I got all the Achivements in Deus Ex the Fall

 Hello everyone. I recently got all the achievements in Deus Ex The Fall (my second time "platinumming" a Steam Game) and I wanted to talk about it.

 

 

 

Overall a straightforward if slightly annoying set of achievements. There's no difficulty settings but you're still relatively fragile in combat on the base difficulty. There's 2 main issues I had when going for all the achievements. The first is that you only get 1 save file period. This save file also holds your latest manual save, autosave and quicksave. So if you mess up at any point and void an achievement, you're out of luck and need to restart the entire game. The other issue is that some achievements aren't "counted until the next area". For example, take the achievement "Total Evasion - Hide from an alerted guard until he loses interest and returns to his patrol". Really easy but I only got it after evading an enemy and going to the next load zone. There are a few instances where this works against you. For example "Boy Scout - You didn't accept a reward for helping Camila with her stalker problem! Such a nice boy!". You need to decline the award and then leave the load zone to register the achievement which also autosaves the game which means you can't go back and get the award. I suppose you can disable the autosave and rely entirely on manual and quicksaves but I was too lazy to. For me, I generally knew the game well enough to know where and when I should save to avoid any major mistakes but I don't think I should consider that a pro.

 

I unfortunately cannot remember off the top of my head which achievements auto-register and which need an area transition to trigger. I did some reasearch and supposedly, its Proton save location is under Steam's compatdata/258180 prefix. So in theory, you could manually backup/transfer your save as an option. I personally cannot confirm that works however.

My unfounded conspiracy theory is that only one save slot is a consequence of its origins as a mobile game. Remember when this game first came out,  lots of  iPhones like my old 4 had 8GB total of space. Most of which was already taken up by iOS and your limited apps. Deus Ex The Fall was nearly 2GB. I suppose the app expanding to take up more storage for save slots was a no-no? And the game never got that fixed even when ported to PC? 

 

The minimum you need to play this game is 1.2 playthroughs. 1 normal non-lethal run (for the achievement) and partly into a NG+ Run because of  "Packing Heat - Own a rocket launcher and a plasma rifle". These cost about $11,000. If you absolutely scavenge for every little credit card (including shooting civilians to get their money), you can get around $10,000 by the end of a playthrough. Money is extremely tight in this game. 

 

I did nearly 4 full playthroughs because of  "Unlock the Power - Purchase 10 praxis kits". Because even after saving every $, I only had enough for 5/10 at $2500 a pop so I needed another NG+ run to get another $10,000. Until I realized you can just buy 1 and keep reloading your save to re-buy them and it still counts. A rare time where the game isn't stingy about locking in your progression. I wish I knew about that earlier to save myself 2 whole playthroughs. I think you can reasonably get all the achievements in 4-5 hours. I am an outlier for doing it in 10 I suppose.

 

There is one sorta bugged achievement in "Hard Times - You have got a problem. You found a can of beer in the trash and then drank it" since the game might not register this.  The most consistent strat for this is to drink all the beer you already have in your inventory so you have no beer. Go to the Slums Area. Immediately hook a right and find the nearest trash can, loot it for beer, drink it and hope it counts. 

 

So yeah, that's the achievements.  Overall, not a bad list. A lot of it is just "do the optional stuff in the game" that I'd do (and did) normally. I think I wasn't going for the achievements, I'd probably end up doing about 70-80% of it because that's what happened when I played the iPhone version. I only missed 1 side quest and some of the money related Achievements. The game is generally so brief and contained that going for the achievements doesn't change much. I suppose it would have been cool if there was a "Do a run with no upgrades/augmentations" achievement as that would be an interesting thing for the achievements to push but by my 4th Playthough, I think was done with the game.

 

One interesting note of the achievements are the historical context.  The achievement "Natural Born Pacifist = Complete the entirety of Part 1 without killing anyone" even shows us this was never meant to be a one and done game 🥲.

 

As for the game itself, despite its mostly negative rating on Steam, I kinda liked it. I think it's a perfectly fine 6/10 little game. I have something of a soft spot for this game because it was my first Deux Ex game. I remember playing it on my hand me down iPhone 4 because I didn't have a PS3 at the time. As someone that played a lot of PSP and DS ports/versions of games that had a proper console version, I was very enamored by this version.

 

I played this game across 3 different devices because the game doesn't support cloud saving and I was too lazy to manually transfer my save around to my different devices. My ROG Ally  Z1 running Bazzite on the latest Experimental Proton and I recall it ran around 60-80 FPS maxed out. The gamepad controls worked flawlessly and I even got Gyro working for aiming. My i7-13620H + RTX 4060 Laptop with Fedora Running on Experimental Proton was running it around 100 FPS but with weird stutters and the aiming crosshairs disappearing. But my i7-7700HQ + GTX 1060 Laptop running Bazzite was getting smoked. I was getting 30 FPS when standing still and 1-2 FPS when moving and the Crossbow wouldn't ADS. It got so bad that I did an experiment where I held "W" down as I walked into a wall for 5 minutes and the game dropped to zero FPS to the point even the Steam Overlay disappeared.

 

I tried all my different Proton versions (Latest, Hotfix, Experimental, GE, DW, 10, 9) until I landed on 7. All of a sudden I got a silky smooth and rock solid 120 FPS with Vsync on. Doing some research, I suspect there might have been a possible regression in how newer versions of Proton handle older Unity ports like DETF? I still got the same bug where accepting the Stun Gun meant I no longer had crosshairs but at this point, I'll take it.

 

 Back to the game, despite its age and origins, I found it looked quite good. At 1080 p maxed out, environments and major characters looked good. Environments were cluttered and full of details and environmental storytelling. The game retains the gold filter from Human Revolution and even borrows the soundtrack which I found nice. NPC models in places like the Slums looked ....questionable. But I'm willing to be lenient here. Judging this as a 2013 iPhone game, this game's graphics would be S tier by those standards. Plus as a fan of those PSP/DS ports, I find the imperfections more charming if anything.

 

A lot of the UI works fine on both gamepad and Mouse + Keyboard. The visual design is still very mobile first and there is some input delay on some clicks and menus like the game is expecting a tap that didn't fully go through. Holding F and G open up the sub and grenade menu and let you use the scroll wheel to cycle through them. I know this sounds like bare minimum stuff but I've played a lot of Mobile Games on Gamepads and Mouse+Keyboard in my time and a lot of even modern ones get this wrong (see my review on Neverness to Everness). So the fact Deus Ex The Fall does an actually good job here is legitimately worth celebrating. The most confusing moment I had was at the start of the tutorial that asked you to bind something to your quick select menu and I missed the exact instructions of clicking the slot then the item so I played a good chunk of my first playthrough with empty slots.

 

The core gameplay  is largely lifted from Human Revolution. You have the same cover based movement, crawling through vents, weird cutscene melee takedowns, power/battery system, augments the whole works. Perhaps this is an unpopular opinion but I was never a huge fan of Human Revolution's take on Stealth as I feel it shares a lot of my complaints with the early Assassin's Creed games. You have very few ways of interacting with enemies or the environment those enemies are in. I was playing Splinter Cell Double Agent on PS2 a while back and in that game, you can Jam Lights to create shadows which both creates pockets of darkness for you to sneak through but can also distract and pull guards. You can whistle to lure guards around. Levels also more stuff for Sam Fisher to climb around on while still being in proximity with enemies. In other words, you rarely find a vent that just straight up bypasses everything. You still need to sneak through an area.

 

In contrast, both Human Revolution and The Fall don't really have stuff like that. Light, sound and distractions aren't really consistent tools you can use. Levels often have vents and other pathways to completely bypass enemies altogether. Here's an example in Deus Ex The Fall. In the Slums, there's a drug hideout. The entrance is guarded by around 7 guards. You could shoot your way in, or work in from the side but you can't stealth KO all of them. Or you could find 2 of the alternate ways in that let you skip the entrance and enter from the sides. Once inside, if you want to go to the Drug Lab, there are vents and walls that completely circumnavigate most of the guarded areas inside. Inside the Drug Lab, there's 2 side quests that send you here as part of their steps. And even here, there are vents, breakable walls and hackable doors that let you skip a lot of the sneaking.

 

To be more specific, there's generally 3 kinds of stealth options in stealth games:

     Avoidance: vents, alternate entrances, breakable walls, and hacked doors.

    Manipulation: distractions, sound, lighting, patrol control, and environmental traps.

    Neutralization: takedowns, weapons, mines, and non-lethal tools.

My argument is that The Fall is relatively generous with avoidance and neutralization but underdeveloped in manipulation.  So what was originally: “Which route does my build allow me to use?" slowly turns into: “Which of my six ways of bypassing this encounter do I feel like using?”

 

Of course, the idea HR and TF are going for here is that this is a Stealth RPG rather than a pure stealth game. So rather than areas being purely mechanical stealth challenges, Stealth Areas are closer to "RPG skill checks". "Can you break walls? If yes, here's a free pathway. Can you hack or destroy these doors? Free Pathway". But at least in HR, there were a few more factors at play. There was the meta aspect and inventory management. Resources were scarce and you had limited inventory space. The boss fights, as whack as they were, still meant you had to plan around them to some extent. Maybe you would choose to put a few points into inventory space to carry more stuff rather than upgrades to break walls or move crates or hacking. So "planning your route" was more important. Instead of solving a stealth problem purely mechanically, you're cashing in prior character-building decisions.

 

Moreover, HR rarely asked you to backtrack or revisit older levels. The Fall sends you back to places like the Nightshades Nightclub and the Elena Hotel (thrice if you include Camilia's side quest). Guards may not respawn so if you're ghosting, you just reuse the same paths you did the first time and do a bit of annoying waiting for guard patrols to be favourable (or use your Camo/Invisible Augmentations), or reuse the same pathways and KO/kill guards for the free EXP, or if they don't respawn, just walk through with no issues.

