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Post by dsparil on Jul 21, 2019 13:16:59 GMT -5
I played the first level of the SNES and arcade versions of Gunforce and they do seems to be almost identical on the default difficulty for the arcade version and medium difficulty for the port. I'm assuming that holds up for the rest of the game. So, claiming both would run afoul of the "no simple ports" rule.
In general, I lean towards counting versus not counting, but these two do seem very close. Sorry for the confusion!
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Post by JoeQ on Jul 22, 2019 2:30:08 GMT -5
Dark Souls II: Scholar of the First Sin (PS4) - Replay (NG+ and NG+2), Time: 70h (estimate) I got the platinum trophy for DS2. Did quick run through NG+ and then a full playthrough of the main game and the DLCs on NG+2. Well, almost full, since I skipped the pain in the ass optional DLC challenge areas. Rating: 4/5 Alphabet Challenge: ABCDE-------MNOP--S-------
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Post by Null0x00 on Jul 22, 2019 6:25:30 GMT -5
Have you played Bit Trip Runner 2 and 3? No, but the little I've seen of Runner3 looks to be of higher craft than Paws on Fire. Honestly, I was glad when I finished everything so I never had to play it again.
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Post by dsparil on Jul 22, 2019 8:38:11 GMT -5
Ys IV: Mask of the Sun (SNES, First Time)
Started with the SNES game since it was the canonical version although I also have the PCE version ready to go. At first, this game is absolutely brutal, and it's very easy to die to the earliest enemies constantly. The AI is ever so slightly smarter than in I and II as enemies will reposition themselves so that you attack them head on instead of off center. Of course they are also capable of much finer movement than you so it's hard to do this "technique" yourself. After gaining some levels and better equipment, it does get into a much more reasonable difficulty and actually ends up being fairly easy. Most of the bosses aren't all that tough either.
There's a very underused element in getting magic from swords. Magic also felt unnecessary in V, but there's also a whole pile of spells. Here, you can use magic from only 3 swords that you get towards the end of the game. I also kinda liked the plot, but I can see why Falcom decided to redo the game. There are certain aspects like the invasion by the Romuns that seem like they're going to be a big deal but end up not really having much impact. Still, a pretty fun game once you get past the too hard beginning.
My last save was at 7:25:20.
Rating: 8
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Post by JoeQ on Jul 23, 2019 8:00:46 GMT -5
Pajama Sam’s Lost & Found (Windows) - First playthrough, Time: 3h 53min (timer)
A simple, tedious and overly long arcade game spinoff.
Rating: 2/5
Alphabet Challenge: ABCDE-------MNOP--S-------
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Post by moran on Jul 23, 2019 10:20:55 GMT -5
A bit of a dump because I haven't really been on in a while, so I'll be brief. And i can get more acurate times when I am home.
Nioh - PS4 8/10 ~40 Hours I really enjoyed this while knowing little about it going into it. I expected a DS clone but was pleasantly surprised by the mission based action gameplay of it.
Sekiro - PS4 8/10 ~60 Hours Took the time Platinum this one, great game. Not From's best, but one of their most refined games. Looks great and plays great, but a little too linear compared to DS or Bloodborne. Combat was really fun. Working my up from basic swords and axes to mastering the kusarigama was a blast.
Mega Man 11 - PS4 6/10 ~3 Hours Not a top MM offering. It lloks great and is a solid game, but was kind of middle of the pack classic MM game, maybe even close to the botom of the list. Just found it a bit bland I guess.
Messenger - Switch 7/10 ~13 Hours (Including DLC) I really liked this, great retro Metroidvania-like game with cool aestetics and time travel aspects.
Sky Force - IOS Mobile 5/10 Adequate mobile schmup. fun to kill time with.
Sky Force R. - IOS Mobile 5/10 See above.
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Post by lurker on Jul 23, 2019 10:56:39 GMT -5
I thought the gears were an interesting idea.
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Post by moran on Jul 23, 2019 11:09:27 GMT -5
I thought so too, but I felt they were ultimately useless. I hardly ever used them.
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Post by 🧀Son of Suzy Creamcheese🧀 on Jul 25, 2019 15:58:50 GMT -5
Streets of Rage 2 (MD, played on Win10, 1st play, 45 mins)
Played with Axel and on Easy because I don't have much patience for beat-em-ups.
Even though it shares some flaws with the original SoR, this is miles better. It kind of makes me not even every play SoR1 again. The balancing's kind of off, though, at least on Easy; All of my deaths except for two or three fell into the latter 3 stages. It gets kind of annoying, especially at the stage 6 bosses and the boss before Mr. X. The moveset's really fun (love slamming down on someone with my knees and grabbing them), though I found the special move utterly useless, and I don't like exchanging health for a special move anyway.
I'll probably go back to it to play it on normal and/or with different characters.
Rating: 8/10
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Post by toei on Jul 25, 2019 16:12:50 GMT -5
Claiming Kishin Douji Zenki: Denei Raibu, first time, and two replays: Kishin Douji Zenki (Game Gear) and Kishin Douji Zenki: Battle Raiden (SNES). These are all different games.
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Post by Null0x00 on Jul 27, 2019 7:42:25 GMT -5
Cleared Knuckles Chaotix for the Sega 32X in 2 hours. Repeat playthrough done on an actual 32X system (don't ever do this).
5/10. The rubber band mechanics are implemented decently enough, but the levels are so nondescript and generic that they blend into each other. That, and the game has near continuous slowdown on an actual 32X that it ruins the whole experience. For a game that's supposed to be the main showpiece of the 32X hardware, it really doesn't show much improvement other than the expanded colour palette, 3D special stages, and mandatory sprite scaling/transparency effects. It also has all of the hallmarks of a unfinished game, with no victory animations for the characters on clearing acts, no death animations and no ending cutscene after the final boss.
