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Post by windfisch on Feb 2, 2021 8:06:44 GMT -5
excelsior Ah, Simon the Sorcerer - such beautiful pixel art! And indeed, those games are rather similar in tone to Monkey Island (though Simon might be an even bigger jerk than Guybrush). Some elements like those smartypants D&D wizards even seem like a direct MI reference. But if you've endured THOSE puzzles*, The Secret of Monkey Island should be a cakewalk! *Most were probably fine, but I remember some being rather obtuse. Though maybe the designers were just being very "British", so it's possible people like you didn't even notice.
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Post by dsparil on Feb 2, 2021 9:24:28 GMT -5
Phoenotopia Awakening (Switch, First Time)
I have a lot of mixed feelings about this side scrolling action-adventure game; it's kinda a metroidvania, but it's more of a Zelda II clone. The pixel art is simple but detailed with some nice animations in places, and the dungeon/level design is generally good. Where it falters quite heavily is in the combat. The big problem is that most of the equipment stinks. You main weapon is a club, but the upgrades barely do any more damage. The final upgrade is part of a lengthy trading sequence and totally not worth it. Armor is a complete joke and barely provides any protection. Aside from rare puzzle use, the sub weapons are all terrible aside from the Sonic Spear (javelin) which is amazing. With the optional (and immediately available) charge attack, it's the best weapon and a few other upgrades that technically also apply to the club only make it better. It's the strongest weapon in the game right when you get it around half way. This game would have been 100% better if you started with the spear and combat abilities and upgrades all revolved around it.
The story starts out well enough. You play as Gail, a young woman living in a remote village on a post-post-apocalyptic Earth that's at a medieval level of technology. After tracking down a fallen meteorite that turns out to be a busted robot head, most of her village is abducted by aliens. I think it would have been more interesting if the intro didn't spell out the apocalyptic backstory and left that as something that gets revealed later. This is a quasi-remake of a Flash game which does the same thing so maybe the developer felt that it had to be repeated? It would have been better served as being shown in the second region of the game as it has absolutely no direct narrative significance otherwise and is just a roadblock until the story picks up again in the third area.
Where it completely falls flat is the ending. There basically isn't one! That isn't to say there isn't a sequence after the final boss, but what should be the ending is just a too brief text dump followed by a bland epilogue that feels like something that should be in the intro to a sequel. It even feels like it's about to set up a really exciting finale, and then it just ends so anticlimactically. I looked at the original ending which is totally different and that manages to not be a complete disappointment even if it isn't exciting either.
I guess I don't want to be too hard on this because it was basically made by one person, but at the same time, a big chunk of the problem comes down to completely awful combat balance. I looked at the development blog, and a ridiculous amount of effort was put into balancing the very copious healing items and the timing based cooking mini-game. No one is going into a action-adventure game and going "Wow! These 90+ food items are so well balanced!" when the substantially more important equipment stats seem to have had zero thought put into them. I mean, there's only a small handful of frequent food anyway and if it is actually 90+ (that number is from the blog), that was a poor use of time. That's really the overarching problem. Things that don't matter all that much got so much attention over things that do.
I finished in 19:14:37. The HLTB time is around 40h so it'll be interesting to see what shows up in the log with reloading taken into account.
Edit: Popped up as 20 - 25 hours so I don't know why it was taking people 2x my time.
Rating: 6
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Post by dsparil on Feb 2, 2021 9:42:26 GMT -5
dsparil my playthrough of Onimusha was actually a replay. Thanks! I've updated the listings.
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Post by alexmate on Feb 2, 2021 12:38:08 GMT -5
Disney's Magical Quest starring Mickey Mouse (SNES, Replay, Time Taken 1hr05) Second replay it was mentioned before so I thought I would give it another go. I've heard this game described as easy mainly by magazines at the time. TBH it is far from tough, but has some tricky bits, much like Sonic 1. The graphics are great, the music above average and the gameplay is solid with tight controls. I prefer Castle of Illusion, but this is a close second.
Rating: 8
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Post by halftheisland on Feb 2, 2021 12:42:02 GMT -5
Work and ongoing lockdown ennui have left me seeking comfort gaming - just put another 20 hours or so into doing the other Black Eagles course in Fire Emblem: Three Houses, and been tooling around a lot in Just Cause 4 in a way that's not exactly enjoyable but is essentially occupying my brain enough. Making less progress than I would like towards my self-imposed Sonic challenge, although I am steadily plugging away at learning the various Sonic Eraser puzzles and some initial exploration of the SMS/GG games.
