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Post by Xeogred on Nov 24, 2020 17:49:36 GMT -5
Busted up Mega Man IV for GB. It's a lot harder than I remembered it being! Especially since I was playing legit - I wonder if I was using save states the last time I played. Probably. I think I was playing on PSP through Masterboy. This time, I was playing on the SNES through the SD2SNES's cool firmware update giving it Super Game Boy capability. I don't know how accurate it is, but it felt really solid to play. This and Mega Man V are definitely the best of the Game Boy games. I give this one an 8/10. I really dug MMV and have always heard IV is pretty good too. Having played the NES MM's for literally all my life though, it's really hard to get into the mood to play something that's similar but 10x upscaled sprites and less level, with way more slowdown and momentum that feels nothing like the NES games... lol. I wish these got some NES remake romhacks.
I remember being floored by how good the Xtreme games look and play though. They straight up seem like an MMX game from the NES.
Anyways yeah, I will try to give IV a shot someday.
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Post by Sarge on Nov 24, 2020 18:29:08 GMT -5
It is slower for sure. But I found the level design quite solid, so that brings it up a level.
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Post by Sarge on Nov 25, 2020 21:05:43 GMT -5
I knocked out another game I've always wanted to run through: Blades of Vengeance for Genesis. To me, it feels a lot like a DOS/Euro-fantasy platformer. Controls are tight, and you can choose from three different characters, all of which have different quirks. I chose the Huntress. Walls you can walk through and out of the way places abound with hidden power-ups, and you'll definitely want to avail yourself of them. Enemies don't drop health restoratives directly - instead, you'll get health potions that restore half your life when you use them. These can be dropped by certain enemies or in treasure chests, or bought between stages. Yep, there's a shop here, and it sells useful items in exchange for the silver you find along the way. Speaking of the shop, there's an item that gets sold after stage 3: armor. This sounds like it might just give an extra hit, but no, it actually effectively upgrades your character to a new class. I haven't fiddled with the other two, but in the case of the Amazon, her style completely changes from sword-wielding to now having a long-range crossbow. This has both positives and negatives, but mostly positive, especially since it brings your base attack level up to the prior class' double-sparkly-gem boost. Probably my biggest gripe about the game is fall damage. This, paired with quite a few blind leaps where you can't see anything below you, will lead to damage, and quite a lot at that. Really, there isn't anything here that sets the world on fire, but I liked the limited inventory and ideas here. It's a very good game that I will likely try out legit in the future, instead of playing super-cautiously via occasional save-states. I'll give this a 7.5/10.
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Post by anayo on Nov 25, 2020 21:41:36 GMT -5
SargeBlades of Vengeance looks righteous! I love the setting of those swords and sorcery video games from the late 80's and 90's, many of which were trying to ride the coattails of Conan the Barbarian. The sprites and backgrounds look really attractive and the character upgrade path as you described it sounds really appealing. I'm surprised I haven't heard of this title before. After reading your review I intend to check it out.
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Post by toei on Nov 25, 2020 21:50:44 GMT -5
Blades of Vengeance is actually an Australian game, turns out. Beam Software was pretty prolific in those days. They also made the very good SNES Shadowrun.
Anyway, Blades of Vengeance (which I assumed was a European game until now) has long looked pretty good to me. I should probably give it a shot.
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Post by Sarge on Nov 25, 2020 21:57:34 GMT -5
I always forget that Beam Software is Australian. Very cool.
I've always seen it pop up on various "best of" lists for the Genesis, and I saw it in various mags back in the day, so it always held some appeal for me. Just glad I sat down and actually stuck with it. I don't even know if it has passwords or anything, but I'd advise having save states just to keep your progress - it took me quite a while to get all the way through it (~3 hours).
EDIT: Ah, interesting, the game has a hidden warp zone. The first area, just to the left of the door leading to the next sub-stage, hides an invisible platform up in the air. It will take quite a few tries to get on it, but then you can jump to the right and up to a hidden door, which leads to an area with a bunch of doors and power-ups that take you to whatever stage you wish. (And I did confirm that I could rip through the final area, this time as the Sorcerer, without any issue. I also discovered a use for some other items I didn't experiment around with, like the Transform potion that turns stronger enemies into weaker ones. Very handy!)
Something else to note, and you might not realize this if you don't read the manual - you can block attacks. By kneeling, you go into a defensive position, and any attacks from the front will be rendered harmless. You pretty much have to do this to get through the game, and I was wondering why I was having such a tough time when I started it.
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Post by Xeogred on Nov 26, 2020 6:31:26 GMT -5
Wow, that looks freaking cool to me. Skimming a video, the music seems great as well. It looks like an awesome cross between Altered Beast, Castlevania, and Golden Axe haha.
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Post by anayo on Nov 26, 2020 8:25:14 GMT -5
Wow, that looks freaking cool to me. Skimming a video, the music seems great as well. It looks like an awesome cross between Altered Beast, Castlevania, and Golden Axe haha. That combo sounds perfect!
