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I'm always happy to see someone play (or better yet finish) a King's Field.

The Ancient City isn't a game for everybody, admittedly. You didn't really touch on any of the things I loved about it. The incredible immersion, the dark oppressive atmosphere, the spooky sense of isolation, the large variety of monsters, the high level of overall challenge with no hand holding, the numerous secret rooms and items, the awesome OST, the consistently gloomy graphics, the continuous sense of discovery, and plenty of other positives in my book.

It is a long game though, I agree. I beat it without using a walkthrough or strategy guide, and it took me about 34 hours to do so.

Exhuminator wrote:Elkin, ya gotta get yer mitts on this shmup:

Steam-Heart's

Play the PC98 original. The ports were censored.

I'm downloading a PC98 emulator now so I can try it out. Normally I hate emulation, but that's an obscure console (at least in the States) that I'll probably never actually own. At least not for a long, long time.

1/16: Diablo III (PC)
1/19: Picross E (3DS DL)
1/23: Baroque (Wii)
2/5: LocoRoco (PSP)
3/31: Picross e2 (3DS DL)
4/7: Stardew Valley (Steam)
4/8: Voices From the Sea (Steam)
4/10: X-Note (Steam)
4/11: To the Moon (Steam)
4/19: Atelier Totori: The Adventurer of Arland (PS3)
4/19: Aquapazza: Aquaplus Dream Match (PS3)
6/19: Steins;Gate (PS3)
7/11: Yoshi’s Woolly World (Wii U)
7/13: Muramasa Rebirth (Vita)
7/13: Strider 2 (PS1 Classics)
7/16: Planetarian ~The Reverie of a Little Planet~ (Steam)
7/16: Narcissu (Steam)
7/26: Crimzon Clover: World Ignition (GOG)
7/28: LocoRoco 2 (PSP)
7/30: Criminal Girls: Invite Only (Vita)

Total: 20 games

Crimzon Clover
I don't play too many SHMUPs since a lot of them seem a bit on the very difficult side, but for some reason I decided to give this one a shot. While I'm completely terrible at it (no way could I have 1CCd this without a lot of frustration), it's still a lot of fun. It gets pretty hectic at times with all the bullets, explosions, and points everywhere which I really liked, but sometimes that also meant I wouldn't see an enemy and run into it accidentally. Still, it's a game I could see myself going back to and see I could not die as often ha.

LocoRoco 2
Pretty much the same game as the original (tilt the world around the cute LocoRocos to get to the exit), but now you can go underwater and swing on vines. There are also some mini-games I suppose, like a whack-a-mole game and a SHMUP section, but I didn't really think they added much to the game. So really I didn't think there was anything in here that was better than the original, but at least there wasn't much that annoyed me either. Only minor annoyance was throughout the game, you unlock new abilities. This is fine, but two of the abilities you unlock are pretty much the same as another you unlock. Other than that though, I thought it was an alright game.

Criminal Girls
I'm really having trouble with starting to talk about this game. On one hand, it's a turn-based RPG that does something a little different and is a more interesting because of it, but on the other hand there are sections that many very vocal people have complained about being unnecessarily censored and avoid the game like the plague because of it. So I'll start just talking about the game and I'll try and address the censorship a bit afterwards (and hopefully I'll not sound completely silly doing so ha).

You play as a guy who took on a job to help seven high school girls redeem their "sins". In order to redeem themselves, they need to traverse a large tower and pass several tests (which just means beating up a bunch of baddies). The story really doesn't get much more complicated than that. You do learn a little bit about the different girls and about their sins, but even with that they're not particularly deep.

While the story and characters are a little basic, the gameplay is much more interesting. Throughout most of the game, you'll be battling enemies with four girls in turn-based battles. In normal turn-based RPG where you can defeat your enemies with any option you have available, Criminal Girls instead has each of your girls choose a semi-random option that you can choose from. You can only choose one option per turn (although you can also use one item and switch one girl per turn), so you'll need to decide which of the four is the best move to make. Sometimes this means you're at the whims of RNG to get the best move, but I found that even if I didn't get the best move it didn't really make the battle frustrating. Certain moves will always appear in certain situations (like Guard if the enemy is charging an attack), so I think this helped keep the frustration down a bit. This also made the required grinding MUCH better than most RPGs, as some moves will always appear on the first turn if there are more than two enemies, which often would insta-kill everything. Not that there is too much grinding required (other than for the final boss bleh), but it was still really nice.

