What are you currently playing?

[NerfedFalcon]

Overall, it's a very good JRPG, especially in the retro 2D genre. Definitely still worth playing and incomprehensible why Nintendo never made an English release.

By 2006, the Nintendo DS had pretty much entirely replaced the Game Boy Advance outside of Japan, where older consoles tend to stick around much longer (the last Japan-only Super Famicom game was released in 1999 or 2000, for instance). Without having done a translation from the start of development, which they didn't because Earthbound didn't even sell well enough in the States to get a PAL conversion, by the time they finished it, absolutely nobody would be buying a brand-new GBA game. And as popular as it became in retrospect due to the fan translation, they probably still don't see the amount of effort it would take as being worth it.

Not to mention all the music-related copyright issues.

 

[Worgen]

You're going to have to say more than that to sell me on it.

Its one of the 2.5d JRPGs that Square has been putting out and its very good. Very good characters, fun combat, interesting stories and good mechanics.

 

[meiam]

Its one of the 2.5d JRPGs that Square has been putting out and its very good. Very good characters, fun combat, interesting stories and good mechanics.

Dunno if its very different from 1 (I heard not), but 1 was kinda so so.

In the same genre I'd go Live-a-live remake over it, much better variety and doesn't limit the story to very rigid arc.

 

[Worgen]

Dunno if its very different from 1 (I heard not), but 1 was kinda so so.

In the same genre I'd go Live-a-live remake over it, much better variety and doesn't limit the story to very rigid arc.

Haven't played the first, but from everything I've heard 2 is much better and it is a really damn good jrpg. Although a couple of the characters stories are kinda weak, the rest are great.

 

[NerfedFalcon]

I hadn't intended to look up anything except how to advance the plot for Silksong, but I've been stuck on Karmelita for long enough that I decided to check where and how to obtain some more upgrades. Continues to reinforce my idea that Team Cherry may have overcooked. What's there, in a vacuum, is very good, but there's just too much of it to really enjoy it all from end to end, in terms of both the amount of content and the complexity of it.

Well, now I have the third Needle upgrade, the third Crafting Kit, and nine Masks. Presumably, that should be enough to get me through everything that's left without needing to take another detour to get 100% completion.

 

[Drathnoxis]

By 2006, the Nintendo DS had pretty much entirely replaced the Game Boy Advance outside of Japan, where older consoles tend to stick around much longer (the last Japan-only Super Famicom game was released in 1999 or 2000, for instance). Without having done a translation from the start of development, which they didn't because Earthbound didn't even sell well enough in the States to get a PAL conversion, by the time they finished it, absolutely nobody would be buying a brand-new GBA game. And as popular as it became in retrospect due to the fan translation, they probably still don't see the amount of effort it would take as being worth it.

Not to mention all the music-related copyright issues.

They could have just ported it to DS like Ace Attorney.

Its one of the 2.5d JRPGs that Square has been putting out and its very good. Very good characters, fun combat, interesting stories and good mechanics.

The last Squeenix JRPG I played was Bravely Default, which I hated. Like I said in the paragraph you quoted, I don't really enjoy JRPGs that much anymore. I'll keep your recommendation in mind if I ever get the urge for another.

 

[NerfedFalcon]

They could have just ported it to DS like Ace Attorney.

A visual novel =/= a full-length JRPG, at least not in that era.

Unrelated: Coral Tower can eat my entire ass and fucking die.

 

[Drathnoxis]

A visual novel =/= a full-length JRPG, at least not in that era.

The DS was backwards compatible with GBA games, it couldn't have been that hard to port.

 

[NerfedFalcon]

The DS was backwards compatible with GBA games, it couldn't have been that hard to port.

Don't forget that Nintendo, at the time, wanted to really crank that DS hardware. Touch screen, microphone, all that good stuff. Adding anything like that to a game like Mother 3 would have added nothing but annoyance, and besides, there are still the remaining issues of the copyright-skirting music, the translation taking a lot of time and money from whatever point they started it, and the fact that at that time, they believed there was no market outside Japan for the Mother series. If you remember, it wasn't until 2013 that NOA did any kind of Earthbound-related outreach that wasn't Ness's inclusion in Smash Bros, to the point where they actually spoiled the ending of Mother 3 in Lucas's trophy description in Brawl, they were that assured nobody outside Japan would ever play it.

