Beat the SNES Library - 267/714

[docile tapeworm 2,990]

14 minutes ago, Reed Rothchild said:

Top 25 on the system imo

Your probably right. Super Nintendo kinda sucks like that.

Edited May 28 by docile tapeworm

[Reed Rothchild 6,008]

Knocked out more low-hanging fruit: Battle Blaze and Emmitt Smith Football are done.

And then reviewing the list, I cleared Brawl Brothers, Peacekeepers, and Civilization in the last year or so for my project, but evidently never think to check here.

[MagusSmurf 391]

In some “totally unhelpful for the main goal of the thread” news, beat SMT I, II, and If...

i and II were okay (6/10), If... was fairly poor (4/10). If anything that might be slightly generous to all the games involved there.

Spoiler

Special mention to SMT1’s Gabriel boss fight. Gamefaqs claims she has 1700 HP, which is kinda low for that part of the game (the final bosses aren’t far from her and have 10k each) but she has an annoying immunity to normal sword attacks so it would make sense. In both my recent playthrough and my previous one around 2015ish, she...certainly did not have 1700 HP. I strongly suspect she had whatever the maximum possible value was (probably 65,536 or 65,535?) or maybe that minus 1700. It says a lot about SMT1’s combat system that the fight was still easily manageable like this, just really time consuming - put on autobattle, go watch something while putting the emulator in a small window, stop to heal when she actually manages to have racked up decent damage on you, win like half an hour later.

This has happened to me twice now yet doesn’t seem to be widely noted as a thing despite the game being fairly notable and having been fan-translated for 20 years so I strongly suspect Orden’s “bug fix” patch improving on Aeon Genesis’s original broke some additional things at some version. This wasn’t even the only big glitch I got in SMT1 or even the worst, but was probably the funniest. Sane people should just go play the now-translated GBA version instead.

I’m starting to wonder (haven’t played it myself yet) if part of the reason for Nocturne’s enduring reputation is that nothing before it in this franchise really holds up and people are too polite or too big a fan of the franchise to say it that directly? Was unimpressed with Kyuuyaku Megami Tensei as well, Last Bible 1 was bad and 2 was underwhelming although I honestly didn’t expect much better from early 90s Game Boy RPGs, am midway through Majin Tensei 1 and it’s terrible, nobody seems to like Persona 1, I always hear “good story, bad gameplay” for the Persona 2 games...At this point if Jack Bros. on Virtual Boy turns out to be the best pre-Nocturne SMT game just from being a decent action game I will not be surprised.

[Reed Rothchild 6,008]

On 5/30/2022 at 11:03 AM, MagusSmurf said:

beat SMT I, II, and If...

Holy God...

edit: Or maybe I should say "Holy Satan"

[Reed Rothchild 6,008]

My only insight is that Persona and Soul Hackers (the two pre-Nocturne titles I've played extensively) are indeed rough in many ways, and lacking in QoL stuff.

Nocturne itself is pretty brutal and unforgiving in many ways, especially if you don't already have the franchise's general strategy beats down.  But it's super playable today.

The stuff after Nocturne is were they really honed it.  4 (and it's sequel) are my favorites.

[MagusSmurf 391]

Finally beat Majin Tensei.

If you’ve ever wondered why this game went untranslated until like 2019 and after its sequel already had a patch, turns out there was probably a good reason: it sucks.

It’s the worst JRPG I’ve beaten.

The mechanics, map design, and balancing are bad and would have resulted in a below average game regardless. And then toss in how slow the whole thing is. There’s no way to turn off the battle screens or speed things up and combined with some particular quirks of this game it’s basically the slowest Strategy RPG ever with gameplay that wouldn’t be good even if it was fast.

If the developers had called it a day at that point and completely phoned things in, this game might have merely been some level of bad rather than totally awful. Unfortunately, instead it’s 59 maps long. There’s an unbelievable amount of dreadful content you have to get through to beat the game. Combined with the slow speed and a lot of overly big, boring maps and the game is over 60 hours long. If you’re making a bad game anyways, don’t make so damn much of it! I only got through this by watching anime while playing it.

This is now the only game I have given a 1/10 to. 

[Daniel_Doyce 332]

On 5/14/2022 at 8:46 PM, Daniel_Doyce said:

I am going to try King Arthur & the Knights of Justice next

This was a bad choice, but I'll see it through. I don't like it at all though.

Excited about some of the games in Reed's top 25 SNES games that still haven't been beaten yet, like Brandish and RoTK2. Liberty or Death and Inindo too but those have been beaten already.