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So, what you playing at the mo? Retro Edition
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Join Date:Posts: 51373
You usually progress from metal to liquid metal then to king slimes. Usually there's a limit to how many levels you can gain easily from them but the initial flurry of level ups after every fight is exhilarating.
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Join Date:Posts: 51373
I'm up to stage 7 in Kirby's adventure. Not played it a whole lot until now. Always wanted it as a kid as it was one of the few nintendo games that Nintendo did a massive advertising campaign for in Europe and it looks incredible. Its a huge amount of fun and really impressive for a NES game.
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Join Date:Posts: 51373
I've noticed online a lot of revisionist history going on about how amazing the N64 was but it really wasn't that great. There's some really amazing titles on it but the library is very small and there just isn't the range of experiences on the system like the PS1 had. What it had over the PS1 was the 4 controller ports which made it a breeze to set up multiplayer and most games supported that in a way. On the PS1 it was hard to find decent 4 player games and don't get me started on the crash team racing is better than mario kart brigade.
All I'll say is don't sleep on Sin and Punishment which is the secret best N64 game.
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Join Date:Posts: 51373
Hint, if you have a US model N64 you can just cut some buts of plastic out of the cart slot and make it a us and jap NTSC machine.
You should probably have a NTSC machine anyway PAL games really suffer badly on the N64 and it locks you out of doing a RGB mod.
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According to the daily mail I’ve missed the boat lads. Gonna cost me at least 25k for Mario kart 64 and a machine to play it on..
Article is hilarious “high quality copies are now becoming rare as cartridges decay over time”. Doesn’t mention anything about the games being sealed/graded etc.. I can picture CEX being swamped with folks shouting about how they “know what they’ve got” and have “done their research”.
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Join Date:Posts: 51373
Felt like playing a PS2 game. Originally was going to make another attempt at Breath of Fire Dragon Quarter until I realised I've only the PAL version on the hard disk which was absolutely ruined by the changes they made to it.
Decided instead on Steambot Chronicles. It's an irem developed open world sandbox game featuring petrol powered mechs that have tank controls. And when I say tank controls I'm mean real tank controls, think Katamari. The first thing to get over is the controls. It's one of those annoying game that doesn't let you invert the axis in a menu. I'm one of gods chosen that inverts the y-axis so I'm ok there but it's one of those Japanese games that inverts the X axis. It's not as bad as it seems since this only applies to walking around, the mech controls better.
The mechs are also tough to get used to but you'll give it time and it's second nature.
When I say that steambot chronicles is an open world sandbox, I mean it more like an actual sandbox game and not something like GTA. You are locked into a path at first but the game eventually opens up and you can go anywhere and take part in a variety of minigames and subquests, most of which is where the main charm of the game lies. It's a game you just relax and get lost in its charming world. Theres multiple decisions for you to make that dictate the outcome of the story. It's got a lot more in common with Shenmue than modern open world games. There's a lot of emphasis on music. The main group you hang around with are a touring band and you can play a variety of musical instruments, each one with its own rhythm minigame.
That game kind of doesn't have the budget to keep up with all ideas the game has. I find it looked very charming even if not cutting edge. There are some glaring graphical problems, like an inconsistent framerates, polygon tearing and screen tearing. I think it's worth putting up with though just experience the world. Sometimes it will even surprise you with the scale of some of the enemies and bosses
Anyway I'm looking forward to travelling through this world while busking with a group of mech riding musicians.
The sequel was in development for PS3 but was cancelled when item closed down. Granzella seem to have picked up the rights to most item properties and even made Disaster Report 4, another game that was cancelled when item closed. The director of the company was the producer of the game and has said he would love to do a sequel or remake but there's been no word on it for a while and he is worried it wouldn't sell. There's some tgs footage of the game which looked well into development and also really good.
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Join Date:Posts: 51373
How are you getting on with faselei!? I never managed to get past I think the 3rd mission which is the first proper challenging one. I think I needed to grind a little more and I kept running out of ammo. Kimimi had a great write up on it recently and I want to get back into it and I've quite enjoyed Sacnoths other games.
They really fucked up Dragon Quarter in PAL regions. It's a rogue like game but got hammered in the US as the genre wasn't understood. So they changed the game for the worst. You can't carry stuff over from a failed run of the game and even worse is they totally fucked up the save system. In the original you had to spend save tokens at save points to save, like the ribbons in Resi. It wasn't a big deal. However you could make a temporary save anywhere which was deleted on loading the game. This is pretty much essential as it can be 1-2 hours between save points.
So what did they do in the PAL version, they start you with 10 save tokens and removed the quick save meaning you have to play for ages to save. It ruins the game.
Anyway if you do try it gets the NTSC version. It's a wonderful game and once you get the third character the battle system becomes incredible. Wonderful Hitoshi Sakamoto soundtrack as well, it's more electronic than his other stuff, so more Gradius V than FF Tactics.
