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Post by Digitalnametag on Sept 20, 2019 21:22:02 GMT -5
Lufia & the Fortress of Doom SNES FTP 18 hours
Or alternatively fetch quest the game. Nothing like a game that asks you to find a purple newt so a wizard can make a meal for a fat King (in a different town) which allows you to access one of the seven pieces of metal you need to make your ship go underwater which lets you get to a sword that you can use to beat the bad guys. After you find a key in a cave to a door in another cave that leads to a tower where the bad guys floating castle happens to be floating around. Which of course moves. Phew. But don't worry there is way more finding things and people to find more things and people than that in the game.
Lufia is a Dragon Quest clone right down to saving at the Church. The random encounter rate is frustratingly high and most locations share tile sets. Ah identical town number nine followed by cave 20. This time the cave is dark blue instead of brown. By the end of the game I had the seemingly ineffective random encounter reduction item on constantly and used an item to escape most encounters. I was a bit underleveled (finished the game in the upper 30s) but luckily the final bosses are easily handled with the 'mirror' spell.
The story reminds me of Lunar (which predates it by half a year) and while somewhat interesting the characters never get much development. The beginning of the game is interesting, you get a bit of dialogue in the middle, and then nothing until near the end of the game. The ending is kind of emotional but outside of Lufia and the Hero you never get to care about anyone else. The entirety of Lufia's main character dialogue can be fit in about two typed pages. There are a few cute moments but these are far and few between. Mostly you a trudging along through encounters to get the next thingamabob.
I did have fun with the game at times but unless you derive enjoyment from early Dragon Quest games or just have masochistic tendencies Fortress of Doom is best left forgotten. Even compared to games of its time Lufia fares poorly. Play Final Fantasy 4 or Lunar instead. But really I played this one so I could more fully enjoy Lufia II. I hear that one is a legitimate classic. Puzzle dungeons and enemies that are visible on the map? Sign me up.
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Post by JoeQ on Sept 21, 2019 16:31:18 GMT -5
Tachyon: The Fringe (Windows) - First time, Time: 28h 39min (timer) Game beaten on Normal on the Bora side. Still got GalSpan campaign to do, but I'll leave that for later. Edit: Went back and beat the GalSpan campaign too, updated the time. A pretty good space combat sim, but I can see why it was mostly overlooked back in the day, it's not up to likes of Freespace, TIE Fighter or I-War. Rating: 3/5Alphabet Challenge: ABCDE-------MNOP-RST-----Z
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Post by Null0x00 on Sept 22, 2019 0:44:09 GMT -5
Cleared Quake for DOS using the Mark V/Quakespasm source ports in 5 hours on Nightmare difficulty. Repeat playthrough. 9/10. Love the atmosphere, music, monster designs and how solid the movement and shooting mechanics are, hate how anti-climatic the final boss level is.
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Post by dsparil on Sept 23, 2019 6:51:27 GMT -5
The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening (Replay*, Switch)
It's LA with better controls, new graphics and some minor tweaks. I don't think that's terribly surprising since the two Grezzo remakes on 3DS have basically been extremely faithful remakes to the point of keeping the low poly level geometry. The new control scheme makes the game so much easier to play as it removes most of the item swapping. Making the power bracelet always available should have been in the original game. Having the sword be permanently mapped to B makes perfect sense, but having the shield and Pegasus Boots permanently mapped to (Z)R and (Z)L makes a little less sense when you consider that you need Roc's Feather all the time. I ended up keeping it as the Y button item for the entire game. I think having 4 equippable buttons would have been better. I very easily would have given up the boots for the feather.
Dampé's dungeon creation mode is a bigger addition than either of the 3DS had which is to say none in OoT 3D aside from tweaking the Water Temple a mirrored Master Quest and boss rush in OoT 3D and the better Bomber's Notebook and extra tips in MM 3D. It's really a puzzle mode where you have to create dungeons based on criteria that he's laid out. I finished 8 of them, but I think there's 16 total. I get the feeling that it's a bit of a teaser for a full on Zelda Maker since that basically already exists as the prototyping tool that was used for BotW. You get new rooms (which are reused from dungeons) and challenges as the game progresses. There's a little finickiness with stairs as they link up to the closest neighbor rather than letting you choose, and you can't pick the side scrolling sections, but those are minor issues.