 

The XRG Data Center Level in The Fall is the one area I feel the game locks in for a challenge that's actually kinda tough regardless of your build. Stealth Players have fewer instapass vents (or the vents require progressing past enemies blocking them). Combat players have some pretty tough enemies that can take a lot of shots. It felt more like "rather than there being a bunch of easy options, I actually had to mix and match my tools since my build(s) helps but doesn't auto-solve the level". The routes and vents converged more often. Enemies tended to occupy more useful pathways and were quick to punish mistakes.

 

Though, to be fair, I suppose I should be lenient to the game given the context. Remember, this game came out in 2013 when Smartphones were finally becoming powerful enough that publishers asked "hey, can we squeeze proper AAA games into this thing?" I remember contemporary reviews of The Fall from the time were impressed that something like The Fall could even exist. Even stuff like the tutorial (which almost every review I found of the PC version criticizes) makes sense from that lens. The studio making this game were aware this was uncharted territory for mobile players so the tutorial being so overbearing, heavy handed and slow was likely seen as a necessary compromise for mobile players new to Deus Ex. Even the scaled back abilities, enemy AI, enemies disappaerening when neutralized and levels were likely technical decisions just as much as they were accessibility/audience considerations. But the consequence is now that The Fall is on PC, it's being judged relative to other PC games where its Mobile Design, even if made with good intentions in places, ends up being seen as flaws.

Funnily enough, the most fun I had playing the Fall was during my 2nd, 3rd and 4th playthroughs where I was under no obligation to be stealthy anymore. So I could use a mix of hit-and-run tactics, melee takedowns and gunplay. Gunfights in the drug lab and Data Center were fun because I'd be using the vents to scurry away as guards came to rush me and I'd be the one flanking them. It was some nice cat-and-mouse gameplay as I had to watch myself as I wasn't very tanky and escaping with only 13HP from a vent to try to reposition was intense. Plus, it was fun to have all the augments and being able to style on enemies.

 

Funnily, this is the sort of dynamic system interaction I feel the stealth side lacked. It's quite ironic and funny.  The achievements initially trained me to experience the game in one of its least interesting ways. Natural Born Pacifist made me approach everything cautiously and avoid killing anyone. Once I'd gotten it, genocidal Ben Saxon was here to slay.  Somehow, I'm having more fun on the pointless replays I didn't need to do.  The stealth playthrough theoretically embodies Deus Ex's player-choice philosophy, but going loud actually made me engage with the levels more deeply.

 

The Fall doesn't have Limited inventory. Instead, you have a "Black Market" that lets you instantly buy and teleport weapons, ammo and equipment into your pockets (think Drebin's Store from Metal Gear Solid 4). Being originally a mobile game with microtransactions, I suppose Square Enix expected you to buy a few things here and there which is why although items and ammo are fairly reasonable, the high end weapons are crazy expensive. I shudder to think of the game's balance if this game got more content. At least I will say compared to HR or MD, I found myself less stressed doing gunfights because common ammo drops for the starting pistol wasn't a worry because enemy drops were good. That's one area The Fall is generous in.

 

The story of the game is a brief prequel/side story/interquel to Human Revolution. You play as Ben Saxon, a member of the Tyrants (the bosses of the HR) who goes rogue after a mission and hides out in Panama during the worldwide Neuropozine shortage that augmented people need to manage their prosthetics being rejected by the body. Ben's investigating Big Pharma and their connections to a new drug, Rizene, said to be a more affordable Neuropozine replacement.  The story takes place just after the attack on Sarif Industries in Human Revolution while Adam Jensen is off on sick leave. Also, you meet Alex Vega in this game before she shows up in Deus Ex Mankind Divided.

 

That's the bulk of the story because it's unfinished. Even to this day, there is a "To be continued" and a "More Content Coming Soon" Tab in the main menu. At least the world building, lore and atmosphere is on point. My favourite part is that you can hack into a computer and learn that Final Fantasy 27 is winning GOTY in 2027 after a Western studio took over FF and it's now finally in the hands of a Japanese Studio. I did some brief research and apparently, our boi Ben is actually one of the main protagonists of the official tie-in novel, Deus Ex: Icarus Effect (which came out in 2011). The Fall essentially adapts a chunk of his timeline from the books. Maybe I should check that out one day but for the sake of this review, I will pretend it doesn't exist.

 

It's hard to properly review this game's story given even the Achievements call it "Part 1". But I had an idea. A while back, I found someone donating their old Xbox 360 and a copy of Deus Ex Human Revolution Director's Cut Disc 1. I was playing through disc 1 until just after the Attack  on Sarif Industries when the game told me to put in Disc 2 which I didn't have. I was really miffed. But that makes for an interesting comparison. How does the story of Deus Ex Human Revolution Disc 1 (about 30 minutes) compare to the story of Deus Ex The Fall (about 2-3 hours)? In other words, if I played both these games back to back and you asked "which one do I want the remaining story to" which would I pick?

 

And even with this advantage to The Fall, I'd still choose Human Revolution in a heartbeat.  HR's first 30 minutes has a lot more going on. You have Adam and his interesting relationship with his ex-Megan and his workplace banter/slight rivalry with Prichard which is entertaining. Adam's also "in the front seat" given his job at Sarif Industries. Moreover, the mystery of who the Tyrants are, why they attacked Sarif and kidnapped Megan, Adam's new status as a cyborg and how he would react to that are super interesting.

 

Plus, there's something The Fall Does that inadvertently makes Human Revolution more interesting despite not being true. The plot of The Fall is Ben looking for a Neuropozine replacement to prevent Augmentation Rejection. If I didn't know the whole plot of Human Revolution, this would make me more excited to play Human Revolution because "Adam is currently working under Sarif who is paying the bills. What happens if Adam ever wanted to go rogue or go against Sarif's orders? He'd lose access to Neuropozine. How would he react or work around that?". Obviously in the actual story, Adam is one of the few rare people that doesn't need Neuropozine but I wouldn't know that from just playing Disc 1 so this would make me more interested in HR. Basically, HR's opening as an exciting Origin Story for Adam and all the mysteries make its 30 minutes more enticing compared to The Fall which feels, you could tell me is a DLC for a larger game and I'd believe you. 

 

Poor Ben in the Fall doesn't have as much narrative material to work with. He doesn't have someone to consistently banter/butt heads with the way Adam does Prichard. His relationship with Anna seems strictly professional. The nature of his mission means he has very little time for introspection, humour or friendly conversation. So Ben doesn't have many opportunities to express his own character. The most interesting thing about Ben here is his past and his relationship to the Tyrants. But it's not clear from the game how much runway there is. I get the impression from the story that Ben is "the new guy" on the squad who already didn't see eye-to-eye with everyone. All this means is that even if the Fall's overall story would have been amazing, the Fall itself doesn't exactly make that convincing. 

 

In closing, there's no pressing reason to play The Fall. The story is incomplete and its gameplay is a diet version of  HR. Other PSP/DS adaptations of console games at least tend to have enough going on to be worth playing on their own. Like, I still sometimes replay Need for Speed Carbon PSP and DS, or something like Resistance Retribution, Metal Gear Solid Portable Ops, GOW Chains of Olympus and Ghost of Sparta, GTA LCS/VCS/CW, LittleBigPlanet PSP etc are so fully featured that even via emulation on modern phones, they still absolutely slap as Portable Titles. You can't even play Deus Ex The Fall on phones anymore since the game has been pulled from Apple and Google's storefronts.

 

And I find that disheartening. The Fall is redundant but never even got even a chance to try. And never will since it reviewed quite poorly and the Deux Ex series is on ice. It's not a good game. Its phone versions disappeared. Its continuation disappeared. Its PC port survives, but that's also the version whose existence people mocked. And now the technological achievement that originally justified the entire project “look, it's basically Human Revolution on your phone!” doesn't even function in its intended ecosystem anymore. 

 

Yet, despite everything, the Fall accomplished something personal. I didn't own the hardware to play Human Revolution at the time. I had an old hand me down iPhone. The Fall did exactly what it was supposed to do. It brought Deus Ex to someone who otherwise couldn't play Deus Ex.

 

So if nothing else, at least I can say the fact it existed was meaningful.

Pokemon Sword and Shield Ultimate Plus GBA

 Hello everyone. Recently, I finished the game Pokemon Sword and Shield Ultimate Plus GBA Version 1.2.1.2. A ROM Created by PCL.g, Jean star', Phantonomy and many others.

 

This ROM Hack is a demake of the 2019 game Pokemon Sword and Shield. Translating the game down to a 2D GBA game. I reviewed the complete edition of Pokemon Sword a few years back and when I stumbled across the complete Rom Hack, I was tempted to try it out. Plus, I was trying out the ArcEmu Emulator on my Apple Watch and decided to play Sword Shield Ultimate Plus on it during my now 2 hour daily commutes. What started as a casual game I wanted to play on my Apple Watch became something of an obsession. I really loved playing it. I lament ArcEmu doesn't have Retroachievements integration like PC emulators do because I would have grinded the hell out of them lol. I would played more but I recently reset my Watch and lost my save file so I decided to review what I already played which is the "base game" and Isle of Armour "DLC".

 

Reviewing the game itself, the first thing that struck me was how faithfully the Rom Hack recreated aspects of Sword and Shield. Towns like Postwick, Wedgehurst, Motostoke, Circhester, as well as areas like Rose's Battle Area feel like 1:1 of their 3D counterparts and arguably look better. The GBA version has a more colourful and saturated palette that makes these places pop.

 

A few areas do suffer for not coming close to the 3D counterparts.  In the 3D version, Ballonlea and its preceding route is like this really moody and cool mushroom route with nice lighting that reminds me of Pandora from the James Cameron Avatar movies. The GBA version, unfortunately, makes it look like a standard GBA Pokemon game forest. 

 

I also find the Pokecenters odd. Almost all of them use a sort of "2 floor" design with the healing centre at the bottom, at the Pokemart/Name Rater/Move Relearner at the top floor. 3D Sword and Shield used a compact 1 floor model where the  Name Rater/Move Relearne, Healing Centre and Pokemart where in front of you on the first floor. There is a Pokecenter in Motostoke with a more accurate layout but it's used only there. I do kinda like that version more since it's more compact.

