Backlog 2023

Kikki · Post Posted: Jun 23, 2023 8:49 am

Energy tanked again; gaming progress always revolves around whether I can muster up the will to pick up a controller or not. Currently feel like I can't. I want to play, but in too distant a way to do anything about it. I SHOULD only have about an hour left in Unpacking, but I don't really enjoy it, so it's taking extra oomph to get me to go back to it. I wrote the other two games I was working on down recently, but...what were they? Trails to Azure and...nrr...maybe No Place Like Home? Which I hadn't realized was also already available on Switch. (And it's currently 15% off on Switch, as well, though I don't know how it plays there...I have it on Steam Deck.)

But I did want to say that Everdream Valley released today and is currently 40% off on Switch. I played a demo on Steam Deck but it's a game that has a child protagonist and cares more about animals than crops, so it's really not for me. But the colours are gorgeous. If you don't have my hang-ups (and how many have the sheer load of hang-ups that I have for every game? lol) then this is probably a fun game and the price is okay to begin, plus 40% off, so that's a good-looking sim with farming in at a good price, if anyone's interested.

Whatever you're doing today, have fun

greensara · Post Posted: Jun 24, 2023 4:58 pm

Started up yet another DQB2 file on one of my other profiles. I've tried some oddball stuff this time, like the extra stuff stored on Skelkatraz's map. Presently I am seeing what I can do before I start the Moonbrooke story by skipping talking to my enemy, and just exploring. I am trying to rebuild a lot of the walls first. Sooo much easier without constant monster attacks.

simside · Post Posted: Jun 24, 2023 6:02 pm

This month is absolutely tear-inducing brutal at work. I literally fall asleep on the couch as soon as I get home at night, so not a lot of gaming.

BUT!!! My partner is visiting his parents for a few days, so I got the PC this weekend!!! This was inevitably wasted by my work schedule, but I started my day absurdly early on Friday so I could come home at a more normal time. I was still exhausted, but I managed to finish the last bit of Act II in Diablo IV. Today, I got up early and played Act III, a bit of Act IV, and a bunch of side dungeon/quests. Currently level 40, though my gear is still terrible. I'm wondering if I can finish, or at least get well into Act V, before my partner comes home tomorrow.

We started Ys 9, which I haven't played much since last Sunday. I think I'm on... act 2? I've played a couple dungeons and have one party member. My partner may not be able to save this game from Extreme 3D Exploration, which I usually hate but this has added a vertical dimension. It's still pretty fun, and kept most of the good stuff from 8 so far. My partner, who has played all the Ys games at least twice, is a lot farther than I am.

When I have a minute and no mental energy, I'm still chipping away on Power Wash Simulator and My Time at Portia. I had stopped mining in Portia to try and get back into the rhythm of completing the requests and making the stuff for the main missions. But I've been sitting around bored the last few in-game days, so I may go back to mining, though it's joyless for me. I'm currently... level 38? I think the next dungeon I need to do is Ingalls Mine level 4, which suggests level 45-50. I am not quite sure how to get levelups without grinding the other levels of Ingalls Mine (which I dislike more than mining), but... I suppose I'll get it eventually by just doing stuff.

Kikki · Post Posted: Jun 25, 2023 7:53 am

Was looking through my PS4 trophies. Most games I can't be bothered to collect trophies on, but with my favourites, I prefer to. I like to know I've drained my favourites of every last drop of content.

I thought I had already platinumed Cold Steel I and II, Ys 9 and Tales of Arise. But it turns out, I have not. I forgot all about having to do a Nightmare run of II. (I do already have the plat for CS1.) This meant today I went into an old (2019) file near the very end of the game, to defeat the pointless and absurdly difficult Isra-Zamiel or Zamrahiel or whatever its name is. That thing is a nightmare even on EASY, so I can't imagine how difficult it'd be if you're actually playing on Nightmare. So went into that old file on Easy or Normal (I can't remember how to check the difficulty I was on, lol.) and found one that I had saved right before IZ at Glacia. It took a lot of Zeram Capsules, and I couldn't even remember how to play, but I did kill the damn thing, and now that trophy is over with and I can go ahead and replay on Nightmare to clean up the last little handful of trophies to get that platinum.

