Philosoraptor

In February, I got sucked back into FGO. And Granblue Fantasy. Back to three gachas. Pain. However, I did have some time to beat a few games since I last reported in. Granblue Fantasy: Relink (PS4)—Ooooooohhh, this is a tough one. A very, very tough one. It's hard to not be biased about this one either, since I play (and love) the gacha it's based on AND the first print of the game includes a code for the mobile game that saves literally a month or more of grinding AND helps unlock a busted character of your choice. Seriously. At the time of writing, the code alone is selling for $30-45, which is most of the price of the game. Sometimes, they sell for more. For those who speak my moon language, I ended up using mine to get Haaselia, an Evoker, and I got her about halfway to five stars just from the rewards from the code alone. I digress. Back to the PS4 game. Gameplay-wise, the battle system is very similar to Xenoblade Chronicles. However, there are 20 playable characters here. 19 are from the gacha and there's one (current) Relink exclusive. Everything is executed well, and the writing is up to the same high standard as Versus and the mobile game. Everyone's specials (ougis/charge attacks) and movesets are VERY different, and you can get a lot of additional playtime trying out characters and playing online. Instead of the weapon grid from past games and gacha game, you have a skill tree that also unlocks a variety of skills and upgrades for each playable character. Background information is shared through fate episodes, and several familiar, upgradeable weapons are available for each character. Locales are gorgeous, cities feel alive, and they even recreated all the familiar NPCs from the mobile game. They've also added lots of chests and critters to find in the towns and story islands. Because it follows the formula of the mobile game (read: quick quests to replay for drops later), most of the stages in its 20ish initial runtime to credits are broken up by running from set piece to set piece. So, even though it's hack-and-slash adjacent, it's once again closer to Xenoblade Chronicles in practice. It's fanservice for GBF fans. It's amazing. However, the game doesn't necessarily give you the best rundown of the story (or the mechanics, or the vernacular), so it's not as good of a jumping in point for new players as Versus is. Also, if you want to finish up the main story, the second arc is another 20 hours, so 40 in total. Overall, though, if you're a GBF fan, you'll love this game. 9/10 Ocean Commander (Wii)—Tough one to recommend. There's nothing wrong with it, per se, but it's bland and way, WAY too easy. This game controls with the Wiimote and Nunchuck, with you holding B to fire, pressing A to bomb, and moving with the Nunchuck. You control the direction of your shots in 360 degrees by pointing the Wiimote at the screen. Each enemy destroyed gets you money which can be used to level up your weapons up to three times. However, you're an absolute unit of a bullet sponge. If I wasn't so concerned with keeping my enemy kill percentage up, I'd be curious whether you could sit in the middle of the screen and win by just holding fire. This game plays less like a SHMUP and more like the 30th best flash game on the Newgrounds homepage. Even though it boasts 20 levels and a final boss showdown, all of the levels feel the same with only minor enemy variety and spawn rates. Bosses are reused (and not even pallete swapped) in probably half the levels, and none of them are particularly large, inspired, or difficult. Overall, it's just sitting in the middle of the screen and holding the fire button for two hours, and trying to shoot the stingrays to keep your kill count up, if you're so inclined. Everything else dies from the barrage of bullets and projectiles eminating from your ship. No bugs, but no excitement. Solid meh. I'd say 4/10 at time of release, but probably 2/10 nowadays. It hasn't aged well. Mario Tennis Ultra Smash (Wii U)—The smoothest playing bad idea I've played in a while. No bugs, no framerate issues, everything has that Nintendo polish. But maaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan. First off, the gimmick is twofold: the first is mega mushrooms that make your character take up at least half the court (and the full court if you're DK or another large player), and the second are jump smashes and ultra smashes. Both of these things cause innumerable problems with the actual tennis itself. Just like the hypothetical-made-reality of the goalie fat enough to plug a hockey goal, the mega mushroom makes it nearly impossible to hit the ball by a supersize player, especially a large one. You can sometimes hit the special shots that appear on court to spin them around or whatever, but that's still no guarantee. Even when you're massive yourself, still no guarantee. Also, to compensate for this ridiculous mechanic, now the tennis ball itself bounces higher in unexpected ways. A shot that barely went over the net can bounce right over your head three or four times higher than you'd expect. Without the indicators on the ground telling you what shot you'd hit, it'd be even tougher to predict that. Jump smashes and ultra smashes basically take the finesse out of the game previously in older Mario Tennis entries and devolve most rallies into smashfests. They function as upgraded overhead smashes, but from the side. For ultra smashes, everyone does a mario-style super high jump overhead smash. However, because of that, they've reduced the angles you can hit the ball, especially at the net, significantly. There's no more cut shots and drop shots are mostly ineffective, making each rally just a slugfest. It's also almost impossible to hit the net or hit the ball out in this game. Speaking of the ball, it's minescule on screen, and it's even more ridiculous in the hands of a player under the effects of a mega mushroom. Plus with the size of the courts being a bit too small, it's very easy to lose track of the ball in front of a giant teammate. So, the tennis isn't the greatest. You don't have the angles to hit balls past competent computers much less good human players in mega mushroom mode, the court is too small, and the end up taking away more from the gameplay than adding. What else can be wrong with this game? Well, maybe the fact that there are only 16 characters, which is the same number as the N64 game if you don't include Transfer Pak characters, but they're of lower quality. In the N64 version, there was a significant difference in how each character type played. Serve and volley for Waluigi. Power and serve positioning for Bowser and DK. In Ultra Smash, the character types are still present, but the variation is significantly downplayed. So much so, that outside of the tricky characters like Boo, most play similarly to each other (and even the tricky characters still play pretty same-y, they mostly just fly and have a bit more curve to their shots, which is downplayed even more by the special shots that appear on the court during the match). Also, did we really need Toadette? or Sprixie Princess? Naah. Ultra Smash also contains many fewer modes than previous entries. No tournament mode here. You do have exhibition modes to take out the gimmicks if you so choose, but the default modes all have them. The replacement for the tournament is a fighting-game style "knockout challenge" where you face off against 30 characters (15 normal and then the same 15 again but as star characters) in tiebreaks one after another. Beat all 30 and you get credits (and coins to buy other star characters and courts). You can also play the knockout challenge with a supported Amiibo buddy. However, instead of modifying the rules where it's now California doubles (the team with two players has to hit between the singles lines against the team with one player, and the team with one player gets the whole court), both sides still play singles. So, you essentially get a free backup as you wail on the ball at the net. It get worse. There's ONE minigame, which is about how long you can keep a rally going. They also took away three- and five-set matches, leaving only tiebreaker, two-game, and one-set matches as options. I get that limitation for online play, but not local play. There are also fewer courts and surfaces than in previous entries. There are the usual grass, clay, and hard courts, as well as carpet, ice, sand, rebound, and mushroom (highest bouncing) court. However, due to the weird bounces, the only courts that really play differently are ice, rebound, sand, and mushroom. Even worse, they're all located in the same arena, just with a different surface. So, instead of Mario Tennis 64's cool locales and music for each court, you get the same music and a same-y surface. Mario Tennis Aces* and Mario Tennis on the virtual boy are the last Mario Tennis games I haven't played. However, of the ones I have played, this is easily the worst. Everything can be unlocked so quickly that it's easy to call this iteration a three-hour tech demo at best. 5/10 Edit: Started Aces. It's way better than Ultra Smash.

