Poll of the Day > Pick the game I try to finish next.

(+) Yeah! (+)

I just beat Exile: Wicked Phenomenon (TGCD) -- 3/10 Took me just under 12 hrs to beat it.

If you're unfamiliar with the Exile series, the two on TGCD (the first was also on Genesis) are side-scrolling ARPGs.

According to Victor Ireland, Working Designs made a last minute tweak to the enemies, which made them extremely overpowered. Even at one under the max level (experience given is so minimal that you would have to grind for hours to hit the max level), the 2nd to last boss will kill you in 3 hits at full HP. For most of the game, the difficulty wasn't bad, but there were a few locations where I could really see this tweak in full force. I'd actually say that about 80% of the game is pretty easy, while the remaining 20% is pretty difficult. Except for one generic enemy, I didn't find anything cheap about the difficulty. After having just played through the cakewalk that is the first Exile, it actually being difficult past the opening dungeon (and the opening dungeon was extremely easy in this one) was a breath of fresh air. A tower about halfway through the game forced me to do some serious grinding to survive, and it served to keep me at a high enough level to be able to manage the rest of the game.

The biggest problem with the game is the hitboxes. If you envision your character as two squares high, your hitbox starts at your waist and continues up 2 squares. So, your legs are completely invulnerable, while getting attacked in the space above you that constitutes a 3rd square will damage you. If you crouch, the hitbox does not move, so no luck trying to duck out of the way of those attacks that were right above your head while standing. The enemies' hitboxes comprise the entire area of all sprite animations. So if it has something like a spear of chain attack, attacking the space where that spear or chain would reach will damage the enemy.

The only other issue was a technical one as several times it would nearly freeze up while loading the Game Over and Continue screen, taking 15 or more seconds to load it.

Unlike the first Exile where you have these other characters in your party that don't actually enter battle, this is like Popful Mail where you can switch between any of the 4, or 5 during the brief time you have Lawrence, characters during the battle stages. Unfortunately, except for a handful of places, the others aren't all that useful, so you'll be using Sadler (or Lawrence while you have him) probably 90+% of the time. HP are "pooled", so you can't switch characters if you're on the brink of death for a bit of safety, since the new character will have the same HP as the one you switched away from.

One feature I didn't really experiment with is mixing tonics -- tonics boost attack or defense for a short period of time or restore HP. Tonics don't take immediate affect after using them, requiring backing completely out of the menu to take affect, so if you use a second tonic before backing out of the menu, it will do something unexpected. I only ever mixed two Peyote healing tonics, which ended up either reducing HP or fully healing the characters. I got a string of bad luck during the run up to the final boss that almost cost me a game over.

The bosses are either extremely easy or pretty tough. A few of them actually had me needing to learn their patterns and attacks, and with how hard they hit, this took several tries. The final boss could be a bit on the interesting side. If I ended up doing due diligence and softened it up in advance, it sure helped me out since it only took about 6 hits to finish off and it didn't even damage me.

Even though I gave it such a low score, I r

I then played through the original Japanese release.
Exile II: Janen no Jishou (PCECD) -- 2/10 Took me just over 2 hrs to beat.

This game is a good example of why Working Designs felt like tweaking the difficulty of the games they localized. With the exception of the battle against El Cid, who was renamed Lawrence for WD's release (my guess is WD felt Lawrence of Arabia would be more readily recognized than El Cid), which took about a half dozen tries, the rest of the game is piss easy. When the end boss requires simply walking up to it and just wailing on it with your sword (if you fully heal yourself before it, you will out DPS it, so you won't even need to heal), meaning put the turbo switch up to max and hold down the attack button for about a minute, there's something seriously wrong with the level of difficulty. So, your options, without downloading mods that are out there that remove WD's tweaks, are to take a weekend or so to beat it or a small portion of an afternoon to beat it. The game over/continue screen is different between the two, and after the credits roll on the Jpn version, it has the voice actors deliver some message and then it allows you to play all the music and the audio from the cutscenes. The nearly complete absence of any difficulty makes me give it a lower score than the US version.
---

Whee, first vote. I say go for Ecco.
---

Vasteel will complete WD's TurboGrafx library. The first Lunar on Sega CD is on deck.

SSBM came in 2nd place last time, so it gets held over.

Meteor Multiplication is one of the several edutainment games geared for elementary school children released on the TI-99/4A.

VidGrid is an interesting concept where it's simply a jigsaw puzzle where the "image" is actually a music video. And, yes, I actually own a Jaguar CD.
---

DeltaBladeX posted...

Whee, first vote. I say go for Ecco.

Have you played it? Is it better than the first game? I wasn't too keen on the first game.
---

I go with Zaxxon.
---

Blaqthourne posted...

Have you played it? Is it better than the first game? I wasn't too keen on the first game.

I liked Tides of Time (Mega Drive) more than the original game, but still pretty similar. Never played the Mega CD version though. Not sure if that has any important differences.
---

I believe the only differences in the CD release of the original game are CD quality music and the addition of some somewhat hidden educational videos about dolphins.
---

Zacek posted...

I go with Zaxxon.

I was never able to get very far in it. Then again, the last time I tried was about 30 years ago. I hope I can get it to run correctly on my current PC, since it's the same version I played back then.
---

Zacek posted...

I go with Zaxxon.

I also voted Zaxxon, though I consider Dragon's Lair to be an acceptable alternative.


---

I think the ports of Dragon's Lair are much more forgiving than the arcade version. Plus, they don't cost $1 for every play.
---

The ports are literally the only reason I know how the Dragon's Lair games end.


---