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That's actually a significant reason why I think none of the Earthbound-inspired games have truly recreated it. Making the game more advanced may make it more interesting on its own, but a major part of Earthbound's vibes is its simplicity, and the mechanics are a big part of that. Besides, you still have to think a fair bit when dealing with enemies, because the resource management required by your limited inventory ensures that you can't just swing blindly at enemies and heal back up from every fight like that. Learning how many hits enemies can take, how much damage they can deal, what psychic attacks they're weak to (including status effects or PP draining), and the like is where the depth in the system comes from, not from having a lot of different attacks or action-based mechanics.
Not that I dislike those things, or the games that do their own thing while still taking inspiration, but Earthbound didn't and doesn't need them, and I feel like a direct remake, especially one with the directly stated intent of "fixing" the "boring" gameplay, would entirely miss the point. Maybe it'd even still be good - but it wouldn't be Earthbound.
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Tried it out and liking the game so far. I unlocked Cider after meeting her and then dying in my third run. The combo system is pretty good. I wouldn't call it "better" than SOR4, but it does something satisfying and different. I don't mind how juggling works in this game, and I am already finding it better than Dragon's Crown.
I finished all the double bosses without using a single Omega. I hate them. They waste time, reduce my dps, way too fiddly and leave you vunerable. I could not imagine playing a whole run trying to use them let alone most of the game
I've had this same conversation on the Hades subreddit a lot lol. From my perspective, the idea of playing through the game using only the regular attacks sounds awful. But I think that serves to reinforce my point. I never see anyone talk about using the regulars and Omegas together, it's always one or the other. Which I really don't think was their intent with this system. They've increased variety overall, but not in the moment to moment gameplay.
Finished 8Doors. I was probably a bit too harsh on it at first (it's a very unwelcoming game) but I ended up liking it more than I thought I would. Some questionable design choices, like having to scroll across eight options in real time to select a weapon that doubles as a tool or a traversal item, all while performing some tricky platforming. Feedback is also an issue. And of course a terrible localization compounded by an already cryptic story (see Afterimage).
You get a weapon halfway through with a special move that lets you tank a hit for free, and if you're good enough you'll probably have charge for more if/when you finally get hit. Game effectively breaks with it. The game also seems to assume you won't be getting many "optional" but really game-breaking skills, like dashing through attacks or immunity to poison water, because many late game areas and bosses are built around you not having these. In any case the second half of the game is a breeze.
You get a weapon halfway through with a special move that lets you tank a hit for free, and if you're good enough you'll probably have charge for more if/when you finally get hit. Game effectively breaks with it. The game also seems to assume you won't be getting many "optional" but really game-breaking skills, like dashing through attacks or immunity to poison water, because many late game areas and bosses are built around you not having these. In any case the second half of the game is a breeze.
This is true. Earthbound was a far simpler game than other games of its time, especially graphically. It was almost visually closer to its predecessor on the NES than other SNES RPGs.
FF6 - 1994
Earthbound - 1994
Mother - 1989
FF6
Earthbound
Mother
Earthbound - 1994
Mother - 1989
FF6
Earthbound
Mother
Really hitting the point on remakes in general there.
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tl;dr: I think remaking Earthbound could be done (in theory; I doubt it'd ever work in practice), just not like that. Not that I think Nintendo would ever actually do it, so it's a thought exercise at best.
Anyway, linked up with Jeff, headed over to Saturn Valley, now it's time to make a cup of coffee while entering the password for the secret waterfall base.
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At this point just remove the fight/RPG gameplay and make it a different game altogether, nothing is gained by having boring gameplay, better to have none then.
Also never said anything making action based or having lot of different attack (earthbound has arguably too many ability already, plenty of them serves the same purpose). But nothing would be lost from having interesting skill/equipment system, more difference between party members, better enemy variety (give them some sort of gimmick and interesting mechanic rather than just health pool and damage number) and more optional things to do and so on.
I'd also argue that a direct inspiration to earthbound is undertale, which does have interesting gameplay, and was by far more successful than any of the mother game while still remaining close to earthbound. Faithful doesn't mean keeping everything the same, keep the good, improve what has potential, discard the bad.
