I’ll never forgive Mega Man ZX map system…
3 Likes
Fire Emblem Fortune’s Weave’s structure is very weird for such a big game…
After a Part 1 that’s roughly 15% battles 85% filler, where you have your characters go clean some temples for various bonuses + eat meals together to raise their support level, etc, you get a Part 2 that’s no-nonsense back to back difficult lategame Fire Emblem maps only. The bosses are crazy. I should have eaten my vegetables and prepared better in Act 1 but how could I know!!
However…. All of Part 2 can be completely skipped to immediately start Part 3 with auto-levelled units (???) I’m not sure about the nature of Part 3 so far but it’s the apocalypse, the sky is red, the city is empty and dragons are roaming. (Also there are guns now but we knew it from the start)
9 Likes
Still playing Dragon Quest VI. this game seems…long! Like a lot longer than I thought it would be, from what a quick glance at a walkthrough without trying to spoil anything, has shown me. in my mind, DQ games got long with DQ7, but I guess I was wrong. Maybe V is also long? I’ll find out, one day.
I recently recruited a soldier who can transform into a dragon and he seems kind of cool, but at this point I don’t know who my favorite party of 4 is, yet. Barbara would probably be my go to, but she lacks in certain areas that Chamorro makes up for (sorry, using this translation’s names for folks - it seems like the DS version renamed everyone?), but Chamorro is basically just a “Boom” machine for me and little else. Oh wait, he can bring characters back to life, too.
Completely unexpected (that’s a lie: I knew about it, but totally forgot) that the game, out of nowhere, is just like “hey, by the way, we have a job system, too.”
I think the method of needing to fight a certain amount of battles makes sense, but it’s annoying that the battles need to be stronger than you because I did a bit of grinding and now the fights are a little easier, but I’m not gaining any experience for the hero’s second job class. I guess this prevents you from just grinding out to the best classes and breaking the game, too early?
The game feels sort of meandering, which I guess is why some folks like it less than other DQ titles, but it’s meandering in a way that I am personally enjoying. Everything is very relaxed, with a couple skill-check bosses peppered in throughout. I think my favorite vignette so far, though, was with the thieves in Amor - that one was very sentimental and sweet.
My hope is to beat this before FF Resonance comes out. Will I do it?
10 Likes
still bad at this game. these mummies..they’re killing me…
i actually got them once but i died before they did. i need to make it through the whole level with the cross god damnit
4 Likes
Theres a local record store that has a Revolution X cabinet on free play and I’ve played through the whole things. Aerosmith was in such a weird place back then having somehow made themselves this music video forward band off of the backs of Batgirl and Arwen despite being old and uncool as hell.
Been sick the past couple days so I finally got into whatever the Super Famicom Picross is on the Switch. After having zero problems, I got up to the 20x20 grids and starting losing just because of simple mistakes because there’s so many numbers to parse along the margins and I keep misreading them. I guess it’s good that this one will take me more time to solve.
9 Likes
Died to a dragon. Death is surprisingly not awful! I was expecting to lose all my progress but I think I just lost some gold? I mean, it was hard earned gold but it could have been so much worse. I’m on the south side of the continent and fighting tougher things with my fighters ring and hand axe. Not that dragon though. Yikes!
Oh and just as I moved from that I learned Radiant. Torches be damned!
12 Likes
One of the most beautiful things about Dragon Quest is that you only lose gold when you die. Everything you do will help you get closer to winning the game.
15 Likes
If this was a final fantasy I’d probably just abandon it after that, but since the cost of death here is really just a few more weeks in the monster mines, they can troll you with a surprise instant kill dragon and it’s not really a rage quit. Desiree my love of Dark Souls, I really kind of appreciate that
4 Likes
Been going through the Sleeping Dogs DLC, let’s see…
The Zodiac Tournament: Dumb. They put a sorta piss film filter over the game and have you do a bunch of fights in a row. The fight with the falling ceiling sucks, you gotta wail on the three guys who are actually important while occasionally throwing one of the three fodder guys into some gears to slow the descent. Died way too many times at that. Final boss is OK, his drunken style is pretty tricky, but if you just hammer counter and occasionally A you can get through it.
Nightmare in North Point: OK. Random possessed citizens attacking you are fine, but the actual Jiangshi are just damage sponges that take way too many hits. Way too much “beat on these hopping vampires until you get your fiery meter, then fight the big demon or boss until that goes away, then repeat.” I’m glad it brings back Old Salty Crab…and Vincent, the forgotten guy from your gang who gets killed off unceremoniously during one questline teleporting into your car to complain about being dead is fun. The three gangsters they bring back to life sound totally different and aren’t that fun to fight. Anyway, the “end of Thriller video” bit is OK I guess. Actually maybe not.
Year of the Snake: Wei gets demoted to beat cop as apocalyptic cultists plants bombs in vehicles around the city. This might be OK if not for two things - one, Wei’s moveset is severely diminished because they give him a taser, so instead of holding X to break arms or legs or whatever you’re just zapping guys. You can hold it forever but that just stuns them longer…they don’t catch on fire like in Syphon Filter. Two, there are so many side quests that involve finding a car with a bomb in it and needing to drive it into the water. All the missions are pretty close to the coast, so easy, right? No! Because your GPS never works in these, and most of the coastline is surrounded by two foot indestructible barriers. You gotta memorize how to get to the shoreline, and then the one or two places where there’s a break in the railing or maybe easy access to a dock, and drive it off there. It sucks.
