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The only graphical issues I noticed occurred when the camera was zoomed in really close to the characters. Some definite blurriness there. But this is optional, and not generally an effective vantage point anyway.

As for the padding in the game....... I probably have a lower tolerance than most, as I'm mainly a 2nd/3rd/4th gen guy. The "average gamer" today is probably used to that many cutscenes and whatnot.

Overall it's a lot like Ys Seven, but a tad worse. I can't quite articulate why at the moment, I just recall enjoying Ys Seven more.

The Super Famicom Ys IV and Ys V are my least favorite Ys games (and the Famicom version of part I, if you wanna throw a botched port into the mix). Book I & II on Turbo CD, IV on PC Engine CD, and Origin are the three standouts.

Anyhow, I think you'll enjoy this one. Oh, and I did get 100% map completion.

Nice review, Bone. I'll definitely be on the look out for the game when I get a Vita. Only problem is now I really want to play Origin (which I can't because my desktop is busted atm :l)

1/10: Superbrothers: Sword & Sorcery EP (Steam)
1/10: Rusty's Real Deal Baseball: Bat & Switch (3DS DL)
1/11: Time Fcuk (Steam)
1/11: Coil (Steam)
1/17: Portal 2 (Steam)
1/31: Tales of Xillia (PS3) (re-beat 3/31)
2/12: Tokyo Jungle (PSN)
2/22: LoZ: Four Swords Anniversary Edition (3DS DL)
4/25: Stanley Parable (Steam)
4/28: BattleBlock Theatre (Steam)
5/3: Fragile Dreams: Farewell Ruins of the Moon (Wii)
5/9: Excite Truck (Wii)
5/14: Elebits (Wii)
5/26: Trauma Center: Under the Knife 2 (DS)
6/9: Klonoa: Door to Phantomile (PSN)
6/11: Tappingo (3DS DL)

Total: 16 games

Tappingo is a little puzzle game where you reveal a picture by extending coloured blocks. The blocks keep extending until they hit something, and each block has a number telling you how long they need to be to finish the puzzle. The puzzles are pretty simple, since there isn't any penalty for choosing to extend blocks out of order and you can extend and contract the blocks as many times as you need. I still found it enjoyable though, since it kind of made me think of Picross in a way (which I really love), but I kind of wish there were more puzzles or some more challenging ones. I think there were 104 puzzles total, each taking around 5 minutes (whereas difficult Picross puzzles can take me 20+ minutes)... But it was only a few bucks so I guess that's really not too bad a deal. There's a sequel as well so I'll probably check it out sometime in the future.

Luke wrote:Just noticed SirPoPo beat Marble Madness, something I didn't know you could do.

Marble Madness is a game I haven't played since I was under five feet but really enjoyed. Is there a boss? There can't be a boss; right?

Right. 6 stages, last one has a lot of obstacles as well as a really interesting final screen, then score is figured out. If you "died" more than 20 times, they cap it at that, because you lose 1,000 points off your final score for each death.

Xeogred wrote:BoneSnapDYs

I approve of this name change. Make it so!

Really delayed response to a previous conversation, but:

I love Ecco the Dolphin (obviously). It's one of the two most profound video game experiences I've had in my life. The other is Mass Effect. These two games have something in common.
Not gonna lie, this blew my mind when I first realized it.

1. Spelunky
2. Race the Sun
3. Renegade Ops
4. Orcs Must Die 1
5. Gun Point
6. Rogue Shooter

New:
Many I have forgotten to post about since I have not updated since Jan and:
7. Killing Floor
8. Grim Dawn - end of Act 3
9. Super Meat Boy
10. Toy Soldiers
11. Hotline Miami

7. I have played Killing Floor since the UT2k4 mod, but since we started playing it on random Thursdays, I have finally gotten the kill on the patriarch in six player on every official base map - Hillbilly Horror was the last.

