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Post by Dashe on Jul 11, 2014 13:50:02 GMT -5
I spent the better part of last night trying to find where I reviewed Oracle of Seasons here so I could remember what I thought of it, because I just cleared both Oracle games going both ways. Apparently I either never reviewed it, or I did and someone with the ability to delete my posts read it and decided they really, REALLY hated what I thought of it. I'm pretty sure that's just fAB. I've got my eye on you, fAB. Jokes aside, yeah, the epic GBC quest is finally over and I can float away on my boat to Koholint Island in peace. I really hope I don't run into a storm.
I also used to own this strategy guide, but Mr. Ninja ate the cover or something stupid like that so my chances of getting any kind of a return on that purchase are slim to none.As always, I jumped into this as Mr. Shue from Glee. Between the two games, I liked Ages more, because I have a soft spot for time travel and using it to fix things that suck. I mean, really, they felt like the same game. Both had their specific mobility aids (Seasons has a farther jump, Ages has faster swimming). Where animal companions are concerned, on my Seasons > Ages run I grabbed Ricky and on my Ages > Seasons run I grabbed Moosh, but if I could go back I'd have probably sprung for Dimitri instead, just out of curiosity. You actually have to go out of your way to get Dimitri in either game. He's probably like a trophy or something, and Moosh is kind of weird.
I named Bipin and Blossom's kids Toby (Seasons > Ages) and Finn (Ages > Seasons). Toby was shy and became a musician and Finn was hyper and became a slacker. When I first got these games I wound up with a curious kid named Tonio who never grew up because I kept getting lost. I don't even know why. I even had the hint book, so I had no excuse!
Now that I'm really thinking about it, Ages seemed to have better overworld inhabitants, and Seasons seemed to have better dungeons. Blowing up the Crescent Island (Ages - 3) was cool, but Smog from Ages - 6 and Head Thwomp from Ages - 2 were frustratingly difficult. For dungeon design, I like the Sword and Shield Maze (Seasons - 8) and the Explorer's Crypt (Seasons - 7), and the Explorer's Crypt boss was really cool-looking but deceptively easy. I looked into it and the boss in question, Gleeok, was actually also in Phantom Hourglass and the original NES game. If Gleeok (Fr. Griock) was my favorite boss in Phantom Hourglass, too, then I'd just go out on a limb and say I'm really just into fighting two-headed dragons. The Tarm Ruins (Seasons - 6) were cool too, and having the 8th Ages dungeon and the 1st Ages dungeon in the same general area 400 years apart was pretty neat.
The townspeople are what really make Ages great, though. The townspeople and that rewarding "Hey, I fixed this horrible situation and saved a bunch of people from dying" feeling. And Ralph. I hear a lot of people think Ralph's annoying, but I liked him. He had fantastic hair. If you're only going to link the games once, I'd start with Ages, since the Ages > Seasons order resolves a loose end from the Ages story and the Seasons > Ages one just has Subrosians come to Labyrinna. I also snagged the Biggoron's Sword and the Bombchus, and against all odds actually managed to get a Gasha seed to give me that last heart piece within minutes of me complaining to Kyle about how stupid the Gasha seed roulette was. I still really hate leaving completion to random chance. This doesn't change anything!
I spent a good portion of my final Seasons run waiting anxiously for the part where I'd have to fight that stupid giant worm, but then I remembered that one was actually in A Link to the Past and heaved a huge sigh of relief.
So all in all, I'd go for out of 5 both ways, with Ages as the more rewarding experience because I'm more into overworld sidequests than dungeon hopping. Solid enough but generally unremarkable, and I'm going to need to dock points for the whole "if you want to 100% this game, random odds need to be ever in your favor, or you'll have to grind and soft-reset like crazy" deal.
