Welcome back to Video Game Round-Up! Guess what? I totally finished some games this month! Whee! But I also started some others. And there are plenty of games that I haven’t finished yet that I didn’t even touch this month, but you know what? That’s okay. Playing video games is supposed to be fun and not stressful, so I’m going to stop stressing about not finishing every game I start, and just have fun playing my games.
Okay, let’s do this!
Super Smash Bros. Ultimate (Switch) - I GOT ALL THE SPIRITS! HAHAHAHAHA! ALL 1303 OF THEM!!!! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!
*koff*
So, yes. It took me a long time to get the last spirit (Mew, for those of you keeping track at home, and no, I’m not going to list out every single spirit there are 1303 of them are you insane), and I am very happy that I can put this game away, for a bit at least. I had been playing nothing but Smash on our Switch for too long now, and I am looking forward to playing other things on it.
This was personal challenge I set for myself just so I could see every piece of art in the game. Most of the Spirits are characters or objects from the series of the fighters in the game (so, a bunch of stuff from Mario, Zelda, Metal Gear, Bayonetta, etc.), but also a few characters from games that don’t have a fighter in the game: from a bunch of Japanese games I’ve never heard of, from early Nintendo sports games (like Excitebike, Ice Hockey, Baseball, etc.), and from awesome games like Balloon Fight, Fatal Frame, Shovel Knight, and more.
There will be at least one more spirit per every new fighter that’s released in the future, but they’re pretty easy to get, so I will play it for like ten minutes and get the fighter and spirit in one sitting.
Kingdom Hearts FINAL MIX (PS4) - I FINALLY BEAT THIS GAME! HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!
*koff*
So, I played this game when it originally came out back on the PS2 (when it was simply known as Kingdom Hearts) because of course I was going to. It was Final Fantasy mixed with a bunch of Disney characters, and at that stage in my life, it was friggin’ everything (the only game I loved more than this at the time was X-Men Legends). I played through the entire game and did nearly everything, except for one thing. I could never beat the final boss.
I alluded to this in a recent status update, but JRPGs (acronym for Japanese roleplaying games) are notorious for difficult final boss battles that have multiple stages. What this means in gameplay terms is that you in effect have to beat multiple bosses in succession without dying. In Kingdom Hearts, the final boss is Ansem and he has three main stages, and his third stage has eight parts itself. There’s also another boss in between Ansem’s first and second stage (yes, it’s super easy and you’ve beaten it twice before already, but it’s still another stage), so there are 11 stages total to this final boss. 17 years ago, when this game first came out, I was not good enough to beat the first part of Ansem’s third stage. That’s where I always stalled, so eventually I just gave up and moved on to another game.
I don’t know if I’ve gotten better in my old age, or if FINAL MIX is easier or something, but I was finally able to beat it, and I actually had the most trouble with Ansem’s second stage (aka the third stage overall). I must have died there at least 20 times, and when I did finally beat him, I was worried that I would again stall on the first part of his third stage, but no. I ended up doing it first try. I was glorious. The only reason I didn’t scream out in joy was because it was stupid late, and I was very tired (and I didn’t want anyone to call the cops on me).
Only eight more games before I can play Kingdom Hearts III (PS4)!
Yoshi’s Crafted World Demo (Switch) - This was only one level, but it’s really good! And it’s adorable! I will definitely be getting the full game. There’s a lot of talk about how it’s quite an easy game, but whatevers, man. Not every game needs to be rock-hard. This is a game I can totally play with the girl in the 2-player mode. She’s not great at platformers because she can’t jump very well, but the jumping here is pretty simple (thanks especially to Yoshi’s fluttery jump which lets him float for a little while), but if there are ever any tricky jumps that she just can’t make, the 2-player mode allows a Yoshi to ride on top of the other, and I can make the jump for her, and then we can continue playing. I mean, that’s just brilliant.
Undertale (Switch) - I beat this game too! I’m on some kind of roll!
Okay, I’m about to massively spoil this game, so if this is something you are interested in, and will play eventually, firstly, get on that, this game is amazing, what are you waiting for, and secondly, skip to the next entry because, yeah, bunches of spoilers.
