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Post by toei on Nov 3, 2023 15:16:55 GMT -5
Sometimes I just mess with a game for up to an hour or so to decide whether it's worth playing. This is thread for that - early impressions, basically.
-Midgard An obscure 1998 Japanese PC RPG fan-translated earlier this year. It was made by a company I've never heard of called Baroque. It's a very simple 3D hack-n-slash dungeon crawler. Randomized dungeons and loot, but no other roguelike features (ie food and so on). The fights are real-time, and they use tank controls with no real lock-on, so it gets clumsy. When you face a bunch of enemies in a group you tend to get mauled as you automatically turn around to attack enemies when they reach your side, but you can't pick who you target. You can side-step or do a quick 180, at least. There is no intro text or story of any kind, and no NPC in town, just a shop and a place where you can change classes (Fighter, Monk, Wizard, Priest or Thief). On Floor B5 I fought a boss, a Dark Knight, who spoke the first text in the game when I beat him - something about "it's been a while since I met anyone" and "maybe you can succeed me, follow me", then he ran away. I expect that you fight him again every 5 floors. Anyway, it's very dull but not unplayable. Interestingly, you can leave the dungeon by picking "Main Menu" and it saves your level and items. When you back, you can start from every 5th level (ie Floor 0, 5, 10, etc.)
-Blaze & Blaze An ARPG by T&E Soft released for PC and PSX with ugly 3D, though this one has a multiplayer option and you can also have other characters following you around as you control the leader. The first dungeon-type area is outdoor, and it goes on forever and a day. You're looking for a boat to get somewhere, but then you have to find a woodcutter, and it takes like a full hour of killing enemies in the forest before you meet him. Very basic fighting and super-boring dungeons. The PC port was GamePro's Worst Game of the Year in 2000. That may be exaggerated, but it's not good.
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Post by Ex on Nov 3, 2023 16:19:55 GMT -5
This is a really good idea for a thread toei. Wish we'd had this from the start back in 2017, better late than never. π
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Post by bonesnapdeez on Nov 3, 2023 16:55:02 GMT -5
I mess around with games more often than actually buckling down and finishing them. Here are some recent ones, all Project EGG releases. Death Force (FM77AV) -- ARPG that might just be entirely in English (though the story seems incomprehensible). Competent graphics from a technical standpoint, but a very gray/brown color palette. Kind of has a "knight in space" futuristic vibe. There's little detail about the game online, though I stumbled upon this insanely detailed article about whether or not the game can actually be finished. Usas (MSX2) -- Obscure Konami platformer I had never heard of until this year. It's archaeology-themed themed with two playable characters, some puzzles, and a weird "emotion system" to contend with. Controls are not the best. It's the kind of game I wish was just on the NES. Jehard (PC-8801mkIISR) -- Ys-y old bumper ARPG by Xtalsoft. Pretty simplistic. The protagonist just looks like some 80s dude in blue jeans. Amusingly, it looks like the title is Engrish-y even though the game never left Japan. The hiragana variant of the title (γΈγγΌγ) means "jihad." Magic++: Nariyuki Makase no Nijiiro Yuusha (PC-98) -- Mouthful of a title but a solid ARPG with a cutesy anime girl protag. Reminds me of something like Fray aesthetically. EXCELLENT music. I like it. Final Zone Wolf (X1) -- top-down military shooter. I always thought this originated in the arcades given the genre, but no. I'm weirdly intrigued by it even though it looks and plays like garbage. Telenet was really hit or miss.
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Post by toei on Nov 3, 2023 18:14:47 GMT -5
Magic++ looks legit. There's a lot of MSX games that would be good if they got ported anywhere else, because I can't live with the massively choppy scrolling at all. Otherwise I wouldn't have dropped Tower of Gazzel and would probably play War of the Dead 2 as well. Final Zone Wolf is Wolf Team's first game, and probably the origin of their name. They were literally Telenet's Final Zone Wolf team. But yeah, that first batch of Telenet games is awful. They got better later.
