got me rather excited, i'll be honest. Using UBW for the first time gave me a perverse thrill, i can tell you!

Best girl is Elizabeth Bathory. She's so damn cute (which i don't think one should be saying, but then the nasuverse has always been great at making people into cute females.) and as a bonus she is one of the better combat characters (although she's no Artoria or Gil).

Over all grind rating probably 7, overall game rating probably also a 7. (amybe 6.5, but they can have an extra half point for good old Elizabeth)

As for my Plat's, cannae be arsed to type out a list like Normanic-kun above, so if you care, here
ShipTeaser's PSN Profile

two things most of my games have in common, cute girls and stupid amounts of grinding. Guess i'm a simple creature at heart eh...
anyways, next game is likely going to be Akiba's Beat when it's released next month, unless i decide to buy one to kill some time in the meantime, but i do have a manga backlog to read, so i may just clear that instead...

ShipTeaser · 8 February 2017

Just downloaded Project Diva Future Tone and all the DLC. Guess that watching Mikunopolis is Los Angeles put me in the mood. So at least this should keep me busy a while

Buzzkillington · 8 February 2017

Finished Resident Evil VII, I liked it an awful lot and wouldn't hesitate in recommending it, which surprised me tbh.

Tried the Fire Emblem mobile game, didn't get Lyn or Tharja, uninstalled

jonno394 · 11 February 2017

Picked up Resident Evil 7. Enjoying it so far, but i've never liked unkillable enemies that stalk you :/

ShipTeaser · 15 February 2017

collected all the trophies on Project Diva Future Tone (There isn't a Platinum, alas, but that is fair) so here is the grind report. There isn't really a grind. Okay, sure, you have to complete every song, but if you are buying this why wouldn't you do that? After all, most of the fun is collecting all the songs for your playlists so you can stage your own impromptu vocaloid concert! If you really must have a grind rating it's about 2.5-3.5 depending on how rubbish you are, but I am pretty average at this type of game and had no issues.

gameplay wise it's pretty standard, which means fun, the only thing it is hard to appreciate the quality videos while frantically whacking buttons so the ability to play the songs in music vidoe mode is awesome. Some songs should NOT be played in a darknened room though on higher difficulties, i nearly had a seizure trying to do AFTER BURNER, so be warned.

Song selection is pretty much the same as the arcade, the only song of note missing that I can see is Kagerou Daze which is a damn shame, but maybe in one of the updates...

There are a vast amount of costume modules available, and they all look great. Gotta collect them all, pokemon style. In fact i'm working on that right now, as well as unlocking every song on Extreme Mode, which I may not be good enough to do, so we'll see, right?

Best girl? It is impossible to decide between Miku and Rin, so i'm not even going to try. I'll just look admiringly at their figures in my detolfs *grin*

My top ten songs? Well that's a tricky one, hut here we go...

10-3 in no particular order

AFTER BURNER
BlackRock Shooter
Romeo and Cinderella
The World Is Mine
Rin-chan Now!
Rolling Girl
Roshin Yukai
Senbonzakura -f edition-

in second place, the noble runner up, is Remote Controller

(This video is from the arcade, so they change costumes a lot during the song rather than having it fixed, but it is still a decent representation)

This song rules, a totally catchy tune and a decent video.

And as the first place winner - Knife

(this video is from an older game, it's pretty much exactly the same in Future Tone just with sharper graphics)
Anyway Knife has it all, amazing tune, epic video, and even Len looks good enough to threaten one's sexuality!

There are still a ton of other great songs as well, really one could sit there watching them on a playlist all day (and in fact it is now my go-to default to have on in the background while doing other stuff.)

So, overall grind rating 0 (2.5-3.5)
overall game rating 9.

Here's hoping they keep releasing more song packs.

Smeelia · 16 February 2017

I managed to fit in more Skyrim recently. I spent most of my time shouting at fish. I'm now a master Alchemist.

I also picked up Stardew Valley on a whim. I spent most of my time shouting at fish.

Stardew Valley is kind of a standard farm sim game but it's fairly well made and has an interesting atmosphere at times. I kind of like the way that it often seems fairly "real world" but then someone mentions something that doesn't quite fit with that. Even the more realistic stuff is interesting, with a large corporate supermarket just on the edge of town.

The actual farming (or various other productive, and possibly not entirely farm related, activities) seems solid enough. Progress seems fairly well paced and there's always something to do. The mix of activities also helps to keep things interesting and you can pretty much afford to focus on a couple if you don't enjoy them all (though there are benefits to all of them).