However, over the past couple of days I have cleared three shorter titles on Switch (NB all times taken from HLTB as I've given up trying to track playtime on Switch), as follows:
When the Past Was Around (2 hours, Switch, 1st time)
I was a big fan of Toge Productions' early work on Flash game sites like Kongregate and it's been fascinating to see them grow over the years into a really strong indie developer / publisher. Although not always the case, it seems they have been drawing lightly on their Indonesian heritage to inform the aesthetics and background to some of their recent games, which gives them a unique feel.
This recent work is a short, experimental narrative experience told entirely through visuals and sound, with no text or voice acting. Because of this, I might be misinterpreting the narrative a bit, but it seems to broadly consist of "present day" settings interspersed with revisiting memories of main character Eda's relationship with The Owl. There's a distinctly bittersweet feeling throughout, and I'm not spoiling anything to say that this is very much a story about love and loss.
The story is backed up by beautiful hand-drawn artwork and a stunning soundtrack, which was easily the high point of the game for me. Music plays a key part in the narrative and this is worked really well into the ongoing soundtrack.
Gameplay-wise this is pretty much straightforward point-and-click fare. Most of the stories take place over just one or two screens and there is limited challenge to the puzzles - the only one that stumped me briefly was to do with clocks, and that's only because I'm terrible at the kind of spatial reasoning it required. There is just enough going on to keep things interesting and make you feel involved, and overall the game strikes a nice balance between gameplay and story flow.
It's currently sitting at around £7 on the UK eShop and there isn't any real replay value that I can see, so may be a bit pricy for some people. However, if you're looking for a decent single-sitting game I would really recommend this.
Scoring this one an 8/10.
The Gardens Between (2.5 hours, Switch, 1st time)
I picked this up as it was getting rave reviews on The Computer Game Show and I've discovered a few other interesting games via them (Golf Story and Yoku's Island Express spring to mind). While it's a very good game, I don't think I ended up enjoying it as much as they did.
This is essentially a puzzle game built entirely around time manipulation, and it packs a lot of interesting ideas into its short run time. The first of these is that bar a couple of specific interactions with the world, you don't directly control the two characters as such - rather you move time forwards and backwards and use those couple of interactions to manipulate the world around them. The core objective in each level is to get a lantern carried by the female character lit and carried to the end of the level, while using the time manipulation to bypass particular obstacles to this happening.
To give an example, you might come across a bridge made of darkness which, when carrying a lit lantern will dissipate and prevent the characters moving forward. You then have to rewind time and give the lantern to a little robot thing which goes off on its own path and meets up with you later. As the game goes on, new mechanics are introduced such as objects which exist in their own timelines (or where those timelines can be separately moved forward/back and then rejoined with the main timeline), which also have to be managed and considered as your characters traverse the level.
This all sounds fairly convoluted when trying to explain it, and it's to the game's credit that it manages to introduce these and other mechanics completely seamlessly through your interaction with the world, and that these never feel obscure or obtuse. Progress through the levels is also generally sectioned off into clear, discrete areas where only one or two interactions at a time are possible, reducing the potential for frustrating rewinding back through levels to a much earlier stage.
The levels are all beautiful little dioramas, built around scenes from everyday life in a way which gradually tells the ongoing narrative, and aesthetically the game exists somewhere at the intersection of Monument Valley, Brothers: A Tale of Two Sons, and any one of a number of films featuring characters for whom everyday objects are massive (think Honey I Shrunk the Kids). Every level is really intricately crafted and animated, and a nice touch of the way the game works is that the developers were able to give loads of life to the two characters by introducing bespoke animations for all sorts of scenarios the characters encounter.
The music and sound design generally achieved what they needed to, I thought - reading about how others experienced it, I feel I might have served myself better playing this in handheld with my good headphones rather than on the big TV. There was one level which used music in a really interesting way and the songs in that were really good. This, however, leads me into my main issue with the game - it really felt just a bit too short.
I don't generally mind single sitting games, and in many ways it can be nice to have a complete experience that you can start and finish in a single evening. In this case, though, it just felt a little like the various mechanics weren't given time to fully breathe. The music one is a perfect example of a really clever way of manipulating two or three separate timelines and it would have been nice to see it given two or three outings. Likewise, the only two times I ever struggled with a puzzle was because of failure to look at an element in the environment rather than due to the complexity of manipulating timelines. I can't help but feel like stretching each level a little further would have given some room to play with more complicated puzzles.
