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Ack
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Re: Games Beaten 2019

by Ack Mon May 06, 2019 2:57 pm

1. Dusk (PC)(FPS)
2. Project: Snowblind (PC)(FPS)
3. Soldier of Fortune: Platinum Edition (PC)(FPS)
4. Ziggurat (PC)(FPS)
5. Wolfenstein 3D: Ultimate Challenge (PC)(FPS)
6. Destiny 2 (PC)(FPS/RPG)
7. Destiny 2: Curse of Osiris (PC)(FPS/RPG)
8. Destiny 2: Warmind (PC)(FPS/RPG)

9. Destiny 2: Forsaken (PC)(FPS/RPG)
10. Star Wars: Rebel Assault (PC)(Rail Shooter)

11. Castle Werewolf (PC)(FPS)
12. Project Warlock (PC)(FPS)
13. Castle Crashers (PC)(Hack and Slash)
14. This Strange Realm of Mine (PC)(FPS)
15. BioShock Remastered (PC)(FPS)
16. BioShock 2 (PC)(FPS)
17. BioShock 2: Minerva's Den (PC)(FPS)


I probably should have posted this earlier, but I've been working my way through the BioShock series for the last few weeks and decided it was time I actually post something about what I have beaten.

BioShock Remastered

I don't really have a lot to say about this. I've played BioShock before, and it didn't impress me much then. Technically, it's a beautiful game; when it came out, the use of water was absolutely phenomenal. The Remastered version does make some visual improvements to help things run with modern visual updates, though a lot of the world now looks considerably more cartoonish. That said, I'm happy to say I still think it's a beautiful world. That's all that was changed for the Remastered edition (well, that and Steam achievements being incorporated), so if you had any other issues with the game the first time, you'll still have them.

Which means I still have them. The gunplay felt lackluster on my initial playthrough, and it still does here, though you can choose instead to focus on melee with great success. Since I'm familiar with the game already, I was able to rush through areas I'd encountered problems with before, but sometimes the game is happy to put a turret in a nasty spot to mess you up, so try to stay on your toes. As for the plot, I've complained about it previously. Yes, I get the showcasing of the failure of absolute Randian philosophy, but the most fascinating part was more about video games and how they control the player's actions, and the game went on to long to completely ruin what would have been a fantastic shock ending for me.

Then I went and played the sequel, and now I see certain things about the original in a much more positive light.

BioShock 2

I go from being just some guy stuck in the show to a full on early series Big Daddy...with nearly none of the benefits. The world is still incredible, because it's the same world. If anything, I have to detract because the ability to backtrack was removed from the second game, and that makes me realize how much I enjoyed it in the first. But basic concepts of the first game were improved upon, such as viewing the progress and benefits of research and how you perform it, a tool with the ability to hack from afar, thus changing my tactics, a dual-wielding of plasmids and weapons, and the upgrade system now featuring a third, special upgrade for each weapon.

Those are the positives. Now for the negatives. First and foremost, the controls between the first and second game change considerably. Some of these choices are understandable, even if I'm not a fan. For example, scrolling through weapons and plasmids had to change to adapt to the new dual-wielding system. But other choices are full on weird. Why is Left Ctrl now being used for health kits? I tend to bind Left Ctrl to crouch, and more than once I wasted a health kit when reacting. The special menu button also changed from H to M for some reason, which was unnecessary. Controller prompts also abound, despite my not using a controller. As someone who prefers his FPS games on a console, I always found this a subtle dig about the influence of consoles on the genre. That, and the colors clash, so it becomes a visual distraction. As someone who played twitch FPS back in the 90s, trust me, you do not want any sort of distraction. Distraction will get you fragged.

The biggest problem though is that you feel weak. I get it, you have to build up in the game, but I'm now a Big Daddy. I should be stomping fools, not nearly getting wasted by one splicer with halfway decent aim. This is countered by the power upgrades you enjoy over time, and by the end of the game you're ridiculously overpowered, but it definitely felt like a harsh awakening going from a game where I had to plan to take these guys on to another where a Joe Schmoe I'd take down with one bullet is now almost effortlessly putting the hurt on me.

As for the plot, I appreciate the juxtaposition this game has with the first. The original BioShock refutes Randian idealism, but BioShock 2 critiques unchecked collectivism and what is very much a socialist approach with an almost religious zeal. We've gone from one side of the spectrum to the other, and not only do both suck, both use similar tactics, such as fostering a cult of personality to an extreme end. The first game was about Andrew Ryan and his Great Chain, but in the sequel, it's Sophia Lamb and her urging to sacrifice yourself for the Family and Utopia. The end result? Both extremes are dehumanizing suckfests, be it individualism above all else or collectivism above all else.

And then we get to...

Minerva's Den

Which is where I fell in love with the story. Minerva's Den is easily my favorite part of BioShock 2. It not only takes all the positives (and admittedly negatives such as controls, though by now I was used to them), but it also adds in large levels that let me explore in a way that feels more natural to me. Sure, there were some restrictions, but I was basically given the keys to the kingdom in each level and told to go have fun, exploring how I like and upgrading myself through my exploration.

The story was also considerably more interesting, because instead of giving me lofty statements on some great ethical debate, I was instead exploring the humanity of a single individual dealing with loss and grief while under a tyrannical regime. It didn't matter which regime, the loss was the true focus. Basically, Minerva's Den is about a person living in a crazy world but experiencing things that are wholly relatable. Give me this one any time.

