Board 8 > Post Each Time You Beat a Game: 2023 Edition

(+) Yeah! (+)

Saw this while looking through the topics list in the aftermath of VGMC noms so might as well. I've tried to keep track of all the stuff I've been playing since some part of last year via Grouvee, why not go ahead and add to that effort in some other form.

Games I've beaten in 2023 so far (even if I started playing them earlier):
Elden Ring
Subnautica (replay, for archipelago multiworld)
Mizzurna Falls (replay)
Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (replay, but first time playing through SAT and PSP versions)
Mafia: Definitive Edition (replay)
Subnautica: Below Zero
Hogwarts Legacy
Yakuza 0
Getsu Fuuma Den
Grand Theft Auto III (partial replay)
Grand Theft Auto Vice City (partial replay)
Grand Theft Auto: Vice City Stories
Grand Theft Auto IV: The Complete Edition
Grand Theft Auto V
Overcooked 2
Castlevania: Curse of Darkness (replay)
Rogue Legacy (mostly a replay but I had never beaten the final boss before; did it again right after for archipelago multiworld)
Donkey Kong 64 (randomizer)
Castlevania 64 (randomizer)

And now for the only one that's fresh enough on my mind to do a quick comment as I literally played through the whole thing today:

The Charnel House Trilogy
It's a point and click adventure. It advertises itself as three games in one; it's not, it's one continuous story with three 'chapters', two of which have you controlling the same character, and all it is is an extended introduction for something that the outro promises will come in 2016, the year after the game was released, that as of right now still hasn't materialized. I found the character you spend most of the game with rather unlikable. The setting for the game's second and third parts is a confusing metaphysical conduit of the "brings your personalized inner demons to life" variety which ended up reading largely like a disguised self-therapy session for the writer. At least the music they furnished the game with is pretty good, which fittingly enough was the main reason I pushed myself to play it, to better contextualize a song from it I had picked out for a VGM list channel I'm running.

The Charnel House Trilogy

I remember playing The Charnel House Trilogy back when it was just that one chapter on the train and it was free. Then they added those 2 more chapters if you even call it that, and sold it as a "game" which honestly wouldn't have mattered if they were actual full-fledged games. The train one (Sepulchre) as a free game would've sufficed. It was one of the most subtly scary things at the time without reliance on jumpscares and I still fondly remember it. But as an entire trilogy I can't justify its price. And of course the sequel that never existed.

I beat Return to Mysterious Island 2: Mina's Fate (PC)

I started this game last year and just could not finish it quick. Having beat the first one back in 2019, I expected this game was just a way to cash in on the premise so already I was having concerns starting it. The last game was sort of exploratory and intuitive in what you could do; this inventory and crafting system I am no stranger to it as I've played previous games from Kheops' Studio. It was also filled with intrigue about Captain Nemo as you make your way slowly into the heart of his operations through cunning and knowledge gathering. However, I just pretty much stopped caring a third into this one and only picked it up now to finally rid of it from my desktop. I felt apathetic towards the plot which seeks to undo all your hard work in the first game and saddle you with a burden and a responsibility to suddenly care about the island.

The puzzles are just more of the same and kind of annoying because it requires a little understanding on chemistry. Granted everything you needed to know was in this journal you find early on so yeah its that kind of game where reading 12 pages of "notes" is integral to understanding solutions. Which I don't mind at all, but in this case if you cut that shit out you're pretty much left with a shorter game. So I struggle to think about the design here.

There's also at least two instances of padding, one that requires you to play politics with a couple of monkeys which was basically feeding them their favorite food until their bar turns green. There's a pottery minigame where you have to manually craft at least 10 vases or something and they were all boring af as you suffer through animation after unskippable animation. Mercifully not everything here is animated as some cutscenes are represented by a graphic novel format.

I think the worst thing about this is the ending. It's your traditional moral dilemma of leaving the island to die or not but you'll be stuck here and I, fed up by all the shit I had to plow through decided yeah fuck this island only to be met with a "yeah that was the wrong choice buddy, enjoy your sad ending" completely out of nowhere.

Still better than Syberia 3.

Oh and if its one thing I enjoyed about this game is that it features a cutscene that connects with the stinger to Voyage: Journey to the Moon which I beat last year and that one was a treat. So watching closure for the Michel Arden story was nice. And it wasn't much but there was enough to give me something to think about. It wasn't a coincidence I didn't plan on beating Voyage after the first Return game, but I'm glad I did. If I saw this scene here and didn't play Voyage I would be confused af.

The Legend of Zelda: Oracle of Seasons

Grabbed this and Oracle of Ages and a couple Monster Hunter titles just before the eshop closed, not my first time playing through the Oracles but it is the first time I'm playing either of them on an actual handheld system. I played most of this while on a trip abroad at the start of April, doing one dungeon + exploration for the next one each night, but didn't finish it then; it wasn't until this last weekend that I went back to run through the final dungeon and finish the game.

For this particular title (and what I remember of Ages), I'd say the overworld exploration aspect is a bit more scuffed than in Link's Awakening just because of the multi-layered different seasons mechanic making it that much more difficult for it to easily cement in your memory. I also don't quite remember how it works in Ages, but outside of a very small number of extremely specific places there's next to no reason to use the animal buddy mechanic (I always go for Dimitri) so I mostly forgot it was in there. This is alleviated somewhat by the Subrosia segments, which lack the changing seasons mechanic and have a significantly smaller map, making it easier to tell what may be stopping you from going forward, or what places you haven't gone before that you can now.

Bearing in mind that LA is likely my favorite 2D Zelda, one way I would say Seasons improved on its predecessor is the dungeon puzzles, which thanks to a recent (and as of yet incomplete) replay of LA through archipelago multiworld I was reminded of a small amount of quite hamfisted bits to them such as finding a bombable wall through nothing but sword wall-poking; there were a couple puzzles in Seasons I spent a little longer on than I expected but I never really felt like it got to that level. Speaking of dungeons, I would say I found the bosses slightly more confusing/frustrating in this game versus LA, but reflecting upon it that's probably because I'm much more familiar with every aspect of that game so I wouldn't spend any time trying to remember how to effectively hurt some of them. That being said, I did manage to beat all but 2 bosses on the first try; the ones that I didn't I got on the second. I would still probably say that this game's version of Gohma is quite possibly the most frustrating boss in the GB Zeldas just because of how unforgiving the kiting technique you're expected to use is and the relatively limited health/resources you have at the time.