I did also already mean to eventually replay Monstrum Nox and Arise, so that I didn't actually get platinum on those on my first playthrough of each is no big deal. I also still have a couple of trophies each to get of CS III and IV, all probably related to playing on Nightmare difficulty. *sigh* I hate that getting 100% in this series always means you must play at least two or times through and one MUST be on the highest difficulty, no way around it. There's no extra content in that, it's just tedious grinding.

But anyway, all together that means I have FIVE games I need to replay to get all the platinum trophies I want. That leaves about forty I'll never bother to get, but I only go for plat for games I want to be shown off as stand-outs. I can't be bothered getting trophies in game I don't care about, like Toren, Castaway Island, Bastion, or Dust, or any other of the dozens of games I have with a very low trophy rating. (Of course, your trophies include games from Vita and PS3 as well, so it adds up to quite a few games!)

At least I never have to worry about Isra-Zamiel again. Still too tired to play more than ten minutes here and there, though, and still deeply uninvested in Unpacking. Why did I even buy it? So not my type of game...

I'm going back to sleep now.

simside · Post Posted: Jun 25, 2023 8:28 am

Kikki wrote: ↑Jun 25, 2023 7:53 am I did also already mean to eventually replay Monstrum Nox and Arise, so that I didn't actually get platinum on those on my first playthrough of each is no big deal. I also still have a couple of trophies each to get of CS III and IV, all probably related to playing on Nightmare difficulty. *sigh* I hate that getting 100% in this series always means you must play at least two or times through and one MUST be on the highest difficulty, no way around it. There's no extra content in that, it's just tedious grinding.

I'm always 50/50 on trophy collecting... Though, I only do it for occasional PC games or the handful of games that use in-game tracking. I love the fun challenge or the sense of completion for some, but others feel like cheating the player, and as you say, some achievements feel like pointless or overly-brutal challenges. I remember full quest completion in Ys 8 included one quest that opened when you entered a dungeon, and closed when the story advanced after you completed the dungeon. Since you can do most dungeons without leaving, this felt really cheap, and hung out as an expired quest the rest of the game. -_-; I think I remembered you mentioning a similar issue in one of the Trails games, where an item required for completion is at a random vendor inaccessible after a certain part of the story?

One of the original Diablo 3 quests haunts me, because it required you to beat the final boss with no armor, IIRC, on the highest of the four difficulties. At the time, less than 10% of players could even get to the third difficulty fully geared, due to the stingy drops/real money auction house mechanic. Made it easier to give up on full quest completion, though!

---

Blizzard has been getting DDoSed for the last ten hours, of course, when I want to try and beat Diablo 4 before my partner gets home. -_-; I've been reading while retrying my login for awhile now.

Kikki · Post Posted: Jun 25, 2023 10:09 am

simside wrote: ↑Jun 25, 2023 8:28 am(SNIP)

Sorry you've been blocked out of playing when you finally have the time and opportunity for it!

Yeah, there are series of books you can collect in Cold Steel, and in I and II in particular, you can usually only buy or be given certain volumes in the series in one chapter of the game, and you can never return...if you miss the opportunity, it's gone. They did have a mechanic where you have random odds of rare items show up in the pawn store, but in one game, that was bugged and didn't work, and even when it does, it can take quite a lot of resetting to get the item you need to show up. Involves no skill or content, it's just tiresome.

Trophies should always encourage you to find more content, or try out alternate game mechanics, imo. If it's a series known for difficult combat, then battle challenges seem fair, too. But it should never be about fighting with RNG for lucky rolls of the dice, and locking the books to very tiny windows of opportunity was a stupid idea to begin with, but Falcom LOVES that kind of thing and puts it in every game. It's often in Ys, too (which is also by Falcom, of course.)

Falcom does great stories, but they really love to slip in those 'if you don't talk to every single one of 100 NPCs every single game day, you'll miss something important!' bits into their games.

Tales of Arise is the first Tales game in my memory to make getting platinum quite easy...something you can do in one playthrough, though you'd have to be quite thorough and probably reload the game to play more after clearing the final boss. Tales of Zestiria has absolutely brutal battle challenges that can't be done on a first playthrough no matter what. (And they can only be done on anything less than Chaos-level difficulty if you're on your FIFTH playthrough. Which is just ridiculous. Zestiria has one of the lowest trophy completion rates of any game I've ever seen.)

midnighttherabbit · Post Posted: Jun 25, 2023 11:18 am

I fully finished Baldur's Gate! The Siege of Dragonspier DLC was honestly really boring until the final half hour - I actually turned the difficulty down to story mode to get there which meant I could treat it more like an interactive book, which was nice.