I believe Minerva's Den is also where the Protector Trials come into play in BioShock 2. The Protector Trials are a series of mini battles where you must protect a little sister gathering Adam from a corpse while splicers try to stop her. The key thing here is that your weapon loadouts are predetermined, so you have to figure out creative ways to use them. Since the enemies you encounter are generally the same, it comes down to understanding how different weapons and plasmid loadouts affect your tactics. I found new uses for tools I hadn't previously used because they weren't my usual playstyle, but now I have a much greater appreciation for them. Conversely, some weapons and plasmids I realize just don't gel. At this point, I've gotten an A or A+ rating in all trials, but it was a fun challenge while it lasted.

All in all, Minerva's Den has been my favorite part of the whole BioShock experience. I still have more to do before I completely wrap up BioShock 2, but that's my achievement hunting habit kicking in. I don't think I'll go into the third BioShock game yet since it's a radical departure from Rapture, but I will get to it some day.
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Re: Games Beaten 2019

by MrPopo Mon May 06, 2019 11:34 pm

1. Octopath Traveler - Switch
2. Dusk - PC
3. Forsaken Remastered - PC
4. Tales of Eternia - PS1
5. Resident Evil 2 (2019) - PC
6. Pokémon Trading Card Game - GBC
7. Metro Exodus - PC
8. Thronebreaker: The Witcher Tales - PC
9. Project Warlock - PC
10. Magic: The Gathering - PC
11. Ghost 1.0 - PC
12. Call of Duty 2 - PC
13. Sekiro: Shadows Die Twice - PS4
14. Revelations: The Demon Slayer - GBC
15. Mechstermination Force - Switch
16. Shadow Warrior Classic Redux - PC
17. Lost Sphear - Switch
18. Warcraft II: Beyond the Dark Portal - PC

Beyond the Dark Portal is from that era of game expansions designed specifically to start off where the previous game ended with regards to difficulty, maybe with a slightly easier first level or two. You need to be ready to go full tilt in every mission. However, there is one major saving grace; the game switched to using the multiplayer AI instead of the campaign AI. This has two implications. The first is that the map design usually starts enemy bases off with few buildings. The second is that the enemy actually needs to collect resources (and consequently, can be starved of resources). This means you are going to want to approach the missions a little differently from the base game. While in the base game you could usually just set up a defensive line and build up an overwhelming force, in this game you're going to be attacked enough that you can't just roll a tide over. And since most of the missions involve you needing to assault to set up a base you are going to want to take that force and move on to a second enemy base; there's usually two main enemy bases per mission, so taking out the less defended one will drastically improve your situation.

Storywise there was a bit more care placed into the narrative. While the base game's story can assume to have both sides mostly happening with the Humans winning and some massaging of the events this game actually has both campaigns happen (the Orc campaign starts a bit before the Human campaign and finishes before it as well). This does the work of keeping the universe open (whereas Warcraft II just ended the Orc threat) and setting up several plot threads that would be picked up in Warcraft III and WoW.
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pook99
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Re: Games Beaten 2019

by pook99 Wed May 08, 2019 11:09 pm

54. Battle Princess Madeline (switch)
55. Contra (nes)
56. Super Punch out (snes)

54. Battle Princess Madeline

Battle princess Madeline is a game that is heavily influenced by ghosts n goblins but throws in some metroid and RPG elements.

The story is lifted straight out of the princess bride. A young girl is sick and in bed, her grandfather visits her to read her a story to make her feel better. Being the little brat that she is, Madeline, would prefer to play on her phone but grandpa promises to make the story exciting and does so by inserting her and him into the story to peak her interest. Madelines ancestors spirits have all been trapped by an evil monster and it is up to Madeline, and the spirit of Fritz, the family dog, to go on an epic quest to free the spirits of her ancestors.

As soon as you fire up the game the homage to gng is obvious. Maddy moves the same way as arthur, attacks the same, and quickly unlocks a double jump similar to what you would expect from the gng series. Maddy wears armor that gets knocked off when she is hit and she is wearing pajamas instead of underwear, which is great because it would have been really weird controlling an 8 year old in her underwear.

Unlock the gng series you can carry multiple weapons at once and switch between them at will. You can also upgrade your armor and weapons by collecting gold.

The game structure is oddly done, there are 10 levels, but they don't go in a sequential order. The first half of the game is spent exploring the first 5 levels, beating bosses, collecting stuff, and doing little side quests. Each level has a warp stone so you can easily go to any level you have previously unlocked and you can access the stone at any time from the pause menu, making backtracking quick and painless. The levels themselves are fairly large, you get a map to easily navigate these levels, but the map does not show how the world is connected which makes the early portion of the game a bit confusing.

I was not sold on the game at first, I felt like the exploration aspects just added confusion and slowed the pace of the game down, they were not terrible, but they just felt unneccesary. There are also a ton of side quests with lame rewards that make them not worth the time. A big issue I have with these side quests is that they never tell you where to resolve them in the quest log. So for example, you meet a guy in a random town, he asks you to find an item. An hour or 2 later you find this item but have no way of knowing who originally gave you the quest.

Once you beat the first cluster of levels you unlock a new portal that lets you warp to 4 new levels, at this time the game becomes much more streamlined, beat a level, warp to a new one, repeat until all 4 levels are beat, warp to final level. I personally enjoy linear games more than I do exploring so I greatly preferred the second half of the game to the first.

