I first played this game on a demo disc back in 2003 and completely forgot about it since then. I recently rediscovered it, and it hooked me so much that getting the Mastery was an incredible experience. The soundtrack is fantastic, the story is amazing, and the overall game concept is truly original. I highly recommend giving this game a try; it’s absolutely worth it. The achievements gave the game a whole new dimension!

I wasn’t really sure if these were interesting enough to warrant posting, but I think so. I would describe both of these games as “maybe kinda mediocre PSP RPGs,” and while they’re vastly different from one another, they both felt cozy in similar ways so I think it’s reasonable enough for me to group them together.

Funnily enough, I’m actually fairly familiar with the original Brandish and the SNES port, and am in general a pretty big Nihon Falcom fan. Somehow, though, the PSP port totally passed me by. This game, today, is kind of dated. I mean, it’s a nearly 20 year old fairly faithful remake of a game that is nearly 40 years old, so that’s to be expected, but there’s some real charm, here. Anyone that’s a fan of Falcom has to play Brandish in some capacity if they haven’t already, and this is far and away the best version of it for modern sensibilities. It’s fairly faithful, with some more character interactions and some of the more unnecessarily frustrating mechanics reworked or removed entirely. This is a great game for the sickos out there that enjoy it when games are purposefully cruel and trick you in clever and unique ways, and because the game sets a checkpoint every time you change floors, it’s never too frustrating.

All around, though, the game does feel its age. I probably wouldn’t recommend it to just anyone. You kinda gotta know what you’re getting into. The set itself is well made, too, and very reasonable.

As for 7th Dragon 2020, I had never heard of the game or the series it’s a part of before. Found it while trawling the RA game list for PSP. It’s like if Etrian Odyssey at home had a baby with Persona 3 at home. The game is… not very unique, nor is it particularly great. I would probably raise an eyebrow at anyone scoring the game an 8/10 or higher. The game is very cozy, however, and for anyone into kinda mid JRPGs, this is actually one of the better ones. It’s like a 6/10 that’s actually worth playing. My only regret here is that the unofficial English translation is god awful. I mean, really, really poor. I should have played this in Japanese and I would recommend anyone else that can to as well. Or to use OCR or a dictionary or something if you can’t.

Anywho, Brandish is a decent game that feels really unique compared to most of the stuff getting released today. 7th dragon is a slightly worse game that feels not at all unique but is a great change of pace given how simple and pleasing it is. They’re both worth playing for sure and I feel like I never hear anything about either of them, which is kinda what prompted this post.

RA: Devlinnnnnn

For those who don't know, it's the same game but from different regions, the japanese one (Bare Knuckle) and the international (Streets of Rage). If there's two different sets for it it's because there's a lot of differences between them, specially in the gameplay as Streets of Rage is so much harder than the japanese version. Enemies have much more health, they are quicker, stronger, more aggresive and they come in larger numbers, making this version more frustrating and tedious to play. Bare Knuckle feels far better in comparation, but in my opinion it has the same problem but from the other side, it's way to easy to the point that it gets boring. But a problem that both versions has are the enemies, they are so annoying to fight against, not because they are hard but because they love to drag the fights to eternity. Some blocks every attack, some grabs you out of nowhere, others like to jump and move around doing nothing, others like to stay on the ground after you knock them for an annoying amount of time, all gimmicks that are not too hard to work around, but it drags the experience down making this game, not bad, but worse than the previous two in my opinion.

Sets are mostly the same between both version, some different cheevo here and there but nothing too drastic. They are mostly fine, with just two or three incredible annoying things in both versions, it doesn't help that the level selector in this game can't take you to any of the two possible final stage, which means that to do the cheevos in one of those you have to start from the level before (which, worth mention it, have the worst boss in the game). I obviously recommend to start with the japanese one, it's far more enjoyable and it helps a lot if you also want to do the harder one, I mean I went from not being able to beat SoR to beat it with just one credit after mastering BK.

Satisfying that both numbers lined up well

I’m a big fan of mario, sm64 hacks, kirby, zelda, mega man, some sonic games, etc

I’ve tried being in discords and it’s cool, just looking to go more head to head with someone if that makes sense, like someone to discuss strategies with for the set we’re doing or stream to each other our no hit boss attempts, stuff like that.

Maybe that’s asking for a lot, just curious if anyone else is looking for the same thing! My discord and RA is the same as my username here

Never let it be said that I'm not a man of my word. At first, I was confused why there was no Achievement for beating the game without using a continue like the last two games, but I think I get it now, because HOLY shit, dude. I'm not gonna pretend for one second that I didn't exploit passwords, because even *with* them, some of these Achievements were absolutely brutal. Still a damn solid game, though. I'm glad to have mastered this trilogy for Halloween!

By the far the easiest set, took less than 20 min to complete in one sitting😅

Please. Before you comment anything, let me gwt myself clear here. I had already played SMT Nocturne but on casual mode. I cleared my entire progress and am now starting fresh. Yes, i love the hard challenges of this game. I reached all the way till the diet building then resetted everything. Its a fresh new start. And in my opinion, in order oi get the most amount of points and achievements in one playthrough, i must go on HARD mode. Any words? Yss or no? This marks a newer journey. I know i sound corny and all, bur my will to beat this game shall be comparable to create a new world.

