#there are people that include gameplay/how they fight when considering favorite monsters.

[lokh]

howdy what monster hunter games do you play? also which is your fav monster 👀

hello! i play rise (switch) and world (pc)!!!! i only have the expansion for world tho lmao. favorite monster................ honestly i dont know if i have a favorite LMAO i think a lot of them look cool... maybe nargacuga?? sleek and cool? but the only monster i can think of that made me go Oh Shit!! Nice when i saw it for the first time is banbaro (but that could also be because i didnt realise they made monsters like that agfdsfbgd)

also im at the stage where i need to play with other people but dont know any people (safi'jiiva) and dont know the etiquette of public servers if anyone ever wants to help out Hit Me Up

[superthatguy62]

top 5 ffs?

Oh, hello.

Just as a warning, I have yet to go through the post 5 FF games to a significant degree, so I'll be including some spinoffs:

5: Final Fantasy Explorers

I haven't played... well, any Monster Hunter-type games, so FFE was my first taste of it, and you know what? I enjoyed it. I played it on single-player, so it was essentially "Beastmaster: The Game" and the bosses were still fun enough. Also it probably has one of my top 5 favorite Big Bridge remixes and some of the music (particularly the general boss theme and Odin's theme) are highlights for me.

4: Final Fantasy Tactics

It clears the 'higher-than-you'd-expect' hurdle of me being able to actually play a decent amount of a strategy game and is generally fun to boot. I got up to Chapter 3 before the random encounters started kicking my ass enough to discourage me from continuing (though the fights towards the end of chapter 2 really tested my patience), though said encounters didn't help by me playing the PSP version with its magic/animation slowdown. By all accounts, I should probably go for the GBA/DS games since those lack permadeath (albeit with a very different tone plotwise), but I still intend to try out the PS1 version of the first game and hopefully not grind myself into a corner.

3: Final Fantasy 2

Yes, this. FF2's 'quirky' and 'complicated', but I dig the story, the gameplay once your characters actually get built up and just general setting. It's also to read the supplementry material and other notes on what could have been: It really shows that the devs were putting some thought into the story and its a shame how some elements didn't translate properly. It's the type of game where it gets better the more you know of how it works. That said the dungeon design alone holds this back fiercely, especially in the PSP's Arcane Labyrinth (Darkness floor, my beloathed). Speaking of which, the bonus content for this game is probably some of the better such content of these re-releases.

2: Final Fantasy 3

Wow, what a surprise.

FF3 is basically the video game equivalent of "it could be that deep" in my eyes. Because you don't have any of those fancy "Materias", "GFs", Magicites" or even abilities to carry over like in FFV and FFT, you need to team build your way through whatever the game throws at you. Again, FF3 is one of those games that gets better when you have more an idea of what to expect: Getting thrown into a mini-dungeon early on is annoying, but its less so when you have mages prepared ahead of time to either magic their way through or play "pass the Fire Rod that the devs conveniently added". The world isn't fully developed, but the nuggets you can find are interesting, especially the whole duality concept and the existence of the World of Darkness.

But this is also the same guy who has spent however many years obsessing over this game, so you know. Feel free to add some salt to this opinion.

As for why this isn't higher, it's because my image of this game has been ruined by my obsession, and there I feel there is no "definitive" version. All three versions are playable (yes, even the remake) and enjoyable (yes, even the remake), but all have enough pros and cons that I can't fully say one is better than the others. It's the kind of game that feels like it has yet to reach its full potential and I unfortunately don't think there are many people, at least in the west, who would care even if it did. 3's always been the overshadowed game. After all, FF5 is right there. And, oh hey, speaking of...

1: Final Fantasy 5:

Not quite a basic answer, but still a not-uncommon one, I feel. I was very late to the FF5 party, only playing it when the PR came out and not even experiencing it through osmosis like I did with FF6, and while my obsession with 3 means that it will never overcome that bias, I can easily see why people consider it to be the gameplay peak of the Nintendo-era, if not 6. It builds on what 1 and 3 started and the job combos can be fun to play with. That said, I'll admit that part of my ranking it so high is a particularly impressive mod known as "Custom Classes", which allows you to swap out basically all of the commands, meaning that you can carry over more than one skill between jobs. I haven't finished a full playthrough of CC yet, but between that and the reasons I gave for FF3, I'll be willing to give the edge to 5 over it.