 

 I do like how the GBA version also tries to make Gyms resemble their 3D counterparts as much as possible. Nessa's, Pier's and Raihen's are 1:1 (no surprise there as simple switch puzzles and gauntlets were staples in the GBA Pokemon games). Milo's is now a Strength Bolder pushing puzzle rather than a Wooloo/Yamper challenge and Opal's is a copy of Blaine's gym. A bit of shame but I imagine this was the best you could do on the GBA. 

 

Allastair/Bea's (the GBA version lets you choose whichever you want to fight) gyms are a downward sliding bike puzzle that I actually like better than the Stick Rotating challenge from the 3D version since I was always worried about giving my joycons more drift. The only gym I feel is worse is Gordie/Melony's since you don't have the radar and now have to trial and error your way through it with worse checkpoints and respawning floors so you can't even see the path you took (Also, there is a bug for this gym that advises you to avoid saving until after you beat the gym and talk to Leon).

 

One of Sword/Shield's new features were Overworld Pokemon (technically first in LGPE but SwSh were the first mainline games with them) and the Wild Area. And the GBA version adapts that.

 

Tall grass in the GBA version will only have sprites of the most common Pokemon walking around. You don't start battles by walking into them. You have to interact with them first. But you can also do random encounters by walking in grass normally (which also include the most common pokemon from the overworld) but also rare Pokemon.

 

I really like this implementation. If you don't want any encounters, you can just repel and move through routes without an issue. if you want random encounters, you can enter the grass as normal and/or use the DexNav (yes, this Rom Hack carries the DexNav. An awesome feature removed after Gen 6) to track down specific Pokemon.  And the overworld spirtes give you a good idea of what the most common Pokemon are and the chance to target them specifically. I spent quite a while farming for Rolycolys with Heatproof and it was way faster and easier to do with Overworld spirtes than running around for random encounters.

 

The Wild Area is interesting. I wasn't fond of the 3D version's take on this. I found it a bit boring to ride the bike past stretches of grass as each large stretch of area had similar spawns until you got farther away, cycling between Dynamax dens for Watts. The GBA version shrinks it down drastically. Having a couple town sized spaces with signs you can move between. It's by far the "least accurate" to the 3D version as the GBA's Wild Areas don't even come close to resembling the layout of sections from the 3D Wild Area..... and I honestly prefer it like this.

 

The GBA's take is way more compact. It's way quicker and more efficient to move through areas, check Dynamax dens, do a few raid battles and move on. Hell, even the concept of Watts is gone. It's all just money now which I prefer.

 

With the 3D version, I felt it was structured in a weird way. You could ignore the Wild Area entirely, but you had fewer chances to get stuff like certain TMs/TRs, EXP Candies and other rare items. Plus a lot of content, especially in the DLC, required Watts as a currency requiring you to farm Dynamax Dens. There was this sense of "fine, I gotta go do my Watts chores". The GBA version making it all just money based means even if I neglect the Wild Area, I'm fine. I can earn money and XP by doing battles. And if I need a break to go do Wild Area stuff, the rewards go both ways.

 

I suppose a missed opportunity was doing what the Rom hack, Radical Red did and having Dynamax dens along regular routes as well. That way, the 3D version has a way for players to get some Dynamax Raids and Watts as they naturally the play the story. And the GBA version has more chances for rare Pokemon and money. 

 

Speaking of which, Dynamax raids, I loathed doing these in the 3D version but found them more enjoyable in the GBA version. The 3D version was this 4v1 where 4 trainers brought 1 Pokemon each against a Dynamaxed Pokemon. But it felt rough to play because AI trainers were absolute idiots. You have a finite number of "lives"/KOs your team can take before you get ejected from the Dynamax Den. No last man standing or survival options. I have never hated someone like I did Martin and his Cosmic Power Solrock 😤. My man, you know you've failed as a trainer when the guy bringing in a Magikarp is more useful than you!

 

The GBA version is instead a 1v1 where your team of 6 face the Dynamax Pokemon and you are allowed to use items like revives and potions. The catch being that the Dynamax Pokemon can further boost its stats and even gets bonus boosts for KO-ing your Mons. As well as launching multiple hits against your Solo Mon. But honestly, I 100% prefer this version. Even with the dumb shields that require 1 regular hit per damage or 1 Max Attack for 2 damage, at least this version doesn't have idiot teammates that ruin it. You only lose when all your Pokemon get knocked out and you can use revives to keep it going. 

 

But even with this, late game and post game Raids are challenging. I got swept by a Dynamax Blaziken, Gengar and Tyranitar that boosted too much and got out of hand. It becomes a separate teambuilding challenge as you construct more bulky Mons with HP EVs that can go toe to toe with these monsters. Unlike the 3D version, you don't get to see a preview of what you will be fighting. Even reloading a save-state won't help you as this rerolls the dynamax pokemon. And Dynamax Pokemon will scale to the highest level Mon on your team.

 

I generally had the best luck with HP/SpDef Trained Metagross, Coalossel, Rotom-Wash all with Leftovers. These were bulky enough with good resists to handle the repeated battering from Max Moves and did enough damage that, provided they could be safely healed, could hurt the Dynamax Pokemon enough secure wins (since Dynamax Pokemon get automatic defense drops as you damage them). I found Dragon, Poison and Ghost Types generally unreliable as defensive mons as a lot of Dynamax Mons had stray Fairy, Ice and Dark Coverage for some reason. I guess this Hack is prepared for when I ever find a Shedinja.

 

 I also kept a Haze Crobat with either a Focus Sash or Choice Scarf in the back as a failsafe to reset Dynamax Mon Boosts. Machamp and Gardevoir were also decent physical/special walls that could deal damage when the situation called for it. I wonder if I could swap out Gardevoir for Hatterene. Speed really doesn't help much when you have to eat multiple hits. And same goes for Trick Room.

 

I found early game Raid Battles more fun as Dynamax Pokemon wouldn't get shields so it was just a 1v6 against a very powerful Pokemon. Whereas later ones were more a "either I have a team that sits on the Monster and can whittle it down, or the monster boosts too much and I can't stop it". Plus, stuff like Status, Perish Song, OHKO moves etc are automatically blocked in Dynamax Raids so the number of strats and playstyles are more limited. I personally would rather have something like "hey, here's a super or ace trainer on this route with 6 hard Pokemon that rotate. Beat them for a prize". Or give me a mini Battle Tower like Emerald had in the campaign but for prizes. But still, at least the GBA Raid Battles were kinda fun.

 

-The Story/Campaign

 

One of SwShUP's flaws is how much it adheres to its source material. You face much of the same gym leaders and major battles with the same Pokemon and levels they had in the 3D version. This means, like in the 3D version, it's easy to end up overlevelled, especially if you do a lot of Dynamax Raids. But even casually, enemy levels grow quite slow relative to how much EXP you earn. Even fresh Mons I caught and never used or brought to Dynamax Battles that just stayed in my party during story battles didn't take long to reach parity with enemy trainer levels. Poor Hop for example, had to face my Mons which could be anywhere from 10-15 levels above him. I ended up intentionally benching a lot of my overlevelled Mons and drafting newer Mons.

 

SwShUP actually has a solution. Some major fights scale to the highest level Mon on your team. I remember going into the Semi-Finals, going up against Nessa. My team was all around 58 minus my Intellion sitting around 72 that I forgot to remove. I expected it to be a standard fight..... only for Nessa to sweep my team with Level 72 Pokemon. Had to do a bit of grinding (with Intellion actually benched this time) with Dynamax Raids to get the team up up to around 67 before trying again.

 

Honestly, I love this feature and wish I could toggle it for every fight. You even get more money for doing scaled fights. The main issue is how inconsistent it is. After doing the Semi-finals and beating Nessa, Allastair and Raihan, I had to go fight Chairman Rose who was packing Level 58s. So my team that had to grind up for Nessa made short work of him. This inconsistent scaling also applies in the Wild Area as you can come across level 10s and level 68s in the same patch of grass.

 

Onto more positive stuff,  SwShUP, being a 2D Pokemon game, is a lot more brisk and faster paced than its 3D counterpart. Cutscenes go by faster as characters don't have to animate and move around. And even the Apple Watch can do 3x Speedup which meant I was zooming through the game (at the cost of my poor battery). This honestly makes the game feel more replayable than the 3D version as I loathe replaying any Gen 6 Pokemon game and onwards given how many long unskippable cutscenes they have that drag down the pace.

One minor complaint I have that SwSh’s 3D version does better is the UI/Map markers. The 3D version tells you in the pause menu what your next objective is and where to do it. Not a huge deal in pokemon games as they are usually pretty straightforward and linear but it helps when you haven’t played a Pokémon game for months, load up your old save and are a bit confused on what you were doing last and why you’re standing in the middle of nowhere instead of close to the next story trigger.

SwShUP has a few instances of not being entirely clear where to go. Such as needing to go to the pool in Circhester City after the restaurant. I remember being confused why the game was blocking me from going to Route 9 until I remembered about that one event from the 3D version, walked to the pool and triggered the next cutscene and was able to proceed normally. Other GBA pokemon rom hacks have found ways to have quest logs and journals so it’s a shame SwShUP couldn’t also have it.

 

The worst of this was in the Isle of Armour DLC. It's this really large area but you don't have a proper map for it. So when the game asks you to find the views (same as in the 3D version except with 1 fewer), it was hard. Even though I knew what to do from the 3D version, actually executing it was hard. I had to pull up both the Wiki  and YouTube Walkthroughs to find my way through it.

 

As for the actual story itself, here is my critique from when I Reviewed Pokemon Sword since the 2D version is almost entirely faithful to it:

''''

 

Sword's base game has a similar premise to that of its predecessors. You start in a small town, you get your starter and your rival. You set out to get the Gym Badges to be able to challenge the Champion. There's an evil team and antagonist you have to stop along the way.

