>>265 Soldier of Fortune II Double Helix. I liked it because of the gore, and it features Sargon in it.

>>268 >it features Sargon in it

Skyrim, I liked it cause Todd told me to buy it.

>>271 you've been bamboozled

>>269 Weird since he's saving the White Race like varg does it, one huwite children at a time

>>273 Depends on the child.

>>276 No lies spotted.

Herdy Gerdy – a forgotten little gem from the early days of PS2. I actually have a bit of a history with this game, I remember seeing it in a magazine way back when, before it even came out, and it was one of those games that represented the then new 6th gen for me, with that sort of happy-go-lucky colorful platforming vibe of the early ’00s. Though I never got around to playing it until now. It’s actually not what I was expecting it to be. It’s sort of a “herding” game, as the name implies, but it’s really more like a simple puzzle game – you have to figure out how to trap enemies and herd different animals to their corresponding pens while avoiding danger. Ultimately there’s only one optimal way to do it and figuring out the solution becomes pretty fun and addictive. The game is fairly easy, clearly targeted at a younger audience, but there’s this soothing and satisfying zen-like process to it. The main draw of the game are these large open levels where you can run around freely and do some light platforming; pretty impressive for the time. Every level is vibrant and very comfy, and the art direction is really interesting for a western game, with this subdued color palette and cell-shaded look imitating a ’90s cartoon aesthetic. That being said, they probably got a bit too ambitious for their actual abilities, the game looks good but runs at like 15 fps which undermines a lot of tighter platforming moments. There are also a lot of loading times every which way. At least restarting a level is surprisingly instantaneous, which helps a lot since redoing the level until you figure out the optimal solution is mandatory. The camera is also a bit clunky, it always slides off the position you want it in, and there’s no vertical movement of the camera at all. That alone would be manageable but together with the framerate it just really hard to be precise with your movements at times. You get used to it eventually, it’s not a game-breaking issue or anything, they just didn’t optimize it very well. I think one disappointing aspect is that there’s really nothing to do outside of the main gameplay; there’s nothing to find or to collect on all these large levels. You instinctively want to explore them for stuff but there’s none. No currency, health items, or any other items. You can’t die anyway. Well, there are these bells to collect for some art galleries but you can only start collecting them once you’ve unlocked all the abilities, waaay by the endgame, so you just ignore them throughout most of the playtime. Definitely a wasted opportunity here. There’s also only one actual boss that you have to platform around, weird they didn’t do more to add variety since you do have some platforming abilities. Like I mentioned, the game does look great, performance aside. The texture quality is excellent and all the models are nicely detailed and animated. The weirdest thing is that they have these cutscenes with very impressive animations which were all made in-engine, but what they ended up using instead are the recorded videos of those cutscenes with atrocious compression. Don’t really understand the reason for doing this, kinda ruins all the work. On that note, there’s sadly no story to speak of, it’s basically an arcady collection of levels. Which is fine but I feel like with that whole unique art direction there was an opportunity for something here, some interesting narrative, and it’s generally nice to have some story urgency, but it’s kinda wasted here. Music on the other hand is nice and chill and the audio mixing is great in general. Voice acting not so much, it feels like they had three people to do all the voices, and they suck at all of them. Definitely a very comfy experience, decently long too, like up to 15 hours if you wanna be thorough.

Monstania – a wonderful vidya for Super Famicom. It’s kind of an isometric tacticool RPG but it plays in real time: you can move as much as you want but enemies move with you. There are attacks that cost points per use but you get a basic free one as well; and points can be regained by standing still, though at your own risk. Don’t know many games that play like that. But there are only two characters to control – the main hero and several others who swap places as the story progresses. Kind of a shame really, it plays so well and is very addictive but having only two characters means there aren’t that many enemies on the map, which in turn means the battles are pretty short and not too demanding. This could have worked wonderfully with a much larger party, can’t imagine it being a technical limitation but who knows. I wouldn’t call the game too easy though, it actually can get somewhat challenging since you have very little HP and enemies will drain it in no time. You definitely need to approach battles strategically and learn how to fight efficiently with the abilities at hand, but once you do, the whole game can be breezed through in about an hour. It is criminally short in general, even with the learning curve and taking your time and whatnot the whole thing barely lasts 4 hours. Though I did split it across several days, which is probably the best way to go. Shame you’re never allowed to explore anything, like towns and such, you only have control during battles, that could have extended the playtime nicely, like in Bahamut Lagoon for example. But at least there’s a nice variety of tasks presented, you’re not just doing the same thing over and over or fighting in the same manner, there are even some light puzzles to solve. Graphically the game looks very nice, everything is beautifully detailed and animated, and the color palette is so pleasant in that distinct SuperFami way. But music in particular steals the show here, it’s absolutely phenomenal. Every tune is a funky masterpiece and on technical level it sounds borderline CD-quality. Super Famicom never stops to amaze me in that aspect. It was actually composed by Noriyuki Iwadare who also did all of Grandia and Lunar – two series well known for their top-tier OSTs. The story is also pretty good I have to say, this is a surprisingly verbose game; and despite the short length it feels like a lot has happened so you end up being satisfied when it’s over. Sadly this is a complete one-off, nothing else was ever done with this IP as far as I can tell. Disappointing but not uncommon in an era with so many games, just reminds you how spoiled we used to be. An excellent game all around.

Moon Crystal – a nice simple platformer for Famicom. It was quite enjoyable. The main thing about this one is the fluidity of character animations, inspired by the likes of Prince of Persia. There are turn frames and even added momentum to your movement; it’s very uncommon for this generation and looks rather impressive. Also similarly to Prince of Persia you can grab onto ledges to pull yourself up or drop down from them, although sadly this isn’t heavily utilized. But these elements definitely give the game a bit of a unique feel that stands out from a lot of contemporary platformers. One thing I didn’t like is that everything in the game resets with each new location – your health, weapon, ability. It’s not hard to regain them as they are sufficiently peppered throughout the levels but it’s a disappointing busywork that deprives you of the sense of progress. Just as you get used to the double jump it’s taken away from you. Speaking of the double jump, there’s some noticeable unresponsiveness with its execution that can lead to some frustration. Maybe it’s just my gamepad but I doubt it. Other than that, the game is very easy and straightforward in nature, and can be mastered in no time. Except for the final boss, that fucker is quite tough initially but that’s not unusual. All the other bosses can be just rushed head-on, if you tap the attack button fast enough (there are tricks for that) they are toast pretty much no matter what. I wonder if this was an international strategy the devs had in mind. The graphics are pretty good and nicely detailed to go along with the intricate animations. The music is equally good and has an interesting sound to it. There’s also a neat little story told with animated cutscenes, which is definitely a nice touch. The game in general has a rather dark tone, going almost for a horror sort of atmosphere. Shame it’s so short but like I said very much enjoyable.

Flight of the Amazon Queen – classic '90s point-and-click adventure goodness. Exactly what I was looking for, I played most of the well known entries but this one somehow slipped past me. It’s right up my alley with the whole exotic adventure thing that I like the most. The game is a bit too joke-y for my personal taste, but ultimately I quite enjoyed it. The puzzles are pretty good, not too hard and with just the right amount of challenge. I wish you could interact with more things though, there are at times entire portions of the screen that aren’t utilized at all. A few questionable design choices here and there but it’s expected and nothing significant, goat puzzle those are not. Although I think they slightly overdid it with the temple at the end – you get so many items by that point and only four slots to view them in, which just becomes an annoyance. There’s also some technical issue where hovering your cursor wouldn’t show the interactable text properly, it’s solvable by shaking it about but that can lead to missing something important early on, I missed an entire screen and got stuck because of that. The graphics are kinda primitive for ’95, looking inferior to something like The Fate of Atlantis which came out 3 years prior, but they are still charming in their own way. Since the game goes for a more comedic, cartoon-y vibe it’s really not that big of an issue. The music is alright, it’s understated but works well for creating the necessary atmosphere. And the voice acting is also alright, especially since everyone is doing an intentionally silly accent. Like I mentioned, the story is pure meta buffoonery and I’m not really a big fan of that, but there’s just about enough effort put into it to keep me invested. Especially later on, when it clearly heavily borrows from the LucasArts’ Indiana Jones games and almost becomes serious. And I do like lighthearted stories with a serious core. Interestingly, it deals with the famous crystal skulls and aliens just like a certain film that doesn’t exist, so I wonder if the crystal skulls legend was already well known at the time. The writing itself is actually pretty good, I chuckled at several jokes. This is a real must for all the point-and-click savants if I do say so myself.

Devil May Cry – featuring Dante from the hit Devil May Cry series. Last time I played the original DMC was somewhere in the mid '00s so this was basically like playing it fresh. The first thing that really struck me was just how gorgeous the game looks, the art direction and lighting are absolutely incredible, it can honestly rub shoulders with DMC3 in that aspect and this is a 2001 game. It’s definitely up there with the early gen trailblazers like MGS2, Shenmue 2, FFX and the like – games that looked like something out of distant future, in an unbelievable leap from the 5th gen with its barely definable blocks to something that still looks good today. Man, the 6th gen paradigm shift was truly the greatest in all of gaming; you almost feel bad for the newfags who will never experience something so groundbreaking, with modern vidya doing just light cosmetic upgrades every new gen. But anyway, gameplay wise it’s still very much recognizable as a DMC game but understandably humbler. Kinda amazing how a lot of core elements carried over all the way up to 4, although the control layout is different to the rest of the series and it took forever for my brain to adjust. Where it definitely differs is in variety of objectives, you’re mostly just meandering through castle grounds collecting keys in a very down-to-earth manner for someone like the son of Sparda. It’s quite comfy in its own way and there’s much more flavor text than in any other entry to go with it, but all that definitely cements the game as Resident Evil with swords. There are also uncharacteristic underwater FPS levels that had the potential of being a major pain in the ass but thankfully they are so short that it's not really an issue. Boss battles however are excellent, just what you'd expect and probably where the game stood out the most at the time as this new sub-genre. They're not as tough as DMC3/4 but have a nice flow to them and still provide some decent challenge. Music is good but it doesn’t leave such an impression as it did in 3 and 4, there’s much more ambience and kinda flaccid one-note techno rather than the KUHRAYZEE techno-rock of the sequels. The story is mostly bare bones, more of a premise really, and instead it's more interesting to look at it retroactively through the prism of the series. For instance, even though I vaguely remembered that the mysterious knight was Vergil, I didn’t expect to actually see his face in this game and even some of his iconic moves like Summoned Swords. Or how Trish did nothing of value but forced herself onto Dante to give her free housing... typical. So the original DMC definitely aged like fine wine, good time.

One Piece Odyssey I'm a big One Piece fan and a JRPG fan but this game is garbage, don't buy it. Especially don't buy it at full price like the complete retard I am. It's almost impossible to lose, it's made for 8 year olds. The art and music were nice but the story was obvious, the twist was obvious, and the entire thing was a complete waste of time and money. Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous Great game. A lot of tactical decisions and an insane amount of customization for your character build. Plot scenes are fantastic, feels like playing a well-DM'd tabletop game. A lot of bugs even as of 2023 and the first character you meet is a lesbian in a relationship with an orc lady, both of them story characters, so torrent if you don't want to support that shit but you can bully the fuck out of them in dialogue if you want too. Great game if you want to scratch that Baldur's Gate itch. Tactics Ogre Reborn If you've played TO and liked it this is definitely worth a look. They took out grinding so you have to actually make a good party, can't just facetank everything like DSP. Basically the same game beyond that. Deus Ex: Human Revolution Insanely good. Never played this when it came out but recently beat it on PC and am planning a second non-lethal run on very hard. Just an allround good game with fun combat, fun stealth, it's fun any way you play it. Lots of augment options to bust through walls or jump off buildings or become invisible or just put every point into gunplay if you want.

>>424 >It's almost impossible to lose, it's made for 8 year olds. The art and music were nice but the story was obvious, the twist was obvious, and the entire thing was a complete waste of time and money. Sounds like every modern game. >They took out grinding so you have to actually make a good party, can't just facetank everything like DSP. Don't know how I feel about this, it's basically removing options and variety.

>>431 >Don't know how I feel about this, it's basically removing options and variety. You can still train in whatever job, but the story has a level cap you can't move past. The game also lets you go back and replay storylines for different outcomes so you don't have to replay the whole game to see everything or recruit different people.