Also, 5 gave us Gilgamesh and ExDeath (and indirectly eScape, and therefore The Twinning).

Honorable Mentions:

Dissidia (012): I don't know how to feel about this game. Settingwise: I love the ways it expands the FF1 mythos, but I hate how WoL is a manikin and what that implies for the rest of the FF1 party. It gave me my favorite portrayal of Garland, but it also gave me Onion Knight, whom I resent for sidelining Luneth's party in later crossovers. Even gameplaywise, I like the general gameplay, at least on paper, but I think I get far frustrated with it more than I would with a normal fighting game. Yet, I keep playing or get the urge to keep playing. Maybe it deserves to be on the list? Maybe it doesn't?

Final Fantasy VIII: I haven't gotten far in FFVIII (I finished the Dollet mission) but what I've played so far feels promising as far as my first PS1-era FF goes (some perfectionism on my part aside). Junctioning is an 'interesting' mechanic, but I think I like it. I need to get the hang of Triple Triad, but I can understand how people get hooked on it.

Final Fantasy Dimensions: Albeit with the mother of all asterisks: This is here mostly for the 'idea' than the execution right now. Like the other FFT games, I do have it ready for play, I just haven't gotten around to it, because when I play games on my phone, it's usually the gatchas that I'm stockholm syndrome'd to playing right now and it's rare for me to not be playing at least 2 at a time. At some point I do want to get around to actually playing it, but until it gets like a steam release or something, it'll be one of those "get to it eventually" type games.

Final Fantasy: Admittedly, it has been ages since I played through FF1 (relatively speaking) compared to every other game on this list aside from FFE, so I don't know how much mention it merits. But I'll put it here anyway.

[jessjustplay]

Chrono Trigger Review

February 4, 2023

According to many gamer tweets, Instagram posts, and blog posts that I've seen online, Chrono Trigger is considered one of the best JRPGs ever made.

As someone who loves the Final Fantasy series, but never played Chrono Trigger, I was intrigued. The title seemed like a classic JRPG that all gamers *needed* to play at least once in their life.

So finally, in 2022, I bought the Windows PC version of the game on Steam. I was immediately impressed!

Story

Chrono Trigger begins with our main character, Crono, a kind-hearted, quiet boy, attending a festival in town. He meets Marle, an energetic and friendly girl, who accompanies him as he explores the festival.

They decide to watch Lucca (Crono's very smart and scrappy childhood friend) present her latest invention. Marle participates in Lucca's showcase, but something goes wrong with the invention and Marle is unexpectedly teleported away.

Crono and Lucca follow along and find themselves teleported to the past. As they explore this new world, they meet new people, hear stories, and uncover the dangers that the future will face.

With time-traveling capabilities, Crono, Marle, Lucca, and their new friends embark on a mission to save the world from the destructive monster, Lavos. And so begins a great quest through past, present, and future!

Gameplay

I played the definitive version of Chrono Trigger on PC and had an enjoyable experience. There weren't any excessively long wait times, everything ran smoothly and fast.

The battle system is an active turn-based system with 3 party members. There are moments in the game where you must include specific characters in your party, but besides these mandatory moments, you are able to freely swap characters in and out.

There aren't any random encounters in the traditional sense of the word. The enemies in Chrono Trigger are fixed to specific locations that you can on-screen. (Sometimes they are hidden and jump out at you, though.) If you exit a room and enter it again, the same enemies will respawn there. It's a great way to level up if you find enemies that give a lot of post-battle points.

Speaking of points, your characters earn EXP points to level up and Tech Points that go towards learning new Technique abilities. I loved that ALL of my characters, active and non-active, earned EXP and TP from battles. It was nice to switch between party members and not worry about one of them being under-leveled.

Multiple Endings

Something to quickly touch on, this game has 13 different endings. (This scared me at first, because I didn't want to get a bad ending.) The ending you get depends on when & how you choose to fight the final boss, who you have in your party, and what parts of the story you were able to experience.

Having multiple endings is a very unique set-up and makes for great replayability. However, I finished this game once and I got the "Beyond Time" ending (which I'm assuming is the standard ending?) and I would replay this game even if I got the same ending again! All that to say, with or without multiple endings, this game is very much replayable!

