I just beat __

harry potter and the philosophers stone (on pc), the second time this year and also the second time ever! this time however i 100% it! not... entirely legit but ill get on detail in the post itself
so ignoring how it does a terrible job of adapting the books (for one, more than halfway through the game youre only at halloween, and then a few minutes after that its suddenly christmas, and then the game just speedruns through the rest of the shcool year for some reason!) its an enjoyable little game though Quite Flawed. the controls are incredibly clunky - you cant strafe, besides specific fights at three points in the game, you cant aim your wand while walking, and the aiming in general is just awful.. the vast majority on the time i relied on using my keys to aim because trying to control it with the mouse actually feels like trying to move the camera with the mouse in rayman 3 i just realised. so basically Bad and it keeps going up and down when i dont want it to

ANOTHER terrible bad AWFUL thing is trying to actually 100% it. this playthrough was a bit more stressful than id like because.. if you miss a card somewhere You Cant Get Back and just get it. youre stuck like this. and i did get stuck at one point and cried! and complained about it in another thread here before realising debug mode existed... i used it to clip through a door and just get the card but its terrible i had to rely on that at all. bad terrible level design. thakn GOD the latter two games of the trilogy fix this
normally its not much of an issue because the secrets are pretty easy to find if you look hard enough but some secrets are just stupid obscure as HELL. i can think of two or three like this. theres a random stained glass window in the lumos challenge that looks no different from any other ones and yet its a SECRET and it leads to a card thats so STUPID!!! normally you can tell what specific paintings/windows/etc are secret but here its not communicated at all???????

generally i think the game does secrets pretty well though!! theres a lot of them scattered throughout hogwarts in the actual levels, occacionally theres even secrets within secrets! and again theyre pretty easy to find if you got a habit of hovering your wand over every slightly suspicious looking spot LMAO. the secrets in hogwarts itself are pretty interesting too with having whole rooms that are mostly there for some immersion(?) and.. some beans with the secrets i guess.
Yeah so thats another problem with the secerts - the fact that the vast majority of them just get you some beans in a game where your beans are already aplenty. it just feels kinda pointless. some secrets feel stupid elaborate and all you get out of them is like, 4 beans and it kinda sucks

and oh yeah some stuff it does is stupid. the game really likes throwing whole bunches gnomes at you which are annoying cause theyre hard to hit with the clunky controls and also i hate their voices LMAO same for pixies though theyre not as frequent. theres also two or so instances of peeves fights and theyre not fun either, hes also hard to hit and takes like a quarter of your hp if you graze him and its just doesnt have much of a reason to be here
and oh! the fights! the final portion of the game is ? ok? i had much less trouble than in my last playtrhough in april (apparently it was april) at least! however trying to make fluffy sleep was just tedious even if i knew what to do. and the quirrel fight itself.. so the first part with sliding blocks is a bit too actiony and its not well designed for a game with controls Like That. the second part was ok

theres not much you do outside of clunky platforming and some mild puzzle solving. little to no side content besides quidditch. and thats pretty interesting.. unlike hp2 you have free flight in quidditch matches and on the first one (of the two) in the game it took me so ridiculously fast to get the snitch LMAO i think its pretty neat! hp2 does quidditch matches by setting you on a path following the switch and you have to fend off the other ... catcher guy and the occacional obstacle. its easier so im not actually sure which style i prefer! (hp3 does quidditch matches by having you watch a singular cutscene and thats it you dont get to play them)
and OH MY GOD i just remembered you cant skip ANY cutscenes this is TERRIBLE

lets move onto pure positives. god it actually looks so unreasonably pretty for a 2001 game??? its REALLY good at outside enviroments, and i think theres even more of them than hp2 has which is a positive! fireseed caves are my favorite part of the game because of how pretty it is and also i adore the.. sfx the fireseeds make
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(ignore the glitchy textures in some of the screenshots, transparency just keeps bugging when i tab out and i tab out a LOT)
the music is pretty good too im a big fan! no wonder they kept reusing it for... not just the first three games but i remember hearing some of it in order of the phoenix which is an entirely different gameplay style and everything! thats nuts!
overall its really clunky but enjoyable enough, though trying to collect every card will show some major flaws. the later games would improve on what it does SO much leaidng to chamber of secrets honsetly being one of my favorite games of all time!! ill get to another playthrough of it soon enough as well
 
Super Mario All-Stars - Super Mario Bros. 2: The Lost Levels

It took long enough, but I finally managed to beat all 52 levels in the SNES version as Mario (maybe I'll do it as Luigi another day). Should clarify that no suspend points were used, but I didn't have to due to certain adjustments made in the All-Stars version, which I'll explain soon.

Super Mario Bros. 2 is, well, obviously the second Super Mario game. It was originally released in 1986 as the flagship Mario title for the Famicom Disk System, which never left Japan. However, as I'm sure you know, Nintendo of America rejected the game for being too difficult for American audiences, and gave us an entirely different game with the same name (I will be playing that one in this marathon, btw; it'll just have to wait until after SMB3 and SMW). It was no joke--despite looking and feeling like its predecessor, the game violates every principle the first game was built on, so it was bound to be divisive from the start...and perhaps too divisive to be released as the sequel to the game that saved games. Fast forward a few years later, and Nintendo of Japan puts this in a compilation of classic Mario titles for SNES. A few adjustments were made to each game, but this one was impacted the most by far, with significant alterations made to make the game actually beatable by the average player. Nintendo of America approved the compilation, simply opting to brand this game as the "Lost Levels" of Super Mario Bros. for its first overseas release. Americans would not get the original, unaltered version until 2007, on the Wii Virtual Console.