The challenge level is definitely on the easy side. Given its heritage I was expecting a super challenging game, but it is not anywhere near as difficult as the game that inspired it. This is not necessarily a bad thing, as the game is still a lot of fun, but I just went in expecting a much harder game then I got. I also did not really love the bosses. The bosses in this game are huge bullet sponges, but their patterns are fairly simple. What this means is you get hit a few times in the beginning learning the bosses moves and then you just rotely repeat the pattern until the boss dies which takes way longer than it should, once I learned the bosses rather simplistic patterns, I just got bored fighting them.

Battle princess Madeline is a fun but flawed game. If you really want to play a game that is heavily inspred by gng than it may be worth your time but it is not a must play by any means.


@flake: Have you played Mega Man 11 yet? Definitely a must play game for fans of the series. Plague knight is fun, but scythe is much more fun. All 3 games are enjoyable though and each one has enough differences to feel unique.

@ElkinFencer: wargroove looks like a lot of fun, I'll probably pick it up on steam at some point, nice review.
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Ordinary Gamer
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Re: Games Beaten 2019

by Ordinary Gamer Thu May 09, 2019 12:07 am

pook99 wrote:54. Battle Princess Madeline (switch)
55. Contra (nes)
56. Super Punch out (snes)

54. Battle Princess Madeline

Battle princess Madeline is a game that is heavily influenced by ghosts n goblins but throws in some metroid and RPG elements.

The story is lifted straight out of the princess bride. A young girl is sick and in bed, her grandfather visits her to read her a story to make her feel better. Being the little brat that she is, Madeline, would prefer to play on her phone but grandpa promises to make the story exciting and does so by inserting her and him into the story to peak her interest. Madelines ancestors spirits have all been trapped by an evil monster and it is up to Madeline, and the spirit of Fritz, the family dog, to go on an epic quest to free the spirits of her ancestors.

As soon as you fire up the game the homage to gng is obvious. Maddy moves the same way as arthur, attacks the same, and quickly unlocks a double jump similar to what you would expect from the gng series. Maddy wears armor that gets knocked off when she is hit and she is wearing pajamas instead of underwear, which is great because it would have been really weird controlling an 8 year old in her underwear.

Unlock the gng series you can carry multiple weapons at once and switch between them at will. You can also upgrade your armor and weapons by collecting gold.

The game structure is oddly done, there are 10 levels, but they don't go in a sequential order. The first half of the game is spent exploring the first 5 levels, beating bosses, collecting stuff, and doing little side quests. Each level has a warp stone so you can easily go to any level you have previously unlocked and you can access the stone at any time from the pause menu, making backtracking quick and painless. The levels themselves are fairly large, you get a map to easily navigate these levels, but the map does not show how the world is connected which makes the early portion of the game a bit confusing.

I was not sold on the game at first, I felt like the exploration aspects just added confusion and slowed the pace of the game down, they were not terrible, but they just felt unneccesary. There are also a ton of side quests with lame rewards that make them not worth the time. A big issue I have with these side quests is that they never tell you where to resolve them in the quest log. So for example, you meet a guy in a random town, he asks you to find an item. An hour or 2 later you find this item but have no way of knowing who originally gave you the quest.

Once you beat the first cluster of levels you unlock a new portal that lets you warp to 4 new levels, at this time the game becomes much more streamlined, beat a level, warp to a new one, repeat until all 4 levels are beat, warp to final level. I personally enjoy linear games more than I do exploring so I greatly preferred the second half of the game to the first.

The challenge level is definitely on the easy side. Given its heritage I was expecting a super challenging game, but it is not anywhere near as difficult as the game that inspired it. This is not necessarily a bad thing, as the game is still a lot of fun, but I just went in expecting a much harder game then I got. I also did not really love the bosses. The bosses in this game are huge bullet sponges, but their patterns are fairly simple. What this means is you get hit a few times in the beginning learning the bosses moves and then you just rotely repeat the pattern until the boss dies which takes way longer than it should, once I learned the bosses rather simplistic patterns, I just got bored fighting them.

Battle princess Madeline is a fun but flawed game. If you really want to play a game that is heavily inspred by gng than it may be worth your time but it is not a must play by any means.




Everything you wrote seems to describe the game's story mode. I'm a bit curious about arcade mode. Does it save your progress? I'm curious to know whether or not I'll have to do it all in one sitting ala Volgarr the Viking's "Path of the Valkyrie". I've read several reviews from various game sites to find the answer to this question and they've been predictably useless, so that's why I'm asking.
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Re: Games Beaten 2019

by Flake Thu May 09, 2019 9:25 am

January Games:
Megaman (Switch)
Megaman 2 (Switch)
Megaman 3 (Switch)
Megaman 4 (Switch)
Megaman 5 (Switch)
Megaman 6 (Switch)
Megaman 7 (Switch)
Megaman 8 (Switch)
Megaman 9 (Switch)
Megaman 10 (Switch)
Kirby's Dreamland (Wii)
Time Spinner (PS4)

February Games:

Megaman Legends (PSTV)
The Misadventures of Tron Bonne (PSTV)
Donkey Kong Country Returns (Wii)

March Games:

Metroid: Samus Returns (3DS)
Mario Galaxy (Wii)

April

Batman: Arkham Asylum (PS4)

May

Shovel Knight: Shovel of Hope (Switch)
Shovel Knight: Plague of Shadows (Switch)
Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes (PS4)


Shovel Knight: Plague of Shadows is AMAZING. It's a great game, first of all, but as a companion to Shovel of Hope, it reminds me of a kind of game development that flat out doesn't exist anymore. Back in the PS1 era you'd get re-mix games like Metal Gear Solid: VR Missions, Rival Schools Evolution or Armored Core: Project Phantasma. Mostly re-used Assets but with new scenarios, gameplay tweaks, etc - it could bring a game you loved back to life and give you more hours and memories.