Congratulations! You've missed my point entirely. tl;dr: Earthbound's gameplay is a lot better than you give it credit for.
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Finished Starstruck Vagabond. By finished I mean, finished the after story collectathon thing. Beat the story a week or so ago. Did really like the game, characters I got were all fun, even the one who was written to be annoying. The afterstory collection thing was pretty annoying, most of it was easy, but finding all the wonders was a pain and the reward wasn't really worth it as far as I can tell. Probably more worthwhile to just start a new game and try to get different companions. Either way, quite good, I very much enjoyed it.
Started Cassette Boy.
It's very much Fez. You're a kid living in a cute little cubic town who one day discovers some magic headwear that changes his perception of the world around him, and what at first looks 2D is revealed to be 3D: the seemingly top down game becomes isometric, and you can rotate the camera at 45 degree angles in any direction.
But where Fez you were primarily rotating the world in order to realign platforms with zero depth of field (so background and foreground were interchangeable) here the name of the game is to disappear things from existence by rotating the camera and hiding them from view. So you might step on a pressure plate to activate a screen and then hide the plate from view, effectively allowing you to walk away without resetting the mechanism; then fire an arrow behind the screen, walk to a second plate in order to open a door and then rotate back to reveal the arrow back into existence, flying through the door you just opened and into a switch.
Some of these are quite clever. Other puzzles are a bit more obscure and have me wondering whether I'm already equipped to deal with them or should come back later. The game usually let's you know whether you're facing something that's optional or mandatory, but it's still perplexing when you got nothing left to try out and everything indicates this is pretty much where you have to be.
It's very much Fez. You're a kid living in a cute little cubic town who one day discovers some magic headwear that changes his perception of the world around him, and what at first looks 2D is revealed to be 3D: the seemingly top down game becomes isometric, and you can rotate the camera at 45 degree angles in any direction.
But where Fez you were primarily rotating the world in order to realign platforms with zero depth of field (so background and foreground were interchangeable) here the name of the game is to disappear things from existence by rotating the camera and hiding them from view. So you might step on a pressure plate to activate a screen and then hide the plate from view, effectively allowing you to walk away without resetting the mechanism; then fire an arrow behind the screen, walk to a second plate in order to open a door and then rotate back to reveal the arrow back into existence, flying through the door you just opened and into a switch.
Some of these are quite clever. Other puzzles are a bit more obscure and have me wondering whether I'm already equipped to deal with them or should come back later. The game usually let's you know whether you're facing something that's optional or mandatory, but it's still perplexing when you got nothing left to try out and everything indicates this is pretty much where you have to be.
Kingdom Come Deliverance 2
I am now around 60 hours in, and still am not done with the main story.
I never updated this, but my full playthrough of the first game ended in 58 hours. I am pretty sure I rushed to the ending at some point because I was feeling burned out. It's the crux of all open world games for me.
I mention this because despite KCD2 having nearly exact same open world design philosophy as the first game, i don’t feel any fatigue or rush to finish it.
I guess I am getting so much more enjoyment out of it? While both games always has something to for me to do, the sequel seem to make those activities more fun.
The story and the characters are so funny. I recently finished the Legacy of the forge dlc, and I was laughing so hard my stomach was hurting. There isn’t a single character that feels flat.
However, while i love these funny moments, I don’t think the story is as good as the first game, particularly after the end of act 1, where Henry finally kills that asshole Istvan Toth and gets the sword back. I feel Henry’s personal journey ends there, and now he is thrown into a much bigger conflict. And with how each missions are supposed to take within a few days of each other, the story seems to lose its steam and each mission feels disjointed, especially when I get distracted with side contents and come back to them 5+hrs later.
Also, it's a damn shame about not being able to enter any of the churches. I can respect the devs not wanting to showcase the unfinished areas, but I feel they couldve at least finish the big one in Kuttenberg. That big city itself has also proven to be really fun to walk around in.
