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1.) :snes: Super Mario World 2.) Hollow Knight (99%) 3.) Castlevania: Rondo of Blood (100%) 4.) Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (200.6%) 5.) Shenmue 6.) Shovel Knight: Shovel of Hope 7.) Shenmue II One of the gifts I got for Christmas(given the weekend before the holiday) was Shovel Knight: Treasure Trove. Comes with all the DLC. I've been wanting to play this for quite some time, but never pulled the trigger on actually spending money on it. Man, was I missing out. It's one of the most original nostalgia pieces I've ever played. It's like someone took Mega Man, Ducktales, and Adventures of Link and mashed them into one game. The level designs are clever and tricky, the gameplay is addicting, and the music is phenomenal. I only beat the main campaign and have only started up as Plague Knight(one of the DLC characters), but since that's how the game originally came out, I feel like that counts enough as a completed game. I still have feats to accomplish that involve playing through a second time, but otherwise I 100%'ed the playthrough. I'll do another completed game update when I finish all of the DLC. SHENMUE II. Holy shit, what a fun game. Improves on a lot of complaints I had with the first one. Surprisingly, the acting is better just enough to make most of the dialogue feel alive, which I think is also due to a big improvement in the dialogue itself. The cast of characters is more colorful, and the general vibe of the plot just feels more fun and engaging than the original. Hong Kong feels huge, and there is plenty more to do to pass the time in the game. Having time skips was a brilliant move, and I like that you can actually earn money from the capsule toys. I felt there were a lot more QTE's and little mini-games throughout. While the ending was yet another cliff-hanger, it felt more bombastic and satisfying than the first one. Even after the third time playing it, after all these years, I still find myself ending Shenmue I with a thought of, "That's it?!" The sequel didn't leave me feeling like that, and in fact, I'd argue it was almost too long of an ending: Minor spoilers I did feel like there were not enough part-time job options(the lucky hit job bloooooows), and the gambling felt almost impossible to credibly make money without resorting to saving and resetting when you lose. I think the increased amount of QTE's made a few of them very plain and suffering from repetitiveness compared to the supreme originality of each one in the first. Also, while mastering moves technically became quicker and easier, removing the option to train freely without gaming the system was a mistake. Other than these complaints, I had a blast with a game, and mostly feel it as an improvement on the first one, especially from a plot-perspective. I got all the trophies but three. One I can get just by playing the beginning again, and one I should be able to do within an hour of loading up a specific save file. But one of them will require pretty much playing the whole game again, and I'm not quite ready for that. Shenmue III was on the docket to be played next, buuuuut I ended up getting Death Stranding as a post-Christmas gift, so that might have to wait.

1.) :snes: Super Mario World 2.) Hollow Knight (99%) 3.) Castlevania: Rondo of Blood (100%) 4.) Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (200.6%) 5.) Shenmue Finally beat this for the third or so time in my life. I started it quite a while ago when it first came out, didn't touch it for a few months, then basically blitzed through it in the last two weeks when I had free time to prepare for Shenmue III. This game still carries a lot of nostalgia for me, but I think the age really comes through on this game. The dialogue is pretty awful, both the writing and the acting, and while that's part of the charm, having started II now, I can already tell there's been a stark improvement. The controls were occasionally frustrating, but that's tank style for you. I also think the amount of times you're forced to wait for a whole day to pass is annoying. There are things to do, but not enough that you don't want to time skip sometimes. That said, I still love this game, and it was pretty revolutionary for it's time. I think I'll find myself appreciating II a lot more already from the few hours I played, but this game will always have a special place in my heart. It just doesn't really have much replay value the third time through. It feels a bit more like a slog. An mostly enjoyable slog, but a slog nonetheless.

Is that the one that's free on the eShop?

((Posted this at The Center, but since some don't really go there anymore, figured I may as well transplant it)) Been meaning to update this for a few months now, but never got around to it, so here we go. 1.) :snes: Super Mario World 2.) Hollow Knight (99%) 3.) Castlevania: Rondo of Blood (100%) 4.) Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (200.6%) Hollow Knight was a long project. I had played it fairly consistently for like 2 months until I hit the Trial of Fools and dropped it after many hours wasted on failed attempts. Eventually picked it back up this year to just go against my nature and explore the rest of the game. Ended up completing most of the base game. Finished the story, including the full boss sequence(going up to fighting The Radiance), found all areas, all but 3 of the charms, and finally turned around and beat The Trial of Fools. Now that I'm done with that, I basically need to comb through every area to look for what I'm missing to 100%, and then at another time complete the DLC. I'm probably going to do that all in one chunk, because defeating The Radiance was such a satisfying ending that I'm ready to put it down for now Rondo of Blood was a pretty quick feat. Once I had the option of playing as Maria, I was able to cheese the whole game. She makes that game stupid easy. But I went back and defeated bosses as Richter for posterity, and I actually finished the last couple levels as Richter and came back and beat Dracula with Maria. I love the presentation and music of this game, and having the different character was refreshing. But the movement feels unnecessarily stilted in comparison to Castlevania IV and Bloodlines. I love the old school Castlevania playstyle, but the art style and modern aesthetic didn't blend well with the rigid controls for Richter, so that made it a little harder to appreciate this game. Also, the bosses are a farcry from most that came before it. Symphony of the Night is just beautiful. Right up my alley. Big ass map with a lot of reward for exploration, a bit of XP grinding, and combat that is increasingly satisfying. I know some people dog on this one for introducing RPG elements and arguably taking away the physical challenge of playing the game in favor of the false feeling of getting better at the game through power improvements. That argument might be fair, but for me, it doesn't ever take away from the game being truly challenging. If you manipulate the ways to break this game, it can be a bit rough, but there are still many times I found myself dying in a frustrating stretch of hallway before a save point. Or getting that raw sense of accomplishment every time I vanquished a boss. The movement is truly the best, especially once you acquire the double jump. You feel like you can zip and flip your way around the whole castle in no time. I love how much it borrows from elements of the previous games(even Bloodlines!) while creating it's own sense of being, something that most of the Castlevanias before Bloodlines struggled with. And that soundtrack just kept me rocking the whole time. Completed the 200.6%, but I still have a couple trophies I have to unlock. One of them requires you to encounter all the enemies to complete a bestiary, but I apparently missed a tiny enemy that only appears as a spawn for a boss, so I'll have to play through the game as Alucard again to do that. With this and the fully completed Rondo of Blood trophy list, I think I'm at like 92%? I'll get the platinum a year down the road or something. I can't help but feel there should be one or two more games that I'm missing, but I've started a few that I haven't completed yet, so that might be contributing.