After finishing Romancing SaGa 2, I played Gimmick! 2, and while I did enjoy it, it did not enamour me to nearly the same extent as the original Gimmick did. Was by no means a bad game though.
I decided to start Omori. I've always been a big EarthBound fan, and I enjoy Undertale and Deltarune and Yume Nikki, so this game seems like an important one to add to my repertoire. So far so good. The characters are full of personality and the colouring pencil art style mixed with pixel graphics is really good. Very curious to see where the story goes.
I've never played any of these Koei strategy games before. It looks like there'll be a learning curve, but I'll be willing to give them a try. This is a very good update. Four games at once, all deep strategic games that never became mainstream popular. Gives them another chance to shine, and offers something that isn't on the service already. I hope to see more great updates in the future. ...Just so long as they don't get removed like Super Soccer.... and unfortunately that'll be the biggest concern I have regarding NSO from now on. :/
Nintendo has been absolutely horrible about including control customisation in their games, I hope this is a sign they're willing to take things more seriously going forward. And I hope they even go as far as to update their older games with more options too.
Metroid Dread for example requires you to hold R to charge the Omega Cannon, and press Y to fire it, while also holding L to aim. Three buttons to hold at once at opposite ends of the controller, with no controller remapping options, is simply just bad accessibility.
hmm. This makes me feel like I should get back into making more of my own youtube shorts about videogame esoterica. I like this kinda stuff. ...I made a handful of shorts for my own amusement but didn't really continue.
I didn't know about this fun fact in particular, though I haven't really played enough Stadium to have much of it in my head anyway, so this was just mildly fun rather than mindblowing.
mmm... I've not played this game before, so it's a little disappointing to hear all the voices are being recast. I would have preferred being able to experience it as it was originally... It isn't too much to ask for "classic mode" to just keep in the classic voices too, is it? :/
I'm impressed that they included the "A-Type Early Version". Normally Nintendo loves to pretend earlier revisions of games don't exist, such as with Fire Temple's chanting.
The version of Tetris with the early song is often referred to as the "Minuet Version" among collectors. You can tell by slight differences in the cartridge label compared to the later revisions. It was only ever seen in Japanese cartridges, all international version feature the classic korobeiniki.
I do have a copy of the Minuet Version since I always thought it was a fun piece of trivia, but strangely enough, I don't actually have a regular Tetris cart - as a kid I had Tetris DX instead.
Maybe one of these days, if I see a cheap regular Tetris cart next time I go to CeX, I'll grab it for the heck of it.
I personally think that it will be a straight up Switch game. Maybe if they show that the Switch 2 can improve performance of Switch games, maybe it will have some enhancements or something. But I don't see a version of the game that straight-up won't run on a regular Switch existing.
I like the Mario face of the USA version because it fits the theme of a more abstract picture puzzle game better, compared to seeing artwork of Archeologist Mario, which would just make me assume this is some kind of adventure or platforming game with a new powerup, just like how SMB3's art was just Raccoon Mario.
Oh, by the way, here's an extremely stupid fun fact about the Sword of Kings in EarthBound.
The Sword of Kings is one of two items in EarthBound that CANNOT be sold or dropped, but can be obtained in arbitrary quantities. The other one being the equally rare Broken Antenna.
This means that... if you REALLY REALLY felt like it, you can potentially completely softlock your save file by grinding for Sword of Kings drops. Drop every single item, and fill every item slot on every character with Swords of Kings. Fill up all 34 Escargo Express storage slots with Swords of Kings too.
Once every single possible empty inventory slot has a Sword of Kings in it... congratulations! You cannot hold the Shyness Book, Meteorite Piece, or any other key item that is required to beat the game. You are fully softlocked, and fully insane for accomplishing this.
In my Suikoden II playthrough I did last year, I got the Double Beat rune without even realising it was supposed to be a rare drop. I gave it to Nanami straight away and she became my MVP for the majority of the game.
I do know the pain of griding souls in Aria and Dawn of Sorrow though. But I love to zone out to youtube videos while grinding soul drops, so it never really bothered me to try and get 100% in them... it can just take a while
By the way, the article writer seems to be under the impression that Luck is functional in Aria of Sorrow, but broken in Dawn? hahahaha. Nope! It's actually broken in both games.
Regarding the Sword of Kings, the only time I actually got it is when I used the Nintendo Switch Online version of the game. I played through the whole game without using rewinds, except for Stonehenge base, where I used rewinds to help me get that drop. Kill a Starman Super, rewind, press a button to advance RNG a bit, kill it again, rewind, etc etc etc. I don't think I would have had the patience to get the Sword legit. But it was cool to finally have it.
...regarding Xenoblade 2 Rare Blades... I did get them all but man did I hate the grind. It's a game I don't think I have it in me to ever replay because of the obnoxious gatcha mechanics for getting Rare Blades. I especially hated how Ursula was one of the very very last Rare Blades i managed to pull, because her quest involves putting her on sooo many merc missions in a row, which would ideally be done in the background throughout the whole game, but since I was already at the end, I just had to sit there and wait in order to complete her quest. What a complete travesty of game design.
I've been fairly lucky regarding shiny Pokémon in my time. I had a shiny Butterfree in Gold version (who no longer exists due to the GBC carts' save battery defuncting itself), I had a shiny Zubat, Buneary and Dusclops in my Pearl. And when i first played X version I got a shiny Espurr pretty early on. I was pretty hyped.
In more recent games where you can see overworld Pokémon, shinies are easier to come across, so they're kind of less memorable. But I do remember catching a shiny Horsea completely by pure luck in the Blueberry Terrarium - the overworld Pokémon are so tiny in Scarlet/Violet, and the lighting engine is so poor in this game, and the difference between colour on shiny Horsea is so minute, it was pure chance that I decided to catch it, and only noticed it was shiny afterwards.
Hmm what else. Hey, does anyone remember Kikuichimonji from Golden Sun? I love this thing because it's a super duper rare drop that is extremely easy to RNG-manipulate to obtain it no problem. I didn't even know it was in the game until I found the RNG manip guide. Haha. I love it when you can subtly bend the rules of the game like this.
Hmm, alright. This hasn't deterred me from wanting to play the game or anything, I do like to come to my own conclusions.
I guess it just depends on how disruptive the dialogue scenes are. I bounced off Ys X because I was getting frustrated with all the dialogue scenes, especially in comparison to the prior Ys games which were all very snappy. I do plan on eventually playing more Ys X in the future though.
But one of my favourite RPGs of all time is Golden Sun, which is infamously very text-heavy. I guess it really depends on how invested I get into the game.
I'm so behind on my JRPGs, I haven't played a single Trails game at all. :/
I kinda wanted to start from the beginning, since I know this series is extremely lore heavy. Most people seem to recommend starting with the first Trails in the Sky, which I know this upcoming game is a remake of.
...but I kinda actually wanted to start even earlier with the earlier Legend of Heroes games, before the Trails series even started.
When I played through Ys, I knew that Lacrimosa was the fan favourite, but I did in fact start with Book I & II and worked my way up, including playing the fan translations for Ys IV, the other Ys IV, and Ys V.
I was thinking of doing something similar whenever I got into Legend of Heroes / Trails games, but. .... it'll be a while until that happens.
I've been thinking about various options based on Square Enix's history with previous games.
A port of the Steam version would come across as kinda lazy, but it would still be acceptable. For some reason I think this is the most likely option. Let's hope it's not bungled like the initial steam release was pre-patch though.