I have said this before, but I don't have a problem with Pokemon's basic story structure or premise. It works as a nice way to get the player out into the world and exploring. The player character doesn't need a strong personal motivation to do that. My issue with Gen 6 and onward is that they tend to "expand" the story by adding lots of cutscenes and interruptions to an otherwise brief story which I feel has the opposite effect of tanking the pacing since often no new information is revealed or progress is made. I remember this quite a bit in ORAS compared to Emerald. Emerald's "cutscenes" and dialogue boxes were quite brief. Generally getting to the point and letting you continue on. ORAS often added more dialogue such with the encounters with Steven Stone or Archie/Maxie that still gives the same information but pads it out.

Sword Sadly continues this trend with plenty of unskippable cutscenes (despite there being an option in the menu to skip cutscenes) that really didn't need to be this long. The story was at its best when it was being hands off and letting me go about the Gym Challenge and talking with people myself along the way.

Hop as a rival was decent with a surprisingly relatable story. He's a dude that spent his whole life preparing for a role. His family are already really proud of his older Brother Leon for being champion and Hop feels like he's hurting his brother's reputation with his losses so he's definitely under a lot of pressure. Hop's putting in all the effort to be the best despite not being the best. He does stuff like switching out and training up an entirely new team whenever he loses to you (I feel it would have sealed the deal if he also ditched his starter, showing his desperation). And here you are, essentially taking his life's work from him effortlessly because you are the main character. I'm reminded a little of the plot of Monsters University here with how Mike was doing his best to be a scarer but being unable to due to lacking the natural talent of other monsters. Hop is the first rival in Pokemon I really felt bad beating because I've been in his shoes before of being outclassed in something I'm passionate about and trying my best to be good at despite my flaws by someone with seemingly God given natural talent. If Sword had branching paths where if you lose to Hop he becomes Champion, I'd gladly take the L there.

That aside, one of my criticisms with Pokemon games is that despite their massive wealth of deep and intricate systems and options for combat, the games never teach you or even hint that exists. Often relying on simple "Wow, you used a Super effective move there. Good Job". Which makes the Post Game Battle Towers feel like a completely different game when the training wheels suddenly come off with no warning and make people complain the base game doesn't evolve or is too basic. When I first played Sword, I was expecting Hop to turn this "You use Super Effective Hits" around on me as a way to teach the player new things through Hop. As an example, what if in one battle, Hop goads you into using Ember on his Grookey. You do so and it turns out he had an Occo Berry or a Weakness Policy in addition Max Sp Def EV investment. Hop then brags that even though "you may know Type Matchups, I know there's more than that".

I wish Sword did something like that as stuff like this would have really improved both the story and gameplay here. For gameplay, it gives the base game more of a challenge (the base game is a bit too easy) and teaches the player more mechanics. And for story, it shows how Hop is trying to go out of his way to improve by implementing competitive strats against you. Making his loses sting even more since he couldn't even beat you despite doing cool stuff like that.

Imagine if every time you faced against Hop, he tried out a new stratgedy against you that often took advantage of you blindly just clicking super effective moves. In addition to using berries and Weakness Policy, he could have used a Zoarak with Nasty Plot to trick you into using Psychic moves against it. Or he has a really bulky team that used Trick Room to be able to turn the tables on you. It was a missed opportunity to not go all out here. I understand Pokemon is a game for children but prior games did these things before. B2W2 even had difficulty options for those who wanted more of a challenge (granted, unlocking them was convoluted but it showed these games could often be more challenging and use more of their depth).

A common criticism of Sword's story is directed towards Chairman Rose and his plotline. And I'm not going to argue against them. Rose's role in the story isn't done well. And I feel Sword is another example of how such over the top and "epic" storylines don't really work in Pokemon.

This is a bit of a long section but bear with me here. So developers of Pokemon games like Masuda have given interviews where they've talked about the world and stories of Pokemon. In particular that Pokemon's world is "a subtle version of utopia" and that "Hoenn was based on Masuda's childhood memories of going on vacation on Kyushu". Essentially, Pokemon games are generally going for a "nostalgic childhood vacation with your pets through a perfect world" feel. And the games really commit to this vibe. The Pokemon world has free healthcare. In Hoenn, we see examples of how people are concerned for the environment that places like Whismer Tunnel got shut down the moment it was clear there was ecological concerns. Gen 6 has people creating infinite reusable and clean energy with no downsides whatsoever. In Alola, you can visit a police station where the cops are kinda bored because there's nothing for them to do. There are no systemic problems in crime, housing, overpopulation, resources, energy, environmentalism etc. Hell, even food isn't a problem everyone is vegan (and they don't eat grass types). You won't even see many farms of livestock in Pokemon.

This isn't a criticism. This sort of vibe gives Pokemon games a really comfy feel. Even if there are some darker stuff in Pokedex descriptions or in the Manga, they are almost always disconnected from the games. You won't see any Drifloons stealing children or Eevees crushing people despite what their Pokedex entries say.

But this does limit the kind of stories that would work well in this kind of world. You can see an example of this in ORAS with Archie and Maxie. In a vacuum, their motivations make sense. One of them wants to expand the Earth's landmass to create more room for humans to build and expand. The other wants to return the world to a state fit for Pokemon untainted by human progress. But the problem is that the world they live in doesn't have the problems these actions would be solutions to. Hoenn doesn't have a problem with overpopulation or resources that would prompt Maxie. Nor is there such disregard for the environment to prompt Archie.

As a result, Archie and Maxie aren't great antagonists and their story is unengaging. Their motives are so disconnected from the world that there's nothing you can really latch onto. And even defeating them is unsatisfying because no progress can be made because the Status Quo is perfect anyway. It's a similar case for Cyrus, Lysandre and Rose.

This is why I feel Pokemon antagonists are at their best when they have smaller scale and more personal plans, generally related to exploiting Pokemon. Like, Team Rocket are great villains because they are essentially the mafia. They profit off stealing Pokemon. Their motive is greed. You can understand why someone would do that and they do leave behind consequences of their actions like Slowpokes missing their tails or missing Pokemon. So taking them down actually "fixes something that is broken". Same with Ghetsis and Co in Gen 5.

Back to Pokemon Sword, this is the main reason why I feel Rose's story falls flat. Like Archie and Maxie, Rose is concerned about a problem disconnected from the Utopian world of Pokemon. And one that was already solved in prior games. In order to make Rose's story work, you'd either need to put cracks in that Utopia, such as Galar actually having energy and sustainability issues, or change Rose's motivations.

One idea I have to do the latter is to kinda take inspiration from the Isle of Armour DLC. Why not have Rose and Leon in cahoots as the antagonists? Have Rose be the one fixing Leon's matches so he remains the unbeatable champion. You can have Leon either be in on this and have him cheat against the player (which would create an interesting dynamic for Hop to go through) or have Leon be oblivious and join your side so he can have a proper fight as a proper champion. This would shift the conflict to something more connected to the Pokemon world.

Switching topics but this is why I like Team Yell in Sword. They are just Marnie's rabid fans which justifies their status as jobber grunts. The rest of the story with Bede, the other Gym Leaders and even Swordbert and Shieldbert, I enjoyed.

As Galar is based on the UK, I really like how the Pokemon League here resembles more of an official spectator sport. And the game does a neat job with this idea from the stadiums and crowds and official League Cards and merch, to more subtle things like how Gym Leaders deal with their fame as essentially professional athletes. Like, you have Leon and Raihan that are show offs and play to the crowd. You have Alaster that is a lot more shy and scared of the attention he gets as a Gym Leader. You have Opal that's "been in the game so long" that she's past all the formalities. You have Kabu and Bede that take the competitive side more seriously. It's neat.

''' 

:::

 

I did note one strange addition to the story. On Route 8, you can come across a lone house past a cave. Inside you find a man lying on the ground with some Garboders around him. After you defeat them, your character investigates the body, finds the man has been dead for a while and the Garboders were eating his corpse and gets the Focus Sash item. Your character freaks out and says he wants to leave and never think about this.

This took me by surprise. It feels so at odds with the story, tone and world of Pokemon and how otherwise faithful or inline SwShUP has been. Is this a reference to something? An Easter egg? Am I missing something?

 

-Other features 

 The game features all pokemon from Gens 1-8 as well as a few Hissuisn and Paldeans Mons. I think the final count is around 902 with around 800 minimum obtainable before beating the main game. Sword and Shield’s main 3D Switch version, with all its DLC, has around 668 Pokemon with around 500 or so actually obtainable to a solo player.

SwShUP even lets you do in game trades to get other regions starter Pokémon, has all mega stones and lets you mega evolve all applicable Pokémon (even though no NPC uses Megas) and you can find an NPC that sells you almost every battle item like choice specs, leftovers, Ability Pills, assault vest etc (but not Choice Band for some reason). The only omission seems to be a vendor for evolutionary stones as those are really rare. I haven’t come across a single one. Not even from Dynamax Raids.

The game features the Isle of Armour DLC and Crown Tundra DLC and these are.... kinda mixed. I already mentioned earlier that the Isle of Armour was annoying to navigate without a Map. A shame because I really the environments, the bonus 4 original Gym Leaders packing new types. Even the Cubfu quest is arguably "better" since you actually have to fight 6 powerful Dark or Water Types instead of jobbers (granted you can bring your own team. You're not limited to Cubfu but I did try to clear as much as I could with Cubfu before having Gardevoir come in).

 

I will complain that the game is missing the Restricted Sparring Mode from the 3D version. This was hands down my favourite part of the 3D version. The way it works is that it's a Battle Facility with a monotype challenge where a team of 3 tries to get as far as possible with 2 heals only through the entire streak.  The game even tracked with types you won with. I remember having a blast in the 3D version clearing the Flying challenge with Corviknight, Gyrados and Togekiss.

 

I was so prepared to dive into this in the 2D version. With way more Pokemon, I was  already planning my teams. I had Rotom Wash, Heat and Mow ready to go for the Electric one lol. But sadly, the 2D version doesn't have it despite how rad it could have been 😭.