Overall, a good update to a classic game. I think the complaints about the price are totally ignoring that $60 is close to what the original versions retailed for once adjusted for inflation. It's a "worse" value than BotW, but it's a cute game with nice gameplay and some really weird elements. It is however a super easy game, and getting the no death ending isn't anywhere close to challenge on the normal difficulty. I do wish there was something closer to ALBW's hero mode where you still had hearts instead of also removing those entirely.
Rating: 9
* Since it's basically the original game with changed graphics and a few small tweaks, I think this shouldn't count as a separate release from the GB or GBC versions.
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Post by Digitalnametag on Sept 23, 2019 17:12:45 GMT -5
The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening Switch Replay 10 hours
Yeah what he said. I didn't intend to play through this so soon but I needed to stay up late yesterday and somehow ended the night/morning at the start of the seventh dungeon. Finished today with a majority of the secret shells, heart pieces, and the best ending. Missing like 9 shells and 10 heart pieces. They added a bunch more in this remake.
The new animations at the front and end of the game are nice and that orchestrated ending theme mixed with the original chip tune music is awesome. The dungeon design could've used some sprucing up (you only use the mirror shield like once!) and I was a little annoyed that the enemy drop temporary power ups still pop a message every time you grab them. I did get a kick out of the DX compass message being there in entirety. "New compass feature" that has only been in place for 20ish years now!
Still a classic. Not sure it replaces the DX version as my favorite but giving a new generation the chance to play LA is a good thing. It was certainly one of my favorite growing up.
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Post by dsparil on Sept 24, 2019 11:56:10 GMT -5
Mission Critical (DOS, First Time)
After making text adventures with illustrated rooms followed by a switch to graphic adventures, Legend's first real multimedia extravaganza is actually pretty good! I'd rank this pretty high (maybe even the best) of the 9 games of their's I have played. Despite being their first FMV game, this also seems like the fanciest one with Michael Dorn having top billing although this is fairly light on live action.
The background is a little weird in taking from the rather odd view that some extremists do hold that the UN is out to essentially conquer the world. The game takes place during a quasi-galactic civil war between the UN (which has become the world's government) and the US led (but technically multinational) Alliance. I have always found this extreme anti-UN view completely perplexing as it is a weaker institution than the League of Nations it replaced. All that is just for the much more minor premise of having the Alliance break off to pursue free technological development versus a UN that stands opposed to that but not to the extent of preventing the development of faster than light travel and space colonization.
The game isn't particularly heavy on this type of political content as it's much more interested in Star Trek style technobabble, but it's still an odd choice. It's only fleshed out in the official supplemental information provided in the strategy guide and still doesn't make a ton of sense there. I'm not really sure what the motivation was for making the UN the villain if there really even is one apart from it already existing as the timeline for all these nefarious dealings is highly compressed.
All that is largely irrelevant as the main thrust of the game is in repairing the starship it takes place on in the first part, and then completing its tasked mission on the far away planet it is orbiting. Puzzles are fairly straight forward for the most part and are almost entirely inventory-based although there are a few mechanical puzzles. There's also an RTS mini-game that you thankfully can just have the computer do for you. It's a little weird how much development is given to this aspect as there's an 8 mission tutorial but only 3 actual battles. This came out before Legend's Star Control 3 and I wonder how much they fed into each other. The part on the ship reminds me quite a bit of Planetfall with a less comical ship's computer taking the place of Floyd.
The second part is "philosophical" and much more interesting than the fairly standard ship section, but it's also shorter and has less developed puzzles. Swapping the balance of these two sections would have been better as the story contained there is a much more plentiful than in the first part, but is has much less room to breath and a lot comes from a fairly long info dump. Maybe the game really needed to be three discs instead of two as I also wouldn't want to cut anything from the ship section. Nothing really feels like padding.
In all, a pretty fun and interesting SF game with some minor issues. I'd say the main problem is that the second half could have fed into some of the anti-technology aspects, but it doesn't really as the two halves don't quite gel together.
Rating: 8
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Post by Snake on Sept 25, 2019 10:41:27 GMT -5
Monster Hunter World: Iceborne, PS4 (1st time, approx 18 hours)
Monster Hunter World continues to impress me by far, in terms of current-gen graphics. The amount of in-game detail is astounding. The effects of falling snow, to trudging knees deep into snow or sand is just tremendous. The cut-scenes, using all in-game graphics, put actual CG scenes for other games to shame. Iceborne is rich with content, adding a slew of monsters and dragons, and variants of existing monsters. For completionists, this means even hundreds more hours of material farming and missions. The story and dialogue feels more fleshed out this time around. More emotional, more comraderie. Even though you have tons of veteran hunters in the cast, they basically expect you to take care of EVERY monster. The last scene on the last mission really exemplifies how elevated you've become as the hero of the game. And of course, some of the coolest bits to the game are the addition of clutch claw and move sets for each weapon.
