My second finished "game" this year is Pillars of Eternity: The White March – Part II expansion from GOG. I had to quest until hitting level 16 in vanilla parts of the game to be able to finish it. I have turned on the scaling for the second expansion, so some of the fights were really crazy hard. Anyway, I was able to give back the memory to Abydon, but I was not able to temper him during the conversation with the Eyeless. We'll see what impact it will have on the final ending of the game. I think I liked this part little bit more than the first one. Well with the exception of monk fights in some of the encounters.

After that, I had still time to finish off the Alpine Dragon. The only dragon, with whom I was not able to talk out of the fight in my playthrough. Well, at least I have an achievement for that :P

All of my finished games this year can be found >>>here<<<

Higurashi When They Cry Ch2 Watanagashi, April 6 (GOG)-Not quite as good as Ch1 but still really good. I think I'm starting to understand how each chapter is laid out but I could be way off. This chapter had some plot points that seemed really telegraphed and the ending was a bit of a low point but there were some twists in there that made it rather interesting. I think I'm going to start Ch3 sooner than later.

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My tendency of playing AAA games almost 10 years after release continues - I almost feel like the guy from XKCD comic that runs into a room screaming the cake is a lie some years after the joke has worn out
I've finished Max Payne 3 (Xbox 360) and it was bloody awesome! I loved almost every second of it. The music is the highlight of the game, as I went to check how many tracks were used for the game, and I expected the number to be at least 3-4x higher. Atmosphere is great, commands happy to accommodate for the hamfisted halfwit that never got along with shooters and gamepad, and story was way way way more than I've expected.
I have really enjoyed it and it left me screaming for more once I've finished. I felt it was much better experience overall than first two games. I remember playing those, and wondering what the heck was all that fuss about.
It's a shame that multiplayer is mostly a ghost town nowadays, so not many achievements can be had if that's you thing.

Overall, if you haven't played it, I highly recommend it!

The Stanley Parable (Epic)

The game was free recently on Epic Games Store. I finished it, quite a few times. In many different ways. I think it's finished.

Ys Origin - Enjoyable action romp with very little bullshit. Just what the doctor ordered.

Sherlock Holmes: Crimes and Punishments

Sometimes I wish it was less "guided"... but I had fun anyway.

Tokyo Mirage Sessions #FE Encore (Switch)

Recently released Switch rerelease of the WiiU game. This "Encore" version has new content added in comparison to the original, touched up graphics, extra songs, scenes and characters- similar to the recent Persona 5 Royal edition (another Atlus RPG). Also, like all Atlus RPG's, it's a long game- taking 60 hours to get the best ending.

The game is a turn based JRPG very much like other Atlus games. It's a mix of Shin Megami Tensei and a little bit of Persona. It follows the usual mechanic of probing for the enemies weak elements and striking them to achieve and maintain chain attacks. Do this and the combat is easy. Fail and play it like a normal "each character takes one turn" JRPG and you will really struggle. The games other sell point is it's a crossover with Fire Emblem, each team member is linked to a Fire Emblem character that is stuck in our world. The other part that will alienate many players is the game ditches the usual devil summoning angle of Shin Megami Tensei and replaces it all with a colourful world based around Japanese Pop Idols. All your team work for a talent agency and use their talent in various performing arts to defeat an impending doomsday. So it's all signing, dancing and acting to save the day, well that and a healthy dose of dungeon crawling in the awesome dungeons.

The game is very well presented, though only in Japanese since recording all the songs in English would take a lot of extra time, money and effort. So it's all subtitles, which brings up the only blemish on another really fun Atlus masterpiece- the game seems to keep a lot of the WiiU assets which results in text for the menus being tiny as well as the cutscene subtitles. I'm sure in docked mode on a TV it would be just fine, but they didn't take hand held play into account well enough IMHO. Regular subtitles in gameplay are fine though. There was space to make the menus larger too, they do not fill the screen by a long shot- so it would have been an easy fix. It was obviously made slightly worse by playing on a Switch Lite with it's smaller screen size. But other wise it was a really great and typically quirky Atlus game.

I haven't finished much this year for lack of time, but I have been replaying two Blizzard classics (or just games, depending on your pov):

Warcraft 2
World of Warcraft Classic

Honestly, the former is a bit disappointing. The pathing is pretty hit or miss - I was tempted to throw my keyboard after a series of follies, the last straw being an instance where my knight was chasing the death knight that had been plaguing me, and just as he was in position (slightly faster mount speed) to attack my knight swerved off in a completely new direction...for no apparent reason at all.

At least on regular difficulty most of the human maps in Tides of Darkness in particular are dull. The orc maps aren't particularly challenging for the most part, but are...fine I guess. The campaign narrative is a bit of a mess.

With the glow of nostalgia brightening up the experience, it's distinctly ok!




WoW Classic did remind me what I used to like about the game. Modern "retail" wow is essentially an action game (similar to Diablo 3) stripped of the majority of its immersion and RPG elements. Classic does really well on both of those elements, and I found the leveling quite enjoyable...for the most part. Poor quest item itemization and extremely slow leveling for some classes are real issues, but they still tend to highlight that Blizzard really over-corrected over time.

