Now Playing

(U)
PS5
Disco Elysium: The Final Cut Subscription
My two health pools should be fairly robust now.

Updated about 19 hours ago

(U)
PS
Suikoden II
I mean, I think I'm almost done? But I thought that several hours ago too, so who knows.

Updated about 5 days ago

(U)
NDS
Castlevania: Portrait of Ruin
We're gonna start over and get the good ending this time!

Updated about 7 days ago

(M)
SNES
Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past
(Randomizer Mod) My tournament run came to an end. However, I gained experience and understanding with Crosskeys, which was the goal of this exercise.

Updated about 2 months ago

★★★★★

hydrapower's Status

(U) Unfinished ?No significant accomplishments.     (B) Beaten ?The main objective has been accomplished. Usually marked by the defeat of a final boss and/or viewing of credits.     (C) Completed ?For games which are 100% done. All extras and modes have been unlocked and finished. All significant items have been collected.
18 (U)
1.9%
778 (B)
82.4%
148 (C)
15.7%
Wishlist  0 ?         Top-Rated  39 ?????         Master Runs  8 (M)
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Arcade BEAT 1 (B) 0 (C) 2 Total
All Games 1316 Total
?Use this field to quickly search your backlog. If you enter in a single letter, you'll get a list of all the games you own that start with that letter.
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about 4 weeks ago (edited)

Badges
Herald of Bak'laag: 500+ unfinished games
Consider Yourself a Hero: Majority of games are beaten
Treasure Hunter: 1000+ games
Thanks, at some point I realized that stopping random crimes really served no purpose and I likely opened up enough "loot boxes", which sorta spurred me forward a decent bit. I'll probably spend the next day or two wrapping up some of the side stuff I left unfinished. I do think they really did go all out with many of the main missions and it's still probably the best an open world series has handled story. Not sure where you are at but I do wish that the occasional boss fights had a bit more variety. I'll save any other comments until after you are done.

That said I will share this bit about the Spider-Man games I saw in an article a few days ago as the last bit gave me some thoughts.

"The first Spider-Man title sold over 22 million units, while Miles Morales sold 10-15MM. Early sales declines suggest Spider-Man 2 may fall short of both of its predecessors. And according to some reports, Insomniac has considered splitting up Spider-Man 3 into two $50 parts in order to address its $385MM budget."

Craziness.

EDIT: I've caught none of it but congrats on your LttP tourney life still continuing, I'm sure your mentor is proud if they are still a thing?

EDIT #2: Congrats on completing Spider-man 2 (and doing fairly solid in the LttP tourney as well). I will give the game credit, they went much further with the whole Venom deal than I anticipated.

DS EDIT: I did not have the year of DS starting off worse than the year of retro jrpgs, maybe the issue is combining the two (it's 15 years old, that might count as retro) >_>

DS EDIT #2: Aww, Kirby Canvas Curse was one of my fave DS games too. FWIW I don't recall there being any wild stylus requirements, it was more just drawing paths and such.

I'm not sure anything requiring the DS mic ever worked all that well aside from the most basic things, but I also don't remember it being that frequently used.

I just looked up said boss fights and can see the issues. Oddly enough reading it I was thinking "that sounds like a bad version of Rocket Slime's boss fights" but... nope, completely different.

FINAL EDIT: Sure you can beat 100 games on all those consoles yet the one time I suggest you a SNES game you drop it within a half hour

15 years seems impossibly long (I think I left my account mostly vacant the first couple years), but here's to 15 more~

FINALLER EDIT: Curious what you end up thinking of Disco Elysium, it's on my list to get to... eventually.
about 2 months ago (edited)

Badges
Herald of Bak'laag: 500+ unfinished games
Consider Yourself a Hero: Majority of games are beaten
Treasure Hunter: 1000+ games
I feel like for someone who generally seems to do a lot of LttP checks you have awful luck when it comes to "well I'll just skip this one" situations breaking wrong, but that may just be the few times it happens being more memorable or worthy of page updates. I'm sure next week/year will go better