One thing I did markedly dislike about it is how a couple of the heart pieces were distributed; as with the other GB Zeldas there is a relatively small amount to be found, but two of them seem to be based on nothing but RNG (bump into Maple and hope she drops it never happened during this last run, and plant a gasha seed in a high-level spot and hope that's what you get for it), which did leave a bad taste.

The music is quite good in both Oracle titles; Seasons does contain Dancing Dragon Dungeon, which I believe would easily be the most recognizable track between them. There's also pieces like Ancient Ruins, which sounds suspiciously similar to the theme from Gargoyle's Quest, another GB Capcom title which came out a decade earlier (but which curiously enough, neither of the composers for this game were involved with).

Overall, while I don't think it gets to the level of tight pacing/design and memorability as Link's Awakening, Seasons is definitely one to check out if you enjoy this series/style. Now who knows if I'll get around to redoing Ages as well in the same fashion anytime soon...

Hoa (XB1)

It seems like they put a lot of effort into art and crafting an atmosphere, but the game is very vanilla. They had a segment toward the end that could have great, but they removed all control from the player. The last chapter was when they finally did some interesting things, but they should have done more all along.

Curse of the Sea Rats (PC)

Do not play this game. This game is cursed. I went into this blind and I severely regret it. Only finished it because I paid for it and I just wanted to see it through but I've never checked out of a game so fast.

This is probably the worst metroidvania I have ever played and its sad because the things that I like about it are rarely seen in the good ones: serviceable to outstanding but very varied voice-acting, great portraits and visuals, as well as animation for your 4 possible playables as well as the boss fights, and finally an exploration ethos that encourages out of order encounters, unlocking shortcuts and optional areas that are in turn also shortcuts to main areas.

Also can I just say. See the plot for this game is that you're pirates headed to be tried when all of a sudden you become rats. This ship has to have had the most multi-national set of prisoners you've ever seen because all the stereotypes are here: american indians, american americans not-guybrush threepwood, stronk jamaicans, sleazy louisianans, pompous persian princesses, bitch aussie with a pet toucan, and gypsies. All voice-acted all hammy af. Very enjoyable and I think I also liked the fact that I thought these people got turned into rats as an excuse to animate non-humans but there are in fact humans in this game both related and unrelated to the plot that you just bump into and you have to fight because you're rats!

But the praise ends there. The game by design is severely flawed. Every aspect to this is just wrong and I don't even know where to start so I'll just list a couple of bullet points on just some of the things you encounter:

• The way some levels and enemies are designed you can't tell if they are actually enemies or bottomless pits or a wall. Literally the first enemy in the game hit me because I thought it wasn't an enemy. And one secret required you to make a leap of faith with no clues whatsoever when every other incident would have led you to a bottomless pit.
• I say Metroidvania, but really you're unlocking some pretty useless shit. 3 bosses give you double jump, super jump, and dash. Then the rest are just bullshit. Like you get goggles that tell you the names of the enemies you kill...midway into the game. You get a backpack that increases your inventory by just a little (more on this later). Certain areas are locked behind by keys and you just find those like, why not gate the keys behind the bosses?
• Most egregious boss item is a "Resurrection Ring" that spawns you where you die. Handy right? Well if you die in a bottomless pit, you spawn in that same pit and die there AGAIN. And this ring is just ONE charge. How do you recharge? You have to beat the same boss that gave you the ring. This boss, has two forms and one of them is over a bottomless pit! You have to run over there and voluntarily do this and not die to recharge it.
• Every single time you die, an NPC is taunting the shit out of how much of a fail you are. And you will die alot because...
• ...severe power imbalances. There are enemies that hit you for a certain amount. But there are also enemies that hit you for a percentage. Common enemies btw. So it doesn't matter how much you level, they will still kill you in 4 hits. Oh by the way, there's no flinching invincibility frames so sometimes enemies can combo the shit out of you.
• One of the boss relics lets you switch characters anytime, except characters only differ in combat ability instead of any kind of uniqueness. Do you wanna be the parry master (can't parry bosses btw), the strong slow guy with no range and is the only one who can heal himself, the aerial expert who sucks at anything else, or the dagger fiend who hits fast and criticals the most. Guess who I used 90% of the time? It's really a shame too as each of the four has unique dialog with the bosses and you can only ever see one of them. You won't miss much lore although one character seems very heavy into it among the rest.
• So the dagger girl mixed with how broken the levelling system is, allowed me to pretty much steamroll over 80% of the bosses in this game. We're talking about them dying off before they finish the animation of their second major attack. It's that broken and I think its because of your ability to 100% crit from behind and most of these bosses having a suspiciously spacious zone behind them you can just roll into (the only bosses I found "challenging" were big bosses in the background or constantly flying ones). I would have played fair just to see how every boss is were it not for the fact that...
• Save Rooms are few and far in between. You die from a boss, you have to run all the way back and if the percentage-gibbing mooks don't kill you you'll be lucky enough to start with half health in the boss room.
• So remember that backpack increasing your slots by 3 per item? Well, it actually broke midgame. Suddenly I was back to pre-backpack inventory and healing in this game is ridiculous. Every item you find is either a useless collectible or food. And the menu will say ?/50 as if you'll find 50 of these but no. There are no random drops. No store for food. You will find a total of about 6-7 of a certain food before the game starves you, forcing you to go to the shopkeeper in few and far zones of the map just to buy 3/3 potions. Like I had 20,000 gold by the end of the game and this motherfucker didn't wanna sell me 99 potions (300 gold each) like every other platformer ever. It's artificial difficulty and it shows
• No inventory tabs. No item sort. So everytime you want to heal or use an item, you have to go into the menu and scroll down past the collectibles like why are the collectibles on top of this shit. Yes there is a shortcut menu, but because you can only carry 3/3 potions and there are only 6/50 food in the game, the point is kind of moot.

