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Post by Sarge on Jan 1, 2021 23:41:42 GMT -5
Oh, that reminds me - I will vouch for Spellcaster. I think it's a pretty solid game, and I was glad I was able to knock it out after seeing it in magazines for so many years.
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Post by toei on Jan 2, 2021 9:42:21 GMT -5
I started playing 3X3 Eyes: Juuma Houkan for the SNES today. It's an interesting game so far. I finished Chapter 1 (there are 4 apparently). It's an adventure game, but it's neither the Japanese-style graphic adventures (known as ADV in Japan, and not goddamn visual novels, which are a separate thing), nor a point-n-click. The view and controls are that of a side-scroller, where you can enter buildings or other parts of areas by pressing Up. Chapter 1 has you going around a small section of Kowloon in Hong Kong, exploring a large building and a few streets for various items that'll let you advance while solving puzzles along the way. The puzzles make sense so far, but the exploration part demands attention to details. For example, there are two doors covered by paper talismans that prevent you from entering (as your character is supernatural). An old lady mentions that she's worried about rats possibly eating the talismans, as she believes the doors must stay closed. In one room of the building, there's a pot, and there are hallways with barrels you can push and stand on, to no obvious use. Turns out you can stand on them to remove the grills from the air ducts above (which I took for background elements at first), which will cause a rat to escape. Put down the pot and the rat will climb inside (something the old lady will also hint at if you talk to her again - she thinks it's funny how rats like to climb inside the pots in her husband's shop). You can then take the pot to one of the room with the talisman, free the rat, and watch it eat it up, letting you get through the door. At the end of Chapter 1 was a battle; a turn-based thing with elaborate-looking attacks where you pick 3 moves per turn and watch things play out. It was a pretty cool change of pace.
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Post by toei on Jan 2, 2021 18:10:18 GMT -5
I finished it. Mini-review. 3x3 Eyes was a supernatural seinen manga that ran from 1987 to 2002, spanning 40 volumes. It deals with Pai, the last member of an ancient race of 3-eyed immortal beings who seeks to become human (which is how the rest of her race is presumed to have gone extinct), and her companion Yakumo, formerly a normal Japanese teenager turned into her immortal guardian. Like most seinen manga, it never got a TV anime, but it did spawn two short OVA series in the '90s, covering the first 5 volumes. Videogame-wise, it got a trilogy of computer adventures games by Nippon Create, which got ports to the PCE-CD, PSX and Saturn, a reportedly mediocre SNES RPG, a much more interesting Sega-CD RPG by Sega itself, whose designers worked on games such as Panzer Dragoon Saga, Defenders of Oasis and the Brandish series*, and this SNES adventure game, Yuuma Houkan, apparently developed by a company called System Supply N-Tech, which I had never heard of until today. The events that take place in the game are not covered in the OVAs; I suspect it's probably an original story, though it could be from the manga. Like many games from that era based off anime and manga franchises, it will make very little sense unless you're very familiar with the franchise. Having only watched the OVAs, I at least knew who about two-thirds of the characters were. The story isn't very interesting, anyway, and it doesn't help that several lines of the fan-translation read like they were translated without context and never edited to make sense. It's divided into three main chapters, with the final chapter being a boss battle. Like the original manga, it takes place in various parts of the world; it starts in Hong Kong, moves on to either Nepal or Tibet depending on a decision you make, and ends in Egypt. I rather enjoyed the first chapter. Running around a dirty, dingy building in Kowloon had me thinking of Shenmue 2, which largely takes place in that same location. Things turn sour in afterward; the other locations don't have the same ambiance, and the proceedings are a lot more tedious. It's easy to get stuck in Chapter 2 trying to get some event to trigger, and the inclusion of (thankfully tiny) platforming sections are seriously hurt by the slippery and irresponsive controls. The Egyptian chapter, which predictably mostly takes place in a pyramid, focuses more on puzzles, and while most are ok, two of them play like a variation on those sliding puzzles I hate with all my heart. The story gets worse as the game goes on, and though there are only 6 or 7 battles in the game, they go from a cool novelty to a minor pain very quickly, as they play out slowly and the system is largely garbage. In the end, I'd probably give it a 5, though I'll mention that the first chapter was at least a 7 for me. *if it's true that this board has a metaphysical influence on such things as releases of games or fan-translations, I vote that it applies to this game.
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Post by Sarge on Jan 2, 2021 20:10:43 GMT -5
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Post by Ex on Jan 4, 2021 10:12:37 GMT -5
It's easy to get stuck in Chapter 2 trying to get some event to trigger, and the inclusion of (thankfully tiny) platforming sections are seriously hurt by the slippery and irresponsive controls. Ugh, man... Well I'm glad you stuck with it anyway. 3x3 Eyes doesn't sound like a game I'd want to play, but I agree with Sarge that the cover art is nice. - I've been playing Blue Submarine No.6 for Dreamcast. I've got almost 16 hours in the game. However, I've stalled out on one particularly infuriating mission. It involves diving down into a sunken city's subway system, and navigating its labyrinthine network, until you reach an exit point to emerge near an item you are supposed to retrieve. The problem I'm having is, you're supposed to find this exit within a certain amount of time, but there's no way to know how much time you have to do so. You either do it, or you fail (and I've failed many times now). The overall situation in doing all this, is far more complicated than I just described - let's just say there's some shit-tier game design at this point. I'm going to give this mission one more try, and if I don't make it, I'm dropping the game. I don't particularly want to drop this game, because when BS#6 is good it is really good, but this particular nadir is killing my interest. Either way, I plan to start that SRPG I was talking about tonight. If I keep going with BS#6, I can just dabble with it during my dayjob's downtime. It's no longer good enough for my prime playing time (late night).
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Post by Chema on Jan 4, 2021 10:37:18 GMT -5
I started Naruto: Path of Ninja for the Nintendo DS. It's a port of a Japan-only GBA game. As you can see from the screenshots, it's an RPG adaptation. It cover the first arcs of the anime series, including some of the filler stories. The game got mediocre reviews back then, but being a fan of the series and having not played a turn-based JRPG for a while, I liked the first hour more than the critics. Sure, it has a barely tolerable soundtrack and many of the environment sprites are very uninspired, but the game has a good pacing, no long cutscenes and no endless dialogue. The battle system is the same turn-based we've seen countless times, but at least it doesn't make things complicated or slow. In just an hour of gameplay, I felt like I accomplished more than playing other, more acclaimed JRPGs. And I liked to see the characters from the show wandering around the map in the form of sprites. I'm sticking with it until I get tired of the soundtrack or the simplicity of the game, though the game is also shorter than most JRPGs, which is another plus for me.
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Post by toei on Jan 4, 2021 11:37:03 GMT -5
I like the battle sprites.
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Post by Ex on Jan 4, 2021 14:54:16 GMT -5
Geez I finally beat that ridiculous mission in BS#6... ...the saga continues.
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Post by Sarge on Jan 4, 2021 15:19:34 GMT -5
Looks cool, Ex! Surprised the game is so long, especially since it's an anime adaptation. Chema: I'm always impressed by a lot of the spritework that appeared on the DS. It really is like a SNES on steroids, and it feels like there were still some really talented sprite artists in the industry.
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Post by Ex on Jan 4, 2021 15:30:53 GMT -5
Surprised the game is so long, especially since it's an anime adaptation. 8 hours would have been perfect. This game is way longer than it needed to be.
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