That said, the lack of non-dungeon/raid content at max level is pretty limiting, and it is pretty apparent that the raids themselves really aren't that challenging mechanically - the challenge is managing the giant herd of overly emotional cats that is a 40 person raid.

But on the whole there's a few months worth of enjoyment to be had, imo.

Me too. I only played it for a month when they started the classic servers, but I enjoyed it without having the desire to go back full time or anything. My WoW days really are over. Though I did plan to go back for another month once all the Battlegrounds were up again. I believe all three original BG's are in the game now right? So maybe soon I'll be back...

A Short Hike (Epic)

It is short too, depending upon how much you take your time to do side activities. Pixel art games are a dime a dozen, but this one looks different somehow- it's sort of like a pixel art watercolour painting.
Basically it's a very simple 3d open world platformer where you can determine how easy to make the trip to the summit yourself by how many feathers you collect and use. It was pretty good for an hour or slightly over. It was one of the free Epic games recently. Just the thing to play after finishing a long game or for a break.

Batman Arkham Asylum GOTY, April 10 (PS3)-This was a really enjoyable game not hampered by the fact I took a two month hiatus from it to play M&M 6. The combat was pretty fun even though I was terrible at it. I liked all the different gadgets and finding the various secrets. All of the levels and bosses were good too. All in all just fun, feel good game.

Full List

The third finished game this year is the base game of Pillars of Eternity from GOG. I decided to go to the Burial Isle only after finishing every single quest I had in a journal. It took few hours and after that, I've descended into the Breith Eaman and Sun in Shadow areas and upscaled the encounters for final act. After few encounters with soul of Iovara, I've step in front of Thaos and after a lengthy dialogue, the fight have started. Well my party and thier builds were not optimal, so I spent a lot bitching about how some of them dropped down few times during the fight :P . In the end, the biggest help for me was the summon of Concelhaut, which was hitting Thaos from distance, while Aloth and Devil of Caroc kept knocked out repeatedly :P . Before his final breath, he managed dow to knock out also Edér, but in the end, it was not enough for him to defeat the rest of my party. After the fight, I’ve released his soul back to the cycle, while keeping his memories, as an adequate punishment for his deeds. In the last step, I’ve returned back the souls to all of the Hollowborn children, as promised to Hylea. The endings I’ve got were mostly positive, with the exception of Sagani, which got lost in the blizzard, and Devil of Caroc, which got torn to pieces by angry villagers. All in all one of the best RPGs, I’ve played in the last few years, and can’t wait to jump into Deadfire with my final save.

My complete list can be found here

CUPID - A Visual Novel

I know what you're thinking but this visual novel about sex death and supernatural goings on is actually very tastefully done and really quite well written
Decisions are from the point of view of being the voice of the heroine's dead mother in her head and you argue with the protagonist and influence her so decisions are not always that clear, I managed to get 3 of the 5 (4 and one 'secret') endings before I resorted to a guide and ended up getting all the achievements, 107% complete etc.
It's free on Steam, check it out, be aware that it takes a while to get going and for the dark supernatural elements to come in, though
Glad I experienced it anyway

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Secret Files 3

The 6th and final game I have completed from the Animation Arts Collection. You would be mistaken for thinking the game was Secret Files 2, as story wise it has a lot more in similar to the first game. The game once again follows Nina as she attempts to find out what happened to her fiancee Max, who was kidnapped. It's a chase that involves tracing the path of an ancient manuscript as it travelled across time, while being tracked by a shadowy all knowing organisation. The story (get ready for this) revolves around a manuscript that details a method to quickly determine the digits of Pi, which is meant to reveal a hidden binary code after the Quadrillionth digits that can be used to build a doomsday device, placed there at the dawn of time to stop civilizations from becoming too advanced. I feel like after Secret Files 2, the stories for the Animation Arts games just got more and more ridiculous. While changing very little from the other games in the series, there are some fairly annoying minigame style puzzles, including one where you pilot a submarine through a labyrinth. There are 4 different endings depending on 2 choices you make at different parts of the game, which only really determines the fate of two characters. It's a fairly good game, but I feel the story is a bit of a letdown, and that 1 & 2 had better characters and puzzles.

Overall the Animation Arts Collection was well worth the money I spent for it, each game taking several hours to complete (except Sam Peters) and while most of them are good, I'd say only Lost Horizon really stood out for me. In order from best to worst, my opinion of the games were:
Lost Horizon
Secret Files 2
Secret Files: Tunguska
Secret Files 3
Secret Files: Sam Peters
Lost Horizon 2

Lost Horizon 2 is the only one of the games with a different engine (it looks like) and it was a poor choice, combined with a terrible story and characters, which pales in comparison to the original. I'd thoroughly reccommend getting the Animation Arts collection, especially when it's on offer, if your a fan of point and clicks.