The endgame is also one of the worst. You are locked out of every teleporter in the game and you need to rush back to the start of the map, forcing you into a boss fight where you can't directly hit them and lasts almost forever. Mercifully you can skip them using the aformentioned optional boss shortcut route but its still a terrible slog and an obvious attempt to pad the game and btw, I hope you actually were working to unlock those areas instead of exploring for no reason because the game doesn't warn you of this teleport nixing malarkey and just drops it on you for no reason.

Oh ya and the game has references to Monkey Island, Hollow Knight, and for some strange reason the rather obscure or less talked about indie game Rime which has nothing to do with the motifs of this game but whatever. Just such a weird allusion.

2/10. I struggle but, this game is still better than Syberia 3.

NBIceman posted...

2 >= 4 > 3 > 6 > 5 > 1.

Hell yes. Glad to see someone who puts 4 on such a high pedestal. I am forever biased by the Megaman I grew up on and I always felt it had the best music. Dustman being my favorite.

Olija (XB1)

Really solid game that is really easy to get lost in with no local map. I found the combat to be quite snappy and stylish. For a low-demanding game, I experienced the occasional framerate drop, and the intro each time I booted the game never had its audio and visuals synced.

Simoun posted...

Hell yes. Glad to see someone who puts 4 on such a high pedestal. I am forever biased by the Megaman I grew up on and I always felt it had the best music. Dustman being my favorite.

Agreed. Love 4. I never get why people rag on its issues whereas both 2 and 3 have real issues themselves. 4 is big, Cossack's castle is unique, its soundtrack has its own identity and is more layered than the other NES titles, it gives you options with a great variety of good weapons (people complain about the Mega Buster but 5 and 6 literally have OP busters but not great RM weapons unlike 4, especially 5). It could do with slightly tougher Robot Masters and platforming, but in the same vein the others lack a lot of stuff as well.

Turok 2: Seeds of Evil (Steam)

This one's been a long time coming. I loved Turok 2 on N64 but I sure as hell could not figure it out. Even with cheats to give myself the best weapons early, infinite ammo, and level select, I don't think I ever beat a single level, or even managed to make much progress. Finally, 20+ years older and with bunch of features like hints, maps, and quick saves (I forget how many of these were in N64 version -- I know the hints weren't) I've beaten it. I saw someone post on the Steam forums about how some of the changes made it feel like easy mode, but that they took that as a sign to finally just beat the damn game and put it behind them. I think I concur.

I ended up feeling pretty conflicted on it in a lot of ways. It's actually way more linear than I remembered. The levels are certainly confusing but mostly because it's easy to miss things and get turned around, not because you have a bunch of options of where to go. And while I wouldn't call the game super easy it's not nearly as tough as I remember. My memory is that the Sisters of Despair minibosses, for instance, felt virtually impossible to kill. But they actually go down in 3 shotgun shots. Regular enemies sometimes take more than that!

I'm also conflicted on if I like this game or not. The levels are really cool and atmospheric and also poorly designed and very repetitive. The guns are extremely fun and unique and half of them are useless (pistol, shotgun, and plasma rifle were my go-tos for the nearly the entire game, until the pistol fell off in Hive of the Mantids and I started using the Cerebral Bore instead). There's a little bit of Metroidvania-ness where you get permanent upgrades and have to revisit previous levels (I've always considered Turok 2 to be very Metroid Prime-adjacent, or maybe vice versa -- they both even have a late-game key hunt) but the upgrades you get are pretty unimpressive.

As I was wrapping up the game's final level, it occurred to me what game it had been reminding me of all through this current playthrough: Halo 1. The cool but tedious and repetitive levels, the cool but oft-useless guns, the general lack of polish, the pistol that OHKs almost everything. I definitely like it more than Halo 1 though, not to mention Turok 1! But I don't think I'll be coming back to it.

Slaughter by the River of Souls > Port of Adia > Primagen's Lightship > Lair of the Blind Ones > Death Marshes > Hive of the Mantids

Final Fantasy II Pixel Remaster
Not much to say here

Crashmo (3DS)

So much harder than Pushmo. All the effects of my working hard to reduce my stress were negated here. Gotta play something else before the back half of the series, that's for sure.

Kenri posted...

(I've always considered Turok 2 to be very Metroid Prime-adjacent, or maybe vice versa -- they both even have a late-game key hunt)

There's a reason for that! It's largely the same development team. Iguana's founder went on to form Retro Studios after Turok 2 and brought most of his team with him. This is also why Turok 3 is so different. I always recommend Turok 2 to Metroid Prime lovers to sort of see the origins of that style of game design. Plus the game just freaking rules (especially with the remaster fixing the frame rate issues), though I totally understand your complaints.

Slaughter by the River of Souls > Port of Adia > Primagen's Lightship > Lair of the Blind Ones > Death Marshes > Hive of the Mantids

Is this a soundtrack ranking or a level ranking? I ask because the level is just called River of Souls and Slaughter by the River of Souls is the accompanying track. And it works better as a soundtrack ranking than a level ranking, imho!

Amanda the Adventurer Demo
Counting 5 minute demos as games is really padding my resume, huh?

_Blur_ posted...

Is this a soundtrack ranking or a level ranking? I ask because the level is just called River of Souls and Slaughter by the River of Souls is the accompanying track. And it works better as a soundtrack ranking than a level ranking, imho!

Just level but I've always heard the level title as Slaughter (which is admittedly a weird name when all the others are just the place name), since that's what Adon calls it in her level opening narration. Maybe I'm wrong and it's just a somewhat common mistake since I've seen other people call it that too.

Would be interested to know your level ranking if you have one off the top of your head!

_Blur_ posted...

There's a reason for that! It's largely the same development team. Iguana's founder went on to form Retro Studios after Turok 2 and brought most of his team with him. This is also why Turok 3 is so different. I always recommend Turok 2 to Metroid Prime lovers to sort of see the origins of that style of game design.