That's what Plague of Shadows felt like. I got to revisit all the levels from the main game and encounter the bosses and enemies in a new way. Plague Knight's gameplay turns the game into a kind of combat puzzler as you have to leverage his wacky movement scheme to navigate through platforming challenges that you could tackle much more directly in the main game. And then all the storyline tweaks that make it make sense that you're Plague Knight without the game just pretending Shovel Knight doesn't exist (Looking at you Super Luigi Bros U.)

I also beat Metal Gear Solid V: Ground Zeroes again. Nothing to say about it other than it's one of my favorite single level, self-contained games. Also that it is WAY harder than Phantom Pain. Also - that emergency medical situation on the helicopter at the end STILL makes me squeamish.
Maybe now Nintendo will acknowledge Metroid has a fanbase?
pook99
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Re: Games Beaten 2019

by pook99 Thu May 09, 2019 9:56 am

Ordinary Gamer wrote:
pook99 wrote:54. Battle Princess Madeline (switch)
55. Contra (nes)
56. Super Punch out (snes)

54. Battle Princess Madeline

Battle princess Madeline is a game that is heavily influenced by ghosts n goblins but throws in some metroid and RPG elements.

The story is lifted straight out of the princess bride. A young girl is sick and in bed, her grandfather visits her to read her a story to make her feel better. Being the little brat that she is, Madeline, would prefer to play on her phone but grandpa promises to make the story exciting and does so by inserting her and him into the story to peak her interest. Madelines ancestors spirits have all been trapped by an evil monster and it is up to Madeline, and the spirit of Fritz, the family dog, to go on an epic quest to free the spirits of her ancestors.

As soon as you fire up the game the homage to gng is obvious. Maddy moves the same way as arthur, attacks the same, and quickly unlocks a double jump similar to what you would expect from the gng series. Maddy wears armor that gets knocked off when she is hit and she is wearing pajamas instead of underwear, which is great because it would have been really weird controlling an 8 year old in her underwear.

Unlock the gng series you can carry multiple weapons at once and switch between them at will. You can also upgrade your armor and weapons by collecting gold.

The game structure is oddly done, there are 10 levels, but they don't go in a sequential order. The first half of the game is spent exploring the first 5 levels, beating bosses, collecting stuff, and doing little side quests. Each level has a warp stone so you can easily go to any level you have previously unlocked and you can access the stone at any time from the pause menu, making backtracking quick and painless. The levels themselves are fairly large, you get a map to easily navigate these levels, but the map does not show how the world is connected which makes the early portion of the game a bit confusing.

I was not sold on the game at first, I felt like the exploration aspects just added confusion and slowed the pace of the game down, they were not terrible, but they just felt unneccesary. There are also a ton of side quests with lame rewards that make them not worth the time. A big issue I have with these side quests is that they never tell you where to resolve them in the quest log. So for example, you meet a guy in a random town, he asks you to find an item. An hour or 2 later you find this item but have no way of knowing who originally gave you the quest.

Once you beat the first cluster of levels you unlock a new portal that lets you warp to 4 new levels, at this time the game becomes much more streamlined, beat a level, warp to a new one, repeat until all 4 levels are beat, warp to final level. I personally enjoy linear games more than I do exploring so I greatly preferred the second half of the game to the first.

The challenge level is definitely on the easy side. Given its heritage I was expecting a super challenging game, but it is not anywhere near as difficult as the game that inspired it. This is not necessarily a bad thing, as the game is still a lot of fun, but I just went in expecting a much harder game then I got. I also did not really love the bosses. The bosses in this game are huge bullet sponges, but their patterns are fairly simple. What this means is you get hit a few times in the beginning learning the bosses moves and then you just rotely repeat the pattern until the boss dies which takes way longer than it should, once I learned the bosses rather simplistic patterns, I just got bored fighting them.

Battle princess Madeline is a fun but flawed game. If you really want to play a game that is heavily inspred by gng than it may be worth your time but it is not a must play by any means.




Everything you wrote seems to describe the game's story mode. I'm a bit curious about arcade mode. Does it save your progress? I'm curious to know whether or not I'll have to do it all in one sitting ala Volgarr the Viking's "Path of the Valkyrie". I've read several reviews from various game sites to find the answer to this question and they've been predictably useless, so that's why I'm asking.



Arcade mode does not save your progress.

I also read a lot about the game and I bought it for the arcade mode since I prefer linear level to level gameplay, unfortunately if you want to play through the arcade mode it has to be done in one sitting which is annoying so I did not bother with it. If you buy the switch version you could kind of circumvent it by just putting the switch in sleep mode when you need a break and not playing any other game on the system until you beat it.

The developer has also said that he is not going to put a save feature into the arcade mode which is just mind boggling given what year it is.
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Re: Games Beaten 2019

by Markies Sat May 11, 2019 6:21 pm

Markies' Games Beat List Of 2019!
*Denotes Replay For Completion*

1. Power Stone 2 (SDC)
2. Radiata Stories (PS2)
3. Dusty Diamond's All-Star Softball (NES)
***4. Saiyuki: Journey West (PS1)***
5. Shining In The Darkness (GEN)
***6. Metropolis Street Racer (SDC)***
7. Half-Life 2 (XBOX)
8. Soul Blazer (SNES)
9. Mario Party (N64)

10. Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance (GCN)

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I beat Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance on the Nintendo GameCube this afternoon!