Max Payne 2: The Fall of Max Payne – I got a sudden hit of nostalgia to replay Max Payne 2 and see if it holds up, used to play the shit out of it back in the '00s. And the answer is, well, sorta. The gameplay is still fun and I especially appreciate that oldschool non-scripted mayhem it provides. This was the dawn of the Havoc physics and the game utilizes them to the fullest, both in a good way and in a bad way. I have a lot of great memories of fucking about with them all day long, and it’s still pretty impressive to have every object affected by your mass and your bullets. Also it’s like they programmed every guy to fall down only in the most comedic way possible. The combat is very simplistic, there are no mechanics or anything, but there is something appealing in that simplicity – you just get a lot of guns and shoot at enemies while jumping at them in slow motion. Sometimes it's the simple things in life. And I still remember everything, first person MP5 in bullet dodge mode is the shit. Graphically the game looks subpar overall. Not so much in polygon count or texture resolution, but more so in the art direction department, it’s pretty drab. It does however somewhat compensate for that with its weird and moody atmosphere. Though it runs fine it is also somewhat sloppily put together – all the in-game cutscenes are clunky as all hell, objects would clip through camera, hands not align with weapons, something would just pop-in, and so on. In the game itself you often encounter something like a story related dead guy who’s been Havoc mouse-dropped in a bathtub in the most comedic fashion. The devs went to great lengths to allow you to flush toilets and switch coffeemakers off but no attention was paid to such in-game esthetics. It is the game’s good fortune that it decided to tell its story largely through a graphic novel, if it was done with these clunky cinematics you would be hard pressed to take it at all seriously. Speaking of the story, it actually holds up pretty well – a depressing noir detective drama in constantly rainy Noo Yoik. Good shit. The voice acting is surprisingly really good as well and elevates the entire experience. Interestingly, I remembered the game having good music but I guess that was one of those Mandela effects because there’s barely any music at all, with the title menu theme and the main song being the only standouts. It’s largely just ambience. Kinda sucks but at least those two compositions are strong enough. Also the game still has the worst sounding weapons. Maybe because I was constantly replaying it back in the day it wasn’t apparent to me, but the game is really short. Naturally I remembered where to go and what to do but it would still probably take about 5 hours max to complete without rushing things. Overall this was very nostalgic. The game is still fun but it’s one of those cases where none of the individual elements are particularly strong but they do come together nicely to create something special.

Silviana: Ai Ippai no Bōkensha – a neat little action-RPG of sorts for the Famicom Disk System. It's more similar to Zelda-style games with the key difference being that in order to damage enemies you have to ram into them, taking damage yourself in the process. It’s an interesting tradeoff, so your health is basically a combination of how much damage you deal and how much damage you can take. Because you’re always losing HP you have to manage your limited inventory mega tightly, at least during the first half of the game – as you get better weapons and armor, and then an optional regen item, the play dynamic changes. Since you have so few resources at hand and pretty much inevitably lose health as you go, even the smallest venture becomes this tense quest of survival, which I actually really enjoyed. Though the game is generally not too hard, mainly because the bosses are kind of a joke, it’s basically the same boss fight done ten times over and it’s equally easy every time. Maybe it was targeted at younger players, but it’s still a disappointment even just from a game design standpoint. You can also respawn enemies in different places by changing screens to your advantage. One other design flaw is the absence of confirmation messages for buying stuff since weapon/armor is perma-equipped automatically after you purchased it, so a slight slip and you can accidentally buy and equip an inferior armament, fucking yourself over. You have to make sure to save often. Speaking of saving, the game has a save state that you can use anywhere, in addition to regular saving; pretty advanced for the time and no doubt a perk of the FDS. Visually the game looks pretty good and colorful though there isn’t much variety in terms of locations, it’s just palette-swapped dungeons and the overworld. There’s also a rather unfortunate usage of tiling that makes it hard to see what’s what sometimes, giving it a jumbled look; you get used to it but there are way better examples of how to go about it in 8-bit. The music is a major letdown I have to say, it’s grating on the ears and you expect better from the FDS in general, there are regular Famicom games with better music but perhaps the composer is more at fault here. The story is non-existent which is a shame, there are similar games that still manage to weave some sort of narrative to follow. But hey, I gotta save mom. I also played the MSX version which gives the game a significant graphical overhaul, boosting it to look like an early 16-bit title – no doubt very impressive for the time (that’s 1989). The graphics are nice but probably the greatest improvement over the original is the music, here it’s actually really good although there aren’t that many tracks. That being said, I probably prefer the original Famicom look despite being lower tech, it has a more appealing color palette and aesthetics, and plays faster. There’s also more variety there, with every dungeon at least going for a distinct color and tiling while the MSX version has like two dungeon types. Other than that it plays the same except for the bosses who now have different patterns although that doesn’t make them any harder or more interesting. So yeah, overall this was a pretty nice experience, I liked having to be extra vigilant and pay close attention to your dwindling health and status as you slowly creep your way through the dungeons.

I recently played through hyperdimension neptunia rebirth 3 and thought it was enjoyable and funny with cuckime console waifus.

>>576 does it have dual audio?

>>578 All nep-nepu rebirth games do, and they also have patches for the awful translations done by north American translation team that you can find on the internet (even were ported to the vita). Only nep game with a decent translation was mega nep v and nep rebirth 1, but the latest one again has a terrible translation. The game really isn't for everyone, the combat can get repetitive is extremely autistic but for whatever reason I really enjoy it. I think the humor is pretty good and references to imageboard culture from japan. and even a bit western imageboard culture It's also really about liking the stupidly cute console waifus and their stupidly talented voice actresses. Honestly I know it's heretical but I think the dub voice actresses are actually not so bad, they would do well if they were given a properly translated script instead of westernizing it up with quirky reddit memes. but even than they do a serviceable job Only thing I'm not exactly a fan with neptunia is some of the ecchi jokes go a little into the lolifag direction but I try not to let that ruin it entirely for me since so many tranimes have lolib8 for those perverts. Oh and one last thing, the first game on the ps3, which is honestly not that good actually does a really good job of building the world and premise of the console waifu games, that being said it's best experienced if you know how to speak jap, because the dub is, well yeah it's not good. you could get most of the games via fitgirl

>>579 Oh yeah, iirc these games were the poster child for the shitty americanized translations. Probably pozzed nowadays, too.

>>584 Latest game might be better than I think but I still think it is likely bad, I've just gone through a sort of autistic moment where I swear something was pronounced translated a certain way where it turns out it wasn't. I like the plot so far tbh *and that it basically implies gaming is dead**

Undercover: Operation Wintersonne – a decent point-and-click puzzle game. I’m a big fan of the genre and was looking for something WW2-based, having played most of the well-known entries. Sadly this was a rather lackluster experience; not to say the game is completely terrible or anything but definitely disappointing. For one thing it fails at creating that particular WW2 atmosphere – you are in Berlin and there are Nazis but it honestly never feels like it, there is none of that contemporary vibe and espionage tension to go along with the setting. The proper atmosphere is arguably the most important thing for a point-and-click game to get right since all you do is walk around and explore stuff, so when that part is kinda meh the game doesn’t really resonate with you. Sadly the story is awful, to make things worse; it’s based on the very interesting real-life operation to halt the development of the Nazi nuclear program, which is absolutely perfect for a game like this, but the plot here is just so flaccid and makes no sense. The protagonist is also the least interesting geriatric pencil-pusher in existence, not sure where they were going with this, it’s like controlling an actual NPC. There are real-life stories from the war on this topic, like the Norwegian heavy water sabotage, that are absolutely fascinating and seemingly tailor-made to be incorporated into this sort of narrative but instead they opted to write this lazy drivel. What a shame. But it’s not all bad, visually the game looks pretty decent actually, especially considering it was made by a small-time studio. The pre-rendered backgrounds look quite good and are probably the highlight of the whole thing, although there aren’t that many locations; the models aren’t too bad either for this skill level, well, as long as you don’t get up-close and sadly they often do. But overall you can definitely work with this presentation and it’s blended together rather nicely. There’s a fair share of small glitches but it’s hard to say whether those are endemic to the game itself or vary with the machine. I had one where the floor just didn’t load for a screen. But it’s nothing game-breaking (though I had a minor soft crash) and you should always rotate the saves heartily in these games anyway. The music is also quite nice, too nice for this project actually. If it was composed specifically for the game then kudos to them but it can be a stock soundtrack from some site. The voice acting is pretty bad on the other hand. The puzzles were alright, satisfying enough. They aren’t hard but I have to say, the execution was fucking terrible at times – you’re expected to notice a literal pixel-sized speck of an object on a wide screen. That’s just bad game design and could have been alleviated with more interesting camera angles and additional screens but they often opt for a single flat angle overseeing the entire area. Still, my point-and-clicking puzzle-solving itch was scratched. Since this is clearly a low-key project you can’t criticize it too hard, but I can only recommend it to the genre savants who already played all the good stuff and just want anything at all semi-decent or on this specific topic.

>>592 If only you could play as the natzees.

>>598 Yeah or at least have a nazi antagonist or something interesting with the concept at all.

Final Fantasy XIII-2 – man, FFXIII… probably the biggest disappointment of my life. Though eventually I came to appreciate it in certain ways, I’ve never played any of the follow-ups until now. For starters, this one is really more of an add-on or expansion pack than any actual continuation, which is common for all these “direct to video” sequels to big anthological RPGs. They basically took the original game with all its assets and recobbled it, trying to improve on as many of XIII’s bad design choices as possible. It’s a band-aid type of solution but honestly, I’d say they mostly succeeded – I kinda liked it. It’s not anything to write home about but in the context of XIII it’s actually quite enjoyable. The combat system, while mechanically unchanged, is now unlocked from the get go, allowing you to use any role you want, as opposed to the original where that option became available only after about 30+ hours in. You can actually see its potential now. Similarly, the character management system got a more traditional overhaul as well. They also added a monster recruitment mechanic – instead of a third character you can now catch and develop virtually every single monster in the game. It actually works so well that it’s baffling they couldn’t think of this for the original XIII. Being a mid-7th gen title, they of course had to add QTEs to the mix though thankfully their presence is minimal compared to a lot of contemporary games. Instead of infamous straight corridors they tried to make every location as open as possible this time around; there’s honestly not much to work with here seeing how they’re re-using the exact same levels from the original, slightly redressed, but you’re indeed allowed to freely travel anywhere and explore places for secrets and shit. It’s pretty fun and there’s actual stuff to do now. Additionally, they implemented a neat ability to aim and throw your Moogle around to open treasure chests scattered everywhere, it's a really fun touch that adds to the exploration and I actually wish more games had something similar. In all of that you can catch a glimpse of a much better game that XIII could have been. One thing that does hold all this back is long-ass loading times between levels. No doubt a drawback of the ass-backwards engine that was built for long seamless corridors and not constant jumping between locations. I also think they were so preoccupied with proving to you that this is indeed an actual video game now, they dumped an entire RPG worth of content in the first 10 hours, so by about midpoint there’s really nothing left to do – you maxed out all your roles, caught all the monsters, found and bought everything you need. Game being piss-easy and holding your hand at every turn doesn’t help, either. If you have to give one thing to XIII – it is a gorgeous-looking game that holds up to this day. Naturally, this translates to XIII-2 as well and elevates the overall experience now that you can actually appreciate the visuals more. It’s pretty impressive looking. The music is really good too and is definitely one of the highlights. It ranges from just good symphonic score to techno-pop, to metal, to acoustic songs. https://yewtu.be/watch?v=LuBNP7kyDRc Good shit. Although, to be fair, there are a lot of reused/remixed tracks from the original. The story, on the other hand, is fucking terrible and feels like anime filler in both writing as well as character design. Made even worse by cringe inducing americanized translation. At least there’s no Lightning in the actual game this time around. The best piece of writing here is unironically the Moogle lore you unlock in the datalog. I’m not sure if one can enjoy the game on its own merits without the context of all the improvement to the original... Perhaps, but it relies entirely on XIII to be coherent and goes nowhere on its own, but as this expansion mod pack it is quite enjoyable. The game is so conceptually different from XIII that with a little bit of effort they honestly could have made a brand new IP out of it. To run into the ground later.