That said, I think it's generally a good thing to come away from a game wishing you could have just a little more of what it's offering, and I understand the desire to try and deliver a short narrative experience in a way that won't lose people.
Going to call this one a 7/10.
Subsurface Circular (2 hours, Switch, 1st time)
It's another single sitting game! I absolutely adored this one and thought it was a really standout example of how to deliver a compelling interactive story in a way that doesn't outstay its welcome.
This is, to all intents and purposes, a text adventure with some additional graphical and musical frippery going on. The entirety of the game takes place on the titular Subsurface Circular, a subway/underground rail line used solely by humanoid robots called Teks. You play as a detective who is asked by another passenger to help explore the disappearance of their friend and, over the course of two hours or so, speak with various other passengers to dig up details of the world and what may have happened and gradually piece together a story.
As conversations progress, as well as gaining more detail of the world around you and the relationship between humans and Teks, you gain "focus points" - essentially new topics of conversation that you can take back to previous interlocutors to try and trigger further discussions. That really is largely all there is to the game from a mechanical perspective: speak to various Teks, gain focus points and so on until each chapter ends. There are one or two mildly clever interactions in the late stages of the game but to discuss them would spoil them.
Graphically and sonically, the game could in theory have done what it needs to without any of the background animation and it's certainly not the focus of the game. However, there is something distinctly atmospheric about being immersed in the sights and sounds of the underground, and the addition of HD rumble in the Switch version boosted the immersion a little. The only aspect really worthy of discussion are the beautiful and distinctly cyberpunk/vaporwave musical stings provided by Dan Le Sac. These are used sparingly enough to always be impactful.
My main genre of choice when it comes to reading is science fiction and I honestly think the story here holds up against a lot of the better short fiction. It's clearly carefully crafted and, while the game is essentially one big infodump about the world in which it takes place, this is nonetheless delivered in a way that never feels like you are being presented with a whole list of facts. Providing just enough to sketch out the shape of the world while leaving enough unspoken to keep the reader hooked and wondering is a delicate balancing act and it's one that is carried out with aplomb here.
I've already bought spiritual successor Quarantine Circular, but I'm tempted to go back through this once more with developer commentary on and try a few of the different dialogue options.
Not quite a perfect game, but a solid 9/10 in my book.
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Post by dsparil on Feb 3, 2021 9:01:10 GMT -5
Teen Agent (DOS, First Time)
This is one of those games that anyone that played shareware in the 90s came across at some point since there weren't too many shareware adventure games. These days, every GOG account comes with it since it's freeware and CD Projekt owns the developer. They're better known for Odium (Gorky 17) and managed to hang on until 2008 which was right around when GOG originally launched. I can't say I was a fan of the shareware, but over the years it's eaten away at me to have this sitting at the end of my GOG library uncompleted.
However, this is completely terrible and easily one of the absolute worst adventure games ever made with very few redeeming qualities. It actually starts out relatively fine. A teenager named Mark is pressed into solving the mystery of some disappearing gold, and gets sent off to boot camp before tackling his mission. The boot camp area was what was distributed as shareware, and while it exhibits the same problems as the rest of the game, it's a small area with explicit goals so they aren't so glaring. Once you get the the main section, those problems get much, much worse.
The single biggest problem is that everything is so completely illogical with barely anything having the semblance of a hint or clue. There isn't even "adventure game logic". It's all use every item on everything else and hope something happens. I try not to use a walkthrough, but this is basically uncompletable without one. It's hard to even think of the what the worst part even is. There's one long chain in particular where literally every single step is both completely nonsensical and has no indication what the next step even would be. You can't work forwards, you can't work backwards and there's nothing to guide you either.
Rating: 2
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Post by alexmate on Feb 3, 2021 11:29:14 GMT -5
Pokemon Red (Gameboy. 1st time, Timer: 20hr 35) Classic game. I didn't like some of the dungeons and thought some of the mechanics were tedious such as pushing boulders, but scores 9.
