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Post by Sarge on Jun 7, 2021 22:19:12 GMT -5
I definitely don't disagree with that particular criticism - dungeons do feel a bit expansive and repetitive, I assume to increase the sense of scale. It definitely would have helped if something were there to make the screens more unique. To be honest, Crystalis also suffers from this to some degree - dungeon tilesets don't vary a lot, which can make it pretty hard to navigate at times.
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Post by Ex on Jun 8, 2021 9:26:09 GMT -5
Crystalis also suffers from this to some degree - dungeon tilesets don't vary a lot, which can make it pretty hard to navigate at times. True. But unlike Willow, Crystalis has a real-time panning camera, which makes navigation smoother (and faster). Willow does that room-by-room panning thing (like the original Zelda), which makes navigation less intuitive. Or for me it does.
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And speaking of Crystalis, the game pissed me off tonight. I ran into some of what I'll call "bad design". I will explain. Keep in mind, I've been playing this game without a walkthrough, and I never beat it as a kid. So no nostalgia glasses here, no past plays to guide me either. Playing Crystalis is all new to me. So I got to the second area and started exploring. Found a hut with a dude in it, he says basically nothing useful (screenshot below). Then I go to the spooky forest (far away from said hut), and explore the spooky forest, I find a town with creatures in it that can't talk to me. So then I don't know where to go anymore. I have explored everywhere. There's a mountain I can't climb due to needing I assume a fire sword to break ice barriers, and another route won't let me advance because it says, "You're not strong enough yet." When I first read that dialogue box, I grinded up from level 3 all the way to level 5, thinking the path would let me advance - nope. So that's bad design #1, not communicating well to the player. The only other route just takes me back to where I started from. So in utter frustration, I looked up a walkthrough, which you all know I hate doing. The walkthrough says: "After you attempt to talk to the forest creatures, return to the hut that had the guy in it, now there will be a new guy there, who you have to beat in a sword fight. After you win, you will learn telepathy, so you can talk to the forest creatures."Yeah that all makes perfect sense. So I'm supposed to magically infer that because I tried to talk to some forest creatures, a new NPC will suddenly spawn in a hut I've already explored before? Okay, bad design #2. Notice this guy does not say, "After you attempt to talk to the forest creatures, and can't understand them, return here to my hut, then you can fight my friend, and we'll teach you telepathy if you beat him." No, this guy says absolutely nothing to that effect. This screenshot is literally all he says the first time you visit this hut.
So I go back to the hut, try to sword fight the new guy, he beats me down, tells me I'm not strong enough yet, and kicks me out of the hut. So I assume my level isn't high enough, so I go spend ten minutes grinding, to go from level 5 to level 6. I return to the hut, he beats me again, tells me the same thing, and out the hut I am evicted. So now I've been beat down twice by this guy, and I'm wondering if the game expects me to grind to level 7 to defeat him. That would take at least 20 minutes of grinding, because I'd need 1200 more experience points to reach level 7, and the best enemies (blue slimes) only give a measly 6 experience points each. Well I wasn't going to do all that grinding without confirmation, so back to the walkthrough I went: "You can't beat the sword guy the first two times you try to defeat him. You have to lose at least twice to him. Also the minimum level you can beat him at is 4, but you will need a turbo controller to do it. A turbo controller is recommended if you are lower than level 7."
And now we have bad design #3. First I was supposed to know a guy would magically appear somewhere I've already been, just because I talked to seemingly unrelated forest creatures. Then, I'm supposed to lose to this guy at least twice, before I can beat him, because that's wholly intuitive. Also you beat this dude by rapidly pressing the attack button for a sustained duration of time while pressing against him, which for me because of an injury to my arm when I was thirteen, is literally painful after just five seconds. But I do have a turbo controller, which didn't help the first two times I lost to this guy. Because apparently you have to lose at least twice obligatorily - and I was supposed to know that obviously. I must be a crappy video game player to not have figured that one out immediately.
Three bad design strikes in a row, and I was out for tonight. I sure hope Crystalis isn't full of byzantine design like this. I really don't care for unintuitive progress triggers in a game. That's not fun for me. I'm not saying I'm done with Crystalis yet, but if the whole game has unintuitive badly design progression like this I'll drop it with no remorse.
- In better news, I started playing Beyond Oasis tonight. Before I knew it, I'd already sunk an hour and a half into this one. I've thus far acquired the water and fire spirits, and just made it onto the enemy ship after conquering their fortress. I've found Beyond Oasis to be quite fun so far, I'm hoping it stays this good to the credits.
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Post by Sarge on Jun 8, 2021 14:27:01 GMT -5
Yeah, there are a few places where it does that. I'd forgotten you couldn't win the first few times, although I'm pretty sure back in the day I ended up losing, gaining one level, coming back, losing, gaining another, and winning. This time around, it looked closer to me, so I just tried it three times in a row and smash the button like no tomorrow.
Thankfully, as far as the "you aren't powerful enough" deal, I'm almost positive that's the only place where that happens, and it is a bit misleading. Of course, I have to wonder how much of that falls on the iffy translation at times. Not sure what the original text reads. It's clearly a way they set up to gate your progress, though, and they probably could have picked a better way to block progress. I do like how you can communicate through telepathy, though.