Taking out rioters by shooting tear gas cannisters directly at their heads is some real 2020 shit from 2012…I don’t think the gas itself does anything.
Anyway I probably have four missions left in this DLC and then I’m done, hooray. I can say I played (almost) all of this game, after all this time.
You couldn’t pay me to do the races in the main game though. Never been my thing. So that’s not getting done.
7 Likes
the oakland pd shot scott olsen in the head with a beanbag in 2011
1 Like
Woof, even worse. Go figure the worst DLC is the one that actually has you acting like a cop.
2 Likes
there is a lot of stuff in that game that’s pretty bad if you start thinking hard about it unfortunately. never been a fan of shens sisters death wish style backstory
5 Likes
I’m glad the bike slide was the moment that took off from Akira instead
8 Likes
One thing that aged better than I expected (since I forgot how it played out in the last decade and change, I was really dreading the run up to the payoff) - there’s a whole set of missions where Wei is told the woman he used to get to the boss of the karaoke bar and then went on all of one date with is cheating on him, and he flips out, calls her a bitch, bugs a payphone she uses to call this guy, then tails her to meeting him.
Wei struts up all pissed off and yellin’, and she in turn rips into his ass for being a cheating hypocrite and tells him to fuck off.
Of course the low lifes who maintain the wiki are eager to point out that you can shoot and kill her at this point, I guess, if you’re a psychopath.
Anyway, finished that DLC. Ends with a very boring boat chase, where all you really gotta do is shoot the driver side of the boats and take them out pretty quickly. Two more shootouts and then that’s that.
But hey, I unlocked the tear gas launcher for story mode. Now I can commit war crimes whenever I want, oh boy.
5 Likes
I downloaded like 15 SAGE demos, which is the Sonic fan community’s annual game/demo/project announcement event. It has grown and grown and is now dozens of cool things to see and try each year. I wanted to give special shout out to FROGGY! there are stats on the page and it only had 16 downloads, which is what inspired me to try it.
A popular theme this year seems to be Pizza Tower likes. It seems like it did a real number on the kids. I’ve never played Pizza Tower but now I can play like 10 different demos for games directly inspired by Pizza Tower. This game is way more inventive than I thought it would be. The animation cycles are great. I had to use my move set in creative ways and they knew you need to give breaks in action. I was very impressed with what I guess is a teenage-effort. I’d tell you all to try it and double their download numbers and leave comments. I may be inspired to try more of the games with low download numbers.
13 Likes
Dragon Warrior
I got the Staff of Rain - what a silly dungeon that was! I really thought that putting on the cursed belt and then returning would do something, but apparently all it did was take it off me and now it’s gone? Not even an un-cursed belt? And it’s not just called “belt” and then you find out it’s cursed when you wear it, which surprised me. It’s immediately identified as a cursed belt.
But whatever!. Now I gotta get those sun stones. I thought I might find some extra information about it but I guess no, it’s just somewhere in the castle (and I have to find the cellar to get there). I liked playing it while trying to minimize official grinding - I did a little intentional grinding near Rimuldar largely for the Goldmen (goldmans? goldsman?) to get the 1000 and 1500 gold weapon and armor upgrades (though that was also just at my limit of decent grinding anyway) and then tried to manage my way through the Grave dungeon. Those Wraith Knights are no freaking joke! I mostly just run away, but everything else in there was reasonable to fight through.
I’m a little surprised at how engaged I am with this really. Like it’s very much an extremely simplified version of a lot of RPGs but the little world exploration puzzle of it all was a surprising inclusion that has me far more engaged than I think I would have been if it had just been “kill thing until strong enough to kill bigger thing”. I’m very invested in making the rainbow bridge over the very conspicuous little piece of one tile ocean.
20 Likes
going back down the clocktower in castlevania 3 is some bullshit
15 Likes
I was similarly surprised when I played the GBC version years and years ago. It is easily one of my favorite games.
8 Likes
Have been enjoying my time for the most part replaying some of the early parts of Witcher 3. I last left off with this game in like 2021 or something, having put over 100 hours into it over the span of five years or so, but walking away in the middle of Blood and Wine. Thinking about the memorable quests and the atmosphere of the world drew me back with added interest in maybe increasing the challenge so that I would need to commit to studying the combat system a bit more, fighting off the feeling that it was just this floaty unimpactful farce of dodging and fast-attacking.
Alas… the combat in this game is truly just that. It’s impossible to gauge when an enemy attacks, unless it’s a boss enemy you’ll be fighting for a while, or one that is extremely common. I wish the deliberate feeling you get when preparing to fight a monster by applying the right oils and drinking the right potions after studying books was carried through into the fight itself, but it isn’t. It sucks! I doubt I am likely to get far in re-playing this game, even with the memory of fun story moments and quests ahead.
I like the Witcher, those characters, the concepts of that world. I guess I can finish up Blood and Wine, and look forward to the new expansion some time. But even then this kind of triple-A game where you just button your way through short dialog trees is also kind of boring to me these days, so I am not sure I can endure even just that. Sad!
6 Likes
Enjoying Control Resonant. I think it’s giving me what I want which is more of that world in a similar but different set-up. Will have to check out the Remedy thread once I’m through.
7 Likes