1-50
51: Digital Devil Story: Megami Tensei II (FC)
52: Biohazard 2 (DC)
53: Biohazard 3: Last Escape (DC)
54: Biohazard Code: Veronica - Kanzenban (DC)
55: Lunar: The Silver Star (SCD)
56: Escape Goat (GOG)
57: Magicool (PCE-CD)
58: Hotline Miami (GOG)
59: Berserk: Millennium Falcon Hen Wasurebana no Shou (DC)
60: Dennou Senki Virtual On: Oratorio Tangram (DC)
61: Mr. Driller (DC)
62: Zombie Revenge (DC)
63: Fighting Vipers 2 (DC)
64: Frame Gride (DC)
65: Space Channel 5 (DC)
66: Space Channel 5 - Part 2 (DC)
67: Super Street Fighter II X: Grand Master Challenge (DC)
68: Street Fighter III: New Generation (DC)
69: Street Fighter III: 2nd Impact (DC)
70: Street Fighter III: 3rd Strike (DC)
71:
Mr. Driller: Drill Spirits (DS)
72:
Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together (Saturn)
I popped in Drill Spirits for the first time in nearly a decade. Finished the last two time attack stages, and that was that. Turns out, the one I hadn't finished (to open up the final stage) was "The Mansion" stage from the first game. So that was fun and easy. I like Mr. Driller as a concept, but I'm not a huge fan of this version. I'll stick to the original.
--
Tactics Ogre was like my white whale this year (I started it back in mid-June), and I'm quite happy to have brought it all home, just under the wire, before the end of 2016.
So, for starters, the Saturn version doesn't have many differences compared to the PS or SNES versions: Extra horizontal resolution compared to SNES (except for in some cutscenes), reworked soundtrack, voice over in a number of cutscenes (which is very nice), no jerky weirdness when casting spells and such like the PS version. Load times in general are pretty agreeable, with the only loading of note being on booting the game (or soft resetting, which I did a lot of), starting the game, and getting into and out of encounters / floors. It's a very inviting package, aesthetically, and plays without any hiccups.
I'll also get this out of the way: The story is absurdly good. It is easily up there with BoF: Dragon Quarter, the Suikoden trilogy, Chrono Cross, Legend of Mana, and Shenmue I/II in terms of story; Perhaps it's a little better than Terra Phantastica in that regard, also. The story is aided in part by being a narrative sequel to Ogre Battle, but is still in a completely different league entirely. From the start, it throws the player into the heat of political strife, and the plight of a Kosovan-esque people trying to make sense of recent events in their history. With the help of some characters from Ogre Battle, one gets to choose a path toward the reunification of the continent, with plenty of pitfalls, and alliance with a variety of different characters--either garnered through altruism and a common objective, or tenuously accepted out of fear or selfish motives--along the way. One rather unfortunate thing is that many of the allied characters don't play very significant roles in the story. I really liked Olivia, and was really happy that she was displayed so prominently in the ending I got, but despite always having her in my active group, she didn't really have any lines after I recruited her. Speaking of the ending:
Obviously the story and presentation is great, but sadly, I did not enjoy the gameplay. Battles (even extremely easy ones like a lot of the random encounters) are way too arduously plodding in pace, and generally drawn out. I had 70 hours clocked in either before or after Haym Castle, which is just before the final area: itself, a torturous place, that at minimum, is a gauntlet of 10 maps--and still not as bad as the 100 floor Temple of the Dead. That 70 hours also doesn't factor in the hours of resetting I did grinding the first floor of the bonus dungeon to farm for Glass Pumpkins and other equipment. I also spent a ton of time leveling units in Training, but there's just way too many maps, and too many of them are completely inconsequential (but required). Early maps tend to put an ally unit three turns away from any other ally unit's intervention, but about two turns away from being set upon by the enemy hoard. On the flip side, much later in the game, almost every map turns into a collection of candy-asses, that are really only a threat if one really made a mistake in deploying units. Speaking of "deploying units," one has to set up the load-out before seeing anything about the map, which could be chock full of zombies that can only be defeated by using Exorcism or Banish, or killing all of them before any reanimate. In other words, one could be completely screwed without certain abilities/classes. So the expectation is, what, go into the battle, see what's happening, then reload the save to pick a better load-out? If not that, then wipe and try again? The most annoying thing to me is the random battles, though. It's not possible to run from encounters, and random encounters take too long; So, I would constantly be moving one town at a time, saving every time I moved, and resetting the game whenever I got a random encounter, because it was ultimately much faster than wasting time on a bunch of useless encounters.
In terms of mechanics, it's pretty boring, as well. Classes are pretty uninteresting, with some really ham handed utility (I'm looking at you, healers). Most of them seem downright useless. Stats start to rack up by the hundreds later in the game, but new equipment is usually only affecting stat bonuses by single digits. By the end of the game, I had a gunner who could theoretically shoot at anything on the entire map, and Habolim, with a skill from the Temple of the Dead that let him turn his DEX into attack damage (got it up to ~350 damage on the final boss) which was mostly all I needed other than a couple mages. When it's not kind of boring, the game is usually a pain in the ass, in terms of its core gameplay. So, there's that. Also, the terrain
ALWAYS fucked me when I would shoot a ranged weapon, but I never saw the same thing happen to the computer.
Ultimately I only really care about this game for the story. It can be fun, but I just don't really know what they were trying to do with the mechanics. Terra Phantastica is still my standard-bearer for SRPG mechanics. For that reason, I'm unlikely to really play this game again, but I can re-watch all the cutscenes in the Warren Report, so I don't really feel much need to, since Neutral is the only acceptable path.
I played enough of this game, and I've written more than enough about it. I'm ready to leave it behind me, back in 2016.