Music

Composers: Yasunori Mitsuda and Nobuo Uematsu

The music in Chrono Trigger is amazing! The battle theme is one of the best battle songs I have ever heard. You will get in a lot of battles and NOT ONCE did the battle theme become annoying. Some of my other favorites include Memories of Green, Wind Scene, and Frog's Theme. All of the music gives each location a unique vibe. There were also sound effects throughout that enhanced the gaming experience. For example, the sound of buttons on machines being pressed, seals breaking, and even the sound of wind were all nice touches.

Graphics

Chrono Trigger is a pixel art video game which is an art style I love. While playing the definitive version on PC, I enabled the high resolution graphics. They offer a softening effect, smoothing the sharp corners of pixels without actually losing the pixelated art.

Character emotions and movements are cleverly expressed. When Marle shouts, when Frog jumps with shock, or when Lucca celebrates a win are all examples of this game delivering emotion through pixelated art.

Chrono Trigger also includes anime cutscenes that further enhance the story, giving the characters MORE facial expressions and movement possibilities. Both art forms worked well together!

Overall

I am so glad I was able to experience this perfect masterpiece. Calling a game "perfect" is extreme, but in this case, I think Chrono Trigger is fully capable of carrying this accolade.

The story is easy to follow and the time-traveling theme is executed well, with easy-to-understand rules. Game objectives are straightforward, making Chrono Trigger fun to play and easy to pick up.

Although the story's ultimate perils are dark and sinister, the game was able to incorporate comedy throughout the story (thanks to their amazing cast of characters!) to lighten the mood. I'm very impressed with everything I saw in Chrono Trigger and I highly recommend everyone play this classic JRPG!

@jessjustplay

[whythehellnaut]

The secret brilliance behind Nickelodeon All Star Brawl‘s marketing

Lately I’ve been thinking a lot about the Nickelodeon fighting game after it was announced, progressing from mild interest to ironic excitement to unironic excitement for it.  So many jokes and memes have been made about it that they’re almost impossible to avoid.  But when I thought about it, I realized that that’s exactly what the marketing team for this game wanted.  The idea of the game is so absurd that no one would expect it to exist, but they figured out a way to make absolutely sure that it would create just the right buzz to get people like me to take serious interest in it.

Watching the trailer again, I figured out that every character they picked to showcase in that minute and a half trailer were carefully and strategically chosen to cater to as many people as they could.  Even the order of their appearance had deliberation behind it.  Here are my thoughts:

Michelangelo comes first, establishing that the game is combat focused.  After all, who better to show off first for a fighting game than a character that has already appeared as a playable character in at least two of them?  Plus, the Ninja Turtles are the oldest characters in Nickelodeon’s library when you consider that they first aired in the 80′s, before Nickelodeon even started making cartoons.  This is a character that everyone recognizes, parents included.

Lincoln Loud comes next, a more modern character that adults might not know but kids will.  This is to quickly lure the kids, who have less patience than adults, into watching the rest of the trailer, assuring them that it won’t just be older characters like the turtles that show up.

Powdered Toast Man comes next to snatch up the other side of the equation, the adults/90′s kids who remember him from the original Ren and Stimpy show from 1991.  I’m not sure if it’s still airing as reruns on Nick today, but considering I hear very little about the show online, I’m guessing not.  This is a bit of a surprise to the adults who thought it’d be a kids’ game, so it lures those folks into staying for the rest of the trailer as well.

Sandy is important to show off early for a number of reasons.  Spongebob is popular among kids and Millenials, and is arguably the only property here as well known as Ninja Turtles, so they’re luring in more fans.  It also serves to imply that other Spongebob characters will join, as, even though Sandy’s passion for karate makes total sense for her to appear in a fighting game, you still can’t leave out Spongebob himself.  Showing her first implies more possibilities of characters to come, proving it won’t just be a festival of protagonists like Jump Force was.  It also shows off their female representation to keep women interested.

Patrick is just a fan favorite to get out of the way before the sponge shows up, so he’s only here to confirm that the game is going to be full of characters that people actually want to see.

Oblina was personally a shocker to me, as I barely remember Ahh Real Monsters from my own childhood, but I remember enough to know that she wasn’t the protagonist, necessarily.  I also know it’s relatively obscure in comparison to Spongebob or Ren and Stimpy, so they proved that they are willing to take characters from more obscure shows that the young kids won’t remember.  This solidified my interest as I could tell that they are doing more to cater to the 90s generation than just confirming Powdered Toast Man.

