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Post by Digitalnametag on Aug 31, 2024 17:09:54 GMT -5
Fate/stay night REMASTERED NS FTP 40 hours
Finally an official release for the game that started the series. I'm a big fan of the modern non-mobile related anime adaptations (Fate/Zero being my favorite) so was fairly familiar with the first two routes. I never did watch the Heaven's Feel movies though so all of that content was new to me.
The game adds a lot of modern conveniences one would expect from a newer visual novel with a detailed flow chart that shows path branches, a database, and scene skips. There are three major branches and most of the content within them is unique though the Heaven's Feel path has the most radical differences. You have to play the routes in order which felt limiting but for newcomers this is necessary to ease them into the universe. Heaven's Feel would be a bad first path for newbies.
Localization is pretty solid. A few small grammar mistakes and I did have two crashes but auto-save prevented me from losing much progress. Unlimited Blade Works was my favorite route but the main heroine there Rin kind of steals the show in every route anyway. Heaven's Feel is darker than the other two and felt like it leaned into the ecchi elements a bit more than the others. This is the all ages version of the game but it is apparent where the H-scenes would be in each route with Unlimited Blade Works being the tamest.
I enjoyed the game but it is long. I'm a quick reader and it still took me 40 hours. I definitely prefer something like Fate/Extra or Persona that mixes VN and actual game play elements, but it was nice to experience the original game in the series with an official localization. I played through all the major endings and some of the bad ends. Honestly though I'd probably just watch the anime though if you want to get into Fate as it cuts out a lot of the fluff.
It looks like the side stories/sequel is getting ported to Switch too so I'll probably be down for that next year. That alongside the long awaited Extra remake.
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Post by dsparil on Sept 1, 2024 9:19:42 GMT -5
Here are the current rankings:
Total Game Completions:
dsparil - 72 Apollo Chungus - 62 personman - 52 Woody Alien - 40 spanky - 32 Digitalnametag - 19 JoeQ - 16 excelsior - 8 alexmate - 3 Snake - 2 lurker - 2 ResidentTsundere - 1
First Time Game Completions:
dsparil - 58 Apollo Chungus - 44 Woody Alien - 35 personman - 20 spanky - 16 Digitalnametag - 14 JoeQ - 13 excelsior - 8 alexmate - 3 Snake - 2 ResidentTsundere - 1 lurker - 1
Total Time Spent (Reference Only):
dsparil - 555h 35m Digitalnametag - 462h 30m personman - 342h 30m Apollo Chungus - 311h 30m spanky - 243h 30m JoeQ - 241h 30m Woody Alien - 138h 45m excelsior - 65h 30m Snake - 19h alexmate - 10h 30m ResidentTsundere - 7h lurker - 5h 30m
First Play Time (Reference Only):
dsparil - 459h 30m Digitalnametag - 406h 30m Apollo Chungus - 207h personman - 190h JoeQ - 140h spanky - 135h 30m Woody Alien - 130h excelsior - 65h 30m Snake - 19h alexmate - 10h 30m ResidentTsundere - 7h lurker - 1h 30m
Total Time Spent (Timer + Estimated + Reference):
JoeQ - 668h 33m 40s (651h 3m 40s/0s/17h 30m) dsparil - 567h 37m 59s (150h 37m 59s/286h/131h) Digitalnametag - 511h 30m (6h 30m/451h 30m/53h 30m) personman - 473h 40m (48h 40m/304h/121h) Apollo Chungus - 271h 46m (110h 20m/12h 56m/148h 30m) spanky - 243h 30m (0s/0s/243h 30m) Woody Alien - 136h 44m 33s (36h 44m 33s/100h/0s) excelsior - 63h 10m (0s/16h 40m/46h 30m) ResidentTsundere - 13h 18m (13h 18m/0s/0s) Snake - 10h 33m (0s/10h 33m/0s) alexmate - 8h 49m (8h 49m/0s/0s) lurker - 5h 30m (0s/0s/5h 30m)
First Play Time (Timer + Estimated + Reference):
dsparil - 484h 18m 19s (128h 18m 19s/246h/110h) Digitalnametag - 449h (6h 30m/398h 30m/44h) JoeQ - 439h 2m (421h 32m/0s/17h 30m) personman - 273h 40m (40m/227h/46h) Apollo Chungus - 182h 30m (78h 14m/6h 46m/97h 30m) spanky - 135h 30m (0s/0s/135h 30m) Woody Alien - 126h 59m 33s (36h 44m 33s/90h 15m/0s) excelsior - 63h 10m (0s/16h 40m/46h 30m) ResidentTsundere - 13h 18m (13h 18m/0s/0s) Snake - 10h 33m (0s/10h 33m/0s) alexmate - 8h 49m (8h 49m/0s/0s) lurker - 1h 30m (0s/0s/1h 30m)
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Post by spanky on Sept 1, 2024 15:14:31 GMT -5
Wolfenstein 3D (SNES, First Time)
This was the version of the game I grew up playing - though it's only the first time I've beaten it. Yes, it's slow, choppy, pixely, censored, missing a lot of content, but when all you had in 1994 was this, it was fine. I actually was surprised at how much fun I had with this port, which is a testament to the strength of the original game.