Oh wow! I might have known this at some point but if I did I had completely forgotten. It makes a lot of sense, though.

Arkista's Ring
Never heard of this game before, saw Arcus I think is his name play it and it looked kinda easy and short so I gave it a go. It was not the best NES game ever, but it had it's charm. It was easy until the last 3 or 4 stages.

Kenri posted...

Just level but I've always heard the level title as Slaughter (which is admittedly a weird name when all the others are just the place name), since that's what Adon calls it in her level opening narration. Maybe I'm wrong and it's just a somewhat common mistake since I've seen other people call it that too.

Would be interested to know your level ranking if you have one off the top of your head!

Oh wow! I might have known this at some point but if I did I had completely forgotten. It makes a lot of sense, though.

Yeah, Adon does say it that way randomly, but if you check the level name anywhere else in game, it's just River of Souls. Think my level ranking would go:

Primagen's Lightship > River of Souls > Hive of the Mantids > Port of Adia > Death Marshes > Lair of the Blind Ones

Soundtrack ranking:

Slaughter by the Rver of Souls > Primagen's Lightship > Port of Adia (literally all three of these are 10/10 tracks) > Hive of the Mantids > Death Marshes > Lair of the Blind Ones

For anyone who has played through Wario Land II, would you consider finishing the "main" levels as beating the game? The credits roll but then there are 25 "hidden" stages, and even the early ones seem pretty tough. Plus to get the "true" ending you need to 100% the game so I'm not sure if I should count this yet...

Underleveled posted...

For anyone who has played through Wario Land II, would you consider finishing the "main" levels as beating the game? The credits roll but then there are 25 "hidden" stages, and even the early ones seem pretty tough. Plus to get the "true" ending you need to 100% the game so I'm not sure if I should count this yet...

I would probably count it as beating the game, I vaguely recall the first set of hidden levels being inaccessible until after you complete the "normal" route and while I don't remember if it's the case for all of them, pretty sure for most of them you get a unique ending for getting to the end of that branch and all that's different if you clear the be-all-end-all 100% final level (which is balls hard) is that you get one more ending with a unique animation which still feels pretty simplistic in relation to the others so the most significant part of 100%ing would just be if you want to get as much as you can out of the game.

ActRaiser

Another replay but I recently started playing ActRaiser Renaissance on steam and as is my wont I felt compelled to quickly replay the original to better judge how different it was and whether it was an improvement. I remembered the original only being a few hours long; I was right, this was another example of a game where I previously got to the final boss and then never actually beat it, it probably helped that this time I played it over two sessions instead of just one like I did originally.

The platforming/action sections which are the first thing you experience in the game do feel fairly clunky even by the standards of the time I think, especially your weapon reach; a problem I've noticed being unusually common for me in games I've played as of late is playing a platformer where you're a sword user and doing a long string of attacks where the thing I'm trying to hit is just barely out of my weapon range (Blasphemous has this too). The upside is that most of the levels are designed to compensate for the clunkiness by giving you health refills at convenient intervals and occasionally extra lives, though this doesn't matter much as you can just restart the level with no penalty if you run out of lives. Bosses can be a bit annoying/tedious with trying to damage them and stay alive, but for a lot of them you can just out-DPS them or find the right magic to use to just nuke them unceremoniously.

The town sim is honestly the more distinctive and memorable part of the game for me, maybe it's just the monkey brain satisfaction of seeing everything progress and flourish just the right way after I've cleared the path for it. The way it actually proceeds is pretty simple but the presentation with the dialogue you have with your followers as you expand is really nice worldbuilding. Weirdly enough this is the part of the game where you can upgrade your character for the action sections which I reckon I have significantly more to say about after this new run; you need to get offerings from your followers to upgrade your lives and magic capacity and get new spells, and most of the time you get this from events which are practically automatic or require some pretty straightforward nudging on your part but others just feel like total non sequiturs, like hitting one of your own temples with lightning to scare one of your followers into giving up an item that he'd been secretly keeping even though you get no hint that that's what will happen.

One more thing that I only really learned about in this new run that feels bizarre to me is the way the world population system works; you need to raise the world population to increase your own level and raise your health, but what determines the max population for each area is not only the type and number of structures that are present (you need to go out of your way to demolish less advanced structures so that they're rebuilt as newer ones) but also... the score you get for the action sections for that area. Which you get no in-game indication that these two mechanics are in any way connected. You also can't redo action stages without restarting the entire game. This wouldn't be too much of a hangup for me if not for the fact that unless you do some pretty deliberate minmaxing in that regard it's impossible to hit the upper level threshold of 17, for which you need to hit 4600 world pop (I was about 100 short of this in the end, and about 150 short of what's apparently the upper threshold for maximum possible world pop, according to retroachievements anyway).

So that felt pretty weird and undermined the straightforward enjoyment of the game for me a bit, but even with this slightly-less-than-perfect build I managed to actually follow through and beat the final boss this time around. Thankfully level 16 was enough for the "DPS race with some judicious pattern recognition use" strategy to work. Overall it's a pretty cool experience that's largely carried by the uniqueness of the gameplay and the world and how good the music is. Will probably play again at some point and maybe attempt the minmaxing nonsense now that I'm at least aware of it.

DeadTaffer posted...

I would probably count it as beating the game, I vaguely recall the first set of hidden levels being inaccessible until after you complete the "normal" route and while I don't remember if it's the case for all of them, pretty sure for most of them you get a unique ending for getting to the end of that branch and all that's different if you clear the be-all-end-all 100% final level (which is balls hard) is that you get one more ending with a unique animation which still feels pretty simplistic in relation to the others so the most significant part of 100%ing would just be if you want to get as much as you can out of the game.

Okay..

Wario Land II (GBC via 3DS Virtual Console)

Fun; I just like Wario games in general and it was nice to have some variety in level clear requirements (ie, one level requires you to find a chicken somewhere in the level and bring it back to the start unharmed; it's not always just "reach the goal"). Some parts are unnecessarily and frustratingly difficult (just because you can't die doesn't mean it isn't tough), and I'm pretty certain that I found at least two places where it's possible to softlock yourself and have to restart the level (made worse by the fact that, as far as I could find, there is no "Exit Level" option, meaning you have to reset the game, and since you can save at any time and resume exactly where you were mid-level, it seems like it's possible to softlock your file altogether).

