Playing Mr Sun’s Hatbox in local co-op for the past few weekends. We’re failing maybe 70% of missions for reasons like my friend picking a character with the “Hopping” attribute and accidentally stomping on my head, but still making decent progress.
I had expected the game would mostly be a slapstick platformer, but most of our time has actually been spent in the strategy layer staring at extremely complex menus:
i can only imagine that co-op makes that game harder rather than easier
oh and the key to managing those menus is that you can auto-assign goobers to departments, so just lock the ones you like and auto-assign everyone else IMO. not worth micromanaging. and if you don’t have enough goobers to fill out the departments, it’s worth doing missions with goobers as rewards because they don’t need to be brainwashed.
i’ve been playing some Samurai Shodown RPG on my Mister the past couple days - I’ve maybe put about 2 hours into it, although there were some starts and stops to make sure it was saving properly (note: it was not, at first), and also just testing out some things like:
so anyway, this game came out in 1997, and i’ve been wanting to play it since even before that, when it was initially announced. there were even rumors of a Street Fighter RPG back in those days (which i think started development, but never got very far), and playing SSRPG now, it feels exactly like what a fighting game 90s RPG should feel like, and maybe what i’d even imagined back then.
so, i’ll break down combat, since that is probably one of the primary draws of this game.
the game is turn based, and characters take turns based on…i’m not sure. at first, I thought it must be speed, but recently, Haohmaru has been attacking before Rimururu, so idk how to account for that. the thing is, though, you have limited time in which to make a decision as to what you’ll do for that turn. if you take too long for an attack, an enemy will interrupt and attack you, instead. this also happens if you mess up the inputs for a special move more than two times (more on that, in a moment).
so basically, your battle menu is your standard stuff → attack, special attack, run, defend, items, change equipment etc. you also have the ability to intimidate your enemy to make them run away. here is where things get interesting, though:
the game has two battle styles to choose from: “Versus” and, i believe, “Classic” (sorry, don’t have the game in front of me). in Versus mode, you perform special moves the way you would in a fighting game or, essentially, the way you performed Sabin’s special techniques in FF6. that said, the input reads are a lot better, and you get three tries to perform the attack with clear “you got it wrong” sounds to let you know you messed up. all the moves are performed the same as in the fighting games, so if that feels daunting, Classic mode is probably the way to go.
i think it also might be possible to do a just-defend when getting attacked, but I haven’t been able to figure out how to do that, yet (i saw something that felt like a mention of it, maybe on GameFAQs or Twitter).
unsurprisingly, all the FAQs for this are text based and were written like 30 years ago, so the discussion around the game’s systems is scant, to be generous. it wasn’t even clear how to heal, until i saw someone someone mention it on the GFAQs message boards (the answer is, select Special Attack, then hold left for 3 seconds to target your own characters, lol).
i made it to what feels like the game’s first “dungeon,” which is Mt. Fuji, in pursuit of Jubei. so far, my impression of the dungeon is that it isn’t designed in a way that allows for intuitive exploration, and your random encounter rate is kind of high for what boils down to “just wander around, looking for the next event or exit.”
so, verdict is out on the game as a whole, however it is gorgeous to look at, it sounds and plays great - they are definitely using the same hardware and engine as regular Samurai Shodown, but now it’s an RPG.
the game is basically all 14-year-old me could have ever wished for, so it’s a shame 14-year-old me isn’t the one who is playing this, and getting all this hot SamSho lore.
in the first town, you pick your team - all the playable characters are available in the bar. you can only have a party of 3! it’s unclear to me if i can swap people out later, or if this game is actually very short and meant to be played repeatedly.
my starting roster is:
Galford (1st choice)
Haohmaru
Rimururu
edit: i tweeted myself out of twitter retirement to ask the one person on the entire English-speaking internet who seems to understand how to do a Just Defend in battle
edit edit: ok wait I found this PDF from the fan translators, thank god I can delete my tweet reply
played some red dead online for the ps plus free weekend. it became a story of two gay ruffians who stole a train full of pinkertons that they unceremoniously executed, rode it to the OIL PLANT and sprayed everyone with machine gun fire like the wild bunch. then they gunned down THE INDUSTRIALISTS by unloading their revolvers through the wall into em and rode away on a giant red horse named sappho. i could get used to this
ok so maybe I spoke too soon when I said
because when I loaded the game up after work today, I made the mistake of thinking I could change the CD-ROM speed at like, a time it was in the middle of loading the initial game, and that corrupted the game somehow, and then I couldn’t get it to work. so I troubleshooted, deleted it, etc., still nothing. eventually, it had to do with leaving the cd tray to “open” status for some reason, and then it worked. but uuhhhh oops I lost my progress.