Rating: 9
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Post by dsparil on Feb 4, 2021 6:39:29 GMT -5
Distraint 2 (macOS via CrossOver*, First Time)
After not liking the first game all that much, the sequel is actually much better. The very short version of the first game is that a mid-level law firm employee has to do a bunch of evictions and then feels guilty about it. There were horror elements that didn't quite work with the rest of it, and it also didn't feel true to life which muddied things. This game takes place entirely within the mind of the main character so everything gels much better. It's more fantastical and the horror elements are better integrated. I'd say the only negative is that it's a bit too short as its themes don't have quite enough time to fully develop. Still though, it makes the first game retroactively better to a degree since everything actually goes somewhere.
Rating: 8
* CrossOver is the commercial version of Wine and has direct ties to the project. It didn't seem that worth it in the past, but it simplifies things immensely on a Mac these days.
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Post by Apollo Chungus on Feb 4, 2021 8:35:07 GMT -5
Tony Hawk's American Sk8land (DS; First Time; 2 hours 12 minutes)
Tony Hawk's Proving Ground (DS; First Time; 3 hours)
Every now and again, I get in the mood to play through a couple of the Tony Hawk's Pro Skater games, and decided to make this latest mood a bit more interesting by playing the DS ports of American Wasteland (renamed American Sk8land) and Proving Ground developed by Vicarious Visions. VV had been involved with the series since the second game, developing the GBA versions of the main series games from THPS2 to THAW and even porting 4 to the original PlayStation. However, those other handheld games tended to be compromised by the GBA's lack of processing ability and much smaller control scheme, making them interesting but way too limited to grab my interest.
What makes the DS ports stand out is that, with the system being able to render 3D games at 60 frames per second and having as many buttons as a Dreamcast controller, the dev team was able to take the console versions and downgrade them to create for fully 3D Pro Skater games you can play on the go. Some inputs are simplified, but this never becomes a hassle in the moment, and they nail the all-important feeling of being very responsive and carrying forward the Neversoft games' quality of having all the moves flow into each other seamlessly. There's a reason why the remakes of 1 and 2 they made last year control so well.
I decided to write about both ports together because it's interesting how they compare and contrast to each other. They both have a story mode with a focus on gaining money to build pieces for a skate park (that you can choose individually), and have the same structure of completing a certain amount of missions until you unlock a pro challenge that gives you another spot to build and another level to play through. They both allow for a large degree of player expression with the skate park pieces, customizable graffiti tags, sound bytes you can record with the DS' microphone, and plenty of clothes and colouring options for your custom skater. (Sk8land wins massive points over its console counterpart by letting you play with a female body.)
That said, they're not quite the same in how they execute their various ideas. The most obvious difference at first glance is in art direction: Sk8land features bright, colourful cel-shaded graphics with an emphasis on cartoony character portraits and cutscenes staged much like those in Elite Beat Agents (comic book panels, single drawings flying around the screen, etc.), while Proving Ground uses more grounded colours and presentation to mirror its console version's similar emphasis. Both games look and run well, but I definitely prefer the more colourful Sk8land - particularly in how the time of day gradually changes over the levels until you encounter a gorgeous nighttime remix of the Alcatraz stage from THPS4. Level design is also fairly different, with Sk8land levels being much more linear than the comparatively open stages in Proving Ground. I feel the latter works much better, especially when you get to the Classic mode where the goals feel much more evenly spread out and huge chunks of the level aren't just sitting there with little going on.
The most notable change I picked up on was the difficulty for the story mode missions. Sk8land's missions are dead simple, even up to the very end of the game, as they often task you with completing a basic task like "pick up 5 items in this straight line" or "perform this spine transfer". Meanwhile, Proving Ground uses the tiered difficulty of its console counterpart, so you have a trio of increasingly difficult variations on the same task that you can complete at your own discretion. The difficulty only affects how much cash you're given to buy items and bonuses, so the game is only as difficult as you want it to be.
Regarding Sk8land, its difficulty seems to be a mix of the tutorializing seen throughout a lot of THAW and the basic goals previously seen in VV's PS1 port of THPS4. I don't know if I'd say it's a problem, since I can imagine this being the first fully 3D Tony Hawk for handheld players who only experienced the GBA ports, so maybe it works in their favour that things are as basic as they are. If they want a tougher time, they can give Classic mode a shot. As for Proving Ground, I feel that its challenge is much fairer and less insane than the console version, which seemed to be made for super hardcore players in how even the easiest tiers still had ridiculous requirements. It does get a bit too tough in its end-game challenges for the higher tiers, but since they don't impact progression, you can ignore them if you like.