I said it was missing content but the overall game seems to be a mishmash of maps and elements from the original game and some of the expansions and includes some new stuff as well. In particular, there is a VERY HANDY automap now. When I played the PC version of Wolf3D years later I was shocked and annoyed to find out the game didn't have an automap. The game is balanced out a bit too, with much more generous ammo drops and the ability to increase your total ammo. The new weapons are nice too.
I actually kind of like the slower gameplay too, there's something sort of tense about it - never knowing when there's a mutant hiding in the corner when you run into the room, or having a guard that heard you sneaking up behind you. The game is easiest if you just play it safe. Poke your head in a room, then back out and let the enemies come to you. I love running through a room guns blazing, getting the attention of all the enemies and backing up against a wall and mowing them down. It's not the most ideal way to play the game nowadays but that doesn't mean it's not unenjoyable. 7/10.
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Post by personman on Sept 4, 2024 2:02:41 GMT -5
Metroid Samus Returns (3DS, 12 hours, replay) Ran through this on release and enjoyed it a ton, so much so I could even say I had little to no complaints for it. If discourse over the net is to be believed I was in a bit of minority on that as the most common reaction I've seen about it over these past few years is pretty much 'eh, its alright' and I recall people here on this forums being pretty down on it. As such it has made me wonder if it was a bit of a honey moon thing for me since I was just so happy to get a new Metroid after the one two punch of Other M and Federation Force causing massive blows to the brand to which we all feared the franchise might get canned thanks to that fiasco. Well since I ran through the original I thought it'd be a good time to give this another shake and see what I think of it now. Frankly I really feel no different, I find this to be fantastic even still. The biggest point of contention people have with it is the melee counter thing and I understand, but at the same time it really never bothered me much. At the start of the game some of the enemy placements are kinda annoying and have 'gotcha' moments charging at you soon as you climb a ledge and stuff but as things go I think it evens out. It does give the game this sort of stop go feel since mobs are spongy unless you counter but you get the freeze beam early on and I swear everyone just seems to forget that ice followed by a missile has pretty much always been a guaranteed one shot in the series. Even without doing that I never felt like I was being slowed down too much though I guess I've never been much for speed running or what have you so I may have more tolerance for it. Eventually you get the screw attack anyways and you can circumvent a lot of it. I also love using it with the Metroid encounters as I am a sucker for flashy animations of you executing things or walloping them which is something Mercury has a knack for. And boy the boss fights are nice. They of course repeat a lot and the variations they receive aren't crazy but they manage to still hit a balance that makes them fun to hunt down and brawl with where as they were just nothing in the original and pretty weak in AM2R. Hell the final boss was great too full of the sort of spectacle I never get tired of personally though I can't deny how stupid it is that Ridley just shows up out of no where. I suppose I also don't mind since even though it tries to mimic the poignant ending of the original it just has a far different feel and is like the one part I'd say the original did better. Some people complain about the hatchling being required to clear the way for upgrades in earlier areas and yeah I'll agree its a bit weird but this time around I was able to find ways around the blocks way more often and only had to resort to waiting till the end to get like 3 things as opposed to the like 8 I had to last time. Makes me think the hatchling isn't required at all to get 100% but I'm not sure. And on the subject of level design I really loved that too. When I first played it I thought it barely resembled the original but now I can see it does follow its template but just throws a bunch more on top of it. Every area in the old game had a space outside of a structure in the center and its about the same here but way more elaborate and they fleshed out everything in between a ton too. Hunting down items in this one I found really fun as things are all like mini puzzles to work through that aren't really taxing but just ask you to know your tools and apply them. I've always enjoyed that kind of design, like you're working yourself through a little mini Rube Goldberg machine. Though the new Aeon abilities which I do welcome do feel a touch undercooked. The scan is really useful and its just nice that you have the option to use it as a hint system. But then the shield is just plain