Battle Garegga’s arrange premium mode is just way too much fun
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Isn’t it? I mean, I appreciate that the arcade original mode is there because it is a thing of beauty, but premium mode makes BG into a game I can play without having to study it like a religion.
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Blade Runner worship.
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I haven’t played the arrange mode… is it strange that especially with garegga I kind of feel like these strange arrange modes are missing the point and spirit of the game, a bit? Like with a cave shooter I can understand different modes and recontextualizing the game for different styles of play, but garegga is something unique, and pulling away from the rank system kind of diminishes it - other than the rank system and the music it’s not a terribly remarkable experience
Like shmupsforum types and speed runners will look at game systems in order to exploit them. I think the complexity of garegga’s rank system both mitigates that impulse and deepens it at the same time. Playing garegga casually is really really rewarding as soon as you learn not to pick up items you don’t need - it makes every movement and decision deliberate, keeps you engaged both reflexively and intellectually from moment to moment. My favourite kind of moments playing garegga is trying to decide whether my medal chain is worth risking a life. That choice is very loaded in garegga as opposed to other games
The fact that garegga is kind of a science just makes it better. It’s complex in the way that an organism is
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Sry I just really really like garegga
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Oh, you’re not wrong, but I also don’t think it entirely misses the point, as much as makes the game slightly less complicated in favor of letting people experience more of it with a little less work. Some of the power-up stuff is still there, just with less pressure on the rank system, so you are still making that “do I pick this up?” decision, with less pressure. If nothing else, it is a training mode, and it’s nice to have a mode I can actually get to the last stage in, as opposed to maybe the end of stage 4.
And I would say it is kinda important to see that stuff, because while so many people focus on the systems of Garegga, there is a lot of amazing aesthetic stuff to it that is really good for people to see. Hell, stage 5 alone is just such an amazing experience that I am glad people have a way to get to it.
Arrange modes don’t bother me because the original mode is still there, and still just as wonderful as it always was. This arrange mode in particular is nice for making the game more accessible (and even with rank not being a concern, there is still plenty of interest in the game) and for allowing some easier experimentation than the arcade original. They are two sides of the same game, and I like them both a lot for different reasons. But as long as the core is intact, I have no problem at all enjoying both, or messing with the silly extra Saturn characters, or whatever. I appreciate that the game let’s me do things to play it however I want, and I think that is oddly really in spirit with even the original game.
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I mean, shit, changing the bullet colors is possibly missing the point of the original, but everyone should totally do it because yup.
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Played a couple hours of Iconoclasts. I was oddly a little underwhelmed by the most recent footage I had seen previously but in practice it feels fine to play. There’s little/no weight/momentum to your movement, but you can shoot as fast as you can press and doublejump with your charged up megaman shots - I like how she auto-aims when you’re close to an enemy that’s a fun slickness. Seems kinda indicative of the combat design in general, less about aiming at & avoiding erratic patterns, most enemies have a telegraphed weakness mini puzzle to solve - shot the bomb into the open mouth, knock back the poison spore with the wrench, stomp on the exposed headbump with your groundpound. So far environments are mostly a lot of hunting for bolts to turn with your wrench to open gates. The bosses are real neat and hectic.
I bet this would be a great game to play on a projector, with it’s kinda zoomed out look and higher resolution; it’s built out at 640x360 so no superthick scanline action to miss out on. It feels like a Hi Res hyper GBA game, even on a ~30in monitor sitting a couple feet away you kinda gotta squint to see all of the lovingly rendered detail - I love all the interior furniture it is real cute.
Also the plot is a hunger games, so.
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yeah, I’m keeping at it too (though not gonna have much time for games for the next 48h+ and I want to start monhun when I can, so we’ll see).
I like it! it’s definitely in the wonderboy or megaman zero school of “classic” not-quite-linear-action-platformers-with-some-story rather than feeling like a strict metrovania (despite the presence of a very satisfying SotN-style annotated map) or aggressively difficult stuff like celeste (despite having a pretty balanced challenge on “harder mode” that often has me running out of health between checkpoints). sometimes this leads me to wonder whether I really care about it all that much! since I was pretty unmoved by similarly gentle throwbacks like shantae or [whatever that sonic furry fangame everyone liked that has a sequel coming out soon was, I can’t seem to google it].
there’s no single part of it that’s really satisfying, the whole thing kind of feels like putting one foot in front of the other which is dangerously close to being generalized to busywork at this point in my illustrious gaming career… the storytelling is being (accurately) described by review outlets as having muddy politics and lots of time given to characters that the author clearly just liked writing for more than he wanted to use them toward any particular purpose… the puzzles are individually fiddly but on reflection it has the most effective crisscrossing of intelligible multi-room spaces for key-and-switch puzzles that I’ve seen since I last replayed link’s awakening…
more than anything else it’s a lovingly, carefully-made exercise in “they don’t make 'em like this anymore!”
like, even as you say, the chosen resolution is perfect, it’s refreshing to see something like this that doesn’t immediately feel like unity or game maker, etc. extremely solid if not revelatory as such.
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Freedom… Planet? Freedom Planet. I think.
Thanks. I was stuck between treasure Island and phantom planet.
Just finished getting all five endings in Drakengard.
What a ride.
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Are you going to play the sequels?, he asks, having himself only played Automata thus far.
I am! I know the games are linked mostly by themes, but that’s exactly my shit. Drakengard 2 was apparently the company telling Yoko Taro “no you’re not allowed to make this one crazy” so he didn’t direct it. I’ll play it eventually maybe, but I’m more interested in Yoko Taro’s weird ideas. I’ve got copies of Nier and Drakengard 3, and maybe one day I’ll even own a copy of Automata.
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I always feel bad that the only people who would consider playing drakengard 2 are people who love all the other games, and that they usually skip it when they find out yoko taro wasn’t involved. because drakengard 2 is fantastic.
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you know you can’t just say these things to me because then I feel compelled to play it
Would I like drakengard 2 if I think most of yoko taro’s games suck?
I’ve only played Drakengard 2. It’s alright.
drakengard 3 is wonderful
figured out I could get Drakengard 2 running on PCSX2 pretty well, so I played through the first chapter. It’s way more polished and smooth! Also, while I can’t quite judge it on its JRPG first act, it does make me wonder if it’ll follow through with D1’s biting commentary.
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