The only activity that is a little weak is socialising, it's not quite as well supported as other activities (and there's no associated skill) so any time spent making friends can feel kind of wasted. The rewards aren't as obvious and you can't really do anything that doesn't rely on having products from another skill. It seems like that could be something to potentially develop for future games to support those who enjoy learning about the area and characters but don't necessarily want to put as much effort into efficient production. It's a bit of a shame that there's not more to do in this area, since it's the main way that you access the story and learn more about the characters and those seem like they could be worth the effort. I suppose that means that there is technically a reward but it's not as tangible (and you will almost certainly see repeated lines fairly often).

It does have a combat/dungeon component, it's pretty basic but seems to work well enough. It's a bit of a gamble, since the main objective is usually to find a randomly placed staircase to advance to the next level (while occasionally picking up resources on a floor). Still, it's fairly well balanced and you don't have to be great at action games to make progress. It's also possible to use other skills to make advancement easier, so you could probably avoid quite a bit of it if you prefer other skills. That's probably true of most things really, the interactions between skills seems quite well considered to benefit players of all types.

It's not an entirely original game but it's well executed and it has a good mix of gameplay that could make it easy to play for a long time without getting bored. You probably do need at least some tolerance for repetitive tasks with incremental improvement, but I suppose that's almost standard for games in general really.

unknownfate · 16 February 2017

Just finished up with Uncharted 4, need to beat the last boss and Teslagrad is done too. Tomorrow I continue with Suikoden III and maybe I'll clear the Black Omen and finish Chrono Trigger too.

NormanicGrav · 17 February 2017

Time to talk about another Platinum'd game.

IA/VT -COLORFUL- [PlayStation Vita]
Yesterday I managed to acquire all of the trophies to Marvelous & Senran Kagura creator's music rhythm game. I finished the songs on Normal difficulty a couple months back but I decided to continue playing because the Platinum trophy is actually pretty easy to acquire, it's just the amount of time needed that can put people off. It took me just over 33 hours to unlock all of the trophies and overall it's a fun music rhythm game that I recommend.

Favourite songs:

TSUBASA New Days
残る夏に花束を (Nokoru Natsu ni Hanataba o)
夢見心地 (Yumemi Gokochi)
ライア (Liar)
星空のライオン (Hoshizora no Lion)
影炎≒Variation (Kagerou≒Variation)
Over Drive
Falling Apart
クラウドライダー (Cloud Rider)
銀河鉄道365 (Ginga Tetsudou 365)
Inner Arts
塵塵呪詛(チリチリジュソ) (Chiri Chiri Juso)
偽りの決意 (Itsuwari no Ketsui)
現実的論理主義者 (Genjitsuteki Ronri Shugisha)
サンデーミナミパーク (Sunday Minami Park)

Next up on my backlog I have:

Akiba's Trip 2: Undead & Undressed
Final Fantasy Type-0 HD (On-Hold as the disc is at home)
Gravity Rush Remastered [Aiming for Platinum!]
JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Eyes of Heaven (On-Hold due to not being caught up with the manga)
Persona 4: Dancing All Night [Aiming for Platinum!]
Steins;Gate 0 [Aiming for Platinum!]
Sword Art Online: Lost Song
Ys: Memories of Celceta

So here's the current Platinum progress in total:

Winkuru · 17 February 2017

Easy? From what i heard these several challenges that are really hard. The songs are really hard to even clear on hard difficulty (you can't fail on the song mode so you can get the trophy for clearing all songs on hard no matter what but that doesn't help you on the challenge mode) so it sounds cocky to say that the platinum is easy.

NormanicGrav · 17 February 2017

Winkuru said:
Easy? From what i heard these several challenges that are really hard. The songs are really hard to even clear on hard difficulty (you can't fail on the song mode so you can get the trophy for clearing all songs on hard no matter what but that doesn't help you on the challenge mode) so it sounds cocky to say that the platinum is easy.

Hmm... well I certainly had no issues, probably because I'm too good at rhythm games lol. The challenge where the notes disappear did throw me off but it's passable thanks to the long notes.

Overall in terms of trophy difficulty out of 10 I would give it a 4. It's still doable in my opinion but certain parts of the Hard STEP UP challenges were challenging. It's also a bit of a grind and making sure you're aware of the costumes to save yourself some time going through songs.

NormanicGrav · 19 February 2017

C'mon Platinum, feel the vibe.