Between battling monsters, you will also need to "Motivate" your girls to learn new skills. Now the Motivation mini-games are a little troublesome for me to talk about (as they're a little difficult for me to describe ha), but I'll try my best. The point of the mini-games is to get the "temptations" off the girls, which vary from tickling them to using some sort of taser-thing. Of course, because anime, the girls are dressed in various outfits while posing in a sexy way. There's never any nudity, but Motivating the girls is required as many of the skills they learn are extremely useful.

Unfortunately for those who like or don't mind this sort of thing, there is a bit of censorship here. What makes sense to me is where they put some extra fog over the younger-looking girl's crotches. Makes sense to me since I know some there's often legal problems with this sort of thing. What doesn't make sense to me is the added fog on some of the older-looking (and obviously 18+) girl's crotches but not others. I personally don't care that much, but it just seems almost like they randomly choose which girls to add fog to. There's also additional fog that was added to all the girls, but it doesn't really cover anything but the background and more of the tamer images. I really have no clue what the point of that fog was. I really don't. Despite that however, I really don't think it's enough to ruin the game. It's a little odd at times, yeah, but many people have stated they would avoid this game solely because of the censorship which I think is pretty silly.

EDIT: I forgot that the voices from the Motivation segments were also taken out Still don't think it ruins it or anything though.

So if you can handle boobs and little censorship, Criminals Girls is a pretty fun RPG. It's not that long either (took me about 36 hours without doing the post-game content), so you wouldn't have to devote an incredibly large amount of time to it either

Exhuminator wrote:The Ancient City isn't a game for everybody, admittedly. You didn't really touch on any of the things I loved about it. The incredible immersion, the dark oppressive atmosphere, the spooky sense of isolation, the large variety of monsters, the high level of overall challenge with no hand holding, the numerous secret rooms and items, the awesome OST, the consistently gloomy graphics, the continuous sense of discovery, and plenty of other positives in my book.

I think some of that is simply subjective. I didn't find it to be that immersive - could be the poor controls, could be the very simplistic AI/patterns, could just be a difficult prospect for PS2 level graphics now (much as I still think a lot look nice, I can't say I get lost in 'em).

Atmosphere worked at times, but just wasn't consistent. As I mentioned, quite a lot of the game world simply isn't interesting, and a good part of that is low detail level.
Later environments, like the Dark temple (or whatever it was, the ruined dome half underwater), for example, was realized enough to actually stand out, and wasn't betrayed by scale. It actually told a story (and had the stone markers to accentuate it), held a relevant item, and added to the experience despite not actually having many items in it. Reminded me of Ash Lake. Most of the architecture didn't really do that.

I think, for me, the relative lack of optional areas made the sense of exploration and discovery somewhat less. Finding absolutely everything wasn't necessary, but you had to find a lot, so it set the tone for the game in general. When poking around in all the corners, pushing all the walls, etc is how you progress in the first place, it's less of a thrill to find something. It's simply expected.

Oh, well...We don't all have to like the same things. (I loved King's Field IV, but I understand why someone would not feel the same way.)

Speaking of immersive FPS games, have either of you played Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth or Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay? They didn't encourage exploration the same way as King's Field, but I enjoyed both of them immensely.

prfsnl_gmr wrote:Speaking of immersive FPS games, have either of you played Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth or Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay? They didn't encourage exploration the same way as King's Field, but I enjoyed both of them immensely.

Give this man a dollar.

prfsnl_gmr wrote:Speaking of immersive FPS games, have either of you played Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth or Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay? They didn't encourage exploration the same way as King's Field, but I enjoyed both of them immensely.

I haven't played it yet, but Call of Cthulhu is on my "games to play soon" list.

1. Ys Book II: Ancient Ys Vanished - The Final Chapter PSN Vita
2. 3D Streets of Rage 2 3DS eShop
3. 3D Gunstar Heroes 3DS eShop
4. 3D Sonic the Hedgehog 2 3DS eShop
5. 3D OutRun 3DS eShop
6. Mugen Senshi Valis II: The Fantasm Soldier PCE CD
7. Mugen Senshi Valis III: The Fantasm Soldier PCE CD
8. Bomberman PCE CD
9. Rocket Knight Adventures Mega Drive
10. Trax Game Boy
11. Panic Bomber Virtual Boy
12. Arcana Heart 3: Love MAX!!!!! Vita
13. Super Monkey Ball Gamecube
14. Lost Kingdoms Gamecube
15. Sonic Adventure 2 Battle Gamecube
16. 1080° Avalanche Gamecube
17. Bubble Ghost Game Boy
18. Catrap Game Boy
19. 3D Thunder Blade 3DS eShop
20. 3D AfterBurner II 3DS eShop
21. 3D Fantasy Zone II W: The Tears of Opa-Opa 3DS eShop
22. Ikaruga Gamecube
23. Dungeon Travelers 2: The Royal Library & The Monster Seal Vita
24. New Adventure Island PCE
25. WarioWare Twisted! GBA
26. Dragon Warrior NES
27. The Legend of Zelda: Majora's Mask 3D 3DS eShop
28. Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors DS
29. Gargoyle's Quest Game Boy
30. Oddworld: Abe's Oddysee PS1
31. Puyo Puyo CD PCE CD
32. Retro City Rampage DX 3DS eShop
33. Super Street Fighter IV: 3D Edition 3DS eShop
34. Super Puyo Puyo Tsuu Remix SFC
35. Super Aleste SNES
36. Sega Rally Championship Saturn
37. Knuckles' Chaotix 32X
38. Mystic Quest Game Boy[/b]
39. Nano Assault EX
40. BOXBOY!
41. Gunman Clive