Yeah I did. That explains what I wasn't getting. I didn't realize they were different animals.

I must be missing something. So many people love Baldur's Gate 1 and 2, but I gave them a 6/10 and 7/10 respectively when I played them in late 2020. I played them both on the PS2, if that makes a difference, but do you see someone who gave those kinds of ratings to the first two enjoying the third? Edit* Sorry Reed. Just saw it was @Gloves who played BG3. Although, I'm still interested in hearing about what I may be missing from the first two. *What say you, Gloves?

I'd be happy if he broke my record! It's something I look back on fondly, and I'm sure the_wizard_666 will feel the same way.

Been a bit! I've been playing more Wii U games recently, with a focus on games that start with "Mario," apparently: Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games - I didn't know what to expect with this game aside from waggle, and it delivered, both in waggle and in entertainment. Sure, there's a lot of running events and sure, drumming the Wii remote and nunchuck to run isn't the most fun thing, but the motion controls are varied across the events, even running events. Plus, it's the summer Olympics. There's lots of running events. Some events, like the trampoline, are a blast. Others, like table tennis, feel like inferior versions of both Mario Tennis AND Wii Sports tennis. On average, though, the events are well done and fun. On another note, I ended up playing this for two days to beat all the events, and I did have a little bit of muscle fatigue on my right upper bicep, but none of the events are taxing enough to put you in knots like PunchOut!! Nintendo also "spiced things up" with dream events that mimic other Olympic events (table tennis, skydiving(?), running, and fencing). Skydiving was the best because you had to navigate through rings and then pull off tricks like in the trampoline event. Running was essentially Mario Kart, but slower. Table Tennis and Fencing just added super moves to the standard events, so I'm not sure they're different enough to warrant a whole 'nuther minigame. Overall, though. I enjoyed my time with the game. More than I expected, even. I'm sure the later ones are better, and I'd be interested to see how they handle the winter Olympics. So, maybe I'll pick up a later one in the future. 8/10 Mario Kart Wii - At the time of release, this is the most polished MK game they had ever made. It's got metric tons of tracks, characters, and unlockables. It pulls all kinds of fantastic tracks from older MK games, has a killer battle mode, and a nice time trial mode. With other human players, it's a blast. However, with computers, all the fun is suddenly sucked out of the room and replaced with pure, unadulterated rage as the 4th blue shell on the final lap hits your character, this time only feet from the finish line. Yes, the garbage AI is back with all the rubberbanding and BS tricks present in previous games, but this one really has the AI spamming all kinds of overpowered items seemingly only at you, especially in 150cc and Extra. It takes away the enjoyment out of the single player experience, and since there's no longer any way to enjoy the game outside of getting a bunch of friends together or modding your Wii, it's hard to not dock it for its indisgressions. With human players, it's much more balanced, and the best players tend to finish close to or at the top. With the AI, it's all up in the air. You could race the best race and finish 10th, and I don't like that as someone who is fairly seasoned at MK and decent at racing games in general. Bikes are also busted compared to their kart counterparts to an upsetting degree. For single player, give me F-Zero and it's tough as nails, skill-based racing than pure luck and the whims of the AI in MK Wii. Oh, also, on the Wii U, the GC controller doesn't work with the GC adapter, so you're stuck with the classic controller, the wheel, or the Wiimote. 8.5/10 Mario Sports Mix - More like mixed bag, IMO. Separately, the volleyball, dodgeball, basketball, and ice hockey games are worse than other offerings on the market. The first DOA Xtreme Beach Volleyball, Super Dodge Ball, NBA Street V3 (which also has Mario and co if you get it on the GC)/NBA Jam, and OG Ice Hockey/NHL 94 are all better offerings. Hell, hockey does feel like an updated Ice Hockey from the NES. However, together, they make a game that is accessible (all of the games use the Wiimote and Nunchuck, and all the games have basically the same control scheme) and could be good fun with up to four human players. However, every video game should be better with friends, so that's no point in this game's favor. That is the intention, though. All of the games are simple arcade affairs. Sometimes too simple - looking at you dodgeball. Where this game does shine is in the different courts/fields/locales/arenas. Call them what you will, but there's some REALLY good ideas here. Divide each volleyball side into 9 and play tic-tac-toe, where three in a row gets you extra points? It's here. Coins to add to points scored in all events (or add power in dodgeball)? Check. Well-implemented items like green shells? Yup. Score multipliers? Random hazards? Petey Pirahna acting as a replacement basketball hoop and gobbling down basketballs? Check, check, and check. They usually only have items, coins, and one gimmick per arena. At least one arena per sport has no gimmicks, if you wanna skip all that jazz, too. The addition of some unlockable Final Fantasy characters is a nice addition, and every character has either a power, balanced, technique stat distribution to make team building at least somewhat of a choice. However, they don't play that differently in execution. Also, in non-star cups/non sports mix cups, the AI just eats glue. In hockey, you can just sit in a corner and face the wall to run out the clock, and your opponents won't do much, if anything. They'll just skate around. Overall, what you get are four oversimplified sports games that don't feel as fluid or fast as other standalone arcade-style sports offerings, but Mario Sports Mix makes up for it with some absolute banger ideas for courts. With friends, this could be a whole helluva lot of fun, but my rating represents a single-player experience. IMO, this might be a bit underrated in the spectrum of Mario Sports games. 7/10

For the first time in 8 years, I booted up my Wii U to beat Castlevania Judgment. I'm honestly surprised my Wii U still worked since it's been sitting so long. I guess that's the good news. The bad news is that Castlevania Judgment felt more at home being compared to the PS1 fighters I've been playing than any of its 2009-era contemporaries. As a Soul Calibur-esque fighting game, this game came out after SoulCalibur IV, meaning it had plenty of other good examples that came before it. What we got, though, was: A mostly two-button fighting game with a comparable moveset to PS1 fighters. Characters with one special move, which is executed with a single button press after a bar is filled up. A fighting game that seems to have been made for the Wiimote and Nunchuck combo, with somewhat baffling button assignments on the classic controller and Gamecube controller. Poorly balanced characters. Arena hazards that your character will lock onto if they're closer to them than the opponent, including zombies that follow and damage you. An...interesting, Hot-Topic-adjacent redesign of some of Castlevania's most beloved characters. Other Wii fighting games, like Guilty Gear XX Accent Core, added Wii motion and still provided comparatively deep fighting systems, but that's not what you get here. Other gripes are that the story mode plays like an arcade mode, and Arcade mode plays like the story mode minus the opening cutscene. More or less, the cutscenes are the same in both and little is added in Story mode. Overall, while this is certainly a better and more polished effort than say, Dynasty Warriors on the PS1, the 12 years between their release makes this game much more disappointing. The contemporary reviews more or less got right. It's a 5.5/10 for me.

Over the weekend, I beat Klonoa: Door to Phantomile for the PS1, which included rescuing all the villagers and beating the secret level. Aside from the somewhat hit and miss controls when grabbing and then immediately jumping with the enemy in midair, this is a very, very solid 2D platformer. Even then, the control issues don't really show themselves until the secret level, which is a timed challenge. The game oozes charm, has a really good OST, and has great level design. None of the levels overstay their welcome, and, while there are some harder to find villagers/NPCs, they're never so hard to find that you need to look up a guide to find them. You can grab enemies and throw them down to double jump, forwards and backwards to attack at greater range, or towards or away from the screen to hit switches or other things in the foreground and background. Doing so much with one mechanic is what really makes this game shine. Story-wise, it's good. What narrative they do weave into the game is well written, and there are some surprises along the way. Overall, it's a fun game that has aged well. 9/10

