I never played Witcher 1 because it looked bad to me at the time but I definitely don’t think I’d have liked Witcher 3 as much if I hadn’t been a massive fan of Witcher 2 – it really blew me away in 2011, it was definitely the best-looking photorealistic-style game I’d ever played on my 9800 GT, the writing was fun and indulgent in a way that the rest of the industry was then not nearly as good at, and the weird combat was imo much easier to get used to at that stage of eurojank development
6 Likes
good news, they are not hard at all actually, you literally just have to not have been ignoring Lucca because her physical attack was weak the way I did too when I was 8
the game probably should have pushed you harder to take her into both Magus’ Castle and Zeal because of how bad those are if you don’t have fire damage and how many elementary schoolers anecdotally struggled with that, it’s one of the only difficult things I can even remember from CT
5 Likes
the only other time I can think of them pulling that is if you try to do Lavos right away in NG+ at the millennial fair – it’s actually super doable after a single playthrough as long as you got the rainbow gear and saved your megalixirs, but you’ll reliably get 1-shot at some point if you aren’t using save states and you didn’t get Marle all the way to learning Life 2.
3 Likes
I thought you grew up there with your parents
11 Likes
Mouse cursor disappeared in Disco Elysium and multiple restarts haven’t brought it back so IDK if I can keep playing.
5 Likes
yeah, it turns out with Luminaire and a brain that wasn’t a 12 year old’s in 1995, it isn’t the hardest thing. still took some amount of concentration to pull off, though.
I’ve used most of my characters evenly during this playthrough, so today I completed all the end sidequests and i’m ready to go to the Black Omen, and everyone except Magus, Ayla, and Robo have their Level 8 spells, at this point.
i’m reading that some folks recommend going through the Black Omen 2-3x to get the full experience points for all characters, so idk. maybe i’ll do it twice, or maybe not and just go for it and start a New Game +.
3 Likes
the one minmaxing thing I do in the black omen (totally unnecessary because Chrono Trigger is not difficult) is steal a speed tab from every wall bird thing that comes to life because you can max Robo’s speed that way and he is absolutely the best character in the game (after sucking for 75% of it because you need elemental magic and he is slow before his side quest) with all his later skills after that (he’s basically Crono with the only multi target heal that’s not a double tech; has his own confuse and luminaire). Frog is p bad for the same reason (latter techs are garbage), Ayla is a no brainer, already mentioned why/when it’s good to use Marle/Lucca, and Magus is fun but w/e.
I don’t run through it multiple times or anything, just this. and as I mentioned, the Lavos fight right at the beginning of NG+ is pretty easy w some prep (levels barely matter, whatever you finish the game with after doing all the side quests is good enough)
7 Likes
it’s probably been confirmed somewhere, but I am sometimes wondering if this game was meant to be a bit longer than it is. you get so many weapons (or the ability to purchase them, anyway) that you only use for like 1 dungeon or setpiece in this game. Crono has so many swords, but realistically could probably get by with only half. like it was neat stealing Slash’s sword but at that point in the game, i’m just going for Rainbow
anyway, I gave the gold pin to Crono, so i’m just spamming Luminaire until the end
7 Likes
2025 was a nightmare so I decided to turn into the skid by making 2026 the year I get really into Kingdom Hearts. I knew nothing about this going in apart from Square + Disney characters, so it was a surprise when it ended up not being a turn-based RPG and is instead both a horribly awkward feeling hack and slash game and a horribly awkward feeling platforming game. The first time it gracelessly, confidently cuts to Disney characters doing their shtick – a scene which in no way follows from anything that’s happened thus far – it starts to take on a casually insane ambience which I had been warned about yet still ended up totally unprepared for. It’s hard to articulate just how bizarre the holistic sense of playing this game is, and I’m not even two hours in.
21 Likes
Capcom Fighting Collection. I am bad at fighting games but it still can be fun even if you are and will always be bad at Darkstalkers.