As for Beyond Oasis, in my opinion it occupies a whole different level than Crystalis. Granted, I still love Crystalis (I'd give it an 8.5/10 today), but Beyond Oasis is like a 9.5/10 for me. Tremendous game, that.
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Post by Ex on Jun 8, 2021 16:00:19 GMT -5
Right now I'd give Crystalis a 7/10, and Beyond Oasis an 8/10, just based on what I've played so far. I've still got a long way to go with both games, though.
Crystalis is not without merit, I don't want to come off as hating it or anything. It's just my patience for purposefully cryptic (or wholly unintuitive) progression triggers with old games, is fairly obliterated at this point in my life. I still plan to play Crystalis tonight.
My only complaints about Beyond Oasis so far, is that it's a total cakewalk, and the OST is surprisingly bad. I say surprisingly, because Yuzo Koshiro did the OST. I don't know what he was going for with this game's music, but it's not doing anything for me. The rest of the game however, is doing plenty. I'm excited to play it more tonight. I'm also interested now in the other Oasis releases. As I understand it, this game is part of a trilogy.
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Post by Sarge on Jun 8, 2021 16:11:50 GMT -5
Well, I think Defenders of Oasis isn't considered part of the series, although I do recommend that one as well as probably the best JRPG on Game Gear. It's an extremely solid Dragon Quest-like that does a few unique things as well, like the upgrade path for your genie.
Agree that the OST ain't much to speak of. It's mostly atmospheric stuff - I was hoping for a lot more kicking melodies, but the game ironically has more in common with a lot of modern games.
As far as cryptic stuff goes, I pretty much just accept it as part of the territory on NES. That was definitely the era where it was the worst, and even Nintendo themselves weren't immune to it. The original Zelda and Zelda II contain their fair share of weird puzzles that don't always make sense. Believe me, I hacked my way through Dragon Scroll, and that may be one of the most egregious offenders. Konami in this era was something else, let me tell you, and I mean that in both good and bad ways.
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Post by Ex on Jun 8, 2021 16:22:51 GMT -5
Well, I think Defenders of Oasis isn't considered part of the series, although I do recommend that one as well as probably the best JRPG on Game Gear. Fair enough. Have you beaten the Saturn sequel though? If so, where's it rate for you?
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Post by Sarge on Jun 8, 2021 16:43:46 GMT -5
Yeah, I played through it during ARPG month last year. Ended up a 7/10 for me, 12 hours to complete. I just don't think the combat feels as visceral, and it's my primary hangup with the game I think. And some really long dungeons, but that can be either a positive or negative depending on how you view it.
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Post by Ex on Jun 8, 2021 17:06:26 GMT -5
Yeah, I played through it during ARPG month last year. Ended up a 7/10 for me, 12 hours to complete. I just don't think the combat feels as visceral, and it's my primary hangup with the game I think. And some really long dungeons, but that can be either a positive or negative depending on how you view it. I recall you playing it now, yeah. I just watched a video of the game, Legend of Oasis somehow looks visually worse than the Genesis one, and its sound effects are just horrid. But that doesn't mean its gameplay doesn't offer something worthwhile. It'll go in the "someday" pile for me. Now that I've got comfortable handheld ways of playing Genesis games, it does make me want to beat other "action-RPGs" on the system I've not done before. Crusader of Centy and Landstalker both spring to mind. I'm sure there are others. I'm hoping someday you do Brandish 2: The Planet Buster on SFC. I'd really enjoy your opinions of that one (for me it was stellar).
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Post by Sarge on Jun 8, 2021 17:14:28 GMT -5
I know that some folks do put Legend of Oasis higher on the list. I think I agree that it looks worse, perhaps not from a technical standpoint, but more that it feels like the layouts are disjointed and busy.
Landstalker was cool, although there are a few hair-pulling timing puzzles that can be really annoying with the controls on hand. I feel like Crusader of Centy is the one that always gets overlooked, and people call it a Zelda-clone, but I think it carves out its own path. I still need to make a run through that one, but I've seen a lot of it since my brother beat it back in the day. And, uh, it's super expensive these days, so as SNESdrunk would put it, "Play it any way you can."
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Post by Sarge on Jun 10, 2021 11:34:41 GMT -5
I've made some decent progress in Willow - climbed the towers, and now I'm trying to remember what I'm supposed to do next. I still think the towers showing previous floors (including the lighting up flames) is a neat touch.
The only "puzzling" here takes the form of navigation, where pretty much everything is a maze. Overworld, dungeons, the works. Definitely a lot of repeated screens, and I agree that the screen-by-screen basis, coupled with repeated screens, makes it very difficult to keep a bearing on where you are. Not that other games don't pull this, but it definitely could have stood a few more unique touches. I have to wonder, on top of potentially being repurposed, if the timetable was moved up a bit for the movie release. I think I hit Level 10 last night. I've learned over the years there are good places to farm - if you die, you lose all your level progress, so if I'm getting close, I always take the time to get the next level. Haven't died yet, though! The floating skulls are often very good spots - most screens they show up on are guaranteed encounters, so you can just keep coming in and beating them down.
I'll also note that while I like a lot of the soundtrack (that intro music is tremendous), the one tune I don't care for is the one that smacks you in the face to start. The village music is kinda shrill and way too repetitive. But this particular tune that plays when you meet a particular character is a great little melody.
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