Continuing the gauntlet of PS1 fighters, I've beaten several more since I last reported in. I will say that when I'm giving grades to games, I try to think of how they grade against other games released at the time as well as how playable and enjoyable they are today. More on that later. Dead or Alive—DOA does an interesting job establishing the franchise and several of its most notable characters. However, with only 11 characters compared to 18 in the first Tekken, relatively flat arenas with explosive floors insead of walls or other hazards, a slower speed to the action in general compared to DOA games, and clunky movement, it's tough to say it was the best 3D fighter on the PS1. On the other hand, the hefty moveset for each character and very different playstyles for each character definitely make each stand out, and unlocking some of the characters can take a very long time, so this game offers lots of replayability (for better or worse). 7/10. Tekken 3—In the eternal battle of "Street Fighter, Tekken, DOA, or <some other major fighting franchise>," I feel like it just depends on the era and the iteration. For this showdown, I think Tekken 3 is better than the first DOA game because it feels more deliberate and accurate. The fighting and combos take a bit of getting used to for those used to Street Fighter, but they make sense in time. Character models look pretty good, although maybe not as good as DOA, and there are almost twice as many characters as DOA, all with reasonably unique play styles. As far as basic attacks go, neither game did the best job leading them into other combos. Tekken's more about juggling and looking for openings, and DOA is more about countering, knowing your opponent, reaction speed, and baiting them into a specific move. But, in the end, Tekken 3 has more polish and more fluid gameplay than DOA. 7.5/10. Street Fighter Alpha 2—However...if I were to choose one of the big three, I'd say Street Fighter Alpha 2 might be the best fighting game of the generation...An absolute banger of a game. Certainly the best I've played so far. Smooth gameplay, great sprites and graphics, and tons of characters. From the arcade port, the PS1 version is only missing a few frames from intro and background animations, but otherwise is intact. This game also represents a transition between the more precise combo requirements of the SNES games and the more forgiving combo requirements of newer iterations. However, it's missing more frames than the Saturn version, and the Saturn version has more characters, making it not the definitive version. Shockingly, the Saturn is, even to this day because the 30th Anniversary Collection includes the arcade version and not Gold. This is the best playing classic Street Fighter game I have played to date. 9.5/10. Dynasty Warriors—Hey, did you know the first Dynasy Warriors game was a 3D fighter? Well, it's a slow one at that with delayed movement. The characters are straight out of the Romance of the three Kingdoms, and all have weapons with various amounts of range. Hit detection with those weapons, however, is suspect at times, especially with polearms. You also seem to have invincibility frames when getting up, so lying on the ground and then getting up when the opponent is about to attack you is a legit strat for free damage. For the most part, combos are simple and Tekken-ish in nature. There are a good amount of moves as well as relatively good combos, albeit slow. Some characters ended up being quite fun, like Xu Zhu, who uses a ball on the end of a stick to more or less lollipop people to death. Overall, while not a standout on the console, Dynasty Warriors is an interesting curiousity that does enough well to still be playable in 2024, but shows its age more than one would hope. 6.5/10. Asuka 120% Final Burning Fest—So, this is a 2D fighting game about various girls trying to keep their clubs open…or something? It's about high school and clubs. Google Translate struggled to read the text because they put the autoscrolling white text over white school uniforms and white characters. Anyway, they all must fight to win a prize and then fight a teacher or something. A unique thing about this game is that there's three ways to win the fight. Everyone has a health bar and a stamina bar. If the health bar goes all the way down, you lose. However, if you deplete the opponent's stamina bar ("downing" them), that's counts for more than having less health than your opponent at rounds' end. If neither are knocked out or downed, it all comes down to who has more health. So, this game is obviously geared towards attacking, spamming, and juggling. When your special bar reaches 120%, you can even spam specials for a limited time. There's also a parry system, but it's not balanced very well and doesn't interrupt combos. So, characters like Nana who have a spinning fan attack that hits 10 times will have a few hits parried and then the rest will hit. This leads to this game essentially being a button masher with some light Street Fighter combos thrown in. It's fast, it's smooth, and it's accessible, but due to the lack of iframes and pushback, it becomes cheese-able. I think with a slightly deeper or well-thought out system, it could have been a really great game, but it falls short for what it is. 7/10. In addition to these, I played some others and wasn't a big enough fan to finish them. That, or burnout is real: Ergheiz—A full 3D fighting game that's actually closer to something like Power Stone in movement. I didn't give this one much of a spin, but it seems at least worth returning to if for no other reason than Tifa, Cloud, and Sephiroth are playable charcters. Is it great, though? I have my doubts. King of Fighters 99—This game is fine, but I'm just not the biggest fan of early KOF games. This one has a neat team mechanic that later ones do, but I just don't like how characters tend to play or control. I know this is a popular series, but it's probably my least favorite of the big franchises on the whole. Lightning Legend—A very, VERY strange 3D fighter in both content and gameplay. Blocking sometimes works unless you're the opponent and there aren't many moves. Everyone also moves like action figures. Jank. Evil Zone—Another very janky fighter for similar reasons to Lightning Legend. Shiritsu Justice Gakuen Nekketsu Seisyun Nikki 2—AKA Rival Schools 2. This one was enjoyable and probably better than at least DOA, but burnout is real. I'll revisit this one at some point. I've played lots of fighters in the past couple years, and, collectively, I think that the PS1/Saturn might be the worst era for fighting games to date. There were very few competent 2D fighters, and the 3D fighters were all some degree of janky, slow, or both. That includes the big names like DOA or Tekken. Sure, I gave some of the PS2 fighters like Mai-Otome Hime: Otome Butou Shi a 5.5, but I'd choose that game over almost every game I put down on the PS1 and even a number of fighters I finished on the PS1. At least Mai Otome has smooth action and resonsive characters. I think the next worst might be the SNES/Genesis era. It cannot be overstated how much fighting games on the whole have improved since the the year 2000. Aside from a few standouts, I find it hard to consistently recommend anything pre-2000 that doesn't have "Capcom" on the front of the box or case. Even then, YMMV.