Okay, everybody that’s left has either played this game already, doesn’t care about spoilers, right? Good.
As I previously mentioned, I had known before playing the game that one could fight or befriend the various characters, and since I had never played an RPG where we could befriend characters, I decided to do that. As the game progressed, and I befriended various characters, both random encounters and bosses, I realized my EXP was staying flat. I wasn’t leveling up or anything, which was a bit disconcerting as it always took at least a few turns before a befriended character would actually stop attacking you (many more for bosses). Since I wasn’t getting any EXP or leveling up, my base stats remained: low defense and low HP (low attack too, but I wasn’t too worried about that since I wasn’t attacking anything). There are various items you can pick up to help with this, like food to replenish your HP during a fight, and clothing and armor you could put on to help your defense. But as I progressed further, and had to endure tougher characters, I started thinking, “Man, should I kill some of these random encounters just so I can level and not get stuck on Undyne or Muffet for so long?” I was attempting a Pacifist Run, so I ultimately decided against this and just persevered against everybody (and stocked up on a lot of HP-replenishing items).
Thank goodness I did. Right before the final boss fights, Sans, the punny skeleton who’s been helping you throughout the game, shows up and judges you for your past actions, and wants to know how much EXP and LVs you have. When he sees you have none of both, he sighs in relief, and explains that EXP actually means “Execution Points” and LV means “Level of Violence”.
Good thing I never kill anybody!
I was reading up on what happens on a Genocide Run (which I will never do because these monsters are all my friends now), and if your EXP and LV is high enough, you have to fight Sans at this point, and he is apparently the hardest boss in the whole game. Instead, he let me pass.
You can’t do a True Pacifist run on your first playthrough (you can at best get a Neutral run), but if you refrain from killing anyone during your Neutral playthrough, you don’t have to play the entire game over again to get the True Pacifist run on your second playthrough. You can start again right before the final boss fights, work your way backwards a bit to properly befriend any of the three major characters you haven’t already befriended (Papyrus, Undyne, and/or Dr Alphys [you can only befriend Dr Alphys on the second playthrough]), and then solve a rather long puzzle in the True Lab, before going against the true final boss of the game.
I love this game to bits. It is now one of my favorite games of all time, and while it bothered me that I had no choice but to fight the final two bosses on the first playthrough (you can’t simply dodge around and outlast them or run away until they give up fighting you), you still get decide whether to kill or spare them afterwards, which is great. The lesson from the game is that you don’t have to kill everything you encounter, like pretty much every other game in existence. You don’t even have to fight them if you don’t want to. You can befriend them instead. You can forgive them for attacking you, and do your best to make them see the error of their ways (usually by complimenting them, or patting them on the head, or having a bake-off, etc.). Even the most seemingly intractable people will eventually see that fighting is not the answer (sometimes after killing you 10 or 20 times, or trying to kill all the friends you’ve already made). It’s a lovely, lovely game.
Also, the music is super rad! It’s all chiptune-type stuff, but my favorite pieces of music by far are the Temmie Village music and Napstablook’s Spooktune music that you can listen to in their house.
Tetris 99 (Switch) - I made fun of this game when it was first announced because Tetris battle royale sounded ricockulous. But oh man, this is actually super fun! You basically just play Tetris against 98 other players and give them extra lines while they give you extra lines, and you try to be the last person standing. As other players get knocked out, the game gets faster and faster. I’ve played around 10 or so rounds, and the highest placement I’ve achieved is 17, which is actually pretty good for me. I’m not actually very good at Tetris, but it’s always a bit of fun (and that music is the best).