Nigel Thornberry is arguably their most important addition at the halfway point.  Outside of Spongebob characters and maybe Stu Pickles, I would say Nigel is the internet’s favorite Nickelodeon character to use for memes.  The marketing team had to have known this.  After getting some of the core audiences hooked, they now have the memer crowd invested, ready to spread the word about the insanity of this game’s premise across the internet.  This is exactly what happened, and why the trailer has 2 million views on Youtube right now.

Lucy Loud is shown off quickly to remind the younger crowd to keep watching, and to add a little bit more female representation.

Spongebob is shown off a little bit late, but since we were expecting him to show up, it’s just to make sure the casual fans who only know the big names stay watching.

Helga is an older character, but I recently saw a young kid wearing a Hey Arnold tee shirt at the supermarket, so I’m positive it’s being shown as reruns on Nick today, so most Nick fans of all ages will be excited about her.  Moreover, since she came immediately after Spongebob, who is a protagonist that was introduced after Sandy, a side character from his show, it gives an implication that Arnold will also appear.  Although he is not introduced in this trailer, it allows the fans to speculate that he will soon be showcased, perhaps in the next trailer.  Also, she’s the fourth female character shown, confirming that the game is being fair and inclusive to both sexes and not simply catering to male gamers, like say, Jump Force or Dragonball Fighter Z.

Reptar is another shocker, because although Rugrats is very popular and well known throughout the generations, he is a very, very minor character in the show.  He is literally a fictional character within a separate fictional universe.  The marketing team threw him in to show off that just about any character from any Nick property, no matter how minor or obscure, has a chance of making it into this game.  Again, this forces the fans to speculate about future announcements with even more creative thinking, as we now know that it won’t just be major characters joining the fray.

Zim is a well thought out choice because he caters to a specific crowd that I’d describe as the alternative niche.  That is to say, there are people who are fans of Invader Zim who don’t watch other Nick shows, so they are luring in the folks you’d expect to see at Hot Topic and the like.  It was an edgy show with a feel and fanbase unlike other shows of its era, so it’s important to use him to diversify the roster.  They also showed off Gir as his assist, and although that may deconfirm him as playable, it still pleases the fans, who often prefer Gir over Zim.

Danny Phantom is the only character that comes strictly from the 2000s era, so they are making sure to maintain the attention of the teenagers who watched that show as kids.

Leonardo seems like an odd choice to end on, maybe even anticlimactic, since they started with Michelangelo, but it makes sense when you think about it.  They couldn’t show just 1 turtle, or else it might imply that the game’s roster was small.  But if they showed all 4 turtles, they would have needed to leave two other characters out of the trailer to make room for them, and they didn’t want to make it look like a Turtles fighting game with guest characters.  So having exactly 2 turtles allows them to show off enough characters from other properties, while also confirming unofficially that the other turtles would appear later, since you can’t just have 2 of the 4 turtles in the game.  By leaving it open like that, they’re giving an implication that the roster is going to be huge.  So big that the turtles were just a small portion of it.  They end the trailer this way to leave the crowd speculating again: how many characters will appear in total?

The only characters that curiously don’t show up in the trailer are the cast of the Avatar franchise, who are quite popular.  However, one of the stages shown is clearly the Air Temple with Aang’s glider in plain sight, implying that Avatar characters will be announced later.  Another smart move to instill hope in the fans.

Finally, the Rollback Netcode announcement that came afterward solidified a very important group- the serious/competitive gamers.  For those who don’t know, rollback netcode is relatively new technology that speeds up online gameplay to cut down on input lag, which is super important for fighting games in particular, as they rely on strict timing more than other game genres.  It’s so new, however, that not all competitive fighting games use it.  Popular tournament fighters like Super Smash Bros, Tekken, and Dragonball Fighter Z have not implemented rollback netcode for their games yet, so of all games, Nickelodeon All Star Brawl beating them to the punch is causing a stir.  This is a sign that the devs are putting serious effort into making the game enjoyable online, which could potentially help its chances to be taken seriously in competitive settings.  Only time will tell if that truly happens, but it’s a sign of quality, nonetheless.