so I started over and now my party is a much cooler:
Galford
Ukyo
Rimururu
ok, so I just got rid of Haohmaru, but I like the aesthetic of this party better and Ukyo is maybe technically better in this game, anyway.
I also misspoke wrt the first dungeon - the first part of it, in the forest, is a little hard to navigate, but once you go on and inside the mountain it becomes a lot more straightforward.
something cool is that during boss fights you get a guest character (AI controlled) in your party. so far I’ve had Hanzo, Jubei, Caffeine Nicotine, and Gaira, and it seems like there’s a bit of randomness to who will join (excepting certain scripted events, I imagine, like with Jubei). they each have their own unique dialogue in the fights, too.
so regarding battles, in addition to a just-defense blocking system, you can also press A when you’re about to get hit to eitherr dodge the attack entirely or eat the hit and counterattack. so coming off of replaying Super Mario RPG, this all feels very familiar, but with an SNK samurai sheen. unlike SMRPG, though, it seems like you can kind of mash A and get it to still work sometimes, so perhaps it allows a few misses on the button taps. no battle has been super hard so far, but I have had to keep on my toes and think about strategy, so the fights aren’t mindless, either. definitely easy to die if you aren’t actually thinking, I’d say.
the game is divided into two chapters - one follows the storyline of SS1, the other of SS2. if, like me, you ever wondered what the hell was going on in these games, because the translations of the originals were uh, obtuse, it’s nice to get an in-depth look at who these characters really are and how they come across one another.
after finding Jubei inside Fuji, we fought one of Amakusa’s lackeys and sliced him up good. now we’re headed back to Edo Castle where trouble is brewing.
apparently the Neo Geo CD version is the best, as it has more colors and animations than the SS or PSX versions. given how nice it looks, I’m really glad this is the version we got.
have I mentioned this game kind of rules?
this sounds fucking awesome???
yeah I mean it’s a actually surpassed my own expectations for the game. I would say the story/writing is fine - so like maybe the battle system is as cool as some other games, but if you have no investment in Samurai Shodown maybe the story is not going to be the main selling point of the game. it’s kind of interesting, though, just not as cinematic as, say, a Squaresoft game of the same general era. as an overall package, it works well, and keep turning it back on to play a little more
I dunno if Armored Core 6 deserved some pointless award on some pointless awards program or not but the work the folks that made the game put into it has made it one of my favorite games, and definitely my fvorite lately by such a degree that I wish there was some way to fairly compensate them for that effort that was actually, realistically achievable right now.
I need to JRPG. I am going to give Dragon Quest XI a shot. I have zero experience with that franchise.
The original game is real bare bones, but it’s also like a perfect “knock out in a solid afternoon, maybe two” game, if you wanna take on something a little smaller.
Fortnite Rocket racing reverses the controls if you’re driving upside down which is incredibly cruel and fucking stupid, other than that this might be the next Fzero GX
Decided to play several of the least popular JRPGs on HowLongToBeat for some reason.
Summon Night Granthese: Horobi no Tsurugi to Yakusoku no Kishi
This game is in Japanese. I don’t read it. It’s an extremely Normal very basic action RPG. I got half an hour in before wandering into an area way beyond my level and getting one shot by a werewolf.
Tsugunai: Atonement
Cursory google searches made this look like the most whatever JRPG possible, but it’s actually got some meat on them bones! It has a “press button at the right time to take less damage” system, but has four different kinds of response to an enemy attack. There’s a purely defensive block, a less effective block that builds up your limit break meter, a much less effective block that triggers a counterattack, and a backstep that allows you to entirely dodge attacks that can’t be otherwise blocked (i.e. fire breath, grappling).
