Week of 20 Aug 2023
“I wasn’t planning on hurting you for real.”
Achievements Earned In:
- The Knight Witch
- Divinity II - The Dragon Knight Saga
- Brothers in Arms: Hell’s Highway
- Vampire Survivors
- Final Fantasy XV Pocket Edition
- Jeremy McGrath’s Offroad
I cut it close, but I managed to wrap-up The Knight Witch late on Sunday. Most of the game is fairly straightforward! Even better, once you give the “eccentric” Lord Yupi 350 coins you’re given the ability to see hidden secrets on the map, making clean-up rather effortless. The one part of the completion I was worried about was obtaining the Radiant Suns, which were awarded for completing the Ambushes without getting struck my enemies. Since it was just getting hit that would negate the attempt, even the invulnerability cheat wouldn’t help! But, once you obtain the Ghost Gun card in the Catacombs, this becomes entirely too easy because you can wipe out any enemy before they even get a shot off. Clone the card with the witch at the Castle and turn on infinite mana, and it really becomes trivial to earn all those Suns. Course, combined with invulnerability, this makes the rest of the game easy, too, and quick. Done and dusted! I was kinda worried, but, since I succeeded, I’m glad I took the dive. Most certainly a game I would never have gotten around to otherwise.
Achievements unlocked: 27 (+19) | Completed
Nice to, uh, meet you. Please don’t murder me.
Most of my time in Divinity II - The Dragon Knight Saga this week was getting through the rest of the base game, which I’d done before, back in 2016. As I reached the later stages of the game, it started kinda ringing a bell finally, especially the fortresses in Orobas Fjords. By Tuesday I’d knocked all that out, still not really needing to change my equipment or loadout much. But, then I got to start the “Flames of Vengeance” add-on, which wasn’t included in the Ego Draconis completion. Something new! The entire storyline takes place in a single city, also going down into the sewers and buildings. From mysterious brother murders to a plague of the undead, there’s plenty to do. And you definitely need to follow a guide so you can most efficiently seek out the side-quests you’ll need for achievements. And, hey, I actually had to use some tricks and upgrade my equipment as the enemies quickly overpowered me. Well… at least one section gave me major issues, and I had to save scum and kite/separate the three enemies I needed to fight. The rest of the add-on was, honestly, not much harder than the base game and I breezed through it. And that was all wrapped up on Wednesday! It was pretty quick with such a focused storyline and small area to explore/traverse.
Achievements unlocked: 50 (+32) | Completed
Oh, I just have to fight through all that? Easy peasy.
Got a single achievement in Brothers in Arms: Hell’s Highway, but it was only a cumulative one. The game has multiple achievements that just require you to load up the game for various time periods. The one I earned this week was for playing the game for seven different days, so I’m almost 1/10 of the way to the longest achievement. Not sure when I’ll play this for real; no rush due to these long achievements.
Achievements unlocked: 2 (+1) | Completion: 5%
Happily played a little more of Vampire Survivors whenever I had some downtime at night. It’s really a very monotonous game, and admittedly gets old if I play too long. But on the other hand it also has that “just one more round” hook, and with each attempt lasting around 30 minutes it can quickly cut into time when I should be sleeping. But, whatever. I’m not really sure how far along I am in the actual progress towards completion, but I’m enjoying taking my time and not really rushing it.
Achievements unlocked: 71 (+14) | Completion: 37%
Playing Final Fantasy XV Pocket Edition has been a journey of emotions. When I started it, the purpose was to have something to play locally on my laptop while visiting my spouse at the hospital. Then it turned into something different when we found out she was dying, and after it happened. It was easy enough to just get an achievement-a-day for my streak and I’d go back to grieving. Then I started feeling more motivated to game, and this fell to the wayside because… every time I loaded it up I was right back there in that little cancer-wing room with her. But, before that happened, I’d stretched this game almost all the way to the end of the storyline. So, when I finally returned this week, it took only a couple hours to mop up the storyline achievements and the couple miscellaneous achievements I needed. The only concern was the achievement for clearing three dungeons fully, which can be a little finicky. Heck, I was going out of my way before to clear any dungeons I had to go through and the achievement never popped. Luckily, I only had to rerun the dungeon in Chapter 5 once before the game gave me the achievement. And that was that. Man, what a bittersweet completion.
Achievements unlocked: 95 (+6) | Completed
Let’s reminisce about those we lost.
Of the games I started for Genre Bingo, the couple racing titles I started were my biggest concern when it came to actually completing them. I hate that genre, because the challengers tend to be unfairly good, or just too fast to defeat consistently. Not to mention one little crash can throw you from first to last very quickly. Luckily for me, Joy Ride Turbo was already a fairly easy completion, and this week’s Jeremy McGrath’s Offroad turned out to be even easier! You have to complete the Career mode, going through five different types of vehicles and many races, and throughout the whole thing I never once scored less than first place! And I barely had to try. What a relief… Honestly, I enjoyed the gameplay, too, as the driving felt slick and I only a handful of times lost control. I mopped up the competition, then turned to the 1000-mile grind. This could have taken a LONG time (when I finished everything else, I was at barely 200 miles) but there’s a glitch you can take advantage of that instead turns it into a 15-minute affair. A FAR easier completion than expected, but I also definitely neglected to ever look at the ratios for the achievements; turns out they were pretty low. Oops, haha.
Achievements unlocked: 12 (+12) | Completed
Huh, surprised how nice this looks as an 11-year old XBLA title.
Highest ratio: 2.72
Adrift (Divinity II: The Dragon Knight Saga)
Lowest ratio: 1.05
Sportsman Career Complete (Jeremy McGrath’s Offroad)