Tōgi Ō: King Colossus – a truly excellent action-RPG/dungeon crawler for Mega Drive. Wasn’t expecting how tremendously I ended up enjoying it. It’s in a way similar to Zelda games but actually challenging. The really cool thing here is the vast arsenal of weaponry you get to use, all with their perks and drawbacks – you can’t jump-strike with spears but they have great reach; with crossbows you can keep long distance but they shoot arrows at an angle; flails are powerful but travel at some weird parabolic trajectory, but then you get the morning star which is hands down the best weapon in the game. And so on. It was a lot of fun experimenting to find the right weapon for the right situation, basically what I'm saying is that the gameplay is very addicting. There are also five magical spells you can use, offensive and defensive, one of which is a time-stop. The game is decently tough, though you can save anywhere and there are a lot of upgrades scattered around dungeons to buff you up. Enemies can still drain your health in two seconds but you in turn can dispose of them in one hit as well. Once you gain the ability to stop time, which can be used repeatedly as you upgrade your MP, even the bosses stop being an issue eventually. You’re well equipped for any situation and the controls are nice and tight. In fact, they probably overdid it with the time-stop – you don’t even get it later on in the game, it’s available from the very beginning. One thing that does add to the challenge is that you’re only allowed to carry a single recovery item at a time; all the others you find are automatically consumed on the spot. Kinda questionable design choice but since enemies also drop recovery items it balances out all right. Visually the game looks okay, it’s an early gen installment so you don’t expect any crazy tech here but everything is decently detailed and pleasant to look at, it's alright. The game in general goes for a darker, more serious tone so the lack of vibrant colors is sort of justified by the very aesthetic. Speaking of the story, it’s actually pretty good and surprisingly grim, this ain’t no cutesy RPG, some monsters in the game are quite grotesque. But the music in particular is fucking fantastic, every melody is so clear and distinct, and hits the mark. This is easily one of the best soundtracks on the system, at least genre-wise; none of the iconic fart sound, too. So a really unexpected gem, it always pays to dig deeper for stuff like this. I wish this was a series, I'd love to play an evolved version on SNES or PS1.

Radia Senki: Reimei Hen – another action-RPG, this time for the Famicom. It is also somewhat evocative of Zelda but not as blatantly, for one thing you’re controlling an entire group of up to five people akin to traditional RPGs. You’re also shown traveling as the whole group at all times, which I believe is actually a first for the genre; and you can tell because eventually the group gets too large and starts clipping into one another, making it hard to even tell who’s who. You have direct control over the main character and can give a variety of commands to the rest of the party to act on their own, which is quite impressive for the time; for example: if you order to ‘defend’, the ally will actively run away from the enemy. You can regroup as well, adding a light touch of strategy to battles. There is a downside to all that however, you basically have to look after 4 extra characters in addition to focusing on fighting the enemy yourself. I ended up having them constantly defending and only used myself and one other guy who shoots projectiles for the majority of the game. Another problem is the very limited inventory to manage five peoples' worth of gear and items; by the second half of the game I literally had just one empty slot to pick anything up. At the same time the bosses are an absolute joke since you have 5 people wailing on them. That being said, I didn’t really like the battle system, that is, what you can do as the main character; you only ever get one very slow and very short thrust, and that’s it. There’s just no versatility to it. It also takes forever to move on the screen; you kinda want to play it faster-paced, like Zelda, but due to that tactical element you’re expected to utilize battles flow like molasses as every character slowly crawls towards the enemy and the enemy towards you. Doesn’t make it bad of course, I’m just too used to that pacing. It does have the best escape mechanics tho – pretending to be dead, don’t think I ever saw that elsewhere. One other standout aspect of the game is its visuals, this was a very late entry and had to compete directly with Super Famicom games at that point so the presentation here is absolutely incredible; great details on everything and a wonderful vibrant palette. At times it honestly looks like and early 16-bit game. There are even a few animated cutscenes to emphasize the story beats. Impressive stuff, it feels like the last big Famicom project before the 16-bit era. Similarly, it feels quite ahead of its time, you can for instance talk to your party members to get hints and directions, as well as some lore – something that would become a staple of the genre in the following gens. Or small details like being able to rest and save in any bed you come across, even in dungeons. Or how you don’t get money from battles and have to trade stuff. The story itself is pretty good and decently complex, with a lot of characters to keep track of. The setting is interesting, it’s fantasy stuff but there are also fantasy planes, which is for some reason my favorite thing. You do however have to backtrack an unreasonable amount of times; constantly backtracking and backtracking back from where you just backtracked. The game world is not very big basically. The OST is pretty nice but weirdly the best piece of music plays on an automated map screen that you see for a total of three seconds. As the subtitle of the game – Dawn Arc – implies there were going to be more installments but that sadly never came to be, it’s an one-off IP. A shame, I wish it got a SuperFami sequel improving on all the cool ideas and innovations. But I guess we got a lot of similar games anyway. On another interesting note, there was a short anime promo advertising the game and it even got preserved into modernity - https://www.yewtu.be/watch?v=35midEBEwOk

Tomb Raider: The Angel of Darkness – probably the most contested entry to the series, and I can see why, but I actually ended up liking it quite a lot. Now, don’t get me wrong, it’s a clusterfuck in more ways than one and its troubled production is very obvious, but I found some elements of the game to be very much enjoyable. Specifically the platforming is nice and the graphics are solid. In both instances I’m explicitly talking about the original PS2 version, avoid the PC port like plague, they cobbled it together in like a week and even after 20 years of continuous attempts to fix the thing it’s still a broken mess. So one of the most common complains about the game is ‘bad controls’ and I have to strongly disagree here; the thing is, the controls are finely tuned for slow, meticulous platforming and nothing else, and for that part they work excellently once mastered. You actually have an incredibly precise control over your movements and when everything works as intended the experience is very much satisfying. It’s really when the game tries to do anything else, like scripted events or action, that it starts to fall apart. It’s decisively not a pick-up-and-play type of game or one of those modern games that play themselves, there’s a significant learning curve and you have to experiment to figure stuff out instead of being piggybacked. I really enjoyed how much depth there is to the controls: lateral movement, side stepping, quick turn, side jumps, backflip, 360° roll, a multitude of leaping jumps covering varied distances – all with different applications. In the ‘walk mode’ you cannot fall off any platform which is the cornerstone of this game and eliminates like 90% of the issues I’d imagine people had. There’s also a grip gauge now, which is always a debatable mechanic, on the one hand it adds to the tension but on the other hand it limits exploration since you can only stay hanging for 10 seconds at a time. Similarly they also added upgradable strength which is a decent idea but the way you achieve those upgrades is bafflingly random at times. There are a lot of baffling design choices here in general. Overall the game is definitely a bit too complex and convoluted for your average normalfag player. But yeah, basically for slow comfy platforming the game works really well but when it comes to anything else you can tell this was rushed to the market as all hell. At the same time I wouldn’t call it hard since shooting is completely broken and you can just cap enemies from the other end of the level; plus you can save anytime. There’s also a tacked-on stealth mechanic which is completely pointless because it’s dropped like halfway through and you literally cannot stealth some enemies even in the most obvious stealth situation. There are a lot of dropped or underutilized mechanics, they definitely got too overambitious for their own good but that’s honestly kinda part of the appeal of this game – a spectacular mess is better than mediocrity. Probably the game’s strongest assets are its visuals and sound design. It looks great, well, the backgrounds do, the models – not so much; though Lara herself looks good and has a nice booba jiggle tech. The lighting in particular is solid and there are some excellent effects. But like I mentioned this refers to the PS2 version, the PC one has higher fidelity but half of the effects look worse and the other half is missing outright. The variety of locations is pretty decent although the game goes for a more urban setting so there’s not much of globetrotting, exotic tombs, and other such goodness; but it’s still a satisfying ride. It’s darker and moody in general, even giving off an unsettling horror vibe at times, emphasized by a brash foreboding score. Also, Lara makes the sexiest grunts and noises in this one. The story is actually pretty interesting but told in an abrupt, choppy manner which makes sense given the troubled production; still, the plot is a very Tomb Raider-esque enjoyable schlock. A polarizing experience for sure but I think there’s enough stuff to like about it despite all the flaws, especially for people who love platformers like myself. Legit underrated.

>>671 >>723 Thank you for these, I'm gonna play them.

>>816 No problem anon.

Kishin Dōji Zenki: Battle Raiden – a Super Famicom action-platformer based on the '90s anime series of the same name. I have never even heard of this anime before but apparently it was quite popular in its day, lasting for over 50 episodes plus an OVA. Maybe I’ll check it out someday. But it’s interesting how some of these once prominent franchises just disappear into the void of time. But anyway, I usually don’t really play games based on shows I haven’t watched but this one caught my eye with its incredible graphics, so I decided to check it out. And I have to say, it’s actually pretty solid. The game is fairly easy, clearly targeted at a younger audience, but there are still a few cool boss fights as well as some platforming challenges. I guess to make it more appealing to the masses they gave you several overpowered attacks, both vertical and horizontal, that can pretty much deal with anything on the screen at any time and cost you nothing. There is one finite attack where you can sacrifice a portion of your health to do some massive damage to the enemy; this is actually a pretty cool mechanic that can be utilized strategically, but since the game is so easy it’s honestly not all that useful. What I didn’t like is how slow your character moves, like trawling through molasses. There is a short dash, which is better than nothing, but it’s not really incorporated into the moveset – you still have to come to a full stop in order to perform another action. Jumping is rather imprecise and flaccid, leading to some annoying platforming. You also don’t get to upgrade anything or get anything new throughout the game, which is fine I guess but feels like a missed opportunity since you can shoot fireballs and stuff. Like I mentioned, the graphics are amazing and what attracted my attention initially, everything is large and intricately detailed. There’s a nice variety of locations too, I especially liked the level where the sunny weather changed drastically to heavy clouds as you progress, it was quite breathtaking. There’s a cool opening cutscene with gorgeous anime art and I was hoping there would be more such goodness scattered throughout, but sadly it’s the only one minus the ending. You do get some interactions within the game itself which I guess is alright. The music is decent but not particularly memorable. The story was out of context to me, obviously, and I don’t know whether it’s just a stand-alone game or if it relies on the anime, but you can infer much of what’s happening either way. There’s a kind of Inuyasha relationship going on between the main protagonists, with a tsundere demon serving a girl. Actually, this predates Inuyasha by about half a decade. All in all, this is a cool platformer based on a forgotten IP that can be enjoyed on its own.

Thanks to JRPGanon I am beginning to understand why so so many JRPG tropes pop up in tranime to begin with, also thanks for the great synopsises on so many games, I wanted to start contributing here as well to anons but I haven't really played any games in the last couple months.

>>896 Glad I could help, anon. I hope you could start playing vidya again soon, and if you do be sure to post about them. Not only does it help other anons to find something they might like, it also helps to memorize the game you played better.

>>907 Now everytime I see the Big Dipper, I can throw the Roman Salute, thanks anon. SPQR.

El. Viento – a decent action-platformer from the early days of Mega Drive. Perhaps due to that, visually it looks somewhat drab, with a lot of ugly browns and horrible meshing effect that makes it hard to see stuff. But it's alright, gets the job done and at least the main girl’s sprite is nicely animated, even having actual turn frames. The game itself is pretty easy, almost surprisingly so – most enemies die in one hit and your weapons have incredible range, while every single boss has a simple exploit that usually involves the last power-up you picked up. A few of the bosses are quite creative though. I’d say most hazards come from some anal platforming you’re asked to perform but even then the game is pretty lenient and doesn’t deal you too much damage, even offering limitless retries on several occasions. It is only the final stage that gets somewhat demanding but it’s more annoying than challenging, with respawning bats harassing you all the way through. Apart from your limitless boomerangs, you also get 5 different abilities to unlock but since all enemies die in one or two hits, most of these end up being kinda useless. Why would I use a slightly bigger fireball than the one I already have when I already got this nice screen-clearing attack? It’s also weird that you just find those power-ups randomly lying around on a level and don’t get them after a boss fight or something. Few times you do get to use them in a creative way, like getting to some hard to reach places, and I wish there was more stuff like that, but sadly the whole thing is rather straightforward otherwise. I did like that the game is story-driven; pretty simple stuff but thematically reminiscent of something like Wicked City and you do get nice anime screens with dialog after every level, so you’re somewhat invested. Plus the main grill is cute. The music is fast-paced and not too bad, honestly; that whole ‘Mega Drive sound’ goes really well with these uneasy apocalyptic themes. Though it doesn’t really stand out in many ways, it’s still an alright action-platformer worth checking out if you enjoy the genre.

