Romancing Saga 2 (Xbox One)

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Romancing Saga 2 was originally released in December 1993 in Japan and took forever to come to America, in fact as far as I can find, this is it. But was it  worth the wait? Honestly unless you are a HUGE JRPG fan the answer is no. The game isn’t bad, it just isn’t great. The story is actually being told by a bard in a tavern, and that story can change depending on choices you make and characters you choose as the linage of your kingdom changes. This aspect is nice and even now is not something you see often. Many times tho this makes it feel like you are simply starting the game over a bunch of times rather than progressing towards beating 7 heroes. The game is fun and interesting and for any JRPG fan its worth playing for both the history of it and the experience of such a unique title, but it is far from being one of the better games of the early 90’s or of the genre. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Dragon Ball Xenoverse

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Dragon Ball Xenoverse is basically the dream game for most fans of the Dragon Ball fans. You create a character from one of the races in the series, then help protect the timeline of the series in an original story made for the game. As you go through various events you unlock different repeatable battles you can fight in to unlock new moves, level up or even train with masters to learn their moves or be given items you can use to increase the abilities of your person or just make them look better. The fighting mechanics are fluid and easy to learn but to learn the abilities you want can take a lot of time and effort. The game and sound are nice tho, so the time spent playing will be nice, but the game is clearly meant for fans of the series. Anyone that isn’t will want to stay very clear of this one, however if you are a fan this is absolutely a must buy. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Terraria

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Terraria is one of those games I had zero interest in playing and my daughter pretty much followed me around saying  ” dad dad dad dad dad dad”..ok so it wasn’t quite like that but it was close enough. It is quite a bit like 2D Minecraft actually. You explore, chop down trees or dig to find resources, fight monsters  and build structures. People will move in, you can interact with them and buy things from them. There are also bosses and such you can fight. The game isn’t bad if you like that sort of thing. Fans of Minecraft and other games of that type will actually really enjoy this, but it really is for that market. Others may want to avoid it. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

For Honor

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For honor..I have avoided reviewing this game for months. I have played it for PlayStation 4 and on the Xbox One X and I have to say I have dreaded reviewing this game. I know some people are going to review this game and say hell yea savior. I agree. Others are going to read this and say nah they fixed that. So I will say this. I played this from 3 days after launch until about a month later for PS4, then of XB1 I played it just last week. I have played this more than most people gave it the chance. I don’t even hate the game, quite the opposite actually. I am disappointed in how it was treated.

The game itself is simply beautiful. Regardless of system that can’t be denied, the game looks great. I never experienced any frame rate issues or any major glitches or anything of the sort. The sound was top notch, the controls worked fluidly and as it should have. Now some of you will be wondering, whats with that entire top paragraph. First and least of all, the grind or money required to unlock it all is in my opinion completely unreasonable, tho I don’t see it as pay to win. Skill and strategy can work wonders. My biggest issue? The matchmaking is one of the worst out there. I have waited double waited so long for matches people I was playing with have just said screw it and quit. People I know have some real patience for this sort of thing. If that wasn’t bad enough, many many times after that wait the game has simply disconnected.  Not just for me, teammates have been kicked mid match. Especially in that first month I don’t think I played a single game where a team had every member play the entire round.

Now to give credit where it is do it has come a long way and they are doing even more to fix it, but for me it is far to little and to late to bring me back. What should have been a game of the year contender has been turned into a laughing stock to many. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

5 Games I Will Probably Never Finish

The following is a list of games I will probably never finish, not because they aren’t good games. Some of them are probably on the list of all time greats. They just either aren’t great to me, or stuff just keeps happening. Also, in no real order.

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Phantasy Star 2. I played this game for the first time on the Sega Channel. For those that don’t know what that is, it was something you got thru your cable provider that fit into the top of the system, and it let you play a bunch of games every month. Basically it was a really really old school version of PlayStation now. I then had a Phantasy Star collection for my Gameboy advance, it came with the Ultimate sonic collection I owned for both the PS3 and Xb360 and I bought it for the Xbox one…still have not beat it, and sadly probably never will.

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The Original Zelda, a classic loved by people all over the world. I have played this game a few times, and I always just get bored and stop playing half an hour after I start. I always say I will look up a guide and just blow through it for the sake of doing it, but lets be honest. I won’t.