8. Titans Quest, without rubberbanding, and a bigger world. Whats not to love? It will be installed for a long time. Grenado is still the best ability in the game - though Pox is just as amazing.

9. Took me two years, but the stupid game is finally done. Base game only, I played through about half of the darkworld maps, screw those things.

10. The Kaiser is defeated, his robo friends are next. The base game is simple tower defense with the ability to control tanks and planes. Not ground breaking by any means. But the concept is awesome. You are toy soldiers, like Britains, fighting in a model environment. But once you figure out a howitzer and two machine guns is the best level 1 and 2 you can get, then swap the machine guns out for mortars once you can get them to level 3 and you just sit in a tank for the rest of the match taking out tanks, the game is simple. And a level 3 anti air is stupidly powerful. I cant wait to move onto coldwar, then warchest. He-man is going down!

11. Bought it Tuesday, beat it Saturday. While it is a murder sim with a crazy id, ego, superego story line, it is a modern day arcade game that is engrossing. It is fast, furious, and a giant puzzle with an amazing soundtrack. I got Bs or As on every map, not going to go crazy for A+'s.

In progress:
Witcher 1 - at the end of Act 3
FTL - working on it, its just annoying sometimes

1. Painkiller - PC
2. Front Mission 4 - PS2
3. Wasteland 2 - PC
4. Arcanum - PC
5. X-COM Terror from the Deep - PC
6. Military Madness - TurboGrafx-16
7. Unreal - PC
8. Shadowrun - SNES
9. Warcraft III - PC
10. Dungeon Keeper - PC
11. Final Fantasy X-2 HD - PS3
12. Descent - PC
13. Quake Mission Pack 2 - Dissolution of Eternity - PC
14. Quake 2 Mission Pack 2 - Ground Zero - PC
15. Sokobond - PC
16. Hybrid Heaven - N64
17. Sonic the Hedgehog - Genesis
18. Castlevania - NES
19. Super Castlevania IV - SNES
20. Castlevania III - NES
21. Castlevania II - NES
22. Castlevania Rondo of Blood - Turbo CD
23. Heretic: Shadow of the Serpent Riders - PC
24. Fractal - PC
25. Kirby's Adventure - NES
26. Pillars of Eternity - PC
27. Bioshock 2: Minerva's Den - PC
28. Command & Conquer Generals: Zero Hour - PC
29. Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves - NES
30. Punch-Out!! - NES
31. Doom 3 - PC
32. The Even More Incredible Machine - PC
33. Contra - NES
34. Dark Forces - PC
35. Jedi Knight: Dark Forces II - PC
36. X-Wing - PC
37. TIE Fighter - PC
38. Bloodborne - PS4
39. Gradius - NES
40. Marble Madness - NES
41. The Witcher 3 - PC
42. Mega Man X5 Zero Playthrough - PSX
43. Wolfenstein The Old Blood - PC
44. Might and Magic Book 1 - PC

Got my old school on and finished this classic. Might and Magic is a game that is in the tradition of Wizardy and The Bard's Tale before it, but it manages to add its own flair that makes it an interesting game beyond just the historical value of it.

Unlike the other two games I mentioned, Might and Magic does not start you off with a goal. The subtitle of the game "The Secret of the Inner Sanctum" is the closest you get to an end goal and even the manual only tells you that you should explore the world and see things. And the game is really set up for you to discover things on your own.

The biggest thing that makes Might and Magic stand out is that it has an overworld. Now, for JRPG fans this doesn't sound like much, but back in the 80's this was unheard of for first person dungeon crawlers, with the Ultima series being the only one to transition between first person dungeons and an overworld. But unlike Ultima, the overworld in Might and Magic is still first person. This ends up creating a fairly mazelike overworld, though some of that comes from false walls. For example, if a wall is a line of pinetrees you almost always can walk through it; the goal is to simulate a forest. On the other hand, a wall of mountains is impassible. The game uses the different wall textures to create a fairly coherent fantasy world that matches up with the stylized world map provided in the game. There's a desert in the northeast, a swamp in the southeast, snowcapped mountains in the northwest, and an ocean in the southwest. It's all very cool when you stop and think about it, especially for 1986.

