This puzzle minigame is pretty well realized, you can only lift 8 containers, and you have limited movement for each lift you take. This would probably be it’s own mid 10’s era indie puzzle game. The music is for this section is really good too.
You fly a small drone and use the beacon bomb to…send the servbots to talk to people and solve environmental puzzles, as well as grab keys and stuff you find.
Then there’s a boss battle! you have to make the servbots trigger the traps while the reaverbot is within the range of the traps in order for it to take damage. It’s very easy to miss hitting the button, and the servbots have to walk over it to tag it, and by then the boss has usually moved out of range. this feels like a destiny raid for some reason…
It’s a very cute game. I have to admit it’s a little thin game wise. Like I’m used to the loop of Mega Man Legends where you find stuff, you get stronger, then go into more caves. But here there’s multiple, like, games and such. I dunno if that’s strong enough to support an 8 hour game, I’ll play a bit more to see…
if there’d be a counter for who uses which emoji most often, Servbot and Tronne would likely get me into the top 3 easily, because they are sooo good to accentuate and catch the feeling of posts
re the game itself:
It is a unique gem and aligns somewhat with Grandia in capturing the feeling that you are going on an anime adventure and everything is technicolor’ed funtime themepark action, where danger seemingly lurks around the corner, but most of the time isn’t, and it is all done in a controlled environment … the main objective feels like just having a good time, and in hindsight both succeeded perfectly at that.
Maybe Breath of Fire 3/4 could qualify as well, but i have forgotten too much about them/didn’t finish either one.
Wild Arms might be worth a look too, but i have only played the PS2 entry (WA5 iirc), so ymmv there as well.
ah shit, Misadventures of Tron Bonne is basically Dillons Dead Heat Breakers in terms of a core game being accentuated by having well realized minigames around it, which all build to a final goal. i feel like this is a subgenre of some kind…hmmm
i feel like solatorobo fits in there too…maybe if i ever get to steambot chronicles i can add that as well
If you can get Steambot and run it on a slim PS2/emulator, absolutely.
On original brick PS2, it suffers from slowdowns/loading screens, and feels janky at all times. But YES, that also captures some of the adventure vibes — however, it is missing the vividly saturated color palette that the PSX gen fully embraced.
otoh if you love spotting Irem Water Surface™, you’re good to go!
my PSN user ID is meauxdal if anyone wants to add me as a friend. i tried to add everyone i could from here but i have never been in the PS ecosystem before so i have a lot of friending to catch up on! i love looking at trophy comparisons and seeing what games people put time into
Misadventures of Tron Bonne also proves out a design conflict i had: is it worth it to abstract a space as a menu system? in megaman legends, you start missions by navigating to a space in the world, or talking to an npc. in tron bonne, its done via menu, and you spend most of your off time inhibiting a menu. this is much easier and cheaper than creating a 3d space for a player to walk around in, but i feel like its a lot flatter.
This is the exact design tension you see moving from No More Heroes 1 to 2. The latter is more pleasant on paper but feels like shit cos there’s no world anymore.
I feel like a similar comparison exists between world-as-map vs minimap tells you everything, so just never take your eyes off of the minimap
Elephantasy 2 is better than the original, I think. (I also liked the original.)
It’s isometric and has some of the tricky platforming you might expect to see in an isometric game, but there’s also something kind of like Celeste’s assist mode that I’ve been leaning on at times.
i feel like i’ve posted about this intermittently but i day dream a lot about an imaginary JRPG that inverts the normal structure of turn based encounters/resource management in the ‘field’ and more-or-less realtime navigation in towns, and has everything you do inside a city kind of set up like a turn based encounter. like, depending on where you are and when you arrive you have a limited amount of time to finish doing ‘chores’ in the city, so you assign each member of your party different tasks to complete based on unique skills and attributes they have (do you send your best haggler to buy armor, weapons, or items?). it would be mostly menu based, but after you’ve made your schedule you then watch it play out kind of like a cutscene, and maybe take responsibility for one section of the itinerary to complete yourself, and encounter the other party members going through their little to-do lists as you walk around. uh-oh… the rogue you thought would do a great job hunting for random treasure around the city has actually decided to slack off and get drunk at the inn… next time assign someone with higher LOYAL
oh yeah this seems kind of exactly what i was thinking of. only it would be attached on to like a more typical rpg where you travel between towns and go to caves and dungeons and stuff, and have multiple characters you have to boss around
