I had started my new Dragon Age: Game on a different PC than my home one so my dual wielding warrior dwarf was put on hold since I was home more these passed couple weeks.
I had a mage saved on my home machine that was in the middle of the first post-origin level, pretty close to where I left the other save. I started zipping through and did all of the DLC during which my character became an arcane warrior. It’s getting to a build I used to have fun with when I first dissected this game - frontline heavy armor hastening the party, tossing out heals, and disabling enemies with paralyze and spirit prison. It’s quite strategic and I am looking forward to getting the healing subclass on top. The final step in that subclass has a sustained spell that area heals at intervals and removes injuries after battle.
The first level after finishing the DLC is the mage circle so I can pick up Wynne, the OOTB healer. I’ll be making her into a similar build so that soon enough I won’t need to worry about injury kits, a source of anxiety and the original reason I did this party composition back in the day. I think double hastening actually does stack. I’m wondering if dual hastening arcane warriors and two rogues was something I tried before.
I did my final save today after just being sent to the fade, an infamous section of the game that breaks up your party and plays a bit with mechanics in a way that feels like a stretch. I hope to power through it to get back to building the party.
Finished playing through the Portable Castlevanias again through the collections. Finally 100%ed the inventory in Ecclesia, and the final item I had to hunt down was a ring that had a chance to spawn in chests that had a chance to contain rare items that are randomly found inside Dracula’s Castle.
That final item was a ring that made rare items drop more often.
Yeah, I’ve had a half-written update in the Football Manager thread that I’ve been working on for what feels like six months now (and probably isn’t that far off from that honestly).
This week I played all the way through Ever17 ~The Out of Infinity~, a visual novel released in 2002 for the Dreamcast and PS2. Feels very DreamcastCore since it takes place in a brightly lit futuristic underwater facility. Of course a disaster happens and you get trapped down there. The goal is to escape. I didn’t think about it until I finished the game and read wikipedia, but of course they were influenced by 9/11.
The most interesting thing about the game is the dual protagonist structure. Normally in these visual novel games, you go through multiple routes and understand that different outcomes are a direct result of your choices. But it’s sort of unclear why routes change when you have 2 protags. Especially when it’s a structural disaster unfolding in a way that words alone couldn’t change…or could they. Adding to that uncertainty you have an untrustworthy AI personality, talk of human cloning and time travel, amnesia, mysterious illnesses, conspiracies, ghosts, etc. It made the plot hard to predict even towards the end when I could start to see the outlines.
The missing piece that finally tied everything together (“Blick Winkel”…I don’t think that’s a spoiler) I thought was the stupidest thing ever. Until I read that the writer, Kotaro Uchikoshi (who is now known for games like Zero Escape and Hundred Line), was told by players of his previous game that the protagonist in dating-VNs should just be the player themselves, and so he took that very literally out of spite presumably, and I think that’s kind of awesome actually.
YS I & II TURBOGRAFX version. it’s a neat game(s) so far
it’s like you know how Dragon Quest came out of Ultima and Wizardry getting thrown in a blender together, and came out like the most simple arcadey version of them both? it’s like if you scooped up Dragon Quest while it was still wet and tossed it back in the same blender with The Legend of Zelda. i’ve already bought the best sword and armor in the 1 town in the first game. it’s so small-scale it’s cute.
there are too fucking many versions of this game. i chose the one i vibed with best, and i believe i was right. Look at this awesome shit
i know there are lots of awesome posts on this series already that i can’t find because it’s literally impossible to search for
Unlike Time Traveler’s Dragon’s Lair hit-the-button-at-the-right-time thing, this sort of plays like an extra limited Virtua Fighter. The audio was wild, with the vocal samples glitching out and jumbled (“you win” would play mid match over and over) and everything else sounding like ancient arcade hardware beeps and bloops.
The game you are looking for is Hydlide (not the NES version). That is where Ys comes from. Like directly. It’s a straight line almost. Well, that and then Dragon Slayer 1, probably.
There are, but officially only like three of them are in English, including this one, but you can play most of them fanslated. I think checking out the PC88 version (available in Japanese on Switch, but if you’ve played through it once in English, you can stumble through it pretty easily) is pretty worth it as well.
The Turbografx version is interesting for how it just makes the first two games into one game, which effectively removes the level cap from the first game, a decision with good/bad consequences. I mean, they sorta have the cap there, in that enemies in 1 stop giving good experience amounts by a certain level, but you could still super grind more if you want to. I still gotta finish 2 in this version as well. It’s good though!
Also, don’t believe Falcom’s later official retconning of it and actually play Ys III next (preferably the Genesis version, but the PC88 version is coool if you don’t mind using a phone to poorly translate it; but the Genesis version has that soundtrack).
Yeees more YS!!!
I need to just play 3 on the flash cart and stop waiting till I get a real cart. Guess i could knock hydlide off my list first since i do have a real cart if that.
Im mostly playing nes on the porch. I intend to dig out the game genie and try to do an all frog play of mario 3. I don’t even know if thats possible.