I absolutely love the Strategy RPG genre. Final Fantasy Tactics was my introduction and I have been gobbling them up ever since that day. I enjoy the more tactical ones like Vandal Hearts along with the grind and leveling of Disgaea. However, one series that I always stayed away from was the Fire Emblem series. I never knew a good place to start and I was afraid of starting all the way at the beginning. So, when I finally got my GameCube, I realized that Fire Emblem had to be on that list. Even though I had heard that the games could be brutal, I had to try it for myself. After finding my own copy and my friend gifting me a strategy guide, I felt that I had all the preparation I needed to jump into the series.

I can safely say that I was completely missing out. Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance was one of the most enjoyable gaming experiences I had all year. It brought me back to my love of the SRPG genre and was like a warm bed on a cold winter's night. The game was absolutely I wanted it to be and it even exceeded all of my expectations. The heart of the game are the long battles and they are laid out so perfectly. You never feel overwhelmed and except for a slight few, none of them are truly punishing. Each map is its own puzzle and its own mini map inside as you move your army from one skirmish to the next. Besides the battles, the characters are so believable and actually real. I felt like I've met those characters in real life. They feel like real people and I loved watching each one grow throughout their character arc. And to top it all off, the story is intense, sweet and gripping. The ending had some cliche moments, but that is what I wanted after all of the hardships I had been through. It kept me invested throughout the entire game and I desperately wanted to know what would happen after each battle.

Overall, Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance is one of the best SRPG's I have ever played. It was a perfect introduction into the series and deserves to be mentioned as one of the greats of the genre. I feel bad it took me this long to play it, but I'm glad I did and I enjoyed every moment of it. The only problem is where to go from here: Do I wait until I get a Wii to play Radiant Dawn or do I travel back in time and play the Famicom games? All I know is that this is a series that I want to play more of!
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Re: Games Beaten 2019

by PartridgeSenpai Sat May 11, 2019 11:11 pm

Markies wrote:The only problem is where to go from here: Do I wait until I get a Wii to play Radiant Dawn or do I travel back in time and play the Famicom games? All I know is that this is a series that I want to play more of!


Glad to hear you enjoyed Path of Radiance so much :D
That said, Fire Emblem is a series that has changed a lot since its inception, especially since the first game or two which, in their Famicom iterations, lack everything from the weapon triangle (the rock-paper-scissors weapon advantages for both physical and magical weapons) to biased character levels (they're entirely random, so you can have high-magic attack generals and high defense tanky archers) to healing characters not gaining experience by healing! They're a pretty heavy change from the more modern FE games, but the first two games have received remakes on the DS (Shadow Dragon) and 3DS (Echoes) respectively.

Two different teams have also worked on FE over the years, and the first half or so, up until the last Super Famicom one, were one team and the GBA-era games and forward are the other one(s), I believe. The later Famicom and especially later Super Famicom ones tend to be REALLY hard, but the SFC ones I know are kindly regarded despite their difficulty. Mechanically, the first GBA one up to Awakening on the 3DS are pretty similar (save for Sacred Stones' and Awakening's world maps and 'random' encounters), and Fates is when you start getting into odd territory like no more weapon durability.

To make a long story short, I think the Famicom ones have no aged very well design-wise and their remakes will be much more enjoyed than the originals for most people, and the first GBA game (Binding Blade) has some really rough and unfair-feeling level design at times with how suddenly new brutal enemies will spawn, but any FE game will likely be one you'll enjoy in the end if you're a big SRPG fan ^w^
I identify everyone via avatar, so if you change your avatar, I genuinely might completely forget who you are. -- Me
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Re: Games Beaten 2019

by pierrot Sun May 12, 2019 2:05 am

  1. Tiny Toon Adventures: Buster's Hidden Treasure (GEN)
  2. The Revenge of Shinobi (GEN)
  3. Shadow Dancer: The Secret of Shinobi (GEN)
  4. Shinobi III: Return of the Ninja Master (GEN)
  5. Go Go Ackman (SFC)
  6. Super Wagyan Land (SFC)
  7. Super Mario RPG (SFC)
  8. Shin Megami Tensei if... (SFC)
  9. Front Mission: Gun Hazard (SFC)
  10. Steep Slope Sliders (SAT)
  11. Valkyrie Profile (PS1)
  12. Sakura Taisen (SAT)
  13. Shenmue Chapter 1: Yokosuka (DC)
  14. Shinobi (PS2)
  15. Gungrave (PS2)
  16. Assault Suit Leynos 2 (SAT)
  17. Sakura Taisen 2: Kimi, Shinitamoukoto Nakare (SAT)
  18. Kino no Tabi: The Beautiful World (PS2)
  19. Ganbare Goemon! Karakuri Douchuu (FC)
  20. Ganbare Goemon 2 (FC)
  21. Sakura Taisen 3 ~Paris wa Moeteiru ka~ (DC)
  22. Capcom vs SNK: Millennium Fight 2000 (DC)
  23. Capcom vs SNK: Millennium Fight 2000 Pro (DC)
  24. Capcom vs SNK 2: Millionaire Fighting 2001 (DC)
  25. Sakura Taisen 4 ~Koi-seyo Otome~ (DC)
  26. Street Fighter Zero 3: Saikyou-ryuu Doujou (DC)
  27. King of Fighters '99 Evolution (DC)
  28. Madou Monogatari I (MD)