Lightning Returns: Final Fantasy XIII – alright, here we go, finishing the Toriyama’s waifu trilogy. It’s hard to believe they were still trying to make this happen and greenlit another XIII game, but anyway, just like with XIII-2 this is more of an expansion/mod/addendum than a sequel, and boy am I tired of seeing that same UI and assets reused by now. At least there are no QTEs here. But even more so than with XIII-2, this is so far removed from the original concept, it just needed to be its own new IP. So this time around they couldn’t think of anything better than adding a time limit to the game, which is a gimmick I can’t stand more than anything. I like to play games at my own pace and here you have a clock constantly ticking over your head. Obviously that’s just my taste, but I don’t see it working with RPGs – you have a fuckton of stuff to do, see, buy, find, consider, and then you’re constantly prodded to hurry up and be efficient with your time. They also redesigned the battle engine, I would say for the worse. You now control only Lightning and have a more direct command input, even able to move around during battles, but it all still runs on a gauge that depletes with every action. It’s like they wanted to make this an action-RPG but just couldn’t commit and the end result is this awkward system where you attack a few times and then have to constantly wait for the gauge to refill. It’s just extremely unsatisfying. Maybe this was another engine limitation, who knows. At the very least they ramped up the difficulty a notch. One thing that truly baffled me was an open text reference to Facebook right in the game’s datalog. Can’t think of anything more immersion shattering than being told to log into Faceberg for a better gaming experience™. On a positive note, they did put some commendable effort into building an entirely new world for this one, instead of re-using levels from previous games again. There are several reasonably large cities and wildlands to explore, all 100% open. Not gonna lie, these are pretty good. I especially liked the two main cities, they have a very unique look and atmosphere to them and it’s really fun just running around exploring stuff. It’s exactly what I wanted from the original XIII, was this so much to ask? But even though these are large, they aren’t large enough to sustain an entire game, which is why they decided to make it entirely side-quest based – you’re just doing menial tasks to extend the timer and that’s pretty much the whole thing. Underwhelming to say the least. The story continues to be terrible filler garbage that’s better skipped, as I started doing eventually. It’s nothing but meandering regurgitation of the previous games; I got so tired of seeing these same characters and plot threads, which weren’t good even in the original, stretched even thinner here. The music and visuals, on the other hand, continue to be great – these are like the only consistently positive aspects of this trilogy. Although about half of the tracks are reused from the two previous games. But what’s new does stand out and they even brought back some classic FF tunes as memes. Graphics are also expectedly good; the main draw here is the truly jaw-dropping lighting for the 7th gen, back then it was like seeing a nextgen project. And you can finally install the game, so loading times are no longer an issue. This game is a weird beast for sure. On the one hand, it’s this endlessly re-stitched corpse; on the other, it has some of the best things in the “trilogy”. They had this more or less original idea but did everything to make it as cumbersome of an experience as possible with the whole timer shit and awkward combat. This is all obviously the result of them not having a clear vision or direction for any of these games. XIII was a clusterfuck of a production by a headless chicken of a studio and they spent the next five years trying to salvage it instead of moving forward. After playing through all three games I can see them being fusion’d into one solid vidya, each had a few really great individual elements, but ultimately this whole project is the biggest waste of the generation, and perhaps emblematic of it. At least the game is completely shameless about dressing Lightning up in lewd outfits.

Comix Zone – a really cool beat ‘em up for the Mega Drive. This one in particular is interesting to me because I believe this was the very first game I ever played, I got my Mega Drive as a birthday present and this was the game it came with. I do remember playing it and its weird aesthetics are forever cut into my memory, but I never touched it again since the '90s. So I was pleased to find that it’s not just one of those weird things you remember from your childhood but in fact a very good game. The main gimmick is really cool, everything about the game has to do with you being inside a comic book – you jump over panels, rip through paper and escape it catching fire, while enemies are literally drawn-in in front of you. The story is near non-existent, it’s just a premise or even an excuse to have a guy stuck inside a comic book; kinda shame but I did like that the whatever “story” there is, as well as hints and flavor text, are all conveyed through in-game speech bubbles – you can stand and read them if you want or just get straight to the action. On that note, the game just oozes that top-grade '90s ‘tude, even enemies shit talk you. Truly the best era of masculinity. I also liked the clever usage of items throughout the game, for example, you can try and just fight a boss or you can get him to light a barrel, move it under him and have it burn his ass. You also get a rat that’s used for simple puzzle solving as well as finding extra items, which it literally scratches out of the “page” you’re on, and if you let it loose when facing female enemies they will scream and run away. The graphics are not very impressive technically speaking but they use them so creatively, with the whole panel look and general comic stylization, that you just can’t help but love them. The weird aesthetics they have going on help a lot as well – you go from apocalyptic ruins to a Tibetan monastery, to a desert and a ship graveyard. All with extremely popping colors. The animations are also really nice and fluid. And the music is just pure iconic Mega Drive, all farts are very upbeat and funky. The combat engine is nice, it’s not particularly complex, you get one hit button that changes depending on the d-pad input, plus jumping. It is still pretty impressive how many combinations you can get out of it considering it’s just one button. Get close to a wall – or panel border that is – and you can throw or smack enemies into it, which is the best way to deal with them. The game is not too hard, even without lives or continues it takes me like 20 minutes to beat it after a day of practice, especially since the final boss has an easy kill loop not sure if deliberate or not. But it is unfortunately very short overall, with just three levels and so only three bosses, including the final one. I wouldn’t mind if it kept going for another three or so. You do get an option of multiple paths in certain places which is a nice touch at least. Being this short has one advantage – it gets very addictive to just drop-in for a quick session. A very creative vidya and good memories.

Maken Shao: Demon Sword – an interesting hack-n-slash from Atlus, I quite liked it. The PS2 version I played is a remake of the Dreamcast one which was released two years prior (in ‘99) and overall this project is Atlus’ first attempt at several things: full 3D, voiced, non-RPG. And it definitely shows, the game has that unmistakable early gen/first venture vibe to it and is all around clunky but ultimately very enjoyable to play once you git gud at it. It’s actually pretty impressive for an early entry into the genre considering a good deal of them struggled with analog controls and 3D camera. You get all the things you expect from Atlus – unique story, fantastic art direction and character design, and some groovy tunes. Sadly the former is completely butchered by a truly abysmal localization but thankfully, through I don’t know what providence, the PS2 version has the original Japanese audio intact so the assrape is somewhat mitigated. The story itself is pretty good though it’s mostly unveiled through text lore. As per Atlus' tradition, there are decisions that affect your progression as well as game's multiple endings. Speaking about the story, funny how it talks about the rise of terrorism in Europe as well as falling out between China and USA. Really makes you think. Despite being a hack-n-slash, the game has a pretty slow pace, with each Boss and enemy type requiring a careful approach (like you’d expect from SMT games). I wouldn't say it's particularly hard but at the same time that's mainly due to the multitude of characters you can unlock and upgrade, some of whom posses near game breaking skills. So you can experiment and adjust your game style accordingly. It was actually a lot of fun leveling up all the characters and waiting to see what abilities they unlock at max power. The graphics are pretty decent but understandably low-tech at times, though I don’t know if the PS2 version was completely rebuild from the ground up or uses anything from the Dreamcast build. It definitely doesn't look bad and Atlus never were the hardware pushers anyway. Superior art direction and level variety elevates the game above its technical limitations as was so wonderful with pre-CY vidya. Music has that unmistakable Shoji Meguro sound and some excellent standout melodies. A solid experience.

EarthBound / MOTHER 2 - played this several times in the past but never made it past Moonside before, this time I beat the game, savescummed a lot at the end though which I'm not proud of and it was bretty gud, but I have some complaints. First off, everyone knows about the shitty item system where the game gives you key items you're not allowed to drop and you have to keep calling Escargo Express intermittently to not lose all your inventory space but I think that's better than these pussy ass zoomer games where you have unlimited space or key items are one-use and then disappear. I really like this game and even I can say it's massively overrated by the vast majority of gaymers, when it's a cult classic that blew up later on and made it out of its niche. The difficulty jumps in the latter parts of the game drag it down, I probably wouldn't have stuck with it if not for savescumming because my enjoyment of the game is directly correlated to how many of my party members are alive. It's massively style over substance, the graphics and music are some of the best on the SNES and the writing and story are charming but gameplay can be either way too fast or way too slow depending on where you are in the game. Unlike other JRPGs I've played it's not grindy at all and even if you consciously try to dodge encounters in most of the dungeons you somehow still end up at a level where you at least have a chance against the next boss, provided you have the items and equipment necessary. It might just be because I savescummed this time around but the money system is way more forgiving than I remember, I had a surplus in almost every town after Twoson or Threed. I liked the real-time ticking damage counter that gives you a chance to heal party members before they die as well as the way you go between party members at different points in the story, this game somehow simultaneously feels like both a test-run and a refinement of Pokemon, which was made by the same studio if I remember correctly. Overall, I'd describe it as a JRPG for people who don't usually like JRPGs, and as someone who falls into that camp I appreciate it and maybe if I play other JRPGs I'll end up liking those more. Excited to move on to Mother 3 which I've never played before. Sorry if this reads like garbage, too tired to make a good effortpost. >>1036 I remember playing this one as a kid, Genesis had so much raw SOVL it's crazy

>>1174 I wanted to try the Mother series but it's kinda been ruined to me by the soy reddit crowd. An unfortunate thing really seeing how this is one of those nippon classics they (the nipponese) hold in high esteem.

>>1177 You're probably not missing out on much, it really is just a slightly more artistically focused Pokemon game. The aesthetics are pretty top-of-the-line for SNES Genesis, 32X and Sega CD all looked and sounded better but you can find better gameplay in a lot of stuff from around that time.

>>1179 Yeah that's another thing, that it looks very casual with not a lot to it. It should have been just a small obscure game to enjoy but normalfags overhyped it to "best game evr XD".

I also finished Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island -- a lot of soys and retro gayming redditors love to suck off Nintendo and claim they never made a bad game but in reality even the majority of first-party games released for the SNES looked, sounded, and played worse than their NES counterparts. Yoshi's Island is one of the few games in the SNES library that is an exception to this rule, as it actually utilizes graphical, sound, and gameplay mechanics that put most games to shame. I could go on about the processing power and sound capabilities of the Sega Genesis compared to the Super Nintendo but judging by the other threads up right now it seems /kong/ is smart enough to look past the rose-colored glasses that most redditors and cuckchan /v/ users have concerning Nintendo. Yoshi's Island has some of the most visually appealing spritework of its time and clearly served as inspiration for the GBA and DS where other SNES and Genesis spritework became antiquated only a few years after release, and the same goes for the soundtrack, which makes full use of the SNES soundchip putting it ahead of many games of that time. In terms of gameplay it tends to be far more creative than any mainline Mario game with mechanics like fluttering and egg-throwing which allows the player to do way more than the typical platformer. It isn't especially challenging but also not the type of game you can just blow through in an hour either. One complaint I have is that the bosses were way too easy as most fights were just mindless egg-throwing and lacked a lot of the creative chops present in the level design. Definitely earns its spot as one of the defining games of the Super Nintendo.

>>1191 I know most of them are good and whatnot, but I haven't actually played any of the first party nintendo games.

Recently I finished the half-life 2 mod Raising the bar redux, it is a recreation of the 2001-2003 storyline of the half-life 2 beta that anon likely downloaded if he is in his late 30s to mid 40s all the way back during the 2003 leak. It mixes in some aspects of the later playable beta build we got and the final release but adds attempts to add all the cut content/remix into the early beta style things from the final release it add. I really, really enjoyed the gritty, dark aesthetic of the mod and the full realization of the beta models and concepts when put on screen, it is certainly the mod that tries to recreate the half-life 2 beta with the most accuracy to the source-material/original content. Gameplay is pretty similar obviously to half-life 2 episode 2, although I've heard that episode two mods can struggle in performance compared to vanilla half life 2 so perhaps in hindsight the modders should have used have used base 2 as starting point, but its a little late for that I guess. Performance on my pc wasn't the best sometimes, probably due to the fact that I was to lazy to switch to a newer wine instance, and of course the aforementioned rumors about episode 2 I heard, that being said I am sure if I switched to a newer version of wine it would run fine and it probably runs fine on a winbl0ws pc. I liked that the original half life 2 had very few cutscenes and the parts that were (((cinematic))) you could still fuck around a ton, shame that so many games took the "cinematic" nature of half-life 2 but forgot to make the game more than a movie. kojima

>>1191 >but in reality even the majority of first-party games released for the SNES looked, sounded, and played worse than their NES counterparts I feel like it is more that nintendo never evolves, because there is no reason for them to since the stagnation seems to just make them even more shekels.

>>1200 >half-life 2 beta Hey I remember that shit. Good for them them made something like this. >I liked that the original half life 2 had very few cutscenes and the parts that were (((cinematic))) you could still fuck around a ton, shame that so many games took the "cinematic" nature of half-life 2 but forgot to make the game more than a movie. I also like that HF2, though trying to go for "photorealism" in some ways, avoided the fugly pit and went for a more stylized approach in character design instead of just scanning someone's mutt and calling it a day.

>>1207 yeah Alyx looks like shit in the newer iterations and art due to the photo-realism and the fact that they actually try to make her look mixed-race, rather than just making her tan and calling it a day. An interesting point is Alyx looks pretty hwite because originally her father was meant to be captain vance, a hwite man, also she would have hwite hair but Valve cut vance and fused him with based nigger Eli, hence Eli's slightly lighter skin and one Aryan eye, it is also implied Eli's wife was also a mutt due to alyx's piercing green eyes, which might be the canonical explanation for why in the original games Alyx isn't an ugly nig-gook-mutt.