Persona 4: Dancing All Night [PlayStation Vita]
As you all know I recently received Persona 4's dancing rhythm game last week and after finally sorting out IA/VT I went straight into it. The story I honestly skipped through because I wasn't a fan of it, though I do like the idea in general. The Free Dance mode is where most of my time went into.

No joke this is pretty damn easy to get a Platinum, but Hard difficulty and 'how to pass the song' can easily throw you off guard unless you're careful. The setlist is pretty small so the amount of time it took wasn't too long and the items are worth sorting out first so that you can double the cash you earn. Playing specialist on Hard difficulty or All Night difficulty is the easiest method to raise the cash to get through the Shopping trophy.

Difficulty wise I give it a 3/10. It's mainly because of the Hard difficulty and how to pass each song that can throw off casual players. And do yourself a favour and make sure you keep the vita a certain distance away from your face otherwise finding the buttons may cause you trouble keeping track.

Also Now I Know is the best track in the game.
Next up on my backlog I have:

Akiba's Trip 2: Undead & Undressed
Final Fantasy Type-0 HD (On-Hold as the disc is at home)
Gravity Rush Remastered [Aiming for Platinum!]
JoJo's Bizarre Adventure: Eyes of Heaven (On-Hold due to not being caught up with the manga)
Steins;Gate 0 [Aiming for Platinum!]
Sword Art Online: Lost Song
Ys: Memories of Celceta

So here's the current Platinum progress in total:

ShipTeaser · 19 February 2017

Yep Dancing all night was stupid easy it was my quickest plat. I disagrees with your best song choice though heh

jonno394 · 19 February 2017

Finished Resident Evil 7 yesterday, fantastic game, even if the last 1/3 felt completely rushed, and the final boss was very underwhelming. Then headed straight to RE5, which I had only sampled about 10 minutes of on PS3 (thanks to PS+) before deciding it wasn't worth my time. Now in 4K at 60fps i'm playing it as it's meant to be played, and loving every minute of it! Up to chapter 3 so far, this is a complete blast. An excellent action game, and a good follow up to RE4 so far, but really the complete antithesis of what a Resident EVil title should be.

Winkuru · 20 February 2017

Don't disagree either. It's not a guaranteed platinum but i don't remember any of the trohpies being challenging to get. There's only like 1-2 trophies that could potentially take lot's of tries.

Anyways. Great game and i would love to see more rhythm games from the same team. I would be okay with sequel but it would be nice them to use other Sega IP's instead.

Buzzkillington · 20 February 2017

I've been playing Nioh and it's so bloody good. I mean there is a few things that annoy me (I don't like the loot system, and the enemy variety is awful) but the gameplay is really solid. Been using the dual blades for the most part but have a normal katana too, there's something so cool every time you activate your living weapon and start beating the crap out of a boss with it. I can't say I really know wtf is going on story wise but I also can't say I really care. Finally, and perhaps most importantly, Okatsu is 100% waifu material (even though she sends me on stupid sub-quests....)

Rena Ryuugu · 1 March 2017

Finished off RE7 the other night, which was absolute brilliant, so I'm now going through RE HD again to get the last few trophies needed for platinum. Also been playing Higurashi on Vita and just started playing Rena's route.

BanzaiJedi · 2 March 2017

I'm being stupid and playing three games at the same time.
Most of the time I'm playing Fallout 4, and forcing myself to leave Sanctuary from time to time so I don't just stay there building stuff. And when I do leave I usually end up being murdered by ghouls.

I'm also playing The Last Guardian, which is really just a glorified puzzle game, but is enjoyable all the same. The only real priority I have here is to have the game finished within a week so I'll be free to focus on Nier Automata. Fallout won't be a problem in that respect as it's easier to dip in and out of that type of game.
And when I have a few minutes spare between other things I play little bursts of Fire Emblem Fates. I'm about halfway through Birthright, but when I'm (eventually) done with it I'll do Conquest as well.

What Games Are You Playing?

Quintessential Grav

Dandy Guy, in Space

Pokémon Master

Dandy Guy, in Space

Dandy Guy, in Space

Cardcaptor

Za Warudo

Dandy Guy, in Space

Thousand Master

Pokémon Master

Quintessential Grav

Adventurer

Quintessential Grav

Quintessential Grav

Dandy Guy, in Space

Za Warudo

Adventurer

Cardcaptor

Oyashiro-Sama

Pokémon Master