Game #26
Fairy Fencer F
Platform: PC
Duration: 17 Hours
Never heard of this series before, but I saw the OT on NeoGAF for it and thought it looked interesting. Plus it was a JRPG for $15 bucks so I figured I would get my money's worth out of it. Honestly, it wasn't all that bad. The game didn't take itself too seriously, combat was decent enough, and the story wasn't the worst. The game did cut a LOT of corners though that probably saved development time and padded out the story significantly. Example: Halfway through the game you travel back in time and go through all the same locations again. There is also only one hub town that is all menu based and cutscenes are all 2D. Recycling!
Game only has 2 waifus though.
Game #27
Croixleur Sigma
Platform: PC
Duration: 2 Hours
Japanese indy game. Basically you climb a tower and kill monsters in arcade combat. Has come combos. Not a lot here but they want you to keep replaying to chase down better times and combos. Kinda fun. Again, 2 waifus.
Game #28
Freedom Wars
Platform: PS Vita
Duration: 22 Hours
Freedom Wars kicks ass. Seriously. It's a third person shooter for the vita where you play a prisoner with no memory in a post apocalyptic setting and a sentence of 1,000,000 years. To reduce your sentence and work off your debt to society like a good person, you go do missions against other cities that are given to you by a teddy bear by shooting robots, cutting off their arms, grappling around, and carrying scientists to drop pods.
You aren't even allowed to sleep laying down until you earn the right and doing so without the correct entitlement adds 50 years to your sentence. 10/10.
Game #29
Destiny: The Taken King
Platform: PS4
Duration: 10 Hours
I am counting this one because god damn it I got a credits screen and that counts. I enjoyed a version of Destiny with an actual story. Itemization definitely feels better, the new Hunter class is fun, and the raid has some very great mechanics for a shooter. Their ability to deliver unique encounters continues to impress me. I will probably stick with it until I clear the raid on Heroic (one boss to go!)
Game #30
Rock Band 4
Platform: XB1
Duration: 20 Hours
There were two ways to return to the music game genre: Keep everything the same (Rock Band) or completely reinvent yourself (Guitar Hero). Erika and I have so much invested in Rock Band that we went this route. This game is straight up a blast from the last gen and still as fun as ever. Our Band, Giant Enemy Crab, reached Rank 9 in the world on the launch weekend. That's something I'm gonna be proud of for a long time.
Game isn't without it's flaws though. The legacy adapter took an extra week to arrive and doesn't work very well. A number of features have been cut from the game including online and practice, though they plan to support the game with free updates instead of coming out with a sequel so we'll see. And finally not all of the DLC is available in the store. Large track packs like Rock Band 1, 2, and 3 are missing as well as Green Day and Lego plus hundreds of stand alone songs. There were also licensing issues at launch which prevented the game from recognizing that I owned specific songs. It's getting sorted, but is still a bummer.
Game #31
Persona 4: Dancing All Night
Platform: PS Vita
Duration: 6 Hours
Fun little rhythm game. I was actually impressed how much work they placed on the story to justify dancing to kill enemies. Game forced me to play through the campaign on Easy though, which is bullshit.
Game #32
Tales of Zestiria
Platform: PC
Duration: 30 Hours
A "Tales" game that is only 30 hours long?! I was as surprised as you are! Tales of Graces took me about 80 hours from start to finish and even Xillia was about 50. When I reached the point where all the characters started talking about the final battle I was like "Yeah okay guys. Now go ahead and reveal the second planet we have to explore." but it never happened. Stabbed the big bad with a sword and disappeared after touching a dragon, the end.
While the story wasn't too awful, it was a bit weak. Combat was fun though, but that's part for the course with Tales games. What WASN'T fun though was the most convoluted item system of any JRPG I have ever played. All items have base stats and affixes, the affixes fall on a gird, forming lines with affixes adds bonuses, you can merge the items to transfer affixes and make new ones, but you have to do it 10 times in an area where you have fought enough monsters to get a blessed item that you then have to merge another 99 times, but stores only sell one item at a time. It's a nightmare.
Well that's everything except Metal Gear. That game deserves it's own post! Planning out the rest of my year though, that 52 game mark is starting to look kinda scary. Planning it out a bit...
33 was Metal Gear 5.
34 will be Black Ops 3.
35 will be Fallout 4.
36 will probably be Tomb Raider.
37 will be Sword Art: Lost Song
38 will be Xenoblade Chronicles X
...and that's all the big titles I can remember right now that I am planning on playing. That's 14 more I need to figure out and beat and it is already November! Well, shit.