 

As I was heading into the Crown Tundra "DLC" , I accidentally reset my Apple Watch when trying to do a backup which meant I lost my SwShUP save file. A shame as I was looking forward to seeing how the game handled it. My last memory was meeting up with Peony and catching Thunderus and Landorus from special Dynamx Dens.

 

 In conclusion, this is my favourite take on the Galar region and I really enjoyed my time with Sword and Shield Ultimate Plus GBA Version 1.2.1.2. The added Pokemon, content, graphics and design were more fun to play with than the main 3D Version. Stuff like Dynamax Raids were actually fun instead of a chore.

 

The Hack is held back from being perfect by a few bugs, the inconsistent scaling, the lack of polish in the DLC, inheriting some of the story issues from being too faithful to the 3D version, missing some features like Restricted Sparring. But I can 100% see myself playing this game in the future properly and getting achievements via Retroachivements. Even for a Nuzlocke of just the base game, this would be so sweet to go through. I still strongly recommend this Hack to everyone. 

 

 This also makes me wish for more rom hacks to be demakes of DS and later Pokemon Games. I've always wanted a demake of a Kalos or Alola game in this format. Here's hoping this is the first step in that.

Neverness to Everness Platinum

 Hello everyone. I recently platinumed Neverness to Everness and wanted to talk about it.

 

 

 

Overall, a straightforward if drawn out Platinum. 

 

The game has the standard Gacha Game trophies of reach level 80 with a character and their weapon (called Arcs here) as well as completing a good chunk of the main V1.0 story and certain side quests. But surprisingly nothing for doing any endgame events or engaging with a huge chunk of the side quests. In theory, I wouldn't be surprised if it would be technically possible to Platinum this game doing like 30% of the main content and like 10% of the V1.0 side content. I wouldn't advise doing that since, best case, it would take you 3-4 extra months of daily quests to make up the deficit because, like every Gacha game, you earn 3-4x more Account EXP (called Hunter EXP in NTE) from activities that require Stamina than most corresponding story quests.

 

I think Honkai Star Rail is probably the only Gacha game on PS5 at this point you could realistically reach the requisite Account Level with your Account EXP coming mostly from Story Quest Content rather than Dailies because HSR has several years worth of story expansions that award decent EXP as well as an option to knock down the difficulty if you're underlevelled for later quests. With NTE, I completed most of the story content and side content around Hunter Level 33-ish after about a month of play. Out of 50. There are calculators online you can use to track how long to go:

https://nullcat.net/

I groaned when it told me I still had 70 days to go. I expect this to get faster as time goes on as NTE gets more Story Content that provides more Account EXP.

 

There are only 3 Trophies I'd say were problematic.

 "It said go for it! = Defeat enemies with Ultimate *500.". This Trophy is bugged. I remember around early June 2026, I decided to grind this one out. There's an in-game achievement system that counted up 300 and I was at about 100. I decided to replay one of the challenge boss fights called "Anomaly Commissions" against 3 extremely weak fish monsters that I could 1 shot so I could get 2-3 kills per run and each run took 20 seconds max (including load times and restarts). I counted manually up to 600 with no Trophy. I was so confused when I looked up that yeah, this Trophy is bugged and also wrong? I've seen some sources say you just need to do Ultimates rather than kill enemies but also the game "forgets" how many Ultimates you do if you close your game? I ended up resigning myself hoping this got patched and forgot about until, when I was grinding for World Drops to Level up, I just randomly got it doing an Ultimate.

 

So advice would probably be to not deliberately grind this one out and leave it to last and hope it pops along the way? 

 

"Mhm? Mhm? Mhm?! = Receive 30 Nacupeda's Punishments. " The game loves timegating stuff. There's 2 other trophies that require doing a daily thing: "Mhm! Mhm! Mhm = Receive 30 Nacupeda's Blessings. " and "Flip-Flopping Future - Perform 10 Divinations. " but these ones just require you to log in and talk to a thing 30-10 times respectively for guaranteed progression.

 

Nacupeda's Punishments are random. You go to a fountain, select the option to Steal Coins and roll a chance to trigger the punishment. Supposedly it's a 50% chance to trigger it every day but I had 8 day+ stretches where it didn't activate. I did the math for different chances:

 | Assumed punishment rate | Expected days left |   |
| ----------------------: | -----------------: | ---------------------: |
|                     60% |           ~42 days |  |
|                     50% |           ~50 days |    |
|                     40% |           ~63 days |   |
|                     30% |           ~84 days |  |

 Mine ended up being closer to about 61 days from when I started farming for this trophy. And was the final trophy I was waiting on.

 

 The 3rd long timegating trophy was "Affinity Master = Reach Affinity Level 10 with 5 Characters Total.". 

 

There's a nice Excel Sheet listing out the most efficient details and combinations: 

https://www.reddit.com/r/NevernessToEverness/s/HDEdESqQp9

 

The main way this works is that in order to raise a character's Affinity to Level 10, you need to give them gifts which offer Affinity Points. You need 56000 Affinity Points per character to max them out at Level 10. However, you can only give each character a max of 3 regular gifts per day and give a max of 10 regular gifts per day. Regular Gifts can have different prices and give different Affinity Points depending on the character. For example, "Asahi Inori - Moonlight" costs $18,000 a pop and gives Haniel 400 Affinity Points but only gives Adler 100.  Depending on your finances and choice of characters, it can take 2-4 months get 5 Characters to Max Affinity at the same time.

 

My advice/approach was the following:

 

-1- Choose your 5 characters early and Opt for a 2/2/2/2/2 configuration where each of the 5 characters gets at least 2 gifts a day. Even giving them each 100 Affinity Point gifts in the early game is helpful as it would cost, worst case, $5000 daily. Then once you finish the main story and develop the Cafes enough to earn about $2000/h and can comfortably earn about $500,000 from Weekly city activities, begin transitioning to the 400 Affinity Point Gifts. Unfortunately, these can max out at $20,000 per 400 Point gift for characters like Jiuyuan. Fadia is thankfully the cheapest at $5,400 per 400 Point gift.

 

I went with Mint  ( $18,000 per 400 Points gift), Adler ($10,000 per 400 Points gift), Haniel ($18,000 per 400 Points Gift), Fadia ($5400 per 400 Points Gift) and Jiuyuan ($20,000 per 400 Points Gift). My thought process was that as Mint, Fadia and Jiuyuan are "Special Characters" that you can invite to a single daily Hangout which gives an extra 200 Points, I can alternate between them for the Daily Hangout to get them an extra 200. So when they finish, I shift to giving more 3 gift configurations.

 

-2- Something I do when Platinumming Gacha games I never intend to play again after Platinumming is to blow all my Premium Currency on speeding up the process. There kinda is a way to do this for Affinity. 

There are "Special Gifts". These have no limits and can still be gifted regardless of the current gifting caps. One are "Cinema Tickets". They give 400 Affinity Points each and are only obtained from events. The other Special Gift is "Handwritten Letters". They give 2000 Affinity Points each. Handwritten Letters Can be obtained by spending 60 Warp Pieces. Warp Pieces come from pulling "duplicate Characters, A-class Arcs, and Hero Chest" from the Game's Gacha System. S-Class character duplicates typically award 40 Warp Pieces (for copies 2 through 7) and 80 Warp Pieces for every subsequent copy. A-Class character duplicates award 6 to 12 Warp Pieces.

 

Because the game guarantees at least 1 A-rank every 10 pulls, I was likely to get, worst case, 0.6 Warp Points per pull. And I did have every A Rank in the game before long. So it would slowly shift towards giving me 1.2 Warp Points per Pull.  All my combined pulling got me an extra 5 Handwritten Letters saving me multiple days. I did have to focus all my pulling on the standard banner since NTE being player friendly with No 50/50s meant I needed dupes of characters from the standard banner to get Warp Points more effectively.

 

So yeah, NTE can be an annoying game to Platinum if you're zooming through it because there's essentially 3 parallel daily timers going on simultaneously that are the real bottlenecks. Nacupeda, Hunter Level 50 and Affinity.  Still, my order ended up being Hunter Level 50 (about 74 days from starting the game on April 28th 2026), Affinity (about 86 days from starting the game) and then finally Nacupeda (about 108 days from starting). At least with this combination, once I got Affinity, I no longer had to play the game anymore. Nacupeda only required me to log in, check a fountain and log out and repeat.

 

As for the game itself, separated from the Platinum, I am mixed on it.

 

When I first downloaded the game, I expected it to be like Anata as this "Anime GTA". Instead it's more like "Genshin Impact but with a GTA Gimmick". I remember back when Arknights Endfield first launched, there was an article talking about how every open world Gacha Game tries to be "Genshin but with a gimmick" and it's making harder for Open World Gacha games to distinguish themselves. Funnily, I don't think Endfield did a great job with that technically neither does NTE.

 

But to be positive, I think NTE is the first Open World Gacha game I played that I actually liked the story, characters and scenarios enough to not skip most cutscenes. NTE's story is a mix of oddly charming "slice of life Anime", workplace humour and "PG13 SCP stories". I found myself oddly invested in the side stories of helping Mint study for her exams, the entirety of the DnD Campaign added in the "999 Nights" updates, but also the Horror stuff.

 

The MC works as part of a supernatural entity hunting organization. These entities, called Anomalies, manifest as anything from haunted appliances trying to prank people, to actually kinda creepy horror sections that the game has to legit warn you about as being scary that even got me a few times. To giant monsters that are epic to fight against. The game has like 40 side quests spread out across the map called "Anomaly Commissions" that are easily the highlight of the game. Some are disappointing "fight this regular enemy that you'd be fighting anyway when grinding" but some are puzzles and platforming challenges that play with your POV in 3D space like those Escher diagrams. Some are Silent Hill style "avoid the monster" with legitimately scary atmospheres. Some are multi hour Adventure Game style puzzles across an entire school with multiple moving parts.