Your character’s magical skills are equipped in this grid using different blocks. I think you unlock different kinds of grid as you go as well. I’ve got a huge amount of room so imagining the better skills are gonna get big, quick.
Game is kinda ugly but there’s def some nice composition, and it started in media res with a pretty neat “how did we get here” moment which got me to care about where the story goes. Not gonna be anything mindblowing I’m sure, but it’s got stuff worth remembering, and that’s neat!
zeldotears on yuzu, largely to see if my rig could actually do it (it can at 30fps) but also to compare with elden ring; am mostly just grinding shrines for heart pieces
elden ring has stronger art direction, but i like zeldo’s goofy lil npcs, and being sniffed by all the pig dudes when you wear the pig dude hat
zeldo is more of a challenge than i was expecting but i’m sure i’ll find some busted tool combos to abuse eventually
Meanwhile in RDO on PC: an unending nightmare of hellish cruelty.
A woman which exists with my knowledge exists without my consent.
You woulda thought we were in Kansas with how many sons of bitches I had to put down today. A gal can’t walk down the street in any town without some freak coming up behind you with the rope, knife, or gun. All it takes is one killing and a bunch more start coming. Hours go by and it doesn’t stop until one party decides to vanish, or maybe you’ll get lucky and just have them crash your fucking game like a complete pussy loser because despite sweating out of control and spending hundreds of in-game dollars on tonics to try and own your low level ass for existing you keep filling them full of holes or tackling them and slitting their throat and that doesn’t get their dick as hard as shooting some broad over and over again until she stops playing the game forever.
This guy couldn’t deal with it after his buddies didn’t back his play against me and Parker’s sister and bailed on him. The ol’ sniper rifle + mouse and keyboard game didn’t work against two bitches who know how to fight dirty up close, so he just crashed our games with a script… if you spend an entire hour and a half trying to harass women for existing and screaming at them in mandarin while getting your ass more or less beat and then finish by doing this you have probably been psychologically defeated.
I would say probably every two hours or so we’d get harassed by 1-3 individuals and have to relentlessly gun them down until they fucked off. Our games got crashed by hackers three times. The only joy to be found is that it drives them fucking insane when their victims fight back. I haven’t made people this salty in a game in years by simply refusing to allow myself to be bullied. You kill them and they just keep throwing themselves at you in a rage until they’re completely exhausted. That Chinese guy we spent like literally a fucking hour shooting at, it all started because he chased me down and shot my fucking horse in the head in front of me and then finished me off. Right after that Parker’s sister rode up and turned his head into a canoe. Horse shooters in this game are scum of the earth; they have no place in this world. From there on he had to be destroyed. If shitty men wanna come after us, that’s fine. It’s just less the world’s gotta worry about and bullets are cheap.
trying to check out some ps+ ‘free game collection’ and ‘extra catalog’ games before i let my subscription lapse
re: Arkane stuff. I think Dishonored 2 is inessential, but you’re right to play Prey (and check out Mooncrash). If you can ever play Dishonored 1, that is well, well, welllll worth it. Lovely game.
hey I’m looking at this again and do those speakers have no tweeters?
why aren’t they a matching pair?
why am I crying?
prey is very good and their much older game, arx fatalis, is a delightful take on ultima underworld the way prey is a take on system shock, so you should check that one out as well (it runs flawlessly on modern machines thanks to the port, arx libertatis, so you needn’t worry about any of the usual woes of pc gaming)
Got the real credits on Bloodstained. A perfectly fine IGAvania game. I was hoping there would be more gimmicks involving being able to aim certain spells besides just being keys with the light ray etc. A fine framework for this kind of game but not quite able to elevate it over the past games of this style. The story in my head when I read the Kickstarter page didn’t match up to what made it into the final product. Read much more like a shonen comic than a heady gothic adventure that SOTN was able to sell. Skill Shards felt more like Dawn of Sorrow toys with less unique feelings than Aria of Sorrows soul skills. Half of them just feel like you throwing the model of the monster at something else. I do like how most weapons have a skill tied to a fighting game input so even weapons that you upgrade past might still have utility later on. Now I’m kind of waiting for the Simons Curse mode DLC to drop for nonbackers because that sounds like it could be fun.