Quick updates for these three, before I sit down and type out an much bigger post for another couple games I beat tomorrow:

Nano Assault EX

Another humble bundle game. In this one you fly around on the surface of some body cells shooting viruses in your tiny nanobot spaceship. The game is a twin stick shooter on Mario Galaxy style 3D environments. You can shoot with the face buttons (which I preferred) or with the 2nd stick on a New 3DS, which I found inaccurate. The game also features levels where you fly into the screen StarFox style. These didn't control so well - aiming with the right stick never felt natural, and your ship moved very slowly and stiffly - it felt a little too much like Thunder Blade and not enough like StarFox for my liking.

Nano Assault was fine - there are 60 levels and it doesn't outstay it's welcome too much. It just never feels special - I didn't regret my time playing it, but I remember very little about it - it's fairly forgettable. The best word to describe the game is 'servicable' - I've not been too impressed by the Humble Bundle offering so far!



Gunman Clive

I've heard a lot of people talk up this one, and I guess it's OK? It plays like Mega Man if Mega Man was really floaty and imprecise feeling. It's a good time, but it's over too quickly at about 20 minutes for a run through on normal mode. There are unlockable characters to play as, and the 20 minutes are an enjoyable romp especially for the game's low price, but this is yet another popular indie game where I just don't have the love everyone else does. Graphically I think it's interesting, but ultimately kinda dull and generic looking, and the music I forgot as soon as I heard it. Gunman Clive is good enough, but it's not truly great.



BOXBOY!

So after a bunch of enjoyable enough but underwhelming indie titles, I wasn't expecting a lot going into this. But as it turns out, this game is a blast. You play as a Boxboy (or BOXBOY! I guess) who has the power to jump a little and create boxes. By creating chains of boxes you can create platforms and towers, use them to create a hook to latch onto ledges, create shields or snake through gaps - there's a lot of ways to use your power, and the levels constantly introduce new mechanics to show it off.


Boxboy is a fairly easy game overall, although some of the bonus collectables in game can take some clever maneuvering to figure out. The game has a fun and charming style with a very clean and simple aesthetic made of solid black lines and white backgrounds. The music is eclectic and bouncy whilst being very minimal. The story is also presented with minimal animations and has a sense of mystery about it, even if it has very little presence in the experience.

BOXBOY! is a fantastic experience that everyone should pick up. I'm very much looking forward to playing the sequel BOXBOXBOY! sometime soon.

ElkinFencer10 wrote:

prfsnl_gmr wrote:Speaking of immersive FPS games, have either of you played Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth or Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay? They didn't encourage exploration the same way as King's Field, but I enjoyed both of them immensely.

I haven't played it yet, but Call of Cthulhu is on my "games to play soon" list.

Move it up. It's seriously wonderful.

laurenhiya21 wrote:fog and crotches

I appreciate the amount of detail you went into about how the fog bothers the crotches. The censorship was dumb, yes. It was totally a great idea to diminish the sole reason anyone is interested in the game. The gameplay sounds decent though, I'll buy it one day.

isiolia wrote:I think some of that is simply subjective.

Oh it's all subjective. My thoughts and your thoughts concerning the various merits of KF4 are both totally subjective. But even though we don't agree on all of it, I still appreciate that you took the time to play through the game. It's one of the greatest hidden gems of the PS2 IMO.

prfsnl_gmr wrote:Speaking of immersive FPS games, have either of you played Call of Cthulhu: Dark Corners of the Earth or Chronicles of Riddick: Escape from Butcher Bay?

I beat Butcher Bay many years ago on PC, I definitely enjoyed the game. One of those exception to the rule experiences (movie license games tend to suck but Riddick does not).

Never played C:DCotE, but I have the PC version. I was put off about it after a dude I knew played through it and ranted about how horrible it was. He tends to have shit taste in gaming though, so I'm not taking his word or anything.