Sunday 16 February 2014

No Game New Year- Week 6

Hello everyone!
I apologize for the lack of a post last week, but I got busy and I figured this way my numbering is back on track (week 6 just finished).  It was a particularly exciting week for me, as I just achieved my first platinum trophy! (more on that in a moment).  First, on to this week's temptations.  Lightning Returns would have to be one game that I took a serious look at.  I'm currently knee deep in the Final Fantasy 13 universe, and as this is the sequel to 13-2 (which I just finished), it definitely peaked my interest.  I watched a couple minutes of tehmorag's stream of it, and it looked okay.  There are some pretty major changes to the 13 universe; they completely change the battle system, and I didn't even recognize the names of the places.  Also, the whole "Lightning is Jesus" thing turned me off quite a bit.  In the end I don't mind waiting for this game, especially since by the time I can buy it, there will most likely be a price drop.  Another temptation that is going to spring up is Mario Kart 8 for the WiiU.  I love the Mario Kart games and it's going to hurt to wait for this one, but I just keep telling myself there is a price drop coming if I wait.

I have to say that doing this challenge has made it easier for me to sit down and really complete games.  As I mentioned earlier, I just got my first platinum.  The fact that I can't have any new games really takes the pressure off to hurry up and finish the games so I can move on to the next one.  I also find it interesting which games I'm choosing to play; I tend to play games that I've played before, games I truly like I guess.  I've decided to really buckle down and start 100% the games I choose to play, so I'm being pickier about which ones I choose to sink my time into.  For instance, now that Final Fantasy 13-2 is platinumed, I'm going to start working on getting the platinum in Ni No Kuni (one of my favourite games).  I know this platinum is going to take well over 100 hours (I'm going to start a new game even though I've beaten it once), but I do love this game and I'm looking forward to giving it the time it deserves.

Final Fantasy 13-2
I finally got the platinum this week!  It wasn't that bad time wise, and there were only a couple of trophies/fragments that really made me want to pull my hair out.  (Warning, I'm going to talk about some of the trophies and fragments here, so if you don't want spoilers stop reading).  Personally the most time consuming things to do was completing the bestiary, the casino fragments/trophies and getting the trophy for 100 pre-emptive attacks in a row.  Having said that, even these trophies didn't take more than 4-5 hours.  The hardest fight in the game for me was the paradox scope fight where you only have Serah and a monster against Caius in the void beyond.  The internet really talked up the fight with Cauis where you only have Noel as being the hardest, however my Noel absolutely destroyed him (I didn't even switch paradigms once, just put him on commando and he ripped into him).  Having said that, because I prepared, my Noel had well over 1k strength by then (max crystarium+Odin weapon).  (I am actually still disappointed with how easy this fight was after all the warning about how hard it was going to be).
If you're looking for a game to start platinuming this is a good one, I'm well under 60 hours with it, and once you max out your crystarium, most of the fights become trivial.  I 5 starred most boss fights the first time I did them (paradox scope versions of course).  Another reason this is a good game to platinum is because you can't miss anything, you can always go back and find anything you missed.  I appreciate this as it lets you platinum the game on one playthrough, without worrying about using a guide your first time through the story.  I really prefer to just play the game through once, on my own, no help, then worry about going to guides for the 100%.  I do recommend using internet resources for some of the trophies such as the casino fragments and the bestiary, as they would be very difficult to do without some help from guides.  Also, save your sanity and use this for the clock puzzles, if you don't you'll be there for hours.  I hate the clock puzzles.

Thanks for reading everyone, talk to you next week!
 

Sunday 2 February 2014

No Game New Year- Week 5

Hello again everyone!
Welcome to week 5 of no game new year!  This week I had a temptation that I really had to resist.  I was watching Cobaltstreak play it, and man it looks good.  The game is called "Our Darker Purpose" and it's available on steam for $10.04.  I highly recommend it if you're not doing this challenge.  Our Darker Purpose plays a bit like Binding of Isaac but you're a girl in a school where all the teachers have disappeared.  The look of the game is quite dark and it really appealed to me.  Having said that, I added another ten bucks to the "games I didn't buy" pot, and I'm up to $40, not bad for one month.  I haven't been feeling very hot this week, so I didn't get any casting done, therefore no progress was made on UnEpic, however the big news is I finally finished Final Fantasy 13-2!  In the section below I'll talk more on my thoughts on the game.  Overall the challenge continues to go well, I'm really happy I decided to do it, so big thanks to SubstanceTV for thinking of it!

Final Fantasy 13-2
Well I finally finished this game!  Overall it was an okay game, but not a very good final fantasy.  There were a lot of points in the game where I was more annoyed than anything (if you've done the clock puzzles you know what I'm talking about).  I generally avoid walkthroughs like the plague on first playthroughs but there were some fragments I absolutely had to look online for (the game isn't 100% yet).  One thing I found odd was that for a lot of the fragments they don't give you any clue whatsoever as to where they are.  This means you just have to wander around the entire map staring at your screen hoping to see the distortion they make. This annoyed me.  I would rather they gave hints so I at least had an area where I was looking for them.  I said I would try to avoid spoilers on this blog so I won't go into details, but I really didn't like the ending, especially those three little words that appeared.  Shame on you Square.  On the positive side, Noel was a really great character, and I hope to see him again.  I have to admit however, I enjoyed the first 13 a lot more than this one.  The story just seemed unnecessarily convoluted, and although the game was very non linear, I could have used more main story.  Overall I'm really glad I grabbed this game while it was on sale (I think I only paid $15 for it), rather than paying the full $60, I would have been disappointed.

That's all for this week, thanks all for your support!