disliked
Didn't land for me. Not "bad" — plenty of good games sit here, and plenty of people will disagree with me about them. A taste statement.
Castlevania: Symphony of the Night · Elden Ring · Final Fantasy IV · Final Fantasy Tactics · Final Fantasy VI · The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim · Unicorn Overlord
A great looking classic but poorly paced and ultimately frustrating. I'm glad I played this as a historical artifact but not my favorite of the genre.
Bounced off this so hard. The mechanics are just so boring. I need a little more meat on that bone. Lesson learned: stop playing Final Fantasies before 7.
I really wanted to like this but it’s too grindy. Also, I don’t like the emphasis on using randos you picked up in a bar instead of the story characters. That’s what I like about Fire Emblem! The whole class building thing is really cool and fun though!
Played but not finished, ultimately boring mechanics and I think the storytelling is hurt by the medium. Too cramped, not enough space on the cartridge to let things breathe.
This game feels like too much for me. There's so many permutations of how you build your units and then you have to build out their logic trees. It's cool but I don't want to dive that deep. Maybe I'll give it another shake at some point.
The drama seems totally unearned here. It has a lot of emotional whiplash and there's a lot of build up out of nowhere. It's also silly which really undercuts it. The cast is too big and the cuts from person to person prevent you from building any kind of relationship with anyone.
The game is really easy and the combat is pretty boring so far (I think mostly because it's too easy for any amount of nuance or strategy to matter.)
I think a lot of these gripes are absolutely me playing it 30 years after release, the genre and games in general have evolved significantly. Still though, it makes me less sympathetic to a lot of arguments I've seen that VI is actually the best in the series and VII is overrated. I think setting quality of story aside (whatever that means, I guess some measure of plot without considering execution of it), VII is a much more emotionally resonant story.
Like an idiot I started this. I don't even know why. I just wanted to test the PSX emulator I guess. It's really fun though. Two seconds in I was like "oh this is basically exactly the Aria of Sorrow engine." And I love Aria.
I don't know if this game is going to have the distance for me. I find it pretty frustrating. I don't love traveling around and it feels like it's just very willing to waste a lot of your time and there's just no hand holding here at all. I can see the bones of why it's so good and so influential but I don't know exactly what it is. It's just not captivating me in the way that Aria of Sorrow did. I would be interested to try Aria again and see if I can figure out what it is (although of course the comparison will always be different because of the nostalgia). I did just play it last year I think, but it's hard for me to tell what's different, a more fresh comparison could help. Speaking of...
I think I figured out the problem with this game. It's fucking annoying. I played through more, I looked up some shit because I didn't want to keep going around this castle in a circle looking for some little hint that I missed the first time. Super Metroid like clearly advertises (HEY THIS DOOR IS A DIFFERENT COLOR COME BACK AT EXACTLY THIS TIME). I got the power of mist and the power of bat and it's just meh.
Like it's annoying to get around. The travelling and platforming doesn't feel great, and you're getting chipped at by these annoying ass armored fleas and then you're like "fuck I've actually lost a lot of health I guess it's not a good time to fight a boss" and then you have to backtrack your ass to the save point to reheal.
Also if you die you have to go through the world's longest screen and reload back into the game from the title. Thank god for save states. Me finishing this game seems unlikely but it's not long? I think I'm going to give myself the option to quit whenever since I think I've gotten what I need out of it.
So I kept going and beat the orb around Richter Belmont. I'm definitely using a walkthrough, this shit is too annoying otherwise. The inverted castle is kind of trippy and hard to get around.
Actually it's a giant pain in the ass. There are rooms here that seem designed to drive one to madness. I'm at three dracula parts so it would seem wasteful to not finish.
I found the alucard shield by accident. No guides in the inverted castle so far. It is hilariously broken in a way I don't really mind. Is it taking all the skill and everything out of the game? Yeah maybe, but it's funny and the game is so annoying in some sections here that it deserves it.
It's very funny melting death by walking at him. Collected another dracula part, just need to find one. This seems like the thing where you could go forever walking around in circles not stumbling across the one room you need. Which is crazy because I feel like I've gotten so many taking pretty random walks. I'm not like methodically going through, I just kind of go forward until I hit a dead end. If I missed it waaaaay back somewhere I'm going to be pissed (partially because I only found like one teleporter room.)
Okay, I beat this last night, yes I did cheese stuff to death. I don't think I would have beaten it otherwise. I'm interested in putting Super Metroid more front and center to really compare and contrast.
Additionally, I found out that basically every Metroid and Castlevania tops out at tenish hours? I might just blast through a lot of these.
Well immediately on to the next one. We're doing the Switch Pixel Remaster!
It was called a bomb ring Cecil what did you EXPECT?
Already I can tell this has some of the speed issues of VI. Like we get to the point very quickly!
If this game loses me it'll be because the random encounter density is too high. There's an option to turn them off which I may flip on and off. I wish I could just tune it instead of it being so binary.
I do feel myself uncompelled to play this at all. I'm not totally sure why. It's just not grabbing me. I don't feel frustrated with it or anything. Uncompelled.
I think it could be a lack of hand holding and direction? Also it's not compelling me visually.
I don't know. I'll have to reflect on it more.
This game is annoying. Screw the bombs, and this needle attack that just destroys people? It's really vexing how they don't tell you anything (standard for the time I assume) like what is Yang good at? Is there a point to kick? What does pray do? Why is it so much better than Edward's heal?
Additionally, what is the point of the antlion fight? It's just so easy. Why are we wasting my time with this interactive cutscene.
The game does a really bad job of expectation setting too. Cecil hits hard, everyone else sucks.
Also some annoying qol stuff, I'm used to Phoenix down just auto targeting or at least being unusable on your up characters. Nope. Wasted one and a turn that way. Also tents don't get people back up. That's how I would describe this half hour. Annoying.
Yeah, I'm just out on this. I think I've learned a lot here about what makes me tick. This game is just too thin mechanically and the story isn't enough to pull me through.