I found myself wondering the same thing at the beginning of last year, so played quite a few last year for the backlog challenge. I liked Symphony of the Night the most of any Castlevania I played, and I ended up giving it a 9.5/10. My next favorite "Castlevania" ended up being Bloodstained (9/10). Rondo of Blood was my favorite of the platformers (9/10) followed by Super Castlevania IV (8/10). I didn't end up playing either of the ones you mentioned, but I also played Castlevania 64 (5/10) and Aria of Sorrow (8/10). I polled the audience about which ones I should play, and those came out as the most popular recommendations. You can find most of those responses on page 22 of the 2023 backlog challenge thread, as well as a more thorough write-up about them as I beat them on page 24. Funny enough, I also hadn't played a Metroid game before 2023 either. I gave Zero Mission a perfect 10 and Metroid 2: Return of Samus a 6/10. I started playing Super Metroid, but put it down due to Metroidvania fatigue. I'd preliminarily give that game a 8.5-9. If you have a PS4 and want the physical game, Symphony of the Night and Rondo of Blood are on Castlevania Requiem. However, SotN on Castlevania Requiem doesn't have the original voice acting, so you won't get the campy voice lines that so many love if you decide to play it on there. Bloodstained is cheaper still, and offers a much more expansive experience than SotN with much of the same goodness. After playing all those Metroid and Castlevania games, I came to the conclusion that both series have winners and losers, and both series are different enough from each other to make them unique. For me, when Metroid is more fast paced, I think it hits higher highs than Castlevania. When it's not, Metroid really plumbs the depths of my patience. However, I'm more about fast-paced action than bombing every nook and cranny of a screen to find five more missiles. YMMV. FYI, I shamelessly co-opted Reed's rating scale years ago because it matched up with my own feelings and observations, so here's his relevant ratings and explanations: 10/10 - One of your very favorite games of all time. 9/10 - Killer game. Everyone should play it. 8/10 - Great game. You like to recommend it. 7/10 - Very good game, but not quite great. 6/10 - Pretty good. You might enjoy occasionally playing it. 5/10 - It's okay, but maybe not something you'll go out of your way to play.

Heeeey! It's an RPG I've played! Let's see if I can sway you one way or another: Even though the 60ish-man roster of playable characters is full of a bunch of big names and perinneal favorites, dialogue bounces from character to character so that none of them are left out. However, this also means no one really gets a whole bunch of screentime. It's similar to when a tv show has a crossover episode and characters from both universes are finishing each others' sentences to ensure everyone gets some spotlight. Also, because they're weaving so many universes together, I found the story to be somewhat milquetoast. However, that may be because lots of lore and story were established in the PS2 game, Namco X Capcom, which never saw an English release. There are those out there who disagree and say the lore and story are great, but I'm not a "story" or a "lore" guy. Battle-wise, I really enjoyed the enemy juggling mechanic. It really made the battles engaging; the better you did, the more damage you did. Each character's attacks also have different timing, so you had to really be familiar with the roster to keep juggling the enemy as long as possible. I liked the depth it added, and it made it stand out amongst more standard tactical RPGs. However, because of the massive roster size, maps and stages balloon in size. Towards the end, they can easily take an hour to clear. If any that sounds somewhat interesting, give it a try. One or two battles will give you a good indication of what the entire game will be like. If you like the battle system but want a smaller roster and more focused story, Super Robot Taisen OG Saga Endless Frontier's battle system is similar, but you only have 7 main characters (if I'm remembering correctly). IMO, the story is also better and a little more cohesive in Endless Frontier. I beat the game close to ten years ago, so my memory might be a bit fuzzy. Based on my feelings and memories towards it, I'd probably give it somewhere between a 7-8, but I think you're a harsher grader than I for RPGs. Most of that high grade is from the roster and battle system. If neither speak to you, you're right in assuming that you won't love it. Edit: booted it up. It took 65 hours to beat.