9/10.
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Post by 🧀Son of Suzy Creamcheese🧀 on Sept 28, 2019 2:52:17 GMT -5
Puyo Puyo 2 (SNES, played on NSW, 1st time, 45min)
The main thing about Puyo Puyo Tetris that I disliked was the lack of a traditional arcade mode, so I was happy to see this show up for free on Switch. Mean Bean Machine/Kirby's Avalanche lack the damage offset rule, which made them really difficult for me to beat, especially when the game gets faster. This game kind of goes the other way, and is ridiculously easy. I could barely follow what was happening in the final few stages, as everything dropped really fast and there were 5 colors of Puyo, and yet I got through most matches without dying, or without even really firing off any big combos. It's kind of weird anyway. By the time the game really starts to speed up, they introduce the 5th Puyo color, which means you suddenly have to deal with a ridiculous speed and increased complexity. They really should've slowed the game down a little when introducing the 5th color. But then again, it was really easy to beat as is...
Anyway, the main core of Puyo Puyo is super strong, but the arcade mode of this one is kind of underwhelming.
Rating: 9/10 (for the game, not the mode)
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Post by toei on Sept 28, 2019 8:38:19 GMT -5
Claiming Batman (NES) and Shadow Dancer (arcade), both first times.
Batman is supposed to be a NES classic, but I didn't like it much for a number of reasons. Shadow Dancer is really good, though. Much harder than the Genesis Shadow Dancer (which is an entirely different game, not a port).
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Post by mainpatr on Sept 28, 2019 9:49:13 GMT -5
Claiming Batman (NES) and Shadow Dancer (arcade), both first times. Batman is supposed to be a NES classic, but I didn't like it much for a number of reasons. Shadow Dancer is really good, though. Much harder than the Genesis Shadow Dancer (which is an entirely different game, not a port). The wall jumping in the last stage,perhaps?
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Post by Snake on Sept 28, 2019 10:19:03 GMT -5
Claiming Batman (NES) and Shadow Dancer (arcade), both first times. Batman is supposed to be a NES classic, but I didn't like it much for a number of reasons. Shadow Dancer is really good, though. Much harder than the Genesis Shadow Dancer (which is an entirely different game, not a port). The wall jumping in the last stage,perhaps? Or the interesting interpretation of Tim Burton's Batman? A lot of enemies that never appeared in the movie, like those Square Box bosses. Plus the difficulty is typical Sunsoft brutal. But I do find it charming in a Journey to Silius kind of way.
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Post by toei on Sept 28, 2019 10:20:27 GMT -5
mainpatr That's part of it. In general I felt there was too much wall-jumping, even if some of it was cool. But really, the worst part about the final level is that you have to replay it so many times, since you can never get any extra lives in the game, so at the most you've got 2 more lives when you make it to the bosses. And then, of course, you don't regain your health, either, so you really only get two chances. It's not quite as bad as Ninja Gaiden's final loop, but it's still bad. There are a few bosses that are kind of broken, some really weird / annoying enemy patterns (well, mostly those jumping guys in level 3), and I hate respawning enemies in general. I liked the first two levels and level 4 was also pretty cool, but I kind of hated level 3 and really hated that last part. It did get a little more fun after I got to know the game enough that I could just run through it on a credit or two, but getting there was really a pain at times. But I've come to realize that I'm just not a NES guy, aside from a small handful of games. The Genesis is a much better fit for me. Snake I don't really care that it doesn't resemble the movie. It's a NES game, so it was never going to, and really the movie was just an excuse to make the game from Sunsoft's point of view. They could have changed the sprite a bit and it would have been a ninja game. And for all my issues with it, it's still better than average for a licensed game. But I actually like Sunsoft's Genesis Batman better, even if it's just a middle tier side-scroller for that console. EDIT - Actually, Atari made an arcade game based on the same movie, which I think is pretty obscure. It captured the dark aesthetics pretty well (though Batman looks weirdly short and chubby), but it's kind of unplayable. Batman Returns on the SNES did get that movie's gothic Christmas atmosphere really well, but that's a really rare thing even on 16-bit consoles.
