loved
A strong recommendation. No caveat to hand you first; I think you should play it.
Against the Storm · Animal Crossing: New Horizons · Anno 117: Pax Romana · Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow · Chrono Trigger · Sid Meier's Civilization V · Diablo II · Donkey Kong Bananza · Dragon Quest XI S · Fallout 2 · Fire Emblem: The Sacred Stones · Horizon Zero Dawn · Indiana Jones and the Great Circle · Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic II — The Sith Lords · Mario Kart World · Metaphor ReFantazio · Metroid Prime Remastered · Metroid: Zero Mission · Mina the Hollower · Monster Hunter Wilds · Monster Hunter: World · My Time at Sandrock · No Man's Sky · Ori and the Blind Forest · Ori and the Will of the Wisps · Persona 5 Royal · Pokémon Unbound · Portal · Portal 2 · Slay the Spire · Slay the Spire 2 · StarCraft II · SteamWorld Heist II · Stellaris · Two Point Museum · The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past · The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time
An RTS game without the army building and management sounds kind of lame but it actually makes it very chill. To be honest, most players aren't good enough to do anything with their army and also stay on top of their econ (BUT I AM DIAMOND RANK BITCHES) so this ends up just being chill and focusing on the most important part.
Everyone’s favorite Pandemic time game. This is a really strong game but honestly maybe not even the strongest in the series. In many ways it feels like there’s the least to do and it’s just a decorating sim and really missing out on a lot of quality of life things.
A good city/civ management game I bounced off of. I think I'll come back to it when I'm in the mood for this kind of game again.
Probably a bit of nostalgia help here, but probably still my favorite one. I just love gathering the souls as you go.
I only played this recently but I understand why it's a classic. Innovative, ahead of its time, and so fun. Lovable and memorable characters too. It does a lot with so little.
I’ve almost beaten this and I should probably just finish it. I liked it, I did that thing where I almost got to the end and then I decided I should go back and get a lot more bananas and then stalled out. It’s really fun though, just good clean carnage.
A wonderfully cozy game for the first two acts and then goes off the rails. Really enjoyed this for the first 40something hours and then kind of enjoyed it after.
One of the best RPGs of all time. Stylish, funny, great systems. I don’t have anything to say that hasn’t been said already.
Not quite the highs of Blazing Blade but a great game overall.
What a good, ridiculous idea. Pure action movie fun.
An amazing voice acting performance and all around great game comes together to feel like an authentic lost chapter of the Indiana Jones saga.
Not quite as memorable as the first but another strong one.
This is not the best Mario Kart but an okay Mario Kart is a pretty good game still. I just wish there was a more standard grand prix mode with three laps per race. Also, I feel like for the asking price they owe me some free content updates.
So good, right up until the last minute. Excellent combat, good characters, a villain I loved to hate.
This game looks the way I remember the original did. The original is great, and so too is this, so atmospheric and such an incredible translation of Metroid into 3D.
An excellent game, looks great, plays great.
Excellent throwback and nostalgia bait. I was initially afraid of the Souls like DNA but this really wasn't that bad difficulty wise. Rewarding and fun mechanically, excellent design. Fell off after beating the last boss and then finding out I had to backtrack to all the mirrors. I might go back and do that just to check the box but I think I get it.
I really like this. It was just really hard to play at launch due to the myriad PC issues. I've tried to get back into it but I've just fallen off and I think restarting it whenever an expansion releases will be the time to get back into it.
My intro to Monster Hunter and truly mindblowing for me at the time. The loop here is so good, the game makes you feel powerful while continually increasing the stakes. It's also so epic feeling, the monsters and the environments are so vast and amazing.
This game consumed my life for a period of a few weeks. It's fun and there's a lot here to do and it was an excellent fire hose to drink from for a while.
What a ridiculously cool open world game. I love collecting and upgrading the ships so much. I’m not much of an open world survival craft person but the ships and upgrade trees are very satisfying here.
Played this, beat it pretty quickly overall. It was a fun Metroidvania. Art style's great.
played this directly after the previous game but fell off after a few hours. I think maybe I was just a little burnt out on the formula.
A tremendous game with a shockingly addictive loop, but unfortunately struggles to stick the landing on its own messages and themes.
Ambitious as all hell, my first experience with a Pokemon romhack. There are lots of ideas here, arguably too many, but at least it tries. Hoopa remains a goofy as all hell Pokemon to base your game around though.
Half the reason to buy The Orange Box.
An incredible follow up and what a role for JK Simmons. He is this character and J. Jonah Jameson (arguably basically the same character.) Builds on everything that was good about the first one and adds co-op!
