I think combos and managing Risk is probably a bit bigger than worrying about the entirety of the weapon crafting. Not to say the weapon crafting doesn’t matter, but only a couple stats there are the really important ones plus most of the sticking points are when you get thrown up against a critter type you haven’t had much chance to build up a weapon against anyway.
Or if you want to just take in the atmosphere and you’re emulating you could just download a clear save and go new game+, the prepped weapons alone make things simpler, and watching a youtube video or something doesn’t allow you to stop and admire the scenery in first person mode whenever you want.
plenty of folks here would be glad to help you if you get stuck, but yeah, at the very least see if there’s a supercut of the story out there. it’s not great literature, but the translation reads fantastically even now and it’s at least an interesting story with good pacing that hints at themes beyond the schlock of square’s other releases at that time. it’s a tight, neat little pocket of a story in a larger world. we don’t get a lot of those in RPGs.
I played through this last week and it’s shocking how perfect it looks – just as an art and tech showcase, the noise masks the low-fidelity details and the colors and textures are so expertly placed it’s entirely convincing. 3 & 4 don’t pull off the same trick at all (and I think weakening the noise filter is a big part of why). Pretty much the only obvious artifact is the per-vertex lighting on large flat surfaces like the streets.
Really miss that Japanese take on dreary wood-paneled Americana. Wish there were more spinoffs of this at a lower intensity. I think most of Deadly Premonition’s charm is as a low-grade vision in the same lens. Cing had a feel for this at times, too – Hotel Dusk captured that low-key textured depressive feel, though they couldn’t rebottle it for the second.
I should look at the Wii Another Code game sometime.