Besides, IANA game developer, but I don't think that just because the DS was backwards-compatible to the GBA that doing a full port was as easy as that, all executive meddling aside.

---

Re: Silksong:

Managed to get the key item needed to unlock the final boss... at least, I'm pretty sure that this time for sure, I have what I need. Knowing what I'm about to face, I expect I'm going to suffer pretty badly, but it wouldn't be the first time. My completion percentage is 66%, and I doubt it's going any higher on this file.

May as well get final thoughts out of the way now. Hollow Knight, when it came out, was pretty damn close to being a perfect game. Improving on that was never going to be an easy task, and Silksong reflects that in a lot of ways. The thing is, every individual part of the game is genuinely good. The story, the areas, the combat and movement design, it all works... but there's so much of it, and so much complexity being put into the design, that it starts to fall apart at the seams. I mean, as one step to get the true ending, you have to jump into a foreground wall that looks exactly like every other wall to enter an area with no other, less cryptically hidden entrances, among a lot of other steps that I found totally unintuitive compared to Hollow Knight's more straightforward and understandable design.

I was one of the people who waited since the very first trailer for this game to come out, and now I just want it to be over. Funny how that works out sometimes.

Well, maybe Sea of Sorrow will bring me around on it. For now, I'm gonna finish this, play the new Deltarune chapter when that drops, and then probably spin up a totally different game about a female anthropomorphic animal with red clothing and a large weapon.

 

[Drathnoxis]

Besides, IANA game developer, but I don't think that just because the DS was backwards-compatible to the GBA that doing a full port was as easy as that, all executive meddling aside.

I mean, if they wanted to do it quick and dirty, they could have just put the GBA ROM on a DS cart and ran it with the GBA emulator. You're right, it wouldn't have met Nintendo's requirement for DS BS, but it would have been simple and few people probably would have complained.

 

[Worgen]

and then probably spin up a totally different game about a female anthropomorphic animal with red clothing and a large weapon.

Just don't take the daggers to start.

 

[Johnny Novgorod]

Any genre have any interest in you atm?

Nominally imetroidvanias, roguelites, survival horror. Anything with exploration, puzzles and/or a management element. But I can get into anything that either offers a genuine sense of intrigue or adventure or has its own set of peculiar rules.

There’s a reason the backlog generally stays a backlog lol.

162 and counting.

 

[Worgen]

Nominally imetroidvanias, roguelites, survival horror. Anything with exploration, puzzles and/or a management element. But I can get into anything that either offers a genuine sense of intrigue or adventure or has its own set of peculiar rules.

Hmm, then I'll just throw out a few recommendations and see if any tickle you.

System Shock Remake - immersive sim survival horror

Return of the Obra Dinn - time puzzles horror

Mohrta - fps adventure dark

Mo Astray - Metroidvania

Void War - FTL Faster then Light, but 40k

 

[NerfedFalcon]

Nominally imetroidvanias, roguelites, survival horror. Anything with exploration, puzzles and/or a management element. But I can get into anything that either offers a genuine sense of intrigue or adventure or has its own set of peculiar rules.

I'll toss in a few:

Riven: A remake of the second Myst game, originally released in 1997. The original world of fixed panoramas is recreated 1:1 in full 3D, maintaining the original story and the ethos of 'anything might be important'. Physical notebook recommended, though there's also an in-game one to use.

Chants of Sennaar: Based around learning new languages, essentially code-breaking. Parse the context out of repeated words, and bridge the gaps between the broken tribes.

Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective: As a ghost, possess and manipulate objects in a crime scene to prevent others' deaths from taking place; by saving them, you'll uncover clues towards your own murder. A port of a Nintendo DS cult classic.

Loop Hero: A roguelite where you rebuild the world from scratch, adding features to a looping road. Gain new terrain cards, learn combos, fight a large variety of monsters (some of which aren't so easy to discover), and figure out just where the rest of the world went, one tile at a time.