It's Slay the Spire but more and better.
This is the best I’ve ever been at any game ever possibly, hitting diamond in ranked. It’s so fun with high highs and low lows: there’s no randomness or anything to hide behind. If you lost, it’s because you’re bad. Fun campaign too.
Good tactics game, the sidescrolling presentation is really unique and interesting, as is the decision to make it physics based instead of % to hit.
An excellent cozy little management sim. My biggest complaint is that it feels like the signage is bugged or I just don't understand it well enough because it seems like I can never get enough credit for it.
The OG. Why does it feel like every other game had a dark world in this era? One of my original favorites way back in the day.
I have beaten and re-beaten this game so many times. I think I still remember how to get Biggoron’s Sword from memory.
This game is pretty boring and basic and yet I still am interested in it after like eight hours? No idea what it is. I think it's short enough with just enough visible over the metaphorical narrative hill and minimal friction to get there to be like "okay let's go see what's over there." I have no idea if it'll pull me through the entire runtime, it's very long, but I said that about P5R.
I thought I was getting close to burning out on this but kept going. I dunno what it is. It's just...fun.
I think Vince is let off the hook pretty easy for being pretty heinous.
Holy shit the mermaid?
The structure of the game is pretty good now that I can fully see it. It's like an old season (as in like 24 episodes) of television. You have your monster of the week episodes and that are their own self contained little story but it still feeds into a slow burn ur-plot. I assume it'll mostly keep that structure until we get to the equivalent of a multi part season finale.
I wrapped up the northern section of the medals academy, beating up a giant bird for an orb. It isn't lost on me that my first Dragon Quest game has me collecting a bunch of spheres that were scattered around the world to collect with characters designed by Toriyama. Where have I seen that before? Hmmmmm.
I appreciate that this game is easy enough that I just feel like I can ignore a lot of little things. I just got this magic key, and am I going to go back and hunt down all the spots from before? Heck no. If I see it I'll get it.
Preliminary party member thoughts:
Erik seems generic as a character but since he started dual wielding he does good damage and is a go to single target guy.
Jade is kind of a slightly more useful Erik in that she has more stuff to hit wide and it feels like she has abilities that hit more specific classes of units, but in bosses I like Erik's toolset better. I think I might slightly prefer her as a trashmobs/exploration person just because she can do some aoe.
Sylvando has kind of improved into a good all-rounder. He's using whips so he's good at cheaply dealing with mobs, he has some support and a bit of healing that's useful.
I can't talk about the twins without talking about Rab, who is basically my magic user of choice. He's well rounded enough to toss a heal when needed or damage when he's got a free turn.
I also think, realistically, that the difficulty of this game is so low that it doesn't matter who you use at all? I know there are ways to make it harder but I'm concerned that it'll just make combat more LONGER and more damage spongey without making it more interesting since the combat system appears to be very basic here, or at least it doesn't tell you how it's not basic. (Are there resistances? Weaknesses?)
I used cheat engine to change the flag on it, damn thing also installed some garbage on it I didn't realize. This should be a crime. Punishable by death.
Okay, so the draconian change is significant and does make combat more interesting than the prior faceroll. I did the Royal Library dungeon, apparently out of sequence, and it was tough. I basically ran on empty MP wise, I had a fight with a mimic too that REALLY put the hurt on me.
I'm not sure I'll end up keeping it though just because it takes so much longer and it does actively make me kind of want to play it less. Like I had the option for it, or Castlevania earlier and I was just like uhhh, Castlevania, I don't want to slog through it more. And again, it is more interesting, but I think it might be something like 50% more interesting for 100% more slog. Not a good trade off.
DQXIS doesn't have to be a challenging game to be good though. It can just be kind of warm and fun and welcoming, like a good Pokemon game. Another thing I do like about it is that I don't feel the need to really do everything. The Tickington stuff just...didn't really resonate with me and I don't feel compelled to do every side quest. This is something where I can comfortably just follow the critical path and be okay with it.
Yeah I turned off the Draconian Quest. Got absolutely bogged down just dealing with trash mobs in the hekswood. Also the fact that the Draconian Quest thing just stays up there the whole time is so annoying.
Also found out I sequence broke some after getting totally lost? There was just nothing to do in the library nor the hekswood, so I googled it. Apparently you have to visit the Queen first? Went around and did the things I needed to do. It wasn't bad, went much faster without the Draconian Quest.