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Post by toei on Nov 4, 2023 17:16:03 GMT -5
War of the Dead (PCE) I put a good 3 hours into this, I thought I was gonna play through the whole thing. This a horror RPG that predates Sweet Home - the original MSX version came out in 1987, so two years before, and this port/remake in early 1989. Rather than turn-based battles, the random encounters lead to side-scrolling action battles, like on Zelda 2's overworld. Unfortunately, there are no side-scroller dungeons - that could have improved the game immensely. The game's world is basically an overworld (it's supposed to be a town) with a few buildings, and you're out to find survivors and bring them back to the Church. Seemed interesting at first, and I enjoyed exploring the overworld early on (the encounter rate is actually low when you're outside, though it goes crazy in some buildings). But it's extremely fussy about event flags, and the whole game consists of traveling long distances back and forth to talk to the same few people over and over just to get a couple lines of text to trigger an event flag. I don't want to wander around forever and I don't want to follow a FAQ the whole time either. Another thing is it looks like the fan translators might have done a bad job with this one. The walkthrough on GameFaqs mentions a bunch of hints and important details given by NPCs that are just not in the translation (it was written before the patch came out, based on the Japanese version). Without them most events hardly make sense and it's often unclear who to talk to. There's very little text - this is an early 8-bit RPG - so cutting out a bunch of it is crazy. Still, I've wanted to play this for years, so I'm glad I gave it a shot.
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Post by bonesnapdeez on Nov 4, 2023 20:01:21 GMT -5
That's a game that's so much better in theory than practice. I love the aesthetics. But yeah, it's rough.
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Post by Xeogred on Nov 4, 2023 20:35:47 GMT -5
Seems rare for horror and JRPG to work well together. Shadow Hearts pulls it off nicely a few generations later.
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Post by toei on Nov 5, 2023 0:40:39 GMT -5
I just had the thought that a Splatterhouse RPG on the Genesis might have been great. Maybe you go get Jennifer's soul back from Hell or something, so it doesn't have to take place entirely within a mansion. I agree with bone that War of the Dead's aesthetics are nice. PC Engine games have the best colors. And the combat is nice and smooth - it's fun at first, before you get tired of fighting the exact same battles over and over. It's Zelda 2 with guns! That's why I think full side-scrolling dungeons to replace the back-and-forths would have made for a good game. Maybe even a great game.
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Post by toei on Dec 3, 2023 19:59:52 GMT -5
Die Hard Trilogy is a prime example of how pre-open world multi-genre games sounded good in theory but rarely worked out. I really like the concept; three arcade-style action games, one of for each Die Hard movie up to that point. But none of them are good.
The first is a third-person shooter with an almost top-down view. Each floor of the building is a level; you have to kill all the enemies and then find the bomb to beat the level. It's very janky and basic, and it gets extremely repetitive in a hurry as every level is basically the same and they just drag on. I had enough after two levels, and there are so many. The worst part about it is you only have one life (unless you can gain an extra life later?), so if you die after 45 minutes of this, you're supposed to start over.
The second is a light gun game patterned after Virtua Cop and Time Crisis, but it's inexplicably awful. I have never seen a light gun play this badly. There's like 20 innocent bystanders per criminal so you're just slaughtering them wholesale (maybe you're supposed to?), and for some reason moving the trigger also moves the camera at the same time in a weirdly uncoordinated and super disorienting way so you can't aim right. They managed to create the only light gun game with this particular flaw, so congrats.
Third is sort of like Driver. You're driving around a city section, trying to locate targets to hit with you car. Absurdly bad handling plus tight time limit and the worst rap beat of all time (I like rap beats, this is just some awful '80s trash).
Terrible.
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Post by Xeogred on Dec 3, 2023 20:01:33 GMT -5
And yet I see a lot of nostalgia and praise for that release over the years. I'll take a gamble it was a popular rental. That kind of concept fits a weekend/week pretty well but beyond that, yeah I don't know. I haven't really played any Die Hard game that I liked. But the NES game is still one of my favorite AVGN episodes, FOOT POWER! lol
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