2 Likes
that first Donald jumpscare is one of the most important things that has ever happened in a videogame. the beginning of the new end
his voice is so fucking obnoxious I always remember him sounding distorted and blown out like a massona track
7 Likes
I’ll say!
6 Likes
Having recently reworked a piece from the series, I decided to play Klonoa: Door to Phantomile over the new year. I always forget, and am pleasantly surprised by how much it does with such a small set of verbs (jump, grab, throw, wahoo). Thoroughly pleasant little platformer.
It’s also a good game to have on hand for when I need a good bloody cry.
I remember playing through 2 fairly recently (last year?) but I think I’ll go through it again.
11 Likes
Oh the places these games go. You have no idea how insane they get.
I mean, I love them. But.
4 Likes
MOM HID MY GAME 2
More outlandish puzzles where you have to try and find your DS without getting caught by your mum!
This one didn’t feel as strong as the first , but was still a good time. Yes, it’s still very much trial and error (more so than the first even), but it’s still so much fun playing through these absurd situations. Made me laugh a lot, and the ending was cute.
Plus, there is a Mom mode for all the Moms you find! And a sick music video!!!
YOSHI'S ISLAND
SHORT VERSION: Good thing I wasn’t in charge of looking after baby Mario, because I would have thrown him off a cliff. Just found this game to be a slog!
LONG VERSION:
I love the aesthetics, character design, and music, but boy howdy I just don’t like playing this game.
Part of the problem is Mario.. the entire game is an escort mission, and I can’t stand the sound of him crying. Grabbing him back was just a nuisance.
But I also don’t like the levels… so many look and feel the same, with the variety coming from enemy design rather than mechanics, which I don’t find as interesting. There are some fun transformations and clever things with the eggs (which is a cool mechanic not enough is done with), but yeah, it was usually just different enemies to dodge in similar feeling environments.
There are also far too many exhausting maze-y levels which I didn’t find enjoyable at all. Left to right for me, thanks, unless I’m playing a Metroidvania. And the bonus for finding keys is usually some minigame that goes on for way too long, depends on too much luck, and just isn’t very fun.
Also, too many collectables! The flowers are fine, but then 20 red coins?? And you can mess up grabbing one and have to restart the whole level?? AND you need full health at the end?? You COULD just ignore those bits, but content is hidden behind getting perfect scores.
Don’t like the way Yoshi controls, either. Big backwards step from Mario World.
I just found this game to be a slog… just not a fan at all.
TOUCH FUZZY GET DIZZY is iconic, though.
SYNDICATE WARS
SHORT VERSION: Starts out as a blast, but becomes increasingly focused on trial and error rather than actual tactics and strategy, this is yet another Bullfrog game I wish I liked more than I actually do. It’s a SINdicate that it’s not better!
LONG VERSION:
A squad tactics game with a wonderfully bleak cyberpunk aesthetic (complete with ads for Ghost in the Shell and Judge Dredd), Syndicate Wars starts out pretty simple with just a group of four dudes with uzis going around cities shooting other people… basically sci-fi Cannon Fodder.
It ends up getting more complex, of course, with varied mission objectives, an increasingly useful selection of weapons and equipment, investment in research to improve your soldiers and access more equipment, you end up blowing up buildings and leveling entire city blocks, can “persuade” enemies to join you, and so on and so forth.
Imagine this… I need to go capture a scientist holed away in a high security facility. I “persuade” a bunch of civilians so I have enough power to win cops over to my side, and get a small army of them. I see there is a security vehicle opposite the compound, so I put down a mine on the road should they come after me. I plant an explosive at the compound entrance which opens it up, and calls over the security vehicle which hits the mine and kills all the dudes inside it. I throw gas into the compound entrance, knocking out some dudes and then take out the remaining guys. I capture the scientist, and get in a vehicle parked there and make my way to the evac point… I was wise to get the vehicle, because dudes are waiting for me and I easily take them out from the vehicle, then I get out and finish the level. What a rush! What fun tactics! What fun strategy! What fun action!