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Moving further into history, the first Resident Evil. I played this at a friends house back on the PlayStation and the controls turned me off. Eventually I played the remake and bought the PS4 remake with @torstenvblog when it was on sale. He was going to play one side and me the other. He finished it, me? Yea you know what the list is called. This game ended up uninstalled and will probably forever be a game I truly want to complete, but won’t.

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This is honestly the only game on the list I only feel bad for because I have completed most of the Final Fantasy games. Basically this and that trilogy us old people like to pretend don’t exist that came out after this but before 14. People seem to have a love it or hate it attitude towards 12, and I fall into the hate it category mostly. The battle system is boring, the story is uninspired and the characters, well mostly I didn’t are if they lived or died. I never finished it, but I got far enough to want Vaan’s head on a pike.

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This one always surprises people. See I love the RPG genre, and Witcher 3 is without a doubt one of the best we have seen in a long time. The game world is breathtakingly beautiful, the world itself is in depth and rich, the characters are as real and well written as any ever created. There is almost nothing to complain about with this game. The complaints you can make are pretty minor at this point, since the major ones have been long since fixed, granted my first attempt had me getting stuck on invisible objects. If anyone were to ask me if they should buy The Witcher 3, I would say absolutely yes. If you look at this game and it looks interesting, buy it.  Also I don’t like it. I can’t explain why, I love the world, I love the characters, the story is great. I WANT to like this game, i WANT to play this game. I simply can’t get into it.

 

Elite Dangerous: Colonia

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Earlier this week I chose to do something magnificently stupid. I wanted to fly from Sol to Colonia, in one day one sitting. I did the whole thing live on Twitch. I started out in Sol around Noon local time for United States Eastern Standard time. I started out strong, making good time and joined by our good friend @torstenvblog we talked as I hopped and scanned over and over. Soon our friend and my fellow Twitch friend Sirfeliciano for a few hours for encouragement. As the people watching climbed a bit I quickly became a bit jaded with the trip around the 7 thousand light year mark.

A guy that joined my stream brought up one last station I could stop at, a last chance to stop my trip and turn around. The station is called Gagarin Gate he said. He gave me the location, I locked it in and away I went.

The hours clicked by, people came and went on my stream and I bounced from excited to bored to downright wanting to quit. I pressed on tho, the people that stopped by to chat were a gift from the gaming gods themselves. A man from Scotland joined me for almost 8 hours actually and left me at about 2 in the morning his time and for that I am forever grateful. He was great company and he offered great advice, tho his desire for me to hit the legendary Beagle Point may have forced me to make that trip someday.

It was also decided that IF I made the 22 thousand light year trip from Sol to Colonia that day I would have to rename my ship. Well here it is, the new name.

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No I did not pick the name, the chat did. The whole trip took what seemed like forever, but it was in total just over 13 hours and 40 minutes. I would like to swear off that type pf stream again, but I am planning on doing another one, maybe not as long but another marathon style stream. I hope to see you there, best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Top 5 Games 2017

I actually thought about not making this list, mostly because they tend to piss people off. So I made it anyway. A few things to point out tho, 1. to make this list, I had to have personally played the game. Don’t expect a Nintendo Switch game. I sadly do not own one, and have never used one. 2. A couple games on this list came out prior to 2017, but released on a new console in 2017. I counted it. and 3. These actually are in order from 5 down to 1.

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Resident Evil 7 was visually impressive, told a great story and was creepy as hell. Its only real downfall was it was short, and honestly I was fine with that. Creeping through this place in first person was great while it lasted and after Resident Evil 6 restored my faith in the franchise.

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Cities Skylines is the first of the games that came out prior to 2017 nut released on PS4 this year and reminded me that a city building game can be fun and addictive. From building that first piece of road and deciding where to build homes, commercial and industrial zones, to setting taxes and even when and where to build monuments and schools the game was fun.

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I knew The Evil Within  2 would be good. Magnificent even. I loved the first one, so why not the second? I however was not prepared for how amazing The Evil Within 2 would be. Right from the start it doesn’t shy away from doing things many games wouldn’t but it also had no issue using what wasn’t there to make the environment scary.

