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Post by Sarge on Mar 26, 2021 17:51:30 GMT -5
Exile: Wicked Phenomenon has met its fate again. This time, though, via the UnWorked patch. Hoo boy, let me tell you, if Working Designs messed up the difficulty curve, making it a brutal, unfair game, then the original Japanese version errs the other direction. It's pitifully easy. Yeah, I got a few game overs, mainly from being cocky and also being occasionally underleveled. The WD release, as flawed as it was, was probably more fun, as it forced you to play carefully and make full use of all your items. Here, the action is just a means to an end, and barely that. I still don't hate it or anything, but something between soul-crushing and babby's first game would be nice. 6/10. Oh, playing Duo stuff via MiSTer is a fantastic experience. Can't recommend it enough. I think I might drop back to the first game, and see how I fare there. It's been a long time since I played through it, but that was via the Genesis release. EDIT: One last thing: this game has that obnoxious "screen only scrolls when you're 4/5 toward the edge" thing going. 
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Post by toei on Mar 26, 2021 19:15:48 GMT -5
The first game was better balanced. I like it a lot. I never actually got around to the sequel because none of the old PCE emulators used to run it, and there were rumors on the Internet that it was impossible to finish due to the rebalancing. I guess that wasn't true.
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Post by Sarge on Mar 26, 2021 20:44:43 GMT -5
Yeah, it's definitely not impossible. Very, very difficult, but beatable. You really have to grind a lot early, and make sure you keep healing and offensive/defensive boost items on hand at all times. I often found using Kindi effective, given his tremendous strength.
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Post by Ex on Mar 26, 2021 21:07:34 GMT -5
SargeMy HLTB notes after beating Exile 2 said "The Japanese version is easy." So I agree. These were my thoughts from 2016: I decided after beating Exile I'd go ahead and do the sequel. So I started playing Exile: Wicked Phenomenon first. Right off the bat the difficulty was insane, and I immediately assumed Working Designs had screwed up the game. I was right: "On Exile 2 it was an issue of limited number of modifications because we weren't doing the game reprogramming, Telenet was. It was a small number of tries. And on the second-to last time, we had it *almost* right, so we added like +1 to the monsters, but it was like that scene with the fat guy in Meaning of Life where the waiter gives him that one wafer and he explodes. That +1 exceeded some limit internally and made the monsters exponentially harder rather than incrementally. Since it was our last "fix" and we had production discs, I thought we were screwed and had made an unwinnable game. Fortunately, with some time and special strategies, we found out you could finish it. We made one of the hardest games ever - by accident." -Vic Ireland ( www.hardcoregaming101.net/exile/exile4.htm ) Myself not having the patience today for yet another Working Designs localization fiasco, decided instead to play the original Japanese version. Which in turn is way too easy. :lol: Seriously Exile II: Janen no Jishou is a piece of cake. I beat the game in an hour and a half barely even trying. That's not to say Exile II doesn't have some improvements over the original. It's got better graphics, better level designs, the ability to switch between four main characters at any time, a more thoroughly realized middle eastern theme, and far more streamlined pacing. That means no more derpy "puzzles" or maze dungeons thankfully. However the OST isn't nearly as good as the original, opting for more classically themed middle eastern orchestration. Which I guess fits the mood and all but is kind of boring musically. That said, there's no reason to bother with the other player characters, when none of them are as good as Sadler. There are far less cutscenes this time, with lots of walls of text instead. Having played through the game in Japanese I didn't know what was going on anyway. It really feels like the developers were short on cash and time with Exile II, but what's here is still pretty decent all things considered. If you enjoy the action portions of ActRaiser, you'll probably like this, as that's what it reminds me of. A nice little action-RPG/platformer snack. But if you do choose to play Exile II, make sure it's the original Japanese version. At least until some intrepid hacker combines the Working Design translation with the Japanese original balancing. (2021 Addendum: This did eventually happen.) I also gave it a 6/10.
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Post by Sarge on Mar 26, 2021 22:42:07 GMT -5
Man, should have used that fire spell earlier against the last boss of Exile. It shredded him.
