only other one I can recommend as meeting today's gaming standards is Digimon Survive... I can't really say World 4 is good at all... tried many times with many multi-player partners but never was able to get past certain parts.... world 1 is definitely a classic but very basic. World 2 is very unique and hasn't been anything else like it in the series... 3 was good but generic RPG and a bit tedious with grinding. the DS ones were good. Next Order was hard... but doable... except the post-game fight... Digital Card Battle was actually very good if you like TCG games. Rumble Arena was a decent SSB style thing. Data Squad was good till near the end which had me spend hours re-trying a fight. Racing was a decent Mario Kart rip-off... but lacks long-term appeal... the best ones are all on Wonder Swan but only 1 was officially released in English and only in Asia and is hella expensive to import at this point... but if you don't mind ROMS I'm sure you could get em that way?

Digimon Story: Cyber Sleuth - easily one of my fave games of the last few years. HM too.

You've gotten yourself into an addictive mixed bag of lego bricks! Some bricks are better than others, the silent/mime puzzle films usually a bit better than the talkie action flicks, but they are one of those casual hunts and fairly easy completes (Not SW Complete Saga tho). Some will surprise, some will disappoint, some will be...fine? Either way, I love them for what they are and am trying to work my way thru then .

Hope you are well!

Exactly! I think it's super cool how often they mix things up. Figuring out how the alchemy worked was my favorite part of my Sophie playthrough, and I thought I wouldn't get that again in the next game. But Firis's alchemy and battle formulas were so drastically different that I got to do the experimentation all over again. Figuring out what traits were good, what materials go into what, etc.

I definitely know what you mean about one-sided battles. In the games I played at least, strong monsters are moreso tests of your item/equipment strength rather than being tactical fights.

I have heard that the original Rorona and Totori were a lot stricter than most of the series. I know those sorts of mechanics are stressful to some people, but I think I'd enjoy a game with more time management aspect too. I guess I won't know for sure until I play them. Firis actually did have a global time limit, but it was so lenient it practically didn't even exist. At the end of the main story I sent her to bed for half a year.

I've only played the Mysterious games for now. I'm absolutely going to play the rest sometime. At this point though, the list of JRPGs I want to play might last a decade...

Atelier games are really fun and cozy, I'm glad you're enjoying them too! The combination of puzzle-like synthesis, item collecting, and cheery slice-of-life story makes it a perfect unwinding series for me. Perhaps one day I can get around to the Arland games as well, it's slow going for me since I enjoy getting their platinum trophies

Munchlax bloated both of my Pearl and Diamond playing times exponentially. I'm now playing Platinum and trying to do it again.

I checked honey trees everyday for months.

Well, obviously both!

But, yeah, I am very much going for a Complete this time. Nothing too crazy like getting Excalibur II, but I do want to get all Skills, all Cards, all Blue Magic, do the Chocobo Sidequest and defeat Ozma. I have only played through the game twice and I never did any of the extra stuff. I have had a desire to replay through the game, so now seemed like a perfect time!

yeah! i played two towers a lot in the early 2000s. going enjoy revisiting

I think going full would be a bit too difficult for me. I have many rhythm games and Atlus/NIS SRPG's that would take many hours for me to complete. I don't have that many hours in my life to do all of that!

I would like to replay some old favorites until Completion and that will be a focus in the future along with buying more games and beating them as well. I was solely focused on beating my Backlog for so long, it is now time to work on the other aspects of the Backloggery as well.

Thank You Very Much!

will rest up for a bit as I enjoy the quiet Backlog.
However, I haven't bought a game since August, so I will be doing some game shopping in the next couple of weeks or so.

What's up! I recall your user name from back in the day, lol.

Are you on a Musou/Warriors binge? I'm loving it. DW2 was my first entry into the Warriors series. I looooved DW for a long time. I played the DW9 demo and wasn't digging it, though.

I really enjoyed AoC, particularly because I really loved BotW. The story is minimal (as with most Warriors games..) but moving. It gets a little whacky later on, but it definitely revealed layers of Zelda you may not have gotten in BotW - I especially like it for that reason. I would say go for it!

I read your notes on DW2 - this is also a good game for busy schedules... you can jump right in and out since the story is pretty clipped. I too am busy and pretty much only game on the weekends.

Jam scale: 7/10

It's decent! Very grindy, very "where do I go now", very NES RPG. But I enjoy it for what it is, and I love the vibe / theme / lore.

Probably not right now. I've just got too many other great games I should be playing and too many other things to spend money on atm. At some point I'd like to look more into the entire rest of the series though.

Hey Mamba! Yeah like 8 years lol. All has been good!

I was gifted Metal Gear through GOG. With a little adjusting from the default settings it seems to be a great way to play it. For some reason they have antialiasing on in the default direct x settings and it makes the game blurry. I just turned it off and set the scaling method to "integer scaling". Looks real sharp now.

I also fiddled with the control settings a little and mapped them to different buttons. I kept trying to open my inventory and accidentally opening the stupid radio. I'm using an xbox one controller.

Hey man, so, your question is the same one I had for years. Some of the achievements for big games I had seen made me go "what the hell is this?" Things like level restrictions, item limits, and other such criteria that would often be grounds for a Master badge over at the Backloggery. That kept me away for a long time. In time I've noticed that the bigger the game, the more try-hard the people making the achievements are.

However, for games that are not Top 10 list material, the achievements are often very reasonable and well-crafted. They have been enhancing my enjoyment of retro games a lot, because it's a cool little reason to go that extra mile. Recently the system as a whole has become way more stable and most of the games are working as they should.

The community is not that great. I personally didn't find it incredibly interesting to get involved in. There's a lot of GameFAQs mentality of "oh, I am good at shooting in videogames so I'm the most awesome person in the planet" which is, you know... unnecessary. But it's perfectly possible to enjoy the website without getting involved.

Do give it a try... add me over there. I'm pretty sure it will add that extra kick to replaying an old game. To me, it was the fuel I needed to 100% the portable Harry Potter games, for example.