Backlog Conquering - Final Fantasy On PSP - Part 3 - A Crown, An Eye, And A Tonic

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. The newest game in the Backlog Conquering series is the PlayStation Portable version of Final Fantasy. this is the downloaded version of the game, but it is also available on UMD. To help with this playthrough i'm proudly using a guide from GameFAQS. here's the link, https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/psp/937909-final-fantasy/faqs/55625. i'm not following it exactly, but it's useful to have. 

I decided to edit Part 3 like i would normally in this series, and like how Part 1 was edited, so that you get to see the whole journey from A to B. I think i'll keep doing this going forward.

Part 3 was interesting as we managed to finish the 3 main quests we were doing. After finding the Marsh i explored it's 3 floors and found some nice items and beat the boss of the Marsh. We got a crown. so net i had to give that crown to the king from Part 2, and once that was settled we got an eye. In Motoya's Cave, the witch needed her eye back so we set off back there and she gave us a special tonic. i headed back to the elf town and gave the tonic to their prince. feeling better, we obtained a special key and set off to open rooms that had been previously locked. 

Part 1 - https://youtu.be/QWXAyHh-R0s

Part 2 - https://youtu.be/95BsHWcN6K0

Stories on Tuesday - The Get Out Kids - Part 1 - Chapters 1 to 13

The new game in the Stories on Tuesday series is the iOS version of The Get Out Kids from Frosty Pop Games. I'm playing this on my iPhone 14 pro, using the Lighting to HDMI adapter to record the video rather than using the phone's own screen recorder.

I previously played The Get Out Kids as part of Mobile Friday, https://youtu.be/pEhZEe0lyfE, and had a great time. back then i said i wanted to come back to it because i wanted to experience the story. It didn't win my Free to Play Mobile Game of the Year Award as it was a release of an older game that originally came out on Apple Arcade, but i had such a great time with it it did get an honorable mention.

In this Part, we started from the beginning playing through the same areas i played for last years video, but it wasn't long before we started experiencing new stuff. It was nice to come back to the game and focus on the story. there was one puzzle involving cars that i found difficult and actually failed. but it's not an issue with The Get Out Kids, the scene was restarted without penalty.

I'm looking forward to Part 2, and it might be the final Part. the story so far has been interesting but we leave it after something might've happened to someone close to us. my mind is racing with thoughts as to what might happen next!

Cloud Monday - SkyGunner - Part 2 - Gameplay Takes Practice, But It's Great To Play Via The Cloud

This week's Cloud Monday video is part 1 of playing SkyGunner on PS4 via the PlayStation Plus Cloud Streaming Service to my Japanese launch model PlayStation 4.

In Part 1, https://youtu.be/f5OsmwasRy8, it was clear that this was going to be ok to stream from the cloud because we're able to save at any point by pressing the Options button on the PS4 controller. what we learned from Part 2 was that the only way to save via the game itself was to save and exit the game via the pause menu. so playing it as a PS2 game on PS4/PS5 is the best way to play it via the cloud.

In this part we also saw how it would play if there were some streaming issues. things like macroblocking weren't that much of an issue because of how big everything in the game is, we're not loosing the small pieces of detail as there aren't much anyway. but the stream tearing, when grey appears on the screen, was more of an issue because this game is 4:3. when the grey appears, more critical video of the action is missing. thankfully, as we're able to pause the game via the emulation software by pressing options, we can stop the game and either wait for things to improve or save and exit if we have to. it's not an ideal situation, but it's fair compromise as there are some games where we can't save at any point, where we'd have to sacrifice a cutsene to get to a point where we could save.

So for SkyGunner, the more difficult question is is the game worth being streamed from the cloud in the first place. i think it is. one reason is that it's a somewhat rare game that i hadn't heard of that came out somewhat early in the PS2 lifecycle. playing it via the cloud is easy and cheaper than trying to find your own copy of the game. i also enjoyed it's story. i was surprised that in Part 2 we got the story from a different perspective as i picked a different character in Part 2. it may take some time to get used to how it controls as it's not perfect, but i think there's enough here for some fun, even if you only play through the story from one character's perspective 

Mobile Friday - Hardcore Leveling Warrior - An Idle RPG With A Nice Story, But A Short Tutorial

For  the first Mobile Friday of 2025, i tried Hardcore Leveling Warrior, from Superplanet on my iPhone 14 Pro.

I am mostly sure that Hardcore Leveling Warrior came out this year, 2025, so will include it in my Game of the Year Round up. it's app store page looked really interesting. the art looked cool, reminding me of the style of Kill la Kill, and for the most part i think it carries over well into the game. what was perhaps the most surprising thing was the soundtrack. the start menu blasts you with a cool song and the bgm throughout was nice. i do think that i'd have to tweak it so the music volume is less than the speaking.

I've played enough of these games to know that RPG could mean anything. but here in Hardcore Leveling Warrior, there's an actual story and within the first hour we watch a cutscene of our fall from power, we meet up with people from our past, and we make new friends. the idle nature of the game acts as the grinding of levels between story beats and feature unlocking.

