Week of 22 May 2022
“Do you plan to take my soul, too?”
Achievements Earned In:
- Unsouled
- Zeroptian Invasion
- Doodle Mafia: Crime City
- Can Androids Pray: Blue
- Super Destronaut DX-2
- Football Game
I’m kinda shocked I’m writing about Unsouled this week, as this is not even close to my type of game. With it also being fairly newish, and with only a recorded three completions on TrueAchievements, this is super not the kind of game I’d even bother with. It looked very hard and why would I purposely go and play a difficult game with zero help, as there are pretty much NO guides on the internet? Well, because of Shadowless Edge. He offered (challenged?) me one of three games to start next: Slay the Spire, Loot River, and this one. The first one is just too long, and the second is a roguelite which I just wasn’t feeling. So I went with this game, which I incorrectly thought was a “Souls-like” but is in fact a lot more like the old Onimusha or Ninja Gaiden games. There is a heavy focus on countering and parrying, but all from a 2D top-down-ish perspective. If the game was just about finishing on the hardest difficulty and upgrading everything, I’d definitely consider this an easy completion. There’s no penalty for dying besides going back to your last checkpoint, and you even get to keep the souls you’ve collected from kills so you’re just that much stronger going back through. Even better if you managed to snag one of the Passive Souls from the enemies that were killing you. The bosses are a different story, requiring quick reflexes to keep yourself alive but still aren’t too bad. And that leads to what really makes this completion difficult: the conditional boss fights. Sure, you could fight the ice-slinging Ammu head-on, but how about killing her without being frozen at any time and finishing her off with a Street Fighter-style button combo? Or take on Niug and defeat him using only Counters? These can be downright infuriating at times, especially that aforementioned Ammu fight, where she just constantly uses hard to dodge freezing attacks and even an unblockable grab attack that brings your freeze meter up to only one hit from frozen. There are seven bosses in the game and only a couple conditions were pretty easy for me (Niug, Gnar, and Lyuh), while the rest took hours of frustration to get the right combination of skill and luck to get the achievement I needed to pop.
As mentioned, for me, one of the hardest parts of this completion is that there is VERY little in the way of help for this game around the internet. I’m kinda shocked, since achievement hunters are usually on top of it. There are a LOT of secrets in the game and lots of souls to collect, so it’s prime material for guide makers. Heck, if I were home I’d have a bunch up! But, I had to make due with the Steam community site, the Unsouled Discord, and various comments around the internet. It’s also a huge boon to notice that the Greek letter Ψ denotes there is a secret nearby. In the end, this game was my main focus throughout the week, first working on getting stronger before trying one or two bosses a night and grinding out kills for dropped Passive Souls throughout the day. As I neared the end, I still had a good few souls missing so I had to scour the levels to find them. Most of the enemy souls came quick enough (nothing I haven’t done before in Symphony of the Night or Aria of Sorrow) but the final one I needed from the Nameless Worker seemed to take ages. Almost two nights of running through the first section of Act 5 over and over again before it finally dropped. I also had issues getting the achievement for beating everything on the hardest difficulty, my second to last achievement, which is lame considering I obviously had to fight all the bosses on Master Soul for the other achievements anyway. My concern came in that you can’t play through the original version of Act 5 after the first time, meaning I thought I might have to play again on a new save to get it to unlock. Luckily, my final attempt on my main save after collecting all the souls FINALLY caused it to pop. Not sure what I did to finally get it unstuck, but I’ll take it. And that makes me number four to finish the game on Friday! Hated it. Worth it.
Achievements unlocked: 52 (+52) | Completed
Here lies my sanity.
With that fairly tough completion out of the way, and my usual inability to quickly pick my next game, I decided I’d initiate a bit of a palate cleanser. I currently have quite a library of games to choose from. One of those, Zeroptian Invasion, is the current game I figured I’d quickly complete. This is…well, it’s Space Invaders. That’s it. And, nabbing all the achievements only requires you to complete the first seven levels, and scoring well throughout. It’s not even very tough, even though I dislike these games.