way too good and you have no reason to not simply keep it on most of the time. Then the canon just chews up too much ammo to use it more than anything other than a key when its needed and the time slow thing while being cool for pretty much being the speed booster in reverse I felt they could have done more with it. I still like them but just think they could have gone farther with them. What I am a little more split on is how it looks and sounds. Bottom line the game looks fine enough and I appreciate the detail in the backgrounds, I can respect the minimalism behind the original and how it can get your imagination going and such but I just plain prefer to actually see an artist work on something lol. The little things going on in the background definitely makes the world seem way more alive, however the game looks pretty crunchy with rather low poly models and very rough textures. I've heard Mercury Steam took the same approach as they did with the 3DS Castlevania title and did everything in HD and down sampled it all to work on the 3DS which still sounds utterly insane to me. I swear I read somewhere they stated it was extremely difficult to do so why did you do that again? Guess they figured out a way to stream line the process enough. But like I said it still looks alright but definitely not the prettiest especially after I just got done going through Majora's Mask 3D which looked so amazing. It always bugged the crap out of me how the little cutscenes on elevators looked like compressed FMV running at 3fps, its just jarring. Not wild about the sound track either as much of it is just okay. Its Metroid so you kind of expect much of it to be on the ambient side but so much of this is so slight it may as well not be there. Find that a bit annoying since when the OST wants to get off it ass it has some awesome tracks, some of the more favorite of the whole series in fact. The fact that this track barely plays ever is just plain criminal and we didn't need that Magmoor Cavern theme to blare at us the very second we see lava, its kinda comical. Also big F-U to whoever decided to lock the reserve tanks behind amiibos. I had to use this tool here to get them and I'm just so glad those aren't really a thing anymore. But yes I loved this and think its a really solid entry in the series; It has it flaws for sure which are things Dread improved on a good deal from what I can remember (and some things it did worse). And of course people want to compare it to the original which I say is apples to oranges, they are both so different in what they are trying to do that I really don't see the point. both are great in completely different ways and I wouldn't really put one over the other. Though I have an easier time recommending this game to about everyone today I still could point many to the old title too. The more sensible comparison is this against AM2R for MANY reasons lol. I do suppose I need to give that one a shot sometime again to see which I like better and while I for sure know that game is really impressive I have a feeling I won't agree its as perfect as I see so many claim. I also can't help but think some people like to put this down just to spite Mercury Steam after what went on with Castlevania while it was in their hands. Remember some people who used to post here who were really militant about it. Wont name names. Anyways, this was great and is worthy of the Metroid name in my book. Not my favorite or anything but a great effort, thumbs up. Rating-8
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Post by dsparil on Sept 4, 2024 9:48:54 GMT -5
Obduction (macOS, First Time)
I'm not sure exactly when I originally bought Obduction although I think it was close-ish to launch. It was exciting to see the first new non-mobile game from Cyan in over a decade back in 2016, but I could barely run it. Eight years later, even a base model Mac Mini can run it at max settings without issue. Apparently there were technical and performance issues at launch which were probably a factor. Even after its last patch, there's still a handful of nasty bugs at least one of which will soft lock the game, but I didn't run into anything major.
It's hard to summarize the premise concisely, but it's sort of like a pure sci-fi version of Myst. Ill-defined alien seeds have been swapping pairs of alien planets and encasing them in domes that render them functionally invisible. A tree at the center of each dome also periodically releases seeds that transport new inhabitants and some of their surroundings from the original planet across time to the dome i.e. the order that they appear in the dome doesn't corresponds to when they got transported. The player finds themselves transported to an Arizona mining town that got swapped in 1903 with some newer bits and alien technology from other domes connected to it by Ambassador Seeds which also swap a sphere of terrain around them; this aspect is also used for some puzzles.. The town is supposed to be populated but it's deserted for reasons that are quickly explained.
