2020
Okay, so I have been thinking about it a bit and.....Yeah, this game just keeps looking worse the more I look back on it, especially when compared to what came after.
As I said before, the bosses are way too easy, I don't know whether that's because I have experience with the Souls franchise or not, but apart from Maneater, I didn't really find any of these bosses hard.
Sure, I died to some of them, but those were all faults on my part with dodge timing and not knowing how the fuck Dragon God worked.
The bosses are well designed, apart from Maneater, and I did like fighting False King Allant, it felt really good dodging his attacks and knocking him out of his explosion attack, but man, I wish they were a bit more challenging.
And this remake is 100% faithful to the original, that's a good thing and a bad thing, a good thing because it shows how much they respect the original game, a bad thing, because they really could've improved upon some of the game's shortcomings, like again, the bosses.
And item capacity, I'm glad this never came back in the other games, because having to deposit all of your smithing materials just so you can hold more healing items is really annoying, and not being able to carry a shitton of healing items on you at all times because you need room for other shit, too is really annoying.
Another thing, not having a poison meter to let you know how close you are to being poisoned and how long you have before your poison meter runs out in case you don't have anything to cure it, like imagine that you didn't know that that swamp was poisonous, so you thought it was safe to walk through it, but then, you're hit with !POISONED!, wouldn't you think that's kinda bullshit? If you say "no", you're lying.
Speaking of, people say that Blighttown is bad? I'd like to introduce you to the Swamp of Sorrows! Where the enemies can move normally through the swamp, but you are stuck walking and not being able to roll, needless to say it's the worst poison swamp area in my eyes.
I also didn't find a lot of the NPCs that interesting, apart from maybe Patches, but you can never do him wrong, unless you make him a spider, seriously, why did Bloodborne do that?
And I still love the Maiden In Black, definitely one of my favorite level up girls.
And I still like the atmosphere and the graphics of this game, but that's not enough to save it for me.
Sad thing is, this might be the only Souls game that I won't ever play again as sad as that sounds, I just can't find it in me to return to it.
As I said before, the bosses are way too easy, I don't know whether that's because I have experience with the Souls franchise or not, but apart from Maneater, I didn't really find any of these bosses hard.
Sure, I died to some of them, but those were all faults on my part with dodge timing and not knowing how the fuck Dragon God worked.
The bosses are well designed, apart from Maneater, and I did like fighting False King Allant, it felt really good dodging his attacks and knocking him out of his explosion attack, but man, I wish they were a bit more challenging.
And this remake is 100% faithful to the original, that's a good thing and a bad thing, a good thing because it shows how much they respect the original game, a bad thing, because they really could've improved upon some of the game's shortcomings, like again, the bosses.
And item capacity, I'm glad this never came back in the other games, because having to deposit all of your smithing materials just so you can hold more healing items is really annoying, and not being able to carry a shitton of healing items on you at all times because you need room for other shit, too is really annoying.
Another thing, not having a poison meter to let you know how close you are to being poisoned and how long you have before your poison meter runs out in case you don't have anything to cure it, like imagine that you didn't know that that swamp was poisonous, so you thought it was safe to walk through it, but then, you're hit with !POISONED!, wouldn't you think that's kinda bullshit? If you say "no", you're lying.
Speaking of, people say that Blighttown is bad? I'd like to introduce you to the Swamp of Sorrows! Where the enemies can move normally through the swamp, but you are stuck walking and not being able to roll, needless to say it's the worst poison swamp area in my eyes.
I also didn't find a lot of the NPCs that interesting, apart from maybe Patches, but you can never do him wrong, unless you make him a spider, seriously, why did Bloodborne do that?
And I still love the Maiden In Black, definitely one of my favorite level up girls.
And I still like the atmosphere and the graphics of this game, but that's not enough to save it for me.
Sad thing is, this might be the only Souls game that I won't ever play again as sad as that sounds, I just can't find it in me to return to it.
Alright, so after replaying this game again recently, I can honestly say that I enjoyed it a lot more this time around, then again, I actually knew where everything was this time around and was able to plan things out a bit better this time around, as well.
