I sure did not expect the 80s sitcom jazz It’s pretty cool
This made me find out that this game has one of the most spectacularly misused songs in videogame history because in co-op mode, literally every single dungeon song in the game gets replaced by this similar manic carnival remix of the classic chocobo theme that must get old after 5 minutes yet must be endured for like 20+ hours if you want to play the whole game co-op without muting
(Starts after a few seconds)
This might be resentment from lonely devs who’ve played their RPGs alone for decades towards people who’d dare play their mystery dungeon game in co-op
Snowblind kept making them, to diminishing returns, until they were folded into WB Games Seattle née Monolith.
I don’t think I’d recommend Justice League Heroes over the Raven Soft Marvel Ultimate Alliance (or either, really), nor the Interplay games built off the engine (Fallout: Brotherhood of Steel, Bard’s Tale). I think there’s a very delicate balance where these Gauntlet-likes are challenging and action-y before they slip into slow guaranteed loot progression like Diablo. I only sporadically got it from the Dark Alliance games but it was so good when it was all spun up.
I finished shadowbringers and it’s not just good for an mmo or jrpg, there’s some real soul stirring shit here. there’s a part where a rich god guy flees off to a floating mountain and laborers from across this hopeless apocalyptic world come together to build a giant robot to bring it back down so you can go in there and kill god and I’m not even sure that moment cracks the top 5. it’s such a nice feeling to have a jrpg with a plot that’s impossible to describe without sounding insane be this good again
I feel the former a lot more than the latter, there’s a very skeletal progression system in the form of a Season, I don’t know if they plan on charging for future ones but for now that’s about it. If you aren’t engaged by the gameplay on its own there’s rly not a lot to keep you playing. I think I’ll only ever play it as a party game. There’s also an issue I’ve noticed with stage selection, some stages seem to show up a lot more than others, especially the final stage. I hope they add more stages to the game given time / have a rotation, cause playing the same few stages over and over will get tiring quickly.
I also don’t like the way the rotating store inventory works or the in game currency you can buy for cash. MTX in buy to play games rly rub me the wrong way.
i think the one that was on n64 was my favorite 3d gauntlet for a while, like everyone looked like they were made of sticks held together by clay and tape and the sounds were so UGLY
I found Sea more compelling, but I want to note that I think Skies is the better game, and I haven’t played quite as much of Skies so my impressions are incomplete.
Sea has the advantage of conceptual simplicity: take the nautical fantasy of stuff like Sindbad the Sailor, move it underground, and add a sprinkling of supernaturally inexplicable and horrible. It’s got a tighter connection to their earlier game Fallen London, and that gave it just a bit more richness of setting. The currencies you assemble don’t always have an obvious use, and you shouldn’t underestimate the power of that kind of mystery.
Skies just works so much better, though. It controls better, the economics are easier to capitalize on, and you’re given a lot fewer options to get yourself into Big Trouble in the early parts of the game. It’s often prettier. I haven’t reached them yet, but I think the later areas finally begin approaching the kinds of weird dreadfulness that shows up all over Seas. I do wish you could get more of that from the beginning.
emet was very compelling. I’ll think about him every time I find nighttime aesthetically repulsive from modern street lighting or any future normalized aspects of the world that are baffling and alien to me from being too old.
the enforcer is chelette. she’s from the derelicts around eulmore, not uldah.
death by degrees is namco doing mgs2 but TEKKEN and it’s absolutely amazing. the only two people in the world who are any good at this game are my best friend who insisted that “games like this” (ofc she never specified lol but I’m pretty sure she also meant Oni) were canon on the ps2 and whoever played it for the FMV intro
all my favorite PS2 games are like, The Sopranos game or The Red Star or Death by Degrees. Everyone either thinks they’re awful or have never heard of them (WHERE ARE ALL THE PEOPLE WHO SHOULDVE TOLD ME ABOUT RED STAR BEFORE DAPHNY CUZ I WANNA YELL AT YOU) but that kind of B game is actually extremely charming and good to me cuz it’s primarily what I had access to on Xbox when we got new games, which was only occasionally. @BustedAstromech made me play Bad Boys: Miami Takedown when I came over once and I played like five levels of it before everyone was like “why are you still playing this” because I love these trash fucking games!!
