Lurker > AxemRedRanger

Despite a positive reception, Max Payne 2 sold poorly, leading Rockstar Games' parent company Take-Two Interactive to cite the "continued disappointing sales of Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne" as one of the causes for the company's reforecasted sales for 2004.

Max Payne 2 came out way back in 2003, only 2 years after the first game, and by it looks like people by then had already stopped caring.
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Switch BotW has already passed OoT Vanilla.

http://vgsales.wikia.com/wiki/The_Legend_of_Zelda

A quick search suggests N64 Ocarina at 7.6 million is indeed the widely reported number.

And if you count Wii TP and GC TP as being basically the same game and as a multiplatform release rather than a "rerelease" per se, TP also outsold OoT vanilla by a bit. I think they started selling TP Wii for $20.00 new as a bargain game sometime during the early Wii U era or so? That probably gave it a pretty long tail.
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Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and Splatoon 2 have already outsold 8 vanilla and Splatoon.
Barring rereleases, Breath of the Wild has already outsold every other game in the Zelda series.
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I think I remember reading something about the fighting game board helping CJayC decided who made it into the 2002 contest? Would definitely explain all the wacky fighting game fodder.

Oh, and as for why Chop Chop Master Onion made it in:

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/787-which-parappa-character-is-your-favorite
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Fire Emblem is absolutely stuffed with shallow one-note minor villains but design like that gave us Gheb, so all is forgiven.
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Guybrush has had a more recent appearance than that!

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/5208-character-battle-ix-division-8-round-1-ganondorf-vs-guybrush

He even got not last, even after having votes removed for stuffing!
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Oath doesn't really have anything else I could call a complete homerun as at its core it's still a remake of a rather simple game. There's one town, a bunch of dungeons, and a plot twist (a new one in this game) that is typical Falcom fare but at least gives the plot some depth. It's also incredibly short. But the gameplay is so much fun that it's the best out of all the Ys games. I wish Falcom used that formula more!

You should give Ys Origins a try, that game is set up pretty similarly. Given your thoughts on recycled content I'm not sure you'd enjoy the "beat the game with every character" thing the game kind of wants you to do but it's definitely worth at least one playthrough

There's also The Ark of Napishtim but I didn't think that one was nearly as good.
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I think Donkey Kong has had some fairly good performances post-fourways. Doing almost the exact same on Vivi in 2010 as in 2004 is probably sneakily good in light of Zidane's trajectory over the same period and the likelihood that FFIX-related entrants had already started boosting by then. DK got hammered by SFF in 2013, yeah, but that's just the nature of SFF (and being the odd-man out in a threeway match with a competitive top two), and the round before he had totally embarrassed Lightning despite Falco being there whose presence was supposed to cost Donkey Kong the match. DKC2 looked fairly good in 2015, too.

The old-school, low-votal state of current gamefaqs is probably a good environment for Donkey Kong to do well. He'll never be a near-elite but given the way he totally demolished Falco I think he'd comfortably beat Captain Falcon or any other Nintendo character below Fox. Though I'd also take Donkey Kong over the Tidus/Yuna/Rikku trio or probably any established non-Square/Nintendo entrant historically weaker than Sub-Zero (excepting maybe Kratos cuz new game) so I might be an outlier.
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Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors
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Huh. Okay, point.

Still think he takes Sigma but that's probably more on Sigma than Pikachu being worth much.
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Sigma got in over Zero? Heresy.

On Squall/Tifa, note that FFVIII wasn't released outside Japan until September 1999 while this contest started in August. How that match goes might depend a lot on exactly what the date of the match is.

Biggest disagreement I have with the other guy is that Pokemon probably isn't going to be heavily antivoted in 1999 (IRL the backlash didn't really seem to set in until 2001) and I just don't think Sigma is worth a whole lot no matter what the year is.

Leon wouldn't have been anything special pre-RE4 but RE2 had only come out the year before and I'm not sure Simon 1999 is gonna be a whole lot better than Simon 2002.

Given that the match is pre-Final Fantasy Chronicles and pre-Chrono Cross I feel Donkey Kong probably beats Magus.

On Crash/Scorpion: https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/20-whos-your-favorite-mascot
That's pretty encouraging for Crash!
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I beat both games within the last year and didn't like either. They share the issues of having bad DS 3D that can't handle Wind Waker's art style properly, a touch-based control scheme that allows for some unique puzzles but is pretty bad for normal combat, and just being generally dull outside of dungeons.