Manus was a pain in the ass for me the first time I played, but was significantly easier for me to beat this time around, thanks to the pendant that I found that blocks his dark magic attacks, I did die once, but once I got back, I was able to dodge his attacks perfectly and get in attacks when I needed to, yes, I GOT GUD.
Last half of the game does fall short, but it doesn't ruin my experience at all, except for the Bed of Chaos, fuck that boss, I died once I killed it and had nothing, but anxiety when I went to get my souls back and trying not to die to the Titanite Demon that stands in the pathway, thankfully, I did retrieve my souls and didn't end up losing them.
I also killed Havel this time and got his armor, something that I didn't do the first time I played and that made things (the Four Kings) a bit easier for me.
As for my favorite boss, I think I'll have to go with Artorias, he's such a cool boss and is quite challenging, with Gwyn being my second favorite.
And this time, I went with the Dark Lord ending, since I already linked the fire the first time and honestly, I can see why people like that ending, it is really cool and unlike Dark Souls 3, you don't have to do anything tedious in order to get it.
But yeah, all in all, this game really is a masterpiece, flawed, but still a masterpiece.
Manus was a pain in the ass for me the first time I played, but was significantly easier for me to beat this time around, thanks to the pendant that I found that blocks his dark magic attacks, I did die once, but once I got back, I was able to dodge his attacks perfectly and get in attacks when I needed to, yes, I GOT GUD.
Last half of the game does fall short, but it doesn't ruin my experience at all, except for the Bed of Chaos, fuck that boss, I died once I killed it and had nothing, but anxiety when I went to get my souls back and trying not to die to the Titanite Demon that stands in the pathway, thankfully, I did retrieve my souls and didn't end up losing them.
I also killed Havel this time and got his armor, something that I didn't do the first time I played and that made things (the Four Kings) a bit easier for me.
As for my favorite boss, I think I'll have to go with Artorias, he's such a cool boss and is quite challenging, with Gwyn being my second favorite.
And this time, I went with the Dark Lord ending, since I already linked the fire the first time and honestly, I can see why people like that ending, it is really cool and unlike Dark Souls 3, you don't have to do anything tedious in order to get it.
But yeah, all in all, this game really is a masterpiece, flawed, but still a masterpiece.
2020
You can definitely tell that this was the first of it's kind, because there are a lot of things in this game that wouldn't be polished or perfected until later entries, one of those being bosses, I found the bosses in this game to be a little too easy, apart from the Maneater, cuz that was an unbalanced mess imo.
But with that being said, I still find a lot of the bosses in this game to be pretty cool, like the Tower Knight, Flamelurker, Storm King, Penetrator, and Old King Allant, with Storm King being my favorite because of it's arena and sound design, they really knocked it out of the ballpark with that one.
The design and the atmosphere of this game are also amazing, and from what little I've seen from the original, they truly did do a great job of recreating this world from the ground up.
All in all, it's pretty decent, not nearly as great as the ones that proceed it, but it's still a decent start for the rest of the series going forward.
But with that being said, I still find a lot of the bosses in this game to be pretty cool, like the Tower Knight, Flamelurker, Storm King, Penetrator, and Old King Allant, with Storm King being my favorite because of it's arena and sound design, they really knocked it out of the ballpark with that one.
The design and the atmosphere of this game are also amazing, and from what little I've seen from the original, they truly did do a great job of recreating this world from the ground up.
All in all, it's pretty decent, not nearly as great as the ones that proceed it, but it's still a decent start for the rest of the series going forward.
I replayed this game after a couple years and even after playing Dark Souls 1, I still say that this is my favorite of the Souls series, this is the first Souls game I ever completed and I love it to death.
And in my opinion, it has the best overall boss design of the entire Souls series, I love every single boss in this game, my most favorite used to be the Abyss Watchers, but upon replay, it has to be Slave Knight Gael, the arena, the music, and the fight itself is so fun and challenging.
There was a time where I kinda didn't like the DLCs because it was so unfamiliar to me at the time, but now, I love them to death, especially their bosses, aside from Halflight, who's just kinda meh in comparison to the others.
