Something about Wild Blue Skys feels off and most of it feels like it could be fixed with some more in game options. Something about it feels more like I’m controlling the reticle and the plane is following than the other way around. I would like the option to have the classic button style of 1 button is tap for rapid and hold for charge instead of having two dedicated buttons. The extra button should be the auto rapid button. I want to shift the camera a little further back and up in relation to the plane. This is a lot of nit picks but its dangerously close to nailing it.
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i beat Final Fantasy 2 Pixel Remaster. i sort of cheated because i doubled the exp. and the gold received, but i don’t care that much - it’s incentivized me to replay the game on Famicom now that i know the general shape of the entire game.
anyway, my sense is that FF2 is often seen as a bit of a bastard child of the FF series since it’s a Kawazu game, but there’s something about it that I’ve always loved, even before finishing it or making much progress in the game.
it’s funny how many people were impacted by FF7’s death of Aerith, when I think the actuality of it is that that was many people’s first Final Fantasy game. so many people die in FF2! it almost becomes expected 3/4 of the game in. so many characters come and go or sacrifice themselves in some way. it’s a pretty somber game - even the ending ends on a bit of a bittersweet note. it’s music, I think, is mostly to thank for this. even the main theme has a melancholy to it.
of course, there are nuances to this - the characters are less developed than later titles and losing a main love interest probably hits harder than losing someone’s dad or a Dragoon you have for 15% of the game. we never really learn why Leon leaves and becomes “evil,” either. his motivations are kind of left up to our imaginations.
I think FF1 is more highly regarded for replayability, but I find myself missing the game already and wanting more.
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I should play through FF2 NES at some point, because both the GBA and the Pixel versions were a lot of fun, both with their own issues. It kinda amazes me that FF2 is never going to be perfect. Each time they tweak the mechanics, it breaks it in its own way (the PR, for example, can easily be way too generous with HP for one), but I think that is also perfectly Kawazu.
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I feel like most early walkthroughs all mentioned the stat glitch (repeatedly selecting whatever skill you wanted to level and then canceling it before executing the battle), so part of me wonders how playable the game is if you’re trying to play it “for real,” but also what is playing a game “for real,” especially from that era?
for example: in my mind, Mega Man 1 is not meant to be completed without the pause glitch and is, in fact, a better game for it
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Been goofin’ around on an Android handheld (I know, I know, my past rants about 'em and whatnot), playing a mess of stuff, most of it old and not exactly pushing the hardware. I’ll write about this thing in the handheld thread soon, I think.
Link’s Awakening DX: I tried this for a bit to mess with “Retro Achievements” and promptly turned them off. Too distracting, can’t use and load save states. Turns out this game is still good. A lot of the limitations are kinda fun and I feel like equipping yourself with weird combinations of stuff feels like some of what they’d do with BOTW decades later. Anyway I’ve beat this game (mostly the old GB version) a million times before, dunno how long I’ll keep going with it.
Dragon Warrior VII: Still chipping away. Currently embroiled in solving this romantic mess goin’ on in this herb village.
Mortal Kombat Shaolin Monks: Finally put more than five minutes to this and I think I “get it,” I get why people keep clamoring for a remake of this. It’s pretty neat. Some fun environmental puzzles. I think the enemies are way too goddamn spongey though. You really gotta whale on these guys for a while before they keel over.
Yakuza: Whoa it’s like Grand Theft Auto in Japan but they say fuck a lot and it’s got Lex Luthor from Smallville and The Joker in it.
I’m not gonna play much of this (I may try the undub version, but…I’ve played Kiwami, I know they’re different but I’m probably good here), but it is both neat and kinda shocking how little has changed from the original game. DNA was always there, just got fleshed out and made a little smoother over time. The sorta judder when the camera snaps around in the streets and the game loads on the fly is kinda jarring though, unless that’s just bad emulation on my part.
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Really going back to my roots of being a 2000’s PC gamer and playing Gothic II: Night of the Raven (finally works without a fuckton of patches on GOG) and Mount and Blade: Warband.
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that sherlock holmes hunts chtulhu game is pretty funny and maybe also really good. watson and holmes are two different types of assholes who complement each other. i get mad every chapter break when i’m forced to roleplay watson so holmes can condescend on me for not knowing shit like a specific flower is iconic for switzerland. i am typing “fuck you holmes” into the text box. enjoying this.
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are you playing the recent remake, or the original from the 2000s?
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The original has better puzzles but the remake lets you dress sherlock holmes in a vyshyvanka so it is impossible to say which is superior
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So quick Xenogen update: the dev has agreed that the checkpoint distance is a bit of an issue and has implemented an easy mode with a more reasonable if still interesting take on them. If you get past X number of jumps in a row you see a little flame thing appear on the ground and that is now a respawn point, and if you keep advancing without dying more of them pop up along the way. When you die you go back to the last one of these that spawned and get to continue from there… but if you die there before creating a new one you go back to the prior one. This gives things an odd bit of push and pull, I loaded up and got surprisingly far my first attempt, got to continue from near the midway point, boffed a few jumps I should have made and was eventually back at the room start again. Once I got warmed up I sorta stuck around the middle of the room edging forward and back a bit but was able to eventually get past said room and finish said demo.
Dev is considering a few other ways to tackle things (may add a practice mode once you clear a room for speedrunners who want to work on individual jumps and let you space respawn points wherever you want) but at the very least it is a bit more reasonable now while still being pretty hard and not compromising on the overall movement ethos. Added it to my wishlist to keep an eye on.
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Played some pac man CE on switch then some pacman CE2+m then some NES pacman CE on emulator. It’s all good but the original CE is probably the best, and I like the NES version more for not having the invisible maze mode
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that frogwares touch… both versions are hilarious and charming in very different ways
i think a lot about how i dont give a shit about sherlock holmes but im in for a frogwares sherlock game every damn time
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I should probably mention that I started Shovel Knight today and the sudden realization that they decided that what a Mega Man-type game needed was a shop to buy upgrades from dropped my personal hype levels significantly, which is probably a good thing given the absurd levels of praise the game has received over the years.
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The only one of the four Shovel Knight games with some SelectButton appeal is the Plague Knight one IMO. It’s the one that takes some genuine risks.
That said, I can’t remember around here praising Plague Knight except for me, and I didn’t experience that strong annoyance at Shovel Knight in the first place (I have no problem scarfing down some tasty megamanslop). So it’s quite possible that it lies in an uncanny valley of too “polished” for Shovel Knight haters and not “polished” enough for most Shovel Knight fans. Which might explain why the devs didn’t prove nearly as daring in the following 2 expansions.
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I’m a Megaman disliker and I don’t really think of Shovel Knight as a strongly Mega Man-like game - I think because a lot of its enemy designs and encounters are greatly different in order to accomodate a primarily melee player-character, as well as its map screen (classic Mega Man is not a series I associate with a well-defined ‘world’ you travel through in the slightest). Obviously all the knights are designed and themed in the robot master manner, but by and large it seemed at least 30% Mario by blood.
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I had a great time with Specter Knight in comparison. I think there is one game buried in the final Shovel Knight for everyone but it weirdly probably isn’t the title character.
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I thought Shovel Knight was just Ducktales have I interpreted the footage incorrectly all this time
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It’s a bit of both, or more accurately, Ducktales has a lot of Mega Man.
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The whole package of shovel knight is one of my all time favorite games. It’s been a little since I played it, but my taste hasn’t changed too drastically so I imagine it still holds the same appeal. My favorite was probably king knight though
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the original
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