A "Pixel Remaster" version would be... so unfortunate. If they actually update the pixel art and changed the character sprites and all that. And make all the text have a weird tiny font and everything. I dunno. I've never been keen on how these look, and it would be a little sad seeing Chrono Trigger subjected to the same fate
A HD version like Romancing SaGa 2 and 3 where they keep the pixel characters but HD-ify the backgrounds (Or like Dragon Quest 1+2+3 where they have HD characters but keep the pixel backgrounds).... I dunno, it wouldn't feel right.
I guess Suikoden looks nice, so it is possible to do this kind of thing well, but I still feel like it looks a bit incongruous since the characters and backgrounds are drawn in different resolutions, you know? I'm not sure I'd want that for Chrono Trigger.
A straight-up emulation like in Collection of Mana / Collection of SaGa... Would be fine actually.
If they're gonna make a new collection, maybe they could also include things like Secret of Evermore that have never been ported before. ...But would this "cheapen" the prestigious reputation that Chrono Trigger has garnered, by making it part of a bundle rather than its own standalone thing? I wonder if they would avoid doing it like this for that reason. I mean, just take a look at how nobody pays attention to Phantasy Star IV despite Sega including it in every single Mega Drive collection. One of the best 16-bit RPGs ever made is available on so many platforms, and people barely give it the time of day because it gets lost in the crowd.
A HD-2D version in the style of Dragon Quest III or Live A Live would be okay. I just hope that it can stand out despite using the same art style as several unrelated games. I hope the HD-2D style doesn't start to homogenise all of Square's pixel stuff. They'd have to really pull it off well.
A brand new full-scale remake similar to SaGa Revenge of the Seven, or Trials of Mana would certainly be cool to see. I wouldn't be opposed to it, but at this point, it would become essentially a brand new game - it wouldn't be able to fulfil its role as the quintessential 90s JRPG classic any more, it would just be... the same story but presented in a modern way.
...Not even gonna entertain the notion of an FF7 Remake / Rebirth style game where it isn't even similar to the original. That wouldn't be porting Chrono Trigger at all, that'd just be a weird alternate reality sequel, no matter whether they put "Remake" in the title or not.
...Honestly, if they just announced that Chrono Trigger would just come to the regular SNES NSO app, I think that might be the simplest way they could handle it - it would mean all Switch subscribers suddenly now have access to a stone-cold classic, just like with what happened to EarthBound. ...but then it may be at risk of going the way of Super Soccer, since its rights might be difficult to negotiate in perpetuity. So maybe even this is not ideal.
You know this isn't official because it pays tribute to Super Mario Bros 35 lol. Still can't believe Nintendo is so willing to throw away their game like that.
But yeah, amazing animation. I love how it focuses on Switch Mario games specifically. Not enough fan works for the Switch era compared to the classic era.
It is kind of crazy to think about how Pokémon was an anime, trading card game, videogame, merchandise line, literally all of these different things all at once, right from the word go.
I can't think of another big Japanese videogame property like this where absolutely every facet of it was brought over to other markets pretty much intact from the very start. And it definitely paid off big time.
A long time ago I did fully complete Donkey Kong on the Game Boy, however when I boot up my cartridge now, the save file is gone. I guess the internal battery died.
If I ever feel like playing DK again, now NSO is a good option. Though it doesn't have the SGB support, so idk. Maybe emulation would still be best until Nintendo sort themselves out regarding SGB support on NSO lol.
anyway. Definitely a good addition to the service.
Linking a save file from 2 to 3 gives you only an extremely minor thing - it unlocks two bonus performances in the Budehuc castle theater.
I believe the stories of the plays are based on stories from the first two games, which explains why it's only there as a save data bonus.
Since I played Suikoden III digitally on the PS3, which doesn't have a way to transfer PS1 save files over, I didn't have the ability to see them either.
But aside from this, the only other thing that changes is that some of the Old Books that refer to the previous wars will use the names you gave them rather than the default names. It's really really minor stuff.
Glad to see this is considered a good remake, especially after such a long time since its announcement. You can never be sure there aren't any glaring issues until it finally comes out, you know?
I'm not itching to play it right away since I only just played the original last year, but I am very curious to see if the story comes across more smoothly with the updated translation. My biggest issue with Suikoden on the PlayStation 1 was its rather awkward English script.
I have a family member who is interested in seeing Suikoden, so I may do another playthrough soonish, using this version, depending on circumstances.
It's not up to Nintendo to decide really. If the owner of the game pulls it from the NSO lineup, then that means Nintendo has no say over it any more. If the IP owner wants to put it up on the eShop separately, that's up to them. If it were up to Nintendo, then it would just stay in the NSO app.
BTW, one random observation about Sonic Unleashed that I always thought was interesting...
The two versions of Unleashed are so fundamentally different from each other that the very rules of lycanthropy are not consistent.
On Xbox 360 / PS3, Sonic changes to Werehog form based on the time of day. Eggmanland has hourglass switches that highlight this.
On Wii / PS2, however, Sonic changes to Werehog based on if he is in the light or the dark. There are the puzzle temples that involve switching forms that highlight this.
Sega can never keep Sonic lore consistent, not even within different versions of the same game.
Yeah, I suppose so. If Sega ever feel like making any more collections, Sonic Colours DS should be included in a Sonic Rush collection. Since it plays pretty much like a third Rush game.
Werehog levels weren't bad intrinsically, but I remember later in the game, they did rely a lot on sections where you walk on thin tightrope paths, which wasn't the most fun gameplay mechanic around. And Eggmanland is just too long.
If Sega ever rereleases Unleashed, they should include the 360 version and the Wii version together as a bundle. Many people played the Wii one, which was very very different.
Katamari 1 was fantastic. An amazing start to the series.
We Love Katamari was perfection and the highlight of the series. Introduced so many new environments and circumstances to make everything feel fun and varied.
Me & My Katamari was fine. Understandably limited by the PSP hardware, but it's good what they were able to pull off.
Beautiful Katamari has good gameplay, but lacks the same spirit - there are no cutscenes, and they decided to do on-disk DLC, which was... not appreciated. ugh. But the game aside from that is good.
Katamari Forever was mostly rehashes of previous levels, with like only two or three actual new levels. And you played with weird remixed music, and weird visual filters. The gameplay was there, but the presentation was kind of off.
Touch My Katamari is the laziest cashgrab of a Katamari game, with missing features such as no item catalogue, fewer cousins, and even more rehashed gameplay ideas. And the monetisation was even worse, with progression requiring you to purchase "Fan Damacys" from the PSVita store in order to actually unlock more levels. Disgusting.
Then there were the now delisted mobile games, I Love Katamari and Katamari Amore. As far as I remember, I Love Katamari was an extremely pared-down mess that only worked with gyro controls and was basically a nothingburger of a game.
Katamari Amore had actual touch controls and played decently well, but again, most of its content was expensive DLC, with very little actually available in the base game.
And the two modern Reroll releases - they're good, but Namco took the lazy route and didn't bother including the English voices. Just like their recent Baten Kaitos release.
...
Basically, every Katamari release after the original duo has had some kind of problem, and they've been getting worse and worse as the series continues.
Since it's been such a long time since we've had a new game, I hope they've actually been working on something worthwhile. But I don't have much faith in them to be honest.
as someone who grew up in the era of the first set of Pokémon cards, the imagery of the iconic Pokéball design from the back of the cards is ingrained into my mind. And the promise of an included limited-edition card is too tantalising to pass up.
I know the Japanese cards had a different design, which is fine, but the design in this box art is being obscured by the logo.