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ZEROrevive
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Post by ZEROrevive on Jul 11, 2014 14:21:39 GMT -5
I pretty much agree with most of this review. Having owned Seasons and recently acquired Ages via 3DS, its pretty clear how the two game strengths and weaknesses are. Unfortunately for me it just feels like the games would have been better if both their strengths were combined as a whole. Part of Capcom made this game and it certainly shows with the differences between These two games and Links Awakening (which I wholly prefer). Does it makes the games bad? No, but playing either game seperate makes you feel like somethings just a bit off...
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Rockxas
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Steel Spirit
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Post by Rockxas on Jul 15, 2014 20:30:51 GMT -5
Recently I played Ace Attorney Investigations 2 since the fan translation patch is finally complete, as a fan of the Ace Attorney series I thought it was pretty good and the fan translation was top notch!
I also played Shovel Knight and it was great, the 8-bit aesthetic was used really well and it had elements I liked from many NES games, I definitely recommend this one for anyone who likes NES platformers.
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Post by Dashe on Jul 18, 2014 20:26:02 GMT -5
Reyn Time, baby! After over 160 hours spread out over however long it's been since the Christmas after this game got a North American release, I finally beat Xenoblade. The story was fantastic. I thought it wouldn't be, and it didn't exactly grip me from the start after many, many years of playing RPGs that centered around a Nature = Good, Tech = Bad dynamic. But I stuck with it and I'm not disappointed in where the plot went in the last act, at all. There is also a race called Nopon, and I am using the term "race" loosely because they are essentially furry balloons with bad grammar and annoying voices, that I wanted to just mass-slaughter for meat. Unfortunately the game did not include Nopon Genocide as an option. However, if you're thinking about buying this game and you have things other than your gaming hobby to attend to I highly recommend just watching the cutscenes on Youtube, especially if you're a completionist. So many achievements and quests require random chance to be in your favor for you to finish them, and Guide Dang It! doesn't even begin to describe what it's like to try and get everything. The nice things about playing the game yourself include being able to make any character run around in underwear, and exploring the world. I'm definitely more partial to the Mechonis, and I think I accidentally missed exploring the basement level of Mechonis Field. I just kept falling into it every so often and might have missed a landmark. I managed to get 185/200 achievements, every skill branch, 5-star affinity with every location, every quest I could muster, every Colony 6 upgrade, and every heart-to-heart. I beat two of the superbosses (Final Marcus with an overleveled party and Despotic Arsene by playing Ring-Around-The-Rock with Melia). Neither dropped the Veritas Glyph necessary for the Love Source item, so the Collectopaedia didn't get finished. As far as I know the superbosses do not respawn (I tried). In the end, I'm going to have to dock a full point for Black Liver Hell and the other random chance achievements and give this a still-solid out of 5...but I doubt I'll be back for New Game Plus. A must-see experience, but not necessarily one that's best as a game for everybody. Definitely avoid spoilers.
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Post by Kyle on Jul 22, 2014 13:28:57 GMT -5
Recently I played Ace Attorney Investigations 2 since the fan translation patch is finally complete, as a fan of the Ace Attorney series I thought it was pretty good and the fan translation was top notch! Oh snap, it actually got translated?! Awesooooome! You'd think Capcom would settle for an official digitally-distributed version, eh?
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Post by Bean on Jul 29, 2014 5:27:40 GMT -5
In the past couple of months, I finally went through and played Chrono Trigger (the SNES one), Mario Kart 8, Mario Golf: World Tour, the original Punch-Out!!, and Double Dragon Neon.
I recommend each and every bolded title, but skip Disney Epic Mickey: Power of Illusion and Castlevania: Lords of Shadow - Mirror of Fate. Those two are a couple of the most boring 3DS games I've played to date.
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Post by MegaTuga on Jul 30, 2014 10:19:21 GMT -5
I wrapped up SteamWorld Dig for the 3DS in less than a week and let me tell you: Don't listen to reviewers.
Sure, the game is somewhat short but if you liked MotherLode (not that one) kind of games, then you would love this one. You play as Rusty, a steambot that had a mine inherited by his passing uncle Joe in a nearly-deserted town in the desert. As he digs deeper into the mine he and the townsfolk start to realize that Joe had found ancient technology never seen before.
