Gaia Gensouki

Swords and Serpents is done. This time I made a team of the first four from last year's NES challenge. Nerdynebraskan in the lead as a warrior with Khromak, another warrior, right behind him. They fittingly made the most damage. Then TheGameDisplay makes an appearance as a thief, because he came out of nowhere and climbed the ranking, before disappearing into the shadows again. And finally, there's Scaryice as the (number) wizard, overseeing everything and keeping everyone alive and buffed with his spells.

Super Spy Hunter is done.

Btw. Did anybody start with Swords and Serpents or wants to play it for their personal completion? If not, I would like to clear it this year as well.

I tried my hands at Time Lord, but I can't beat the boss in the wild west level. Somehow this dude can take an insane amount of bullet and just won't die. I even lost my patience and tried with save states, but even after getting the in-game timer to July this dude just doesn't die. Does he maybe regenerate health and you need to shoot as fast as if you had a turbo controller?

I didn't know that we were allowed to turn down the difficulty. I thought that at least normal was a must. I remember Burai Fighter being pretty difficult back then. Anyway, I beat Demon Sword. It's very rough around the edges, but you can get used to the jank. The final boss however was really tough for me, so I had to farm a lot of those red orbs that refill your health. After a while normal enemies don't respawn anymore and you have to fight against these pretty dangerous bone dogs that will quickly overwhelm you. I guess it's sort of like an enrage timer. But you can avoid this by walking around the level some more or by going through any of those doors. You have to fight a boss then, but once you do, you can go back to farming health power ups. Also, sometimes you get a room with a big buddha statue in it. Usually there's a power up in hands, but sometimes it's seemingly empty. In those cases you can jump on top of the entrance to the left and slash at the wall a few times, until a power up appears. This will give you an extra live! I got this info from the strategy wiki and it was a big help. https://strategywiki.org/wiki/Demon_Sword/Items_(Demon_Sword)

Zoda's Revenge: StarTropics II is done.

I'm finally done with Destiny of an Emperor! This game is a clear case of overstaying its welcome. Had it ended a bit sooner I would have looked back on it fondly as a good RPG, but the last quarter or so of this game absolutely drags on forever, more specifically the war against Wu and Wei. Near the end it turns into a huge endurance marathon, where you have to go through 2 dungeons, then fight against two bosses, one of which is extremely difficult, and past that there is even more fighting until you get to a resting location. The fights against Si Ma Yi have been absolutely brutal. Not only does he have a huge amount of units (HP), but he also castes a lot of powerful spells, that hit your entire party, and he can completely heal himself! I got major traumatic flashbacks to the final boss of The Bard's Tale, another good RPG that was ruined by its endgame. Anyway, the trick is, to use sort of a mut on Si Ma Yi when his HP are low, so that he can't heal himself. But you have only so little MP in the game, especially after the gauntlet of dungeons, tough enemies and bosses. So my first two attempts ended in faulire and I had to go all the way to back to this boss fight again, through both dungeons. This sucked. By this time I just wanted the game to be done. Anyway, I ended up beating Si Ma Yi, but of course he had to retreat and come back later with even bigger armies. after some more battling it was time for the final boss gauntlet which consisted of two fights, that tended to drag on for way too long, because the bosses could completely heal themselves again! But I had so little MP left, that I couldn't mute Si Ma Yi during the final confrontation. Luckily, the game had mercy on me and he didn't heal himself, which would have been my end as I was already out of MP. Another difficulty of the game were actually the many, many Chinese names. I'm not really familiar with Chinese and I'm bad at remembering names as well, so this was an unlucky combo. They were throwing people's names and place names at you in rapid-fire succession, that after a while I just gave up trying to learn who is who. There is also a ridiculous amount of tacticians that you can recruit. I think you can keep roughly 60 in your reserve and that was filled up quickly. But most of them were actually really useless. So the only point of recruiting them is making sure, that they don't come up as enemies again. Because if you don't recruit them, they will come back later with more troops and it's easier to fight against nameless rebels or bandits rather than fighting against tacticians with huge armies. Overall the end soured my experience a little or I would have given an emphatic recommendation, but it just went on and on, plus the difficulty skyrocketed. Still, it's by no means a dud and worth a playthrough, but I don't see myself revisiting it very soon.

Maybe Breath of Fire? Looks kinda Capcom-ish to me.