And this time around, I felt that the End of Fire ending was very appropriate, since the First Flame is slowly dying and you can see this in the Link the Fire ending with how small the flame has become over time, plus it feels like the proper way for the story to end, in my opinion.
And in my opinion, it has the best overall boss design of the entire Souls series, I love every single boss in this game, my most favorite used to be the Abyss Watchers, but upon replay, it has to be Slave Knight Gael, the arena, the music, and the fight itself is so fun and challenging.
There was a time where I kinda didn't like the DLCs because it was so unfamiliar to me at the time, but now, I love them to death, especially their bosses, aside from Halflight, who's just kinda meh in comparison to the others.
And this time around, I felt that the End of Fire ending was very appropriate, since the First Flame is slowly dying and you can see this in the Link the Fire ending with how small the flame has become over time, plus it feels like the proper way for the story to end, in my opinion.
This was my second full playthrough of Ghost of Tsushima and just like the first time, it was just as amazing, the visual upgrades and the lack of loading screens really makes this game feel more seamless than it's PS4 counterpart.
I did like the new version of Jin's flashback to his father's death being the one from Iki Island instead, that was really neat, plus more cinematic than the original one imo.
But yeah, just like it's PS4 counterpart, it's up there with being one of my favorite PlayStation Exclusives.
I did like the new version of Jin's flashback to his father's death being the one from Iki Island instead, that was really neat, plus more cinematic than the original one imo.
But yeah, just like it's PS4 counterpart, it's up there with being one of my favorite PlayStation Exclusives.
Just like the main game, this was amazing, the story was great, the characters were great, the music, as always, was great, and also, the little armor styles you can get that're references to other PlayStation titles was also really cool.
This review contains spoilers
Okay, I think I've had enough time to think this expansion over a good bit, so here's the review.
Being able to play as Tails, Knuckles, and Amy again after so long without being able to is awesome, especially Tails and Knuckles with the Cyclone and the punch glide loop that you can use to bypass pretty much all of the puzzles with.
Now, here's the weakest part of the DLC....Sonic.
Not character wise, he's still written very well, I'm talking about what he's given to do in his gameplay sections.
You have to climb the stupid towers again and guess what? THEY'RE HARDER!
I had to switch the difficulty to Easy in order to actually get up the towers without going insane, and when you go up them, you're given really annoying little trials to do where you have to beat enemies in a certain time limit, sounds simple right? WRONG!
Ya see, the game decided to bring you back to Level 1 for all of them, making all of that levelling and grinding completely pointless.
I don't even understand why these trials exist to begin with, especially the last one, which involves you fighting every single one of the Titans again (excluding Supreme), only this time, you're AGAIN, set back to Level 1, meaning you only have 400 rings to work with, that sounds okay, right? Except IT ISN'T!
Because you won't be able to get more in between fights, meaning whatever ring count you have at the end of each fight is what you're stuck with in the next one, so try not to get hit as base form Sonic, oh yeah, they have you climb the Titans again as well, meaning you have to climb them hitless in order to actually get through it, on top of that, the game takes away your normal parry for these trials and replaces it with a Perfect Parry, meaning you have to time your parries PERFECTLY in order to beat them, and remember that, cuz it becomes important later.
Fortunately, you can swap the difficulty to Easy, which extends the parry window by a bit, so there's that.
But yeah, back to what I mentioned before, why do these trials exist? I get that it's the Titan riders testing Sonic's might, but here's the thing, the last trial is him fighting the Titans......Something he already did......And is the entire reason that he has to go through these trials to start with, you see where I'm going with this?
Okay, now for the final boss, you have to fight Supreme again, because this expansion doesn't have enough padding with the tower climbing and the stupid trials, it's easy enough, but they really should've just skipped it for this expansion, just saying.
But the real fight starts after you beat him, where The End connects itself to Supreme, and the connection keeps Supreme's health from going down, meaning you have to sever it in order to be able to do damage to him, do I need to say it?
