Backlog Conquering - Anthem On PS4 - Part 10

Welcome to Backlog Conquering. This is a series were i play a game from my backlog that i may or may not have played before. the goal isn't necessarily to finish the game, the goal is to play it. that way, i can have an opinion about it.

Our new game is the PlayStation 4 version of Anthem. i have previously played around 5 hours of this game back in 2019, but i stopped playing once EA announced they weren't going to update the game. The main reason for picking up Anthem now is that the game servers are going to be turned off on January 12th 2026. I started recording these videos before the servers were taken down so from Part 5 onwards, these will go live on YouTube AFTER the servers have been shut down. You can't play Anthem anymore as the game doesn't have an off-line mode, it was online only.

Unfortunately, this is more like Part 10 B. i lost the first part of this video when my recorder crashed. so at the start of this video i do try to explain what happened in the story up to when this video starts. i recorded this the late into the day Anthem's servers were going to close. i had hoped this would be the final part, but right at the end the game forced me to do yet another quest once again delaying my progress. I do end this part at the point of no return where i can choose to do the end game. but you'll have to come back and see if i had enough time for one more part or if this was my final Anthem video.

Check out previous parts:

Part 1 - https://youtu.be/A9yTrycU5gk

Part 2 - https://youtu.be/e8-wLS1CmN8

Part 3 - https://youtu.be/n-V3VDh_cJQ

Part 4 - https://youtu.be/kgWj3TeJWXg

Part 5 - https://youtu.be/ujvrBZeRZOI

Part 6 - https://youtu.be/OaOLQf336ZQ

Part 7 - https://youtu.be/ivTkSJ9nJGg

Part 8 - https://youtu.be/CV1P3tc7pOs

Part 9 - https://youtu.be/ir62lx7d7rc

Stories on Tuesday - Fatal Twelve - Part 1

The new Stories on Tuesday game is the PlayStation 4 Disc version of Fatal Twelve from Sekai Project and aiueoKompany.

Part 1 made an explosive first impression and was interesting throughout. i'm not used to the main characters in these sort of visual novel games having so much inner monologues. i do like the art and style i've seen so far and the music has been a nice complement to it. sometimes in these games the characters have few art so they're often showing an emotion but saying another. here in Fatal Twelve it's been refreshing to see some subtle changes in the character's expressions. for me, what was interesting about the end of this part was how it recontextualised earlier bits of the video in such a way that my assumptions as to what was happening were way off.

Demo Play Thursday - Dragon Quest VII Reimagined DEMO On Switch

For this week's Demo Play Thursday i played the Nintendo Switch version of Dragon Quest VII Reimagined from HexaDrive.

I haven't played the original PlayStation One version of Dragon Quest VII nor the first remake of the game on 3DS so i came into this demo knowing nothing about it's story or who the characters are. one of the reasons why i wanted to try this demo is because of the game's art. there's something about the art style of the characters that grabs my attention more than the usual Akira Toriyama Dragon Quest Characters. i had wanted to try it on PS4, but the demo hasn't come out there but in the end this Switch version played great.

This is a much longer video than typical Demo Play Thursday videos and yet i didn't reach the end of it's story. but i did a lot in the demo and i had a great time doing it, too. i found the pacing very good, the story interesting, the game's performance solid, and most of the characters were cool. there was just one that really annoyed me and in 3 hours only really had 1 moment i could look at and say was nice. the rest of the time, Maribel was just unpleasant. 

The game's premise was odd, that this is the only island in the world. logically, it doesn't work. but as we played and learned that there are characters in -game who also think this, the story became more mysterious. in this video we uncover some secrets and go on an adventure and by the end when we came back, i couldn't help but wonder whether our island was the bad guys. it probably won't go that way, but after playing the demo i am curious about how the story will play out.

something i really liked about this demo, that will carry over into the main game, was how much you can customise your playing experience. when you start the demo the game will ask you to set the game's settings how you like. i chose to keep things normal but i did change it so my party's health would go back to full after battles. for me, this made the game's difficulty pleasant. but there are many other ways of making it easier or harder. thankfully, you're then able to change these whilst your playing the game so it's possible to fine tune the experience to how you want to play it.

I had a great time playing the Dragon Quest VII Reimagined DEMO, so much so that i'm really interested in getting the game now and continuing from where i left off in this demo. the art style might be a little polarizing but for me it works and it really feels modern whilst respectful to the original art. i look forward to Dragon Quest VIII getting the same treatment. this demo is worth trying for anyone curious about the series and i recommend people give it a go.

Backlog Conquering - Anthem On PS4 - Part 9

Welcome to Backlog Conquering. This is a series were i play a game from my backlog that i may or may not have played before. the goal isn't necessarily to finish the game, the goal is to play it. that way, i can have an opinion about it.

Our new game is the PlayStation 4 version of Anthem. i have previously played around 5 hours of this game back in 2019, but i stopped playing once EA announced they weren't going to update the game. The main reason for picking up Anthem now is that the game servers are going to be turned off on January 12th 2026. I started recording these videos before the servers were taken down so from Part 5 onwards, these will go live on YouTube AFTER the servers have been shut down. You can't play Anthem anymore as the game doesn't have an off-line mode, it was online only.