 I'd even go so far as to complain here that there's only a trophy for killing the Whale Boss Fight Anomaly. It's a shame the game doesn't encourage you to try out more of these with trophies.

 

The prison system is also surprisingly complex. In other GTA games, getting arrested just means you respawn at the Police Station. In NTE, getting arrested has you getting shipped to a prison island and required to serve your sentence. You can wander different areas of the prison depending on the time of day, converse with other prisoners, do daily events and tasks, get a job to earn money .... and try to escape. There's 5 ways to escape that require you collect resources over several days (or just use your platforming skills to do a tricky set of jumps to just escape). It is legitimately cool and I remember on my first day getting the game just spending hours exploring every inch of the prison, listening to every NPC dialogue. If you do want to get the Prisoners' outfit, you're required to get arrested daily and repeat the same activities to slowly accrue Prison currency over an entire month which does kill the replayability. 

 

The recent patch added in a new game mode called "999 Nights" which feels like NTE trying to do a comedy take on DnD style campaigns, RPG video games, and Expedition 33 (complete  with one sheep wearing a yellow 33 Banner you can summon, one wearing a 66 and one wearing a 99). This entire side mode adapts the game's systems to become a Dungeon Crawler where you get loot and EXP in an entirely self contained mode. The story, world and setup is legitimately engrossing. Like, I was hooked.

 

There was one boss fight between a Swordswoman and my God, it felt epic. I don't know how to describe but it felt like,  NTE wanted to become like Metal Gear Rising Revengence and did its damnedest to try to make it happen just once. It was the only time in the game I felt truly in love with the combat experience.

 

The open world map of Heterau is legitimately cool and super detailed. I remember exploring random rooftops in the downtown area to find the NTE's equivalent of Crackdown Orbs or Assassin's Creed's Animus Fragments and admiring random pools on rooftops, billboards etc. You can run into other Gacha characters randomly chilling in the open world and their dialogue is usually engaging. I think hands down, this is the best open world in any Gacha Game I have ever played (granted I've only played like 4 open world Gachas).

 

You can buy property and customize it and it is legitimately cool. 

 

Graphically, the game looks so beautiful and smooth on PS5. And on my iPhone, I can actually crank down the visuals considerably to preserve battery life and heat (something Arknights Endfield wouldn't let me do as much I would have wanted). 

 

With all that said, here are my negatives with the game:

 

For one, the game feels like it's torn between its aspirations as a GTA-Like and its obligations as a Gacha Game.

 

Take the currency system. One major currency in the game is called "Fons" and is used to purchase city based stuff like cars, property, food, gifts etc. You earn this passively from a cafe you can invest in at a rate around of $2500 per hour when max upgraded even when not playing the game. You can also earn about $20,000 per day from doing dailies and from Story missions. But the main source of Fons is from your weekly City activities called "Hetearu Hobbies" (and also the premium Battle Pass). These activities include Taxi Missions, Cargo Driving Delivery Missions, Street Races, Fishing, a Bank Robbery, Dominoes, Rockband, a version of "papas pizzeria" etc. But in order to actually get Fons out of these actvities, you need to use "City Stamina". 

 

The conversion rate is about  $1000 per 1 City Stamina and City Stamina only recovers to full on a weekly reset on Mondays. You start with around 500 City Stamina per week and can unlock higher amounts. I currently get refilled to 700 City Stamina a week and spending earns me (in the worst case), about $600,000 a week. If you don't have City Stamina you can still do these activities but you don't get any Fons out of it which killed my motivation to engage with a lot of the Hetearu Hobbies because I felt like I shouldn't be wasting my City Stamina.

 

But you also have separate currencies for upgrading Gacha characters that requires spending "regular Stamina" that recharges about like in regular Gacha games. I typically spend about 200-ish of these daily to do grinds for  Character, Weapon and Ability Upgrades.

 

I often found myself in scenarios where I was swimming in Gold Beetle Coins, Appleseeds and Badges .... but functionally broke because I was low on Fons. Or the opposite. Ways to exchange City resources for other Gacha resources was relatively restricted. 

 

In between my daily NTE sessions, I was also platinumming Assassin's Creed Shadows. That game also requires a fair amount of grinding and replaying content to collect currency, gear, EXP and materials. But I found myself feeling more "grateful" to Shadows' economy. If I wanted to go farm iron and wheat for my hideout, I could go redo Outposts to my heart's content and also earn EXP and money along the way. If I had an abundance of Money, I could use it on merchants to buy resources. If I had a lot of resources but needed more money, I could sell resources. I could either sell my weapons or break them down into materials.

 

Obviously Shadows is a Premium Boxed Product and NTE is a F2P Gacha Game and it's unfair to compare the two. And I could also mention the ways NTE gives you more content to do for Free than many other Gacha games. But I feel it highlights that NTE's generosity will likely forever be capped due to its nature as a F2P gacha game. 

 

But on a more concerning note is how limited NTE's GTA influence is on its main story. There's only 1 mission in the game, a tailing mission/chase with Hathor on her bike chasing a limo, that actually had me engaging with the open world driving in a main story mission. The rest of the time, it might as well not even be a GTA-Like. You can't even run over Monsters in your car to kill them. Most gameplay during missions is "go to a place, watch cutscenes, fight enemies with the same combat system I grew tired off, repeat".

 

I think there's a reason why most GTA-likes are also 3rd person shooters rather than melee focused games. You can shoot while driving and use cars and the environment as cover and tools so there's more versatility. In NTE, if you're in a car, you can only really drive the car. You can't attack from the car. But also, NTE can't guarantee what car you'll even have given the Gacha system and limited number of Fons. You can "hijack" Cars off the road. Pressing Circle will have Mint try to request the NPC hand over their car (which they can sometimes refuse) or you can attack their car for 10+ seconds causing them to flee at which getting into the car triggers a Wanted Level. But the cops are dumb. I remember getting arrested every day for a month straight to go to prison to do some dailies there and half the time, even when I was sitting there after stealing the car, the cops would often get stuck getting to me. And eventually once I got a Motorbike (that cost half a mill), I never had to hijack cars off the road again.

Another major complaint is the game's controller support of all things in menus. This game is very clearly a mobile game first and foremost. When in gameplay, the gamepad controls generally work fine. The more consistent issues I noticed is when driving right and letting the stick return to neutral. The game will sometimes jerk my car to the left (causing me to sometimes crash). My theory is that the left stick is emulating a virtual stick so letting go off the left stick as it's pointed right makes it "register left" as it returns to neutral.

 

But it's at its worst in menus. Take the Bond Menu. You have to press on the Dpad to navigate between submenus and the Left Stick to switch between characters .... except sometimes the game seems to forget which one controls what so left stick now needs to be used to navigate been submenu items. And sub-sub menu items (such as which gift to scroll through) require pressing X to go in, then using the left stick as the dpad might swap a menu higher up. On top of that, pressing on the Dpad even in menus will sometimes swap characters in the overworld because the game forgets to swap the dpad binding from character switch or menu actions.

 

This was especially funny in the Papa's Pizzeria Activity since you need to use the Dpad to control certain ingredients. And a couple times, this caused my character to switch and completely mess up the fixed camera to point in a completely different direction. 

 

While the character swap bug in menus is funny and never caused any problems, actual menu navigation is a pain because the game forgets which sub-sub menu you're in, swaps left stick and dpad controls, and pressing O to back out sometimes backs you out entirely rather than just the current sub-sub menu. It's such a bizzare experience that a Destiny or modern Assassin's Creed style cursor to navigate menus with a controller would be 100% an objective improvement. Seriously, if there was an option in certain menus to press R3 have a cursor take over, it would legit improve the menus so much it's not even funny.

 

Regarding combat, it's .... generally fine. It feels like a more lenient version of Arknights Endfield. One button strikes, One button Ability, a jump and jump attack that's useless, attacking generates an ultimate. A dodge. Meeting certain requirements in combat lets you switch to another character while doing an attack (such as doing an Ability Move with MC instantly charges up Mint's Swap in Attack).

 

The combat system is relatively basic because it needs to work for touch screens. The game is a lot more generous with dodges and "red ring attacks" compared to something like Arknights Endfield. Almost all Attacks you can dodge will have a small red line flash which you can visually and audibly rely on to press the dodge button. Instead of i-framing through an attack, attacks you dodge will give you a nice looking dodge animation. And the game is usually very generous in doing these red flashes for almost every attack enemies have and counting your dodges.

 

Attacks which can't be dodged will have a red ring that turns yellow. If you attack the red ring with an Ability, or a yellow ring with any attack, you can make the enemy cancel their attack and get stunned. On tougher enemies, they will do more frequent attacks or overlap attacks and stage hazards to offset the more generous dodging which can do serious damage to your health. 

 

 

In closing, I think I can make the case NTE is my "favourite" open world Gacha game. Its story and world are the few that got me, someone who normally skips that aspect of Gacha games, legitimately invested. The platinum is held back by some annoying time gates. And even aside from that, while game doesn't feel as predatory as other Gacha games, it still feels like it's somewhat held back. I think I want a Persona-like game in this style that can afford to go all out. But until then, I suppose I can appreciate that fact if, nothing else, this might end up being my rarest platinum. 

Suicide Squad Kill the Justice League Platinum Trophy

Hello everyone. I recently platinummed the 2024 game Suicide Squad Kill the Justice League and wanted to talk about it. Spoilers ahead.

 

 

While I understand it now (kinda) I found this was a really confusing game to Platinum because there's essentially 2 games here and some conflicting information and I wasted a fair amount of time "doing the wrong thing and wondering why I wasn't progressing". 

 

There's "the main campaign and open world" that has its own set of trophies. And there's the postgame grind and live service content which has its own set of trophies some of which overlap and ended up affecting the former. As a result, some of the online guides I found had conflicting and unclear information. For example, take "Blaze of Glory - Achieve 39 Stars in Riddler AR Challenges". At one point this trophy seemed to have been bugged because Rocksteady added additional Riddler AR challenges as part of content updates and expansions and the trophy now required you to do all added challenges in addition to the base game ones. So many older guides from the time mention that this trophy is bugged and you need to do all Added Challenges. However, Rocksteady patched this and it is explicitly mentioned in their patch notes. You only need to do the base game ones.