Super Mario Bros. 2 (NES/Switch) - SMB2 is finally available on Nintendo Switch Online! Yay! I love SMB2 to bits because it’s one of the few games that lets you play as Peach (who debuts her floaty jump here for the first time). A lot of people don’t consider this game a proper Super Mario Bros. game because it’s actually a reskin of Yume Kōjō: Doki Doki Panic (Famicom CD) as the original Japanese Super Mario Bros. 2 (Famicom CD) (also known as Super Mario Bros.: Lost Levels in the US) was deemed too similar to the first game, and more importantly, too difficult for US audiences, but that’s hogwash. SMB2 contains the first appearances of many characters and move sets (like bob-ombs and lifting and throwing objects) that would appear in later Mario games. This is the first game that makes Luigi taller and thinner than Mario, instead of just a palette swap of Mario. Without this game, we wouldn’t have later games in their current forms. So there’s no way SMB2 isn’t a real Mario game. Who cares that it doesn’t take place in the Mushroom Kingdom? Neither do the Super Mario Land (GB) or Super Mario Galaxy (Wii) series, or Super Mario Sunshine (GC), and nobody thinks those aren’t real Mario games, so let’s just stop this nonsense, alright?
SMB2 is awesome, and I’ve already beaten a couple of Birdos and Mouser.
Kingdom Hearts: Re:Chain of Memories (PS4) - Originally titled Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories (GBA), I actually own the GBA version of this game, and tried playing it on my Advance when I first got it, but the gameplay was so different from the original Kingdom Hearts (PS2), I didn’t get very far into it. Instead of the real-time hack-and-slash of the first game (which was already a departure for Square Enix’s JRPGs, which had previously all featured turn-based combat), this featured a card-based battle system THAT WAS ALSO REAL-TIME. I’m not against card-based battle games in the slightest, but turn-based works so much better for that. The two Metal Gear Acid games for the PSP are excellent examples. You move around a board and you have cards that allow Snake to do various things. Every turn, you can look at your hand and decide which card/action makes the most sense for you to do in your current situation. This includes movement, attacks, special items, etc.
With the exception of movement, Chain of Memories has all these cards as well, but because the battles are real-time, you have no chance to look at anything and just end up mashing the attack/card button until you run out of cards and have to replenish (by also mashing the attack/card button). When I first got this game way back when, I thought the gameplay would be like Metal Gear Acid, and I was so disappointed that it wasn’t.
I’ve started its souped remake (bundled in the Kingdom Hearts HD 1.5 + 2.5 ReMIX collection along with Kingdom Hearts FINAL MIX and four other games) with the knowledge of what this game actually is, and it’s now a little easier to swallow. I still fervently wish it had been turn-based, but knowing ahead of time that it isn’t makes me not immediately hate it.
Marvel Strike Force (iPhone) - I don’t talk about mobile games on this because I would be talking about them every month, and that’s just boring. Plus, most of them are just messes of multiplayer microtransactions and I refuse to acknowledge them as real video games (yes, I know where I work), but Strike Force is legitimately fun and has a pretty substantial story. You don’t ever have to spend any money if you don’t want to, and, even better, you don’t have to play with other people if you don’t want. Yes, it will make it a lot slower to get certain characters (or maybe impossible? not sure, I’ve been playing for like two weeks), but unless it’s one of your favorite characters ever, it won’t matter.
The gameplay is a single-player RPG, and you use teams of up to 5 characters in various battles against evil versions of other heroes. The gameplay can get repetitive, but like I said, the story is pretty good, and I keep going for that. The actions that each character can do are based on their comic power sets, and are pretty neat. So yeah, check it out if it sounds like your thing. Also, even though I will for sure continue to play this, I won’t mention it here ever again :D
Assassin’s Creed Odyssey: Legacy of the First Blade DLC (PS4) - Spoilers for the whole of this bit of DLC, so skip to the next entry if you do not want to be spoiled like milk left on the counter too long.
The third and final part of the Legacy of the First Blade dropped at the beginning of the month and it did some damage control for the forced heterosexual coupling at the end of the second part. As Ubisoft said last month, nothing too big was changed, so I assume the main story beats of murdering Natakas and having Kassandra’s child kidnapped were already there, as well as the ending in which Kassandra tells Darius to take the child so that it will be safer away from her, leaving Kassandra much as she was before this thing started: free of any familial encumbrances and ready to kick ass all over the Greek world. The main changes were at the end of the second part and beginning of the third part so players can insist to Natakas that this is a purely platonic relationship based on the need to make sure the bloodline continues. It’s not great, but Ubisoft made these changes after discussions with the player base and GLAAD, so they at least tried to fix their mistake after admitting and apologizing, and that is probably more important.