Also, I think the image you chose for the Japanese box art isn't actually what was printed on the box? It includes the release date, so this is probably a promotional image and not the actual box art.
I'm playing Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven.
I never played the original Romancing SaGa 2, nor the original Romancing SaGa 1, nor Minstrel Song or any other related game. The only other SaGa I played before was The Final Fantasy Legend. So my thoughts are based only on what I see in this version.
Overall, I'm enjoying the game. I enjoy the open-endedness of the exploration and the freedom to complete the quests in the order of your choosing. For the most part, it seems to be mostly an RPG made out of nothing but sidequests. There is literally no main questline at all - rather, some of the sidequests just so happen to lead to one of the Seven as a boss, and that's considered progress when you beat them.
It's certainly unique to have an RPG with no actual main character. Instead, the main character keeps changing, because the game can seemingly arbitrarily decide that there's been a 150+ year time skip in between sidequests. I don't know what causes the timeskips to occur, but it seems to happen whenever the game feels like you've accomplished "enough" things in the current era. I guess the emperor just decided to forget about doing any more work for the rest of their natural life? Even when there were more things to do?
The inheritance system has interesting implications for the gameplay mechanics, such as passing down previously- learned skills and all that, but in a worldbuilding sense, it does feel a bit contrived. It certainly doesn't feel like such a huge timeskip has occurred when all of the towns have the exact same layout with the exact same NPCs saying the exact same dialogue as they did 150 years ago. Kids cheering that their town is now monster-free and they can now play outside... even though their town has been monster free for over 150 years, so what the heck are they still celebrating like that for? Every NPC in the game gets replaced with an identical "descendent" so that you don't lose access to sidequests and such... it really doesn't feel like any real history is occurring at all.
Occasionally they do do something interesting with this though - once I failed to get around to helping an ally nation before a timeskip, and in the next era, they had been overtaken by enemy soldiers, and the questline changed to liberating them. That was kinda cool. I don't know how many quests work this way though - for the most part, they all seem to patiently wait for me, no matter how many hundreds of years pass.
Maybe this was easier to suspend disbelief for this kind of thing back when it was a 1993 pixel game? In such a detailed fully-3D modern RPG, details that don't make sense like this are harder to overlook.
From a gameplay perspective, this game is pretty fun and it's nice to explore dungeons and do quests and stuff, and I like the simple turn based battles. But presentation-wise, it feels like there's a lot missing to make this world feel fully-realised and make sense. Because as it stands, it just plainly doesn't make sense.
Yeah, I agree, it would be great to be able to play a proper modern collection rather than having to rely on a now-proven-to-be-unreliable service like NSO.
Capcom has released MM Battle Network collections to decent success, so hopefully they'll think about their other RPG classics.
I played Suikoden IV last year. I wrote an extremely extensive blog post about my opinions on it if you are interested in hearing a newcomer perspective. Overall I enjoyed my time with the game, but I had a LOT of problems with it.
Well... this is certainly a worrying new precedent.
Thankfully I would think all the first-party games are safe, but there are a LOT of third-party classics on there at the moment.
Can you imagine being 30 hours deep in Breath of Fire II and then suddenly Capcom wants to release their own collection and orders Nintendo to remove it from NSO? It sounds bad, but it is absolutely not an impossible scenario by any means.
...This is literally the reason why I bought the SNK collection to play Crystalis rather than use the NSO app btw. I have never felt fully comfortable with the way the app works, and here is literally exactly my problem manifesting.
My one hope for this game is that this is an official Pokémon Showdown simulator kinda thing where you can just create a team, tweak every stat, every IV, every move, exactly how you like it, and then battle online.
Knowing Pokémon's track record, this isn't likely, it's probably just a new Pokémon Battle Revolution kinda thing.
A whole special broadcast just for one re-release? They didn't do this for Dominus Collection or any of their previous recent games. ... are they planning to reveal actual new Suikoden content? Or at the very least new remasters or ports?
Yeah, I suppose on average, I can get through one large RPG in a month. Though it does depend on the game of course.
I do like to play smaller games in between though. As sort of palette-cleansers. Believe it or not, I can feel fatigued from playing nothing but RPGs too.
In between finishing Fantasian and starting Romancing SaGa 2 Revenge of the Seven, I played every Donkey Kong Country game for example. ...and I also played Glover on N64. literally because the eShop listing for the Switch port of Glover reminded me that I never played the N64 cart I already have. So I just... went ahead and played it lol.
Before Fantasian, my previous big RPG was actually Fire Emblem 1 NES. I played it courtesy of that limited edition version that Nintendo made available for like four months a long time ago. And I was extremely surprised at just how playable it was - I was expecting a painful old game, but it was actually really fun.
In-between Fire Emblem 1 and Fantasian, I randomly played Rygar The Legendary Adventure on PlayStation 2 as my palette-cleanser game. I also played Pocky & Rocky Reshrined and a few other miscellaneous smaller games.
Last year, in between playing Suikoden III and Suikoden IV, I played Ghost Trick Phantom Detective for DS, Patrick's Parabox on Switch, and Poinie's Poin for PlayStation 2. And some other miscellaneous smaller games that aren't coming to mind right now. It wasn't straight from 3 to 4, I had some non-RPG downtime.
It's not non-stop RPGs for me, but since they do take the longest, they feel like big milestones that tend to define my memory of the month I play them in.
The smaller games I play don't have much rhyme or reason to them. I just pick something that's been in my collection unplayed for far too long and give it a go.
I'm getting the Suikoden 1+2 remake, and also the Lunar 1+2 remake.
So much retro RPG goodness ... and I still haven't yet played the Grandia 1+2 remake I bought a while ago, nor any the FF Pixel Remasters. And I still have Octopath II to play!
How did so many JRPGs come out! I only just finished Fantasian Neo Dimension (and I loved it), and there's already so much more to play around the corner.
Last year I played the original versions of Suikoden 1 and 2 (and 3 and 4 and Tactics), so there's no need for me to play the remaster so soon, but I still want to buy it. I have a family member who is interested in Suikoden, so I at least want to have it to show it off.
...that reminds me, though, I still need to play Suikoden 5 and Suikdoen Tierkreis. Around the time I finished Suikoden Tactics last year, both Zelda Echoes of Wisdom and UFO 50 released close to each other, so I put off starting Suikoden 5 until I had a less busy gaming schedule.
But things don't always go back on track so readily. Currently I'm playing Romancing SaGa 2 Revenge of the Seven, so Suikoden 5 will have to wait even more I guess..
Hm.. It would be nice of Konami if, after Suikoden 1 and 2, they re-released 3, 4, Tactics, and 5 next, wouldn't it? And Tierkreis. And maybe that Japan-only PSP game if we're lucky?
I think Suikoden 4 and Tactics should be bundled together just like 1 and 2 are here. But... tbh I don't think it has much likelihood of happening, because they're not the most popular games around.
Suikoden 4's encounter rate is ridiculous, and the main quest is really short, and the ship is annoying to control, and the game is too easy in general. It's not the most amazing RPG around to be fair, but regardless, fans of Suikoden 1&2 who want to play the whole saga should be given that option, I say.
drip feed indeed. eight minutes of soundtrack in one week. still, it's a classic that obviously belongs on the service, but... yeah, this service is kinda. ... ... it's just kinda.
I just finished playing all of the Donkey Kong Country games.
I found the Game Boy Color DKC1 at a CeX recently and bought it.
