So, what you playing at the mo? Retro Edition

Glad to hear it holds up. Was worried it didn't as I inhaled anything Metroid Prime since I loved the first game so much.

Started Beyond the Labyrinth on 3DS. It's a Japanese only rpg from Konami and TriAce which strangely never made it to the west and it's a shame as it's really great. There was a fan translation thankfully but it's a little weird to set up. You need to turn subtitles on and also need to change the language of the game to Japanese so the character name text can appear. It's a bit fiddly, I got it to work on my old 3DS but my XL won't work with the character names which are kind of important.

The game starts off looking like a PC98 dungeon crawler and you are joined by 3 other players as it's a fake online game. Shortly into the game you are transported into a much more realistic looking world with a strange girl who is asking for your help.

The game looks incredible, there's a real Ico feel to the game and the girl you escort and protect is very well animated. The music is absolutely incredible. It's composed by Motio sakurabe who composed the likes of dark souls and the Xenoblade games. It's seriously incredible with some stunning tracks, Profusion of Flowers being a standout.

The game plays like a dungeon crawler but there's no random battles, enemies are visible at all times. The battle system is very unique. You can attack and can change the power of attacks with more powerful attacks increasing the time in the turn order until you can attack again, the timeline is always visible. That's the only thing you can do, there's no magic or even a way to heal.

What makes the battle system interesting is that there is a rock paper scissors weakness system. Attacking an enemy with their weakness fills up a pool of HP which is then given to the next player or enemy that has the weakness that was exploited. This is the only way to heal in the game. It makes the game very interesting as you cant just exploit an enemies weakness as if they attack next turn they will just gain all their hp back. You have to set up your turn order so you can steal this HP from the enemy before they attack and often times it's better to whiff a weak attack than exploit a weakness. It sounds complex but it's very intuitive. There are items to use but they aren't traditional items, they allow you to change affinity or skip turns.

I'm really enjoying the game although there's a bit too much of a gap between save points being my only caveat. What surprised me as well is how funny the game is. There's great banter between the characters with each being a different gamer archetype. Prof is a nerd that loves rpgs, lily is a girl that loves cute things while edge is a really cynical guy that balks at all of the girls friendship speeches.

There was a lot of buzz around it and the 3DS was crying out for good games at the time. I was baffled as well that it didn't get a release.

It's handy enough. It's more complicated if you had softmodded before and are updating. The method depends on what type of 3DS you have. The site that covers this gives you a handy step by step guide to doing it and I was fine following it for my already softmodded 3DS and my then non soft modded 3DS XL.

It's probably a good thing to do it as you'll back up your 3DS and nand as part of the process. Also it's the only way to get DLC for many games now.

With regards to DLC if you install it through the softmod just trust it's there. If you go into the in game store to see if it's installed the game will uninstall the DLC. Just something to be aware of.

Ah yes, had the same issue until I realised I had that free to play sub game installed.

It's a great game. The Americans don't seem to appreciate it but it got some great home computer conversions. I only played the Amiga version which was great.

I love the whale boss. It was mind blowing. Quite a few games copies it afterwards like Yoshi's island.

So decided to finish up with knightmare and admit it's beaten me. Got to the end using the 25 loves cheat code and judicial use of save states. It's a remarkable game that still holds up despite such primitive hardware. I just had to admit defeat at stage 6 as I doubt I'd get good enough in this lifetime to beat it.

This one though isn't just me being me. I think everyone that plays it has the same complaint unfortunately. It's frustrating because it's a fantastic game until that point.