BTW I am preliminarily leaning towards my '24 gaming project being lining up a bunch of simultaneous game playthroughs with a bunch of folks with them choosing the games (preliminary as they could all go "nah I'd rather not" spread out over the twelve months. You've only got like 16 listed unbeaten games which has very little crossover with my... slightly more than 16 listed unbeaten games, but if you want in at some point during the year consider yourself a welcome inclusion

EDIT: I don't know how to say this but Hollow Knight has like a half dozen endings, with some of them more or less doubling the game length somehow according to what I've heard rumblings of. I just took the first one I came across as I'm a lazy soul

I also started up Assassin's Creed Mirage earlier today and am working all the hours for the next week and a half, so depending on what ending you end up settling on you may get a big head start on me re: Spider-Man 2. That said if I get through AC: M and you aren't already at its endgame (fortunately Mirage isn't supposed to be super long and is as different an open world game from SM2 as possible) that may end up doable.

SM2 EDIT: I feel these Spider-man games capture what it must be like to be him as I get side-tracked so frequently by random crimes and whatnot, always arriving at my intended destination much later than I planned on. If there was an actual day/night cycle I think Harry would have wondered why I was several days late for our meeting >_>

THREADS EDIT: I mean in terms of aesthetics, although the various health/damage/focus upgrades are technically listed under suit tech. Anyways I'm just swinging around as Scarlet Spider once more, now I just gotta find a better outfit for Miles.

PROGRESS EDIT: I checked and am currently at 18/31, so a good bit ahead but not absurdly so. Am splitting time between reading a book and some long delayed not-actually-spring cleaning so I'll probably stay ahead but not run away with it.

I agree that one could basically sum it up as "Spider-Man: More".
about 3 months ago (edited)

Badges
Herald of Bak'laag: 500+ unfinished games
Consider Yourself a Hero: Majority of games are beaten
Treasure Hunter: 1000+ games
Congrats, now you can play... some other jrpgs. I look forward to you finally tackling the various Xeno- games in '24

TBF survival horror games don't throw me off because they are spooky but because I have an truly awful sense of resource management and many of them will let you screw yourself over horribly in that regard.

Also just realized that you finished Star Ocean 2 just in time for the remake to come out. Now you can play it a second time and compare~

EDIT: FWIW I actually googled around before starting RE 7 and people seem to be under the impression that it doesn't have a dynamic ammo/resource system. I did notice that the destructible boxes had different stuff in it when I died, but it also didn't seem particularly tied to my ammo situation in any real way.

EDIT #2: Just noting that I saw that

WEAPON EDIT: You may realize this now but if you even stick your head into a room for a second before deciding to go the other direction instead the map marks the entire room as explored, as opposed to the more CV: SOTN/Super Metroid approach of only noting how much of a room one explored. It can sometimes causes issues >_>

SMRPG EDIT: Your completion time stood out so I checked howlongtobeat and it isn't atypical so is there a reason the game seems to be roughly 5 hours shorter than the original? I heard it was a fairly faithful remake but that seems to be a significantly faster pace.

Also best of luck in your LttP tourney match, I once again expect you to win the entire thing no matter how modest you act
about 6 months ago

Badges
Herald of Bak'laag: 500+ unfinished games
Consider Yourself a Hero: Majority of games are beaten
Treasure Hunter: 1000+ games
The PS5 says I played it for 5 hours, although I'm not sure if that includes the time I spent playing one of the GB Castlevania games on it on the PS4 a couple years back (or the time I spent paused looking up routes and such). I'd have guessed 4-something hours.

I cannot state how angered I was when it turned out that Death had a second phase. I'm pretty sure I beat it the second time I reached it (died several more times before I did so) as it's not that rough, but that first phase is a nightmare with all those scythes flying around.

Stage 9 was fairly annoying as well, although I learned that the room layout is slightly different for the mimic boss fight in the two versions. It seems like it is always impossible unless one cheeses it, but how one does so is a bit different between the two versions. If you want to know I crawled under the low central ledge and tossed knives and axes at him as it could not reach me.