I had hoped that the game's stopping our progress in the story was over, but unfortunately it happened again in Part 9. to progress the story this time, a new character was introduced and we had to do tasks for her. it was obvious that she wasn't telling us the whole truth so when things went south it wasn't much of a surprise. By the end i was invested in what was happening and then it's dropped by the game. i wanted to know where they had been, how long it had been for them, what happened that day, and yet the game says thanks for saving them, gives us the item we need, and moves us along. i ended this part going shopping and still needing some items to continue the games story. at the very least, this pause in the story was handled and integrated into the main story better than what happened in parts 7 and 8.

Check out previous parts:

Part 1 - https://youtu.be/A9yTrycU5gk

Part 2 - https://youtu.be/e8-wLS1CmN8

Part 3 - https://youtu.be/n-V3VDh_cJQ

Part 4 - https://youtu.be/kgWj3TeJWXg

Part 5 - https://youtu.be/ujvrBZeRZOI

Part 6 - https://youtu.be/OaOLQf336ZQ

Part 7 - https://youtu.be/ivTkSJ9nJGg

Part 8 - https://youtu.be/CV1P3tc7pOs

Stories on Tuesday - Monsters (Probably) Stole My Princess

The new story is Monsters (Probably) Stole My Princess from Mediatonic. i played this on PS3, but as a #minis title its playable on PSP and PSV too.

I have played, and finished, Monsters (Probably) Stole My Princess in the past a few times. But i wanted to play it again and i thought that it could be a game i can showcase on Stories on Tuesday. there isn't much story here, but the twist at the end is a fun one. this video is the whole story and it shows my entire gaming session, including some fails, the credits, and a look at some of the menus.

iPhone Friday - Heartopia - It Has A Good Tutorial And Is Welcoming But The Start Is A Little Slow

For this week's iPhone Friday i tried Heartopia from XD Entertainment on my iPhone 14 Pro. 

Heartopia is a highly rated game that is top of the family charts here in Japan and people in my Live Stream chats have mentioned it. but it's not a type of game i typically play. i have played Animal Crossing before but rarely any other similar style of game. graphically, Heartopia seems to be a mix of Animal Crossing but also the My Sims games from EA. i actually like the style they use here.

The introduction to Heartopia feels welcoming. my guess is that the developers have targeted this game towards a more casual gaming audience and in doing so the tutorial in Heartopia feels well considered without coming across patronising. But this does also mean that the start of Heartopia is much slower than i personally needed. i feel that even by the end of this video i was still in the tutorial faze of the game and hadn't made any meaningful progress.

Heartopia is labeled as a cozy game and i do get that feeling from it. there's no urgency from the game but there's always a sparkle trial lighting the way when you do want to continue. the world map is huge and there's clearly space for DLC additions to it. one way the game manages this size is by having a bus route around the central town area. whilst being novel, to get back home i still needed to walk a little bit. it's hard to say whether the bus route will grow as our playthrough of the game continues or not.

As the game is taking things slow, it's also not really explained where things could be going. the store page helps provide some extra information but the game itself, in my time with it, doesn't showcase what you can do with it. the game has an additional data download at the start but does nothing with that. the music and background image remain on screen, there's no video, no trailer, not even screenshots. the developers missed an opportunity to show what's possible.

I have rated the game as worth playing, shown by the up arrow, as even though i feel like i haven't made much progress what i have done was easy to do and understand. 

Version 0.4.5 Played

Demo Play Thursday - The Legend of Heroes: Trails Beyond the Horizon Story DEMO On PS4

For this week's Demo Play Thursday i played the PlayStation 4 version of The Legend of Heroes: Trails Beyond the Horizon Story Demo, from Nihon Falcom.

I've been told before that these The Legend of Heroes games have a slow long start to them. so in this playthrough of the Story Demo, i allowed myself more time than usual to check out more of the game that i've done with previous games from this series.

The game does look great on PS4 and mostly runs fine but i did notice some pop-in and there was a moment when my PS4 froze. it's possible there were some minor tech issues with it as i remember near the end moments when it looked like one of a character's eyes was not open. Other than that, the demo went smoothly. this is the most recently patched version of the demo.

For this being a "Story Demo" there was a lot of battles at the start. the battle system is mostly introduced to us smartly, but the fact we have to do mostly the same thing twice in the first hour or so means it got a little boring. the final tutorial boss fight was fun. After that we were introduced to what's been happening in the game world, mostly between the end of the previous entry and this. But what's odd is that in this video i never worked out what the game's actual story is about. i speculated what it could be. but for the most part, all we did was the battle tutorial and have a reunion.

You'll have to let me know in the comments how much further i had to go to get the game's story. i know this demo is from The Legend of Heroes: Trails Beyond the Horizon Prologue but i am surprised that for a demo they didn't include anything to hint at or tell us what the game's story actually is. there is no trailer nor screenshots on the main menu. there's no hint as to how much further i would've had to go either.

It's difficult to recommend The Legend of Heroes: Trails Beyond the Horizon as fans of the series know what they're getting themselves into and for those coming to the series for the first time there's a real chance they'll come away lacking the context to fully understand what's going on in the game.