I then got the three DKC games on GBA from eBay. (DKC3 GBA seems a bit pricey usually, but I managed to win it in a bid that was lower than the buy-it-now listings, which was nice)
This is how I went about doing it: I played DKC1 on SNES NSO, and would complete a world. Then I played on GBC and completed the same world. Then I played on GBA and completed the same world again. And I would alternate like that. To see the differences between each version.
Was kind of fun to do it this way.
I did the same for DKC2 and DKC3 with their NSO and GBA versions.
DKC3 was particularly interesting with its GBA version, as it added a brand new world called Pacifica, located in the north-west of the overworld map.
(...Pacifica Northwest? made me think of Gravity Falls for no reason), and also has a completely different soundtrack to the SNES version.
But overall, for all three games, when they ported the level design over to GBA, they didn't always transfer it perfectly - sometimes an out-of-reach barrel on SNES was perfectly reachable on GBA, or a line of Gnawties that you can easily roll through on SNES would cause you to take a hit on GBA. It felt like the conversion wasn't always perfect, and the SNES originals always had the most deliberate and congruous level design, despite the GBA adding new content and improvements on top.
I also played the Game Boy DK Land games on NSO. They were fine. DK Land 1 was definitely its own thing, though it felt unrefined, and the cloud levels are just annoying.
DK Land 2 was very much trying to be a GB port of DK Country 2 with simplified level layouts. It felt a bit redundant, but it wasn't bad.
And DK Land 3 sits somewhere in between - not exactly a DKC3 rehash, but not its own entirely new thing like DK Land 1 either. It's okay. I enjoyed them.
I then played DKC Returns on the 3DS (didn't feel like buying the Switch port when I had this one in my collection already), and Tropical Freeze on Switch.
They are good games, but I found them incredibly frustrating to play at times. Tropical Freeze was much better than Returns in my opinion, but I was surprised that I found myself enjoying them a lot less than the SNES games.
I was also surprised at how extremely difficult they are in comparison. Normally you'd expect a modern Wii era game to be easier than a classic SNES era game right? Hahaha. No. DKC Returns was one of the most difficult games I've played in a long time.
For both of these games I got 100% but did not try to go for Mirror Mode / Hard Mode at all. One playthrough was enough for me.
HAL is one of the absolute best developers out there in my opinion. Almost every single Kirby game is top notch quality, and their other output is nothing to sneeze at either.
The Seal of Quality doesn't check for things like a game's options menus or playability or accessibility.
It ensures that Nintendo have checked that the game is compatible with your system. It boots up, it doesn't damage your hardware, it doesn't crash constantly. Games need to pass a Lot Check which tests for these kinds of issues among other things, and when they pass, they get the seal.
This is what happens when you don't have the Nintendo "Seal of Quality" on your products. Of course Nintendo themselves aren't going to license your new NES releases in this day and age, so I suppose any newly made NES games are going to have to be scrutinised more.
It's good that this issue was caught, but it's rather worrying that products that can damage your vintage consoles are being sold to regular people who may not be savvy about technical things.
Funko is one of the least-appealing products I've ever seen, and I have absolutely no idea why anyone would buy them, nor why they are popular enough for them to fill game shops and toy shops shelves to the ridiculous extent they do.
Even for Funkos made for brands I like, the fact that they remove their eyes and replace them with giant black dots, or the fact that they force everything into this weird misshapen square head shape... it feels more like an insult to the character design than it does a celebration of them, don't you think? I truly truly don't understand how Funkos have ever gotten so popular.
Ys 6 plays similarly to Origin and Oath in Felghana, so it will have an audience for fans of those games. And it also has a modern Steam version. The Steam version of Ys 6 doesn't have the extra Konami-developed content from the PS2 and PSP versions (extra dungeon on PS2, extra minigames on PSP), but it does have added fast-travel. If they port Ys 6, they'll likely just port over the Steam version since they own all the content in that one.
Ys 5 on the other hand, only has a bad SNES game and an even worse PlayStation 2 game, and has never had a modern version or an English version at all. It was technically ported to PC once on a CD-ROM in 2003 for Windows XP computers in Japan as part of "Ys Complete Works", but it was just the SNES ROM on a disc.
More likely, Ys 5 is going to get a Celceta-style brand new overhaul, rather than any kind of port. It just makes more sense when you see how they've handled the rest of the series - anything 16-bit or older doesn't see the light of day (Aside from the EGG CONSOLE releases, which seem to be available for historical value more than anything), and now only proper Falcom-developed and Falcom-owned versions are allowed.
Comments 2,235
Re: Reminder: Nintendo Is Removing A Switch Online SNES Game Next Week
@Duncanballs
That's because it being removed is actually a bigger deal than it being added, believe it or not.
Re: Talking Point: What Are You Playing This Weekend? (22nd March)
After finishing Romancing SaGa 2, I played Gimmick! 2, and while I did enjoy it, it did not enamour me to nearly the same extent as the original Gimmick did. Was by no means a bad game though.
I decided to start Omori. I've always been a big EarthBound fan, and I enjoy Undertale and Deltarune and Yume Nikki, so this game seems like an important one to add to my repertoire. So far so good. The characters are full of personality and the colouring pencil art style mixed with pixel graphics is really good. Very curious to see where the story goes.
Re: Nintendo Expands Switch Online's SNES Library With Four More Titles
I've never played any of these Koei strategy games before. It looks like there'll be a learning curve, but I'll be willing to give them a try.
This is a very good update. Four games at once, all deep strategic games that never became mainstream popular. Gives them another chance to shine, and offers something that isn't on the service already. I hope to see more great updates in the future.
...Just so long as they don't get removed like Super Soccer.... and unfortunately that'll be the biggest concern I have regarding NSO from now on. :/
Re: Nintendo Joins Cross-Industry Effort 'Accessible Games Initiative' As Founding Member
Nintendo has been absolutely horrible about including control customisation in their games, I hope this is a sign they're willing to take things more seriously going forward. And I hope they even go as far as to update their older games with more options too.
Metroid Dread for example requires you to hold R to charge the Omega Cannon, and press Y to fire it, while also holding L to aim. Three buttons to hold at once at opposite ends of the controller, with no controller remapping options, is simply just bad accessibility.
Re: Random: Did You Know About These Hidden Animations In Pokémon Stadium?
hmm.
This makes me feel like I should get back into making more of my own youtube shorts about videogame esoterica. I like this kinda stuff. ...I made a handful of shorts for my own amusement but didn't really continue.
I didn't know about this fun fact in particular, though I haven't really played enough Stadium to have much of it in my head anyway, so this was just mildly fun rather than mindblowing.
Re: Lunar Remastered Collection Talks New Voice Acting And Classic Mode
mmm... I've not played this game before, so it's a little disappointing to hear all the voices are being recast. I would have preferred being able to experience it as it was originally... It isn't too much to ask for "classic mode" to just keep in the classic voices too, is it? :/
Re: Plants vs. Zombies Looks Set To Be Revived And 'Reloaded' On Switch
I love the first Plants vs Zombies, but I simply don't trust EA.
I don't care about this until it's out and confirmed not bad.
Re: Sakurai Says Japanese Developers Should Avoid Trying To Appeal To Western Tastes
Hmm. You know Sonic the Hedgehog's character design was designed to appeal to westerners from the very beginning, right?
But largely, I do agree - especially when you look at games like Final Fantasy 16 that just... don't have that Final Fantasy vibe to them at all.
Re: Nintendo Music Drops Three More Albums, Here's Every Song Included
I'm impressed that they included the "A-Type Early Version". Normally Nintendo loves to pretend earlier revisions of games don't exist, such as with Fire Temple's chanting.
