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Post by anayo on Dec 13, 2019 19:23:45 GMT -5
I beat Ultimate Doom. Episode 4 really takes the kid gloves off. I was low on health and ammo most of the time and had a save state spam a lot. Also the levels get way more detailed and ambitious, causing the frame rate to tank on my Pentium I. I was often floating around the teens. Awesome game anyway. 10/10
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Post by Moulinoski on Dec 24, 2019 0:00:36 GMT -5
I don't know if it counts or not since this is the Switch version, but I just beat Dragon Quest. It's not the first time, though. I've beaten the GB one countless times, beaten the SNES one at least a handful of times, the mobile version a few times, and have played a chunk of the NES and Famicom versions as well! And not every time in English, in fact. And I also have it for 3DS. But in any case. I went through Dragon Quest again, except that this time, I took the princess with me to fight DragonLord. You only get a unique extra text box where DragonLord says "ooh, tribute!" Normally, this is something that's a bit difficult to achieve because to do so you have to make sure you first fight the dragon in the cave the connects Kol and Rimuldar (I may mix names up a bit due to language and localization differences between versions) and then go into DragonLord's castle. You cannot go back to the king to save. So, if you end up dying while you do that, you can lose a good chunk of progress (plus, I don't know if it triggers the dialogue where you restore the princess to the king). Thankfully, the Switch version adds autosave support, so you can cheese your way to this extra textbox. I had fun with it.
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Post by Sarge on Dec 25, 2019 0:00:54 GMT -5
Really sloppy Contra run done. At least I didn't use any continues (had five lives left at the end, which indicates said sloppiness).
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Post by anayo on Dec 25, 2019 11:05:49 GMT -5
I don't know if it counts or not since this is the Switch version, but I just beat Dragon Quest. It's not the first time, though. I've beaten the GB one countless times, beaten the SNES one at least a handful of times, the mobile version a few times, and have played a chunk of the NES and Famicom versions as well! And not every time in English, in fact. And I also have it for 3DS. But in any case. I went through Dragon Quest again, except that this time, I took the princess with me to fight DragonLord. You only get a unique extra text box where DragonLord says "ooh, tribute!" Normally, this is something that's a bit difficult to achieve because to do so you have to make sure you first fight the dragon in the cave the connects Kol and Rimuldar (I may mix names up a bit due to language and localization differences between versions) and then go into DragonLord's castle. You cannot go back to the king to save. So, if you end up dying while you do that, you can lose a good chunk of progress (plus, I don't know if it triggers the dialogue where you restore the princess to the king). Thankfully, the Switch version adds autosave support, so you can cheese your way to this extra textbox. I had fun with it. Was it the recent Switch e-shop version that you played? I heard about that lately.
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Post by Ex on Dec 27, 2019 1:20:19 GMT -5
I took the princess with me to fight DragonLord. You only get a unique extra text box where DragonLord says "ooh, tribute!" I had no idea this was a possible thing to do. Very amusing. Thanks for sharing that anecdote.
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Post by Moulinoski on Dec 27, 2019 21:03:20 GMT -5
anayo Yes, it's the Switch version. YMMV, it follows Square-Enix's shoddy tradition of mucking around ports for older Final Fantasy and Dragon Quest games to make them look a bit nastier than they used to. In my case, I was able to get over it since I just like to get lost in Dragon Quest and discover stuff. I'm now on my way to beating (for like the third or fourth time) Dragon Quest II. The original trilogy is currently on sale for Switch.