Well, unpopular opinion time: I think the original Capcom vs SNK: Millennium Fight 2000 might be the best of the Capcom vs SNK games on the Dreamcast. Technically Pro should be the better of the two, just because it fixes some things, but I don't really care about Dan or Joe, and I just had more fun playing the first game. CvS2 is just not that fun to me. It had fantastic presentation, and a decent roster, but I just find it to be a lot less fun to play than other crossover games like the aforementioned CvS, or MvC, X-men vs Street Fighter, Tatsunoko vs Capcom, etc. I think it really just has too much going on for its own good. I really don't like all the different grooves, and it might really just be that I don't like grooves that much at all. I also don't really care much for SF Zero 3, and think it's substantially less fun than SF Zero 2, or Zero 2 Dash. The roster is a lot bigger, but I just don't see the point in adding a bunch of SSFII characters to a series meant to take place before the original Street Fighter, and again, the Grooves and stuff just feel like extraneous bull crap to me.

Sticking with fighting games here, KoF '99 Evolution is kind of an underwhelming game for me. I played a lot of KoF Dream Match '99 on the Dreamcast, back around the turn of the century, and I've never really played much KoF since then. Evolution feels pretty decent, but suffers from terrible SNK boss syndrome. I don't mind the striker system, but the roster is just confusing. Why are there three friggin' Kyos! Maybe that just upsets me because Vanessa can't be used as anything other than a striker. At any rate, Evolution is okay, but I don't think I'd actually recommend it.


Unfortunately it was a fair amount of time ago that I finished Sakura Taisen 4, and it's not really very fresh in my mind. It was pretty good, though. I had a really tough time getting used to the character portraits, because they chose to redraw a bunch of them, and they just didn't look very good to me. Especially Kana's. I mean, they slapped the game together in about a year, so I don't really understand why they would have put the effort into new character portraits when they had a bunch of perfectly good ones for the original cast from 1 and 2. They even used a couple of the portraits from 2, anyway, so, like, what? The redrawn portraits tended to have more of a budget feel to me. I can understand that there would have been a much tighter budget, but I would think that would expressly lead to reusing what they already had! All right, enough about the portraits. The very first impression is actually really good in Sakura Taisen 4, because on top of a new eye-catch opening animation, once you actually start a new game, there's a very fancy, in-game engine, 3D rendered cutscene that looks pretty fantastic. In general, Sakura Taisen 4 is really more of what we got with Sakura Taisen 3, but back in Tokyo, and much more toned down in scale. There are only four chapters, and the there aren't even any title cards between chapters like in previous entries. The main focus here is really getting all of the 13 girls together, and making you choose between your 1&2 heroine, and your 3 heroine. Oogami is placed in charge of stage production for the Hanagumi's upcoming performance of Les Miserable (I had no idea it was Les Miserable when I was playing the game, because I don't really know that play, and they used a Japanese title for it in the game). The wedding scene at the end prompts Oogami to think about marriage a bit more, under the guise of getting the scene right. So, he asks every single one of the girls about their thoughts on marriage, which obviously causes a right kerfuffle, I'll tell you what. I've never really felt like more of a cad in these games than I did in Sakura Taisen 4. Sakura made it kind of tough on me, and it could have been recency bias, but once Hanabi showed up, I was set on her being the heroine. I was pretty happy with that choice until I got to her ending, where she just seemed to completely regress. It was kind of upsetting. It also made the end of the game way more emotionally difficult than I was expecting, by choosing one of the Paris girls. The ending was a rough ride, with all that finality and closure to it. I was fairly happy with the game, overall, though.

While I'm not sure I would necessarily call Sakura Taisen 4 a game for fans only, one really shouldn't play it without playing the first three games beforehand. I mean, the ARMS system is pretty great, and that's no different in 4, so maybe it wouldn't be terrible to just go into 3 and 4 only. It is a bit shorter than the other games, but there's still a lot of replayability if one wanted to actually get all of the endings. I don't really have time for that. Once through each of them was probably enough for me. I do have to mention that the picture-matching minigame in 4 actually kind of taught me the rules to mahjong. The minigame in Sakura Taisen 4 is way better than mahjong, though. It's actually fun, for one thing.


