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The 2021 Backlog Challenge


Reed Rothchild

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29 minutes ago, Reed Rothchild said:

92 turns.  92 TURNS!

JESUS. CHRIST. 🤣

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Anyways, got him.  And I just did the P5 cast cause they were the starters.  Did the P3 cast for the first game.

Holy hell! That was how many turns I think I had for the final boss haha. Glad you finally got him down 🙂 it is easy street from here. What level are you currently?

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22 hours ago, Sumez said:

As it turns out, Mega Man 4 is actually the best in the NES series. It's just crazy good.

At this point, I've played the first 4 NES games (I have booted up 5 and 6 but not for more than 5 minutes just to test them). I've played them both in their own day and in more recent years and have a fair bit of time and experience invested. Personally, I would rank them thusly:
1) Mega Man 2 (nostalgia and total time playing probably deeply influences me here)
2) Mega Man 3
3) Mega Man 4
4) Mega Man

I don't think 4 was bad at all. Quite a good game, actually. But if I have to be critical as compared to the other early games, I felt like the level design was rather inconsistent and often felt uninspired. A couple of the stages (Skull Man and Dive Man in particular) felt almost laughably easy and with little variety. Still others relied on some cheap deaths and enemy placements. Dust Man's stage was probably the most interesting in design and challenge but it still wasn't up to snuff with some of the stage designs from 2 or 3. Ring Man, both stage and boss, are just cheap and obnoxious. I did like that some of the boss weapons can be put to good use in a few of the stages, though. Especially Toad Man and Bright Man's weapons. On the other hand, some boss weapons felt bland and/or useless.

The Mega Buster was a neat idea that didn't really serve any purpose in this one. It went on to do great things in later games but it is almost never worth using in MM4.

If I were grading it, I'd give it a "B-". Still solid but uninspired and needs some polish.

Edited by Webhead123
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Dark Devotion done.

Not sure how I feel about this game. It was good but it didn’t really know what it wanted to be. It had rogue lite, dungeon crawling, action rpg and soulslike all rolled into one but never really excelled at anything and never did justice to any of those genres. 

Maybe just inches out a 7/10 for me. Worth playing but if it’s in your backlog maybe save it for the 2024 backlog challenge.

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Editorials Team · Posted

sigh

Fought the final boss of Persona Q2 for awhile, got her health down to 1/3.  And then the battery went red, and then 5 seconds later it was flashing, and then 5 seconds later it was dead.  Turned it back on and it was lost.  So... I may call it a win.  It was in the bag (I had popped a full party recovery so I was sitting pretty), and I really don't have the fortitude to do that again anytime soon.

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53 minutes ago, Reed Rothchild said:

sigh

Fought the final boss of Persona Q2 for awhile, got her health down to 1/3.  And then the battery went red, and then 5 seconds later it was flashing, and then 5 seconds later it was dead.  Turned it back on and it was lost.  So... I may call it a win.  It was in the bag (I had popped a full party recovery so I was sitting pretty), and I really don't have the fortitude to do that again anytime soon.

I don't blame you. I think the fight went for almost 40mins, or maybe even close to an hour. It's a very unnecessary long fight. It does change up a bit around half way but it doesn't get more difficult. The key to the fight was just having heaps of SP items while you slowly chip away at her health.

The game ends straight after that fight so you could just watch the end video online, which is worth watching because the conclusion is pretty good I thought.

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Editorials Team · Posted
1 hour ago, Shmup said:

I don't blame you. I think the fight went for almost 40mins, or maybe even close to an hour. It's a very unnecessary long fight. It does change up a bit around half way but it doesn't get more difficult. The key to the fight was just having heaps of SP items while you slowly chip away at her health.

The game ends straight after that fight so you could just watch the end video online, which is worth watching because the conclusion is pretty good I thought.

Fuck it, went and got some levels, turned out I was close to some new rare weapons.  I'll rally and then go back in even stronger and ensure the job gets done.

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Just beat The Battle of Olympus and I really enjoyed this it. There were a few times where grinding olives got annoying as well as hitting a few difficulty spikes (I kept forgetting about the "RETRY" option which helped solve a couple), but other than that I liked it. Had a decent amount of exploration without having any dumb "how was I supposed to figure that out" for the next thing to do. Partly, this is due to the NPC dialog actually being understandable and mostly useful. I did enjoy mapping out those two maze sections. Had some interesting mechanics like the gravity changing that I totally didn't expect. I liked the music as well.