 

The more confusing thing for me was how the endgame trophies worked due to a combination of bugs, patches, and the game's own descriptions being unclear,  how the game works now may not be reflected in how some guides write about it. But in order to explain my confusion, I need to first give a crash course on how the endgame works:

 

So the base game has 3 difficulty levels: Walk In The Park (Easy), Best Pay Attention (Normal), Sweating Bullets (Hard). These are the options the game gives you when you first boot up the campaign and can change at any point. The Higher Difficulties also increase EXP and Loot you earn.

 

Once you beat the main campaign, a sort of separate but still connected new difficulty system opens up called "Mastery Levels". So when you start up a postgame activity, the game asks you "what difficulty do you want?  Walk In The Park (Easy), Best Pay Attention (Normal), Sweating Bullets (Hard), Mastery 1 (harder than Sweating Bullets and unlocked by playing a hard activity on Sweating Bullets difficulty), Mastery 2 (harder than Mastery 1 and unlocked by playing a hard activity on Mastery 1 difficulty), Mastery 3 etc". All the way up to Mastery 60 or something. Later Mastery Level Difficulties are locked until you complete certain activities on the previous Mastery Level Difficulty.

 

You can apply these Mastery Difficulty options to content in the main open world as well as specific endgame activities and depending on the activity, the difficulties are "tracked separately".  This confused me when I first played the game because most guides said some variation of "difficulty doesn't matter for your playthrough.... difficulty matters for endgame so make sure you play on the highest difficulty possible". I was like "wait, so which one is it? Does Difficulty matter or doesn't it? Can't  I just grind for a few extra hours on the lowest difficulty and eventually get the Platinum?" The truth is that for the base game/campaign, difficulty doesn't matter. You can play on whatever. But for endgame, you have to play on the highest difficulty possible to unlock the next highest difficulty and keep progressing.

 

For the purposes of the Platinum Trophy, this matters for 3 specific trophies: "The Venom Connection - Equip 3 pieces of the Tier 1 Bane Infamy Set",  "All Sorts of Fun - Equip 3 pieces of the Tier 2 Bane Infamy Set", and " The Reaper - Equip 3 pieces of the Tier 3 Bane Infamy Set". I feel these are the hardest and most demanding trophies in the game. You get these and everything else is an easy clean up.

 

To get the platinum, you need to get at least 3 drops of Bane's Tier 1 set, 3 drops of Bane's Tier 2 Set and 3 drops of Bane's Tier 3 set. How do you do that? There's 2 parts to the equation that determines which loot gets dropped.

 

The first is that there's 3 specific missions that open up in the endgame called "Incursion Missions". These missions are  "World’s Un-Fair" (and tends to drop Bane Shields and Grenades as loot), "Sending a Signal" (Tends to Drop Bane Guns), and "Invasive Species" (tends to drop Bane Neck Bomb Mods and Lucky Charm Drops). These missions require a currency called Promethium (around 250-1000 per player per mission) to attempt.

 

The second part of the equation is something called "The Finite Crisis Rank". The rank is determined by adding up the Mastery Levels of highest completions of the 3 Incursion Missions. So for example, if I do "World's Un-Fair" at Mastery Rank 3,  "Sending a Signal" at Mastery Rank 2 and "Invasive Species" at Mastery Rank 1, my Finite Crisis Rank will be 3+2+1 = 6. Your Finite Crisis Rank will not decrease even if you decide to go back and do "World's Un-Fair" at Mastery Rank 1 or something.

 

Specific Tier Bane Gear will be added to the pool of rewards you can get based on what Mastery Level you complete an Incursion Mission at, and what your Finite Crisis Rank is. For example, Tier 3 Bane loot requires playing an Incursion Mission at Mastery Level 24 or higher while your Finite Crisis Rank is at least 6o.  The thresholds are about "Mastery Levels 1-9 and Finite Crisis Rank 1+" for Tier 1 Bane Gear, "Mastery Levels 10-24 and Finite Crisis Rank 30+" for Tier 2 Bane gear and "Mastery Levels 24+ and Finite Crisis Rank 60+" for Tier 3 Bane Gear.

 

This is where one of the first confusions I ran into.  Turns out, upon the game's release, these loot drops were bugged and ended up dropping at earlier levels than intended. Many guides used that info to say Tier 3 Loot dropped after Mastery Levels 20. When instead, they should have dropped after Mastery Level 24+ (and this is something Rocksteady's patch notes explicitly noted was an issue and has since been corrected). I wasted a lot of time grinding at Mastery Level 20 missions and was so confused because "my Finite Crisis Rank is 64 and I am doing a Mastery Level 20 mission. What gives? Where's my Tier 3 loot?". Even online, I can't find any guide that has the corrected info. The game technically does tell you the correct Mastery Levels required but it's easy to gloss over and it instead highlights the Finite Crisis rank requirement more so. So uh.... ooops on me.

 

Moreover, in earlier versions of the game, the game would sometimes "take away" these main 3 Incursion Missions and instead ask you to play another Incursion Mission (usually a Horde survival mode or a repeat of the final campaign mission at a higher difficulty) as a combination of "Break from the grinding" and "test to see if you're ready to continue grinding". Many guides and videos I watched do mention this. However, in the current patch, the game will only do this once or twice and then leave you free to grind the main 3 Incursion Missions as long or as many times as you want.

 

I will note this grind for Tier 3 Loot was challenging. By Mastery Level 15, I was getting Smacked around hard that I actually had to dig in and start sorta buildcrafting. Something I am terrible at in every RPG/Looter shooter/MMO I have ever played. My main approach was Deadshot and giving him Bane's Tier 1 and 2 gear I had collected. Bane's gear tends to synergize with a status condition called "Frenzy" which makes enemies temporarily ignore the player and start attacking each other at the cost of taking reduced damage from your own attacks and being harder to drain Shield/HP from. I also had a bug? I think where if enough enemies around me were frenzied, their models would disappear and be replaced by a giant green swirling cloud of light which it impossible to tell what that enemy was even if they weren't frenzied anymore. I ended up getting sucker punched a lot by that.

 

However, it was still worth it because the rest of my build synergized well with Frenzy. I got gear that increased my damage on Frenzied enemies, a sniper that could Frenzy enemies on Critical Hits (and eating 10% of my Shield when this happened), and a perk that made Frenzied Enemies do more damage to each other.  I also dumped Overflow points into "Doing 8% bonus damage to enemies while airbourne" and "Bonus 3% Shield Capacity". Both helped me because I needed to hover close to enemies as Deadshot. It was only barely enough to squeak by and I was sometimes failing Incursion Missions as my DPS wasn't enough and if enemies KO-ed me, I'd lose precious time on the clock. On one attempt, I literally ran out of time, the Timer went away and the game was doing the mission fail dialogue when I just barely killed the final enemy so the game awkwardly continued the next phase of the mission despite telling me I just failed. 

 

This is why I said these were hardest trophies in the game. The rising difficulty levels do not mess around and you may have to grind Overflow Levels just to stand a chance. Every victory I had made me feel worse because it meant I had a higher Difficulty Level to go through. When I reached Mastery Level 24 and started doing attempts, it felt so discouraging to not get a single Tier 3 Drop. I was begging the game "please, I just need 1 shield/grenade and any weapon. I don't even want to use it. I don't even care if the perks are trash. Just give me this so I can be done with this!". I felt the game mocked me when it dropped 2 Tier 3 Grenades I already had. When it finally dropped the Tier 3 Sniper Rifle, the high was greater than that of Walter White's finest meth.

 

Onto more mundane stuff, another example of a trophy I found whose guides were somewhat inaccurate now was " Number the Dead - Defeat 10 Raising Hell Hit Squads". Upon launch of the game, the way this works is that the game gives you 5 random challenges you can see on the map and have to do in the open world. These can range from "kill x enemies in y location" to "Afflict X enemies with a Status Condition" and everything in between. Completing these 5 challenges raises a notoriety level and sends a "Hit squad" after you of harder enemies. If you leave the immediate area, the Hit Squad also disappears and you need to do 5 more challenges to get another Hit Squad to Appear. Killing all the Hit Squad Members also ends their pursuit and you need to do 5 more challenges to get another Hit Squad after you. This trophy requires you to kill 10 Hit Squads.

 

However, this Hit Squad System has been updated. For one, it's 3 challenges now, not 5. Plus, there is an Incursion Mission called "Killing Time" that throws you into a survival mode where killing enemies raises your Mastery Level and gives you more time. The goal of this mission is to survive as long as possible and then extract safely without dying or running out of time in order to keep your loot. However, every few Mastery Levels, the game might spawn a Hit Squad even if you didn't do any Raising Hell Challenges. So I was able to do 6 of my 10 Hit Squads in this mission and the remaining 4 in the open world. This mission is a godsend and saved me so much time.

  

And that's mostly all for the trophy side. While I am here, I might as well review the game  itself.

 

As for the game itself, I am.... mixed on the game. Like I said earlier, there's 2 games here. The Story/Main Campaign/Open World side, and the post game grind side.

 

Starting with the postgame, it's.... fine. I am historically not a fan of live service type games. And the whole reason why I even I went for the platinum was because SSKTJL was free on PS+, and PSNProfiles said it was a brisk 50 hours total and a 4/10 difficulty to platinum the game. I had already finished the main story, saw there were no unmissable trophies and figured it wouldn't be too bad to go for the platinum. And it... wasn't too bad but I do feel it was kinda repetitive.  Grinding the same 3 missions over and over again for a few days, for loot I wasn't interested in, while the story froze and no longer progressed. I was listening to YouTube videos on the side which helped. And the combat wasn't mindless as the increased difficulty meant I was always under pressure to keep moving and performing to my best. I can't say the experience was 100% mindless but I will note that if the game was Mastery Level 25 or higher to unlock Tier 3 loot, I would probably have stopped playing. At Mastery Level 24, I often had a 70% success rate on my attempts. I was lucky the game showered me with Promethium so I never had to grind more. I think in total. I must have done at least 40-50 attempts total before getting 3 Tier 3s.