Of the four main areas, the starting town of Hunrath is the largest and most well designed. Most of the game's backstory is found there, and there's a good variety of puzzles. You also get some guidance from CW, a man in a vault who is of course played by Rand Miller. The other areas are not as good. The game is sort of linear, and the second, Kaptar, is large but without as much to do and a little confusing. The third, Maray, is pretty much just a sequence of puzzles which are mostly not good which I'll get back to. The fourth, Soria, is really tiny and basically just there for plot reasons.
This was a project on Kickstarter, and according to Wikipedia, Cyan deliberately set a too low goal thinking they'd get multiples of it. They did reach the goal itself, but didn't go that far beyond it. Although they did get more money elsewhere, I think it shows in those later areas (and the technical issues) that they were constrained by money. Maray in particular is a mess for multiple reasons. One is that it's more or less literally impossible to finish without a walkthrough. A specific number that was needed to complete the game wasn't properly rendering on all systems so it got taken out and literally replaced with nothing. You have to input this number close to where it was found otherwise you're stopped dead in your tracks right before the area and basically the game is done. There's also a puzzle there involving a set of three teleporters that seems to follow no logic at all.
There's also one other puzzle there that gets called out, but I think that one is actually fine. It's fairly simple overall and involves creating a few paths inside a rotatable area that also has interior sections that can be swapped and rotated. Now, the problem here is twofold. One I think really is purely on the part of people trying to solve it. This is genuinely an easy puzzle, but it needs a small amount of forethought. The problem on Cyan's part which exacerbates the first is the process your have to go through to solve it. The area itself is rotated from simple buttons, but rotating and swapping the interior sections involves an elevator and two different teleporters. If you're going all willy-nilly there's a lot of loading as you teleport between areas. On an SSD, my loading times were pretty quick, just a second or two, but I can imagine someone on a magnetic HDD having a lot more pain especially without a plan. If you're still using magnetic disks for your active drive, you're doing yourself a major disservice. There's a lot of really hyperbolic outrage around this puzzle some of which is verging on disinformation which is why I'm mentioning it so specifically.
I'm still a little torn all things considered. There are some good elements, but it mostly lacks that qualities that made Myst and Riven so good. It's very front loaded and not satisfying to finish. Clickbait outrage aside, it could have used more play and bug testing at a minimum even if the game is exactly what Cyan always intended to make.
Rating: 6
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Post by ResidentTsundere on Sept 5, 2024 2:38:14 GMT -5
Cadillacs and Dinosaurs (Arcade via RetroArch, First Time, one hour, two minutes)
Holy COW is this game good, even though I don't think it's quite as good as Capcom's Dungeons & Dragons beat 'em ups. I love how you can really see the Capcom...ness in their '90s arcade output. Well worth checking out
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Post by JoeQ on Sept 6, 2024 5:02:07 GMT -5
Silent Storm (PC/Windows) - First playthrough, Time: 59h 31min (GOG timer), Rating: 4/5An excellent turnbased tactics game in the vein of X-COM and Jagged Alliance. You lead a squad of covert operatives in the middle of World War 2 to uncover a sinister conspiracy lurking in the shadows. An all around great tactics game with a plethora of tactical options and combat puzzles to solve in wholly destructible environments. That is, until the infamous Panzerkleins show up around the two thirds mark of the game. These dieselpunk powerarmors basically break the game balance completely. They're very unfun to fight, but also not fun to use yourself, since all the tactics and mobility of the earlier part of the game goes out the window in favor of just slowly and clunkily walking towards your enemies. A shame, but at least there are mods to remove them (I didn't try that this playthrough) and game is still fun enough otherwise. Really, my only other major complaint apart from the PKs is that were never any mission that placed you on the frontlines of the war or had you face more realistic vehicles like tanks etc. Still very much recommended to fans of these types of games. I beat the game playing through the Axis campaign on Normal difficulty. When I eventually play the Allies campaign and the Sentinels expansion I'll have to try those rebalance mods and harder difficulties. Alphabet Challenge: ABCEFNPST
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Post by dsparil on Sept 6, 2024 8:44:12 GMT -5
Rastan Saga II (TurboGrafx-16, First Time)
At first I would have said that this was one of the worst Taito games, but I somehow came around to it eventually. There's still problems with it though.
I finished in 01:00:10.
