Oh shit is that a SMT1 comic

Dark Souls is done with and it left me drained. I say that, but it's a good thing actually. I really enjoyed the game and it was a blast the whole way through. Part of me was going to check out something different after tackling both Demon's Souls and Dark Souls back to back, but honestly, these games just leave me wanting more. I wasn't even really thinking about picking up DSII but I'm starting to seriously reconsider. Though it looks like Bloodborne will be my next title to tackle. After that, I'll either catch up on my PS3/4 backlogs, or more likely, devour Persona 5 which came out this week.

There is too much to say about Dark Souls that I can't say with this message, but I will say it may be one of the best open world games I've experienced. Largely because Dark Souls doesn't bog it all down with samey fetch quests and conquering towers to open up the map. Instead it just created a real good interconnected world and left the player to explore for themselves. It doesn't bog you down with chores to destroy the immersion, instead just letting you immerse yourself in Lordran.

Finished Demon's Souls finally, and a bit miffed that it took me so long to get around to playing this fantastic game. I feel I really needed a game that offered a bit more challenge and this game delivered, also the ending theme is gorgeous.

It was a pretty grueling but overall, fair challenge with me just needing to stick to it and learn from my mistakes. I also adored the world and story with the minimalist approached to everything which made exploring more rewarding and tracking down items all the more valuable.

I feel the bosses in the Shrine of Storms were my favorite boss battles in the game only slightly ahead of the ones from Boletaria Castle. Also, smurf the Valley of Defilement, the fact the bosses are a joke and the story of Saint Astrea are the only redeeming factors of that hell hole of an area.

If I could improve the game somehow, it would be the ability to "sell" extra loot to at least gain items like Grass for healing. Perhaps a midway checkpoint in some of the stages like Stonefang Tunnel 2-2 since that place is huge and the shortcut is more hazardous than the long path. I would also better balance Magic and Miracles because Magic is far superior and I honestly felt that Miracles offered very little in terms of useful abilities. I almost feel like Protection and Warding were put in the Magic category to counter how overpowered spells like Firestorm and Cursed Weapon could be and needed those spells to take up more Magic Spell slots to balance the mages out.

Overall, it was an awarding experience and I'm diving into Dark Souls next and if I don't get burnt out, Bloodborne afterwards. I can already hear one of my online friends squeeing for glee that I'm finally playing Dark Souls after years of wanting me to check it out after introducing him to Vagrant Story. Overall, check out Demon's Souls if you want a challenging and unique Action-RPG.

Recently finished Final Fantasy XV, while it's hardly perfect and not going to revitalize the franchise, I found it to be still a fun game to go through. Combat was fun and had a few tweaks to keep it from feeling like you're just mashing the attack button like most ARPGs I've known. The open world design works well for an RPG but the pitfalls the design rings are still here with too much traveling and too many samey quest that feel more like time wasters than something fulfilling.

The story has its fair share of problems as well. I stand by my feelings that cutting out content to put into a multimedia design format is still a bad idea. The opening of the game when Insomnia falls would have worked much better as being part of the game instead of being ripped out and expanded into a pretty tedious action flick like Kingsglaive. While Brotherhood was much better in presentation, I still feel the scenes should have been left in the game. The plot waffles between being pretty goal focus in the beginning, to finally have some exciting drama in the middle before the game kind of rushes you to the ending. The ending wasn't bad per se, but really needed to be slowed down and more subtle.

The main villain was quite excellent but the rest of the villainous cast were given the raw deal. This extends to several of the story characters as some were quite awesome in the story proper (Iris and Aranea) while others were disappointing (Lunafreya and Cor) but the main four were quite well done.

Overall, I would recommend it but It falls somewhere in the middle of the franchise for me. Not bad, but not great either.

Started Flower and was inspired to give FFVII another whirl. Finally deleted four games I got from the PSN hacking debacle a few years ago. Partly because I just didn't have the hardware space to keep them and partly because in all of the various "upgrades" to PSN, I seem to have changed my account information and now the games won't recognize my account. I would be more annoyed if I liked the games I chose but I was pretty indifferent and I got them as a fluke so no hard feelings. I probably would never had gotten around to any of them anyway.

After I finish the journey collection, I'm thinking of either finishing the Mass Effect series or finally giving my Wii and Gamecube games some serious love.