Last game you finished and your thoughts

Thought I'd read something of yours about TWA, Jay. In my flurry of joy (or 'review', if you'd like) about the game, I forgot to mention the music: the only time I've ever been tempted to download a game's soundtrack. Lovely stuff.

Think I'll probably be picking up TwA this weekend.  With the following game finished, I need something to pass the time:

Pokémon Alpha Sapphire



Too much water.

Oh yes, sure, laugh it up.  But when the summary from IGN's review went viral, although I laughed at the derivatives (here's one I like), I couldn't help remembering the long time I spent Surfing slooooowly and running from wild Pokémon, over the many utterly unremarkable water routes.  And thinking, just maybe, despite it fitting the theme of the games and all, they had something there.

And sure enough, even with Sharpedo's speed-Surfing (a nice touch), there's too much water.  And not just to Surf on: there's also too much rain on the routes, making them feel dismal.  The gameplay should determine the theme of the game, not the other way around.

If I'm dwelling on the water problem, that's because people have talked about the other big problem, the ease of the game, to death.  The gyms, the Elite Four, the Delta Episode - piece of the proverbial urine.  The one benefit is that I didn't have to grind before facing the Elite Four, at all.  That was nice.


As for the good, well, it's Pokémon.  It's one of the best generations of Pokémon, too, despite all the water: good monsters, interesting locations, and nice music that mostly hasn't been ruined ( at what they've done to the desert theme).  

But in this day and age, the original RSE are all but unplayable, hamstrung by the technical constraints of their console.  And so it's great to have what is a jolly good update, ease aside: it's obviously prettier, the mechanics have been smoothed, the story enhanced (although not by perhaps as much as I was hoping), and the Megas adding an interesting dynamic to the previous game's battling.  Shame about the 3D: it mostly doesn't work, and when it does, the frame rate suffers dramatically.


...Look, if you enjoy Pokémon, you'll enjoy this, and most of you do.  The core mechanics of the game are as good as ever, and the Delta stuff is a decent postgame.  You'll find it easy, but you'll still enjoy slapping trainers around with the new Mega-Evolutions, of which there are lots.  I like Pokémon, so I'm slapping on it an

8/10

Despite not liking the game all that much, I feel that your review on OR/AS pretty much sums up my feelings.

I think that the way the game is supposed to be played has shifted from the days before DS and I haven't shifted my play style to get the best out of it.

Thinking back to R/B or G/S you had to pretty much stick with a team as grinding up new members was time consuming. You really had to have a balanced team to deal with other elements as the number of 'moves' or 'attacks' each pokemon could learn was drastically smaller.

I think now, thoughts like 'Ill add X to my team because he really compliments Y' are contrary to what the game expects.

I'm keen on anything that removes grinding. And it's true that perhaps RSE went a bit too far the other way: in the early points of the game, and before the E4, grinding was pretty much obligatory. You just couldn't get the experience points any other way, especially if you were keen to try new monsters at different points in the game.

There must be a middle ground, surely, where grinding is minimal but the opponents still provide some challenge?

See, I'm the other person: love grinding. The feeling of slowly getting more powerful, rising up to the challenge of our rivals. Tinkering with my team, getting more moves and thinking how they'll slot in... being in the Grindcopter is where I want to be. ORAS and X/Y removed the need for this entirely and that's what I've been used to over the years from 'mon games.

It's clearly time for me to switch off that Exp Share, should it exist in the next set of games.

I had it off anyway.  Still didn't grind.

The perfect balance is probably to keep the Exp. Share, much though I hate it, and position the levels so that you're just too low without it (old RSE-style), and just too high with it.

Quite frankly, the Exp Share this gen is broken to the max. I'm not much of a grindy person, but even I felt cheap (especially in the early stages of the game) when I could see my team routinely destroying everything without even having to make proper type matchups.

I had to do a tiny bit of grinding to catch a few slower 'mon up to the rest of my team (Tyrantrum and Malamar: I'm looking at you... who were barely used in the end), but once that had been done my Mega Charizard Y was level eighty-two and pretty much capable of whooping the Elite Four by itself.

I'd turn the EXP. Share off, but not taking advantage of it, as dirty as it is, seems foolish.

I think I've said this elsewhere, but for me the problem with the experience share was that some of my pokemon just never get a look in. By the time all six are at level 47, my starters already level 48 so he's never at the top spot.

Thanks to how it seemed to work out for me, even though the rest of my team were respectably levelled, they totally paled in comparison to Mega Charizard. I don't have much experience with the Megas, but they've probably broken the single player experience as well.

My other five Pokémon weren't even a consideration in 95% of battles, outside of Talonflame who had similar moves to Charizard anyway.

Its the 'elite 4', really we should expect grinding to even match them. Remember Cynthia? That was a proper battle, nothing comes close in X/Y or OR/AS and I'd have to put it down to the lack of necessity to grind. I might actually go back to playing Platinum and White. Those were the glory days.

I remember how you could coast through most of R/B/Y without too much trouble, but then you faced the huge level spike of Victory Road and the Elite Four. It did feel a bit jarring upon repeated plays, but finally scraping your team of underdogs up to the right standard felt very rewarding indeed. Something that X and Y couldn't emulate.

Bayonetta 2

This was, essentially, more of the same. And it was ace.
It definitely felt easier than the first game, though that might be more to do with my playing it after the first game, and it wasn't paced with Kamiya's eye for cinematic timing.
On the other hand, there were none of the horrendous difficulty spikes the first game was plagued by and the plot was a really nice extension of the first game's. I'd probably consider them on the same way as I do the Galaxy games or the Mass Effect Trilogy, wherein I count them as one whole game.
In conclusion, I'm very happy to name the pair as my Games of the Year.

10/10

Drunka, is there a game you've reviewed here that hasn't received a 10/10?

Not that I'm saying Bayonetta 2 doesn't deserve it - it looks bloody brilliant and the consensus seems to be that it is indeed bloody brilliant.

Not for a while, no. It's a combination of the fact that I'm unlikely to write about or even finish a game that doesn't deserve a high score and also the fact that I dislike review scores entirely.

This is awfully close to the cut-off, I've just realised - if another game comes along, there won't be much room to discuss it. So I'll lock this thread, and the next person with a finished game can start the new one.