alienjesus wrote:Louie
I always mistakenly remember them as Joeys--.
alienjesus wrote:I actually found the game easy as long as you kept the line bomb power up from world 3. I only died once after that point, and I went back and got the powerr up again. You can very quickly create lines of 10 bombs using it to trap enemies, block their route, and destroy stages very quickly. Keeping hold of the pass through bombs/blocks power ups can get you out of trouble you get yourself in with it too.
Yeah, I noticed, from some long-plays, that the final boss is really easy with all the powerups, but I brute forced it the way I would have as a kid. I was able to hold on to powerups a lot more easily in Saturn Bomberman, which is probably why that game seemed so much easier. (Also, I think Saturn Bomberman was just generally easier.)
alienjesus wrote:I miss the animal buddies, but with Kirby's more advanced 'Superstar' movesets being more common now, I guess they don't have as much of a place anymore. Coo was clearly the best. I've 100%ed Dreamland 2, and that last boss was indeed a jerk. I've not done the same for 3 yet though!
I love Coo's broom ability, where he becomes a feather duster, in Dream Land 3. It makes me actually giggle. I made sure to pick up all the heart stars, in Dream Land 3, before I left a world, and it added a lot of time to just beating the game. It probably hampered my enjoyment of the game, a little, because of it (although the mini-game stages are usually a crap shoot, and legitimately dumb). For that reason, I'm liable to not recommend bothering with the true ending, but the fight itself is at least slightly easier than the one in Dream Land 2.
Some really classic soundtracks in those games, too. Just thinking about the games brings up a ton of themes in my head.
alienjesus wrote:I really enjoyed Yoshi's Island when I played it back when, but I find it hard to go back to now to replay. Not sure what it is about it, but the slow pacing just fails to keep my interest as easily, even though I really like the game.
Yeah, I did ultimately enjoy playing through it, but would also have trouble revisiting it later. I have zero interest in getting 100 pts in each stage, and the bonus stages, too. It's actually one game I really wish had a boss-rush mode, though. I would definitely play that.
alienjesus wrote:I also prefer DKC3 to the other games in the series. I like it's slightly lighter tone, I like how different the characters feel, and I think the level design is the best in the series. However, I still enjoy the first 2 games. I'm not nearly as in love with the aesthetic of DKC2 as everyone else is, and I think of all the games it has the most bizarrely erratic difficulty balance. Diddy Kong also feels useless, as everything he does, Dixie does better. Kiddy and Donkey might be objectively worse than Dixie and Diddy in 3 and 1, but at least they feel like they have some advantages, particularly in their size and being able to deal with bigger enemies.
I definitely most enjoyed the level design in DKC 3, but even just little things, like the method of moving between worlds: It's such a smooth operation in DKC 3, and such an amazing pain in the ass in the other two.
I agree that DKC 2's difficulty feels a bit uneven, but I thought Dixie and Diddy had some decent trade-offs. I ended up playing as both, pretty evenly, because Diddy felt a little more nimble, with a slightly higher peak to his jumps, while Dixie, obviously, has the hair-tactics. That said, I didn't really feel like they needed to work in tandem to complete their trials.
alienjesus wrote:pierrot wrote:Clockwork Knight
I picked this up recently, sounds like I need to sit down and play through it. How long is it overall? Interesting that the character is called Tongara in the Japanese version - it's certainly easier to say than Pepperachou or whatever the English name for him is.
Just to be on the safe side, I wouldn't go in expecting something console selling. For something that I thought would be, barely, average, I felt by the end that it was well above average. There's a toy train stage, early on, that's probably the low point of the game, though. It's pretty short: I'm pretty sure it was five levels, with two stages and a boss in each.
Yeah, in the manual his full name is Tongara du Pepperoucho. Made sense to me to just call him Tongara, since two other characters would also be called Pepperoucho, otherwise.
alienjesus wrote:I don't get the love for Zwei myself. I found it to be incredibly easy (I blasted through it the first time I ever played it) and really empty feeling compared to the first game, where you were constantly kept on your toes. The first game was very hard though, which required me to change how I held the controller. Hitting any of A,B or C would make you shoot, so by putting your fingers on all 3 and rapidly tapping them in succession would make you shoot super fast. I can't comment on the soundtracks as it's been some time since I played them both, but it's probably worth noting that I can remember a few tunes from Panzer 1, but nothing at all comes to mind for Zwei.
Yeah, I had actually picked up on that rapid fire technique while I was playing, but I tend to tire quickly of holding a controller like that. The first game is absolutely the more intense experience, but I feel like that's largely due to the limited continues. I think the main reason I was able to beat it this time was because I did so well with my shot-down-percentage in the first four episodes, and didn't get hung up on the episode 4 boss. The framerate in the original was really an issue for me, though. It was a bit difficult to keep track of projectiles, and enemies. Also the way the camera moves made it really difficult to actually shoot down projectiles coming in from inconvenient angles.
I agree that PD1 has some really memorable tracks, but aside from the title music, and the episode 1 BGM, I don't remember much of it. Those two tracks do feel really sweeping, and grand; I feel like those qualities of the soundtrack make up for some of the ways in which the original falls short in terms of world building. PD1 feels a little bit like a game that hit a "deliverable" point in development, and was whisked out the door of Team Andromeda. On the other hand, I feel Zwei had a little more of a gestation period, where it got to sort of marinade in audio/visual bliss. One of the main things about the game that I attribute to my enjoyment of it (aside from the stage backdrops) was the emphasis on the bond between dragon and rider. That's one thing that I was happy to see in Orta, as well.
alienjesus wrote:I liked Orta, and considered it better than Zwei, but I agree with some of your points. My biggest obstacle for Orfta was playing it on XBox. I just HATE that controller. I found it hard getting used to utilising the boost and brake mechanic too.
Agree to disagree? Zwei and Saga are about equally fantastic, for me, but I think of the series as pretty much two tiers of quality (not including Mini).
Yeah, I have an S controller, and the face buttons were murder on my thumb. I've never been able to even tolerate the Duke. I had a fair amount of difficulty keeping up with which button was boost, which one was break, and where I was in the order of dragon transformations. There's just a little too much going on, on screen, at any particular time for that set up to feel reasonable.
The thing I hated most about the game was that one attack the final boss did, with repeated bundles of homing laser, that all had to be locked on to in order to not be hit by it. If they weren't so ridiculously damaging, it might be okay, but I was on that boss for over an hour because of that attack. Got an S rank for that episode once I did actually beat it, though--.