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I finally beat another game: Hamtaro Ham-Ham Heartbreak.

I don't see myself getting through the whole list, but I'm going to try to knock off as many as I can. My wife has been out of province (since June) taking care of her mother who's been going through cancer treatments, so it's just been me and the kids and will be until December...finding the time to play games has been a challenge (and sometimes when you do have the time, you're just not in the mood).

Regardless, I intend to keep at it!

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10 minutes ago, Renmauzo said:

I finally beat another game: Hamtaro Ham-Ham Heartbreak.

I don't see myself getting through the whole list, but I'm going to try to knock off as many as I can. My wife has been out of province (since June) taking care of her mother who's been going through cancer treatments, so it's just been me and the kids and will be until December...finding the time to play games has been a challenge (and sometimes when you do have the time, you're just not in the mood).

Regardless, I intend to keep at it!

Sorry to hear about your mother-in-law. I hope everything goes well with her treatments and she bounces back.

My wife takes in-house call several times a month, so I feel your pain with working and juggling the kids. 90% of the time after I get them to bed, I'm exhausted and videogames seem like a bridge too far. Infinite respect to all the single parents out there, for sure.

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Beat Monster Party for NES:

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I did not use any of the game's Passwords, but I did have to continue a few times (mostly on the fourth level and eighth level). I needed to watch a video to get through level 6 (the Haunted House maze) because I remember being stumped on that level in October of last year. Also, I had to be careful not to fight the spider boss on level 7 because if you fight all of the bosses you'll lose the key and can't beat the level. But anyway, I finally got around to beating the game.

Edited by MegaMan52
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On 10/9/2021 at 5:00 PM, Sumez said:

As it turns out, Mega Man 4 is actually the best in the NES series. It's just crazy good.

Yes I remember renting it for the first time and I was quite impressed by the graphics, especially the colorful stage intros.  Though the NES MegaMen in general (especially the last 3-4) have among the best graphics on the system.

Back to our regularly scheduled program, how in the world do you guys not get overwhelmed by the backlog?  I mean of all the things I could be backlogged on it has to be retro JRPGs, about the longest most involved games possible (YES I've gone on record as saying I appreciate games where you feel like you get your money's worth but boy can all that time commitment really add up!). 😞  And add to that my newspaper archive project, me resuming my reading retro gaming magazines project (I'm starting 1992 at the moment)...I guess just one day, one bite at a time?

Edited by Estil
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1 hour ago, Estil said:

Back to our regularly scheduled program, how in the world do you guys not get overwhelmed by the backlog?

I am definitely overwhelmed. I made the big mistake of choosing a lot of JRPGs haha.

I’ve learnt for next year to focus on the games that are average 10hours not 60hours. I am happy I finished Persona q2 though and I’m almost done with ToCS. Everything else will be a bonus.

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35 minutes ago, Shmup said:

I am definitely overwhelmed. I made the big mistake of choosing a lot of JRPGs haha.

I’ve learnt for next year to focus on the games that are average 10hours not 60hours. I am happy I finished Persona q2 though and I’m almost done with ToCS. Everything else will be a bonus.

ToCS...*looks it up* Hey, I haven't played these yet!  I can play these on my Playstation 3 system!

It's The Legend of Heroes and it's really rad!

Those creatures from C are really bad!

Flying Felines, and Grass Drones, and Coin Beetles too...

With 'little help, our Hero'll pull through!

Wiki wiki, yeah!  Go Rean Go!  Awesome!  Intense!

The Playstation 3...your parents help you hook it up.  The Legend of Heroes games each sold separately.

 

Sorry I couldn't resist 😄 

 

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On 10/18/2021 at 5:25 AM, Sumez said:

Didn't you play Trails in the Sky? The main character has the same name as you 😛 😛 😛 

Different spelling and the female version of the name besides (and in my newspaper archive I DID in fact find a few more Estil's (guys and same spelling) in my local area).  Doesn't count.  Still she does seem like quite the Rapunzel cutie 😄   

To be honest I never even heard of this series until you brought it up.  Wouldn't it be better though to play the previous five "The Legend of" games (the sixth one for whatever reason is only on PSP which I don't have) or is Trails enough of a distinctive series that I can start with it?  Hey, it'd give me a good excuse to go for more trophies! 😄 

EDIT: Oh crud, Trails in the Sky is also (mostly) JP only... 😞 

As for those previous five games I can play those on my SNES Everdrive and my PSIO...Stone Age Gamer helped me hook those up. 😄 

Edited by Estil
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