Okay I really liked the ice city arc and I don't know why. Maybe it's because Krystalinda can get it. But even considering my time wasting out of sequence here I found myself looking fondly at it after we left. Maybe it's the fact that there's just some odd stuff and this place doesn't feel done. The Krystalinda/Queen thing doesn't seem done (the queen is a doofus the witch literally just tried to imprison you again and yet you'll trust her?) There was also the frozen dragon in the fjord on your way out that's definitely going to come up again.
Also poor Rab just randomly getting embarrassed for no reason.
We continue ever onward. I assume there's some big act 2 turnaround about to happen at this big ol' tree. I'm banking the pep of my people for the big lottery pep power. I love that thing, getting the huge payout feels awesome.
Poor Hendrik. I'm very here for Sylvando Quest so far. So apparently I'm roughly a third of the way through now? Stunning how much game there is here.
I played a bit of this to get through Jade's vignette and a bit into Erik's. You know, I'm not sure I need vignettes for EVERYONE but maybe it'll payoff at some point?
Yeah I started it big whoop. I also technically started Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow but I feel like I'll end up doing Zero Mission first.
Overall? So far I feel like the controls are really refined here, the platforming seems so much better.
I'm thinking I'm not going to end up adding anything, I have quite a bit of DQXIS to get through still and I'd like to get that done before Zero Company comes out.
I've finished the vignettes, I was really afraid there'd be one for every character which would have felt like a bit much.
I appreciated the comic nature of the fisherman pulling my character out in full plate and just assuming I'm another fisherman stealing bait off his line, and the surprising warmth and care of the character.
That's the recurring theme within dqxis, warmth and hope in darkness and while it does bludgeon you over the head with it and that's anything but an original story, I think it wears that with such earnestness that it still feels good.
Game is a blast. Super addictive and a great portable pick up and play game for a few minutes. This game is also pretty short feeling. I'm like two hours and some change in and I'm at Mother Brain? I assume this is basically the end of the game. I definitely haven't been as exhaustive as possible in finding every pickup but I think I'm doing a pretty reasonable job. I suppose I'm missing a lot of classic Metroid items that might point to this being longer (Power Bombs, Space Jump) but I suppose it's possible those didn't exist in the original and were Super Metroid innovations.
Love the platforming, although it's mildly more annoying with the screw attack. I keep killing things I want to stand on.
Okay we're back in the main thrust of the story here finally. The king thing was mildly confusing at first since I thought he just...wasn't real or had died or whatever.
I don't understand why I'm so deferential to Hendrik or why he's such a dick! I really expected a contrite "hey I really fucked up but I'm here for you to help right this wrong and my part in it." I also don't get why the king is just the guy in charge either. Shouldn't everyone be looking to help ME instead of giving me orders?
I guess my silent ass couldn't tell them what to do anyways. I really think this game suffers from the devotion to the concept of a silent protagonist. It just makes them so weird and agencyless. don't think there is any value to that in this game. Just make him a regular person.
Hendrik is also the worst robo party member. Dude just hit them, stop buffing and stuff. I do find a perverse joy in looting all this stuff in front of him. Your king's shit is my shit now.
Okay, a bit of contrition from Hendrik. Thank you for acknowledging you suck and I did nothing to deserve it.
The fuck is this shit King? Hendrik saved us all? That dude was just in the vicinity while heroism and history happened. I see now why other guy went to the dark side.
The little vignettes are apparently only in the S version and I cannot imagine how fucking random Sylvando's whole deal feels without that extra information.
Yo fuck the Mother Brain room in this one.
And we beat this one too.
The final section is really fun, I really like the tension of having to be depowered and wandering the space pirate ship. It felt dangerous. Scary.
I think I'll do Samus Returns next. Really enjoying knocking these out. AM2R is also highly possible. Maybe after though. Should probably do a Castlevania too.
This game goes ON. Damn. It feels like most of the runtime of act 2 is going to just be getting the band back together.
Rab does some noble shit and they can't stop shaming him for his girlie mags God damn.
My biggest issue with this game remains the music. The music is good, there's just not enough of it. I just like cannot give this game my full attention because it gets on my nerves.
I'm not certain by what right Irwin is king but I'm not sure whether I'm more offended that Eleanor should be queen and the realm is sexist, or if I should be mad at me for saying just because Irwin doesn't have the right to rule due to his birthright.
It's interesting to me how bloodless this game is. Like some dark shit happens, like betrayal and such but the blades always come out clean. It's also just tonally so weird in general. We get some whiplash from the tragic end of King Irwin to the GLOOMIVORE.
Erik's memory loss seemed so random and unnecessary. Like we could have just not had that plot beat at all?