I don't want to call stage 10 easy but... only the first bit of it was all that tricky (the downward scrolling one with the collapsing floors and medusa heads). I think they may have made it worse for the US/NES version (did your final swinging pendulum section have birds, as mine did not). I found the first phase of the Dracula fight to be difficult as for whatever reason I never used axes on it (if I died I had very few hearts anyways) and controlling the height of the throwing knife is a bit tricky, but the second phase was a gimme and the third only killed me the first time as I had one small bit of health left and I didn't know about the lasers (which based on video evidence were made much longer on your version). I also ran out of axes a few hits short of killing it but... you know, throwing knives and such.

I will get to Bloodlines at some point, as well as the second Gameboy CV game. Hard Corps too. For now I just gotta figure out what game I want to play next (I'll probably go play with the fortune cookie thing after I post this) to kill a week before I start my Halloween game. Oh, I also need to figure out what'll be my Halloween game
about 6 months ago (edited)

Badges
Herald of Bak'laag: 500+ unfinished games
Consider Yourself a Hero: Majority of games are beaten
Treasure Hunter: 1000+ games
So started up the Japanese version of CV III (hope the story isn't important as it is untranslated), made sure to get Grant even though it required visiting the clock tower stage (hated it), got to a branch in stage three and went to look up what exactly it entailed as I wasn't sure if the translated version gave any hint as to what either one meant. I googled and saw that apparently it determines which other character you can recruit which meant little to me as Grant seemed useful enough to not want to ditch, but other than one being trickier than the other I didn't immediately see much in terms of clarifying info. I then was struck by the thought "hey, Hydra wrote a bunch of spoilered stuff on my page, I wonder if he had any thoughts on which path to take". It turns out you did, strong ones as that. It was still a bit tricky to figure out as saying stage 7 isn't particularly useful when there are two of them but I figured out which was the Alucard route and which was the Sypha one and went with the latter.

Hilariously enough I later googled Castlevania III worst stage and it seems you aren't alone in your opinion. I'm actually a bit curious as to how bad it is as I really dislike every stair-heavy stage I've come across (so many "eh, you aren't pushing up/down enough so just step off the ledge instead" deaths), especially combined with those infinitely spawning flying annoyances, so I want to see exactly how much worse it can really get.

EDIT: Watched the vid and I can see that stage being annoying to deal with, although it has the exact same bosses as the alternate stage 7. One of those see-saw platforms sometimes doesn't spawn in my stage 7 which makes it impossible to pass a given gap which is bothersome.

I am up to stage 10 and will hopefully finish it up tomorrow so let me say... I think it is gonna be my least favorite classicvania, excluding the Gameboy games and Bloodlines (which I've yet to try). It's not bad but it often feels hard in an annoying way rather than a purely challenging way. It is definitely very ambitious by NES standards and I chuckle at how much I can bypass whole sections of stages with Grant... but yeah I am definitely not here for all these stairs.
about 6 months ago (edited)

Badges
Herald of Bak'laag: 500+ unfinished games
Consider Yourself a Hero: Majority of games are beaten
Treasure Hunter: 1000+ games
I saw your most recent update and suddenly remember that one of the main reasons I was hesitant to try the Horizon games is that I know a few people who were driven halfway nuts by the endless chatter and complete lack of faith in the player being able to figure anything out. I take it that it was never fixed in any sort of patch.

Also I've completely lost track which of several LttP tourneys you are in but I hope they go well and that you can keep them straight better than I can

EDIT: With the site redesign coming... at some point I found out that any PSN games not explicitly tied to a specific "original system" will end up getting shuffled somewhere else when the change comes (I believe the support email said most likely PS4), so since you seem to have a similar listing set-up as me you may want to go through and fix those beforehand. Fortunately you just have 10 or so while I have... 121

EDIT #2: So I spent three months playing through a ton of PS+ catalog games for less than $15 extra bucks, apparently beat 13 of them and tried over a dozen other ones, very last day of the sub Sony announces that they are raising the cost of all tiers of PS+ by 33%. I feel like this is somewhat my fault...