Rating: 6
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Post by Woody Alien 2 on Sept 9, 2024 6:38:09 GMT -5
I either use Steam all the time or spend long swaths of time not even touching it. Well now there's two free games I just completed so here we are:
Distant Space (Steam, first time, 29 minutes according to counter)
This game answers the question "What if Space Invaders had bosses, no barriers but deployable shields, and was also total shit?" A really pointless game whose only purpose is to farm its achievements to compose phrases on your Steam profile since every stage gives you an achievement with a letter from A to Z and numbers from 0 to 9. The fact that the first batch of levels gives you both a letter and a number makes you aware of how half-assed everything is. It's dull, repetitive, there's only one additional weapon that doesn't do much of anything, the shitty "neon/pixelated" graphics only hurt your eyes after a while, there's no point in playing it good since there's infinite continues and you can replay every level as much as you want, there's no score and there are even slowdowns when there's too many bullets and ships on screen!! I wonder if it's a part of some sort of scheme because I have rarely seen such an useless, forgettable time waster. 2/10
Beecarbonize (Steam, first time, about 2 hours between various playthroughs)
Edutainment tabletop game where you have to save the world from climate change. You have to create and deploy cards into four spaces (industry, environment, population and science) with the time and resources you have, and the ultimate goal is to find the cards that give you a winning condition by deploying innovations that bring you closer to further societal and technological improvements. However you have to balance the resources (money, people and research) and building stuff creates emissions that accumulate and after certain intervals bring you to "tipping points": negative cards that can only be removed by using the resources and only bring more damage if you don't remove them in time, and can destroy your cards or even bring to the game over. I'm not good at explaining it but it's fairly interesting once you understand how it works, I don't know if the science is sound and some of the proposed concepts seem too idealistic (after building some renewable energy sources, you can destroy "the industry" for resources, invent carbon absorbers/removers and you'll almost never have to worry about emissions again) and other too pessimistic (you can build nuclear energy but not only it takes a lot of time and resources, it also doesn't seem that much effective). Others seem kind of weird and sci-fi (augmented humans? VR worlds a la OASIS from Ready Player One?), however judging it as a game it's fairly well-made and it's an interesting way to discuss some concept that sadly are becoming all too familiar. 7/10
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Post by lurker on Sept 9, 2024 15:28:29 GMT -5
Vampire Savior (Switch [via the Capcom Fighting Collection], Replay [previously through Darkstalkers Resurrection])
Still my favorite of the trilogy and made me wish even more that Capcom would actually put together a Darkstalkers 4 at some point. So many neat touches in this one (like Felicia's ability to perch on opponents). While there were some annoying fights, I don't think any were as frustrating as the Huitzil fights from the previous two. I plan on returning to this one to finish off the remaining achievement type stuff, but for now I kinda want to start Aiyuden Chronicle.
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Post by Digitalnametag on Sept 9, 2024 19:16:16 GMT -5
Visions of Mana PS5 FTP 30 hours
Mixed feelings about this one. When the game is letting you explore environments and fight enemies it is a lot of fun. The story is pretty meh though and for some reason they decided to push it in this game. I just kind of want to smash things in Mana.
The story has a weird tone too. The premise is a journey of sacrifice like Final Fantasy X or Tales of Symphonia. The world requires a sacrifice from each of the eight elemental villages every four years and the people do this joyfully. Of course this develops further but it never quite goes where I expected it too. The characters aren't particularly interesting either and at points you get a lot of story scenes with little exploration in between.
Overall I would say the game is okay. Battles are fun but not quite as good as say Ys. I think I preferred the Trials of Mana remake.
6/10
Castlevania: Symphony of the Night PS4 Replay 6.5 hours
So the Requiem Collection this is in was $4 on PSN the other day. I've only played this one once before on PSP so was due a replay. I can see why some people still claim it as their favorite of the bunch but for me I'd rank it somewhere in the middle of the Metroidvanis. I was having a pretty good time until the inverted castle spoiled my mood a bit. Sure wish the super jump was mapped to a trigger or something...but for some reason wolf form is mapped. I guess it can move fast.
Other than that it is on the easy side. The later games also have several quality of life stuff this one is missing. In Symphony the bestiary is tied to a location rather than just a menu and you have to jump through every warp until you hit the location you want. No dashing outside wolf form either. You have to equip items instead of weapons to use them. Hard to hate though when the game created a genre so I'll cut some slack.