>>1208 Yeah I never thought Alyx was some mutt, she doesn't even come across as a mulatto or a quadroon or whatever. I always assumed that Eli adopted her in the post apocalypse and he was just a father figure. There are zero non-huwite features on the original Alyx. Of course she must be made ugly in the current year.

>>1212 In the original beta Eli was vance and his wife's friend and basically had been like her uncle or grandfather, he only became her dad after valve fused both the characters together.

>>1213 Was it ever stated that he's her biological father?

>>1219 Yes, but keep in mind both Eli and his waife are part hwite and have some aryan phenotypes to them mostly the eyes and the lighter skin so that is why Alyx won the genetic lottery in the first game when it comes to being cute despite her mutt status.

>>1222 We'll she's not really mutt, they haven't redesigned her from the beta version to make her visually a mutt. I guess at worst she would be a quadroon and we all know that quadroons are huwite *chuckles* . I was just curious if in the final version they actually made Eli her biological father and not just an adopted one.

Tales of Xillia – ah, Tales games, even though they never quite rise above mediocrity most of the time, the longer you live in this clown world, the more you actually start to appreciate them for their reliability: they are always there to deliver a big comfy fantasy adventure, much needed to sooth ones tired mind. After the flaccid fart in the wind that was Graces, devs made significant improvements to pretty much every aspect of the formula. The graphics are great; a bit uneven in places and it's kinda unclear whether they're going for a full-on painted anime backgrounds look or a more conventional 3D style, since both kinda shift places at a whim, but the art direction here is absolutely fantastic and needs to be seen, probably one of the best of the era. The world is large enough and worth exploring, borrowing the FFXII-esque open ended structure this time around. The battle system is a solid variation on the good ol’ Tales battle engine, augmented with the new "Sphere Grid"-type of leveling up mechanic. They packed a lot of stuff for you to do in the game and even though most of it is ankle deep it’s still nice to have, after all, it's the small things that make up a good vidya. I had a lot of fun. The game is pretty long and while the story is your typical Tales endeavor – although admittedly on the better end of the spectrum – it’s still interesting to follow along. The characters are likable and the slight differences in narration depending on which character you chose as the protagonist is a nice touch. However, the whole thing is significantly undercut by a horrible dub and general script americanization to the point of tears, likely a lot of rewrites injecting gurl power and other such shit. This one sadly doesn't have dual audio but do seek undub if possible. The music is good but overall unmemorable, which is ironic seeing how the game comes with a bonus OST disc, but I can’t imagine listening to it. One downside to the gameplay I noticed is that they made the preemptive attack on the enemy both way too easy to execute and way too overpowered, so 90% of the gametime you’re just breezing through the encounters. A shame really because I think the battle system here is actually solid enough to warrant some challenge, but sadly the series as a whole suffers from the baby's first RPG syndrome and 7th gen already being significantly downgraded in terms of difficulty only worsens this issue. You do get a lot of merit for your buck with this one, so overall dare I say good shit indeed.

>>1233 you wanna know something interesting? the original team behind Tales of Phantasia or the creator left to form a new Studio called Tri-ace the same studio that made Final Fantasy 13-2 but their biggest game or I would argue one of the best jrpg namely the first Star Ocean and Valkyria Profile 1 on ps1 and PSP. Also another interesting thing, this Tale of Xillia game made the Japanese see "tales of" series as a genuine competitor to FF games in the Japanese market.

>>1240 >Tale of Xillia game made the Japanese see "tales of" series as a genuine competitor to FF games in the Japanese market. lolno not even close. Tales of Symphonia put the series on the map as a legitimate RPG contender, it was extremely popular. But it was Tales of the Abyss that was phenomenally popular in Japan and skyrocketed the series into the top franchises over there. It still has the most fanart of the series to this day.

>>1242 "Tales of" series was popular before but after FF13 and then the trilogy like ff13-2 and lighting return that is what made some people nervous or look at FF with another light along with the failed FF14 before it was re-released, also before ff15 and the other spin off's, And in many ways it made some look at "Tales of" as the third or second contender or within the top 3 JRPGs in Japan. I just remember reading it, but it was a long time ago, it might've been Xillia 2 but that gen FF fell on it's butt and then you also had the problem of Shin Megami Tensei wasn't released on any consoles, just handhelds. But the top 3 now is as it has always been dragon quest, ff and then SMT.

>>1244 Xillia is literally one of the worst selling in the series so no, it definitely wasn't some break away hit. In fact all the best selling games in the series are the old ones. >But the top 3 now is as it has always been dragon quest, ff and then SMT. SMT has never been in any top 3. It's a niche series. Persona maybe.

>>1245 When it comes to SMT or the Megami Tensei series of games are huge and Persona is within that universe, it is the spin off that is more popular than the actual mainline game of the Shin Megami, and there are many Spin off's of SMT like Soul Hackers 2 last year that took some inspiration from Persona but in general SMT makes it's money back in Japan. The "Tales of" then I mean within the PS3 and 360 generation, so that means on PS3 in Japan then the released games would've been Tales of Graces F, Tales of Vesperia, Tales of Xillia, tales of Xillia 2 and lastly Tales of Zestiria which is cross-gen with PS4. So, I meant "Tales of" as a series being seen in a different light as the major or big jrpg on that PS3 console generation because there wasn't really released anything when it came to JRPGs. I am gonna try and find that article of Tales of Xillia, if it wasn't Xillia 2 that was seen in a different light as the "Tales of" as that was comparable to Final Fantasy then it was gameplay, first week sales and other things like good word of mouth.It could also have been another Tales game and I am misremembering.

>>1246 >the Megami Tensei series of games are huge They're really not. SMT 5 is the first to sell over a million copies. >Persona is within that universe Only tangentially. It is its own thing not related to any mainline SMT games, and never advertised as being part of SMT. They even count Persona sales separately. On that note, Persona series sold almost as much as the entire SMT series.

>>1247 >tangentially Megaten universe gets destroyed and re-created in the image of the new god. Persona is it's own thing? I don't know the first game in Japan had the name of SMT, then it was taken out later on but Persona had the demon summoning and some of the dark themes of SMT then it became more and more friendly and less doomsday dark like the mainline series and the spin offs. >SMT 5 being the best selling game yeah, I can see that since it was the first game that was somewhat normally marketed because of Sega and Nintendo worldwide. In the west the games where known but a bit to being niche. But it is a different story in Japan, then they have the whole anniversary thing along with anniversary editions of games.

Recently I tried out the half-life 2 beta recreation mod Dark Interval, it isn't as complete or polished as RTBR per say but it is still pretty cool, I like the general look of it as well, not as much as RTBR. Wish it didn't constantly error with the AI and keep me from progressing on Linux, otherwise I would have already completed it by now.

Spot Goes to Hollywood – a cool isometric platformer for the Mega Drive and another memory from my childhood, used to play it a lot during my school years. I actually recall trying to tape a walkthrough on VHS and send it to a vidya magazine, they would publish those and that was considered mad honor. I failed miserably because I couldn’t land a jump, kept re-recording it and eventually ragequit. Good memories. The game feels exactly how I remember it, as if I played it last month and not 20 years ago. One thing that struck me playing it now is how decently sized and open-ended the levels are, you’re free to explore and collect shit; there’s a nice verticality to some of them as well. You have to collect a certain number of “coins” to exit a level but other than that nothing bars you from going anywhere you can get to and the game is full of secrets to discover. You can also collect other stuff scattered about but sadly it’s mostly useless and apart from an occasional 1Up amounts to nothing but points, kind of a missed opportunity here in my opinion. Literally once in the entire thing you find boots that allow you to jump higher… for 15 seconds. There really needed to be more stuff like this, some buffs and whatnot to find, maybe extra weapons since all you get is one basic attack that takes forever to kill enemies with. The controls are pretty good, the whole isometric perspective thing can be hard to nail down and could naturally lead to some frustration but thankfully devs realized that and there’s an easy 99 lives code. You get used to it pretty fast and then it plays smoothly. The game’s not too challenging, in fact, the bosses here are a complete cakewalk the final one is almost insultingly easy and the only hard parts are the auto-scroll levels. The graphics are good, though it’s a bit hard to place – on the one hand, everything is impressively detailed and well animated but on the other hand, the color pallet is sorta dark and desaturated, and not very appealing. I raised the white balance in photoshop and it instantly made things look better. But oh well. At least it compensates for that with a great variety of locations, since the game is movie-based you get to visit all the major film genres, from pirates and post-apocalypse to horror and sci-fi. The music is pretty decent and reflects the locations nicely, although I think the game is kinda low on sound effects and also Spot’s squeak is annoying as fuck. All in all, this is a fun vidya. It’s pretty good despite being basically a commercial shilling a brand; probably the best ever made of that ilk. I actually went and bought 7Up for the occasion, so they succeeded 25 years later, oy vey. There's also a PS1 version that I need to check some time.

>>1246 SMT is a lot better than persona tbh anon.

>>1294 The earlier Perusona games were good, the series got heavily casualized as it went on due to normalfags' attention.

>>1298 Lol why even do that, peak (((american moment))) in cuckeo game translations.

>>1307 Americans are obsessed with niggers, mutt's law.

Tales of Zestiria – after Xillia my expectations were set high for this one and I gotta say, I was not disappointed. Well, maybe a bit initially, the game takes its sweet time to get going and at first strikes you as a step down, but then by about 1/3rd it really opens up and becomes a real joy to play and explore. Shame you have to wait like ten hours for that to happen but it is what it is. At least the whole thing is 50+ hours long so in the end that wasn’t a big issue. Just like Xillia, the game continues to be inspired by the 6th gen's FFXII-styled RPGs and here the resemblance is even more noticeable. But this time around the game is truly massive, with large open-ended areas sprawling in multiple directions, often interconnected with one another. I honestly felt very nostalgic playing it, like I was back exploring DQVIII, FFXII, Phantasy Star Universe and the like. Nowhere near as big or complex as those but still a very enjoyable experience. Some really comfy and atmospheric dungeons in this one too. Visually it even looks more like a high-end 6th gen game rather than a big PS3 hardware pusher. Despite being somewhat low tech and rough around the corners the pop-ups here…, this is still a very beautiful game thanks to a truly stellar art direction and sheer variety of locations. I would often just stop and enjoy the view, with its large vistas and monumental architecture. There are some nice anime cutscenes present, as per tradition, but sadly it’s all digital vomit at this point. Musically the game definitely stands out over its immediate predecessors. This was the series’ 20th anniversary project so they got a whole bunch of composers to do the OST together, and the result is pretty solid: you get everything from the big epic score to very subtle moody melodies, to some Nordic motives and particularly great stuff in trial dungeons that I wish there was more of. What I didn’t like is what they’ve done to the battle engine, it was always simple and to the point, versatile enough without being overly convoluted. Here they just over-crammed it with a ton of needlessly complicated and mostly useless systems. Due to that you’re constantly pestered with tutorials, but it’s impossible to comprehend all of it on your first playthrough and there’s no reason to, really, since the game is pretty easy in general. No point in reading essays worth of text when you’re just always winning anyway. I guess it’s nice to have as an option but it’s an illusion of complexity. One other notable downside – the game lacks any side activities, like mini-games and whatnot, to add some variety. There’s not even a casino. The story is pretty good as far as these modern Tales games go, dare I say best grills and fanservice as well. However, one thing that undermines it all is the catastrophic, nuclear levels of americanization and redditfication of the translation; they put even the ones in Xillia to shame. I have never seen anything on this scale before. At least, mercifully, there’s Japanese audio present but it’s not gonna save you from the literal doge memes and SocJus lingo. I would literally sit in disbelief for a good minute or two after reading some of this shit. The above mentioned tutorials are also harder to comprehend because of this. Despite that I still enjoyed this one a lot. 7th gen was really missing games like this; I wish it came out in like 2008 and not 2015 when the gen was already over.