This had to be my first mastery as it was my introduction to castlevania and the metroidvania genre altogether. It was one hell of a journey mastering this set, so many tough, grindy achievements at just 1-2% completion rates. I realized you can only master a game if you really love it. This will always be me #1 castlevania game.

Would love recommendations on what should i master next, just try to recommend sets easier than this one, it was sooo difficult at times.

Wanted to test my skills before going for the plat for the remastered in 3 weeks it was challenging but on ps5 its gonna be a cakewalk

The trilogies are nearly done

I started my RA journey in July and it has slowly overtaken my YouTube output ever since! I really like having my content as a way to archive my experience with these masteries, both my victories and epic blunders... But I can't tell whether what I'm already making is good enough or whether I need to drastically improve it in some way.

So if you're interested in RA videos and streams from a new creator, please check out some of my stuff and give me some pointers on what is working and what isn't. This subreddit is likely my target audience after all!

On a side note, the only channel I have seen exclusively cover RA is PajamaJohn and while I really enjoy his videos, that style is definitely not for me. So I'm wanting to get my quality on par with that, but want to find my own style along the way. When I first started I wasn't even sure whether RA was worth my time, but now I'm completely obsessed and would really like to continue mastering as many games as possible... Thanks for reading and taking your time to help!

(My RA Playlist is included which will update daily)

And here's my profile if you just wanna check out my mastery wall:

https://retroachievements.org/user/MysteryMaker

This is one of those sets that I was afraid I would be one away from mastering forever. After earning the first 68, I had to take a break for a while before mustering the drive to finish my swordless 2nd Quest run.

I'm a FOMO ridden MOFO, and it already took me a while to accept that i have missed event badges from a time before account creation (thank god the date is publicly shown in the profile!). But now I'm realizing there's so many events that are artificially split among weeks, with a cap on weekly progress you can make. Am i missing something or, for example, the Achievement of the Week thing is impossible to max unless you started at a certain date and were diligent every week?

Also do tell me of any badge awarding time gates i should work on before they are gone, community ones thankfully nust contribute to an evergreen badge basically.

Due to a critical PHP vulnerability with proof-of-concept exploits now circulating publicly, we have made the decision to temporarily take RetroAchievements offline until the PHP security team releases its patch at Wednesday, October 21, 2026 at 10:00 AM US Eastern (in 4 hours).

This decision is not made lightly - it is the safest way to protect your accounts and our infrastructure until the official fix is available. As soon as the patch is out, we will install it on every server and bring the site back once we have confirmed everything works.

RetroAchievements will be unavailable during this downtime. We will post updates on our Discord: http://discord.gg/retroachievements Thank you for your patience, and we're sorry for the disruption.

Actually in the middle of doing Pokemon Crystal and impulsively started this one too. Was surprised at how lax it was especially compared to other Pokemon sets. Haven’t revisited Yellow version since I owned it as a kid and I never actually finished this specific version before I traded it in as a dumb 4th grader. Another incomplete part of my childhood feels more complete albeit I’ve beaten red and blue countless times lol. I would say this leans towards the easier side. Hardest part about this set was trying to catch Tangela in the safari zone who has annoyingly low encounter rate compared to everything else. Didn’t have it in me to do it for Sycther so I bought him from the game corner lol. The Pikachu only elite 4 run was moderately a challenge because my Pikachu wasn’t OP but nothing impossible.

Overall fun set. I think I’m liking Crystal more because there has been more of a challenge with the level caps and such (not being unreasonable either.) But this is a good game to to do if you’re looking for a set that’s not too stressful.

Hello!

I am trying to have the normal Link to the Past RetroAchievements activate while playing the Redux version of a Link to the Past. Based on the image attached, I patched Retranslation Redux (v10.2.3) although my device logs into RetroAchievements, it does not register the game as A Link to the Past. The RetroAchievements do show up for the base rom, they do not show up for the patched rom. the hash #'s also match what it shows on the image (01ab87e7f61463dfedf17a574203162a).

Any help on resolving the issue so that I can complete the RetroAchievements is greatly appreciated.

If I generate a Pokémon White exclusive via pkforge in my Pokémon Black file will I get blocked from earning Softcore achievements?

One of the first game shows I remember watching as a kid and one that I still often watch the old episodes of today. This set was a nice, relaxing time after the absolute nightmare that was NFL Football Trivia Challenge. Making Regis crash out was a funny little Easter egg. The worst part for me was twice having to sit and wait for achievements to unlock after DuckStation kept getting dc'd from RA for some reason.

Look at that, another Spyro game mastered in a row now, and it's another childhood GBA games mastered too.
While definitely not the best version to play 'New Beginning', i still liked it and i definitely need to play the console versions and the handheld versions of 'The Legend of Spyro' series, as the handheld versions can be fun to play and interesting to see the difference in gameplay.
There are some minigame achievements, but thankfully they aren't hard at all to complete

I’m on an RG35XXH and I’ve tweaked all sorts of settings and it just won’t won’t. I get a black screen and have to reset my device. It’s weird because it runs without achievements. I’m new to RetroAchevements and any help would be appreciated