Deltarune: It may not be quite the genre you're into, but as far as a 'genuine sense of intrigue or adventure' and 'having its own set of peculiar rules' goes, there aren't many games that do better than this one. If you ever enjoyed Undertale at all, you should absolutely check this out - even in its 'unfinished' state it's got more and better content than a lot of games these days.

 

[Drathnoxis]

Nominally imetroidvanias, roguelites, survival horror. Anything with exploration, puzzles and/or a management element. But I can get into anything that either offers a genuine sense of intrigue or adventure or has its own set of peculiar rules.

Did you ever try Noita? It has a ridiculous amount of stuff to explore, so much that you could beat the game and not even see 1/8 of its content, or even realize it exists.

 

[hanselthecaretaker2]

Finished Hearts of Stone before even finishing the main game. I did the riddle and saved Olgierd. Cool swords.

 

[Ezekiel]

I am two hours into Code Veronica. How unfortunate that it was the only Resident Evil with scripted camera angles in 3D environments. The old style never had time to mature. 3D had more potential for environmental physics and lighting than the old flat backgrounds. That's one of the reasons I'm so unimpressed by independent devs that try to emulate the old Resident Evil games. Almost all of them use flat backgrounds instead of taking the old idea and improving upon it in 3D.

The controls in this perspective peaked with the Gamecube remake, but more could have been done.

1. Moving with the D-pad is redundant. The player could have assigned weapons/items there, reducing how frequently they pause the action to go into the Status menu.
2. We don't need Map, Status and Options buttons. Options can be accessed from the top titles in the Status menu, freeing a button for something else. Also, the Gamecube's right face button (X) was not used. A dodge/scuttle (that does not reorient the character) on one or the other button could have allowed the enemies to be more mobile.
3. The right stick could let you pan the camera and the R3 button let you lock it in place, like in Metal Gear Solid 3. (Most MGS3 players won't know what I'm talking about because they don't switch from "Third-person" to "Original" when they play Subsistence or the HD versions. R3 is not supposed to toggle a more modern 3D camera.) The enemy you're aiming at being just out of view is not scary, sorry, bro.

 

[Old_Hunter_77]

The Adventures of Elliott (demo)

A game I heard about while listening to the various gaming pods/streams I listen to. It's a cutesy pixel art adventure, with the overhead style of mostly melee combat. Overworld map, dungeons, companion character.

The demo is available on all platforms (I think- I played on Switch) and it's very long, maybe the longest demo I've ever played. I played like 90 minutes and I still have more to go, so definitely play it for yourselves if you're into this kind of game.

But I don't particularly like it, and I'm chalking that up to how it's being received- which is that it's being taken seriously by adults, even though it's so clearly a widdwe babbie game. You go around, get told how great you are all the time for solving elementary "puzzles" and easily defeating scrub enemies. Remember I'm the guy that whines about difficulty, quits every award winning critically acclaimed at some point because it's too hard for me, and drop narrative games I like to easy to get through the end, so I'm telling you it's for little children, trust me.

And reviewers are like "oh the companion character talks too much." Yeah she talks too much because in order to keep a child player's attention, a cartoon has to provide constant stimulus. Another potential reasons could be like Netflix content- repeating info all the time because the player is second-screening. This thought occurred to me while actually second-screening the World Cup while playing this.

The pixel art is very pretty. HD-2D, they call it. Whatever it is, I do like it.

The most telling comment I heard someone call it was a nice palette cleanser after Mina the Hollower. Well, that game seems way too hard for me, while Elliott is too easy. *shrugs*

 

[NerfedFalcon]

Remember I'm the guy that whines about difficulty, quits every award winning critically acclaimed at some point because it's too hard for me, and drop narrative games I like to easy to get through the end,

Bloodborne must've really resonated with you, with that in mind.

 

[Old_Hunter_77]

Bloodborne must've really resonated with you, with that in mind.

Yes... well, at the time (2018) I had more time and patience. BB's visuals, sound, and themes were so IT that it was the game that finally hooked me into FromSoftware's whole... thing. That was followed by all the others, especially Sekiro.
So yeah if a game is really great I will for sure push through- but the older I get, the harder it is and the better the game has to be.