The version of Tetris with the early song is often referred to as the "Minuet Version" among collectors. You can tell by slight differences in the cartridge label compared to the later revisions. It was only ever seen in Japanese cartridges, all international version feature the classic korobeiniki.
I do have a copy of the Minuet Version since I always thought it was a fun piece of trivia, but strangely enough, I don't actually have a regular Tetris cart - as a kid I had Tetris DX instead.
Maybe one of these days, if I see a cheap regular Tetris cart next time I go to CeX, I'll grab it for the heck of it.
Re: Talking Point: Will Metroid Prime 4 Get A Switch 2 Release?
I personally think that it will be a straight up Switch game. Maybe if they show that the Switch 2 can improve performance of Switch games, maybe it will have some enhancements or something. But I don't see a version of the game that straight-up won't run on a regular Switch existing.
Re: Poll: Box Art Brawl: Mario's Picross
I like the Mario face of the USA version because it fits the theme of a more abstract picture puzzle game better, compared to seeing artwork of Archeologist Mario, which would just make me assume this is some kind of adventure or platforming game with a new powerup, just like how SMB3's art was just Raccoon Mario.
Re: Opinion: Against All Odds - Why Does RPG RNG Hate Me?
Oh, by the way, here's an extremely stupid fun fact about the Sword of Kings in EarthBound.
The Sword of Kings is one of two items in EarthBound that CANNOT be sold or dropped, but can be obtained in arbitrary quantities. The other one being the equally rare Broken Antenna.
This means that... if you REALLY REALLY felt like it, you can potentially completely softlock your save file by grinding for Sword of Kings drops. Drop every single item, and fill every item slot on every character with Swords of Kings. Fill up all 34 Escargo Express storage slots with Swords of Kings too.
Once every single possible empty inventory slot has a Sword of Kings in it... congratulations! You cannot hold the Shyness Book, Meteorite Piece, or any other key item that is required to beat the game. You are fully softlocked, and fully insane for accomplishing this.
Re: Opinion: Against All Odds - Why Does RPG RNG Hate Me?
In my Suikoden II playthrough I did last year, I got the Double Beat rune without even realising it was supposed to be a rare drop. I gave it to Nanami straight away and she became my MVP for the majority of the game.
I do know the pain of griding souls in Aria and Dawn of Sorrow though. But I love to zone out to youtube videos while grinding soul drops, so it never really bothered me to try and get 100% in them... it can just take a while
By the way, the article writer seems to be under the impression that Luck is functional in Aria of Sorrow, but broken in Dawn? hahahaha. Nope! It's actually broken in both games.
Regarding the Sword of Kings, the only time I actually got it is when I used the Nintendo Switch Online version of the game. I played through the whole game without using rewinds, except for Stonehenge base, where I used rewinds to help me get that drop. Kill a Starman Super, rewind, press a button to advance RNG a bit, kill it again, rewind, etc etc etc. I don't think I would have had the patience to get the Sword legit. But it was cool to finally have it.
...regarding Xenoblade 2 Rare Blades... I did get them all but man did I hate the grind. It's a game I don't think I have it in me to ever replay because of the obnoxious gatcha mechanics for getting Rare Blades. I especially hated how Ursula was one of the very very last Rare Blades i managed to pull, because her quest involves putting her on sooo many merc missions in a row, which would ideally be done in the background throughout the whole game, but since I was already at the end, I just had to sit there and wait in order to complete her quest. What a complete travesty of game design.
I've been fairly lucky regarding shiny Pokémon in my time. I had a shiny Butterfree in Gold version (who no longer exists due to the GBC carts' save battery defuncting itself), I had a shiny Zubat, Buneary and Dusclops in my Pearl. And when i first played X version I got a shiny Espurr pretty early on. I was pretty hyped.
In more recent games where you can see overworld Pokémon, shinies are easier to come across, so they're kind of less memorable. But I do remember catching a shiny Horsea completely by pure luck in the Blueberry Terrarium - the overworld Pokémon are so tiny in Scarlet/Violet, and the lighting engine is so poor in this game, and the difference between colour on shiny Horsea is so minute, it was pure chance that I decided to catch it, and only noticed it was shiny afterwards.
Hmm what else. Hey, does anyone remember Kikuichimonji from Golden Sun? I love this thing because it's a super duper rare drop that is extremely easy to RNG-manipulate to obtain it no problem. I didn't even know it was in the game until I found the RNG manip guide. Haha. I love it when you can subtly bend the rules of the game like this.
Re: Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes Second Story Expansion DLC Now Available
...If an RPG is getting DLC, all that tells me is to not buy it until later.
Re: Meet The Stellar Cast Of Trails In The Sky 1st Chapter
@Daniel36
Hmm, alright. This hasn't deterred me from wanting to play the game or anything, I do like to come to my own conclusions.
I guess it just depends on how disruptive the dialogue scenes are. I bounced off Ys X because I was getting frustrated with all the dialogue scenes, especially in comparison to the prior Ys games which were all very snappy. I do plan on eventually playing more Ys X in the future though.
But one of my favourite RPGs of all time is Golden Sun, which is infamously very text-heavy.
I guess it really depends on how invested I get into the game.
Re: Meet The Stellar Cast Of Trails In The Sky 1st Chapter
I'm so behind on my JRPGs, I haven't played a single Trails game at all. :/
I kinda wanted to start from the beginning, since I know this series is extremely lore heavy. Most people seem to recommend starting with the first Trails in the Sky, which I know this upcoming game is a remake of.
...but I kinda actually wanted to start even earlier with the earlier Legend of Heroes games, before the Trails series even started.
When I played through Ys, I knew that Lacrimosa was the fan favourite, but I did in fact start with Book I & II and worked my way up, including playing the fan translations for Ys IV, the other Ys IV, and Ys V.
I was thinking of doing something similar whenever I got into Legend of Heroes / Trails games, but. .... it'll be a while until that happens.
Re: Chrono Trigger To Celebrate 30th Anniversary With "Various Projects"
I've been thinking about various options based on Square Enix's history with previous games.
A port of the Steam version would come across as kinda lazy, but it would still be acceptable. For some reason I think this is the most likely option. Let's hope it's not bungled like the initial steam release was pre-patch though.
A "Pixel Remaster" version would be... so unfortunate. If they actually update the pixel art and changed the character sprites and all that. And make all the text have a weird tiny font and everything. I dunno. I've never been keen on how these look, and it would be a little sad seeing Chrono Trigger subjected to the same fate
A HD version like Romancing SaGa 2 and 3 where they keep the pixel characters but HD-ify the backgrounds (Or like Dragon Quest 1+2+3 where they have HD characters but keep the pixel backgrounds).... I dunno, it wouldn't feel right.
I guess Suikoden looks nice, so it is possible to do this kind of thing well, but I still feel like it looks a bit incongruous since the characters and backgrounds are drawn in different resolutions, you know? I'm not sure I'd want that for Chrono Trigger.
A straight-up emulation like in Collection of Mana / Collection of SaGa... Would be fine actually.
If they're gonna make a new collection, maybe they could also include things like Secret of Evermore that have never been ported before. ...But would this "cheapen" the prestigious reputation that Chrono Trigger has garnered, by making it part of a bundle rather than its own standalone thing? I wonder if they would avoid doing it like this for that reason. I mean, just take a look at how nobody pays attention to Phantasy Star IV despite Sega including it in every single Mega Drive collection. One of the best 16-bit RPGs ever made is available on so many platforms, and people barely give it the time of day because it gets lost in the crowd.