Figured I'd get a jump start to the year to give myself some padding to beat longer games later in the year, so I beat four quick ones yesterday, all for the PS1: Advanced V.G.—This one really leans into the copycat vibe and pulls it off worse than its SFC counterpart. On top of lots of fighters that rip off moves or even fighting styles from prominent Capcom fighters like SF and Darkstalkers, this iteration is now sluggish like Street Fighter II. They provided a cheap solution to the sluggishness by giving players the option to increase game speed from 1 (normal) to 5 (significantly faster than SF II Turbo). Whatever is selected just fast forwards all character animations. Combos are pretty generous and easy to pull off, if not a bit spammable. The sprite graphics are well done, and the music, despite some noticeable problems with looping and some dead air, is quite good. (7/10) The Last Blade (Bakumatsu Rouman: Gekka no Kenshi)—An even slower game than Samurai Shodown. This game is deliberate, and focuses more on reacting to others' moves and countering. However, since most moves have such a long delay/windup, it kind of defeats the purpose of this style of game, IMO. You can have gameplay that focuses on countering opponents and still have speedy characters and attacks. The combos are pretty easy to pull off, the music is mid, and the spite work is very, very good here. It's an interesting experience, for sure. (6.5/10) Saber Marionette J: Battle Sabers—A 2.5D fighter with characters that have so few moves that the better ones are the ones who can attack quicker or who have more range. If you choose wrong, you're already at a big disadvantage. If you choose right, spam moves to win. Before the fight, you can choose up to six upgrades. Some of those upgrades give you giant feet or hands, which takes away from the character modeling. Think bighead mode, but feet or hands. Even though this game is mostly bug free, the lack of moves, interesting mechanics, or even more than one or two sound clips when performing moves drags it down. Also, the special edition comes with three miniature figures, but they're unpainted. They look like fossilized Tang. They couldn't even paint the figures, man! (5/10) Tatsunoko Fight—The main downfall of this one is tedium. To beat the story mode and unlock the final chapter of the story, you must beat the same five bosses with five different heroes, some of whom played really well and others who were slow and clunky. In the final story mode, you have to beat the same five bosses with specific heroes and then a sixth with whoever you want. Fighting-wise, this is another one where your characters don't necessarily have a lot of moves compared to newer fighters, but this one really falls apart in the lack of a well-thought-out combo system. Very few attacks flow into each other, big specials have very long, easily blockable wind-ups, and some characters are even hard counters to others. When going up against an opponent who is a hard counter, the only way to win was to cheese or outsmart the AI. However, they put a lot of effort, original music, original FMVs, and heart into making this game, and it really does show. While the fighting might not be top tier, the presentation is fantastic. (6/10) ...I then took out Tatsunoko Fight from my slim PS2, flipped the disc over for whatever reason, and noticed a neat circle had been carved into the underside of the disc by the laser's ribbon cable. Apparently, this had been an issue since I got the PS2 fixed in December, so 8 of my games now have rings on them. They all still work, but I'm taking them to a local place to get buffed soon. What a great way to start off the year... Edit*: Got the discs buffed. They're all like new. The ribbon cable just decided to scuff the bottom of the discs, not scratch them, so yay!