I'm not sure if I'll come back to these ports as often as I do the Neversoft games, but they are very solid takes on the Pro Skater style that I'd definitely recommend to any Tony Hawk fans, and for people who want to experience the levels from THAW and THPG under a new context.
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Post by Apollo Chungus on Feb 6, 2021 12:42:21 GMT -5
Tony Hawk's Proving Ground (Xbox 360; First Time; 3 hours 50 minutes) Still got Tony Hawk on the brain, so I thought I'd finish the one Neversoft game that always gave me some trouble. Proving Ground was the last game they made before they committed full-time to Guitar Hero, and is kinda interesting in how it still shows both their desperate attempts to come up with new ideas to keep people coming, and their attempts to change up the structure and do something interesting.
Case in point, this has the same concept as Project 8, where you have a central goal to reach and any task you accomplish builds towards that goal. But unlike Project 8, your options are categorized into three specific routes that you can do either exclusively or jump back-and-forth between at your fancy: Career, which has you pulling off big tricks and showing off to crowds; Hardcore, with an emphasis on doing weird tricks and punching people; and Rigger, where you place objects to complete objectives. It's pretty cool in how it varies up the usual formula, but it does rely too much on you having played the previous games intimately before going in.
While it does have the tiered difficulty system to offer higher bonuses for your performance, the Pro and Sick bonuses are frequently too tough to the point of being unreasonable. Even the first few missions only give you a Sick rating if you do frankly insane tasks that I assume you'd only be able to do if you were good enough to attend and win Pro Skater tournaments. There's luckily enough missions for you that you don't have to complete everything on Sick in order to reach the end, but I can't imagine how unbearably annoying this would be for completionists.
I completed the Hardcore route, did a whole bunch of side missions, and briefly played with the Rigger stuff before I was able to proceed to the final mission and conclude the game. I've come round to this one a bit more than I had previously felt. The main reason has to do with the vibe it's got going. This is by far the dullest Tony Hawk in its visuals, with grey cityscapes consisting of nearly every level. But it has this sense of a downbeat, humdrum mood conveyed through cars and people going about their business, the constant grey skies, and the occasional bit of rain that coats the streets in puddles. And I just really like that mood here. It's not much, but it makes for a game I might revisit on occasion to complete the other missions and just cruise around at my own pace.
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Post by spanky on Feb 6, 2021 17:42:25 GMT -5
Beat Mega Man Zero via the Anniversary Collection (Switch, first time)
Picked up the collection based on the recommendations here. Aside from Zero 4, which I bought used for super cheap YEARS ago, the Zero series is largely unexplored to me. I generally love Mega Man and realizing I still had nearly a whole series of Mega Man games to dive into was pretty exciting.
There's a lot of new ideas in this one, not shocking since it's the first in a new series. However unlike say in X1, not all the ideas work. In particular Cyber Elves are kind of half baked and the really useful ones require an absurd amount of points to level up. I guess they wanted to pad out the game by making you grind between missions? I'm not wild that you have to level up your standard weapons either but given there's less in the way of maverick weapons in the game, it's understandable I guess. Also, you can permanently fail levels and not be able to complete them or get the items from them. Fortunately I think some of this stuff was dialed down for the sequels.
Graphics are fine, nothing spectacular. Some of the backgrounds are kinda ugly. Music is OK too, overall GBA sound issues notwithstanding.
And holy cow this game is TOUGH. I played with the Save Assist feature on which I don't think goes against the rules on. It basically just gives you checkpoints and doesn't subtract lives when you die, which more or less makes this feel like a more modern indie platformer with bite sized challenges and very few penalties for dying. It feels slightly less like cheating than save state abuse at any rate. Still though, this game is no joke, though the levels aren't too tough, a few bosses took me a dozen times or more to figure out, especially early on. The GBA resolution means you'll sometimes be making blind jumps which I don't like either.
There's more emphasis on story and that's fine I guess. Am I wrong or are the humans in the X and Zero series extremely dumb? "Hey let's make a bunch of robots with free will and give them all kinds of crazy weapons. Oh no...they want to kill us? Crap."
Anyway, this was pretty good and I definitely think I will check out the rest of the series. At any rate I think I preferred it to some of the later era X games.
I went ahead and began MMZ2 as well and it's much improved from what I've seen so far.
