Double victory

Dragon Quest V: Hand of the Heavenly Bridecompleted

Two more bosses down, we're pretty close to the end here. Found my wife statue, not entirely sure why she can't just be unrocked like me. Overall I'd say I'm pretty disappointed in how long it takes to get the wife back especially because it was billed as such a huge, monumental choice.

The monsters that change your party tactics need to be removed from the game. It's a cute thing the first time but it's purely a time waster.

We beat this too. Okay, so meeting your mom and then losing her didn't land as well for me. I think there is an issue where the story isn't as resonant due to lack of voice over and real cinematics. The wife also has shockingly little to say.

Speaking of, I consistently feel like this game could/should run twice as fast most of the time. The sage's stone is essentially broken.

The victory lap here is much too manual.

I think this is primarily a let down of expectations and in hindsight it never could have capitalized. The ds is just not going to be able to execute on it. There are great ideas here but the end result falls short.

Castlevania: Order of Ecclesiacompleted

Beat it today. I did use a cheat to just help me over the hump. I just wanted to see it through.

I think this game is fine. The Castlevania series is much weaker for me overall compared to Metroid. I think the backtracking is possibly weaker because the verb gaining is much weaker. In this game for example, you get paries and wings so late and there aren't many other traversal powers beyond the double jump.

Also getting weapon upgrades is pretty underwhelming. Once you have all the variety it's mostly just getting the slightly more powerful versions. And for me at least, not much got better than rapiers. They deal so much damage so quickly.