Blacksmithing is fun! The fact that you gave to carefully heat the metal to the right temperature, hammer at the right pace and position, all with the detailed process is amazing. Im sure the real process is longer and tougher, but it’s much better than crafting a weapon with a single button click.
I also found myself building Henry differently compared to the first game; In the first game, he was a frontline warrior, a combat medic with knowledge of making various potions and poisons. Here, he is more of ranger/scout, carrying a ranged weapon, focusing on infiltration, having Mutt around for tracking and help during combat.
Because the skills improve independently with their own skill point gains, I know Henry will eventually become good at everything. But I find it interesting how the skills i chose to master first are different in the two games.
I am now around 60 hours in, and still am not done with the main story.
I never updated this, but my full playthrough of the first game ended in 58 hours. I am pretty sure I rushed to the ending at some point because I was feeling burned out. It's the crux of all open world games for me.
I mention this because despite KCD2 having nearly exact same open world design philosophy as the first game, i don’t feel any fatigue or rush to finish it.
I guess I am getting so much more enjoyment out of it? While both games always has something to for me to do, the sequel seem to make those activities more fun.
The story and the characters are so funny. I recently finished the Legacy of the forge dlc, and I was laughing so hard my stomach was hurting. There isn’t a single character that feels flat.
However, while i love these funny moments, I don’t think the story is as good as the first game, particularly after the end of act 1, where Henry finally kills that asshole Istvan Toth and gets the sword back. I feel Henry’s personal journey ends there, and now he is thrown into a much bigger conflict. And with how each missions are supposed to take within a few days of each other, the story seems to lose its steam and each mission feels disjointed, especially when I get distracted with side contents and come back to them 5+hrs later.
Also, it's a damn shame about not being able to enter any of the churches. I can respect the devs not wanting to showcase the unfinished areas, but I feel they couldve at least finish the big one in Kuttenberg. That big city itself has also proven to be really fun to walk around in.
Blacksmithing is fun! The fact that you gave to carefully heat the metal to the right temperature, hammer at the right pace and position, all with the detailed process is amazing. Im sure the real process is longer and tougher, but it’s much better than crafting a weapon with a single button click.
I also found myself building Henry differently compared to the first game; In the first game, he was a frontline warrior, a combat medic with knowledge of making various potions and poisons. Here, he is more of ranger/scout, carrying a ranged weapon, focusing on infiltration, having Mutt around for tracking and help during combat.
Because the skills improve independently with their own skill point gains, I know Henry will eventually become good at everything. But I find it interesting how the skills i chose to master first are different in the two games.
I nabbed Tainted Grail: Fall of Avalon since it was on sale and played an hour and a half. I've been hankering for a new RPG to sink into for a while, and decided to pull the trigger on this one. And first impressions are good! It feels like a very deliberate and overt mix of Skyrim and Dark Souls: you even start your journey in a prison asylum for afflicted people, and there's an esoteric dark force slowly creeping over the land. Mechanically it's virtually identical to Skyrim, down to the control scheme and lockpicking minigame. Instead of just repeating how it feels like Skyrim over and over, I'll summarize it like this: it feels like a high quality Skyrim mod in a good way. Obviously it can't match the size and scope, but the AA budget has been clearly used in the right places. The combat is elevated by the addition of dodges and dashes, and enemies have movesets you need to look out for. Fighting more than one enemy already ramps up the danger quite a bit. Visually it's about "Skyrim+", but much like its progenitor, it's elevated by some nice lighting and good visual design. Already in the bits I've played there's been a surprising amount of creativity with dreamlike landscapes and downright biomechanical designs. It nails one of my favorite parts of any RPG, which is a humble start. You start out skulking through a prison, shanking guards with a dagger and slowly making your way through. It's got a nice bit of atmosphere to it and the writing and acting are surprisingly good, so they make up for the atrocious, borderline totally absent lipsyncing.
So yeah, very interested to see where this one goes.
So yeah, very interested to see where this one goes.
What you mention was the bare minimum for RPG gameplay of that era, by that metric, every RPG had great gameplay.