Achievements unlocked: 11 (+11) | Completed
Honestly, this just makes me think of laundromats in the 90s. I can practically smell the detergent and sadness!
Saturday came and I just could NOT pick my next game. Now that my spouse has been discharged from the hospital to my care in our temp rental house, I no longer need to rely on solely Game Pass Cloud games. So, I figure I’d focus on more easy/short games! Doodle Mafia: Crime City was my next one, and these games are always kinda fun. It’s neat to combine the “elements” of the game (y’know, the well-known ones like fire, water, air, hacker, and…sports car) and see what comes out. This version has a crime and law overlay, with the narrative being you’re solving crimes. But it’s very superficial and can mostly be ignored. Following a guide (or spending IRL money?!) makes this game super short and easy. You don’t even have to complete all the combos or all of the campaign missions. The best kind of easy completion!
Achievements unlocked: 14 (+14) | Completed
I’m not a big-shot detective or anything, but I think I’d start by looking into whether Discount Jason Voorhees had something to do with the corpse within close proximity.
The next game I chose to start was Can Androids Pray: Blue, a very short game that would make Asimov happy. It’s literally a single, static scene shown from different angles as two mech pilots have a philosophical discussion on being human and their monotheistic deity. You make a handful of conversation choices, but that’s it. And, even reading every line slowly (to make for a good stream), the game is quite brief. It takes two playthroughs minimum to get all of the achievements, with the first one just requiring mashing the A-button, and the second requiring particular choices. I GUESS the dialogue is interesting, but it feels…I don’t know. Rambling? The flow of the conversation just doesn’t feel right. Can’t put my finger on it.
Achievements unlocked: 10 (+10) | Completed
So…since we’re gonna die anyway, do YOU know who ate my future-yogurt from the barracks fridge?
The next easy game on Saturday was the second game in a series of which I’d played the third recently, Super Destronaut DX-2, which I JUST realized is the second Space Invaders clone I played this week. Like Land Wars, this is actually a fun game that I had trouble cutting off when I’d reached the scores needed in each mode. For instance, I played Classic Mode for almost double the score I actually needed. It’s nice when these easy games are actually enjoyable and not just soulless cash grabs. Or boring. But, it’s still short.
Achievements unlocked: 14 (+14) | Completed
It’s Space Invaders, except with Gyroids!
I’m not really sure what to make of Football Game. First off, this is not a game about football. Nor do you even play football, American or otherwise, in this game. You’re going to a football game, but besides that being mentioned in dialogue it’s barely related. Second, I’m not even sure I truly understand what occurred here. I think it’s a point-and-click adventure game about a Nice Guy™ that can’t take a hint. Maybe I missed something expositionary by following an achievement guide, but there’s also mentioned the protagonist did something bad. No idea what it is. And the talking heads during dialogue is very off-putting. The whole game has this air of dread like something bad is going to occur and then…the game ends. I guess the ending is symbolic or something, but I personally think it landed like a wet fart.
Achievements unlocked: 15 (+15) | Completed
I sure hope I’m still sleeping, mother, because you are a nightmare vision.
Highest ratio: 42.13
Master Soul (Unsouled)
Lowest ratio: 1.00 (tie)
First Death (Unsouled)
Boosted (Zeroptian Invasion)
Don’t give up (Zeroptian Invasion)
Welcome (Zeroptian Invasion)
Good job (Zeroptian Invasion)
Good start (Doodle Mafia: Crime City)
Mechromancy (Can Androids Pray: Blue)
Civility Filter Activated (Can Androids Pray: Blue)
Identity Establishment (Can Androids Pray: Blue)
Way With Words (Can Androids Pray: Blue)
Mech A Friend (Can Androids Pray: Blue)
Variant Cover (Can Androids Pray: Blue)
The whole crew was lost (Super Destronaut DX-2)
The Lake (Football Game)
Remove the Evidence (Football Game)
The Past: One (Football Game)