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Post by JoeQ on Sept 29, 2019 10:26:13 GMT -5
Bit.Trip Core (PS4) - First time, Time: no idea, a lot Finally... after a month I finally beat the last game in the Bit.Trip collection. As someone not good at rhythm games it was brutal. Now I finally got the platinum trophy and can retire it for good. Rating: 3/5Alphabet Challenge: ABCDE-------MNOP-RST-----Z
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Post by dsparil on Sept 30, 2019 7:05:42 GMT -5
Steins;Gate Elite (Switch, First Time)
I had heard of Steins;Gate a little bit going in, but didn't really know anything about the plot aside from it relating to the old John Titor hoax from the late 90s/2000. That was so obviously fake as it originally pulled in some unrealistic Y2K fears before switching in 2000 to the year 2038 problem 32-bit Unix systems have; they count time as seconds since 1970 in a signed 32 bit integer, and it'll overflow in 2038. The nonsense comes in his need for acquiring an IBM 5100 to debug some of those systems due to a "hidden" feature. The 5100 didn't run a Unix operating system and wasn't mean to be interoperable with them in the first place. As far as I can tell, there was a hidden feature, but it was just being able to run APL programs written for IBM's System/370 mainframe OS on top of the advertised System/360. Also, a civil war in the US and WWIII were supposed to have already happened.
SG doesn't take the more obviously wrong elements and leaves the need for the 5100 much vaguer in the 2chan @channel postings that make up that backstory. I do have several quibbles with the plot some of which might rise to the level of being actual issues. I do appreciate the attempt for a more realistic depiction of time travel, and mainly limiting it to sending information to the past. Primarily the problem is that "realism" gets thrown out the window for some significant plot elements although there is some handwaving. Plus, it seems to show events happening before a change in the past being affected by it in a spot or two which makes no sense. I did like it the plot overall, but the "emotional journey" feels much more satisfying than the main time travel plot.
Of course the major reason for this version's existence was using animation from the anime adaptation rather than the portraits and CGs of a standard VN. In most places it doesn't add much (compared to a still VN), but it certainly amplifies everything when it does. From what I've read, a sizable chunk of Chapter 7 was removed due to not existing in the anime. That is a little odd as there was new animation created for this version, but I guess adding in that content would have been much more work.
I am kinda interested in the spinoffs, but those haven't been released in English for Switch. They were all ported, but they haven't left Japan yet.
I finished in 24:36:18.
Rating: 8
8-bit ADV Steins;Gate (Switch, First Time)
The Switch version comes with a cute little NES style adventure reinterpretation of the game which was created for this release; the other versions come with an HD version of one of the spinoffs. It is a fairly simple game requiring you to go to the right place and talk to some for a large majority of the gameplay. The only minus is that there's a few spots where you can die, but there's no saving. The plot is fairly different from the main game although they do share some similarities. In some ways, the plot is actually better because as it's much more to the point and has an ending that I very much prefer over the one in the main game.
I finished in about 3.5h.
Rating: 8
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Post by Snake on Sept 30, 2019 10:20:33 GMT -5
Tales of Phantasia, Playstation 1 (1st time, 34 hours and 15 minutes)
After over 24 years, I finally beat this game. I've attempted it 5 times before, with this being my 6th. The first time around, I played blindly in Japanese and got stuck after what I thought was the final battle. The other times, I just got side tracked, lost data, or got tired of grinding. In terms of gameplay, I just got tired of all the random fights. Moreso if the fights feel long and dragged out. It was fun to watch the spells when I was young, but now they just take up too much on-screen time.
The game itself was amazing for its time. 48 megabits for all the shouts, voices, and songs. Almost hard to believe that this game was developed by members of Wolf Team, which I remember more for Earnest Evans, El Viento, and Arcus Odyssey. But Motoi Sakuraba's music is imprinted. He has a distinct style that you can see his flavor running from El Viento, Tales of Phantasia, to Valkyrie Profile and Star Ocean 2. Soundtrack for this game is one I really enjoy. It's full of fun, upbeatness, and drama.
Ah! My Goddess style character designs, with colorful visuals round out the experience. Despite the growing tedium of the gameplay, I actually quite like the story and the mythology. And what makes the Playstation version great are the overworld dialogue skits which adds fan-service in highlighting the characters' personalities. It's one of those games where you're kind of sad to the story end. I do wish there was more of an epilogue to the ending. Bittersweet. Production IG really brought a gorgeously done opening animation. Pity there was no added ending sequences; just stills as the ending credits roll.
I didn't go completionist on this one. There was still more of an extra dungeon to explore, and seems like I was missing quite a few summons.
7.5/10.
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