DefaultGen

I'm playing Might and Magic on NES. This would be such a cool open world RPG if it wasn't such a pain in the ass. There's so much instant death and so many sluggish battles with no rewards (20 enemy random battles, wtf). There's a lot of old-school obscure BS and quests to figure out, but the awful combat makes it so not worth it.

I heard Super Mario 3D All Stars is going to be super limited.

I've started Might & Magic while I'm in the blobber mood, not that I think anyone else is itching to play it. You really are trash when you start out in this game. Accidentally trying to open a locked door or trapped loot bag the starter town can result in instant party wipe.

Wizardry 2 is done. Damn, that's a great game! My least favorite things in games are when they start out like I've never played a video game before and when they overstay their welcome. KOD throws you straight into the grinder and it's only 6 floors long so it's anything but exhausting or repetitive. All killer, no filler. I didn't realize VGS is like the KOD fan club, but I'm hoping I can join as a member.

I just teleported into rock, basically erasing my save game

I thought Wizardry prepared me for Wizardry 2, but every single time the ends of my map meet, they don't match up because of one way walls and teleporters.

Oh man I missed this. I’ll take one if available.

I feel like video games should be a good storytelling medium but I rarely find that to be the case. They can have a interesting premise or fleshed out characters, but I've never played a video game that told a story as well or concisely as the best books or movies. The best stories are perfectly edited and paced, which seems impossible for video games which are never edited down to only the most worthwhile core and the pace is determined by the player unless you're going to load up on cut scenes. No storyteller would say even a game as good as TLOU2 is a story that needs 30 hours to be told. As good as TLOU2 is, it's interspersed with scenes like "Then Ellie literally took out a gun and murdered 40 armed military men on her own", because you know, it's a video game. In the TV adaptation they intentionally took a lot of the serial murder stuff out because it doesn't make the story better, it's just fun to shoot dudes in video games. I mean I'm a video game man. Video games are cool unique ways to take part in stories and worlds. But verbatim write down your next dialog tree in Baldur's Gate 3 or KOTOR where every NPC blurts out their immediate quest-ly problems to you within 2 sentences of meeting you then open up to a random paragraph of Lord of the Rings. The video game way of telling a fantasy story is just worse. Anyway yeah the answer is Metal Gear Solid 2.

Barry Lyndon is kind of like an 18th century Forrest Gump but you get a huuuge zoom shot every other scene. I love that movie. The Shining would have to be my favorite though. I love Paths of Glory too.

What's a good party makeup? I went Fighter, Fighter, Cleric, Thief, Wizard, Mage. It seemed fine except the Wizard really seemed the worst of both worlds. I was thinking of rolling the same swapping out the Wizard for another Mage. Clerics are kinda badass too, maybe two Clerics instead of two Fighters?

The only reason I lived through Werdna was Mahaman resurrecting my entire party at the opportune moment (although silencing him would sure work). I gotta look into this for KOD though.

All PC for me last year I think? Hmm. Really, really good Cruelty Squad Brigand: Oaxana Getting Over It with Bennett Foddy Elasto Mania Really good Opus Magnum Post Void Chronicon Good Necesse Heavenly Bodies Bread & Fred Automaton Lung Toree 2 The Looker Pony Island I also beat these video games Toree 3D Scanner Sombre Omori

What did Yoshi's Story ever do to you

Wizardry is done. This game is sweet. I put it off my entire life because I thought it was too archaic, but those PLATO D&D nerds were making interesting CRPGs before most genres even existed. With a little less dumbass Murphy's Ghost grinding and a little less instant permadeath, I'd recommend it to almost anyone. You get a lot of powerful spells pretty early on. It actually has nice progression and you don't feel like a chump half the game. It's my favorite NES RPG I've played so far. Also yes I teleported out with the amulet to beat the game, but the WERDNA kill shot (with every party member alive baby) is so much sweeter. Here's some maps. I like seeing people's maps.

Damn I gotta stop shipping to Canada

All 3 of those are among my favorite puzzle games. I really loved the Talos DLC. I thought the regular DLC areas were the best in the game, then the very end of it showed you a bunch of hard-to-wrap-your-brain-around mechanics that they were kind enough not to use more in the regular game. Small Space Big Solution was my favorite puzzle. The Witness is very different. It's primarily a 2D game that occasionally has 3D environmental solutions, but not really at all the same thing. The Witness never repeats concepts without adding a new complexity though, which is something the main Talos campaign does a few times.

The Ring of Death killed my mage before I ever realized what happened Oh cruel game.

Which games are these? Are these few games the Greg Games?

Realms of the Haunting seems a little affordable

I wonder if it's a sealed Lucasarts collector and the Macintosh version is desirably rare or if it's someone who just wanted a sealed Monkey Island and settled for the crappy Mac version no one wants because it's all they could find

I'm on NES. I started on SFC which looks like maybe the best version, but I felt pity for the NES completions thread and switched to NES. It seems like a pretty great version though, just the original with type-in stuff changed to menus. And yeah, I'm having a lot of fun. Certainly a lot more fun that all the times I tried to play it as a stupid kid. I can't imagine walking into this game and it being your first dungeon crawler. But as an adult who understand the genre more and is willing to figure out confusing maps, I'm in. I've read bad things about unfair difficulty and instant kills later on so I'm hoping to persevere.

Wizardry is hilarious. I have an evil wizard (SAURON) who accidentally turned good by random chance because I simply choose not to fight a friendly group of monsters. You can't put good and evil characters in the same party, so he left my party. I have to grind up a new good party with the sole purpose of hunting friendly mobs of turn SAURON evil again. And people say this game doesn't have a story.

Yeah it’s 5 minutes just for the run after figuring out how to skirt around those 3 turrets. But you don’t even need some cheesy build order or RNG like you do for quick wins in some of the other strategy games. You just load up a tank and go win.

I’m gonna try to do Wizardry 1 and Ultima V. With our RPG powers and @ZeldaFreak’s promise to grind out 100 hours of boring sports games, we will 677/677 this year.