The Murder of Sonic the Hedgehog
Didn't live up to its potential.

I wouldn't recommend quitting Wario Land II after finishing the main route, but it is still beating the game. You see the credits roll, and it's about as long as any other route in the game if you went in order from the beginning.

I pretty much always consider the credits roll to be the signal that you've "beaten" the game unless it's very explicitly spelled out that that isn't the case.

Speaking of only having finished main routes
Rance IX: The Helmanian Revolution (PC)
Gahahahaha. Rance returns in this direct sequel to Rance Quest, helping an exiled former prince overthrow the corrupt and crumbling government of his homeland for typically selfish reasons. The VN elements are greatly streamlined here from the previous few, only offering a small selection of cutscenes and battles at a time. The dungeons are gone as well, leaving only large-scale SRPG combat. This is very reminiscent of Fire Emblem, pitting your named characters against many enemies on a 2D grid battlefield. There are even support conversations between particular units from time to time. In addition to the one-time story battles, there are Free Battles, accessible at any time after they're unlocked, useful for training or offering a unique challenge such as an optional boss.

Outside of battle, there's a solid selection of customization elements to work with. Characters can equip power-boosting accessories, upgrade individual core stats with skill points, improve their weapons, and temporarily improve armor. Upgrading all available stats by 2, 4, 6, and 8 grants a passive improvement specific to the character each time, including lowered special move cost, and increased number of special move uses, and increasing the rate of random effects such as counters. Every unit also has a stat-based chance to not die any time they would have, which relieves some of the FE stress.

Another source of customization is the Hoverfort, a mechanized vehicle that plays a large role in the story. This is represented by a rectangular grid that can be loaded up with weapons and devices, like the inventory in Resident Evil. Upgrading the devices either powers them up or makes them smaller, allowing more stuff to be placed. In certain battles, one of the devices can be consumed to activate their effect, from a large beam attack to a 1x1 wall to moving a friendly or enemy unit elsewhere on the field. In some battles, enemies also attempt to get past your forces to invade the Hoverfort, which can trigger a defense battle where your unused party members defend the core.

There is also Rance Mode, which unsurprisingly involves Rance "interacting" with several of the female party members in H scenes (Not, mind you, the only H scenes in the game). In addition to being storylines of their own, these grant the characters significant numbers of skill points, but to activate each one takes a certain number points acquired from the main or free battles. There are a limited number of these, so you probably can't romance everyone on the first run.

The dark reflection of Rance Mode is bad ends. These can happen when you lose certain party members to certain battles, which seems difficult to do by accident. Then you get a choice to see the bad end or have them turn up perfectly safe. The bad ends are truly unpleasant. One strong point of the series is I like these characters. To see them meet with these terrible fates is just... bleh. They also result in an instant game over. If you're determined to watch all the scenes, good luck with that.

That aside, the story builds to an exciting and satisfying conclusion. One could say it's not truly Rance's story, but the story of others involved. He's not the most complicated character after all, and he doesn't change all that much. At least he seems to achieve his real goal here in order to prepare himself for the next and apparently final game in the series. On the way there, of course, there's no end to the absurdity from his interactions with returning and new characters. My favorite might be Miracle Tor, a self-styled Dark Witch who's every bit as arrogant and deluded as Rance, but in a rather different way. Also worth noting is Pigu, a strange girl who can divide herself into 8 copies during combat. They have rather low HP at that point but generating a small army of evade tanks has its uses.

I could just go on about this game. Love this series. I know it's not for everyone, but I recommend it to anyone else.

Professor Layton and the Curious Village (DS)

I basically played through this before but apparently got tripped up on a puzzle very close to the end, so this was pretty much a second playthrough but first time actually clinching the victory, completing 109 puzzles along the way. I remember first seeing this game advertised when it first came out and thinking between the name and art style it looked like a game for children. Like, really little children, not a family game like a Mario or something. Glad I was wrong. This was fun and I'm excited for the rest of the series.

Coffee Talk Episode 2: Hibiscus & Butterfly (XB1)

I wasn't engrossed with it like I was the first, but it was still a solid experience. They crammed in all of the old characters, and honestly they shouldn't have as half of them just didn't justify having any screen time with uninteresting story arcs. The new people were pretty cool though, and the returning characters that were given proper focus (specifically Jorji and Hyde) did shine.

Our World is Ended (PS4)

Quite possibly the worst visual novel I have ever read, and I am honestly not sure how they got such a great Japanese VA cast for this garbage. Every character is a walking anime trope that you have seen in many Japanese games, and I hated pretty much the entire main cast. There's supposedly a serious story going on throughout the game, but the game always loses focus to make another joke about boobs instead.

It has a 59 on Metacritic and 48 on Opencritic. I honestly think both of those scores are giving it too much credit. The developer (RED Entertainment) has not made any games since this one, and honestly, I do not think I would buy another game from them. Their 'character' in the Neptunia series is also extremely annoying so it fits pretty well.

Replays
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Kid Icarus (NES/Switch): Has a weird difficulty of starting out hard in the beginning but gets easier the further you get

Kirby's Dream Land (Game Boy/Switch): Fun, short and sweet. Still holds up well today.

Game & Watch Gallery 3 (Game Boy Color/Switch): Been a good number of years since I played this one. I totally forgot it had a Credits sequence. A nice set of games that are fun to play. My favorite one is probably Mario Bros., where you control Mario & Luigi at a cake factory.

Star Fox (SNES/Switch): Completed Course 1. I still enjoy it despite it's age and that is what matters to me.

Fighter's History (SNES/Switch): Completed the game with Ray. Spamming Dynamite Tackle is a guilty pleasure.

Super Mario Land 2: 6 Golden Coins: Still a fun game to me.