Mia says she hasn't been Mia for a long time but she was a gold statue until the world tree fell which seems like it wasn't actually that long ago. Maybe she was thinking inside the gold statue in which case I would say she's SHOCKINGLY SANE. Impressively so.
I also feel like Erik got on board with sororicide very quickly. Like of course at the end he can't do it but he spent almost zero time being like "there must be another solution."
Okay I liked this arc but I feel like I got general whiplash from it. Mia was very evil "for a long time" and then was not very evil. They didn't really make it seem like "oh no she was under a spell" it was just she didn't...want to die? Which I guess fair. We also just found out about this sister, and what happened to her, and then that was undone off screen. And Erik being so gung ho for murder and then actually no.
Serena really gets the shortest fucking preamble to join. Everyone else was off doing shit and she's just kind of...around.
Man Serena is just the most non-character. For a while it was her and Erik but Serena is the most plain toast person in this cast. Maybe Henrik too I suppose. At least give Serena the protector reveal instead of Veronica? Part of my cynicism is that I don't believe Veronica will stay dead, if she does that's a real change for Serena.
I really like how the game commits to "talk to pink dot on map get a thing pointing to what to do next."
Oooookay so maybe Veronica is dead. Serena just getting her entire playbook seems definitive.
This dragon absolutely beat the shit out of me in the volcano. The town was so easy. I started to think this was a battle you're MEANT to lose.
Beat that dragon and it was a total walkover this time. I think just having Rab and Serena in the starting lineup helped. I just needed that healing throughput. Also felt like the dragon focused people else and spread the damage around.
Any time these characters do a charge up I just absolutely want them to go Super Saiyan.
What the fuck is Gyldygga doing here restraining the team?! Mia is a liar?!
Alright we've rolled credits but as I understand it there's quite a bit left!
Act 3 spoilers: Going back in time to undo shit is just the height of hubris and "I read the script." Like why would you gamble all of the success for a chance at bringing one person who knowingly sacrificed herself FOR THE WIN?
Narratively this is also just such a weird fucking choice. It undoes all the character growth that was had by these people, some of who had huge changes, like Serena and Hendrik.
I guess metanarratively it's the character doing a NG+.
I dunno. This is the first time I've felt like the game might be losing me. Narratively this seems like a weird decision, and mechanically I have to deal with these characters being crap again and having to unlock shit again?
And at this point why not just go back in time to the night Dundrasil fell and stop THAT? I guess that would be TOOOOO crazy.
I think it's weird this game expects me to care about Gemma. I really thought she would be the first party member.
Alright, advanced the plot some. Tried to get this thing for Serena's harp and got my ass beat by this Crystalotl thing. Gonna have to do some grinding!
Well, I'm not going to finish this before Zero Company, but that's fine. I'm pushing the critical path a bit more after doing some exploring and grabbing some more recipes and such.
Overall I still don't really know how I feel about the third act, or the concept of it. It just kind of tosses away the big moments of the first two acts and presents a new villain that I have zero attachment or caring about. It feels reminiscent of P5R, we went from Shido to the God of Control who I didn't care about. Heck, at least the God of Control was a twist on something and not totally random.
Like Veronica's death and Serena's transformation meant something and it felt interesting and impactful and now we're just back to plain toast Serena. Heck, I would have liked it if Veronica stayed big as the seer changed her, but now she's back to being a kid.
I'm going through this thing where Sylvando reconciles with his dad again and it's like...this feels less impactful than it did the first time, both because I've seen it and also because the build up to that was more.
The more I think about it, the more likely it is that zero company coming out is not going to just mean that I play Dragon Quest in parallel. It might just be a break from it
Did this Sylvando/Hendrik quest. Well tried to. I got to these bosses that you're supposed to take down with their pet power and then accidentally killed one so I had to restart. Then I didn't accidentally kill one and I switched in Hendrik and found out that I didn't have the pet power learned because you have to have a specific set of unlocks in both of their skill trees to do it. Which I don't think it told me, maybe I missed it. That's very annoying. I just assumed that as part of this quest they were given the pet power and would be able to unleash it.
Went to do the Crystalotl and it beat the shit out of me. Damn.
I started this because I needed another game to play on the bike. You know, something slower paced. Easy to start and stop. The art is interesting so far. I had a moment of triumph where I refused to buy a new sword for Crono because I could just feel in my bones I was going to get a newer, better one for free and then I did!
I think DQXIS is done. I thought about farming to be able to beat the Crystalotl and was just like...no, I'm good on that. What I might do is cheat heavily, give myself a bunch of free levels and then just finish out the game? But also I suppose I could just watch the ending on Youtube or something? I dunno. It's definitely done For Now. Maybe I'll come back.