Anyways I did this because of a suggestion you made a year or so back so thanks for that, it ended up working out rather well, especially since I'm likely never gonna be using this service again at that cost >_>

PROJECT EDIT: I have talked with Sci about doing a simultaneous playthrough of a big puzzle game during the fall sometime, but that's about it. There's a couple classic PC games I really should get to finally but that's sort of an ongoing idea I never fully commit to.

RETRO EDIT: Oooh, redemption project, neat. If you save Castlevania III until after I finish Pikmin 3 I may be able to join you on that one (sounds like a good october/Halloween game to me IMO).

I fell behind on all my random PC games due to the summer of PS+, so they need some run.

BTW you sure seem to love facing off against #1 seeds in LttP, I've only gotten to tune in very briefly during this most recent run of tourney games but I assume you've been shocking the world regularly :P

EDIT #5-ish: Nah, just keep plugging away at CV III then, worst case I'll just get to it next month and we can compare notes then.

EDIT 6: I will read that in probably a few weeks, but one quick question in case it wasn't mentioned: US or Japanese version? I'm likely going with the latter.
about 8 months ago (edited)

Badges
Herald of Bak'laag: 500+ unfinished games
Consider Yourself a Hero: Majority of games are beaten
Treasure Hunter: 1000+ games
So I don't know that it'll be added to my backloggery page but I started Final Fantasy VII Remake to check it out to see if it is worth revisiting down the road. I am unsure if I grasp how the combat system works all that well and Cloud's voice actor has some very "you are hearing me talk" line reads, but it is very pretty and seems okay enough. That is my summer day or two of JRPGs

EDIT: Based on what I can piece together Hollow Knight is a 20-25 hour-ish game that would take 45ish if I wanted to unlock the true ending. I will not be trying to latter as I feel like I'd either have to go full-walkthrough for it or spend a long time wandering around until I stumbled upon necessary things.

What I have figured out is that I somehow missed the blacksmith/weapons person, whoever handles the various collectibles you pick up as a vendor, the pass that operates the train system, and the ability that bypasses one of the specific "lock & key" set-ups the game has in place (the last is apparently only for post-game stuff though). I think at least the first one is partly due to how the in-game map system works... but yeah I sure did walk past a lot of stuff.

TBF I don't think I was struggling that much given that I never upgraded my weapon, a couple bosses were hard (I struggle with multiple bosses at once battles) but I never got super stuck, I was just a bit worried by more poor damage output which I got around a bit by leaning all the way on magic attacks.

Anyways it's a very good game, not gonna bother with all the extra stuff but it is among the best metroidvania worlds I've seen, and mechanically is very solid. You've probably played enough Super Metroid by now to handle it

EDIT #2: So I tried out Returnal as part of my summer of PS+ since you talked it up. Suspended it overnight and my PS5 download and installed a system update that functionally killed me, in a game that basically has permadeath. I tried it again and it took an hour to catch back up and basically reach the first boss (which I stopped just short of previously). Died and realized I could get back to said boss quickly, but with an awful weapon. Died again, deleted it, I ain't here for these 7 hour games stretched out to 25-30 hours via permadeath/randomization. At least I know now, but god turning it on today to see the system update really soured things on top of everything else.

EDIT #3: To clarify, you talked it up as the perfect type of PS+ catalog game to try out, so I did
about 9 months ago (edited)

Badges
Herald of Bak'laag: 500+ unfinished games
Consider Yourself a Hero: Majority of games are beaten
Treasure Hunter: 1000+ games
I thought of you rather early on in my time with ALBW as while the overworld is mostly the same the... pathing(?) through the world is notably altered in spots. It was enough to really throw me a bit off early on and I could only imagine you with all the original routes hardwired into your brain getting crossed up even more. It is odd, it feels notably smaller than the original and I can't tell if it is due to familiarity with the map, more of the map being closed off initially or the view being slightly different. Still pretty neat so far until the eye strain sets in.