Crypt Stalker (PC): Game got an updated recently and it got new levels. The game also got tweaked/fixed and a few of the bosses got slightly different attack patterns. The game is also less buggy too. Fun Legally Distinct Castlevania game.

Final Fight (Switch/Arcade): Played via Capcom Beat Em' Up Bundle with a friend online. He played as Haggar and I decided to be different and used Guy this time around.

Ninja Gaiden (NES/Switch): I just had that mood of wanting to play this game and wanted to stay sharp about playing this game. I finally did a personal achievement too I was grinding on the side: Beating Jaquio damageless and made a clip of myself doing it. I'm proud of that accomplishment.

Rygar (NES/Switch): This game is really fun when you know what to do and where to go. Fun to go through from time to time in an hour something minutes.

New games beaten from the backlog
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Woodle Tree Adventures (Switch): I got this game on sale long ago and decided to finally get around to playing it. I was surprised on how short it is. It's a nice and chill 3D platformer where you play as a sentient Log while you collect stuff/McGuffins.

Alien Splatter Redux: A fun run and gun action/platformer. Last year I played the original version of the game when it came with Jet Gunner via Properties > Local Files > Browse. Alien Splatter Redux is a stand alone release and it fixed/tweaked a few of the level designs and even dropped a few of the old bosses and put in a new boss. This is much better than the original version in every way.

Cybarian: The Time Traveling Warrior (Switch): Very weird concept of a Barbarian set in a future setting in this action/platformer. The combat is kinda unique in that you have to time your swings. Boss fights are done in phases which I'm a little indifferent about. I slightly ended up liking this game once I got used to the mechanics.

Firework (Switch): A game where the look is based off of Mega Man and Cave Story. It does an ok job of trying to be it's own thing. Very little information is given in this game on how you have to figure out to get the true ending. When I did look up said information, it did make sense. I was still a little annoyed I went through the game twice and got the bad ending. My third playthrough which went smoothly due to new game plus I eventually did see the new content and got the true ending. I liked the ability of having multiple Air Dashes.

Super Mario Bros. Deluxe (Game Boy Color/Switch): This is the definitive version of Super Mario Bros. It is incredible how much content there is. It has so many unlockables in it and the different modes are neat. If there was a way to hack this game with a better screen resolution it would be really sweet to put it on an NES or something.

The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild (Switch): I took a 3 year hiatus of this game due to a lack of motivation, drowning in my backlog and spending too much time on Animal Crossing: New Horizons/other games. I felt like I committed a "cardinal sin" of not finishing a Zelda game after I started it but never finishing it. I finally decide to go back to this game to finish it in time for Tears of the Kingdom.

I gotta say...this game felt like the closest feeling I had that The Legend of Zelda NES gave me. It had that similar vibe to me. The whole open world thing it has going on. The weapon durability did get old after awhile but it's ok cause you can practically find them everywhere and you can be very creative on how to dispatch the enemies. I really did enjoy exploring and getting distracted a lot. The story was ok. I also did like you get more story/lore when finding the Recovered Memories. Overall, I enjoyed of what I played of this game.

GOGZero posted...

Super Mario Bros. Deluxe (Game Boy Color/Switch)

Wut

Underleveled posted...

Wut

I assume it's the GBC emulation on Switch. That is one of the games available IIRC.

paperwarior posted...

I assume it's the GBC emulation on Switch. That is one of the games available IIRC.

No, it's not on NSO, which is why I'm "wut"ing.

Mega Man (via Mega Man Legacy Collection, Steam)

unfortunately I am still not a big fan of Mega Man -- but hey, now I've finally beaten one of the classic ones! I guess I'd already beaten Mega Man 10 years ago, if that counts (it doesn't).

I don't know if I'd say I had to abuse rewind/save states here but I definitely did in a few key locations because I otherwise would not have had the patience for this game. I know 2 and 3 are supposed to be way better so I'll give those a shot eventually.

Underleveled posted...

Wut

paperwarior posted...

I assume it's the GBC emulation on Switch. That is one of the games available IIRC.

Underleveled posted...

No, it's not on NSO, which is why I'm "wut"ing.

My bad! That was a very bad typo.
I meant to put down 2DS XL instead of Switch.
Super Mario Deluxe was one of many games I downloaded to my 2DS XL before the eShop shutdown. I played it through the 2DS XL.

Gal*Gun 2 (PS4)

Wanted to get through this one before starting up Gal Guardians but I don't think it was worth it. The previous game in the series, Gal*Gun: Double Peace, is better than 2 in every way basically. Game is still the same on-rails shooter as the other games, but this one adds item searching and defense missions, neither of which add much to the experience. Still, it seems like a very easy platinum so I'll just finish it off later this week.

ActRaiser Renaissance

Been wanting to play this one for a while as I quite liked the original when I first played it. It's certainly different.

The action sections are fairly faithful recreations of the originals (not 1:1 mapwise, but quite close progression-beatwise), with the most obvious difference being the graphics. TBH those stood out to me in a not-great way at first as they largely consist of 3D renders converted into sprites, like you'd see in Donkey Kong Country, except they're conspicuously significantly lower res than even that so all the characters just look kinda blurry and uneven compared to the tight spritework of the original. Controls are a bit clunky too, but having quickly replayed the original definitely helped with adjusting to that sooner than later.

The town sim is still the meat of the game where you'll spend the vast majority of your time, and is where the most significant changes come in. A good chunk of it still follows the same kind of flow as the original, but the gameplay is effectively doubled by the new siege/raid quests, which are basically tower defense, but which suffer from a good few hit and miss factors. You can build forts to block or attack enemies, which you'd think you'd be allowed to place wherever you want for the sake of strategy, but instead you can only place each type of fort in a seemingly arbitrary predetermined set of positions which may end up leaving some of the paths wide open. During the actual sieges you can also place fragile, easily-replaced palisades on the roads to further stall your enemies, although this suffers from the same limitation. Combine this with the fact that as in the original, you have no direct control over just where your important resource-producing facilities (farms and workshops) will be built, and things can get a bit frustrating when the odds decide to stack against you. There's always about 5 sieges to go through in each area in addition to overseeing the town's expansion and completing other tasks, so it can feel like a bit of a padded chore.