I was really concerned if I'd like this because I bounced off FFVI so hard but that seems like much less of a concern here. Lucca and Marle seem like much more interesting characters and they're not portrayed so... seriously. The entire thing doesn't take itself seriously, it's clearly trying to be funny. And to be fair, FFVI was funny, but it just gave some severe whiplash, melodrama to absurdity and back again.
The combat is also better. Timing (I get it) being an aspect beyond just atb is really good!
I dislike how old school jrpgs expect you to have all the time in the world to just talk to everyone until you happen to talk to the right person to advance the plot.
Other than that standard old school game lack of handholding I'm really enjoying it right now.
I do wish it was easier to look through all the techs, it's a lot of scrolling through.
I have been playing through a lot of this game. It's pretty fun. I might be playing it too quickly to properly digest all of the reasons why I like it. I've been trying to be more mindful and not write as many notes during.
Some gripes. I really think that the UI is a little bit in my way. Having the stuff on the second screen is better than having it on the main screen. I tried classic settings because I felt like I couldn't pay attention to what was happening on the screen because I was trying to pick my character's stuff at the same time. I was just missing stuff that was going on there so I thought classic would help me do both. It's so cramped.
The dinosaur dungeon takes too long and there are just too many fucking fights. This thing literally broke me until I realized that I could save scum because what would happen is you fall through the floor and then you have to refight the things that you just fought. It's like, why? It's like, oh I can just reload the save state before I do all the button pressing and then I won't fall through the floor.
This has killed every other game for me today though. I did feel a pang to play a little bit of Metroid Dread but I was like, let's just keep grinding on this.
Thoughts about characters? Well I like most of them. They all have their own charm and I think that's partially just because there are fewer of them. (I'm gonna keep comparing this to Final Fantasy VI just because they're both super great SNES JRPGs and VI is the one I played recently and bounced off hard.) But part of the issue that I had with Six is that there are so many party members that I'm supposed to care about and then they just keep going in and out of the party. It's just hard to build an attachment and I find that very frustrating about JRPGs.
For the most part people stay. You get to keep at least your core three: Chrono, Marle, and Lucca. Then Robo stays as soon as you get him too. Alya and Frog dip in and out but it doesn't feel like forever between it. I do really wish you could play with the fourth party member although I wouldn't be able to juggle the ATB effectively at that point.
Maybe I should try the wait mode or a slower game speed but that seems also worse in it's own way (making combats take longer).
One thing I do love about these older games is that you can finish them a lot faster, as we've seen with the Metroids and this game. I am finishing games more quickly than I can write post-mortems about it though.
I found out that Crono's name only doesn't have the H in it because of character limitations. I don't know what's dumber: that they wanted to name him Crono, that they couldn't name him Crono because of the limitation, or that they were unwilling to fix the limitation.
Like his name as is isn't so good or anything but it's at least less on the nose. You could imagine it being a character's name in the universe as opposed to the one with the H or it's just like, "Oh it's time boy. I named my child Time."
I do feel like it is bogging me down with too many little fights. That would be my biggest complaint so far.
Got through the ocean palace, lost a Crono, gained a Magus. All quite standard.
Oh I see. We're doing a fetch quest through time.
Moving through the side quests here. MAYBE WE COULD JUST CHECK THE BASEMENT FOR THE RAINBOW SHELL?! The chancellor could have tried harder here.
I think if this game has a miss, it's that there's not more of stuff like the campfire scene leading into Lucca's side time travel journey. That scene is so dread inspiring and I up entered the password the first time because I didn't understand exactly what it wanted me to do. I reloaded the save to go do it again, which I think is a testament to how powerful that is. Obviously she would go back and redo that moment if she could in the exact same way. I would go back and redo that moment if I could and it's not even real and it's not even my mom.
Too many fights here in the end game dungeon. I've also definitely settled on Crono, Robo, and Ayla as my main 3.
I do like how Lavos just seems to be some kind of entity. It's not a dark demon with goals. It's just some kind of...animal that wants to become the "perfect life" or whatever?
Also it's Cell?
If we're so worried about Robo not being made in the future he could just hang out here. Frog too!
I got what the wiki says is ending 1B. It's a very good ending.
This game holds up. I think compared to it's contemporaries and even now, it does a good job at a lot of things. This has to be the best turn based combat on the SNES, it and Super Mario RPG. The characters exude personality and are easy to keep straight. They each have very clear lanes that communicate a lot very quickly, which is really important in this era.