La Pucelle Tactics – an excellent tacticool RPG from Nippon Ichi, basically a predecessor to the Disgaea series. Extremely wholesome, I greatly enjoyed it. The story’s nice, it’s characteristically cutesy but mixed with surprisingly dark moments – somehow when bad shit happens to cute chibi characters it feels even more impactful. Although, sadly, the game is heavily censored in the west but at least there’s Japanese audio option available so you don’t have to suffer through the horrific dub. The visuals are overall superb with exquisite sprite work and gorgeous hand-painted backgrounds. It is however very much a PS1 game running on PS2, it even came out on CD originally. As such, the 3D battle backgrounds, while still pleasant looking, are very rudimentary and the 2D backgrounds are static to the point where you have to be content with a motionless fountain. There’s also this weird thing where you can rotate the camera on certain battle screens but not the others for some reason. But it was never too bothersome, really. Well, maybe the fountain thing. I mean, just don’t draw a fountain there if you know you can’t animate it. The music was one of the highlights for sure, it's extremely good and I wish there was more of it… perhaps also a downside of using a single CD. Gameplay wise it’s a pretty standard nip SRPG. Good shit. Notable gimmick being the ability to convert any monster in the game to your side so your party ends up being 50% monster-based. I found it generally too easy tho, mainly because the map screens are so small there’s just not enough room for grander strategies and it feels more like comfy chess matches. In fact, some battles get so tight you actually have to accommodate meta elements like spawn and exit squares that enemies can’t step on into your strategy, which was interesting. On a side note, I know it’s characteristic of the genre but the whole not being able to select your target when facing multiple opponents and missing the enemy with 1 HP remaining is ass splitting. The game just radiates that carefree atmosphere of better days; it’s now one of my all-time favorites in fact. Would very much recommend it. Haven't played the Disgaea series yet, largely because of the NISA cancer, but if it's as good as this I'll find a way to get to it eventually.

>>1513 >the NISA cancer Don't even get me started about how much they ruined the English dubs of Neptune, and how badly they fucked the subtitles.

>>421 Late response but I was actually playing through both DMC1 and DMC3 at the same time at the beginning of the year but as with most games I sorta just stopped, both are a lot of fun though, guess I just didn't have the motivation...

>>1515 They, they ruined entire generations of vidya so now you have to jump through hoops to enjoy the games.

>>1516 I can't imagine playing two games at once, that would definitely lessen the enjoyment of both in my opinion.

>>1520 Basically I was playing one with a fren and the other alone, I started the third game cause I wanted to continue playing with my fren as we were sorta taking turns playing.

>>1521 I see. Though playing with frens can be fun in and of itself, I found that it doesn't really translate to the enjoyment of the game, especially when you grow older. I remember back in university me and my pal really wanted to play some co-op game, I think MK Shaolin Monks or some shit, and it seemed like such a fun idea, so then we bought it and started playing it but then lost interest really fast. We never played anything together again. We were growing out of that age where just fucking about together is the primarily objective, but at the same time my personal individual enjoyment of games became only stronger with time.

>>1522 How odd, the opposite for me, as I've grown older my interests have sort of waned, though I would say I am not much of what you would call a "gamer's gamer" besides the stuff I particularly enjoy. As time as gone on enjoying co-op like L4D2 with the few frens I got has been become even more enjoyable as I've gotten older, and the want to do it more has increased. I think it is because at this age I am sort of sensing my own mortality.

>>1524 Well that's good for you my nigga but I think the co-op stuff is more fleeting because like I mentioned you're enjoying the commutative process and not so much the game, you don't even care what the game is, everything is fun with pals. But then it becomes less and less fun because you're doing the same surface level thing. Whereas when you try to get into individual gayming, you get some really profound experiences.

The Story of Thor: A Successor of The Light – a superb action-platformer for the Mega Drive. Really good shit right here. It’s very much a Zelda clone but it has its own style and personality, more inspired by Zelda than simply outright copying it. And holy fuck does it look good, this is a very late-gen game, especially for Mega Drive, but it’s got to be one of the most beautiful and detailed game of the entire 4th generation. It can easily hold its own against the best SNES has to offer and I’m surprised MD can even run it. Though it didn’t escape the characteristic muted palette look. It’s also one of the few games on the system to have a save mode. All the sprites are large, intricately detailed, and fully animated. Clearly a lot of effort was put into animation and miscellaneous effects in general - for example, when you’re crawling you can see the character supporting himself with his hand on the ground, or how enemies would catch flame both from your attacks as well as accidental friendly fire. The score is equally impressive and is probably taxing the poor MD sound chip to the absolute limit. There sadly is no big iconic main theme of some kind. The world is beautiful and vibrant, with great variety of locations, it’s not as big as a Zelda world to explore but you are still given a decent freedom to wander about. Found a bridge? You can crawl under it and discover some goodies. Shame the story is rather basic, though; you can talk to people but they don’t say anything interesting, kind of a wasted opportunity here. The gameplay is really fun and surprisingly versatile, you get a pretty decent moveset and can use a variety of weapons at will. It’s really neat how you can even drop items from your inventory on the floor if you’re full or don’t need something. The main gimmick of the game is summoning spirits – you get your standard elemental familiars but the number of ways in which they can be utilized is really impressive and advanced. To summon them you need to find a corresponding element somewhere on the level, and it can be anything from – in water’s case – obvious bodies of water, to little creeks on rock surfaces, to a tiny drip from a ceiling that you don’t even register at first. You can even summon them from other enemies if they consist of or produce the element in question. You need to melt ice with a fire spirit to proceed further but you can also summon another spirit off the ice’s surface. The game often asks you to think about such things creatively to solve puzzles, especially for secret stuff. The variety of enemies gets pretty commendable by the end of the game, I liked the one enemy that’s immaterial unless you have a spirit summoned but then it starts attacking the spirit relentlessly, giving you but a tiny window to dispose of the damned thing. Zombies are also nice, they can give you a hard time but would literally crumble to dust if you’ll think of using fire. The bosses are also pretty cool. Though overall the game’s fairly easy, mainly because you have so much stuff at your disposal and can save anywhere outside dungeons, sometimes even in dungeons. But it does ask you to make some dubious platforming jumps at times. Though I wouldn’t call this game obscure, I’m surprised it’s not heralded amongst the greatest in Mega Drive’s library and the entire generation. I had great fun, often just taking my time appreciating the vibe of the backgrounds and music. Definitely a must play if you’re into 2D Zelda-type games.

Dawn of Mana (aka Seiken Densetsu 4) – a great little gem from when Square still used to make video games. Unlike all the other Seiken games, this is not an RPG but a rather unique action-platformer, which is why it being a numbered mainline installment is questionable, but it's still really fun nonetheless. The main gimmick of the game is that it is physics based – slashing around won't do you much good, instead, you have to use your whip to throw objects into enemies, smash them into one another, stagger and finish them off. The stronger you get, the more shit you can throw around. The combat engine is pretty basic and it's obvious that interacting with the world is the main crux of the game – knocking boulders on unassuming monsters, setting haystacks on fire and causing debris avalanches; all that on large sandbox levels with complex geometry. It’s pretty impressive to say the least and of course the game looks fantastic, with incredible art design and late gen technical prowess that you used to expect from Square. Music is extremely solid as well. The story is nice and simple but more of a fanservice for the fans of the series, especially considering the much shorter length compared to an RPG. All that gameplay freedom can make the controls a little bit unruly at times but that naturally stops being an issue once you git gud at it, and of course it's a great technical achievement that all of this works as good as it does. About the only downside of the game is that it's too repetitive, you do the exact same thing on every level and it’s a damn shame considering the variety of mechanics and puzzles that would work with this premise. The challenge level is also not particularly high, mainly because it's too easy to max out your stats on every level. All in all, a great vidya. It has that Kingdom Hearts/Dark Cloud/Okami vibe going on, comfiness levels through the roof and just good time in general.

Shiki Eiyūden: Jinryū Densetsu – a pretty interesting RPG for the Super Famicom. Its main thing is that it’s based on actual Chinese history, the warring states period to be specific. There’s no real story per se, you’re just in ancient China to visit real historical locations and meet real historical personas; all string together with the larger warring states narrative. It’s a neat idea but the story is just too basic, more like a collection of bullet points. There are so many verbose RPGs on the system but here the characters barely exchange two lines of dialog. A shame really because this political setting seems perfectly suited for a much more complex storytelling. It is cool though that on a few occasions you’re expected to know actual Chinese history – common enough knowledge in China and Japan I suppose – to advance further; I had to find and translate a source on the subject since it was available only in Japanese. Gameplay wise, however, it’s anything but simple; this is a rather tough game, at least for novices. In fact they probably realized that because you gain XP even by running away. The random encounter rate is really high and enemies hit you hard, you can only save in towns but in an unexpected move of charity you do get a no-encounters spell. There’s also no map whatsoever so you better have a pencil near you at all times because the game is super obtuse with directions, sometimes not even repeating where you have to go. You do get a decent arsenal of spells at your disposal that allows for some tactical deployment to figure out. Like for instance there is a doppelganger spell and bosses would often use a turn to dispel it instead of buffing themselves, giving you an opening. Generally, all this stuff is well thought out with good attention to details. I liked that you don’t earn any money here and have to sell loot by bartering with traders. The game also enjoys torturing you with hard mandatory puzzles. Graphically it’s not particularly advanced but still looks pretty good I have to say; though there isn’t much in terms of variety – towns and dungeons are mostly just color swaps. Music definitely deserves praise on the other hand, not just composition-wise but also the clear quality of sound itself. Overall I enjoyed it. I liked the higher challenge level and that the game doesn’t babysit you. The combat is also nicely nuanced. It’s really just the story that is a letdown – the characters, historical and not, have no personality and I don’t think the unique setting was utilized that well here. Still, it was a pretty stand out experience.

Gimmick! – a neat little Sunsoft platformer for the Famicom. One cool thing about this one is that it was a late-gen entry and had to compete directly with 16-bit games, so they made some special tech for advanced graphics and sound to have it stand out on the market. And you can definitely tell that right away, the visuals are very beautiful and detailed, with wonderful backgrounds and fluid animations. Even though all characters are just blobs. But the sound stands out the most, they made an entire extra chip for it, it’s way above the standard quality of this generation, the music is absolutely incredible. Mechanically the game is pretty unique, it’s in a way physics based – your sole method of attack is a star that you charge above your head and then release, after which it bounces around in a realistic manner. You can even jump off it to reach secret places or let it carry you across obstacles; if you can pull that off. Now, that’s a neat idea and all but I think it does limit the gameplay a bit because you have to charge the star to use it and then can’t use it again until the previous one is off the screen. Nothing gets any upgrades, either. There’s just not enough room for gameplay variety with that, so you’re only ever doing the most basic things throughout the game. I also didn’t like how they implemented the control scheme for this whole business – you get three items you can carry and the way to use them is to hold Up + the star charge button... in a game where you’re constantly jumping around. Needless to say, they are used up on accident all the time. I know there are only two buttons on the gamepad, but at the same time Select button is not utilized at all, c’mon. The game gets pretty challenging later on, especially since your character has a heavy momentum and slides on any surface and then you get to the ice level. So some frustration will be experienced. It is very short on the other hand and still really fun. There’s no story, either, it’s feels more arcady that way. So, a really cool project. Above everything else it’s worth playing for the visuals and music, I wish more 8-bit games looked like this. But the physics gameplay is neat as well. Also, check that cute playdough cover art.

i need to get back into gaming..

Jurassic Park: the Game (2011) – I’m a big fan of both the Jurassic Park franchise as well as point-and-click adventure games so you’d think this will be right up my alley, and it probably would have been if they didn’t fuck it up this badly. To begin with, this isn’t a traditional point-and-click type of game – there’s no exploration, no collecting of stuff to solve stuff; nothing. Instead, this is basically a glorified visual novel with QTEs. The whole appeal of point-and-click games is to walk around, explore stuff, solve things, seep in the atmosphere, that’d be pretty cool in a Jurassic Park setting. Instead, all you do is get punished with QTEs after suffering through terrible cutscenes. I did to some extent enjoy the whole ‘father and daughter have to escape from the island’ dynamic of the first episode, it had that sort of wholesome white family vibe to it and the atmosphere of Jurassic Park was palpable. But then they had to ruin it by adding an annoying old libshit hippie to the equation; after that the story is fanfiction tier bad and you have to suffer through wads of pointless dialog with horrible writing. Visually the game looked like crap way back in 2011 and nothing changed since then. Perhaps if this was a classic point-and-click without constant extreme close-ups for all the cutscenes and QTEs, it might have worked, but it’s so poorly made in general – it’s the kind of game where you see somebody holding an AK that floats half a meter away from the model. I guess the music is alright at least, it’s the expected John Williams sampling and some original score to go along with it. As mentioned, there’s barely any gameplay. The few times it pretends to let you play, everything you can click on is brightly marked so you wouldn’t confuse this with a video game. And the few puzzles present are an insult to ones intelligence. Of course it also has just 1 autosave file that locks you off from anything you didn’t finish “exploring”. I also didn’t like how they utilized the dinos in this, especially the Tyrannosaurus, I guess they thought it’s gonna be extremely tense if you’re constantly falling on his head and jumping through his mouth with QTEs. But in reality it just dissipates the danger and makes T-Rex look like an incompetent doofus. Sadly, or maybe thankfully, the game glitched on me at the very end at which point I dropped it. Overall it was a miserable experience that I wouldn’t wish on my enemy. The worst thing is that this was made on the very cusp of point-and-click genre dying out so now there will never be a Jurassic Park game like that. Fuck my life.