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Join Date:Posts: 51373
It's a genre that just totally disappeared in the west for a long time. There were a few Sega ones released, fatal labyrinth and that game gear one. There were attempts on the PS1 and two like the torneko game, Azure dreams and tower of duraga, which was again ruined by localisation choices. The genre only really caught back on with spelunky and indie games that followed. I do remember a few hardcore PC gamer boardsies talk about Nethack so it wasn't totally gone.
The genre becoming a much bigger deal in Japan wasn't a fluke either. The first chunsoft rogue like was a dragon quest spin off based of DQ4's most popular character. I guess the dragon quest pedigree had more people take a chance on the game and explore it more without immediately dismissing it when their first run ends with all their progress being wiped.
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Join Date:Posts: 51373
So I'm up to chapter 16 of 20 I'm valkyria chronicles 3 and Ive enough playes to talk a bit more about it.
This one moves away from the civil war sequel story of 2 and goes back to the same war and setting of the first game. It tells a tale parallel to the original games where you play as a wrongfully accused officer leading a rag tag squad formed from a bunch of criminals in a dirty dozen style unit. You'll run into all the main characters from VC1 and 2.
It's an interesting premise for a story but it really fumbles it due to anime nonsense. In one way the story does mean you fight 3 different factions that feels very different from the other. It's all a little too silly though. The story can contradict what happened in VC1 and there's a lot of 'if it wasn't for the nameless then the guys from VC1 would never have succeeded' stuff.
The nameless are sent on a lot of suicide or dangerous missions but a lot of them involved committing war crimes, something the game addresses badly. They squad usually has a lot of misgivings about carrying them out and always manages to worm their way out of doing them. There's just something that feels off about it when they are flippantly discussing dressing as civilians or using chemical weapons when it's something the Israelis are doing right now in Gaza. The Gallians are meant to be the good guys.
There's also the issue with the Crimson Raven squad, a squad of darcsens that are the nameless main nemesis. The Darcsens are the series stand in for the Jews and it doesn't really work where a squad of darcsens are basically fighting for the Nazis for the promise of a homeland.
I expected a bit more from VC3 in the writing. I think VC1 was a fantastic piece of writing that managed to deal with the worst of WW2 and yet keep it to a pg13 sheen. VC3 is supposedly darker and a return to form for the series but in reality after playing it, it's really not.
So if I've so much issues with the story why do I keep playing? Well the VC combat has never been better. VC2 made some big changes to the systems to make it work better as a handheld games. Stages are split between multiple areas you have to move between by capturing enemy bases to allow you to deploy in other areas. The amount of units was greatly reduced. This might sound bad but it made the game a much more tactical experience and added a lot of depth. New units were also added.
VC3 builds on this again with units being rebalanced to be a lot more useful and others being a lot less broken. VC2 also felt like a purely multiplayer game with a singleplayer tacked on where as the levels feel a lot more authored in VC3. There's still the issue that you'll be fighting in the same locations as awful lot but it changes it up that each encounter feels unique rather than the random generation of VC2. It's just great fun.
One major issue though is that it's waaaaaay too long. I'm 65 hours in and it feels like it really could have been a leaner 30ish hour game like VC1.
As for the fan translation, it's fine but littered with errors. It's also not that well written. Seemingly it is based on a Russian fan translation. Theres a lot of spelling errors, text spilling out of text boxes and being cut off etc. It's not quite there but doesn't spoil the experience.
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All done now 😞 The game is a 16bit masterpiece, up there with the very best of them. So many games get over hyped, but Earthbound deserves every bit of it.
I'll genuinely miss playing it, at least, for another decade anyway...at which point, I may pick it up again. Until then....
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The mine cart stages aren't so bad once you get used to them. One tip is if you unlock the guy that lets you fly to previous stages you can use him to go back to a save point. There's a few level gauntlets in the game but they are always at the start of a world until you unlock him or a save point.
I was surprised how short and easy the first game is. It's not the best platformer on the SNES but it's not bad either. The sequel is much better but be prepared for hair pullingly difficult stages in that.
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Join Date:Posts: 51373
Finished up VC3 so booted up the DS. Was going to start Castlevania Order of Ecclesia but had a quick game of Elite Beat Agents. Think I'll stick with it and try and finish it. It really is one of the best, probably the best, rhythm action game of all time. Well maybe Osu tatake Ouendan is but only because the soundtrack is that little bit better.
I do like that all the cheesy awful pop songs in the game have me bopping away. Never thought I'd enjoy Sk8ter Boi in any context but it's just me of awesome in elite beat agents.
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Join Date:Posts: 51373
I don't get the love for the sonic advance games. Never found them that good but they came out at a time when it was wall to wall garbage 3D games so they are lucked upon fondly.
Saying that I really enjoyed Sonic Rush. The soundtrack is incredible.
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