You literally have to sidestep in order to be able to lock on to the connection and attack it until it's severed, the game gives you no indication that that's what you need to do, so you'll basically just be here wailing on it, not knowing what to do, which is what I did, and it pissed me off when I found the solution, cuz HOW THE HELL WAS I SUPPOSED TO KNOW THAT?!
Not only that, but the boss also shoots energy balls at you that SAP YOUR RINGS! And if you're on Hard, it saps a huge chunk of them and you can't parry them until you become Cyber Sonic (I'm not calling him Super Sonic 2), meaning that before you can really start fighting the boss, you have to take three energy balls to the face and lose most of your rings, LOVELY.
Also, remember when I said they took away your parry and replaced it with a Perfect Parry? Yeah, they did that here, too, and you better have this on Easy, cuz if you have it on Hard, GOOD FUCKING LUCK!
The timing on Perfect Parry is insane to time and you better parry those energy balls, cuz again, they sap your rings, and even if you have the max number of rings, on Hard, you're FUCKED!
Not to mention that at certain angles, the FUCKING TREES BLOCK YOUR VIEW AND MESS UP YOUR TIMING EVEN MORE!
But hey, if you're able to get past all of that, sever the connection, and get his health down, you'll still be stuck trying to figure out what to do, because again, the game doesn't tell you what you need to do to proceed and also doesn't even make it obvious what needs to be done.
And if you take too much time trying to figure it out, The End will repair its connection and heal him all the way back to full, meaning you'll have to do it all again.
How the hell are people supposed to know that you have to perform a Cyloop on the hole in its back to bring out its gun, then perform another Cyloop to finish Phase 1?!
Yeah, THAT WAS PHASE FUCKING 1!
And now, you have to DO THE SAME FIGHT AGAIN!
Meaning you have to sever The End's connection AGAIN, and beat it AGAIN!
And no, unlike before, you can't just sever the connection immediately, because Supreme decides to throw a tempur tantrum that keeps you from attacking the connection and wastes time before it finally decides to attack Eggman and the others.
Oh, and at one point in the fight, Surpreme fires a huge energy ball that takes down your rings even more, basically rushing you to finish the fight, there is no way to avoid this, there is no time limit, it is a scripted Fuck You attack, so you'd better hope that your parries are on point and that you have his health down pretty low, otherwise, you're fucked!
But hey, once you beat him, you get a cool cutscene where Sonic is shot out of Supreme's gun at The End and you do hear Roger do a really cool scream, which was awesome, but from there, the ending is pretty much the same as the main game, except Eggman is with Sage this time, which is a really wholesome scene, followed by an equally wholesome song, which is a lyrical version of the song from the original boss fight with The End.
I'm sorry about all of the complaining, but seriously, they made this expansion way too hard for casual players, even if you have it on Easy, seriously, how're kids supposed to beat this?
And if any of you are going to say "Git Gud", kindly shove that statement up your ass, Sonic games shouldn't be hard, and yeah, the main game was easy, even on Hard, but it's Sonic, these games aren't meant to be challenging, you want challenge, go back to FromSoftware and leave Sonic alone.
I get that the developers were listening to player feedback, and it's great when they do, it shows that they care about the people that play their games, but they really went overboard with the difficulty on this one, hopefully, they learn from this and make the next Sonic game the perfect balance of easy and difficult, like they did with the Adventure games and Unleashed.
Oh yeah, the new music is really good, each character having their own music to fit their gameplay sections is really nice and the new version of I'm Here done by Kellin Quinn is now my new favorite version of the song, and I'm With You, the wholesome song that I previously mentioned.
Also, this was completely free, so there's that, I hope this, on top of God of War Ragnarok's Valhalla DLC is an indication on what direction some game companies will start going with their DLCs, I say some, cuz you all know EA and Ubisoft ain't gonna do that.
TLDR: Basically, I like playing as Tails, Knuckles, and Amy again, I hate playing as Sonic, cuz of all the bullshit he has to do, trials feel like unnecessary padding, the final boss is cool, but bullshit, you essentially have to have it on Easy in order to actually have fun or have an easier time, the new songs are great, the DLC is free, so no use being too mad at it.