Unfortunately, it rarely works out that way because this game is so heavily scripted. Now, I don’t mind if a bunch of dudes show up after a blow up a building or something… that makes sense and it’s fun to get yourself out of a jam like that.
What I mean is, there are levels where it’s like “okay, when I walk to this spot, it triggers these dudes on the other side of the level to come towards me so I’ll wait here and kill them. Then when I walk here it triggers an airship, so I’ll go hide under this shelter over here and take it out. Then when I walk over to THIS spot, it suddenly spawns in 10 enemies out of literally nowhere (usually enemies are dropped in which is fine, but yup, sometimes they’ll spawn out of thin air), so I’ll prepare myself before I go to that trigger point.”
There is not enough tactics, not enough planning ahead, not enough coming up with emergent strategies, and not enough logical consequences to actions… so much of the game is just trial and error plus memorisation, learning the scripts for each level, with lots of restarting. And that’s boring, tedious, and feels like a waste of time!
The game is also buggy, which led to multiple softlocks. Sometimes I’d do something the game didn’t expect, resulting in the game failing to complete its scripts (for example, an enemy moving to a certain location), and the level would refuse to progress. This happened rarely, but once is too many in a game that should encourage emergent strategies.
But the worst problem is people getting stuck! Sometimes my dudes would get jammed in tight spaces, on architecture, or trapped under ramps which they were walking ON TOP of. This always seemed to happen at the worst moments, and on the odd occasion they would become permanently stuck. NPCs can also become stuck. I tell you, it really blows executing the perfect plan only to have to restart a mission because a dumbass scientist you need to capture got stuck on a wall and can’t get to the evacuation point. There are other bugs too, but these were the worst.
It also has one of the most dogshit manuals I’ve ever seen. It doesn’t explain how persuasion works at all, a CORE AND VERY IMPORTANT MECHANIC, and countless other things go unexplained. I had to look up how persuasion works, and found an ancient usenet post from someone who had to buy a strategy guide just to figure out how it worked. Cool. Oh yeah, could also have told me how to rob banks too since that’s how you get most of your money in this game, unlike in the original where you got passive income from controlled territories. I ended up restarting the game after I found out I missed stacks of cash.
Also, it takes too long to get access to items that give you more strategic options, even when robbing banks and cranking research funding all the way up.
Oh, buildings also often get in the way of your vision… you can hide them, but it’s a not a toggle. It’s also really easy to mis-click in the heat of action, though I can’t blame the game TOO much for that… it’s just the kind of game it is.
ALSO, I like that this game has my birth city in it, but of course it looks nothing like the real thing… disappointing, I wanted to blow it up.
Listen, I could go on about what bugged me about this game. It’s so frustrating, because when it works, this game is so so SO much fun. Like, FANTASTICALLY fun. And unique! And it looks so cool exploring these low poly cityscapes before blowing up an airship, and watching it crash into a building which then also blows up. But those high moments were becoming so fewer in number, so I ended up abandoning the game because I felt like it was wasting my time.
Intro still kicks ass, though!
21 Likes
i can remember being really aroused by the UI in syndicate wars back in the day but i never played more than the demo
6 Likes
Syndicate Wars is visually amazing but then the actual game is like, oh ok, you just do this?
I’m a sucker for isometric anything but I think isometric real time action games that aren’t quite full competitive RTSes are mostly just a historical curiosity, it turns out there’s not a lot you can do with indirect control over that few characters
8 Likes
somehow, it never occured to me that syndicate is cyberpunk cannon fodder. my mind is blown
6 Likes
we received a free ps4. im sure someone else deserves it more but it went to us. i tried the unicorn overlord demo. every story scene in it annoys me. like fire emblem but worse. extra annoying after recent tactics ogre play
the game itself seems fine but i think it kinda makes it harder to have patience for tactics when you are dealing with fire emblem nonsense and annoyingly plain and naive characters. not helped by making it more fantasy verbose. everyone please stfu and kill each other
13 Likes