The consensus is that Spirit Tracks is at least slightly better than Phantom Hourglass, which I get the impression is mostly a kneejerk reaction to people not having to go through PH's Temple of the Ocean King like half a dozen times, which admittedly was annoying. It also has the better soundtrack (but "better soundtrack than Phantom Hourglass" is a damn low bar to clear) and for however little it's worth the story is probably better.

On the other hand, the overworld traversal is just awful and a total waste of time even compared to PH sailing. Also they make you do this dreadful flute minigame before each dungeon (and during the final boss fight!) that is controlled by microphone inputs and the game doesn't give you proper feedback on what you're doing wrong.

And it's pretty ludicrous that that ST has a metascore of 87 and PH has 90.
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Beat Dark Dawn yesterday and only have Star Magician and Dullahan's dungeons left. I'd say the game is pretty average. My big issues with the game comes down to the story being terrible and the game being ridiculously easy right up until the final boss. I'll give it this; I don't think the first two games hold up as good at this point either.

Dungeons and just exploring stuff was done well enough. Just going places, seeing new stuff, and delving into dungeons to solve more puzzles was the highlight of the game, even if there were no real brainbenders here. I think this is part of why the Points of No Return got so many complaints. Exploring every nook and cranny to find more Djinn or just More Stuff in general is one of the game's draws, so doing something to injure that when the story and battle system are also pretty weak meant there's not necessarily all that much for players to hold onto.

One thing about the Points of No Return is that the first two Trails in the Sky games (haven't played beyond that) tended to be pretty clear about exactly where those are and if a Trails quest's expiration term is listed as Short, that's your cue to go do them before continuing the main plot. Dark Dawn gives you no such courtesies. Worse, it hides a few Djinn as random encounters in small areas of the map (and regardless of PONR, that really shouldn't have still been a thing) so unless you got lucky you might have never had a fair opportunity to even know you were missing anything without looking it up.

Battlewise, nothing until the final boss even felt like the game was trying to kill me. I don't think I healed more than once a battle before then and otherwise just attacked or occasionally summon rushed. This game would have befitted a good deal from auto-battle. The class system is kind of boring and I had issues with how it worked (as I did with GS1 and 2), but the way the game actually played usually made the details of Djinn and classes irrelevant.

In general I think the Golden Sun games have the worst stories of any JRPGs I've played. They spend a ridiculous amount of words for the most party totally failing to be fun or interesting. I don't regard myself as having particularly high standards for JRPG stories but I do like them to actually try to do something neat - and if they can't manage that, then at least not take up much time. Generally, Golden Sun stories don't try. Cool character exploration or development, fun party interaction, weird or interesting scenarios, big standout moments? Almost none is to be found and what nuggets are there get buried under mountains of bland, repetitive dialogue. There are specific things I could criticize about Dark Dawn's characters/plot/etc. but the problem (as in the first two games) was really the everything. One thing Dark Dawn does notably worse than GS1/2 is that you can no longer hold down B to skip through dialogue and have to tap the button for every single line. I guess the game can be argued to have good worldbuilding but it fails to put much that's actually compelling in said world - so I didn't end up caring.

The soundtrack was decent I guess? I dunno, none of the tracks outside the reused ones from GS1 & 2 stuck with me and I just played the game. This might just be an issue with me and playing games on the bus, though. The game generally looks decent enough but 3D graphics from a Nintendo DS game just aren't gonna be that great. I thought the out-of-battle character models in particular were pretty weak. Giving every Djinn their own unique character design was a nice touch, though.
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Also Square-Enix doesn't even make Star Ocean, Tri-Ace does.
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I've spent a lot of my last year on the bus to and from work playing DS games I never got far into or hadn't played in a decade. This was one of them. It wasn't good.