The game even has a story, and the people in the town are fun to talk to. Basically what you do is dig down... and down... and down... Forget your minecraft instincts, Rusty can wallclimb, dig in 8 directions and a square in space to each side... and then... oh and then! You get all these neat abilities to improve your exploring ability. Oh and the town has various shops that are built as you trade off ores, each new shop has better upgrades than the last one but you have to get the previous upgrades before... sucks. Oh, and then there is the music. Sure you only hear 5 or so different tracks in the whole game, but it provides an incredible ambiance while you are digging.
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Post by Dashe on Aug 2, 2014 19:27:01 GMT -5
It came from the depths of either a yard sale or a Gamestop bargain bin. I'm not sure when I acquired it, and I didn't even know I owned this until the fortune cookie app on Backloggery told me to get it out of the way. Well, now it's out of the way, and here's my impression of it.
If I had a box for it like this, I might actually be able to resell it for something worthwhile.From the outset, the graphics were impressive for a Game Boy Color game. From what I understand, this is like a dummied down version of the original Rayman, with different levels in it and fewer bosses. I've never actually played a Rayman game, though, so don't quote me on it if my facts are a little off. The music was solid (and allegedly from Rayman 2), and I liked how instead of having a slippery ice world, they threw in a slippery music world instead. I will give this game a star just for having a music world, because I wasn't expecting it. I'm not sure if there was anything wrong with the controls or physics engine, because I'm not usually good at these things. I'd like to think that the fact that I often fell off of ledges for no good reason was the fault of the engine, but in all bluntness that was probably me, because it got easier after playing it for a few hours straight. I hear people often call that sort of thing "practicing" in day-to-day life. There may have been a bug with the brown boxes with the faces on them in the music levels, because sometimes I'd just pass straight through them, but most of the platforms were solid enough. Well, except the ones that disappeared, but they didn't make telling the difference between stable and unstable platforms too hard.In this game, in order to progress, you often need to go find and trigger invisible switches that are only noticeable by sound, which was a pain because I had no idea what I was looking for and a lot of the areas looked alike. I found myself traipsing through seven levels, no fewer than four of which were forests of some sort. Two of the remainders contained rocky terrain (and one of those had lava), so my favorite world being the music one wasn't entirely based in my personal preferences. Unfortunately, Rayman GBC is also plagued with the dreaded password save system, and that made things a lot less fun than they could have been. The last two levels were actually harder than the final boss, which took me three attempts before I kicked it into next week. I've got to give them credit for putting in additional language options even though there was barely any text, and I can certainly respect them enough for creating new levels instead of rehashing the old ones...even if there's a good chance it's because the old ones were just too big for the GBC to handle. But on the other hand...this exists: Yeah...That says "Dephts." Nothing says "Infernal Hellhole" quite like aflagrant typographical error. Color me intimidated.In the end, this game left me wanting to like it more than I did. Maybe ten years from now I'll recall fond memories of playing this while waiting for my friends to finish up at their clothing store closeout shopping spree, lined up with all the boyfriends and husbands and kids who'd been dragged along for the ride against their wills. Or maybe I'll remember the dephts, whatever a depht is supposed to be. Or the music world. The music world was pretty fabulous.
out of 5, final verdict. Password saves can go lick a cactus. Oh, and the game is also impossible to 100% unless you have two GBCs and two carts. I got 75%. Good enough, I suppose.
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ZEROrevive
Gorubeshu
"Needs more 0's..."
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Post by ZEROrevive on Aug 2, 2014 20:31:16 GMT -5
Dashe...having played this game and the original Rayman 1 for both PS1 and GBA I must say this: This game is rubbish in comparison to the original. It isnt the worst game of its kind but they really tried to cram in something vaguely like Rayman 1 onto GBC..and it didn't work well. They later did this again with the GBA port of the PS1 original which was much more decent to be honest.