Now I'm gonna go back to patiently waiting for the next Sonic game, which hopefully will feature Shadow as a main character again, bring my boy back in the spotlight, and actually write him better, please?
Being able to play as Tails, Knuckles, and Amy again after so long without being able to is awesome, especially Tails and Knuckles with the Cyclone and the punch glide loop that you can use to bypass pretty much all of the puzzles with.
Now, here's the weakest part of the DLC....Sonic.
Not character wise, he's still written very well, I'm talking about what he's given to do in his gameplay sections.
You have to climb the stupid towers again and guess what? THEY'RE HARDER!
I had to switch the difficulty to Easy in order to actually get up the towers without going insane, and when you go up them, you're given really annoying little trials to do where you have to beat enemies in a certain time limit, sounds simple right? WRONG!
Ya see, the game decided to bring you back to Level 1 for all of them, making all of that levelling and grinding completely pointless.
I don't even understand why these trials exist to begin with, especially the last one, which involves you fighting every single one of the Titans again (excluding Supreme), only this time, you're AGAIN, set back to Level 1, meaning you only have 400 rings to work with, that sounds okay, right? Except IT ISN'T!
Because you won't be able to get more in between fights, meaning whatever ring count you have at the end of each fight is what you're stuck with in the next one, so try not to get hit as base form Sonic, oh yeah, they have you climb the Titans again as well, meaning you have to climb them hitless in order to actually get through it, on top of that, the game takes away your normal parry for these trials and replaces it with a Perfect Parry, meaning you have to time your parries PERFECTLY in order to beat them, and remember that, cuz it becomes important later.
Fortunately, you can swap the difficulty to Easy, which extends the parry window by a bit, so there's that.
But yeah, back to what I mentioned before, why do these trials exist? I get that it's the Titan riders testing Sonic's might, but here's the thing, the last trial is him fighting the Titans......Something he already did......And is the entire reason that he has to go through these trials to start with, you see where I'm going with this?
Okay, now for the final boss, you have to fight Supreme again, because this expansion doesn't have enough padding with the tower climbing and the stupid trials, it's easy enough, but they really should've just skipped it for this expansion, just saying.
But the real fight starts after you beat him, where The End connects itself to Supreme, and the connection keeps Supreme's health from going down, meaning you have to sever it in order to be able to do damage to him, do I need to say it?
You literally have to sidestep in order to be able to lock on to the connection and attack it until it's severed, the game gives you no indication that that's what you need to do, so you'll basically just be here wailing on it, not knowing what to do, which is what I did, and it pissed me off when I found the solution, cuz HOW THE HELL WAS I SUPPOSED TO KNOW THAT?!
Not only that, but the boss also shoots energy balls at you that SAP YOUR RINGS! And if you're on Hard, it saps a huge chunk of them and you can't parry them until you become Cyber Sonic (I'm not calling him Super Sonic 2), meaning that before you can really start fighting the boss, you have to take three energy balls to the face and lose most of your rings, LOVELY.
Also, remember when I said they took away your parry and replaced it with a Perfect Parry? Yeah, they did that here, too, and you better have this on Easy, cuz if you have it on Hard, GOOD FUCKING LUCK!
The timing on Perfect Parry is insane to time and you better parry those energy balls, cuz again, they sap your rings, and even if you have the max number of rings, on Hard, you're FUCKED!
Not to mention that at certain angles, the FUCKING TREES BLOCK YOUR VIEW AND MESS UP YOUR TIMING EVEN MORE!
But hey, if you're able to get past all of that, sever the connection, and get his health down, you'll still be stuck trying to figure out what to do, because again, the game doesn't tell you what you need to do to proceed and also doesn't even make it obvious what needs to be done.
And if you take too much time trying to figure it out, The End will repair its connection and heal him all the way back to full, meaning you'll have to do it all again.
How the hell are people supposed to know that you have to perform a Cyloop on the hole in its back to bring out its gun, then perform another Cyloop to finish Phase 1?!
Yeah, THAT WAS PHASE FUCKING 1!
And now, you have to DO THE SAME FIGHT AGAIN!