If you've got the whip, you've at least gotten fairly far into the ocean dungeon in the southeast section of the map. Probably beaten it unless you're in the habit of leaving Zelda dungeons halfway finished in order to embark on ridiculous sidequests - in friggin Spirit Tracks, no less. In which case you probably either need to go back to the Spirit Tower and do a segment there to unlock the northeast section of the map; or, you've already done that and need to head to the northeast section of the map to do stuff that will eventually unlock the next dungeon.
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Skylanders, netflix, and kids are all totally irrelevant. Remake hype might be enough to solidify him as non-fodder and finally let him take down Morrigan, I guess? I wouldn't expect much more than that.
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Amaterasu and Raiden.
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Eh, he's probably more annoyed at Billy Mitchell right now.
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Looks like I'm close enough to the end of Dark Dawn that I might as well save my commentary on it for then.
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Have seen:
Akira
Attack on Titan
Avatar: The Last Airbender (anime ja nai)
Baccano!
Code Geass
Daily Lives of High School Boys
Death Note
FLCL
Hunter x Hunter (2011)
JoJos Bizzare Adventure
Kinos Journey
One Outs
One Punch Man
Pokemon
Pokemon: The First Movie
Redline
School Rumble
Steins;Gate
Summer Wars
TTGL
The Girl Who Leapt Through Time
The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya

Have not:
Angel Beats!
AnoHana
Aria
Assassination Classroom
Death Parade
Furiko
Hajime no Ippo
Kurokos Basketball
Monthly Girls Nozaki-kun
My Hero Academia
My Love Story!!
Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt
Penguindrum
ReLIFE
SKET Dance
Sayonara Zesubou Sensei
Scums Wish
Seto no Hanayome
Shomin Sample
Squid Girl
The Seven Deadly Sins
The World God Only Knows
Toradora!
Tsurezure Children
Wandering Son
Welcome to the NHK!
Wolf Children
Your Name
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It's a JRPG series that's been dead for over a decade and it's 2018. OF COURSE any new game in the series is going to be some horrible mobile thing. That should pretty much go without saying.
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IIRC they retcon him as being 12 a bit later with the excuse that he didn't know how to count past 10 correctly or something.
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Dark Dawn is in fact the mediocre game I was talking about earlier. Just exited Luna Tower. Will say more when he gets to it (which may also let me progress a little further).
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Nelson_Mandela posted...

JonThePenguin posted...

Jakyl25 posted...

Did you know there was a DS Sonic RPG? lol

From BioWare of all companies! Back when everyone still loved them!

wait wtf

it's got the most "amazing" soundtrack too!


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So when does Phoenix Wright vs. Professor Layton take place in the timeline? >_>
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Berseria? if that's what you're talking about, then yeah, it has some boring dungeons.

Nah, I meant that the remaining dubious game yet to be ranked which I'm currently playing actually has good (or certainly at least distinctive) dungeons but I think it has very little else going for it.

If it's not obvious from that, maybe we have wildly diverging tastes. Or maybe the game actually gets better later on. I can only hope!
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He said he disliked recycled content and generic dungeons right in that write-up and you think it's a good idea to recommend him a game whose "dungeons" entirely consist of randomized areas?

There's one of the two medicore-ish games I was wondering about down, though. The praise to dungeon design probably explains why the other game is even higher, because I'm playing through it at the moment and it sure doesn't have much else going for it!
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Haven't played DKC2 in awhile but I beat Trails in the Sky SC yesterday. Great game. Think I'd go Estelle > Joshua > Olivier > Kloe > Kevin > Tita > Zin > Agate > Scherazard

Zin is only above anyone because I really liked his kung fu rivalry and backstory with Walter. Agate might have been higher if I had chosen to accompany him for the first several chapters, but then going with Scherzard didn't really do any favors for her so I dunno.

Also finished the first Palace in Persona 5, which I thank Leon again for buying me! It's pretty neat so far.
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Morgan Fey talks a few sentences to herself on Day 2 of 3-5 and therefore technically qualifies.
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A direct match could be rough, but with RE1 having a playrate that high and over two-thirds of its players having played the much-better REmake, I might actually buy RE1 > RE2 like 2015 results imply.
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Finally got to a game I've played!
Bowser's Inside Story woo

Yeah I had trouble on that train battle too.