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The other game on the list that was out prior to this year, it came out this year on the PS4. Elite Dangerous can only be described as a space simulator. The game takes place in a life sized version of our galaxy ( yes you can with the right permits visit Earth) The game itself is huge, and you can easily sink hundreds if not thousands of hours into it, in fact many people have. The game however doesn’t care about you. You aren’t a chosen one or special. You are just one person in the galaxy doing what you want to do, and I never had so much fun in space.

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This for me is without a doubt game of the year. Persona 5 is a master piece of gaming, graphically beautiful, the story is superbly done and the sound it absolutely stunning. The characters feel almost like real teenagers at times and Japan itself is full of things to do and people to see with shops, hangouts and restaurants. With around 100 hours in I still haven’t seen it all.

And that is my list, best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

 

5 Games I Want in 2018

20017 was a great year for gaming, and 2018 is looking to be no slouch itself. The following list is just 5 games I am looking forward to supposedly coming in 2018 that I can wait to play, and of course in no particular order.

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Look anyone that follows the blog knew Kingdom Hearts 3 was going to be on this list. People have been waiting forever and supposedly we are getting it next year, tho like everyone else I have my doubts. Will the quest of Sora continue? Your guess is as good as mine.

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Far Cry 5, Sadly it was pushed a little bit but still supposed to be 2018. But in todays world of radical religious people how can you not want a game that lets you save a city from a few? Plus far cry is always fun.  More on this here Far Cry 5

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Of all the games on the list this is the one I am most excited for and most concerned about. The concept is great. You and a friend each control a person and attempt to survive and leave an area. Could be fun. might also be horrible.

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Kingdom Come Deliverance for me is great because I get to run around with a sword and stab stuff in  world that reacts to what I do and that is always a good time to me. The story seems exciting, the world imaginative and graphically it looks beautiful. You can also see more on that here. Kingdom Come Deliverance

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Come on, like this wasn’t going to make the list. The first game was amazing, one of the best looking and most fun games of the last generation. The story was also top notch and made westerns cool again for the first time in decades. Fine the trailer here. Red Dead Redemption 2 trailer

I know guys, short list, let me know In the comments what games you are looking forward to. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

 

Titan Fall 2 (PS4)

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I had never really put to much thought into Titan Fall 2 honestly. It looked like just a standard shooter with some giant robots. I mean that sounds fun enough really, I just didn’t want to spend money on it. A few weeks ago Torsten brought it up and I said it looked good enough. Fast forward a bit and he shows up at my place with an early Birthday/Christmas gift. Two copies of Titan Fall 2. Obviously one for me and one for him.

You guys won’t believe this, or hey maybe you will. A fast paced shooter that involves huge robots, is a hell of a lot of fun. The game looks nice and the controls are fluid and responsive. Whether running across walls or sliding across the road gunning people down while launching a grappling hook onto the side of a Titan to escape you never feel like you are out of control or limited in what you can do. You are encouraged to keep moving. The Titans however, control mostly like you would think but are still maneuverable enough to make battles strategic and fun. Each Titan also has their own strengths and weaknesses.

The game is far from perfect obviously, the match making is horrible and time consuming some nights and its usually easiest to just let the game pick whatever it wants to send you to. But regardless it is fun and easy to pick up, but challenging to master. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.

Monster Hunter World Beta

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For those with a PlayStation 4 and a PSN account this weekend was a treat, we got to take part in the open beta for Monster Hunter world. But how was it? There are a few negative things you could say that would all be fair. I will say those now real quick just to get them out of the way. First off, it was pretty small really. There were only  three missions with very limited ability to really upgrade anything at all. The match making was also a nightmare even for a beta. At one point on Saturday it took me almost 45 minutes to find a game. Those missions could all be beaten pretty quickly as well. Also on a minor control issue certain attacks being mapped to the controller how they are would result in messing with items instead if you were too close, which almost got me killed a few times.

Other than that my time with the game flew by. The graphics looked great on my PS4 pro. I didn’t have any issues with frame rate tho i should note when given the option I did choose to prioritize that over anything else, an option the game tells you is only given to pro owners.  The controls themselves felt nice and fluid and easy to use with combinations working as one would expect and each weapon felt different. The game will definitely be a treat for fans of the series come January. Best wishes and may the gaming gods bring you glory.