So yeah, Exile is much better than Exile 2. For one, the screen scrolling isn't wonky. There are some unique enemy death animations, so that's a nice touch. I think the graphics overall look better, too. While it doesn't fix the "easy" problem, it doesn't feel quite as truncated and pathetic on that front. This, of course, is the Working Designs version, so they probably boosted a few stats, for the better, I think.
One thing that really helped communicate the world-spanning adventure was the map screen, something the second game omits. Why, I don't know, but it makes the game feel slightly less linear, and the RPG elements are more than simple window dressing.
Not sure what I want to rate this one. It's at least a 7/10, though. It won't blow any doors off, but it is most assuredly a good game.
(I also forgot to mention that it felt like I ripped through Exile 2 in like an hour, tops. It felt ridiculously short. This one probably took closer to three hours.)
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Post by Moulinoski on Mar 27, 2021 13:56:27 GMT -5
Phantasy Star IV and Cave Noire are both great games, good taste man. I've beaten the former but not the latter. Cave Noire gets rather difficult eventually, but I always enjoyed its OST even when dying. As a portable roguelike with cute graphics, I think CN was well ahead of its time. PS3 is a downgrade from PS4, but I think it's still worth playing regardless. I still play Cave Noire and no kidding it gets hard! I’ll get there eventually, though! Part of the reason I want to take a while before starting Phantasy Star 3 is because I don’t want my experience with PS4 to taint it. I feel like on its own, it’ll probably a good game (as I’ve heard from people who played it when it still the most recent PS game). But Phantasy Star 4 also went on for a bit longer than I expected and it wore me down a bit. I don’t know how long it took me to finish. I know it wasn’t 100 hours like Persona or Dragon Quest, but there was something about the later dungeon design that tired me out. I do look forward to it though. |
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Post by toei on Mar 27, 2021 13:58:48 GMT -5
Phantasy Star IV is like 20 hours long. It's just really fast-paced, so they're able to pack a lot in those 20 hours. Still, I've never heard anyone say it was too long before.
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Post by Xeogred on Mar 27, 2021 13:59:56 GMT -5
Phantasy Star IV and Cave Noire are both great games, good taste man. I've beaten the former but not the latter. Cave Noire gets rather difficult eventually, but I always enjoyed its OST even when dying. As a portable roguelike with cute graphics, I think CN was well ahead of its time. PS3 is a downgrade from PS4, but I think it's still worth playing regardless. I still play Cave Noire and no kidding it gets hard! I’ll get there eventually, though! Part of the reason I want to take a while before starting Phantasy Star 3 is because I don’t want my experience with PS4 to taint it. I feel like on its own, it’ll probably a good game (as I’ve heard from people who played it when it still the most recent PS game). But Phantasy Star 4 also went on for a bit longer than I expected and it wore me down a bit. I don’t know how long it took me to finish. I know it wasn’t 100 hours like Persona or Dragon Quest, but there was something about the later dungeon design that tired me out. I do look forward to it though. That surprises me a little, since it seemed swiftly paced like Chrono Trigger or whatnot to me, even moreso. I manually tracked my time and beat it around 17 hours myself. I agree with your last post though that the Air Castle was nuts. Thankfully it had a save and healing point midway in.
From what I hear PS2-PS3 can be much longer and more grindy.
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Post by Sarge on Mar 27, 2021 16:07:39 GMT -5
I don't think PSIII is very grindy, but PSII absolutely is.
Anyway, made a quick Street Fighter Zero run on the MiSTer. I remember almost managing to beat this on one quarter back in the day, but came up just short. Anyway, this was when I really started to dig Street Fighter. SFII was fine, but the feel of the Alpha games are much more my speed. 8/10, and only because it was surpassed by its follow-ups, especially in mechanical refinements and roster additions.
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Post by Moulinoski on Mar 31, 2021 13:05:34 GMT -5
Yeah, I remember really liking PS2 back when I played it but coming back to it recently, I realized that part of why I tolerated it was that I was playing the iOS port (not the new ones, this was like 2012). It automatically save stated anytime I closed out of it and was very good for certain quick breaks. I remember having to look up several maps late in the game.
I hope PS3 isn’t very grindy. I really want to experience the generation system and I’m guessing the game is easier to get into than that Romancing SaGa game that has a similar premise (from what I’ve read/ heard. I don’t care to put in the effort that SaGa wants out of me).
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