So ultimately, this short trailer and announcement manage to cater to dang near every crowd that may want to play it: Kids, teenagers, young adults in their 20s and 30s, parents in their 40s, men, women, memers, casual fans, alternative fans, and serious gamers, and opens up a ton of potential for speculation regarding new announcements.  That’s a fantastic way to start off and explains why this game, which for all intents and purposes should have been nothing more than a thought experiment that people joke about in the car with friends, has been trending so much for the past two weeks.  Congrats to the marketing team for what they put together.

[zaph1337]

Monster Hunter Rating 21: Khezu, the Blank Stare

When I reviewed Basarios, I made a joke about how the devs likely gave it human teeth over sharp teeth because the latter might not give children nightmares, but I don’t actually think that the devs ever intended Basarios to be more terrifying than any other monster in the game. This monster, however, is literally the stuff of nightmares, and I’m not misusing “literally” here. This may be the longest review I’ve written yet, so buckle up. Time to get spooky with Khezu!

(How it appears in Monster Hunter 1)

(How it appears in Monster Hunter Rise)

Appearance: I think there’s been a mistake here; last I checked, Capcom wasn’t making Silent Hill games. Seriously, this thing would fit right into that series, and not just ‘cause its phallic neck lends itself well to metaphors. The pale, veiny skin, the leech-like mouth, the complete lack of eyes...Khezu’s unlike any other monster in the series because it’s the only monster that’s meant to be horrifying to look at. It’s got flabby, tattered wings and gecko-like feet, but its main characteristic (other than the head) is its tail, the tip of which can open up into a suction cup that allows Khezu to stick to ceilings.

Obviously, Khezu’s an abomination that came from a really dark place in someone’s mind, but that’s just it: Khezu is a monster that appeared in an MH developer’s nightmare either before or during the production of the first Monster Hunter game, and said developer (I don’t actually remember who) decided to put it in the game. I learned of this from the Twitch streams of a streamer called DuncanCan’tDie, who’s a huge MH fan that’s on great terms with Capcom. Unfortunately, I can’t find any other sources for this claim, but I don’t think he’s lying for a few reasons; firstly, like I said, he’s on great terms with Capcom. He’s friends with some people who work there, and he even has a tattoo designed by someone on the MH team he called “Kaname-san” (who didn’t actually give him the tattoo, but drew the design that a tattoo artist used) and the only person who could go by that name is Kaname Fujioka, the man who literally directed several MH games, including the first one, and who was the art director for Monster Hunter World. So yeah. Duncan and Capcom get along great, and if he was spreading false rumors, they’d probably know about it.

The second reason I believe Duncan about Khezu’s origin is that someone once came into one of his streams (and I was there at the time) and started spouting “lore” about two monsters that looked like they could be related, but actually weren’t. Duncan flat out told this person that what they were claiming wasn’t mentioned anywhere and asked for sources...which the loregiver did not provide. In fact, after Duncan started getting on their case, I don’t think they said a word for the rest of the stream. Duncan believes that this person was just making stuff up to sound like they knew a lot about MH and weren’t aware that he was an MH expert, and I doubt that someone who would call someone out on that would do the same thing, especially if he had a reputation to uphold.

I apologize if I spent a lot of time talking about that, but I didn’t want people getting on my case because they couldn’t find anything to support my claims. But in conclusion, I believe that Khezu truly was born of a nightmare, and that’s awesome. It makes the Silent Hill comparison even more fitting since the enemies in those games are basically projections of the protagonists’ psyches. Disturbing enemies are much more effective if they scare(d) the people who created them, and Khezu is certainly disturbing. Because of that, as well as its ominous origin, I’m giving it a 9/10.

Behavior: Khezu mostly inhabit caves, jungles, and swamps due to the need for their skin to be moisturized, though they usually only leave caves to hunt, which they don’t have to do very often due to the plentiful fat beneath their skin, which also keeps them warm. Their favorite hunting strategy is to ambush their prey from a location usually concealed by darkness, which is made easier by their extendable necks. However, their reliance on darkness, as well as their preference to dwell in caves, has made them completely blind and reliant on their other senses; despite not having visible nostrils or ears, Khezu have great hearing and a very good sense of smell. Back to hunting, while they need to subdue larger prey, smaller ones, like Kelbi, are slowly swallowed whole...which is apparently something you can actually witness in the games, according to TV Tropes (I normally stick to the wiki and what I already know for resources, but I went to the “Monster Hunter / Nightmare Fuel” page while searching for another source for Khezu’s origin as a nightmare). As if this thing needed to be more disturbing, it doesn’t always kill its prey before it tries to swallow it, so the Kelbi you can see it eat is constantly struggling as the Khezu swallows it bottom-first. That’s...that’s messed up. But it gets worse.