Now, as you explore the world and start mapping everything you're going to start to run into quests. The very first quest you get is designed to help you explore the world, as it requires you to visit all five cities to get the clues necessary to find a key item elsewhere in the world (and that item doesn't spawn until you do the quest, so you can't skip it with spoilers). The conclusion to this chain leaves you with a key and no idea of where to go from there. But once you can successfully complete this you have enough experience under your belt (both in game and out) to start exploring the wider world. You will stumble upon clues and NPCs who give you hints about what's going on in the world.

The actual conclusion to the game comes very quickly, though. You learn that a king is being impersonated and upon confronting him you're tossed in a dungeon. This dungeon has a really neat puzzle in it; the secret is literally hidden in the walls of the dungeon, in that if you look at the dungeon mapped out the walls spell out a message. Upon solving this puzzle you get a large hint to the nature of the world and are told to embark upon what turns out to be the last step in the game. This last step involves the most frustrating dungeon ever created that doesn't involve teleports or spinners. Instead, the gimmick is that aside from a handful of walls around tiny rooms, every wall is invisible. The only way to map is to run face-first into everything, which includes having to spin around and hit the walls to the side of the corridor you're going down. Additionally, on this map your locate spell (which gives grid coordinates and facing) doesn't work and the game doesn't have any sort of sound when you take a step. I said "fuck that noise" and looked up a map for it; I have better things to do with my time than painstakingly map out invisoland and get occasionally wiped out by monsters that decide they don't like my face. Upon completion of this dungeon you are told the truth about the world and are given the notification that it's time for you to search out the sequel.

The game manages to keep your spellcasters and physical fighters pretty well balanced, so that all classes feel pretty essential to have. The mapping adds a lot to the enjoyment and there's a real satisfying feeling to having a completed map of the world. Definitely glad I played this, but I probably won't pick up the sequel for a while because this game definitely requires your time and attention. I had my keyboard on one leg, my tablet on the other and used my tablet for mapping and looking up spells (the game chooses spells by number with no in-game help, so you need to look up the table) and equipment (games of this era don't tell you shit about equipment).

I admire the perseverance it took to finish that game. But:

the gimmick is that aside from a handful of walls around tiny rooms, every wall is invisible. The only way to map is to run face-first into everything

Horrible game design ideas like that is why I find it incredibly hard to go back and play those first WRPGs. I mean that dungeon design was blatantly invented as a means to artificially lengthen the amount of time completing the dungeon would take. That sort of design eschews player fun factor for pure hour devouring. Ugh. I'm sure much of the game was still enjoyable, but shit like that man, shit like that.

Still, I'm very impressed you went back and finished such an archaic classic.

I finished Halo 3 and 4 recently with my co-worker. He is a huge fan of the series and wanted to show them to me, since I never played past the 2nd game.

Halo 3 was pretty dull. Not offensive, it worked fine, and shooting stuff was alright, but the game just felt really bland. Could not get into the little bit of story that was there, the environments weren't particularly interesting, no outstanding musical tracks... just, shooting things.

Halo 4 was much better. Actually got a little invested in what was happening, the environments were gorgeous, and shooting stuff was still fun. As far as campaigns go, I think 4 is probably the best. Then again, I like more personal, character-to-character interaction more than sweeping military stuff. Pleasantly surprised, both that I actually enjoyed the game, and that I beat games this year that aren't 2D.

Bard's Tale > Might and Magic > Wizardry

(the first M&M game came out in 1986? for some reason I thought the series was older)

dunpeal2064 wrote:I finished Halo 3 and 4 recently with my co-worker. He is a huge fan of the series and wanted to show them to me, since I never played past the 2nd game.

Check out Reach. It is by far the best story of all the Halos. I still like the first the most, but Reach is a close second.