Call of Duty 2 – I got nostalgic for WW2 shooters so I decided to revisit CoD2 which I had fond memories of from playing it way back in the day. I was actually happy to see that the game still holds up pretty well. For one thing, it definitely holds up visually, given you maxed out the settings, which shouldn’t be an issue nowadays but I remember taking great pride in being able to run the game at max settings on my new PC when it came out. Back then the texture quality seemed magical. All the maps are nicely detailed and full of atmosphere. Decent amount of variety as you jump through different campaigns across the globe. The campaigns themselves are pretty good as well – you do feel right in the middle of a violent battle, with shit constantly exploding all around you and bullets trailing over your head as you scramble to the nearest piece of debris for cover. They did a good job recreating that hectic feel of war. All done entirely through gameplay without any scripted cinematic event™ bullshit. Very nice. I guess one drawback is that you’re always fighting with your platoon members right next to you, so occasional gameovers caused by accidentally shooting or exploding them are inevitable. The combat itself is simple but satisfying, no need to reinvent the wheel here. It just works™. The music, when present, is mostly a generic epic score but it does work well here. Good sound design all around, although NPC voice samples do get repetitive. There are, however, no scores, bonuses or anything to motivate you to play better, sadly. Nor is there any reason to explore the maps, there’s absolutely nothing extra you can find, not even weapons. This is honestly a let down and kills any replayability, I suppose the multiplayer was meant to substitute for that, I think I played it back in the day but I don’t remember much about it. I’m sure it was fun. Also, even on normal difficulty the game is piss easy so switching to hard right away is mandatory. There are no real “boss” encounters of any kind, either, I understand that they were going for realism but I don’t think it’s out of the realm of believably to fight some huge ass tank with a lot of HP on occasion. Certainly at the end would be the time, as the game ends rather anticlimactically. All in all, I had a good time. There was some expansion pack that for some reason only came out on Wii and PS2, and after that the series pretty much stopped being developed with PC in mind. Ironically, this was the last CoD game I ever played and it's staying that way.

Although I haven't finished either I am currently playing Touhou Genso Wanderer, Pokemon Mystery Dungeon Explorers of Sky, afterstory autism Senran Kagura Shinovi Versus and Burst, and Super Mario 64. I am mostly focusing on Super Mario 64 but have been having a blast playing every game at the moment. Any anons still around and are they still having fun with autistic games meant to help us forget our civilization is literally burning?

>>3245 >Any anons still around and are they still having fun with autistic games meant to help us forget our civilization is literally burning? Sure do. Backlog saves the day in the current year. You can play all the countless games from 3 decades you didn't gave the access to prior due to cost or technology.

>>3246 >Backlog saves the day in the current year Been enjoying some mobile gaming on my Vita and 3DS's backlog as well as PS3 and old PC games, you are correct about that anon.

>>3247 I'm more of a 5th-6th gen myself.

>>3259 Yeah I was trying to really get back into that era as well, was playing a bit of Kirby 64 recently and remember how much fun Super Mario Sunshine was a couple years back.

>>3246 backlogging is undeniably based, imagine playing modern "games"...

Prince of Persia: the Forgotten Sands – a forgotten 7th gen sequel to the Sands of Time trilogy, so the name is quite ironic. I always thought this was a movie tie-in game as it came out literally the same week as the film and the prince here kinda looks like the actor, but no, this is an actual full fledged sequel (well, technically a midquel) to the 6th gen games. Truly a bizarre marketing decision. For that reason, I had always steered clear from it as some quickly thrown together garbage. Shame as the game’s actually pretty good and I ended up enjoying it a lot. The most surprising thing, especially in the context of them already rebooting the series by this point, is that for a late 7th gen game it feels exactly like those 6th gen games: there’s not a single QTE, not a single prompt or scripted walking session – you have to do stuff yourself. It is somewhat casualized in places but not to an extent you’d expect and it’s unusual to see a western 7th gen game – from Ubishit no less – that requires actual skill and effort. That is not to say the game is particularly challenging, it’s pretty easy but not in a modern game sort of way where it just plays itself for you. Rather you have all the appropriate tools you need to deal with any situation the game throws at you. Extra challenge would have been appreciated as there’s not even a hard mode available but it is still a satisfying experience none the less. Graphically it looks like an HD remaster of a PS2 game but despite low tech the art direction is superb and thanks to that the game actually looks quite gorgeous; there’s some exquisite texture work on display. Of course you expect a particular atmosphere out of a PoP game, with exotic locations and scantily clad women, all of which is in full effect here. But I have to say that despite being well made, conceptually the game is pretty weak, It feels uninspired and redundant. The story is almost nonexistent and is a complete throwaway, seemingly thought up at the last moment. The original trilogy had a consistent theme behind everything but here you get your same powers for a completely different reason and in a way more generic manner. You then go through levels that are largely derivative of the previous games. Maybe this was meant to be another reboot originally, who knows. The music is also not as strong as in the older games I miss Godsmack, there are a few nice tunes but it largely feels like a stock fantasy score. Interestingly, the Wii version is a completely different game made by a different team, it looks much more compelling setting and story wise from what I’ve seen; maybe I’ll play it one day. That being said, the gameplay is still fun because you get to fight and platform on your own – something that became a rare commodity as the medium went on. The combat is simple but satisfying enough, there’s an equally simple skill tree where you can unlock new abilities like projectiles and buffs. But those are honestly not needed and I forgot about them even existing. Platforming is also well done, with some creative challenges; especially later on when you have to use your different time powers simultaneously. Sadly there are almost no bosses and those few present are virtually identical. The final one is alright at least. Overall I definitely enjoyed it, perhaps more so because I had zero expectations going in and was pleasantly reminded of a much better era in gaming. It’s been a long time since I played the original trilogy so I can’t really comment on how this stacks up to it exactly but it’s still kind of a miracle this game was even made in 2010. This was basically the last hurrah for the genre before Uncharted and AssCreed degraded it into no skill required cinematic events where platforming boils down to holding Up.

Grand Master – a neat little Famicom action-RPG. This one is also clearly inspired by Zelda, in fact, it’s outright copying it. But interestingly it copies specifically the Link to the Past when this is obviously a late Famicom game, so you get this weird idiosyncratic feeling of playing something that shouldn’t be. The gameplay itself is pretty simple and straightforward, very much like Zelda, obviously, even down to the grappling hook mechanics; however, you gain experience points to level up. And unlike Link you get a truly huge-ass sword with some impressive swing radius. You, too, explore large maze-like levels to collect weapons and buffs, and ultimately a key to proceed further. I liked the buff system – you can find several levels of upgrades for your shield, armor and every weapon, if you’re thorough enough, by late game you can literally breeze through bosses like butter, including the final one. Unlike Zelda there aren’t really any puzzles to solve and it is much more action oriented instead. The game is not too hard overall but you can get killed in a manner of seconds when enemies gang on you and they gang on you all the time. Plus the only way to replenish health is to find a single potion somewhere on the level. So this is not a leisure stroll either. But then the final stage is ridonculous, expecting you to beat all that shit without saving is crzay. Another cool thing about the game is its branching path system based on the order in which you decide to tackle the stages. If you don’t trigger certain events in a specific order you won’t get the proper ending. On that note, there’s a surprisingly decent amount of story in the game; even a bit of lore. It’s not anything to write home about but still a nice touch. There are even little animated cutscenes peppered throughout, although ironically there isn’t one for the finale; not sure if that was a creative choice or they simply ran out of time. Visually the game looks quite pleasant. There’s a decent variety of locations and the backgrounds are nicely detailed. The final level is particularly creative, with almost every other screen being different and unique looking. There are a few janks here and there but nothing major there is a way to soft crash the game in one spot tho. I especially liked the attention to small details like the hero changing his clothes to warmer ones in winter levels. There’s even some sweet 8-bit nudity. Lewd. The music sounds pretty good and clean as well, though I’m not an expert on 3rd gen soundtracks, but I think it sounds nice and groovy. And again, some tunes are lifted straight from Zelda. Overall the game is a quality clone, I liked it. Just like the progenitor it has a very adventurous, open-ended atmosphere where everything is in your hands.

>>4323 >>4393 Thank you for these quality essays sharing your gaming experiences N

>>4406 *anon.

>>4406 No problem anon, glad you like them.

Madou Monogatari I – a super cute RPG-ish first person dungeon crawler. A dungeon cuter. It’s part of a long running series and this is basically a Mega Drive remake of one of the earlier games. It actually marks the milestone of being the very last game ever released on the system in Japan. Also of note is that this is where all the Puyo Puyo games spawned from. It’s pretty solid and addictive, you enter a tower and have to navigate through about 15 floors with a cute loli while fighting equally cute enemies and solving various tasks and light puzzles. Despite the appearances, it is actually decently challenging, you must have a notepad and pencil on you at all times because the game marks literally nothing and there’s a fuckton of stuff to keep track of on every floor. Both in and outside of combat you have to directly input different button combinations to cast spells, kinda like in a fighting game, which is a pretty interesting approach and adds player's speed as an on-game factor; pretty good shit, I wish more RPGs used this. Visually it’s very impressive for Mega Drive, with detailed animated sprites; they had to sacrifice like 50% of the screen for that tho but it never really bothers you. There’s also a lot of good quality voice work. The music is pretty solid as well though there’s very little of it, probably making space for all that speech. Interestingly, the game goes for a rather unconventional approach of not using any numeric stats for the HUD and instead all the information is indicated through loli's expressions, music and text. Usually this idea turns into a pain in the ass but in a simple game like this it works fine. There's no story really, it's kinda arcady that way, but there are gags and funny interactions sprinkled throughout. Looking forward to seeing more of the games translated.

Paradise – as a big fan of graphical adventure games I was tracking down this one for quite some time now. Even finding it online isn't easy. Overall, I enjoyed it. It’s very recognizably a Sokal game (he’s like the Kojima of point-and-click games) both artistically and gameplay-wise, for good and for bad. Not so much the baby’s first graphical adventure that Syberia was if we’re talking any particular level of challenge, but it's still a pretty simple game, at least if you’re experienced with the genre. Though there are a few poorly designed puzzles that force you to look them up, however, just like with Syberia you’re mostly playing for the atmosphere. And on that note the atmosphere here is excellent, the game has truly exquisite pre-rendered backgrounds that craft an exotic journey through some hot third-world African shithole in the midst of a civil war, from a harem with scantily clad nigresses to deep jungle filled with Sokal’s trademark fantastical fauna. Good shit. Though it is a shame the backgrounds are mostly completely static, there are a few with animated elements and I don’t expect them all to be like that, after all this is just a AA Frog production, not Sqaresoft, but they could have at least added some animated polygonal objects here and there, stuff like that was done even way back on PS1. However, even though the backgrounds are excellent and there's a surprising amount of nice looking pre-rendered cutscenes, all the in-game aspects are kinda clunky and start to completely fall apart by the end of the game, with characters t-posing across the screen, events not playing out properly, etc. Maybe the game was glitching on my machine but I somehow doubt it. It’s like they literally ran out of time, and they probably did, but it feels cheaper because of this; Syberia this ain’t. Voice acting is passable and ranges from good with the main lead to average with everyone else. With that in mind the music was definitely a saving grace, it’s really good all the way through and elevates the experience despite the shortcomings. The story is actually pretty decent and quite morbid but, like mentioned, the execution sells it short, and all the flavor text dialog – the bread and butter of these kinds of games – is mostly empty fluff, sadly. Nonetheless, like I said I enjoyed it, chiefly for the atmosphere and exotic escapism combined with the general comfyness of the genre, and I miss games with pre-rendered backgrounds dearly.