I am still playing Princess Crown if you can believe it, there is a lot more “post” game than I had imagined. I just beat the Propsena the apprentice Witch book. Her attack is to spin her arms arount like Bart menacing Lisa. And her charge attack is a launcher in the form of a column of power coming out of a magic circle with a random magic effect. So sometimes an enemy is set on fire or even turns to gold. She can also fly freely on her broom instead of jumping. She seems stiff and silly at first but its actually really fun and cute. Her whole story is a scavenger hunt. I really dug it but I could see people hating it. Next book I play as the pirate. And then finally there is an ending book.
Launched Norco for a minute to see what it’s like and enjoyed selecting every option I could that had to do with my player character enjoying lots of sleep. In the fist 15 minutes there were like five choices that implied I am a little sleepyhead. My favorite was during a passage that described the long nights awake on the couch I would witness my recently deceased mother passing wrapped up in a blanket, to which I said something like “but there weren’t all that many of those.” YEAH because I was sleeping, obviously
Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance (360)
it’s probably not a good sign that, within the first ten (?) minutes of this whatever-it-is, i’m controlling a cyborg ninja and going toe-to-toe with a mechanical dragon and somehow it’s still not any fun
Oddworld: Abe’s Oddysee (PS4)
i remain convinced that the first of OI’s experiments is still the best
is the emulation on this version a little laggy, or is it me?
Edit: Rupture Farms completed and with all twenty-eight Mudokons rescued no less- not bad for someone who’s out of practice. onto the Stockyards and (ideally) a significant decrease in the number of Follow Me Wait Follow Me Wait Follow Me shit no I meant Wait shit GodDAMN IT puzzles
I’m playing Unbeatable (which is another one of those terms you cannot search for on discourse.) It fucking rocks. Here’s my impressions of the demo.
The game suggests playing it in a single session on New Years Eve which proves the makers are young because that would take like 10 hours. Then again it is so filled with references for people exactly my age. Who has the focus and time to play a game 10 hours straight??
The music is freaking great (If you like Japanese alternative from the 90s, And I do!) It felt really special when a song started and the hair on the back of my neck stood up. Woah! Like none of the songs have I hummed or wanted to listen to afterwards, but in the moment, rock solid. Never mind the ridiculous animation.
Despite it being a I Fucking Love Japan/Egg Sandwich game I am having a fantastic time with it. I wish folks would make games about their own culture, which this does. It would feel incredibly petty to list the several times it triggered me betraying this as a Weeaboo, and not of the culture it mythologizes. But here’s one, running around town it has the “blind cross walk beep” playing on a 2 second loop. Then it had cicadas, just barely audible in some other aural loop. Alright y’all I get it you love gacha machines and fresh bread and mixed zoning.
The game has real characters. I have laughed out loud multiple times at the dialog and words.
Then on top of all this it also has a 50 song rhythm game right there in the main-menu. On top of the story game.
I hate to end this praise on a bummer but it is worth pointing out the game is made of hopes and gumption on at least ps5. There are dropped frames and skips in a rhythm game. One of the character’s sprites just doesn’t load for me. One of the songs timing was just absolutely broken (you can just turn on auto mode which was a godsend to get past that.) i tried reinstalling, restarting the game and the console and no fix. There were times during songs that stuff just broke and I felt like I was playing a beta that had unexpected behavior on a show floor.
I’ll probably play the last two chapters tonight straight through to the credits tonight. Unlike Artful Escape or OFK this is the real deal. A game about music made with love and passion and energy and no-cynicism.
Lapis x Labyrinth is a little arcadey/platforming rpg thing with a cute hook: your party members ride piggyback on each other. Main character handles regular attacks and absorbs all the damage, the riders are assist characters. Unfortunately the game absolutely vomits Systems all over you and I have no patience for that. Also it does the Bubble Bobble thing where if a timer expires a one-hit-kill enemy starts floating around the level, disregarding the platform geometry. I died to it in the first mission and deleted the game.
I played about 20 minutes of the PS4 port of Dead Rising and the constant cutscenes full of terrible dialogue and voice acting made me feel like doing just about anything else with my time so I quit.
Side note is anyone else’s PS4 becoming nearly unusable, like the UI is slow and buggy and games seem to take 3 times as long on loading screens etc? I swear this console used to actually be pleasant to use and lately it’s a misery. It just randomly disorganized my game library and unhid all the games I’d scratched off my backlog. Thank God I only want to play a handful more games on this before I get rid of it
finished sinking city last night and while i can see how there was a core from the sherlock games beaten and remade into this it really is just a huge big map chores game like anything with enough budget. misunderstood for a long while how the deduction system worked but once i did it just became a way of validating whatever 2-3 choices this mass effect type rpg gives you. maybe started to grow tired of how every conflict and choice is framed so i started leaning into stuff like framing a politician for murder so the police never find out about the guy who was blackmailed into doing it, killing both the vampire and her torturer, and telling a cult member good luck with the self-immolation instead of talking her down, because i’m so out of mercy and patience. if i detect a single ambition that isn’t love i’m reaching for the gun.
in the end none of what you did or chose matters and maybe that’s the whole point of it all anyway. i think that’s probably very lovecraftian. even the final choice seems like a mostly fake one. suffer forever mr detective.
