oh jesus christ the weapon sprite is misaligned in that screenshot I’m blind
have some respect for the assets my guys
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Yeah I realized after I posted that there’s a harder-to-see (dark-grass-colored) green line going through the entire center of the screen in the screenshot you posted as well so I guess it’s a weirder bug
part of me wonders if this is some sort of floating point precision bug
I haven’t even gone into the audio issues aside from the music glitching out once; the mixing goes haywire sometimes (or maybe they did it on purpose) and sounds get panned way harder towards a channel than they should be, said panning is inconsistently applied, they outright screwed up the stage three intro (it’s supposed to play muffled, then clearly, then muffled again)
I’m sure it’ll all get sorted out. maybe.
I played and finished Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night.
I would call it a “richly flavoured chewin-gum”.
You go ahead and kill everything, and have some excuse to explore. Soon after the first area you have several chances to get overpowered weapons, which makes me think the gameplay was not well fine tuned.
The graphics in movement are gorgeous.
The item/armor etc crafting mechanics are simple but somehow compelling.
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Even in the first area there’s an overpowered ability lol
It makes me think the gameplay is exactly as finetuned as planned
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Hey Broco, I remember reading you liked Momodora a lot. Could you elaborate more about it? What makes it special? In case of Bloodstained, you spoke about its “maximalism” which, indeed, makes it quite enjoyable even if it’s not very good mechanic-wise.
I would like to understand if Momodora could be more special for my tastes or if I can give it less priority to, say, games like Elliott Quest (did you play this one too?) or Environmental Station Alpha
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Yeah, most likely, Igarashi wanted to make it this way.
It’s pretty much the opposite reason for Momodora RutM. It’s minimalistic, well-balanced, and paced for completion in 5 hours or so. There’s no weapon/ability swapping but the bow and leaf you start with are really satisfying and well-animated. You can turn into a cat. If you play on hard mode without winning the game on normal first, the first level and its hard-only enemies will absolutely kick your ass, but I had a grand time doing that anyway and I’m glad the game didn’t put hard mode behind a game-completion lock.
I also played and like Elliott Quest and Environmental Station Alpha. I can’t really rank them relative to each other. Elliott Quest has attritional, nail-biting gauntlets and a lonely vibe full of secrets. Environmental Station Alpha has good exploration and the best-balanced bosses I’ve ever seen in a metroidvania.
I guess you could play Momodora first just because it’s much shorter than the other two, but if the saturated anime style doesn’t vibe with you at all, sure fine I respect that. (Two other somewhat difficult, short-and-sweet metroidvanias I enjoyed and that might trigger your fancy more, by the way, are Hero Core and Redo!.)
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I figure some of Bloodstained’s early overpowered stuff was partially put there with hard mode in mind.
This could be a good point, but the hard mode gets unlocked only after completing the standard difficulty, and now I have no desire to replay the game.
Also, the level design is not nearly interesting enough for me to want to revisit it in a few years playing the hard mode.
Thanks for the insight. You just convinced me to try to play it directly on hard mode 
I will also take note of the other two short metroidvanias.
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I am in the last two months of Tokimemo. I am very curious what the PS1/Saturn/PSP remakes do for QoL.
So a couple of annoyances. If you don’t talk to one of the girls they will start making rumors about you and tank your love rate across the board. So you have to waste your one weekly phone call (what is this prison?) to either call the girl to pacifitate her or call your bro who will give you the chart of your love stats but also that is your one action for the week.
So in my last year I abused save states because I spent about 4 months going on dates I didn’t want to because I didn’t want to lose status with the girl I liked which ironically DID ruin the stats with the girl I liked because I ignored her for 4 months.
I tried just concentrating on one girl and that’s how I found out that will tank your reputation with that girl as the other girls sabotage it.
It feels much more unreal and video gamey. Every piece is discrete except in these arbitrary ways. There are no relationships outside of your control.
Ironically talking with Tigress this gave me a new found appreciation for the modern Persona games for placing ADULTS so much in the lives of kids because well that is what being a kid is having ADULTS in there in weird and uncomfortable ways.
And of course in Tokimeki Memorial’s dreamscape of High School there are no adults because this is a game for adults looking back and adults do not consider the adults in their lives. You are your own adult and if you say what she wants to hear (which is almost always “I like the thing you like in the most surface level way.”) then you win.
Take the girl who likes Romance movies to a Horror Movie:
Girl “I didn’t really like that”
- That was so scary
- That was okay
- Not really my thing I guess
It’s almost like every date is a first date and that a shared bad experience cannot possibly be a bond.
But it is so surface level and G Rated I find it less offensive than other dating sims. I don’t get the reward of touching my 16 year old idol I am managing. There hasn’t even been the implication of a kiss.
This is for boys so there has been peeping in the shower room.
Anyways tomorrow night I’ll find out if someone is waiting for me under that Cherry Tree. Here’s hoping it is Nozomi.
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now that i can play backups on my Saturn, i find myself with a whole treasure trove of games to play that i couldn’t before. mostly have been spending time with fighters (the SFZero 3 port is sooooo nice), and finally got to check out Final Fight Revenge. hahaha hoo boy, it really is not very good, is it?
unfortunately, because of how a Pseudo Saturn cart works, the memory i have available for saves, especially for RPGs. is extremely limited, so i am going to try to tackle one at a time. which of these should i play first?
- Grandia
- Dragon Force II
- Vandal Hearts
- Shining Force III
i’m kind of leaning Grandia, since it seems to be so quintessentially “Saturn”
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Grandia
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i’m so sorry to always have some new rabbit hole for you, but
(your idea is still a good idea but just in case you wanna back up some saturn saves at some point)
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Vandal Hearts for the way characters gush fountains of blood squares.
And because some characters remind me of Chou Aniki.
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these look like they will…take some time for me to actually read in order to comphrened, fully. but, it looks interesting! i guess the question i have is, how do you get the save games back onto the Saturn??
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e.g. burn a cd with them on it, that’s what the second link is for
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i wonder if the person packing my shipments at B&H is wondering why i keep ordering so many blank CDs
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