Class of Heroes 2G is done. This is going to be a long one. HISSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSSS. I don't know who to blame for this one. I think a lot of it is on the original developers, Zerodiv, who went on to develop the Wizardry game for the PS3. But, some of it is on Gaijinworks (for all intents and purposes, Working Designs). Together, they've certainly made a game of all time. First off, this is a first-person POV, Wizardy-inspired dungeon crawler. I missed out on Wizardry, but I have played several Etrian Odyssey titles, Dungeon Travelers 2, and other, better games that are similar to CoH2G. From the 10 races and 19 classes in the game, you can create a party of 6 students, place 3 each on the front row and back row, and set out for "adventure." "Adventure," in the context of this game, means menial tasks and backtracking for 70% of the playtime. First, let's start with the races and classes. Some classes require certain races, like you have to be a Felpur to create a beast or a Gnome to create an Alchemist. Some races have special abilities, like Celestians, Fairies, and Gnomes can float (remember this). When creating characters, you get a random number of bonus points. I got from as few as 6 to as many as 37 (I'm sure you can get more, too). There are only 6 stats, and you can only put 10 bonus points in each, but you can keep rerolling new characters for more bonus points. The game tries to dock you by giving you "worse" stat increases for level-ups later, but you need high bonus rolls to make a lot of the classes. Levels are also Fire Emblem-style (aka random). You're guaranteed an HP and SP increase, but any other stats can increase or decrease on level up, making for lots of soft resets. I hope you like soft resets, BTW. One cool thing this game does is allow you to have multiple parties at the same time. As I got to other two schools, I created all the unique classes at each school, picked my favorites for my main party, and parked the extras in town or schools across the map. Your inventory is shared between all parties, so when it's full, switching to another party to sell stuff in a town or craft stuff at a school a pretty big time saver. OK! Now you're all ready to set out on your grand adventure! Fair warning, this game is exponentially more difficult at the beginning than at the end. When you start out, some of your backliners may have as little as 9 HP. So, if you get ambushed and one of your backliners is hit, it's almost a guaranteed KO. You have two chances to resurrect a character with spells or in a town. If the first fails, you have to try again. If the second fails...permadeath. However, aside from the very last few floors of the very last dungeon, monsters are actually the least dangerous things in a dungeon. The real dangers are traps. In the early game, electrified walls (which the game loves to run you into with tiles that spin your character in random directions), electric traps, and treasure chests are more likely to kill your party than anything. Due to your low HP at low levels, electric traps can easily wipe your party in one or two hits. You can cast a spell to float to avoid the electric traps on the floor, but there are tiles that dispel spells and tiles that are "deep," like bodies of water or lava. This game LOVES to combine those two traps, and if your characters don't float (Celestians, Fairies, and Gnomes) and if you don't have the shoes with absolute garbage stats that allow non-floating classes to cross those deep tiles on EACH of your non-floating characters, it's instadeath. Oh, chests are almost always booby trapped, and do everything from cut your MP and HP, to fully paralyzing or petrifying your party, which counts as a wipe. This includes chests dropped after battles. They're booby trapped too. However, certain classes can identify and disarm the traps on chests. I'm completely fine with all of the information above. That's all stuff that comes with the genre, none of those systems are buggy, and the game is reasonably fair about all of those mechanics. If the game was competently executed and just had the above mechanics, I would have had a lot more fun with it. So let's get to why I didn't have as much fun with it as I'd hoped: Battles—In a dungeon crawler, a significant chunk of your time is spent battling. This isn't a surprise. Therefore, combat should be exciting, challenging, or at least somewhat unique depending on which monsters you encounter. In Class of Heroes 2G, it's not. You get nothing special for dispatching monsters in various ways, such as using magic or the various attack types on weapons, like piercing or slashing. The major thing that makes some monsters harder than others is whether they're resistant to physical attacks. If they aren't, hold X to auto select attack/defend and watch as your characters destroy everything. If they are, hold X to auto select attack for your melee characters, select a spell for your magic users, and then hold X to auto the rest of the battle. That's all there is to it, even for bosses. If you need extra insurance, you can use a team attack once or twice on a boss to decimate them that way. The monsters themselves have a similar visual style to original Yu-Gi-Oh monsters, albeit slightly worse ones. Crafting—Nothing like a poor crafting system to drag a game down. You can buy some equipment from towns and schools, but they're limited. You have to make a majority of the equipment you'll end up using from monster drops and broken weapons/armor obtained as battle rewards or from chests. That's fine. However, to craft weapons, you also have to have the recipe, which are only sold by schools. Every school sells different recipes, so you'll get drops and materials for stuff that just fills up your inventory (unless you store stuff at the schools). But let's say you've got the materials AND the recipe. You have to navigate to the broken material in your inventory to see what it makes (because the names aren't always self-explanatory), then navigate to the recipe in one crafting menu, and finally craft the item in another menu. CoH2g also won't tell you what you can make; you have to scour your inventory for the items and then add the right materials and quantities