The story concerns itself with Darius and Kassandra wiping out the remains of the Order of the Ancients (who seem to know a lot more about the First Civilization than they let on) after they destroy their idyllic lives in Dyme. The Order has kidnapped Kassandra’s child and killed Natakas (no big loss there, honestly), so Kassandra and Darius kill a whole bunch of people to get him back, Taken-style (I mean, they always kill a whole bunch of people, but they have a really, really good reason this time).
I also did the two Lost Tales bits that were released. These are short-ish questlines in various places around Greece that don’t have anything to do with the main storyline, but are little bits of story all on their own. In one of them, Alexios and Kassandra get to romance twin brothers (though not at the same time, which was a missed opportunity, frankly), and then explain what one night stands are when they both profess their love, so that’s nice.
Overall, I have very much enjoyed the time I’ve spent in this game, and have done pretty much everything there is to do (there are always new and time-limited missions and such popping up, but they’re just more of the same and have no story content attached to them, so I don’t count them; they’re just ways to get more money and/or resources), so I will put it away until the next DLC story, The Fate of Atlantis, comes out (the first part is slated for Spring 2019, so possibly next month, though I assume May is more likely). There are more Lost Tales bits coming as well, but as I’ve done in the past, I won’t bother with them until the new bit of DLC shows up.
Yakuza 0 (PS4) - This is quite a weird game. It’s basically an open-world brawler in which your two gameplay options are to beat up the thugs that come after you (in one of three different ways) and help various people around Kamurocho, a fictitious neighborhood in Tokyo tightly packed with nightclubs, bars, and convenience stores. I mean, it’s basically a long chain of cutscenes strung together with street brawls and dialogue options.
I’m not doing a good job of selling this, but it’s actually a pretty sweet game. It feels like the yakuza movies from the 80s (which makes sense, as it is set in the 80s). The main character, Kazuma Kiryu, is framed for a murder he didn’t commit and has to solve the mystery... by getting into real estate.
Look, I know I’m not selling it, but trust me, it’s awesome. I haven’t even reached the stuff with Goro Majima, the other protagonist of the series, and everyone says he’s a super fun character.
Also, there is Yakuza lieutenant named Kuze who’s probably behind your frame-up, but even if he isn’t, he is a dick, and it is very satisfying to beat him down. He does have super nice tattoos all over his body, though.
Deltarune Chapter 1 (Switch) - This weirdly felt almost like a complete story. I mean, sort of. There are obvious story hooks for future chapters, and a pretty chilling cliffhanger at the end, but if this were it, I almost wouldn’t mind. Toby Fox has crafted another amazing gaming experience. It doesn’t feel as groundbreaking as Undertale did, but that’s okay. I still love the fact that you don’t have to fight anything you don’t want to, but now the game doesn’t have to be all coy about it. Some differences in gameplay exist, like now you have a party instead of just one character, you can sometimes take damage when you’re not in battle, and you have the ability to run now. There are also tons more puzzles than in Undertale, which is also great.
And that last bit in the town really does have some pretty awesome story hooks.
This first chapter is free on both PC and Switch, so there is no reason not to get it, but I very much recommend you play through Undertale first.
And that’s it for this month! Can you believe I finished five games this month?! What even am I going to play next?! Well, more Yakuza 0 (PS4) and Kingdom Hearts: Re:Chain of Memories (PS4) for sure, and probably more Captain Toad: Treasure Tracker (Switch) as some DLC just dropped. Will I also finish Gris (Switch), Iconoclasts (Switch), Kentucky Route Zero (PC), Return of the Obra Dinn (PC), and The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Ages (3DS)? Maybe! I might just start entirely new games like Far Cry: New Dawn (PS4), The Sexy Brutale (Switch), or VA-11 Hall-A (PC)! Who knows?! We can all find out together next month in the next installment of Video Game Round-Up!
Until next month, play more video games!
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