[Event] The PokeCommunity Game-Along

[pkmin3033]

I am going to put myself under a moderate amount of pressure and say I'm going to finish Robotics;Notes this month...if it comes to the end of the month and I haven't then I'm going to change my game to an ebihime VN. xD

 

[Cherrim]

Okay so... I just started reading Umineko the other day because my friends gifted me the Questions and Answers arcs during the Steam sale.

I don't know that I can do the entire questions arc, buuut since it's technically a compilation edition of episodes 1-4 of the original release, would it be alright to just do episode 1? (Or, more likely, episodes 1 and 2.) I'm not sure I have time for the whole questions arc at only a couple hours per night but I can definitely do some of them.

(Side note: knitting to VNs is one of my favourite autumn/winter pasttimes!)

 

[pkmin3033]

Considering Higurashi was split into multiple parts and each part took about 10 hours to read, I'm fine with just one part of Umineko counting for this month, because tbh I'm amazed they didn't do the same with it since it is of comparable length.

 

[gimmepie]

I'm probably at about the half-way point now. It always gets me how clever the foreshadowing is and how deep the layers go.

 

[gimmepie]

and the game is complete. Wheeee

 

[Cherrim]

Oh, forgot to mention here, but I finished the first episode of Umineko the other week. I got a start on the second one, too, especially now that I've discovered I can read in bed using steam link on my phone. >:D

 

[Janp]

I should probably also mention already that I finished both Vol 2 and 3 of Nekopara already. Vol 2 was okay, it had a little better story than Vol 1 and I enjoyed Azuki and Coconut more than Chocola and Vanilla. Vol 3 on the other hand made something I thought was impossible. It made me like Cinnamon. Ever since Vol 1, she was my least favourite catgirl. But Vol 3 took the one-dimensional character she was before and expanded on her.

I don't think I'll have time to play through Vol 4 that was released few days ago, but I said I would play through Vol 2 and 3 for the challenge, so it should be okay.

 

[pkmin3033]

I...may have given up on Robotics;Notes for now and just read through Lynne and then nothing & nowhere, two VNs by ebihime with the same protagonist set a few years apart. Good stuff! I feel like this is cheating just a bit as they were both a little under 2 hours long though, hahaha. But I kept getting distracted by other things on my Switch (mostly Digimon) so I just didn't have the time for it in the end. I do intend to go back to it somewhen, but not for this.

 

[pkmin3033]

December - Hard Mode

Welcome to the final month of the Game Along! For those of you who have stuck with this for the entire year - thank you! I hope this has given you the opportunity (or at least the motivation) to play some great games this year! For those of you browsing this thread out of curiosity, or who dropped this earlier in the year - it's still not too late to participate! There is a fairly high probability there will be a new thread next year, after all...

So, your final challenge for this year is to play a game on Hard Mode! Any game will do - it just has to have difficulty options, and you need to pick at least the next difficulty up from the default one and play it through to the end without changing the difficulty. If the default difficulty is "easy" and the next one up is called "normal" you'll need to pick the next one up from that. If the game gives difficulty options different names, picking the next difficulty up will be fine. Any questions, ask in here as always. Good luck!

 

[Janp]

I've played majority of games for this event on harder difficulties. Which leaves me with only few games that I know have more difficulties that I could play. I'll have to check some games that I'm not sure have more difficulties. In the meantime, what about New Game+? Does that count?

 

[pkmin3033]

I've played majority of games for this event on harder difficulties. Which leaves me with only few games that I know have more difficulties that I could play. I'll have to check some games that I'm not sure have more difficulties. In the meantime, what about New Game+? Does that count?

Only if that game offers increased difficulty (e.g enemy parameters scale to match yours) in NG+, otherwise it's basically easy mode. xD

 

[Janp]

Only if that game offers increased difficulty (e.g enemy parameters scale to match yours) in NG+, otherwise it's basically easy mode. xD

Okay, thanks.

I think I'll go with Assassin's Creed: Origins, since it should have difficulty settings. I'll play on the hardest difficulty possible for the first playthrough.

 

[gimmepie]

Oh god.
I'll have to think about this :')

 

[Dragon]

Hmm well maybe I'll do an old Tales game for this c:

 

[gimmepie]

I'll play through Detroit: Become Human again. I did it on Casual last time since it was really just a story play through. This time I'll try the harder mode.

 

[Setsuna]

This looks like a lot of fun, I'm just finding out about this now, but if this happens next year I'm interested in committing for a whole year, may as well start here.

I originally wanted to play Bloodstained Ritual of the Night on its hardest difficulty (there are three, Normal, Hard, and Nightmare) but since I have to beat the game on Hard before unlocking Nightmare, I thought I'd do a New Game+ run but challenging myself to do damageless boss fights, because the game technically has a reward for them. If you beat a boss without taking any damage, you earn a medal. They do absolutely nothing, but I figured this would be a good way to make my playthrough actually difficult. And this way I can just screenshot the medals in my inventory to prove I did it.

In addition, a lot of the movement related abilities in the game (things like double jumping or invincibility warping) aren't kept when you start New Game+, which means I have a lot less options than I normally would when attempting boss fights.

 

[Setsuna]

This looks like a lot of fun, I'm just finding out about this now, but if this happens next year I'm interested in committing for a whole year, may as well start here.

I originally wanted to play Bloodstained Ritual of the Night on its hardest difficulty (there are three, Normal, Hard, and Nightmare) but since I have to beat the game on Hard before unlocking Nightmare, I thought I'd do a New Game+ run but challenging myself to do damageless boss fights, because the game technically has a reward for them. If you beat a boss without taking any damage, you earn a medal. They do absolutely nothing, but I figured this would be a good way to make my playthrough actually difficult. And this way I can just screenshot the medals in my inventory to prove I did it.

In addition, a lot of the movement related abilities in the game (things like double jumping or invincibility warping) aren't kept when you start New Game+, which means I have a lot less options than I normally would when attempting boss fights.

Adding onto this thread to say I've done it and offer screenshots of my proof, it was a lot of fun and I tried my best to shy away from any cheap tricks or strategies. Since it was NG+ I was able to play through the game really quickly and it was basically just as if I was doing a boss rush. I don't mean to ramble on about this, so I'll just drop my screenshots here. Spoiler warning of course.

Spoiler:

 

[pkmin3033]

OK, despite knowing that one boss is probably going to make me cry tears of blood and despair...I'm going to do my third Ys Origin run as Toal on Hard mode. God help me.

 

[Dragon]

So tales of Hearts R hard mode is... looking a lot easier than I remember?

Like after you master the counter=combo system, you can easily knock off most bosses in the game? Heck the most threatening thing I think so far are the monsters in the sewer, but that's what grinding covers.

I'm playing as Beryl and Kohaku - they're both pretty fun.

 

[Janp]

I finally got around to play AC: Origins and I don't think I've been ever so bored while playing an AC game. The story in a first few hours is almost non-existent, except for few cutscenes and dialogues that act like I should already know everything about the world and the conflict I've been put into. Bayek is just so dull character. Every protagonist's personality was pretty flashed out right from the start. But I don't think I found anything interesting about Bayek's character. And battle system is simple and has the "bad" side of a hard mode. The only thing different on higher difficulties is that enemies have more HP and higher attack. That's it. Otherwise it's just soulless mashing of the same 2 buttons, it just takes more time to kill an enemy. Plus the controls were once again changed after Unity/Syndicate and I couldn't really get it in my hands.

So I don't think I would be able to put myself through this game. I'm not sure what game I'll play instead.