in the other menu. Short some materials? You have to back out of that menu, go to the school shop, buy what you're missing, then go back to the lab to craft. Why it doesn't just give you a list of craftable recipes with what you have in your inventory or the ability to buy missing materials from the shop in the same town from the same screen boggles my mind, but easily 25% of your playtime will be eaten up by item management and this bad set of interfaces alone. Bloated class and race systems—Initially, 10 races and 19 classes sounds impressive, but when only some of those races have special skills like floating and many classes are nearly identical to others, the real number of useful races and classes is much smaller. Dungeons—Probably a minor gripe comparatively, but some dungeons look identical to others throughout the game. Worse, dungeons are pretty straightforward compared to the other dungeon crawlers that I've played. They are full of traps, but I never found them to be particularly well-thought-out. They seem to be placed sporadically throughout the maps to surprise you, densely placed in small areas of inconsequential value to annoy, or, most occasionally, placed in a way that actually hinders progress, but never in a clever way. The anti-magic/deep square combo is about as clever as they get. There are only a few secret doors in the game. It's less about exploration and puzzle solving and more about just getting through the dungeons to make progress. Time-wasting systems and backtracking—In addition to the poorly implemented crafting system, CoH2G is chock-full of other time-wasting systems. You get no warps to towns you have discovered, meaning you always have to start out from the same school you start the game at. You have to teleport through each dungeon and navigate the menus in each town to exit the town to get to where you need to go. Say you want to get to the tower at the top left of this map: Whelp, each line is at least one dungeon with multiple floors and each green circle is a town. That means you could be teleporting through seven dungeons every time you need to get to a new quest (Addendum: I see a dragon in the image above, which might be a way to warp to specific locales. However, I never unlocked it, and the game never gave me any indication it was a thing; the screenshot above is from Class of Heroes 2 on the PSP). CoH2G also has three separate quest boards (one in each school) and it likes drip-feeding quests to you, meaning more teleporting. Finally, quests are usually worded like "go to dungeon to find a thing/fight a monster." The actual location in the dungeon is not marked on your map. Some quests open new dungeons, but a majority have you hunting through already-explored dungeons, teleporting around, hoping the spot the small yellow question mark. That is, unless you look up the locations of the question marks on the internet... Bad translation and UI—CoH2G has far, FAR too many menus that prop up bad or poorly thought-out mechanics. Some classes learn magic that can identify a trap on a chest. Other classes learn skills to disarm chest traps, which I JUST LEARNED AS I WAS WRITING THIS REVIEW!!! I had the identification magic long before I actually knew how to use it. When you examine a chest, you're given six options in Class of Heroes 2: Examine, Show Trap, Unlock, Disarm Trap, Open, and Leave. For whatever reason, in Class of Heroes 2G, "Show Trap" is "Satchel," which makes no sense. Why would I access magic through Satchel? Also, when you access the map from a town, you get the map above, which only tells you the name of the marked points (towns, schools, or bases). However, when you depart from one of those marked points, you're given the names of the dungeons that are between locations you can access from the marked point. Some marked points give you three or four options to choose from, and remembering which dungeon connects which green dots was irritating. Story pacing and translation (again)—I honestly don't expect a story from dungeon crawlers, much less a good one. However, if you're going to include one, for the love of all that is holy, don't make so bad it actually detracts from the game! Until late game, all of your quests are school activities or assignments masquerading as quests. Honestly, this isn't a bad plot. What kills it is the translation, and maybe also the original script. In all the other Gaijinworks/Working Designs games I've played, they've really excelled in taking the source material and crafting witty dialogue, making memorable characters, and preserving the underlying story throughout the game. But this time, not so much. The wittiness they go for falls flat, and no single character stands out from the others or above the high water line of staunchly mediocre. Script-wise, each time you accept or turn in a quest, you're treated to one or more short dialogue sequences that honestly don't add much to the game. Since 70% of the quests have to do with the bog-standard school plot, only 10% of the quests cover the major plot points in the above spoiler, making them very, very disjointed and rushed. Lots of situations where major character growth occurs or motiviations are spoken are only given a single sentence. The remaining 20% of the quests are only available in the postgame, and I wasn't about to stick around and find out what they were about. (Note: All percentages were pulled from the quest completion status, so they're not guesstimations.) Overall, Class of Heroes 2G doesn't contain any noteworthy mechanics and can't stop getting in its own way. It's different enough from the first (according to the internet) that it might be worth playing the first, but this is also (according to the internet) the vastly superior entry in the series. Both games were developed by Zerodiv. The game ended up taking me about 55 hours to beat, and I think it would have been more compelling if they cut the fat and got it down to 30-40. I find CoH2G hard to recommend in this day and age unless you've played every other great, decent, or OK dungeon crawler out there, and I wouldn't recommend the upcoming Class of Heroes 1 & 2: Complete Edition unless they do some serious revamping of both games. I give it a 5/10 on Reed's scale.