Originally I was going to move on to something else after finishing it, but the end was a cliffhanger and actually made me want to play the sequel and so far it's a massive improvement over the first game. My only issue is there's a lot to do and the companion quests all seem to have time limits once you start them, so I'm getting halfway to a quest and having the companion complaining I'm taking too long (even though the directions they gave me sucked!)

Otherwise, I'm still slowly chipping away at ToTK. It's more of a podcast game for me, I think - it doesn't really take up 100% of my brain as I'm playing it so I can explore for a while while watching / listening to something else and have a much better time.

StormFire · Post Posted: Jun 26, 2023 7:29 am

Oh man, I’m glad we have a topic like this because my backlog is bad. I swear I have way too many games that I need to finish that have just accumulated over the years lol. I love otome games so I have a lot of those that I need to complete, but even some of the Pokémon games I haven’t completely “finished” because I need to complete their pokedex. I’m also a huge fan of the Legend of Heroes series as well (been playing since Trails in the Sky originally released on PSP back in 2012), and I still need to complete all those recent games that have released and we have the next one releasing here pretty soon. SOS:AWL also releases tomorrow so that will take over my life for a few days I’m sure. Overall I think life has just been pretty busy so the only times I have to play any video game are in the evenings—but I’m a teacher so I have to sleep early.

But summer vacation just started for me, so I’m hoping to put a tiny dent inside of my backlog. I mostly play on switch and the PS5, but also some of PC.

I’ll put some of the games under a spoiler tag so I can remember but I need to compete:

Spoiler:

These are just the games I can remember so I’m sure I’m missing a lot. I’m really wanting to finish all those otomes in my list this summer, it’s just the stories never fully grabbed my attention so it becomes a drag. I *loved* games like Code Realize, Olympia Soiree, Norn9 etc but the rest have never been up to par with those specific 3 for me.

Kikki · Post Posted: Jun 26, 2023 12:12 pm

When we started the thread years ago, mine was worse than what you have there

(Though perhaps not worse than if you include any games you may have forgotten!) I had mine really organized via Grouvee, across all consoles (though I point-blank eliminated every PC/Steam game, as I had long given up on PC gaming at that point.) and I abandoned 50 games at once. Though that was over a backlog of 10+ years, all the way back to childhood 30+ years ago, so it wasn't quite as awful as it seemed, lol...I had counted every game I ever had and didn't finish, even if I'd given up on it years ago but hadn't formally abandoned it.

~

Re-played the Divine Force demo. (The camera is so bad, makes my brain twist...maybe that's why I opted against it?)

And finally finished Unpacking! I hate that game.

Seriously, I didn't have any fun at ALL with it. It was boring to play and had a meaningless story, to me...if you could call that a story. People grow up and move to places. They grow up more and move in with other people. Then different people. Then maybe some pets. The end. BORING.

I don't like slice-of-life stories at all. Never have. I also found Journey to be a tiresome game, which I was initially curious about when everyone was raving about it being so very moving and touching and so on. The human condition, okay. People are born. They move through life. They meet some people and do some things. Then they die, and someone else probably continues. Yeah, is that supposed to be a revelation? Deep? Moving? I don't get it, it's just plain, old, boring reality. Why am I being called a robot for not crying at this? (My favourite description of myself in response to Journey was 'unusually sedate', lol.) What's so bloody moving about the basic reality of being human?

Got a bit riled up, lol. I think I just get tired of not understanding why others find these things moving when I'm 100% stationary in response to them.

I need unrealistically big stories to be moved. I need world-saving and extreme sacrifice and ridiculous levels of friendship, or the face I make while playing is something like this: (-___-) And it's not like I hate reality or anything. Society, maybe. But I love the sky. I love grass and flowers and fresh air. I enjoy breathing. I feel as happy as can be on a beautiful day. People tend to be of no interest to me but the planet itself is lovely. (I'd sooner fight to save the planet than to save humans, I have discovered. I can't think about the forest fires going on in every direction in Canada right now or I wind right up. The air is so thick here right now...stinks of smoke the second you open the door.)