One upside to this addition though is that in each area you get to recruit and command a hero character, at first this just serves to give you an additional crutch in clearing out the monsters faster but it quickly turns into elemental rock paper scissors as you unlock the three types of heroes you can summon for this (melee, ranged, and magic) which feels a lot more strategic and controllable than placing your gates and towers does. The heroes also play into the new stories/dialogue that each area has, which again pretty much largely follow the beats and lead to the same outcomes as in the original, but giving the world some more development and depth without bringing any crazy radical changes into it. Another semi-related minor addition in the town sim is that monster lairs are no longer automatically sealed and are instead timed mini-action stages that get progressively harder, but never to the point that it feels overbearing.

Something else significant is that there is one new area in this version which is only accessible in postgame. My prior comments pretty much apply there; it has the most gimmicky monster lair stages and one of the worst sieges in the game that easily took me the highest number of retries, as it requires you to defend your farms which are extremely fragile and as stated can and will be built anywhere on the map where there's enough room, even if that happens to be an abysmal position relative to available defense placements. There were two additional sieges after that which felt like a joke in comparison (can I call this a Bloodbane moment?).

The story for this new area also develops somewhat disappointingly, as there's only one action stage at the end instead of the usual two, there's no new hero to recruit, it's established that it takes place in a setting where neither humans nor the monster servants of the main game's villain had ever set foot, and the story mostly concerns the mystery of why there are monsters that show up and start attacking the settlers anyway which turns out to be because some mysterious being (literally called "Unknown" in the boss fight) that may or may not be another god/angel like yourself had been hiding there.

It's definitely nowhere near as satisfying as the conclusion to the main game but I guess that's something of a trend in somewhat recent RPG remasters (looking at you, Xenoblade Future Connected) but at least it gives me an excuse to mention another positive, which is that not only is all the music from the original included in both original chiptune and new arranged versions, there are also a good chunk of new compositions which exist in both formats as well, courtesy of Yuzo Koshiro who returned to contribute to this project. I'm quite partial to a few of the new compositions, particularly the new town themes for Aitos and Marahna, and especially in the SNES style.

There's a few extra details I could mention like how the angel now has a charge attack that I forgot existed 99% of the time and how a lot of the postgame quests/achievements are some of the most pointless stuff you'll ever see as they call for grinding/doing "I vant you to keel seex snow moose" quests at a point where you've already done everything that matters, but hey, don't gotta feel bad at all for ignoring those altogether. Overall, I'd say I'd recommend it to fans of the original if you think you can adjust to the dumb siege quests (which is ironically not too difficult because of how dumbed down they feel) and just feel like you want more out of the classic that was the original.

SNK vs. Capcom: Card Fighters Clash

So I purchased Neo Geo Pocket Color Selection Vol. 2 from Limited Run. I got the Vol 1 becasue that system was a system I wanted as a kid but never had (It was on sale once when a store was going out of business, but I couldn't convince my parents to get it for me lol)

Anywho, I randomly checked Limited Run one day and saw that Vol 2 was out....and had about an hour before reserve orders stopped, so I made a gut decision to buy it without even checking what games were included lol. Something that's pretty rare for me to do.

It came in last weekend and most of the games are fun, but this card game I vaguely remember from back in the day but didn't know much about. Turns out it's pretty great. Simple enough card game to get into but the way you progress it makes sense to have it set up like that.

My only complaints are 1. The computer kept me in the game a few times when it should have just killed me (And I wound up winning because of it) and 2. It wasn't long enough lol......I have no idea how long it took me to beat as the in game timer says 77 hours for some reason (I think it glitches when I play with it docked...) and the Switch doesn't always tell you how many hours you were in a game. My guess would be 15-20 hours. I almost never go that hard on a game within like 4 or 5 days, a game has not sucked me in that thoroughly for a while.

I hear there is a sequel but in Japanese...(Though there could be a fan translation? idk) and there is a DS game...where the reviews say the DS game is bad. I don't know how they could have screwed it up lol

Oh, after checking the doc I realized for the first time that I haven't even beaten a game thus far this year. Oops. Well, time to start beating things. I started with something I finally have pushed through other things to actually play:
The Legend of Zelda: A Link Between Worlds (3DS)

My first 3DS game beaten due to other things I won't mention here really, I was working on a few games throughout the past half a year, some games I won't really ever consider beaten and then the 3DS games that include a game I have a deep run in but am waiting to finish it up. As for this one, since it has a totals screen... 17448 rupees and 7 deaths comprised my first run. I skipped out on collecting 7 heart pieces which I'll head back in to collect another time. I also got 90 of the maiamais, so a bit more to collect when I decide to cap the 100% run out.

It's an incredible game, the reimagining of the Link to the Past version of Hyrule and gave more of a story to the back half. Also the sages were a fun shift, bringing back actual personalities for them like OoT was a bonus. Puzzles were incredibly creative at times and I couldn't tell you how many times I got stumped on something when the answer was just "merge with the wall and cross this gap." A lot more to say but this is already a long post, gotta get more done.

Mass Effect 2 (XB1)

This was always my least favorite (though still an outstanding game) of the trilogy for, among many things, being a glorified interlude, and I feel like my opinion on it has fallen a little bit not remembering how tame most of the loyalty missions were.

Neo: The World Ends With You
Good game, but I feel it's weaker than the first one. The biggest complaint being that they used time-travel multiple times but to set it up had to set up the bad timeline which was often just you getting delayed and taking a long path, hurting the pace a lot. Also felt that having the same party throughout provided less intrigue and character development than the mixups they did in the first one.

Mega Man 2
Mega Man 3 (both via Mega Man Legacy Collection, Steam)

These are both definitely stronger games than MM1, not to mention feeling much more fair (with a few exceptions). I used rewind/save states significantly less here but I'm still not enough of a Mega Man fan to try to do everything clean.