A HD-2D version in the style of Dragon Quest III or Live A Live would be okay. I just hope that it can stand out despite using the same art style as several unrelated games. I hope the HD-2D style doesn't start to homogenise all of Square's pixel stuff. They'd have to really pull it off well.
A brand new full-scale remake similar to SaGa Revenge of the Seven, or Trials of Mana would certainly be cool to see. I wouldn't be opposed to it, but at this point, it would become essentially a brand new game - it wouldn't be able to fulfil its role as the quintessential 90s JRPG classic any more, it would just be... the same story but presented in a modern way.
...Not even gonna entertain the notion of an FF7 Remake / Rebirth style game where it isn't even similar to the original. That wouldn't be porting Chrono Trigger at all, that'd just be a weird alternate reality sequel, no matter whether they put "Remake" in the title or not.
...Honestly, if they just announced that Chrono Trigger would just come to the regular SNES NSO app, I think that might be the simplest way they could handle it - it would mean all Switch subscribers suddenly now have access to a stone-cold classic, just like with what happened to EarthBound. ...but then it may be at risk of going the way of Super Soccer, since its rights might be difficult to negotiate in perpetuity. So maybe even this is not ideal.
Re: Random: This Stunning Fan-Made Animation Is The Perfect Way To Celebrate MAR10 Day
You know this isn't official because it pays tribute to Super Mario Bros 35 lol.
Still can't believe Nintendo is so willing to throw away their game like that.
But yeah, amazing animation.
I love how it focuses on Switch Mario games specifically. Not enough fan works for the Switch era compared to the classic era.
Re: Pokémon Almost Became A "Gritty" Baseball-Themed RPG In The West
It is kind of crazy to think about how Pokémon was an anime, trading card game, videogame, merchandise line, literally all of these different things all at once, right from the word go.
I can't think of another big Japanese videogame property like this where absolutely every facet of it was brought over to other markets pretty much intact from the very start. And it definitely paid off big time.
Re: Nintendo Expands Switch Online's Game Boy Library With Two More Titles
A long time ago I did fully complete Donkey Kong on the Game Boy, however when I boot up my cartridge now, the save file is gone. I guess the internal battery died.
If I ever feel like playing DK again, now NSO is a good option. Though it doesn't have the SGB support, so idk. Maybe emulation would still be best until Nintendo sort themselves out regarding SGB support on NSO lol.
anyway. Definitely a good addition to the service.
Re: Review: Suikoden 1 & 2 HD Remaster (Switch) - Two Of The PS1's Best RPGs Beautifully Preserved, For The Most Part
@-wc-
Linking a save file from 2 to 3 gives you only an extremely minor thing - it unlocks two bonus performances in the Budehuc castle theater.
I believe the stories of the plays are based on stories from the first two games, which explains why it's only there as a save data bonus.
Since I played Suikoden III digitally on the PS3, which doesn't have a way to transfer PS1 save files over, I didn't have the ability to see them either.
But aside from this, the only other thing that changes is that some of the Old Books that refer to the previous wars will use the names you gave them rather than the default names. It's really really minor stuff.
Re: Review: Suikoden 1 & 2 HD Remaster (Switch) - Two Of The PS1's Best RPGs Beautifully Preserved, For The Most Part
Glad to see this is considered a good remake, especially after such a long time since its announcement. You can never be sure there aren't any glaring issues until it finally comes out, you know?
I'm not itching to play it right away since I only just played the original last year, but I am very curious to see if the story comes across more smoothly with the updated translation. My biggest issue with Suikoden on the PlayStation 1 was its rather awkward English script.
I have a family member who is interested in seeing Suikoden, so I may do another playthrough soonish, using this version, depending on circumstances.
Re: Round Up: Everything Announced At Konami's Suikoden "Special Program" Broadcast
... a free-to-play mobile game is probably not the grand return fans were hoping for. :/
Re: Opinion: Nintendo, Let Us Buy The Games Being Delisted From Switch Online
It's not up to Nintendo to decide really. If the owner of the game pulls it from the NSO lineup, then that means Nintendo has no say over it any more. If the IP owner wants to put it up on the eShop separately, that's up to them. If it were up to Nintendo, then it would just stay in the NSO app.
Re: Random: This Unofficial Sonic Unleashed PC Port Has Us Dreaming Of A Switch 2 Remaster
BTW, one random observation about Sonic Unleashed that I always thought was interesting...
The two versions of Unleashed are so fundamentally different from each other that the very rules of lycanthropy are not consistent.
On Xbox 360 / PS3, Sonic changes to Werehog form based on the time of day. Eggmanland has hourglass switches that highlight this.
On Wii / PS2, however, Sonic changes to Werehog based on if he is in the light or the dark. There are the puzzle temples that involve switching forms that highlight this.
Sega can never keep Sonic lore consistent, not even within different versions of the same game.
Re: Random: This Unofficial Sonic Unleashed PC Port Has Us Dreaming Of A Switch 2 Remaster
@MirrorFate2
Yeah, I suppose so. If Sega ever feel like making any more collections, Sonic Colours DS should be included in a Sonic Rush collection. Since it plays pretty much like a third Rush game.
Re: Random: This Unofficial Sonic Unleashed PC Port Has Us Dreaming Of A Switch 2 Remaster
Werehog levels weren't bad intrinsically, but I remember later in the game, they did rely a lot on sections where you walk on thin tightrope paths, which wasn't the most fun gameplay mechanic around. And Eggmanland is just too long.
If Sega ever rereleases Unleashed, they should include the 360 version and the Wii version together as a bundle. Many people played the Wii one, which was very very different.
Re: New Bandai Namco Trademark 'Once Upon A Katamari' Spotted
Katamari 1 was fantastic. An amazing start to the series.
We Love Katamari was perfection and the highlight of the series. Introduced so many new environments and circumstances to make everything feel fun and varied.
Me & My Katamari was fine. Understandably limited by the PSP hardware, but it's good what they were able to pull off.
Beautiful Katamari has good gameplay, but lacks the same spirit - there are no cutscenes, and they decided to do on-disk DLC, which was... not appreciated. ugh. But the game aside from that is good.
Katamari Forever was mostly rehashes of previous levels, with like only two or three actual new levels. And you played with weird remixed music, and weird visual filters. The gameplay was there, but the presentation was kind of off.
Touch My Katamari is the laziest cashgrab of a Katamari game, with missing features such as no item catalogue, fewer cousins, and even more rehashed gameplay ideas. And the monetisation was even worse, with progression requiring you to purchase "Fan Damacys" from the PSVita store in order to actually unlock more levels. Disgusting.
Then there were the now delisted mobile games, I Love Katamari and Katamari Amore. As far as I remember, I Love Katamari was an extremely pared-down mess that only worked with gyro controls and was basically a nothingburger of a game.
Katamari Amore had actual touch controls and played decently well, but again, most of its content was expensive DLC, with very little actually available in the base game.
And the two modern Reroll releases - they're good, but Namco took the lazy route and didn't bother including the English voices. Just like their recent Baten Kaitos release.
...
Basically, every Katamari release after the original duo has had some kind of problem, and they've been getting worse and worse as the series continues.
Since it's been such a long time since we've had a new game, I hope they've actually been working on something worthwhile. But I don't have much faith in them to be honest.