 

I suppose this is the norm for this Looter shooter/Live Service Endgames. Repeatedly doing the the same few missions to unlock harder runs for better gear.  I will comment that at least the way SSKTJL handles its loot is a lot less "arbitrary" in a sense. In something like Borderlands, a weapon drop's quality is in part dictated by the level you get it at. So a Level 20 version of a gun is going to be way stronger than a level 10 version of a gun and there's no way to bring up a Level 10 up to a 20 or reroll or tune its perks.

 

SSKTJL operates a bit differently. Loot is mostly static and disconnected from level. So a Notorious Drop you get in like chapter 3 of the main story is just as capable as an endgame drop. The exact perks may not line up but by and large, you're not forced to have to keep equipping newer and higher levelled gear. If you find a set or loadout you are happy with, the game lets that you roll with that. There are NPCs that can help reroll perks or upgrade status on the weapon to improve it slightly at least.

 

I do wanna highlight some little things I liked about the game before moving onto the main campaign. I love the use of the Dualsense’s features. The R2 adaptive trigger being harder to use when melee-ing was a great way of reminding me I was overextending my characters. I loved the lights indicating my health, weapon and character. I love the use of the speakers for radio transmissions and wished more games (including the Arkham ones) did that. I love the extended database/codex complete with voice acted audiologs that can play in the background. Aesthetically and graphically, I felt the game and map looked cool

 

Now, as for the main story/campaign/open world, I may hurt my credibility with this review (as if I had any left) but I really enjoyed the first 80% of the campaign's story.

 

Like, I would have expected a Suicide Squad game to "play it safe" where Task Force X would have a "side mission" far from any actual heroes and certainly wouldn't kill any mainline Justice League members. But no. The game goes all in on its premise. It really does have the Squad kill off most of the Justice League. It doesn't "coddle" or "protect" the League. The end result for me at least is a way more interesting and novel story. I know this game is very controversial for its story but like, I felt it commits and does a great job with it.



I feel the story does a great job in characterizing the Squad. I flip flopped between "God! These are absoluty despicable heels" and "Golly gee, I feel kinda bad for these guys. Maybe they don't deserve this suffering. Maybe there is some humanity in them".



Like, when the Squad kills Flash, Boomerang prepares his whole speech. That's expected of him. He is an egotistical villain that gets off on hating Flash. But when he begins to desecrate Flash's corpse, at first Deadshot holds him and berates him like "Man, this is the Flash, what are you doing...." but when he sees Boomerang's junk, the whole squad turns around and praises him. It's this switch between "Hey maybe the Squad aren't bad people" to "God, these guys are monsters" that I find so interesting in the story.


I like the arc of the characters. They start out barely tolerating each other, forced to work together because of their internal bombs. And by Batman's mission when hit with fear toxin, they've worked together enough that they are able to pull through as a team and counter Batman despite the fear toxin really pull at the Squad's insecurities and pushing them to cut and run. Whereas Batman would have expected them to easily fall apart like any other group of disorganized and distrustful criminals.  

 

Moreover, I just love the dialogue and production value in the game. Between Batman's Radio Dialogue, the news broadcasts, the Squad's own quips, Brainiac's performance. It's legit good stuff.  

 

 I feel my biggest complaint is the fact this game is/was a live service game (Ironic given the first half of this post). It bleeds into the story. The game can't start with the squad truly hating each other and being dysfunctional like in other SS media because you need the 4 Squad Members kitted and functional by like Hour 2 for coop and Seasonal Events. The game can't have more handcrafted set piece like missions (like the past Arkham Games) because it needs to accommodate multiple players (potentially different characters depending on what players chose or even if there are multiple players).


For example, there's 2 missions in the game where the Squad are being hunted by Batman. They feel like they're from a horror game where you're on your own, using your flashlight to peek around while Batman leaves traps and occasionally ambushes you. It's really cool. But these sections have basic gameplay and don't go really far with how you respond against Batman.



Another casualty is the final 20% of the story. The squad kill Superman and are celebrating when Brainiac freezes them and brings teleports them on his ship. Brainiac has been built up this entire game. You don't hear or see him. And now here he is. He speaks in this eloquent way. He prepares his brainwashing machines while telling the Squad he will "give them everything they could ever want" and plays to their insecurities. Lex 2 Teleports the Squad last second off the ship and to Lexcorp. The squad try to catch their breath after what happens. And Boomerang even drops a rather funny "wait, I wanted to hear Brainiac out".


It feels like the game is shaping up for the final fight against Brainiac. Maybe the Squad could lose here or betray each other. Hell, you could even have a sequence where the character you were controlling when the mission starts eventually gets brainwashed by Brainiac and the remaining 3 Squad members have to kill him and then Brainiac to end the game in this bitersweet moment. Or hell, you could have a moment where the Squad embrace the end and let their neck bombs go off to save the world to end the game.



But the story has Lex 2 tell you "well actually, there are 13 Brainiacs across different dimensions/Elseworlds. You need to do some grinding to take on this one first". And now the story loses its momentum. It doesn't feel like I am preparing for a final battle against Brainiac. It feels like I am grinding to do a mission. And now I know the Squad will beat Brainiac and it devalues Brainiac because now the Squad will also have to challenge and beat the other 12 in post game live service updates.



I also feel it "devalues" the premise of the Squad and their accomplishments. What makes SS/Task Force X interesting, especially in this game, is the fact they're the longshots. The fact they've made it 30 minutes without failing or dying is a miracle. Every hero underestimates them. Waller even picks this group because "they are C-D tier villains. Nobody expects them to truly succeed so when they fail/die, it's no huge loss". The actual Justice League couldn't take down Brainiac. The fact the Squad are being sent in isn't because they actually are the substitutes but because they're the desperate "we got nothing to lose" option. 


But if the Squad are now grinding to take on Brainiac, and also are aware of the 12 other ones coming in live service updates. All of that changes. Braniac no longer feels like such an insurmountable task, but like, another villain and one the Squad doesn't have to worry too much on. It feels now like any group could have done this and devalues the fact that the Justice League failed to stop him. 

 

 The gameplay also suffers. I already mentioned some main missions were limited but also, a lot of missions are "kill x number of enemies an arbitrary number of times". The game has to do this rather than more specific scenarios since that would require scripting unique sequences and enforce structure on the player. But the game can't guarantee what squad member you are playing at, what gear they have, and what other players are active so it needs this more generic mission template to accommodate that.


Even the boss fights against the other JL members showcase this. How do you beat Flash? You wait for him to run around and begin one of his charging attacks. Then you "counter shoot him" with L2+R1. This opens him up to damage from your regular attacks. How do you beat Green Lantern? You shoot his green constructs, counter shoot him to render him vulnerable then shoot him with your regular attacks. How do you beat Superman? You wait for him to fly around and begin one of his charging attacks. Then you "counter shoot him" with L2+R1. This opens him up to damage from your regular attacks. The animations of the hero changes but not the "flow of the fight".


The only boss fight that is unique is Batman's because it can only be played solo and it dictates your character selection to some extent. So it can have a Horror game sequence beforehand where Batman douses the squad with Fear Toxin. And the Boss fight itself is against a Giant hallucination of a Demon Batman with custom attacks you have to jump over and shoot. It's still somewhat basic from gameplay but more unique compared to Flash, Supes and Hal. Even the Brainiac Boss fight has Brainiac turn himself into Flash and repeats the Flash boss fight but with more minions.

The open world also suffers here. Prior Arkham games also had relatively static open worlds to some extent (Arkham City and Knight took place across a single night after all). However,  in Arkham City, as you played through the main story, the progression of the turf war between Joker, Penguin and Two Face occasionally intersects with Batman's story in a way that's simultaneously in the background but also influencing the story in way that makes replays so much more interesting as you can see the puzzle pieces moving in real time.

For example, in Arkham City, the villains have established clear territories: Two-Face in Park Row (Solomon Wayne Courthouse), Joker in the Industrial District (Steel Mill), and Penguin in the Bowery (Museum).  Rumors spread that Joker is dying. This looming power vacuum motivates Penguin and Two-Face to plan their moves, while Joker's crew becomes increasingly desperate and divided. Penguin uses his influence to distract Joker's crew at the GCPD building while secretly holding Mr. Freeze in his museum. He further escalates the war by destroying bridges to isolate the Industrial District. Once Batman defeats Penguin, the Bowery falls into chaos. Two-Face capitalizes on this, seizing control of the Bowery and absorbing many of Penguin's men.

You can see the progression of this as you play with the thugs doing makeshift alterations to their uniforms, their dialogue and even where they are located. And they end up as obstacles to Batman not because Batman is directly involved in their turf war but because they happened to be in his way to his own separate objectives. Batman doesn't take out Penguin and Joker's men in the subway because he wants to disrupt their turf war but because they're on the way to Wonder City and as a result, learns more about their conflict. It makes the story and world feel so much richer.

SSKTJL can't really do this. The map is mostly static at the start of the game as it is by the end barring more destruction and surface level collateral. The early chapters had cutscenes showing Brainiac's forces capturing civilians and transforming them but they're not present during gameplay. Instead just wandering around or holding down territory. You don’t get side stories from other heroes or villains surviving the onslaught. Yo don’t see the progression of the war. It’s like time freezes when the game starts. Metropolis trapped in a perpetual live service limbo.


In another timeline, SSKTJL was a 8-10 hour singleplayer game that was able to make a more story focussed one and done game that didn't have to be completeable by different players and support years worth of live service content.  It may even help its legacy over time as a bold new and risky game. But instead, even though its servers are still up, even though it technically has an offline mode now, I worry this game wouldn't be around long enough for future players to appreciate any of its positives.