That music though....I'm really into GB music in general but this didn't suit my ears well. Thats saying alot considering I love Rayman 2 and its music. Maybe I'd pick it up and play it again sometime, but the game just felt really empty and unpolished compared to what I'm used to playing.
I really recommend you give Rayman 1 for PS1 a try if you liked this game. Avoid the GBA port if possible- it has a lower resolution which makes the gameplay through levels harder, and the music suffers a bit apart from a few good original tracks.
Also, congrats on completing 75% of the game. Going by early Rayman standards...that's pretty solid.
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Post by Dashe on Aug 13, 2014 18:49:12 GMT -5
Eh, I didn't like it enough to want to go around looking for the rest of them, even if this one's easily the worst of the lot. I'm trying to cut back on the amount of games I have, which is why I'm going through all of the ones I have.
You know, I never thought I'd see the day when I'd beat a game before anyone else had a chance to post in this thread again. I've never made it a point to sit down and just get the games over with, though, either. I guess that's working. So yeah, I got Mega Man Xtreme over with on Monday. It reuses stages and bosses from Mega Man X and Mega Man X2, though I have never played either of those games and I have no idea which are from which game. When I first bought this, it was 200X, Zain was a pain, and I really couldn't get through the spider boss. I picked it up again a few years back, but being a completionist has its drawbacks. I wasted many, many, many lives trying to get the Hadouken and Shoryuken and just set it aside again. I started up a new file the day I beat Rayman and suddenly found this to be surprisingly easy to blitz through. I even got the Hadouken and Shoryuken completely by accident. Every sub-tank, every heart container, every capsule was just...there. Even Xtreme mode was oddly easy. Wikipedia and a couple of reviewers called this hard, so I'm wondering why I can't beat any of the X games I had for the Playstations. It was like bosses had patterns and I was actually able to pick up on them. Auto-charge helped, but to get all of the items I had to turn it off. Maybe if all of the X games had an auto-charge feature I'd be able to beat them. I read there were a bunch of framerate glitches throughout this one, but it controlled really well for me. I never had any issues with making X do what I wanted him to do except in Spark Mandrill's Stage, but only because I couldn't see a damn thing when the lights were out. I also never felt a need to use any of the Zero moves in any situation. Some enemies dropped different items than others. In Chill Penguin's stage there was an area where pink flying enemies would ambush you from all sides. Those and the mets all had a really good chance of dropping extra lives, so by the end I was running around with seven or eight lives and just jumping up the wall to beat Sigma. The top left corners of the screen are great for beating Sigma. None of the music really captivated me much, the levels were short, and the bosses (even though they were new to me) didn't really stick aside from Morph Moth. Morph Moth was cool. The story was incredibly basic and plagued by more English deficiencies than it would have had if it'd been written as a second grader's school assignment. The four exclusive characters had cool designs. The most irritating boss had to be at the end of the second Sigma stage. It was an old man driving a floating machine over a continuous bed of spikes and it had four guns on it that you had to shoot off. I beat one of those in another Mega Man game once, but I forget which one it was. Final verdict? out of 5. I docked a full point for the egregious English blunders alone. You're being paid for your English skills, team. Get with it.
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ZEROrevive
Gorubeshu
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Post by ZEROrevive on Aug 13, 2014 22:18:24 GMT -5
I like to think of Extreme 1 as Capcom's first step into making a X game for Gameboy Color. Capcom's 2nd step (Extreme 2) Feels much more polished...at least when I play as Zero. Hadn't compared Gameplay between X in Extreme 1 and 2. I have this game on my bucket list for 3DS though- but I may just hold off and get Xtreme 2 first.
And yeah, that english is just plain silly...feels like X6 all over again.
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Post by Blues on Aug 14, 2014 3:26:21 GMT -5
So for this list I'm counting only games I actually first played/got this year. I've beat others, but listing them would make this list more unwieldy than it already is, so. The Lego Movie: The Video Game
I'm sure y'all are well aware of how excited I was for the movie; and being a fan of the Lego series of VGs in general, I was really looking forward to playing this game. Thing is I don't have any current gen consoles, so I had to make do with the 3DS version. Which ended up being really disappointing. Instead of emulating the gameplay or feel of the console version it tried to be its own thing, which normally isn't bad but this played like a cheap top-down GBA version of the regular one- and for a game made in the year 2014, that's no compliment. Still, it was easy enough to finish I guess. My appetite for a good Lego Movie game just won't be satisfied 'til I own a proper version console version, though...
Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc
Yep! The very same game Kyle livestreamed all those months ago. It's all thanks to him that I've become hooked on despair! >: D Really though, Jeep's playthrough incited an interest in the game I didn't have before, and after the end of the stream I was itching to play it, (partial) pre-knowledge of the plot be damned. Nothing beats the experience of actually playing a game for yourself, that's what I think. And it didn't disappoint! Though I knew some of the story parts beforehand, the exploration and trial (especially the trial!) parts of the game held up well enough to keep me engaged throughout my experience. Now I join the legion of fans looking forward to playing the sequel!
LSD: Dream EmulatorOhhh man, this game. It should be noted that I'm counting this one on a technicality, as a) I don't own it and b) it can't be 'beaten' in the traditional sense; but it's one hell of a game worth mentioning anyway. I was introduced to this game by my sister's friend- she's really into what I can best describe as "disturbingly f**ked-up games", the kind that (generally) aren't intentionally fright-inducing but still haunt your nightmares long after you've stopped playing the game. And I mean, that should tell you enough about this game, but if not? Well, hm. Playing it is kind of like experiencing a suuuuuuuper-trippy fever dream that borders on being a nightmare depending on where you go/what you do/when you do it. Moreover, this has to be the only game I've played that is legitimately unsettling, and I can't emphasize that last word enough. Yet in spite of this it's also very addictive; you'll constantly want to go back and explore the dreamscapes just to see what new messed up creatures or events pop up. I recommend you go play this game on an emulator if you can. Pictures and videos don't do it justice. The Stanley ParableI'd heard scattered little bits of positive buzz about this game from a few sites months before I actually played it, but it was all kinda, um, evasive as to what the game actually was. Even playing the demo I was really unsure what the game was actually about. So after purchasing the game during the summer Steam sale, I went in with these vague first impressions, thinking it'd be more fun 'weird stuff' on par with the experience that was taking playing LSD. But...wow. It was a lot different than what I expected, not even close to what I had in mind. I really don't want to say anything more and risk spoilers as it's one of those game you have to play to understand. So maybe give this demo a shot. Mega Man VI don't need to tell you guys about how much of a Classic series fan I am, and I know some of you are also Classic series fans, so you're probably aware of its reputation as, y'know, the best Mega Man game since 2 or 3? This was one I've been really excited to get the chance to play, and it was as good as they say! Though a little easier than I expected, the gameplay is 100% solid and just plain fun. The story was simple, appropriately reminiscent of a classic manga story, and the game is just packed to the brim with charm. Basically I loved it. And that's it! As for what's next? I'm considering getting Shovel Knight somehow as I've heard nothing but praise for that game. Of course, ideally I'd like to get it on a console (for the authentic experience aspect of it)...which means I'd need to save up to get a current-gen console, so who know when that'll happen? >_<
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Post by MegaTuga on Aug 14, 2014 11:59:55 GMT -5
Ah, yes. I streamed the Stanely Parable on February and a couple guys from here appeared, leaving me surprised. It's really hard to convey what the game actually is to other people without spoilers and the demo does a good work, but it could have more.
Anyway, I finally wrapped up Pokémon Y. And dang the Champion took some effort. I managed to beat elite four and the champion in one go, but I wasted one Max revive and other two regular revives. Not to mention that I ended up with only one pokémon at the end and one attack would have done him (fun fact, it was my starter Pokémon in his third stage - Delphox) Not to mention that I was unsure of The champion had another full restore to use or not, so it was sort of a gamble. And then the extra battle was easy as cake. I thought it would be hard, but I was mistaken. Oh well.