Re: Poll: Box Art Brawl - Duel: Pokémon Trading Card Game
@SoIDecidedTo
It was this Meowth card https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Meowth_(Wizards_Promo_10)
Additionally, this Venusaur card came with the Official Player's Guide for the game
https://bulbapedia.bulbagarden.net/wiki/Venusaur_(Wizards_Promo_13)
Re: Poll: Box Art Brawl - Duel: Pokémon Trading Card Game
as someone who grew up in the era of the first set of Pokémon cards, the imagery of the iconic Pokéball design from the back of the cards is ingrained into my mind. And the promise of an included limited-edition card is too tantalising to pass up.
I know the Japanese cards had a different design, which is fine, but the design in this box art is being obscured by the logo.
Also, I think the image you chose for the Japanese box art isn't actually what was printed on the box? It includes the release date, so this is probably a promotional image and not the actual box art.
Re: Talking Point: What Are You Playing This Weekend? (1st March)
I'm playing Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven.
I never played the original Romancing SaGa 2, nor the original Romancing SaGa 1, nor Minstrel Song or any other related game. The only other SaGa I played before was The Final Fantasy Legend. So my thoughts are based only on what I see in this version.
Overall, I'm enjoying the game. I enjoy the open-endedness of the exploration and the freedom to complete the quests in the order of your choosing.
For the most part, it seems to be mostly an RPG made out of nothing but sidequests. There is literally no main questline at all - rather, some of the sidequests just so happen to lead to one of the Seven as a boss, and that's considered progress when you beat them.
It's certainly unique to have an RPG with no actual main character. Instead, the main character keeps changing, because the game can seemingly arbitrarily decide that there's been a 150+ year time skip in between sidequests. I don't know what causes the timeskips to occur, but it seems to happen whenever the game feels like you've accomplished "enough" things in the current era. I guess the emperor just decided to forget about doing any more work for the rest of their natural life? Even when there were more things to do?
The inheritance system has interesting implications for the gameplay mechanics, such as passing down previously- learned skills and all that, but in a worldbuilding sense, it does feel a bit contrived.
It certainly doesn't feel like such a huge timeskip has occurred when all of the towns have the exact same layout with the exact same NPCs saying the exact same dialogue as they did 150 years ago. Kids cheering that their town is now monster-free and they can now play outside... even though their town has been monster free for over 150 years, so what the heck are they still celebrating like that for?
Every NPC in the game gets replaced with an identical "descendent" so that you don't lose access to sidequests and such... it really doesn't feel like any real history is occurring at all.
Occasionally they do do something interesting with this though - once I failed to get around to helping an ally nation before a timeskip, and in the next era, they had been overtaken by enemy soldiers, and the questline changed to liberating them. That was kinda cool. I don't know how many quests work this way though - for the most part, they all seem to patiently wait for me, no matter how many hundreds of years pass.
Maybe this was easier to suspend disbelief for this kind of thing back when it was a 1993 pixel game? In such a detailed fully-3D modern RPG, details that don't make sense like this are harder to overlook.
From a gameplay perspective, this game is pretty fun and it's nice to explore dungeons and do quests and stuff, and I like the simple turn based battles. But presentation-wise, it feels like there's a lot missing to make this world feel fully-realised and make sense. Because as it stands, it just plainly doesn't make sense.
Still having a good time overall though.
Re: Nintendo Switch Online Announces Removal Of Super Famicom Title
@BringleWorkshop
Yeah, I agree, it would be great to be able to play a proper modern collection rather than having to rely on a now-proven-to-be-unreliable service like NSO.
Capcom has released MM Battle Network collections to decent success, so hopefully they'll think about their other RPG classics.
Re: Konami Airing Suikoden "Special Program" Broadcast Next Month
@Suikoden_1986
I played Suikoden IV last year. I wrote an extremely extensive blog post about my opinions on it if you are interested in hearing a newcomer perspective.
Overall I enjoyed my time with the game, but I had a LOT of problems with it.
https://benjysgames.blogspot.com/2024/07/suikoden-iv.html
Re: Nintendo Switch Online Announces Removal Of Super Famicom Title
Well... this is certainly a worrying new precedent.
Thankfully I would think all the first-party games are safe, but there are a LOT of third-party classics on there at the moment.
Can you imagine being 30 hours deep in Breath of Fire II and then suddenly Capcom wants to release their own collection and orders Nintendo to remove it from NSO? It sounds bad, but it is absolutely not an impossible scenario by any means.
...This is literally the reason why I bought the SNK collection to play Crystalis rather than use the NSO app btw. I have never felt fully comfortable with the way the app works, and here is literally exactly my problem manifesting.
Re: 'Pokémon Champions', A New Battle-Focused Game, Announced For Switch And Mobile
My one hope for this game is that this is an official Pokémon Showdown simulator kinda thing where you can just create a team, tweak every stat, every IV, every move, exactly how you like it, and then battle online.
Knowing Pokémon's track record, this isn't likely, it's probably just a new Pokémon Battle Revolution kinda thing.
Re: Pokémon Legends: Z-A Trailer Confirms Starters And Mega Evolutions, Coming Late 2025
...they could have replaced Totodile with Popplio or something to make it match Arceus more, right? I wonder why they chose these starters
Re: Konami Airing Suikoden "Special Program" Broadcast Next Month
A whole special broadcast just for one re-release? They didn't do this for Dominus Collection or any of their previous recent games. ... are they planning to reveal actual new Suikoden content?
Or at the very least new remasters or ports?
Re: Pokémon Centre UK Releases Gorgeous New 'Loungefly' Backpack Range
i like how Togepi gets a free pass for products that rely on gen 1 nostalgia bait. despite being Pokédex number 175, Togepi is like honorary gen 1 lol
Re: Nintendo Highlights Four Brand New Games "Coming Soon" To Switch
@Solomon_Rambling
Yeah, I suppose on average, I can get through one large RPG in a month. Though it does depend on the game of course.
I do like to play smaller games in between though. As sort of palette-cleansers. Believe it or not, I can feel fatigued from playing nothing but RPGs too.
In between finishing Fantasian and starting Romancing SaGa 2 Revenge of the Seven, I played every Donkey Kong Country game for example. ...and I also played Glover on N64. literally because the eShop listing for the Switch port of Glover reminded me that I never played the N64 cart I already have. So I just... went ahead and played it lol.
Before Fantasian, my previous big RPG was actually Fire Emblem 1 NES. I played it courtesy of that limited edition version that Nintendo made available for like four months a long time ago. And I was extremely surprised at just how playable it was - I was expecting a painful old game, but it was actually really fun.
In-between Fire Emblem 1 and Fantasian, I randomly played Rygar The Legendary Adventure on PlayStation 2 as my palette-cleanser game. I also played Pocky & Rocky Reshrined and a few other miscellaneous smaller games.
Last year, in between playing Suikoden III and Suikoden IV, I played Ghost Trick Phantom Detective for DS, Patrick's Parabox on Switch, and Poinie's Poin for PlayStation 2. And some other miscellaneous smaller games that aren't coming to mind right now. It wasn't straight from 3 to 4, I had some non-RPG downtime.
It's not non-stop RPGs for me, but since they do take the longest, they feel like big milestones that tend to define my memory of the month I play them in.
The smaller games I play don't have much rhyme or reason to them. I just pick something that's been in my collection unplayed for far too long and give it a go.
Re: Nintendo Highlights Four Brand New Games "Coming Soon" To Switch
I'm getting the Suikoden 1+2 remake, and also the Lunar 1+2 remake.
So much retro RPG goodness ... and I still haven't yet played the Grandia 1+2 remake I bought a while ago, nor any the FF Pixel Remasters. And I still have Octopath II to play!