It must be that time of year. I started playing Class of Heroes 2G because the Class of Heroes 1 and 2 Complete Edition is coming out soon. Mistake. I'm 50 hours in and it just pulled some major plot BS that significantly extended the story campaign. I thought I would put a bow on it over the weekend, but nope. It's soooooooooooooooooooooo blaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand. It's taking all of my willpower to sit down and turn on the PS3 instead of playing something more fun.

I'm not the biggest RPG guy, especially early, pre-PS1 ones. I've started multiple versions of FF, but I never got through any of them. I gave it a 7/10. If I don't feel like finishing an RPG for whatever reason, it's hard for me to give it anything higher than that.

Last year I successfully focused on beating a specific monetary amount of games and games in high-profile, popular franchises that I'd never beaten before. However, over the last two years, it's become abondantly clear that I've neglected certain consoles. To alleviate that issue, my goals this year are to: Beat 75 games. (31 of 75) Beat (29 of 50) games combined on the following consoles, and at least one game on each console: 32X—0 Dreamcast—0 Gamecube—4 Mega Drive—0 PS1—12 PS2—5 PSP—1 PS Vita—1 Sega CD—0 Wii—5 Wii U—1 Xbox—0 Reduce the backlog by beating more games than I buy this year. (Bought 9 so far) Games I beat in 2022 or 2023 will not count towards this year's totals. Progress: Advanced V.G. (PS1) The Last Blade (Bakumatsu Rouman: Gekka no Kenshi) (PS1) Saber Marionette J: Battle Sabers (PS1) Tatsunoko Fight (PS1) Dead or Alive (PS1) Tekken 3 (PS1) Street Fighter Alpha 2 (PS1) Dynasty Warriors (PS1) Asuka 120% Final Burning Fest (PS1) Klonoa: Door to Phantomile (PS1) Gundam Battle Assault (PS1) Gundam Battle Assault 2 (PS1) Castlevania Judgment (Wii) Mario & Sonic at the Olympic Games (Wii) Mario Kart Wii (Wii) Mario Sports Mix (Wii) Granblue Fantasy: Relink (PS4) Ocean Commander (Wii) Mario Tennis Ultra Smash (Wii U) Mario Tennis Aces (Switch) Arcana Heart (PS2) King of Fighters Maximum Impact (PS2) King of Fighters 2006 (PS2) King of Fighters XI (PS2) Street Fighter EX3 (PS2) Guilty Gear Judgment (PSP) Super Monkey Ball Banana Splitz (PS Vita) Super Smash Bros. Melee (Gamecube) Super Monkey Ball (Gamecube) Super Monkey Ball 2 (Gamecube) Capcom VS. SNK 2 EO (Gamecube)