There's a lot for me to get to with Madou Monogatari. Where to start. Well, this is sort of a remake of the original PC Madou Monogatari I, which has a bit of an odd history. You see, there was originally a trilogy of games that made up the true debut release of "Madou Monogatari 1-2-3" for the MSX (later released to the PC-98). However, there was technically a Madou Monogatari game released on the MSX before 1-2-3, but it most resembled the second chapter of Madou Monogatari 1-2-3. Confused yet? Good. Madou Monogatari I on the Mega Drive is basically a tweaked version of the first chapter of Madou Monogatari 1-2-3. I haven't really played any of the other games, but from what I've gathered, the main differences, beyond some aesthetic changes, are rearranged/more floors, monster capturing mechanics, and huge changes to the battle system. The other versions of Madou Monogatari I have the player actually selecting attacks from a list, but the Mega Drive version puts the player into a bit more of a one-on-one fighting game style battle where the back button blocks, up jumps, down ducks, and forward (this is something I didn't actually figure out until the very last battle in the game) makes Arle attack the enemy with a harisen. This is Madou Monogatari, after all, so Arle also has a bunch of magic that she can cast by holding the magic button, putting in the corresponding directional combo, and releasing the magic button. A few of her spells (Fire, Ice Storm, Warp, and Ruipanko) don't use any magic power when cast, but the other six spells in the game will. Madou Monogatari is a bit of a funny RPG in that it doesn't put any numbers to anything like health, magic, speed, experience, etc. Instead, you have to pay attention to the vague descriptions of how Arle is feeling, or how much magic she has left. When not in combat, you can get a sense of these things by looking at Arle's face in the top left of the screen, or the sparkles in the crystal ball in the upper right. Similarly, in combat, you'll get messages on how the enemy is fairing, but it's kind of not worth waiting to see that: Basically, there are two message windows during battle (one for Arle, and one for the enemy), and when Arle attacks with a spell (and if it lands), the enemy's message window will first give the enemy's response to being hit, then a message about how effective the attack was, then a message indicating how much health the enemy has left, but you can pretty much attack as quickly as you can mash out the inputs without the game dropping them, so a lot of times it's not worth waiting to put in the command for the next spell to see the messages about the enemy's health. If the enemy decides to attack, it could interrupt the messages in response to Arle's attack spell anyway. Some aspects of the combat weren't planned out especially well, but it still works decently, and is fun to play, anyway.

The story in Madou Monogatari is a fairly simple one. Arle is a wee kindergartner at a magic school. The manual has a comic strip that gives some background that the intro movie doesn't, as well. Essentially, there's this somewhat gifted, and very stuck up classmate of Arle's, named Lala, who Arle accidentally (on purpose?) sprays down with Ice Shower a couple times. Lala wakes up with a cold the next day, which just so happens to be the day of the written exam at school, and blames it on Arle; Although the comic is quick to point out that the real reason she got sick was because she was sleeping with her stomach exposed (it's a Japanese thing--). Anyway, Arle is no good at written exams, so she goes with what she knows, and rolls her pencil for the answers (it's a Japanese thing--). Wouldn't you know it, the next day everyone gathers around the Magic Tower to hear the results of the written exam, when the teacher announces that Arle "earned" the highest grade. This doesn't sit well with Lala, and she secretly vows to get in Arle's way, as Arle's achievement means that she is the only one allowed to take on the trials awaiting in the Magic Tower.

That leads into the goal of the game, which is essentially to make it out of the tower, but just that on its own isn't enough. Arle must also receive a score of 90 points or better. She gets one point each for opening one of the 40 treasure chests, or correctly answering one of the 40 questions, and the remaining 20 points are allocated based on Arle's good deeds. So, it's really a dungeon crawler's dungeon crawler, with a bunch of minor objectives, or "quests" if you want to think of them that way, although most of the questions just require you to follow some basic commands like casting a particular spell, handing over a particular item, or bumping into a wall 3 times. The main draw to the gameplay, in my opinion, is how the tower feels like a layered puzzle box. The game regularly requires certain items or spells to proceed in the tower, but with a number of floor gimmicks that require fairly thoughtful solutions.

There's really a lot to like about the game. Actually there's a lot I do like about the game. It's pretty terrific: The music is outstanding, the graphics are quite nice, the puzzle solving is very rewarding, the characters and enemies are full of humor and charm, it's a game that's full of quirky humor and abject cuteness. My only real complaint is that the progression doesn't feel quite as fun toward the end of the game, because you're pretty regularly running back and forth between seven or eight of the 16 floors in the tower, trying to complete tasks, and warp into otherwise inaccessible parts of other floors. The first half of the game was pretty expertly crafted, but that's not as much the case later into the game. I still had a hard time putting the controller down, anyway, so that's a pretty minor complaint, really.

I finished the game with a perfect 100 points, and while I was able to do just about everything without any walkthrough assistance, there was a really late question that asked for an item that creates a sapphire when mixed with an exploding egg, which was a recipe I had done before, but I just couldn't remember what the other ingredient was. So I looked it up to save time. When I looked that up, I kind of peeked at the spell I needed to use in order to get the last spell from Mrs. Eve, and even though I forgot what it was, the spell I needed to cast in order to get the magic makeup to complete the Legendary Accessory set. I'm a little sad that I bothered to look anything up at all, but it did save me a fair amount of time at the end of the game. I found it to be a really nice difficulty, overall, but while the normal battles tend to be relatively easy, the boss battles can be pretty tough. The last two boss battles especially are totally nuts. I was loaded to the teeth with everything I could have needed, and they still took me at least five attempts each to actually beat. I kind of unintentionally cheesed the final boss, too. He has these two near insta-kill moves, and with one of them, he teleports and reappears behind your character. I sort of panicked one time when he did this, and launched off a fully powered ice storm right as he was about to reappear, and potentially kill me. At fully boosted power, Ice Storm, and Fire change the background and throw all kinds of junk around the screen. After it all cleared away, the boss was just gone, and I was standing there without an opponent. I thought I might have soft locked, until I used Jugem a couple times, and actually got the giant pillar of energy attack out of it (it's a super powerful attack, but it rarely does anything useful). After that attack animation finished, it came back to the battlefield. The final boss was also magically there again, and going into his death throws. It was a pretty interesting bug.