Lost Horizon – after Paradise I was still in the mood for more graphical adventure games so I decided to play one from my backlog that I was putting off for a long while and man, talk about not judging a book by its cover. I was putting the game off because it looked kind of amateurish and indeed it is made by a tiny German developer, however, it turned out to be exceptionally well made, in fact by a mile better than the aforementioned Paradise which is supposed to be a large production but comes off lazy in comparison. The thing that initially turned me off was the general presentation, it has that particular nonprofessional feel to it – the cover, the font, the title screen, the background artwork which is hand-drawn but has that distinct tumblr look to it; all of that, on surface, strikes you as amateur in nature. But after playing it, the backgrounds absolutely won me over, they are actually quite charming and clearly so much work went into them, plus the art direction is not at all bad. And like I said the game is really well put together for such a humble project – everything works flawlessly, 3D models look nice even on extreme close ups, there are a lot of misc animations that even a lot of bigger devs wouldn't bother with. They also have an interesting seamless way of integrating FMVs into the actual gameplay, not even sure how they did it. Good job all around. Well, except maybe for the music, it’s alright but it’s just the stock epic music they probably bought off some site. But at least the voice acting is alright, especially from the main lead, they clearly went for the Broken Sword vibe with the protagonist having a snarky remark about almost every object on the screen, the writing is nowhere near as good but it did make me chuckle a few times. The story goes through all the classic globe trotting tropes – Nazis, Tibetan artifact, ancient civilization, asian waifu. In fact, it is almost to a tee ripping off Indiana Jones and the Thunder in the Orient but, just like with the visuals, the game tries its hardest with the material at hand, it’s nothing to write home about but I was enjoying the ride. Gameplay wise the puzzles are really nice, varied and require you to think (provided you turned off the hints, including them in a puzzle game at all is insulting but this was made in 2010); with some decent gimmicks like switching between characters and fakeout solutions. The final puzzle where you switch between two time periods was an excellent idea, shame it was rather short as was the ending but it’s almost always like that with these types of games. The game itself is pleasantly long. All and all, I was unexpectedly impressed with the game, it’s a great entry into the genre that rises above its humble origins and I would very much recommend it.

Recently I finished a small Doom wad Deafening Deals.wad, a very well made wad taking place in some sort of mall. I also completed said wad with an updated version of the old Moonman mod that was made by some guy featuring an /pol/ idealizes version of the orange man himself and Kyle the Kike killer rittenhouse. I don't think they are as well made characters as the original three, but I like the changea in speed to Zyklon Ben and I like some of the new effects/enemies

>>5947 Author also added a couple extra enemies such as a zombie chink giant, a nigger SS officer with song of the south esque sound effects, a beaner gunner, and my favorite, a yid that goes around screaming "oy vey your in our neighborhood goy RAPE!" and worms around the map like a faggot. He also fused the lost soul skin with the cyberdemon for a version of it which is a cyber tyrone comics, kinda cool. I guess, he didn't understand the original reference to the negro who was seething about moonman on jewtube back in the day, luckily it is still in the files so hopefully it can also spawn as well. Also one more thing, because of the nature of how Moonman Doom is obtained, by normalfags in particular, and the distinct lack of SS or Wehrmacht classes my guess is the modder updated an older version of the mod sadly, well nothing is perfect I guess. there is a chance he simply replaced them since both were never finished and were simply just Hitler at the time though Currently playing as Dup going through the Touhou Doom wad, its kinda find to hear dup spout loser, all the time whenever he kills a fairy.

>>5948 I also forgot about the most interesting mode added by the modder, absolute genocide mode, this game version makes it to where niggers respawn often, this allows for getting weapons, health, and ammo at a faster rate and in infinite amounts but is needed since hoards of enemies constantly refill the levels, kinda fun in for a bit in a novel way but it can get a bit unfair, going through a regenerating hoard of niggers, spics, and kikes with good old Zyklon Ben's improved super shotgun was a ton of fun though. You'd have to actually be good at video games and Doom in general to beat it which I'm not but I guess that is what save-stating is for retards like me with less gaming skill than the average zoomer. Either way had a lot of fun with this new version of Moonman Doom, glad to know some autist wanted to maintain it/add onto it.

Aladdin (SNES) – ah, the times when loicensed vidya used to be as good as you can get. A great little platformer from Capcom. And it really is little, you can beat the whole thing in under an hour, it's not at all hard compared to a lot of contemporary platformers. There are virtually no bosses or any particular hard spots minus the flying from lava stage, fuck that stage. The only real challenge here is to get all the collectibles but even then it's but a mild spike in difficulty. Kind of a shame, the controls are butter-smooth and the gliding mechanic is very satisfying. There was much potential here but they were likely under pressure by Yidsney to release it for the holiday season or something. At least it compensates for its short length with beautiful visuals and truly excellent 16-bit song renditions from the movie. And it's just all-around super comfy fun time that you can always jump right into for a quick session. I like how these games back then always incorporated original levels into the narrative to expand the playtime. For instance, you can't have a wacky Genie song number in the game but without it you'll miss an important story beat so they came up with a level inside the lamp where Friend Like Me plays and it's all about the Genie wackiness. Good stuff. Fun fact: this game was designed by Shinji Mikami, his last game before Resident Evil. Following that, I also played the Mega Drive version, which was made in the west. The really interesting thing about the game is its development history – all sprites were animated by the actual Disney animators who worked on the film itself, so in that regard this is the most authentic experience. And yeah, everything moves very fluidly and with that squishy-squashy Disney flair; it’s very impressive for the system. Everything else, not so much. Visually the game is kind of a mixed bag, there are some nice-looking locations but there are also some hideous ones and overall it looks way inferior to the SNES version, both technically and art direction wise. It also suffers heavily from that weird desaturated look that a lot of Mega Drive games have, like there's a drab filter over the screen and you just want to click the auto contrast button. But at least everything is sufficiently detailed. The music is not bad, obviously it’s all songs from the film but it’s kinda more aggravating than the SNES version, with the same track playing ad nauseam being more noticeable. Gameplay is also mixed, you do get to use a sword in this version but at the same time the execution is fucking terrible: there’s an annoying delay before every strike and it’s literally canceled if you try to attack while releasing the run button. They clearly didn’t understand how this whole thing is supposed to work and that you need precise control over your actions. At least this version is also pretty easy, so this wasn’t a game-ruining issue. It is overall more challenging than the SNES one, with actual bosses this time around, although platforming is nowhere near as demanding or satisfying. Tiny-ass bats are the game’s toughest enemy. Also unlike the SNES version where they added extra levels to extend the narration, here they just completely rewrote the story to suit the game and now it’s barely even coherent lol. This is an okay platformer more interesting for its production history than anything else, I recommend watching a documentary. It is also quite short, so there’s no reason not to check it out as well.

Magical Pop'n – a pretty solid action cuteformer. It’s a rather straight arcady affair as there’s no story to speak of, which honestly is a shame because I always enjoy the way they manage to incorporate lore and story into simple platformer/action games of the era. The game’s not too hard initially but does get progressively more challenging with the final stage being quite something. Even more so considering there is no save function or even a password system, and levels in this are quite long, easily up to an hour on your first playthrough. Something tells me not many little nips beat this game back in the day. Thankfully the controls are pretty tight. Visually it’s very appealing, with beautiful, nicely detailed backgrounds and special effects. Music was also a standout feature with some rockin’ tunes, especially later on. However, the elephant in the room is that they had some contemporary idol slut do the voice of the main girl and fuck is she terrible. It’s not like there’s voiced dialog or anything, how do you fail at basic cutesy sounds? This is the first time I've encountered such an issue. Though the game is still enjoyable, it’s definitely a bit bare bones and lacks something – some interesting gimmick to add more depth to the experience. You do get extra abilities you find throughout levels but they are almost entirely useless except for the two mandatory ones utilized in platforming. I guess the idea was that less skilled players will use these more often but since they consume resources you end up just ignoring and subsequently forgetting about them. Plus your sword strike is enough for virtually all enemies, including the bosses. Interestingly, this is one of the most expensive Super Famicom games due to its rarity.

>>6692 >cute witch girl goes on adventures Seems story enough to me anon.

Moldorian: Hikari to Yami no Sister – a comfy little RPG for the Game Gear. It was quite alright. The game has a rather peculiar combat system that forces you to always be extra vigilant, though overall it’s not very hard; at least by non-normalfag standards and certainly for the era. The presentation was kinda interesting, at least to me. I haven’t played many Game Gear titles so it’s hard for me to judge how the game stacks up, but the graphics come off as a missing link between the 8-bit and the 16-bit hardware. Which I guess sounds about right for the handheld of the era. They aren't anything wild (the graphics) but you have to remember what the game runs on; to be able to play this on a bus in '94 would have been pretty impressive. The music is all around solid and was actually done by Hitoshi Sakimoto of whom I am a really big fan, so this was certainly a surprising revelation to accidentally find him all the way on Game Gear. The story is simple but pleasant enough to follow; could have been fleshed out more if this was released on a home console. The one downside that really bugged me is the absence of item description of any kind. You'll have to take the good ol' pen and paper and constantly make notes of this stuff. Which in itself is fine by me but considering the fact there is actual unremovable equipment (if you put in on you can't un-equip it) with ailments, you can get fucked over. I doubt that’s due to any hardware limitation and I can always appreciate some extra challenge but come on niggers, that’s just rude. It's not in the manual either. Overall, this was a pretty interesting experience. Game Gear feels like an underappreciated handheld, to be able to play games with such decent graphics and in color, when the only alternative was Gameboy, is undeniably impressive. Well, at least in theory, I know it ate batteries like nothing.

Monster World IV – an excellent platformer for Mega Drive, really loved this one. Despite being part of a series, it’s the only one from that prime 4th gen zone that made it stand out and caught my eye. And it's the only one within the series starring a cute girl, which makes it the best one in my book. Check out that clay figurine they made for the cover. I don’t know about the rest of the games but this one commendably strives to be more than a standard jump-n-slash platformer, there are some obvious RPG influences – you can explore a hub-town full of secrets and talk to people to get hints and some flavor text. You also have to find money to buy new equipment, sometimes having to go and grind for it. The story is very simple but pretty good for what it is, the cutesy lore is surprisingly interesting and I wonder if there's some continuity across the series. Visually it’s truly fantastic for a Mega Drive game, they tried their hardest to work around the system limitations and be on par with SNES quality as much as humanly possible. The game has a lot of those iconic SNES-esque pastel colors and the art direction is superb. The music is alright, there are a few nice melodies but generally it’s somewhere in the background and doesn't have strong enough themes to go along with the levels. And it definitely didn’t escape the iconic Mega Drive fart sound treatment. As a platformer, the game is pretty versatile – you can slash in any direction, jumpslash upwards and downwards and guard with a shield. As the main gimmick you get a floating pet blob-thing that is used in a variety of creative ways to platform and solve simple puzzles. Good shit. The game is not at all hard initially but, as if to compensate for that, the last few levels go over the top with platforming and get somewhat ridiculous. There’s also an impressive variety of enemies you encounter, although bosses are generally a joke, a few have a second form but you can just rush all of them. Sadly the waifu never returns in the series. Such great injustice.

i love video games.

>>7631 The two I knew about for GG were "Defenders of Oasis" and "Royal Stone" there was also a Gundam game I played to completion (either untranslated or I don't think story driven) and I also enjoyed briefly I think was called "Gamble Panic" There was just not a lot on the Game Gear that came out in the West that I could sample, without romhacking translation efforts that've since come to pass

>>8393 Game Gear was pretty cool in the day, but they didn't make enough unique games for it, and the ones they did are kinda stuck in that intermediate zone of not being as good as full-on 16 bit games.

>>8390 Yes.

Eternal Ring – I haven’t played the King’s Field series yet but from what I can tell this is basically King’s Field lite. This was a PS2 launch title and I don’t know whether FromSoftware wanted to or were asked to coincide the game with the launch, or whether they were testing 6th gen waters before the next mainline installment. Either way it’s pretty bare bones. The game’s main gimmick is a ring crafting system which is probably its best aspect; it’s pretty in-depth and satisfying: making rings, finding rings; rings with offensive spells, rings with defensive spells, status rings, there’s a lot to experiment with. The rings all also have very nice image renders. Other than that there’s really not much else to do, the game is pretty short and not particularly well designed; yeah it’s tough but also very primitive and easily exploitable - nothing can stand up to your circle strafing. The visuals are pretty weak and in fact the game kinda looks worse than King’s Field 3 on PS1, both in terms of art direction as well as actual tech. The game just has no mood or style to it at all. There’s also a plethora of bugs, with my favorite being projectiles hitting you through walls and ceilings. It’s so unfair I almost kinda like it, it completely changes the conventional vidya dynamics – “you thought you were safe behind that wall, faggot? Wanted to heal and regroup? Think again!” I did however like the HUD and UI, they are well designed and crisp. Despite the instruction manual and the game itself lying to you that the analog controls are supported, they are in fact not so you have to play with a d-pad and with PS2’s pressure sensitive buttons you have to jam hard the directional button for hours; my thumb needs an extensive therapy now. The music is pretty weak, it’s completely inappropriate 90% of the time with the same limp loop playing ad nauseam. Even no music at all would be a better choice. The story is barely present and sadly is also not very interesting, there’s just nothing to work with here. No good lore™ or anything either. You might be thinking I hated the game but despite all that I still enjoyed it, there’s a certain charm to playing something so hardcore and archaic, I just wish there was some incentive to play it other than meta. King’s Field 3 and 4 look much better in that aspect so maybe they are what I'm looking for.