Still the amount of secrets and neat stuff in the game is impressive. Exploring the Castle is fun and the game play loop satisfying. Probably not one I'll revisit anytime soon but a worthy play.
8/10
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Post by dsparil on Sept 11, 2024 8:01:01 GMT -5
Etrian Odyssey HD (Switch, First Time)
I had eagerly awaited the original EO when it came out on DS. Atlus still had a fairly active mailing list back then which was good at hyping up games. Getting the actual game was a mixed bag. It’s not so much that the first EO is too difficult, it’s mainly that it’s too tedious.
The most evident tedium is in the need to create your own maps. Having this be a game of integrated map making was a major selling point, but the problems have more to do with the game’s levels than the concept. They are larger than those of classic dungeon crawlers, 35x35 versus 16x16 to 20x20 or so, while also having significantly less of note in them. Almost everything you’d need to jot down in most levels is just walls and floors although the game did have an option for auto-floors at least. Since the game uses “worm tunnels” rather than shared walls like Wizardry, M&M, Bard’s Tale, etc, it’s not a 4x increase in size, but it’s still at least 2x.
The game does have a more than basic character system, but it still leaves things to be desired. You have your standard array of class archetypes each with a selection of active and passive skills, and that’s about it. There’s no reclassing or class mixing of any kind, and the “best” party is what you’d expect. Skills generally go up to 10 and you get 1 point per level. The problems here are that skills were a complex web of dependencies which were not listed, skill descriptions were vague, and some were useless.
The core experience is like playing a typical RPG on Hard but in the worst way. Everything does too much damage to you. You don’t deal out enough in return. Except, the game is actually totally broken due to one skill possibly being more effective than intended. Experience is also not balanced around dungeon exploration so there's ever so much grinding. There were even suggestions of making a second party to use for collecting resources (for money and unlocking new equipment) since the number of opportunities to collect is tied to three skills. So that's even more potential grinding.
Originally, I don’t think I even made it past the second floor. That one introduces FOEs, strong enemies you’re mostly supposed to avoid. Except in a few places like the very first one so it's a hard wall. With the prospect of having having to grind a whole lot just to keep going, I put it down. Eventually, I did go back and I think I made through the first Stratum (dungeon) at least before I just got way too bored to keep going.
The HD version does of course fix a lot of things. You now have the option of “full” automapping which does floors and walls. You can properly see the skill web with actual skill level requirements, better descriptions and some buffs; the overpowered skill was left as is maybe indicating is was working as intended? There’s actual difficulty levels, and the original is now the hardest.
Is this all a panacea? I’d still say mostly no. The dungeon levels are still a core problem. They do get better in the second half of the third Stratum and in most of the fourth, but the fifth and last of the main ones is back to being a bit dull minus a small gimmick. Maybe if I hadn’t sat through nearly 90 hours of Labyrinth of Galleria last year (most of which is the dullest randomized dungeons you’ve ever seen), I’d be a little less annoyed.
It’s good to have difficulty levels, but there’s way too much of a gulf between the original and medium difficulty levels. The easiest, Picnic, is oddly the default which is easy to the point that you can auto battle everything including bosses. The medium, Basic, is only a small step up difficulty, but you lose the XP bonus of Picnic so it’s double the grinding for little benefit. It would have been better to have a few toggles rather than discrete difficulties with everything off being the default. I deal with the actual difficulty of the original game, but it’s the grinding that kills me. Even just an optional boost to experience would have been enough.
I sort of wish that the 3DS remake had also been ported because that does have a proper story unlike this one which only has the smallest morsels. Even though I didn’t end up liking Galleria much, I still pushed through for the story. Not having played any of the EO games after this one as a caveat, maybe Galleria's predecessor Labyrinth of Refrain was the better version of the same basic idea. The character system is much more involved (maybe even too involved), the dungeon crawling is significantly better, the difficulty levels are better balanced, the story is excellent, and it even has FOE equivalents. Everything I’ve read says that the EO games at least on DS get better from here so I still have some hopes.
I finished in 14:51:17.
Rating: 6
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Post by ResidentTsundere on Sept 11, 2024 18:03:51 GMT -5
Oishii Puzzle Ha Irimasen Ka | Triple Fun (first time playthrough, Arcade via RetroArch)
Completed (according to Retro Achievements' achievement list) in one hour and nine minutes. A fun, cute lil' game.