EDIT: BTW perhaps you just didn't update but was your LTTP tourney schedule really something like 4 matches in 5 days, then two weeks of nothing? From the outside that would seem a bit odd.

EDIT #2: The silver lining is that even if you had gone straight to the Ice Palace boss instead of randomly leaving halfway through said dungeon you were already probably too far behind for it to matter much? Anyways hope the next race goes better, I won't be around to catch it so hopefully I'm just a jinx.

Also I took your advice from a year or so back and upgraded my PS+ plan for the last 3 months of my sub to check out what its catalog offers. Got a list up on my page if you are at all curious what my to do list looks like, feel free to praise/criticize any of my choices

19 SECOND EDIT: I only got back in time to catch the very end of your race, the time you won by three or so seconds was much more dramatic >_>

VIII EDIT: I don't think I will ever play FF8 and I only picked up random bits of info on it here and there (I recall like a time compressed orphanage or something, which may not be in any way accurate). Feel free to post or PM any of your ramblings, just be forewarned that I only have 2 PM spots left open in my inbox. I will take this time to say that I'm impressed it got 2 stars from you, I was preparing for the worst

BROKEN EDIT: I feel like I should point out that like... every other FF game through 8 was probably mechanically broken to some degree. 2 had various nuttiness, I recall beating the final boss in 6 in a single turn (and I didn't abuse vanish/doom), I don't think avoiding stuff like this was a priority until maybe the PS2 gen. Story sounds like a mess but I played and enjoyed 13 and 15 so clearly story ain't that important to me
about 11 months ago (edited)

Badges
Herald of Bak'laag: 500+ unfinished games
Consider Yourself a Hero: Majority of games are beaten
Treasure Hunter: 1000+ games
Glad to see that your LttP qualifying has seemingly gone well so far, it's been a minute since I noticed you in the thick of on of those tourneys so glad that you aren't rusty (ignoring all the likely non-tourney races you've run since then, if they aren't posted they don't exist :P)

BTW I killed my PC (am on a backup one I borrowed from my sis ATM) so once I get it officially replaced I may be able to play some of those so-called modern PC games as opposed to whatever still happened to run on my 13 year old rig. Off chance you may actually recognize one of the PC games I play in the future in the midst of all those other random ones I go through

CC/XG edit: In case you didn't know that much feared X game started life off as a sequel to Chrono Trigger that sort of spun off in its own direction so it isn't a huge surprise that the guy behind it also got to write for the actual follow-up. The fact that neither of them seem to have all that much to do with CT for most of their runtimes (there is a bit in XG where one can see where it could tie up with CT if it wanted to) seems to have been a repeatedly intentional choice which still strikes me as funny, but I'm also a relatively low voter on CT.

AVERAGE EDIT: So if you finished a 5 star and 1 star game at the same time... overall it must have been a 3 star experience. That's not so bad

(I believe I rented Chrono Cross near release and was so baffled by it that I returned it before it was even due, I guess I didn't miss much.)

RE4 is the only RE game I ever beat/liked really (the bit of 2 I played seemed fine, the original is impossible to beat and everyone who says it can be is lying) so glad to hear that the remake didn't screw it up.

PM EDIT: ...so basically what you are saying is that the 1/3 year of jrpgs is going well At the very least you've now established a floor, that's my silver lining take.

(FWIW Kato wrote the script of XG but isn't responsible for its story, that was all the main Xeno guy Takahashi's creation that Kato had to get down into words, although he did add a few things here and there. Basically he only deserves idk... 60-70% of the scorn you direct his way )

LTTP TOURNEY EDIT: My only thought reading your update:

[Link]

>_>
about 12 months ago

Badges
Consider Yourself a Hero: Majority of games are beaten
Treasure Hunter: 1000+ games
Confused: Playing 10+ games at once
Does the PC port of Chrono Cross run as poorly as I've been led to believe?
Not just the backlog, but basically the history.