I think MM2 is the stand-out so far, despite being mostly pretty easy. It has the best set of Robot Masters so far and the best set of powers. I liked MM3 significantly less in this regard, though that game is much better in terms of movement options thanks to the slide and Rush. MM3 is also way way harder, even more so than MM1 despite the difficulty feeling fairer. I dunno, they're both pretty solid!

At some point play the rest of the Mega Man NES games. They don't get as much love because of the nostalgia not being there for most but they are still really great games.

Xtlm posted...

At some point play the rest of the Mega Man NES games. They don't get as much love because of the nostalgia not being there for most but they are still really great games.

Funny you should say this...!

Mega Man 4
Mega Man 5
Mega Man 6 (all via Mega Man Legacy Collection, Steam)

I'm gonna be honest, playing all of these over the span of a few days made them all kinda run together so I don't really have anything detailed to say about them. They're all solid, though I think 6 is probably the weakest entry since 1. It feels much more like a kid's game than the rest, partly because of the dumb story but also because of the lower difficulty and, idk, just a lot of intangibles. 4 and 5 are both really strong, though I lean towards 2 as still being the best of the group.

Mega Man 7 (via Mega Man Legacy Collection 2, Steam)

Definitely the most hit-and-miss so far. I really liked having a bunch of upgrades to discover throughout the levels, but they're almost all really obscure and hard to find without a guide. Just in general I think it plays worse (and, honestly, kinda looks worse) than the NES games though. Something about the more detailed sprites makes the gameplay feel a lot slower even though I don't think it actually is. The story is really dumb again though Mega Man threatening to kill Wily at the end kinda owns. The difficulty is also unusually low with the exception of the final boss, which I found tricky.

Mega Man 8 (via Mega Man Legacy Collection 2, Steam)

Wow, I didn't like this one at all. I wanted to drop it during the first real stage and honestly I should have, it started bad and did not get any better. Just a mess of incredibly slow gameplay on terribly designed stages.

(I'm also now realizing that the reason the story seemed so minimal and nonsensical is because this game is supposed to have cutscenes that just weren't playing on Steam Deck. In fairness it's rated as being not supported on Deck at all so I can't complain too much.)

HROT (PC)

I appreciate this game. Been following it since the dawn of the revival of this genre. Around the time DUSK was hype, this game had humble beginnings and honestly continued its development cycle well over 2 years. Then I find out its just by one guy and he's coding this whole thing in Pascal as if I couldn't love this game even more.

So is it the game that it was meant to be? I would say, that the developer went and did something he really loved and turned it into the game that he wanted. Almost every single level has a real life counterpart and when have you ever seen that. And the part that isn't---the surreal stuff, yeah those are just wild.

The game's clearly a love letter to Quake with some enemies being a 1 to 1 representation. But its also a love letter to many many games like Duke Nukem. I absolutely love being able to kick grenades back at people. In some ways I was glad to play Quake last year otherwise I wouldn't have gotten the references.

But now its time to put the gamer hat on. This game has weird pacing and in some parts feel imbalanced. HROT is great for its ambiance but for its challenge, that lies in your ability to find secrets. Ammo and Health are very tight and your defense is very squishy. Mooks can instantly kill you and unlike Dread Templar you don't have a fancy dash or a skill tree to save you so finding every bit of nook and cranny is important. That said, this is a game that thrives on well-placed enemies. In arena type battles which are few and far in between the challenge becomes almost nil as these enemies who were made to fight in specific environs are now in the open only to fail somewhat.

And that brings me to my next issue. The finale. The last 3 levels had the dev basically throw their hands in the air and say fuck it. After all those wonderful setpieces and odd places and things you find, the game suddenly decides to throw 2 arena levels back to back. Then its final boss time and I it was none other than Vladimir Putin himself. With not one not two, but FIVE forms. Then some surreal bullshit happens and you fix a piece of machinery and hurray. The lack of a plot is both to this game's benefit and detriment. I feel like this game could've benefitted from some kind of clear goal instead of being a mindless shooter in context.

Still would rank this game high. Perhaps 2 slots lower than DUSK for now.

Still better than Dread Templar? Hm. I think they both have a place on my list at the same time. So there's that.

I only learned about HROT the other day but I'm pretty interested in it. Maybe after I play DUSK and the other FPSes in my backlog I'll pick it up.

Mega Man 9 (via Mega Man Legacy Collection 2, Steam)

Okay so. This is definitely the best Mega Man game of 1-10. There's some trial-and-error difficulty and a few rooms with really cheap jumps/obstacles/enemy placement but mostly it's just great all around. Almost every power is useful, the bosses are all fun, it's just a good time. I don't miss the charge buster but I do wish they had kept the slide. Oh well. Good game zone.

Mega Man 10 (replay, via Mega Man Legacy Collection 2, Steam)

THIS game on the other hand. Holy shit, wasn't this supposed to be easy compared to MM9? This game fucking destroyed me, especially the Wily stages. Admittedly, I was using Proto Man, and I strongly regret that decision because I'm just not good enough at this series to deal with dying in 3 hits without it being a miserable experience, but even the platforming was insanely tough. No wonder I had to grind bolts and buy 9 of every healing item to beat Wily's Fortress when I first played this as a kid.

I suspect I'd have had more fun as Bass than Proto Man but I think he wasn't available to begin with? I dunno. Anyway, I generally like this game but those Wily stages are just brutal so I'm ending this 10 game marathon on kind of a sour note, unfortunately.

If I had to rank these games, I think I'd go with something like:

9 > 2 > 4 > 5 > 10 > 3 > 7 > 6 > 1 > 8

The middle is kind of a clusterfuck though. 9 is definitely the best and 2 is definitely second and 8 is by far the worst but everything else is pretty solid and could easily get swapped around.

Anyway that concludes my time with this series for now since I have no interest at all in Mega Man 11 (mostly because it looks incredibly ugly, not to be a graphics snob but yeesh). I still don't think I can consider myself a huge Mega Man fan or anything but I'm glad I've finally played these games!

Lost Nova (PC)

A chill, combat-less resource collector/puzzle/adventure. It was a slow start, but once I got up some upgrades, things went smoother and more fun.