Now, I am thinking of making a competition team for friendly battles. I still don't know which Pokémon I will pick but Since Mawile is my favorite, it is a must.
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Post by Loken on Aug 16, 2014 2:18:10 GMT -5
I beat P.T., the horrifying new demo for Silent Hills. It's directed by Hideo Kojima of Metal Gear and the horror film maker Del Toro. Also stars Norman Reedus inexplicably. Seriously scary stuff. Messes with your mind. Don't want to spoil too much. If you have a PS4 it is available for download on the PSStore for free. Otherwise I'd watch a Let's Play that has been completed. The ending is behind an extremely difficult puzzle that everyone stumbles into beating it, if they beat it.
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Post by Dashe on Sept 15, 2014 21:18:54 GMT -5
It's no secret that I'm not as into video games as I was when I first signed up here, so I'm sure a lot of my reviews and reactions lie well outside the bell curve. Commander Keen for the Game Boy Color, though? I'm surprised it even got published. I really can't think of much that's good about it.
...What is this anatomy you speak of?My background with Commander Keen is limited to what I've read about it on the internet. Just from that I can see that he's completely off-model in this. I'd give it a pass if it were just his shirt and pants that were off, but Keen's supposed to be wearing a Green Bay Packers helmet because the creator grew up in Wisconsin and based the guy off of himself. I don't know what handegg team has those colors. The Arizona Cardinals, maybe? I can't say I know anybody who roots for them. Point is, handegg helmets are not cheap, or something people generally buy to fill up their house. There's no reason why his helmet shouldn't be yellow and green, unless the Packers complained. I'm not sure why they would. It's free advertisement to an audience who probably wouldn't know they exist otherwise.
The gameplay involves basic platform jumping and item collection. You defeat three bosses to collect three crystals. If you were to say to any random old person, "Tell me what you think of when you imagine a computer game that a kid would spend hours playing," this is probably what they'd come up with. This or Pong. When I was about the same age as the protagonist, I probably tried to design a game with this exact premise: A kid putting on a football helmet and wielding a ray gun and pogo stick to defeat aliens and pick up floating junk food to get points. To rub it in more, I'd have actually given it logical controls. You see, the controls here are incredibly intuitive. Just like piloting a foreign submarine, where the labels for all of the identical switches on the dashboard are in Swahili. This game employs gratuitous usage of the Select button in instances where most people would think to just press A. Much of the game involves pulling switches to change the terrain and proceed farther. If you want to pull a switch, you need to pogo on top of the switchbox and press select while standing on it. That's got to be the least intuitive means of switch pulling in a game that I've ever seen.
In order to defeat almost any enemy, you have to first shoot them, and then pull out your trusty pogo stick by simultaneously pressing A and down, and stomp on the stunned enemy before the gunfire wears off. Some enemies can't even be defeated that way. At least once you defeat things, they're gone for good.
Oh, wow. I found one good thing to say about this. That's one more than I expected. I guess you can count "There's no final boss level you have to plod through after you collect all three crystals."
The graphics are alright, but they have serious problems, too. Serious problems like "no way to tell if you're looking at a background element, hostile terrain that kills you on contact, or a platform you can stand on without trial and error." If something moves, it might be an enemy, or it might be a moving platform. You can't always tell just by shooting it, because some enemies are invincible. Sometimes you just have to jump at it and see if it kills you or not. The second level on Fribbulus Zax has platforms that fade in and out over a long stretch of nothing, but unlike in Classic Mega Man, you have to navigate them with your pogo stick, which constantly bounces (as pogo sticks are wont to do). You have to guess where the next platform's going to appear while you're in midair and sometimes the timing for the platforms' appearance was unfortunate.
There were 90s sound effects for everything, and the one that played when I picked stuff up reminded me of a relatively boring Apogee game I used to play as a small child called Math Rescue. Apparently Apogee published the PC Keens, but id was responsible for the actual development. Two of the three worlds seem to be rehashes of places Keen has already been. The ending cutscene references a plot point that makes no sense without the manual or background knowledge of the series.