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Post by toei on Dec 28, 2019 13:37:57 GMT -5
Well, I did finish one more game, just in time for the end of the year. Hero Chronicle (SNES, 1992 - Fan Translation)Winky Soft / BanprestoHero Chronicle is a surprisingly decent licensed RPG with a complicated real-life background*. It brings together characters from three of the most storied franchises in Japanese children's entertainment, Ultraman, Kamen Rider and Gundam, into an original setting, a slightly futuristic world in which each franchise is represented by its own continent, and the various cities are connected by automated roads depicted as white lines on a Mode 7 map. To combat a recent rise in terrorist attacks, an elite team named ZEUS is created, bringing together soldiers and heroes from three allied countries. Its core members are Amuro Ray (the original Gundam protagonist), Kotaro Minashi (Kamen Rider Black), and Dan Maboroshi (Ultraseven). They are lead by a supercomputer which sends them out on missions and collects intel to help them. Along the way, numerous characters from the three series join your quest, sometimes joining your organization, sometimes not. While the story initially seems a bit like a flimsy excuse to showcase as many characters from the source material(s) as possible, it eventually develops into something a bit more interesting, with hints of war-time politics, a tragic villain with motives that aren't completely stupid, and some pretty decent substories, some of which get surprisingly dark despite the frequently lighthearted overall tone. The roads mentioned earlier play an important part in the proceedings too, as you're forever trying to find ways to get in or out of places despite roads that closed-off due to war or terrorism. There's a surprising amount of dialogue and story sequences for a 1992 RPG; never too much, but enough that it feels more advanced in that regard than a lot of early 16-bit RPGs. As a traditional RPG, it does have a few gameplay twists. Instead of the usual MP system, special moves cost technique points which replenish with each defeated enemy. This creates a different balance where instead of saving up all your magic for boss battles, you get to use your special techniques frequently during regular battles, as long as you manage your TP smartly. On the other hand, healing is kind of complicated because only Ultras have an healing move (a very powerful move that heals all characters), which you can only use in battle; outside of them, you can use items, though they're pretty expensive early on, or go to hospitals in town. You also recover all HP whenever you level up, which can be a lifesaver at times. Another thing of note is that the game likes to split up your party and have everyone adventuring solo for a while. This is a way to explore their individual universes a bit more, but it's also pretty cool in that it changes the gameplay balance and forces you to use your special moves a bit more strategically. In general you can get by without any level grinding, which makes the game challenging enough to keep you on your toes. The encounter rate occasionally gets annoying, though it's mitigated in many dungeons by the fact that the counter resets whenever you go through a door or up/down some stairs, and doors are usually all over the place. Accessing the menu also resets the counter (a trick I learned when I played Final Fantasy 1, many years ago), so every now and then I'd rely on that trick to give myself a breather. I enjoyed the game's world, too, though the towns tend to mostly look the same. I always enjoyed modern settings in RPG, and this is what this game mostly is. There are office buildings, city halls, factories, hospitals and telephones; it's basically the '90s with bits of advanced, improbable science. And that's about it. I'd say it's a mid-range SNES RPG, not one of the many classics on the console, but a nice one nonetheless. It's certainly much better than the average licensed game, even if, like me, you haven't seen any of the series it's based on. I had also enjoyed Winky Soft's SNES Villgust RPG many years ago, so I'd say it comes down to them being a better developer than most of the other companies Banpresto and other publishers of licensed games typically work with. *Banpresto (and now Bandai Namco) has an entire meta-series of Ultraman-Kamen Rider-Gundam crossovers known as Compati Hero, which spawned over 40 games between 1990 and 2015. It includes the Great Battle series, of which AGTP translated a bunch of SNES entries a while back, various sports games, and a handful of RPGs, of which Hero Chronicle was the first (though it's a stand-alone game in terms of narrative and setting). The original Super Robot Wars was initially conceived as a Compati Hero spin-off, but it quickly became its own monstrous thing, with about 60 games to date (!!!), 50 of which apparently feature the same goddamn SRPG gameplay (!!!). Perhaps because SRW wasn't yet established as a franchise (only two games had been released by then), and because Winky Soft, which developed most (all?) SRW games in the '90s, also made Hero Chronicles, it features brief playable appearances by two dimension-traveling characters from the Super Robot Wars series (so-called Banpresto Originals, as they were created specifically for SRW2 the year before, and became recurring characters in the series), and its main antagonist went on to appear in a bunch of SRW games as well.
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Post by Ex on Dec 29, 2019 11:46:02 GMT -5
toeiGlad to hear you not only beat a game again, but managed to have a fun time too. I'll admit I've ignored these SRW/ Great Battle related games that AGTP has been so fervent about releasing. I've ignored them, because I have no frame of reference for the material, and frankly the robot designs do nothing for me. Of course that doesn't mean the games aren't good. Judging from your review, Hero Chronicle is at least decent. I like the fact that this JRPG has a modern/sci-fi aesthetic, that's always appreciated as the fantasy trope gets old after a while.
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Post by toei on Dec 29, 2019 12:53:45 GMT -5
Ex I haven't been interested in them either, but this one's a stand-alone game, so it's easy to get into. It's also not that focused on mecha, since two of the three source franchises are tokusatsu rather than mecha. BTW, there is one Super Robot Wars game I feel you might like, if only because it seems similar to the Front Mission games, at a glance. It doesn't use the SD style most of the series does, and it doesn't feature any licensed mecha, just all-original characters. Apparently it's the SRW game that people who aren't fans of the series tend to like. No idea if it's good, myself, but if you should want to ever try one of them, that should probably be the one.
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Post by Xeogred on Dec 29, 2019 14:20:23 GMT -5
^ That one looks pretty rad to me, killer production.
Unlike you two I'm a huge fan of mecha and especially 80's Sunrise, but even for me just glancing at the SRW series is daunting to say the least. I've known some people online into mecha that were super big into them though. All I know is that there's two big branches in the series, original content, and then the ones that combine a bunch of IP's with crossovers. I bet those would be a licensing nightmare to get localized and probably why they never did I don't think.
But yeah, SRPG's... either way you cut it, I only play like one of these a year, if even. And for now I'm focused on Front Mission.
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