Guess I'm just not built to be moved by the things most devs make their stories revolve around. Might also be why I found Zelda to be absolutely fantastic in Tears of the Kingdom. Won't expound in case of spoilers.

BerryBea · Post Posted: Jun 26, 2023 8:14 pm

I don't think I can really properly explain the appeal of those types of games. I do tend to enjoy them, but I will also pick a nature-based game over a daily life-based game every single time. But, it's ok to like what you like (not that you need me to say this), even when goes against the majority opinion. It definitely doesn't make you a robot! At least you have a better idea of the types of games that'll be worth your time in the future?

---

I've played through a couple more games. I finally finished a playthrough of It Takes Two with a good friend. I had a really good time with this one, apart from one horrible section.

Spoiler:

It's fully co-op and you go through different worlds, having to work together to progress in each. I really loved that it gave you slightly different powers in each world. So, the different worlds not only had different surroundings, but enough of a difference in gameplay to keep it really fresh. We had some connection issues playing online, but once we worked those out, it was great.

I picked up and played through the main story of Cattails. This is the one where you're an abandoned cat joining a feral cat colony. I've heard people say it's kind of like cat Stardew, but there's not really farming. You do have some quests and there are festivals, but it's mostly hunting and gathering. I avoided it for a long time because abandoned cats just make me sad (and domestic cats outside tend to be really bad for the ecosystem - and this game incentivizes you to keep hunting as much as possible, well beyond what you need to survive), and I can't make my brain just turn these facts off. But, it was super cheap, so I gave it a try and it was alright.

I also finished Mutazione. I really enjoyed this one, but it is pretty odd. You're a young girl, being sent to a small town (of mutants) to spend some time with your ailing grandpa. You do spend a lot of time getting to know the townsfolk and their stories. You also spend a lot of time helping to revive the suffering ecosystem, with magical musical gardens. You pick up seeds as you walk around (a lot of seeds - like 80 or 90-some different types!), which I loved, and plant those in various gardens.

I also picked up Submerged: Hidden Depths (non-violent exploration of a flooded city), because I'd enjoyed the first Submerged and it was 90% off. (I'm not sure why it got such a sudden huge sale. I think the previous best price on steam was around $18, and it went down to $3 for this sale.) I haven't played this one yet though!

I played the first episode of Life is Strange 2, but it was so utterly depressing that I didn't feel like playing more. I was also really annoyed at a choice I couldn't avoid.

Spoiler:

Maybe I'll decide to give it another chance in the future, but for now it's off the backlog. I'm down to 10 games!

Bluie · Post Posted: Jun 27, 2023 2:42 am

*drags myself in* nnnnnhello...

I despise summer. It's too hot and work gets too crazy. Any free time I get after work usually dissolves into me trying to game, and then falling asleep. I've been chipping away at Final Fantasy XVI to the best of my ability. I'm ignoring the hours played due to my constant conking, but the PS5 splash card says my progress is at 49% - which is surprising all things considered. I want to binge the rest of it on my days off this week if I can, but oooooghhh, July the 4th.... it's coming.....

As for the game itself, I'm enjoying my time with it a lot. The story is fantastic, English VA have great direction, battle system is fun once you unlock more abilities, and the game itself just looks very pretty. I guess my one complaint is that the maps are either too small or too big, but there's not much in the way of rewards for exploration outside of superbosses and chests that are usually just crafting materials, so it's not that much of an issue. The bigger maps do get easier to traverse once getting a chocobo, so there's that too.

I feel like I've been watching a new Pokemon release all over again with how the fandom is reacting to this game. I've never really interacted with the FF fandom on new release outside of FFXIV and lord, are they a bunch of screaming infants. After the absolute dumpster fire that was FFXV, you're given a competent game with an extreme amount of effort and love put into it - and all you want to do is « Baaaa *glomp* » about what it does and doesn't have? No, it isn't perfect, but dear lord it's at least respecting your time and not forcing you to buy DLC, watch movies+anime, and read novels to get the entire story. Like, I get that I have a bias due to loving FFXIV and a huge chunk of its team pumped out FFXVI, but give me strength, people will complain about what they hated in the previous entry now being fixed in the newest. Like, maybe you should just look into another genre of games if nothing makes you happy any more.