How did so many JRPGs come out! I only just finished Fantasian Neo Dimension (and I loved it), and there's already so much more to play around the corner.
Last year I played the original versions of Suikoden 1 and 2 (and 3 and 4 and Tactics), so there's no need for me to play the remaster so soon, but I still want to buy it. I have a family member who is interested in Suikoden, so I at least want to have it to show it off.
...that reminds me, though, I still need to play Suikoden 5 and Suikdoen Tierkreis. Around the time I finished Suikoden Tactics last year, both Zelda Echoes of Wisdom and UFO 50 released close to each other, so I put off starting Suikoden 5 until I had a less busy gaming schedule.
But things don't always go back on track so readily. Currently I'm playing Romancing SaGa 2 Revenge of the Seven, so Suikoden 5 will have to wait even more I guess..
Hm.. It would be nice of Konami if, after Suikoden 1 and 2, they re-released 3, 4, Tactics, and 5 next, wouldn't it? And Tierkreis. And maybe that Japan-only PSP game if we're lucky?
I think Suikoden 4 and Tactics should be bundled together just like 1 and 2 are here. But... tbh I don't think it has much likelihood of happening, because they're not the most popular games around.
Suikoden 4's encounter rate is ridiculous, and the main quest is really short, and the ship is annoying to control, and the game is too easy in general. It's not the most amazing RPG around to be fair, but regardless, fans of Suikoden 1&2 who want to play the whole saga should be given that option, I say.
Re: Super Mario NES Banger Joins Nintendo's Music App, Here's The Full Tracklist
drip feed indeed. eight minutes of soundtrack in one week.
still, it's a classic that obviously belongs on the service, but... yeah, this service is kinda. ... ... it's just kinda.
Re: Poll: Which Pokémon Game Really Deserves A Remake Next?
Hmm.
There's no option for "no more remakes please for goodness' sake" in the poll.
So I didn't vote
Re: Talking Point: What Are You Playing This Weekend? (22nd February)
I just finished playing all of the Donkey Kong Country games.
I found the Game Boy Color DKC1 at a CeX recently and bought it.
I then got the three DKC games on GBA from eBay. (DKC3 GBA seems a bit pricey usually, but I managed to win it in a bid that was lower than the buy-it-now listings, which was nice)
This is how I went about doing it: I played DKC1 on SNES NSO, and would complete a world. Then I played on GBC and completed the same world. Then I played on GBA and completed the same world again. And I would alternate like that. To see the differences between each version.
Was kind of fun to do it this way.
I did the same for DKC2 and DKC3 with their NSO and GBA versions.
DKC3 was particularly interesting with its GBA version, as it added a brand new world called Pacifica, located in the north-west of the overworld map.
(...Pacifica Northwest? made me think of Gravity Falls for no reason), and also has a completely different soundtrack to the SNES version.
But overall, for all three games, when they ported the level design over to GBA, they didn't always transfer it perfectly - sometimes an out-of-reach barrel on SNES was perfectly reachable on GBA, or a line of Gnawties that you can easily roll through on SNES would cause you to take a hit on GBA. It felt like the conversion wasn't always perfect, and the SNES originals always had the most deliberate and congruous level design, despite the GBA adding new content and improvements on top.
I also played the Game Boy DK Land games on NSO. They were fine. DK Land 1 was definitely its own thing, though it felt unrefined, and the cloud levels are just annoying.
DK Land 2 was very much trying to be a GB port of DK Country 2 with simplified level layouts. It felt a bit redundant, but it wasn't bad.
And DK Land 3 sits somewhere in between - not exactly a DKC3 rehash, but not its own entirely new thing like DK Land 1 either. It's okay. I enjoyed them.
I then played DKC Returns on the 3DS (didn't feel like buying the Switch port when I had this one in my collection already), and Tropical Freeze on Switch.
They are good games, but I found them incredibly frustrating to play at times. Tropical Freeze was much better than Returns in my opinion, but I was surprised that I found myself enjoying them a lot less than the SNES games.
I was also surprised at how extremely difficult they are in comparison. Normally you'd expect a modern Wii era game to be easier than a classic SNES era game right? Hahaha. No. DKC Returns was one of the most difficult games I've played in a long time.
For both of these games I got 100% but did not try to go for Mirror Mode / Hard Mode at all. One playthrough was enough for me.
Re: Anniversary: HAL Laboratory Is 45 Years Old Today
HAL is one of the absolute best developers out there in my opinion. Almost every single Kirby game is top notch quality, and their other output is nothing to sneeze at either.
Re: New Limited-Time Pokémon Scarlet & Violet Distribution Event Is Now Available
well.
today i booted up pokémon scarlet for the first time in a while.
i downloaded a jumpluff.
and then i turned the game off.
i'd say that was a play session well spent.
Re: Be Warned, Two NES Titles From Limited Run Games May Damage Your Console
@Princess_Lilly
The Seal of Quality doesn't check for things like a game's options menus or playability or accessibility.
It ensures that Nintendo have checked that the game is compatible with your system. It boots up, it doesn't damage your hardware, it doesn't crash constantly. Games need to pass a Lot Check which tests for these kinds of issues among other things, and when they pass, they get the seal.
Re: Be Warned, Two NES Titles From Limited Run Games May Damage Your Console
This is what happens when you don't have the Nintendo "Seal of Quality" on your products. Of course Nintendo themselves aren't going to license your new NES releases in this day and age, so I suppose any newly made NES games are going to have to be scrutinised more.
It's good that this issue was caught, but it's rather worrying that products that can damage your vintage consoles are being sold to regular people who may not be savvy about technical things.
Re: Nintendo Music's Latest Update Adds 3DS 'SteetPass Mii Plaza' Soundtrack
this is for all of us with streetpass nostalgia.
simpler times for many of us. ...
Re: Funko Fusion Is Deemed A "Complete Commercial And Critical Failure"
Funko is one of the least-appealing products I've ever seen, and I have absolutely no idea why anyone would buy them, nor why they are popular enough for them to fill game shops and toy shops shelves to the ridiculous extent they do.
Even for Funkos made for brands I like, the fact that they remove their eyes and replace them with giant black dots, or the fact that they force everything into this weird misshapen square head shape... it feels more like an insult to the character design than it does a celebration of them, don't you think? I truly truly don't understand how Funkos have ever gotten so popular.
Re: PS Vita's 'Ys Memoire: Memories Of Celceta' Lands Switch Remaster In Japan This May
@8thDoctor
6 is definitely more likely than 5.
Ys 6 plays similarly to Origin and Oath in Felghana, so it will have an audience for fans of those games. And it also has a modern Steam version. The Steam version of Ys 6 doesn't have the extra Konami-developed content from the PS2 and PSP versions (extra dungeon on PS2, extra minigames on PSP), but it does have added fast-travel. If they port Ys 6, they'll likely just port over the Steam version since they own all the content in that one.
Ys 5 on the other hand, only has a bad SNES game and an even worse PlayStation 2 game, and has never had a modern version or an English version at all. It was technically ported to PC once on a CD-ROM in 2003 for Windows XP computers in Japan as part of "Ys Complete Works", but it was just the SNES ROM on a disc.
More likely, Ys 5 is going to get a Celceta-style brand new overhaul, rather than any kind of port. It just makes more sense when you see how they've handled the rest of the series - anything 16-bit or older doesn't see the light of day (Aside from the EGG CONSOLE releases, which seem to be available for historical value more than anything), and now only proper Falcom-developed and Falcom-owned versions are allowed.