Earthbound came out 3 year after FF5, which had all it had plus an interesting (for the time) class system. FF6 came out a year before it and it had a large cast of character, each with their own unique gameplay and the summon system. You had Lufia 2 a few year before too, with a monster taming system. Treasure of Rudra with a weird customize magic system and multiple party storyline. Mario RPG came out the year after and had player input for attack. And I'm skipping so many.
The truth is that its a boring JRPG, you get into the same fights over and over again (which barely change from region to region) you fight exactly the same way as the game progress because there's no interesting skill as you level up, you just get rank up version of previous skill that are super boiler plate. Discovering weakness is not interesting, its trial and error and once you know it, there's no reason not to use it. Equipment is just about which has the biggest number attached to it.
Its about as simple as a JRPG gameplay gets and there's no reason it couldn't do more in a remake.
- Apr 1, 2009
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- Whatever, just wash your hands.
Whew, beat Lies of P. I am so of two minds about it, on one hand the story and characters were interesting and I wanted more of them, on the other, so many bossfights were just annoying. Very temping to do newgame+ since I've heard it gives you more of the story and since I beat all the bosses it probably won't be as annoying to deal with them again... but I also have other games from the holiday sales to get to.
Warhammer 40,000: Rogue Trader
This game is sort of lucky it’s opening salvo party members are so much fun because the jank is fucking real. I’m not very good at pure isometric cRPG games and while this one is more forgiving than those it is systematically based on - Pathfinder - it’s still deeply annoying. Also there’s not reason at all that once you pick up Sister Argenta that every enemy that isn’t an experienced Psyker or the Chaos Spawn aren’t just automatically dying since they’re mainly serfs in no armour or armour made of heshin bags and she’s a fully kitted out Adeptus Sororitas with her trusty Godwyn-pattern Bolter. In fact I'd argue that one of the worst things about all the 40k based games I've played thus far, is that the Bolter never feels as powerful in use as it does on paper.j
That said, it’s still fun enough to brute force my way through but I fear repeat playthroughs will be marred with having to play the prologue again because so far as I’ve observed there’s not many critical path things that occur. And unlike more free roaming action games you can’t just speed run it.
This game is sort of lucky it’s opening salvo party members are so much fun because the jank is fucking real. I’m not very good at pure isometric cRPG games and while this one is more forgiving than those it is systematically based on - Pathfinder - it’s still deeply annoying. Also there’s not reason at all that once you pick up Sister Argenta that every enemy that isn’t an experienced Psyker or the Chaos Spawn aren’t just automatically dying since they’re mainly serfs in no armour or armour made of heshin bags and she’s a fully kitted out Adeptus Sororitas with her trusty Godwyn-pattern Bolter. In fact I'd argue that one of the worst things about all the 40k based games I've played thus far, is that the Bolter never feels as powerful in use as it does on paper.j
That said, it’s still fun enough to brute force my way through but I fear repeat playthroughs will be marred with having to play the prologue again because so far as I’ve observed there’s not many critical path things that occur. And unlike more free roaming action games you can’t just speed run it.
Also you can't romance the Sororitas. 0 Stars xD
After watching GameFront's "The Minecraft Show," I was enticed to boot Minecraft back up myself. Been more than a decade since this little nugget consumed about a month+ of my life, and it feels good to be back in it. Don't remember it being this brutally difficult, though. I'm more than familiar with the cost of death in games like Dark Souls and Elden Ring, but Minecraft, woof, death resets everything; you're basically level one until you recoup your shit which, depending on where you died, can make the runback pretty hairy. Still, frustration aside, it is a very calming game, the music especially.
Also, am currently downloading Death Stranding. Once a PlayStation exclusive, I guess recent collaborations/agreements between Sony and Microsoft have made it available on GamePass? I know this game was pretty much hit or miss for most folks, but it sounds like something that might hit for me.
Also, am currently downloading Death Stranding. Once a PlayStation exclusive, I guess recent collaborations/agreements between Sony and Microsoft have made it available on GamePass? I know this game was pretty much hit or miss for most folks, but it sounds like something that might hit for me.