Terdin · Post Posted: Jun 27, 2023 10:17 am

*peeks in* Hello.

Can't say I have a definite list of games I want to finish, as that would be way too long. Having a tendency to start over after a hiatus, there are a bunch of games where I've played the first half (or three quarters, or whatever percentage) a dozen times or more, and never reached The End.

That said, in the last month or two, I've been going through my old GBA games. So far, I've finished Phantasy Star 1, Phantasy Star 2, Shining Soul (beating the final boss with one of the four available characters), and Lord of the Ring: The Two Towers (with two of the five characters). Those last two games were ones I had just about given up on, but decided to give another try.
Sadly, I stalled once again on FFIV as I was trying to get a rare monster for the bestiary and it didn't want to show up even after a few hundred initiated battles. That's one game I definitely want to finish at some point.

Sadly, my PS and PS2 games have pretty much fallen off my "want to finish" list, since my PS2 stopped working a few years ago. It's also made me reluctant to play my PS3. And I still haven't hooked up my PS4...
So, I've mostly played handheld games since then, even if a Retro Trio console opened up the possibility to play NES and SNES games again (it can play SEGA Genesis games too, but I don't have any of those). It was real nice to play the original Harvest Moon with better processor, reducing the lag that could happen in the barn. The handcontrols that came with that console wore out fast though, so it's fortunate that the controls to the original consoles can be used.

simside · Post Posted: Jun 27, 2023 5:33 pm

Glad you're enjoying XVI, Bluie! I had a coworker who took a couple days off to deep dive, and they were really loving it. I've been disconnected from FF fandom for quite some time, so I haven't been seeing reactions to it. I'm surprised it's not well-liked, as far as I can tell it's a really fantastic game. It seems like one of those things where folks just like to complain about new things.

Terdin wrote: ↑Jun 27, 2023 10:17 am That said, in the last month or two, I've been going through my old GBA games. So far, I've finished Phantasy Star 1, Phantasy Star 2, Shining Soul (beating the final boss with one of the four available characters), and Lord of the Ring: The Two Towers (with two of the five characters). Those last two games were ones I had just about given up on, but decided to give another try.
Sadly, I stalled once again on FFIV as I was trying to get a rare monster for the bestiary and it didn't want to show up even after a few hundred initiated battles. That's one game I definitely want to finish at some point.

Whoo, Shining Soul!!! Two is one of my all-time favorite games, I beat it several times, but I may have only gone through the first one time. I also played the GBA Phantasy Star Collection... though I can't remember if I beat two on there or somewhere else. Those are beefy games, and beating either of the first two is A Feat.

I recently got my PS2 fixed. The lasers go bad, but they are relatively easy to have repaired, or to do yourself. I couldn't bear to part with the system or my games, and I figured a secondhand system would have the same issue. Though, right after I got it fixed, I played through Space Channel 5 again, and lost my last good controller when it left its pins in the controller port. -_-;;;

Bluie · Post Posted: Jun 28, 2023 4:25 am

simside wrote: ↑Jun 27, 2023 5:33 pm Glad you're enjoying XVI, Bluie! I had a coworker who took a couple days off to deep dive, and they were really loving it. I've been disconnected from FF fandom for quite some time, so I haven't been seeing reactions to it. I'm surprised it's not well-liked, as far as I can tell it's a really fantastic game. It seems like one of those things where folks just like to complain about new things.

It's just surpassed 3 million copies sold so I'm sure it's a vocal minority, but man are they loud. It's not affecting my enjoyment of the game, I just wish I could scroll through my social media of choice without them « Baaaa *glomp* » every few posts. It basically boils down to how people didn't like the linearity of FFXIII, didn't like the empty open world of FFXV, and now that FFXVI is a good mix of both people are losing their minds. While I do kinda get the complaints of there being too many cutscenes, last time I checked, this is a Final Fantasy game - literally every single game in the series is cutscene heavy - it was just more text based in the older entries. Now that it's extremely cinematic, people are taking issue with it. But yeah, overall, the masses like it while the 'true fans' are having tantrums. I'm finding that 99% of FFXIV's user base is loving it, because it's very similarly structured to an expansion in the game. People are even joking that it's the most detailed and longest FFXIV expansion they've ever played lol. Once it drops on PC and Xbox (and maybe Switch Cloud - there's no way a Switch can handle this normally), it'll be interesting to see how the other userbases take it.