After my time was up, there were many elements of the game i hadn't unlocked and a lot of story too. i get the feeling we're talking double digits of hours needed to play through it all. and of course, as a mobile game, the developers can always add more story or side quests in the future.

Hardcore Leveling Warrior isn't the simplest idle game i've played, it lives up to it's name. there are a large number of things to level up, one way or another. our character himself has a few ways to be levelled up, then there's the items we have equipped, our skills, our companions, boosts, and more. the numbers in this game are going to keep on getting bigger in a way that feels right for the game and our character.

The spelling mistake wasn't an issue for me, but what does keep Hardcore Leveling Warrior from being a great game is it's tutorial and quest mechanic. both start out as good and useful, but their limitations become quite apparent. early on, i failed to beat the first boss and my character was stuck looping the previous stage. the quest wanted me to beat the first boss, but when i pressed it nothing happened. the tutorial didn't tell me how to get out of the loop if i failed to beat the boss. But there were other times when pressing the quest took me to where i needed to complete an action. The home screen also feels unnecessarily cluttered. especially when the tutorial never talked about it and there were no quests to interact with it. 

Hardcore Leveling Warrior isn't bad but it's not fantastic either. but what it does have is an interesting story and some cool art and music. i wont be deleting it from my phone as yet as i'd like to see a little more of it's story. so i would say it's worth downloading and trying, but after an hour i think you'd have a good idea if it's something you want to continue or not.

Version 1.1.2 Played.

Demo Play Thursday - Phantom Brave: The Lost Hero On PS4

For this week's Demo Play Thursday i played the PlayStation 4 version of Phantom Brave: The Lost Hero.

Unfortunately my main audio recording stopped working so in this video i'm using my backup, but my MiniDisc ran out of space during the goodbyes so that's why the audio is odd this week.

I wasn't familiar with the Phantom Brave series but i could tell from the art that it was from the developers behind the Disgaea games. i've got a couple of them and played several others so i was looking forward to playing Phantom Brave: The Lost Hero. the PSN store page for this game reveals that the save from this demo will carry over to the main game. the demo itself didn't mention this at all during the hour i spent with it. at least there was a link to the PSN Store page to pre-order the game.

This demo felt like it was the actual start of the game. some demos will be bespoke and have some changes to avoid spoilers, but not this demo for Phantom Brave: The Lost Hero. this makes me a little concerned for the retail release as i encountered some small technical issues. the biggest of which being when my character stopped walking. 

Other than that, the hour i played went smoothly. i appreciated that the game's designers brought in the camera closer to the action. this made the characters look real good. there is a downside to this and it's that it was clear the none of the characters in this game had moving mouths. 

i thought the game did a great job of not only introducing the world and the main characters in Phantom Brave: The Lost Hero, but it also had a way for the main character to be underpowered, even tho Phantom Brave: The Lost Hero isn't the first game in the series.

Backlog Conquering - Final Fantasy On PSP - Part 2 - Getting To The Western Keep

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. The newest game in the Backlog Conquering series is the PlayStation Portable version of Final Fantasy. this is the downloaded version of the game, but it is also available on UMD. To help with this playthrough i'm proudly using a guide from GameFAQS. here's the link, https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/psp/937909-final-fantasy/faqs/55625. i'm not following it exactly, but it's useful to have. 

For Part 2 i wanted to try a different approach. normally, i show everything i do in a playthrough. but with the large number of random battles in Final Fantasy, i wanted to try cutting them out and only showing story progress. so whilst my recording was around 1 hour 20 minutes, with most of the random battles cut out it's less than 50 minutes! Let me know in the comments if this is a welcome change or if you'd prefer i stick to how it used to be. i may put up a community post asking for opinions.

Part 2, in terms of story, was also interesting as we got some things to do. We started in Matoya’s Cave and got a quest there. we visited Pravoka and defeated pirates, earning ourself a boat! next i visited Elfheim and we learned about their Prince and that became a quest. and finally we got to The Western Keep and found a King, who gave us our final quest.

Part 1 - https://youtu.be/QWXAyHh-R0s

Backlog Conquering - Hakuoki: Stories of the Shinsengumi - From Start To Finish On PS3

I have combined all 10 parts of my playthrough of Hakuoki: Stories of the Shinsengumi into one story. This ended up being the story that gets the "normal" ending. there are many other endings available.

I have increased the volume of all parts considerably as the volume for this game was surprisingly low. You may have to turn down your volume a little

Part 1 - https://youtu.be/H-TuXJyK05Q

Part 2 - https://youtu.be/hQJtjsH3jeo

Part 3 - https://youtu.be/DTXxfdyFOrg

Part 4 - https://youtu.be/Mu7t-UIiecg

Part 5 - https://youtu.be/1olfaNjwmHM

Part 6 - https://youtu.be/h2Ut7OM9bA4

Part 7 - https://youtu.be/hH4X7IveNVE

Part 8 - https://youtu.be/3y6O0LYkyAU

Part 9 - https://youtu.be/qMTqhn8H4qk

Part 10 - https://youtu.be/54LofduFvBM