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Post by Sarge on Nov 26, 2020 19:55:58 GMT -5
I've made a semi-legit run of M.U.S.H.A. By "semi-legit", I mean I cleared every stage except the last one without using save states, then I kicked 'em in to finish it up. Unpopular opinion time: I definitely don't like this as much as Soldier Blade, and I don't even prefer it to Blazing Lazers or the "weaker" Space Megaforce. It's still good, but there's something about the weapon system I don't much care for. And while it sports an interesting setting (this could almost fit into this month's Club Retro theme in some ways), the color palette seems surprisingly muted compared to what I'm used to in Compile shooters. I'll give this one a 7/10. I understand why folks love it, but it just doesn't hit that upper tier for me.
EDIT: And because I wanted to try the other Star Soldier game on PC Engine, I played through Super Star Soldier. Holy crudmuffins, Batman, is this game hard. Sheesh. It feels hard to get powered up, hard to stay powered up, and even then, you're not guaranteed success. Everything feels ridiculously fast. I know I'm bad at (some) shooters, but I'm seriously terrible at this one. Save states all around. I'm giving this one a 6/10. I'm hoping I look up an article and it talks about the game's legendary difficulty or something.
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Post by Xeogred on Nov 27, 2020 14:13:57 GMT -5
I guess I like MUSHA a little more myself. But it's no Thunder Force IV for that system. I'll have to see what I make of Space Megaforce compared to MUSHA...
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And I wrapped up my Demon's Souls / Female Magician run today. Took about 18 hours, some of that was leisure and taking my time again for some specific items or backtracking. I had a blast playing it again with a trickier build, early on. It probably didn't help that I didn't upgrade any weapon until I was like more than midway in, haha. I ended up using the Crescent Falchion the most, since its damage scales with the Magic stat and it has an MP regen effect, though it's very slow and passive. As a female character, once I got the exclusive gauntlets that boost your Souls gain, I kept those own forever, along with the ring that does that as well.
Overall, I think I'd say I had more fun doing a Mage build in Dark Souls though. There's more magic and tools to mess with. With Demon's, I mostly just stuck with two soul arrow type attacks (Soul Ray and Homing Soul Arrow) and Warding which was a huge defense buff. But yeah, the options seem a bit more limited than I expected. If you play Demon's Souls through multiple runs, you naturally end up wanting and getting all the magic anyways. Especially things like Second Chance, or Cursed Weapon, etc. So the late game of Demon's gives you a ton of variety if you're in it for the trophies or numerous NG+ runs... since I usually rock large swords and medium equipment in these games, using shorter weapons and weaker armor is what made the early portions of this run pretty challenging and different. I didn't like the Crescent Falchion's animations or lack of reach at all, but it's what I had to use for my stats haha.
My biggest annoyance with Demon's was thankfully fixed from Dark Souls and on too... the dreaded "Item Weight". There's at least the Herculean Ring to slap on when you need more space, but it's all a bunch of weird busywork and I'll never forget if you don't pickup some exclusive armor in a world and things get reset, it despawns forever. So you better hope that ring helps give you enough space to pick everything up! The Crystal Lizard/Gecko's are still frustrating too, but in a comical way. I also don't like how the game defaults to looking for the now dead servers, so it takes awhile to load up initially before it lets you select offline mode. And last but not least... the Dragon God boss battle, I'll admit, yeah it's pretty wack. lol, an interesting idea that could have been cooler. But hey, I love all the experimentation in Demon's.
Even as a veteran of the game, I still banged my head up against the wall badly in 4-2. Because my STR/DEX stats were so low, using a bow to take on those flying stingrays was not really ideal at all. I was doing like 2 points of damage per hit. And they were usually out of range for my Soul Arrorws. So, I just had to constantly dodge, heal, and pray for the best around the cliffs. The Reaper's were giving me a heck of a time with this character build. Now adding salt to the wound, I kept using Stone of Ephemeral Eyes at this point because it was the last level I needed to clear and I wanted that huge HP gain you get in body/human form, along with a free ring slot (not having to use the Cling Ring). Well... I died a lot in human form, so the world tendency of 4-2 shot down to pure black, which causes more gold skeleton phantoms to spawn around the outside ledges areas. Because yeah, Demon's Souls punishes you when you're doing bad! So it was a brutal run and I just needed to be really patient and careful, haha. Thankfully the 4-2 boss is a bit of a joke...
I did world 5 before 4-2 and other stuff. I always dread them, but I cleared 5-1 on my first go, then weirdly had a good time in 5-2. I think it's like I said a week ago or so when I started this replay though, because I know the levels so well by this point and some of their gimmicks, I know how to prepare for them and change up my equipment if necessary... like with 5-2, hah. I'll say no more.
I got False King Allant on my first try, he couldn't do much against my Warding and Homing Soul Arrow tore him up. That sucker still grabbed me once though and took a Soul Level. It's insane a boss can steal a level, haha. They never did this idea again.
I kind of wish there was more to 1-4, or an elegant interior castle section. Alas, that came in the sequels... ... but yeah, all of world 1, 3, and 4, are still some of my favorites in the entire Soulsbornekiro saga. And world 2 isn't good for souls/levels per se, but has all the stones and a lot of personality to it that I appreciate. All the levels are so iconic.
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