I'm at 55% now after getting to spend a few more hours with it. I'm actually trying to finish it asap so I can hand the PS5 over to my husband so he can start playing it too. We were originally going to share on release, but he got worried about accidentally saving over my file, so he's waiting patiently. He's got a bad habit of screen watching though. I've had to shoo him away a few times because I'm approaching spoilers and he's just mesmerized. I'm not rushing though, I've also been taking time to do every side quest and notorious mark (overworld super bosses) because I want to lol. Tomorrow is my day off and I plan on 'no-life-ing' it to see how much further I can get. Gonna probably put up a privacy screen between the TV and my husband's work station because he can't help himself.

I will say that I'm resisting the urge to play SoS:AWL. I bought it yesterday on PS5 but I'm not allowing myself to play it until after FFXVI and when I have the PS5 is my possession (husband will really only be playing it an night and on his days off). It'll be a perfect way to wind down after a story and action heavy JRPG.

Kikki · Post Posted: Jun 28, 2023 5:12 am

BerryBea wrote: ↑Jun 26, 2023 8:14 pmI don't think I can really properly explain the appeal of those types of games. I do tend to enjoy them, but I will also pick a nature-based game over a daily life-based game every single time. But, it's ok to like what you like (not that you need me to say this), even when goes against the majority opinion. It definitely doesn't make you a robot! At least you have a better idea of the types of games that'll be worth your time in the future?

As someone whose life as a gamer began in 1986 (When I was 8, and we got our first home computer: a Tandy 1000.) I actually long ago knew what my gaming milleu was, but once in a while, some other game breaks through. I can't resist going back to see if a really popular/highly-praised game that I KNOW I won't like will somehow actually manage to reach me.

It never does. Even so, once in a while, I can't resist trying again to see if somehow something hasn't shaken loose. If I can't somehow figure out what the heck touches people about these games I find so utterly uninteresting. It's probably not about the game itself. It's probably more about never 100% understanding why I can't feel anything for these games when so many others seem to be unable to help but be moved. I think it's simply that people...society...doesn't interest me. If humanity ceases to exist, I don't really care, though I'd prefer not to be around for the collapse, cuz I'm sure it'd be mightily unpleasant. But still, I don't feel invested in humanity. The planet would be perfectly happy (probably much happier) without us, but we could never exist even for a few seconds without it. To me, I just don't get anything, I guess? I don't know why anyone fusses about who will be president or injustices between races or genders or...etc...when we are every day, actively destroying the habitability of the planet we live on. Thinking about it makes me panicky. That is just so much more important than anything else. That's the basis of existence. And instead, we fuss about social gunk, which is a luxury when compared to something so fundamental as the viability of the literal earth we stand on.

I dunno. I'm out of step with reality, I guess, and this occasional failure to respect my own leanings is probably just me trying to figure out why I can't care about what the rest of the world seems to revolve around. Even though I probably know, lol. Can't help but think...I'm supposed to care about this, right? All this society/people stuff? Maybe I should try again... But I think everybody does that at least a little. Tries to figure out where they fit and why they don't fit into places most others seem to. Everybody else in my circle is vibing with this, so why don't I...? That kind of a thing.

For a while I won't be tempted to try again. But sooner or later, another game I know I won't like will sneak into my backlog, I'll force myself to play it, and cement again that I just don't like those games, even though it seems like I should.

Got some extra social stress right now so my life is temporarily completely derailed. Will have to do my best to get it back on track tomorrow, and hope that doing so gives me a little more mental energy/clarity to play with. Right now I'm just sleeping all the time, and I can't tell if the physio exercises are making things better, or worse. I think they may just be stirring the pot pointlessly. My ability to walk further than around the block, or do anything physical for longer than ten minutes, hasn't increased even a little. Heck, I'm even getting too tired to hold my arms up just from washing my hair in the shower. What the bloody heck is the matter with this junk heap I call a body?