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Post by Apollo Chungus on Sept 11, 2024 18:20:24 GMT -5
Nice to hear your thoughts on Etrian Odyssey HD dsparil! I'm only really familiar with the 3DS era titles (4/5, and the remakes of 1 and 2), so it's neat hearing how the original game fared. Difficulty balancing between the different modes in EO is something Atlus has always had a bit of trouble with; I found the easiest mode in Untold 1 to be the sweet spot in terms of being forgiving enough but still demanding you pay attention and play competently enough to make your way through dungeons. Untold 2's easiest mode was way too easy, being that "autobattle through everything, even the bosses" scenario HD's Picnic seems to be, while anything above that went in the opposite direction with impossibly spongey enemies. I think 5 might've been okay on its easiest mode (though the first stratum's boss is genuinely ludicrously hard without doing a BUNCH of grinding), but I gave up on that due to the annoying teleporting stratum. All those games are a good few years old, so I was hoping that maybe Atlus had gotten the hang of it by now, and it's a shame that they haven't. I definitely agree that having things be more adjustable than hard and fast "Easy gives you X, Medium gives you Y, Hard gives you Z" rulesets would be the way to go. The series has always had some interest in players tinkering the party and individual characters to their liking, so why not extend that to the difficulty if you're already offering different levels of challenge? On some level, I respect the decision to port the original EO as opposed to the remake, preserving the original work and its intentions as much as possible. I recall the game's director wanting to have a relatively minimalist story with blank slate characters so you could make up your own backstories and relationships for these characters, and have that contextualized in their dungeoneering (much like the old-school dungeon crawlers and the tabletop RPGs they emulate). But I wish there was an option to experience the remake as well, as someone who really became an EO fan thanks to having a more traditional narrative to guide me through the gameplay. It would be an undoubtedly more complex project incorporating all the unique stuff; the story events, voicework, illustrations, the brand new dungeon area; so I can see why they went with the original. (Though if it were possible, I'd be crazy to suggest having both versions together, and incorporating the redesigned dungeon layouts into the remake while leaving the original's dungeons alone. Then you have twice the number of dungeons to explore and map out!)
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Post by personman on Sept 11, 2024 19:00:29 GMT -5
Rental (Steam/Linux, played on Steam Deck, first time, 45 min.) Nitrorad did a vid on this. It sounded like a simple thing to wind down with after work that night so I gave it a shot. It's just a super simple little game jam project they decided to to throw out there with little I can think to say about it. Could have done without the mirror maze and that is where most of my play time went. Nothing I'll really rate or try to judge but I wasn't really amused by it like Nitro was. It's free though so no harm done. Got all the achievements for the hell of it. Theres a campaign to get the star of the game to be made into a plushie because of course. Nightmare Kart (Steam/Linux, played on Steam Deck, first time, 2 hours) Finally got around to this. Been following the creator on twitter (not calling it X) for like 2 and a half years now so its cool to see it out there now just with a barely legally distinct coat of paint. I'll just say right off the bat that you'd play this more for the novelty than anything as the parody is very charming , doubly so if you like Bloodbourne itself. I couldn't help grinning from ear to ear when I unlocked a giant boar as one of the vehicles or how Micolash Nicholas just straight up books it on foot. There was a ton of love that went into this thing and its just nice to see. The campaign has a ton off effort shown too with how half of the stages are actual boss fights that pay loving homage to the game's respective encounters. Its definitely way more thought than they really needed to put forth and should be commended. However it can't escape the fact that it is pretty janky and doesn't do anything really amazing fundamentally outside of the boss fight flourishes. There was more effort put into the battle modes which are cool and I like how the items work but the actual race courses themselves are merely okay and do have some over sights. For instance the library track has a lot of jumps and you can just get hit by an attack in the middle of it and it'll just sending you crashing down to the early part of the track. Happened to me three times and each time I just had to throw the race. Further there is also the expected hit detection and control jank here and there. Sometimes, especially in the capture the flag style maps I'd just get stuck in place unable to move till I got blown up. But I'm willing to cut the thing plenty of slack. It started out as a freaking aprils fools joke for crying out loud. Also, its free so again no harm in giving it a whirl for the heck of it. It's nothing amazing of course but for a fun little fan parody thing its way more solid than it has any right to be. Also really fun soundtrack too. Rating-5
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