There's a couple pretty mediocre (might be generous?) games that I'm surprised haven't shown up yet. Are we still in your Revel in Mediocrity tier?
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MD Geist isn't dead yet

he's going to SAVE ANIME

starting right from this topic!
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For what it's worth, there seems to be a pretty clear consensus that the 2003 series was better. It's got an 8.44 on mal and the newer one has a 7.61. Can't say exactly how it's better though, since I saw the reception the new series was getting and decided not to bother with it.l
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The "Lunar series" consists of two great games with a ridiculous number of remakes (mainly of Lunar 1), a couple spinoffs nobody cares about, and a prequel that's universally-despised. Even acknowledging that it was close to the bottom, it didn't belong on this list.
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You really weren't kidding about all the Japanese RPGs at the bottom end. Do you think that's just because you play a lot of them in general or what?
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Mega Man 9/10 DLC?
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https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/games/rankings?platform=63&genre=54&list_type=diff&view_type=0&dlc=1&min_votes=7

gamefaqs averages indicate most users thought DKC2 was the hardest. Not by that large a margin, though.
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bump
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so what I'm getting out of this exchange is that Franxx might be somewhat less stupid than Genesis of Aquarion and Aquarion Evol

this sounds disappointing
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bump
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So how would people rank Square's former near-elites these days?

I'd go:

Auron
Tifa
Sora
Squall
Vincent

I figure Kefka and Vivi at least give Sora and Squall a good scare these days (Vivi having of course already beaten Squall in 2013 but that may not have been a normal match), and there's quite a few other characters I'd be tempted to take over Vincent.
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Movies:

Tier 1:
MD Geist
Lupin III: Cagliostro no Shiro
Akira
Redline
Millennium Acress
Nausicaa of the Valley of the Winds
Princess Mononoke
Laputa: Castle in the Sky
Perfect Blue
Legend of the Galactic Heroes: Overture to a New War

Tier 2:
Cowboy Bebop: Knocking on Heaven's Door
Spirited Away
Porco Rosso
Howl's Moving Castle
One Piece Movie 6: Omatsuri Danshaku to Himitsu no Shima
Kiki's Delivert Service
Vampire Hunter D (2000)
Jin-Rou
Whisper of the Heart
Tokyo Godfathers
Slayers Great
Slayers Return
Ouritsu Uchuugun: Honneamise no Tsubasa
Macross: Do You Remember Love?
Mobile Suit Gundam I
Mobile Suit Gundam II: Soldiers of Sorrow
Mobile Suit Gundam III: Encounters in Space
Mobile Police Patlabor: The Movie
Mobile Police Patlabor 2: The Movie
Memories
Dirty Pair: The Movie
Paprika
Chirin no Suzu
Arcadia of my Youth
Digimon Adventure: Our War Game!
Sword of the Stranger
Space Adventure Cobra
Ideon: Be Invoked
Legend of the Galactic Heroes: My Conquest is the Sea of Stars
Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann Movie: Lagann-hen
Summer Wars
Suzumiya Haruhi no Shoushitsu
Mahou Shoujo MadokaMagica Movie 3: Hangyaku no Monogatari
Sakasama no Patema
Psycho-Pass Movie
Mobile Suit Gundam Thunderbolt: December Sky
Trigun: Badlands Rumble
Riding Bean
Baoh The Visitor
Roujin Z
Gekiganger 3: The Movie
Dragon Ball Z Special 1: Tatta Hitori no Saishuu Kessen
Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex - Solid State Society
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no crusty pop, huh
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Didn't the anime skip 2-1, and therefore Maggey will presumably not be introduced until 3-3? I guess they could make that work, though.
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Is banjo supposed to be kazooie's mount?
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staying alive
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Where would original Ace Attorney, Justice for All, and Dual Destinies rank?
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I had the tapes for Donkey Kong Country, Pokemon, and Donkey Kong 64 and Jet Force Gemini.

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLEvGfPRiBfYKParGLjVPE7FldJTIl2lFv

Donkey Kong Country Exposed remains a work of art.

The Pokemon one isn't included there but...come to think of it, that video was mostly about the anime and the games were barely in it. I remember me or my sister also getting a video about Cubix so I assume the pokemon one was probably produced by 4kids rather than any Nintendo-related entity.
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I think we pretty much saw that Vincent had dropped in 2013.

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/5156-character-battle-ix-division-2-round-1-kos-mos-vs-dunban-vs
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/poll/5229-character-battle-ix-division-2-round-2-phoenix-vs-vincent-vs

At the time people blamed Phoenix > Vincent on the hilarious picture, and that probably contributed, but look at his earlier match. 60% on KOS-MOS in 2013 is just not a near-elite level performance and that's assuming you don't try to argue Xeno-LFF or something. KOS-MOS is probably around the fodder-line at best so yeah that looks pretty damn bad for Vincent!
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I don't think we've seen any favorite RPG character polls other than this one and some Final Fantasy polls that are generally 15+ years old.
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