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Post by dsparil on Feb 7, 2021 7:33:58 GMT -5
The Save Assist is fine. I played through them that way last year. It's a good middle ground between the original difficulty and the easier one which originated in the DS compilation. I played through the first game with it since I just wanted to blow through it (and have S ranked it before), and it is so incredibly easy that way. You get all the elves enabled and all your weapons maxed out right from the start which is too much. It does go to show how much of the total time really is just grinding for elves and weapon levels. It only takes about an hour to finish it straight through.
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Post by 🧀Son of Suzy Creamcheese🧀 on Feb 7, 2021 10:14:34 GMT -5
Castlevania II: Simon's Quest (NES, 1st play, 6h)There are obviously a lot of problems with this game. The level design has taken a big hit from 1 to 2, and there's a lot of repetition in areas as well. The overall difficulty is toned down way too much (even if you barely level up like I did), and some of the sidequests or solutions to things just don't make any sense. There's almost no penalty for dying/getting a game over, and all the bosses are a joke. The dungeons are not very complicated, and the climax of the game is just a strutt through an empty castle. The day/night cycle and RPG elements are also poorly implemented. And yet...I enjoyed this game quite a bit. It was pretty interesting to see what waits for you when you reach a new area, and it plays fine, too. Music's great, of course (why has Monster Dance never been remixed for later CV games???). And while there are some parts that are hard or impossible to figure out without a walkthrough, I found that I wasn't slowed down all that much, and mostly could figure stuff out myself. So yeah, it's a very flawed game, but I am glad that I played it anyway, and glad that I shelved out the money to get a physical cart. Rating: 7/10Pokemon Red (Gameboy. 1st time, Timer: 20hr 35) Classic game. I didn't like some of the dungeons and thought some of the mechanics were tedious such as pushing boulders, but scores 9.
What party did you have besides Beedril?
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Post by spanky on Feb 7, 2021 19:41:11 GMT -5
Castlevania II: Simon's Quest (NES, 1st play, 6h)There are obviously a lot of problems with this game. The level design has taken a big hit from 1 to 2, and there's a lot of repetition in areas as well. The overall difficulty is toned down way too much (even if you barely level up like I did), and some of the sidequests or solutions to things just don't make any sense. There's almost no penalty for dying/getting a game over, and all the bosses are a joke. The dungeons are not very complicated, and the climax of the game is just a strutt through an empty castle. The day/night cycle and RPG elements are also poorly implemented. And yet...I enjoyed this game quite a bit. It was pretty interesting to see what waits for you when you reach a new area, and it plays fine, too. Music's great, of course (why has Monster Dance never been remixed for later CV games???). And while there are some parts that are hard or impossible to figure out without a walkthrough, I found that I wasn't slowed down all that much, and mostly could figure stuff out myself. So yeah, it's a very flawed game, but I am glad that I played it anyway, and glad that I shelved out the money to get a physical cart. Simon's Quest is definitely flawed but I have a soft spot for NES era inscrutability and this game has it in spades. Definitely from a lost era where you had to figure out shit on your own, plunking down the cash for a magazine or a guide or having some kid on the playground tell you what to do. Did you have to look up kneeling with the Red Crystal at Yuba Lake? Or was that something you picked up through years of gamer osmosis?
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Post by 🧀Son of Suzy Creamcheese🧀 on Feb 8, 2021 4:52:29 GMT -5
Simon's Quest is definitely flawed but I have a soft spot for NES era inscrutability and this game has it in spades. Definitely from a lost era where you had to figure out shit on your own, plunking down the cash for a magazine or a guide or having some kid on the playground tell you what to do. Did you have to look up kneeling with the Red Crystal at Yuba Lake? Or was that something you picked up through years of gamer osmosis? Kneeling down to scroll down the lake and to summon the tornado are pretty infamous things by now I think, so I knew about those for years. I still somehow messed up summoning the tornado first time around, though. The second lake, however, I didn't get. I figured I had looped back to the first lake and was just on the other side of it. So I had convinced myself I was just at a dead end. There were a few other things that stumped me, like how to get past the final bridge area, and I wasted some time trying to get stuff done that turned out to be villagers talking bullshit (like meeting the lady at the river-end, or digging up the 4th grave), and there were also some dead ends or areas that had no purpose whatsoever that I was trying to figure out the purpose of. But overall it wasn't too bad, and I even lucked out with the invisible platform and the ferryman bringing you to the secret area. If you play with a retranslation of the Japanese text on stand-by and keep some notes it's pretty doable for the most part.
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