Oh, and if that weren't enough, not only does it save with passwords, but when you input your nonsensical password, if you make a mistake, there's no backspace button. You have to input the rest of the password, then RE-INPUT it. If you misread an S as a 5 and the password doesn't work, you've gotta correctly select all 16 characters all over again.
I just cruised through this game on the easiest mode once it became apparent that it had nothing good to offer, and never looked back. This gets an unsurprising out of 5 from me. It is so far the worst game from my entire collection that I have had the displeasure of playing. If I ever find out who reached down into the bargain bin or walked into the wrong yard sale and bought me this tripe, I'm going to force them to beat Hard Mode.
So this took longer than the reviews let on. If you were on iScribble last night, you'd know that I'm 2/3 of the way through the Rainfall Trio now. I could probably describe The Last Story as the cozy American Thanksgiving dinner of the RPG world: Nothing new, but nothing bad either. Imagine your most familiar regional comfort food and this would be it in video game form. Since I've probably played through at least two dozen fantasy RPGs, I could see most of the things they call plot twists coming a mile away. It was so old-school setting meets (some) new-school gameplay mechanics that I didn't even mind the love story too much. Let that sink in for a while. For this paragraph, I'll assume you've probably played a bunch of these games too, so minor spoilers will follow. Anyone who's played even two Final Fantasies can probably see them coming, especially if one of them was Final Fantasy IX. If you haven't and want to be surprised, skip directly to the next paragraph. The story is your basic "petty criminal chosen by a mysterious entity to receive useful powers wants to be a proper knight, runs into the princess with a singing hobby in disguise trying to escape a corrupt regime and a forced marriage to an asshole, and they fall in love with no real reasoning behind it" sort of deal. The princess goes by "Lisa" for a while, so there's definitely something for Tommy Wiseau fans here. There's a war against another race/species, which naturally means that some kind of a message about war and racism being bad pops up. You know, nothing too surprising. You'll probably even figure out the "big" plot "twist" a good deal ahead of time. The hub town is cozy and has a decent amount of interactivity. There are sidequests, but there seem to be a lot less of them than there were in Xenoblade. As a result, they ended up being marginally more memorable. The dungeons are theme-y without being totally overt about it (though the haunted house seemed really random) and the boss design was pretty cool. The bosses near the end got me a bunch of times, though. It was hard to figure out what to do, and I'm still not entirely sure what to do about the third-to-last boss battle because I just brute-forced it. Most bosses do have a means of defeating them that makes the process a lot easier than if you tried to hack-n-slash at them, but it's not always easy to figure out when they don't just tell you outright. Your base of operations is, for the most part, a tavern, and your teammate Syrenne is not shy about her excessive alcohol consumption. If she had been the main character instead of Zael, I'd have probably found the game a lot more interesting, to the point where it would have made my top ten list. All of the supporting cast is awesome but the healer, and even she's got a binge eating quirk. They probably could have expounded upon that one some more to make her more likable. Also, if you're a perv, you can acquire invisible dye to put your party in boring gray underwear for most of the game, including cutscenes. The good news? You don't have to worry about getting a debuff, since it's invisible dye for your current armor. The bad news? Everyone has the exact same body and the same gray underwear, for the most part. No unique models, just different skin tones. Watching characters attend important functions in their underwear is pretty funny, though. There are a whole lot of ways to goof off in this game otherwise, too. You can shoot banana peels to trip up townspeople and screw up poignant moments with the love interest. Let's just say Zael spent a lot of time getting slapped in the face. The worst part? The camera. It was weird and annoying and you couldn't adjust it very well on your own and it made the final boss's last form pretty much hell on earth. I'll give this one a out of 5. It's pretty cliche, but it doesn't take itself too seriously, it felt like a spiritual successor to FFIX, and it's a heck of a lot better than the Final Fantasies Square Enix has been making. If you're looking for some video game comfort food, this delivers. Unless you eat video games. If you do, you probably ought to stop doing that.
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