Meaning you have to sever The End's connection AGAIN, and beat it AGAIN!
And no, unlike before, you can't just sever the connection immediately, because Supreme decides to throw a tempur tantrum that keeps you from attacking the connection and wastes time before it finally decides to attack Eggman and the others.
Oh, and at one point in the fight, Surpreme fires a huge energy ball that takes down your rings even more, basically rushing you to finish the fight, there is no way to avoid this, there is no time limit, it is a scripted Fuck You attack, so you'd better hope that your parries are on point and that you have his health down pretty low, otherwise, you're fucked!
But hey, once you beat him, you get a cool cutscene where Sonic is shot out of Supreme's gun at The End and you do hear Roger do a really cool scream, which was awesome, but from there, the ending is pretty much the same as the main game, except Eggman is with Sage this time, which is a really wholesome scene, followed by an equally wholesome song, which is a lyrical version of the song from the original boss fight with The End.
I'm sorry about all of the complaining, but seriously, they made this expansion way too hard for casual players, even if you have it on Easy, seriously, how're kids supposed to beat this?
And if any of you are going to say "Git Gud", kindly shove that statement up your ass, Sonic games shouldn't be hard, and yeah, the main game was easy, even on Hard, but it's Sonic, these games aren't meant to be challenging, you want challenge, go back to FromSoftware and leave Sonic alone.
I get that the developers were listening to player feedback, and it's great when they do, it shows that they care about the people that play their games, but they really went overboard with the difficulty on this one, hopefully, they learn from this and make the next Sonic game the perfect balance of easy and difficult, like they did with the Adventure games and Unleashed.
Oh yeah, the new music is really good, each character having their own music to fit their gameplay sections is really nice and the new version of I'm Here done by Kellin Quinn is now my new favorite version of the song, and I'm With You, the wholesome song that I previously mentioned.
Also, this was completely free, so there's that, I hope this, on top of God of War Ragnarok's Valhalla DLC is an indication on what direction some game companies will start going with their DLCs, I say some, cuz you all know EA and Ubisoft ain't gonna do that.
TLDR: Basically, I like playing as Tails, Knuckles, and Amy again, I hate playing as Sonic, cuz of all the bullshit he has to do, trials feel like unnecessary padding, the final boss is cool, but bullshit, you essentially have to have it on Easy in order to actually have fun or have an easier time, the new songs are great, the DLC is free, so no use being too mad at it.
Now I'm gonna go back to patiently waiting for the next Sonic game, which hopefully will feature Shadow as a main character again, bring my boy back in the spotlight, and actually write him better, please?
"You're weak, and you know what makes you weak, your faith in your friends!"
Shut the fuck up
Shut the fuck up
2020
Haven't finished the game yet, but can confirm, from the hours that I have played so far, that every award that it got at the Game Awards was well deserved.
Also, gotta love that other game devs hate it, because it makes their practices inexcusable.
Also, gotta love that other game devs hate it, because it makes their practices inexcusable.
2023
You can have Bowser as a teammate, that's a 1,000/10
There are levels where you can torment Helpy....That alone is worth the price.
Just when I thought this game peaked, Santa Monica released this DLC FOR FREE!!
Not only is it quite fun and frustrating, but it serves as the perfect Epilogue to Kratos' journey.
Hell, I might play through this again, it's so much fun.
Not only is it quite fun and frustrating, but it serves as the perfect Epilogue to Kratos' journey.
Hell, I might play through this again, it's so much fun.
Lord of the Rings, a universe chock full of amazing characters and amazing stories that would be perfect adapted into a video game.
These guys: "Let's make a game about that crackhead who talks funny!"
These guys: "Let's make a game about that crackhead who talks funny!"
I don't know, why people complained so much about this game, I bet it was actually pretty good for it's time.
What do you mean it came out this year?
What do you mean it came out this year?
This game was a lot of fun and a joy to experience and I can tell that the new voice actor is really good as Mario and Luigi, because if I didn't know any better, I'd say Charles Martinet is still voicing them.
This is another win for 2023 for me.
This is another win for 2023 for me.