Smash TV is easy? Is this some kind of joke I'm not getting? I remember giving up on the NES version because of the awkward controls with a single controller. The SNES version was much more accessible and even that got very difficult later on. Definitely not something for babies or it would be a 1 or 2 point game. Anyway, I continued a little with Destiny of an Emperor and am currently fighting against Wu. It probably shouldn't take too long to finish off the rest of the game. But who knows. Maybe there'll be some insane grind at the very end.

I'm done with Metal Mech. This was originally supposed to be a short playthrough before moving on to DoaE, but I somehow kept choking on the last level over and over again, so that this turned into an evening filling ordeal. What makes the last level so incredibly difficult and aggravating are certain enemies that kill you with one attack. On top of that their hitboxes are extremely janky so that you don't really know when they actually hit you. They also spawn all the time and you have to deal with the extremely awkward controls. I was so unlucky this time around that I even died on the final boss, which never happened before. Somehow the turrets decided to respawn which I can't remember ever happening before. Anyway, they took my last hit point from my last life of my last continue shortly before I had the final boss beat. Man, I was livid. Well, at least I've earned those pain points. I just couldn't resist those tempting 14 points. But tomorrow I'll return to business as usual with DoaE.

I finally found some time for a gaming session. So I started Destiny of an Emperor and beat down the Yellow Scarves Rebellion pretty quickly. It was really anti-climactic and I already thought, that this was a surprisingly short RPG. But of course it continued and follows the rest of the lives of these characters. So far it's a really strange RPG, that starts off as quite difficult and slow, because the battles take so long and enemies are so strong, that auto-battle was too dangerous. But now I've somewhat figured out the game and am having a lot more fun.

@Crabmaster2000 Excellent job on beating R-Type! What a tough game and you almost made it sound easy. But it's good to know that the level 7 boss can give you another power up, because without them the level 8 and the final boss would be a nightmare. I might give R-Type another chance some time later this year just to knock it off for myself. After all, it's a great port and a fun game, just a bit too difficult for my taste.

A few quick and easy clears: Arcade Classic No. 2: Centipede / Millipede Arcade Classic No. 3: Galaga / Galaxian Castlevania II: Belmont's Revenge. Almost beat this one on a single continue, but I forgot the pattern for the final boss and had to use a continue. But still a fun game on the go.

I didn't have time to play video games these past few days, because I had so much work and other stuff to do. Then when I was reading the manual for Destiny of an Emperor tonight I ended up spending roughly two hours reading up on all these historic figures, the Yellow Turban Rebellion etc. So much for this night of gaming. I will probably start the game proper tomorrow.

I tried my hands at Klashball, but that game is so awful. The controls are atrocious and it feels like the game is at least half based on luck. Some games I wipe the floor with the enemies and win something like 10-1 or 22-0 and other times I'm getting wrecked mercilessly. Also, that weird buzzing sound during kickoff is so etched into my ears that I'm still hearing it even after shutting off the console. Anyway, good luck to whoever wants to beat this janky game. It's starting to get difficult finding games that I still want to beat. Is anybody currently working on Destiny of an Emperor? Is this game stressful or frustrating for an RPG?

Shenmue?

Section Z is done.

Race America is done. What a crummy game. The drag racing is truly awful. First of all, the computer is perfect and changing gears so it's close to impossible to even get close to them. And whenever he drives ahead you only see their screen and no longer yours. This means that you can't evade oil puddles on the ground. How are you supposed to do that, when you're not on the screen and can't see the track or your car? There seems to be some indication at the top of the screen, but it's barely helpful. So I just raced straight forward and only concentrated on increasing my speed. Then the actual races. You're driving so fast that it's extremely difficult to evade enemy cars and even one crash can be very problematic. And when the enemy drives past you, you're left to drive on the small bottom left part of the screen, i.e. there's only one fourth of the screen available to you! I understand that this would make at least somewhat sense in two-player mode, but why against the CPU? It was a truly awful racing experience for me and not something that I would revisit for fun. Although people in previous years seemed to have liked this game, so I'm probably an outlier.

King's Knight is done. This time around I was struggling a bit on some of the stages. Also, I got a bug during some of the underground stages where the boss wouldn't appear and I was basically soft-locked. So I had to restart the game and do it all over again. Jeez! That was annoying.

The Krion Conquest is done.

No, I didn't know about that, but just saw a clip on Youtube and it looks really cute. Thanks! TIL. Btw. I completed Wrath of the Black Manta.

Thundercade is done. It's a tough game, but I really enjoy it.

Ghostbusters is done.

Iron Tank is done.

Btw. @scaryice, if my memory serves me right, I had 311 points before completing Dungeon Magic. So I think I should be at 328 points.