Anyway, really fantastic swan song for the Japanese Mega Drive. Shadowrun on the Mega CD was also quite good, but I think this one might have taken up a bit more of Compile's resources at the time. There are a bunch of notes in the manual from the development team, and apparently the game had a pretty rough road to release. The sound engineer was pretty upset that he couldn't get all the voice samples to play simultaneously with the BGM. Honestly, that might be another small criticism I have of the game, because while the voice samples are numerous, and pretty good, the music is better, and in combat you rarely hear much of the BGM because Arle and the enemies are shouting things out whenever they do something. I had a really good time with Madou Monogatari I, though. It was just about the perfect amount of time at around 10 hours to complete, and was a real treat.

Finishing the Game with 100 points also gave me a "present" from Arle's teacher, and what a present it was. It unlocked a sound mode, with all the music, sound effects, and voice samples, which is all excellent. On top of that, it allows me to watch the Madou Ondo anytime I want. The Madou Ondo can be viewed in one of the very late game floors by paying 10000 gold, which is about 1/5 of my total gold at the time of completing the game. That 10000 gold gets you a viewing of three Carbuncles dancing to probably my favorite track in the game (here), while lyrics scroll along the bottom of the screen, karaoke style. It's legit. I love it.
Last edited by pierrot on Sun May 12, 2019 3:24 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Games Beaten 2019

by Ordinary Gamer Sun May 12, 2019 2:43 am

pook99 wrote:
Ordinary Gamer wrote:
pook99 wrote:54. Battle Princess Madeline (switch)
55. Contra (nes)
56. Super Punch out (snes)

54. Battle Princess Madeline

Battle princess Madeline is a game that is heavily influenced by ghosts n goblins but throws in some metroid and RPG elements.

The story is lifted straight out of the princess bride. A young girl is sick and in bed, her grandfather visits her to read her a story to make her feel better. Being the little brat that she is, Madeline, would prefer to play on her phone but grandpa promises to make the story exciting and does so by inserting her and him into the story to peak her interest. Madelines ancestors spirits have all been trapped by an evil monster and it is up to Madeline, and the spirit of Fritz, the family dog, to go on an epic quest to free the spirits of her ancestors.

As soon as you fire up the game the homage to gng is obvious. Maddy moves the same way as arthur, attacks the same, and quickly unlocks a double jump similar to what you would expect from the gng series. Maddy wears armor that gets knocked off when she is hit and she is wearing pajamas instead of underwear, which is great because it would have been really weird controlling an 8 year old in her underwear.

Unlock the gng series you can carry multiple weapons at once and switch between them at will. You can also upgrade your armor and weapons by collecting gold.

The game structure is oddly done, there are 10 levels, but they don't go in a sequential order. The first half of the game is spent exploring the first 5 levels, beating bosses, collecting stuff, and doing little side quests. Each level has a warp stone so you can easily go to any level you have previously unlocked and you can access the stone at any time from the pause menu, making backtracking quick and painless. The levels themselves are fairly large, you get a map to easily navigate these levels, but the map does not show how the world is connected which makes the early portion of the game a bit confusing.

I was not sold on the game at first, I felt like the exploration aspects just added confusion and slowed the pace of the game down, they were not terrible, but they just felt unneccesary. There are also a ton of side quests with lame rewards that make them not worth the time. A big issue I have with these side quests is that they never tell you where to resolve them in the quest log. So for example, you meet a guy in a random town, he asks you to find an item. An hour or 2 later you find this item but have no way of knowing who originally gave you the quest.

Once you beat the first cluster of levels you unlock a new portal that lets you warp to 4 new levels, at this time the game becomes much more streamlined, beat a level, warp to a new one, repeat until all 4 levels are beat, warp to final level. I personally enjoy linear games more than I do exploring so I greatly preferred the second half of the game to the first.

The challenge level is definitely on the easy side. Given its heritage I was expecting a super challenging game, but it is not anywhere near as difficult as the game that inspired it. This is not necessarily a bad thing, as the game is still a lot of fun, but I just went in expecting a much harder game then I got. I also did not really love the bosses. The bosses in this game are huge bullet sponges, but their patterns are fairly simple. What this means is you get hit a few times in the beginning learning the bosses moves and then you just rotely repeat the pattern until the boss dies which takes way longer than it should, once I learned the bosses rather simplistic patterns, I just got bored fighting them.

Battle princess Madeline is a fun but flawed game. If you really want to play a game that is heavily inspred by gng than it may be worth your time but it is not a must play by any means.




Everything you wrote seems to describe the game's story mode. I'm a bit curious about arcade mode. Does it save your progress? I'm curious to know whether or not I'll have to do it all in one sitting ala Volgarr the Viking's "Path of the Valkyrie". I've read several reviews from various game sites to find the answer to this question and they've been predictably useless, so that's why I'm asking.



Arcade mode does not save your progress.

I also read a lot about the game and I bought it for the arcade mode since I prefer linear level to level gameplay, unfortunately if you want to play through the arcade mode it has to be done in one sitting which is annoying so I did not bother with it. If you buy the switch version you could kind of circumvent it by just putting the switch in sleep mode when you need a break and not playing any other game on the system until you beat it.

The developer has also said that he is not going to put a save feature into the arcade mode which is just mind boggling given what year it is.


Yeah, I agree that's annoying but not a deal breaker for me if I'm really enjoying a game. I just like to know ahead of time so I know how much time I'll need when I sit down to play something.

What's interesting about Battle Princess is that I hear a lot of people say they prefer Arcade Mode as it gets around some of the flaws you brought up in your review
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