So, what alterations were there that changed NoA's minds? Let's start with the most significant one. The original version required players to beat every world on only 3 lives, just like its predecessor; if the player ran out of lives, they were sent back to the beginning of the world. In All-Stars, the default life count was increased to 5 for both this game and Mario 1, but more notably, it's the only game in the compilation that saves after every level, rather than every world. This gives the player an essentially infinite supply of lives to work with, leaving the struggle simply between you and your patience. Furthermore, four of the game's five secret worlds required that 8-4 be beaten a total of eight times in the original; in All-Stars, the player need only beat it once.

Purists will no doubt be disappointed by these changes, and indeed, playing the All-Stars version is a very different experience from the original game. All the levels have exactly the same trolltastic and fiendishly brilliant level design you remember--the difference is that the extra saving opportunities and easier unlock requirements for the secret worlds significantly decreases the emphasis on complete mastery. But while perhaps off-putting to the true Super Player, there are many Mario fans who have neither the time nor the patience to beat the game the way the original laid it out. The All-Stars version is a great way for such fans to find out what these Lost Levels are all about. And as someone who...really doesn't have the skill to beat the original without save states, I found these changes very welcome. The challenge itself isn't butchered at all--it's the amount of frustration and required willpower that's toned down.

So, if you're a Switch Online subscriber, you have access to both these versions--which one should you play? I'd easily recommend the All-Stars version here, but if you enjoyed it enough and have the guts to try, the original may be worth taking on. Just don't be surprised if you find yourself wanting to smash your Switch with Dedede's hammer.
 
donkey kong country 2! same save state rules
ZelenPixel said:
also because i absolutely fear having to deal with lives i make save states at the start of each level and at the checkpoints. no rewinds and save states beyond that though
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looking back on dkc1 now it seems way more simplistic compared to dkc2 like wow.. i love dixies glide and the team up abilities thingies, rattly is really fun to control, i kinda hated squawks at first but by the final few levels i grew to appreciate just how insanely FAST he can be, the music is still awesome too! some levels were pretty cool like rattle battle, toxic tower and screechs sprint!
unfortunately there were more levels i found frustrating than in dkc1 (as my first playthroughs anyway) and king zing in particular was just terrible and bad and awful. i guess theyre both the sorta games that get better the more you replay it? either way it wasnt enough to make me not wanna play the game, i think it was fun enough to not actually mind the levels that much even if i may find them insanely frustrating when going through them themselves! i dont think theyre actually badly designed i think i just suck at the game thats all lmao
the final boss is certainly an improvement too!! i like the music better honestly and hte attacks are more varied and it also gives you some dk barrels between phases!!! thats the best part!!! unfortunately it did take me way too long. estimate at around 2 hours without breaks...... man
anyway my save stats are 30 kremkoins, 6 dk coins(forgot the name), 57%, and a time of 02:27 but thats not accurate at all because i Did use savestates so yea
anyway i cant wait for dkc3!! if theres any pattern here i hope it comes sometime in october
 
now harry potter and the chamber of secrets!! i dont have as much of a huge infodump but its better than philosophers stone in basically every way. for one the controls are SIGNIFICANTLY improved and are actually incredibly fun in my opinion, the secrets and new spells are really fun, also its a bit lengthier! still pretty short though
of course it still doesnt do the best job of adapting the books but its still fun as hell and also.. pretty
next up is is the prisoner of azkaban ohh boyyyyy
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+all cards, i actually only ever missed one so thats good!
 
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Super Mario 3D All Stars - Super Mario 64 (Nintendo Switch)

85/120 Stars, will go back for the remaining 35 stars in a little bit.
 
Kirby Battle Royale

A full review will have to wait--maybe I'll post one when I achieve 100%. The story mode's pretty fun and lasts a good long while (not to mention it has one of my favorite finales in the entire series), but there actually isn't a whole lot to keep you hooked after the credits if you're playing alone. As the game that introduced online multiplayer to the series, you can still find a fair number of matches online, but while it's not dead, it's still rather sparsely populated (as you'd expect from a late-life 3DS game). Download play is supported at least, so couch co-op is your best bet here.

As one of the 3DS' final games, as well as being the last original 3DS Kirby game, it's pretty great and well worth a buy--if you can get it for half price. I'd only recommend full price if you have friends nearby to play with, because otherwise there's very little replay value beyond the final boss. Similar case to Kirby Fighters 2, basically. Battle Royale doesn't deserve its title of "worst-received Kirby game", but if you're playing alone and can't get it for half price like I did, the mainline entries Triple Deluxe and Planet Robobot are much more generous content-wise.

Of course, if you're like me, you're a Bandana Waddle Dee fan who would pay $40 for it anyway just for all that juicy dialogue in the story mode. If that's you, be my guest.