If you're really interested, just emulate it. At least you'll get better performance in a modern emulator vs a 32X setup.
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Post by Digitalnametag on Jul 27, 2019 13:28:56 GMT -5
Marvel Ultimate Alliance 3: The Black Order Switch 12 hours FTP
Fun beat'em up that is heavily inspired by the Marvel Cinematic Universe. There is a lot of neat comic stuff too but the basic plot is pretty simple. Get the infinity stones while bouncing through a lot of high profile Marvel stages. The game-play has been further simplified from the previous Ultimate Alliance games with characters only having four abilities and a basic combo string. There sure are a lot of characters though. You can level up abilities but only a couple times and they all follow the same flow-path. You do get access to equip-able shard things but these have boring percentage effects and aren't really fun to mess with. They may as well have cut these from the game as they don't add much. You can tell they wanted it to be replay-able like Diablo with multiple difficulties and the infinity rift challenge stages but MUA3's shards are not nearly as exciting as Diablo's equipment. Also no unlockable costumes! You can unlock these lame alternate color schemes but they don't change the character model. Boo.
Complaints aside the game is a perfectly serviceable beat'em up. Definitely more fun to play with friends and thankfully co-op is easy to pick up and play. I played about half the game with a buddy. Fun to play for a few hours just don't expect much depth. They have all sorts of DLC plans (including unique costumes and tons of new characters) so I may come back to it in a few months. But for now Fire Emblem calls.
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Post by zerker on Jul 27, 2019 18:31:52 GMT -5
Finished Delver (Linux) First time; 3 hours. My first ever roguelike/lite victory. Ironically, also my first run of the game. So it's a bit easy. I would have liked it as much if it wasn't even random at all. A lot of the room pieces are intricately designed, so it actually discuses it fairly well until you see repeats of particularly unique ones. 8/10.
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Post by alexmate on Jul 28, 2019 12:57:04 GMT -5
Cleared Knuckles Chaotix for the Sega 32X in 2 hours. Repeat playthrough done on an actual 32X system (don't ever do this). 5/10. The rubber band mechanics are implemented decently enough, but the levels are so nondescript and generic that they blend into each other. That, and the game has near continuous slowdown on an actual 32X that it ruins the whole experience. For a game that's supposed to be the main showpiece of the 32X hardware, it really doesn't show much improvement other than the expanded colour palette, 3D special stages, and mandatory sprite scaling/transparency effects. It also has all of the hallmarks of a unfinished game, with no victory animations for the characters on clearing acts, no death animations and no ending cutscene after the final boss. If you're really interested, just emulate it. At least you'll get better performance in a modern emulator vs a 32X setup. I've got this and the Mega CD game to complete then I will have completed every "16 bit" title. I don't include Mean Bean Machine as it is Puyo Puyo. I started playing Chaotix I think it chooses the level for you at random which I found really annoying.
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Post by dsparil on Jul 29, 2019 8:03:20 GMT -5
Ys IV: The Dawn of Ys (PCE CD, First Time)
You can't even compare the presentation of the two Ys IV, but I wouldn't say that this one totally supersedes MotS due to the story and minor gameplay differences. I did not expect the stories to be as different as they actually are. They share a few character names and some story events very vaguely, but that's about it. For a second in the semi-hidden developer's room, I thought the scenario writer was apologizing for deviating so much, but that turned out to not be the case. A funny thing about the subtitles of the Ys IV "series" is they really should be swapped. The Mask of the Sun gets mentioned way more in this game while the SFC one has more backstory. Absolutely superb presentation aside, I honestly liked the story of MotS more. It feels better developed in general especially in terms of Leeza and Eldeel. What this game does a whole lot better is the part where you go back to Esteria which feels much less tacked on.
In terms of gameplay, it's nice that magic gets real use and that there's an actual reason given for it returning. It does play a little bit slower—movement speed is lower and HP takes forever to regenerate—with a higher experience cap, but my final times ended up similar. Enemies are less aggressive, but that ironically makes it a little harder to level since they don't tend to rush towards you. Also a little odd/different is the bump combat. It can feel a little random whether you do damage or take damage sometimes. I suspect it's because the unsafe area is smaller in this game, but it also makes it harder to judge if you're coming in horizontally. MotS also lets you deal a small amount of damage when attacking the unsafe area if your attack is sufficiently high which this game doesn't do. The site's article complains about poison in MotS which is a very small element, but this game has totally invisible enemies in some areas which is much more frustrating.
What really annoyed me though is the bosses. They're a reasonable difficulty, but they take way too much damage to defeat to the point that they start to get dull. A key example of this is the ice golem boss. It's easy to minimize damage but you only have a short window of opportunity to do small amounts of damage to it. The developer's room mentions that the boss designer was 22, so maybe it's a Phantasy Star II situation where a new developer went a little overboard although not to such an extreme degree.
Overall, I think the two games end up balancing out a little bit. The presentation is better here, but the bosses are too spongey. MotS has a better story and faster gameplay, but the beginning is beyond being too difficult. They're both great games worth playing since the problems they both have are ultimately not that significant.
Just a small note on PCE CD emulation: I've seen references to it being hard to emulation PCE CD games well, but I only had one tiny issue. The correct bios revision for this game frequently has a 512 byte header attached which needed to be removed. I used OpenEmu on macOS which uses Mednafen as the emulator backend and had no problems once I corrected that.
My last save was at 7:42.
Rating: 8
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