Practically every monster in this series isn’t any more intelligent than what we consider a normal animal to be. Aside from Lynians, which are people, the smartest monster I’ve talked about is the Velociprey, which might not be as smart as, say, an irl crow, which is very intelligent by the standards of nonhuman animals. What I’m getting at here is that most of the monsters in this series don’t really take any sadistic pleasure in killing and eating prey; they just do it to survive. But Khezu is different. In several MH games, including Rise, the first time you go on a quest to kill a specific monster, the gameplay is preceded by a cutscene that shows off how powerful or intimidating that monster is (and in Rise’s case, you also get a poem). Here’s Khezu’s intro, and I want you to pay attention to what Khezu does from 0:24-0:30:

That’s right: this thing “looked” right at the monster it was going to eat, and smiled. That isn’t just me anthropomorphizing it, either; I’ve seen what Khezu looks like outside of that cutscene, and even with its mouth closed it has a neutral expression, so it smiling actually means something, and considering the context, it’s obvious what the devs wanted us to take from it: Khezu likes killing. It enjoyed the prospect of swallowing that monster whole while it was still alive and struggling, which means that this is the first monster I’ve talked about that we can definitively say is evil rather than just an animal. Rather fitting for a living nightmare, I would say. And if you thought all that was disturbing, I have some...unfortunate news. I hope you aren’t eating anything right now, ‘cause this next part is just gross.

Y’know how some wasps lay their eggs inside other bugs so the eggs have incubation they can eat when they hatch? Well, uh...Khezu do that, too. And they’re hermaphrodites that, from what I can gather, don’t need to mate, so any adult Khezu is capable of injecting another monster with its “whelps” (not saying that Khezu are always “pregnant,” just saying that any of them can be). And you know the really crazy part? After everything I said about Khezu, there are still people in the MH world that tame them and keep them as pets. Why would you want to have a slimy, flabby, sadistic, parasitoid, 14-to-40-foot abomination as a pet!? God, people are so freaking weird.

EDIT (05/07/2021): My older brother reminded me that I forgot about one of the odder aspects of Khezu; when you enter a fight with a Main Monster, its battle theme plays (don’t know if every monster has a unique theme, but several do, to my knowledge), but Khezu has no theme to speak of. I don’t know if this is true in every game, or even if it was intentional at first, but it’s still both funny and eerie at the same time. There’s no background music until you get in a fight, so if you somehow tick off a Khezu without seeing it, then it can sneak up on you. “But Zaph, the moment a monster enters ‘fight mode,’ it roars! So the Khezu will give away its position!” See, you’d be right about that if it wasn’t for the fact that, according to TV Tropes at least, Khezu’s roar sounds just like wind--howling wind, yes, but wind all the same. I don’t know if there’s any howling wind SFX in the areas where Khezu live, so for all I know you’ll still be able to identify it in a hurry, but just imagine what that’s like in-universe! Imagine that you’re walking around in the Frost Islands or something and hear a chilling wind from out of nowhere. Unless you’re an experienced hunter, you’d likely have no idea if that was a Khezu or not, so you wouldn’t know if it’s too late to run or not, or even if you should run at all. Going back out of universe, the details I just described are very nice touches to a monster that was already horrifying in behavior, so I’m bumping the score here up from the 7 I initially gave it to 8/10.

Abilities: All of the “Flying Wyverns” I’ve talked about so far have had a lot of trouble with the whole “flying” part, and Khezu are no exception; they’re better at it than Diablos and Gravios, but they still need to flap really frantically to stay in the air. They’re great at jumping, though, and their gecko-like feet allow them to scale walls and stick to ceilings, something that their tails also allow them to do. Khezu are Thunder-element monsters capable of discharging electricity in a manner of ways, including shooting balls of it from their mouths and emitting it all around their bodies. Since Khezu like to spend time around water, their attacks are even more dangerous, as everything near them will likely be wet and therefore more conductive. This also applies to Khezu themselves, which may be why they stick their tails onto the ground before discharging electricity; they ground themselves so that they don’t shock themselves. Finally, Khezu saliva is very dangerous; we don’t know if it’s electric or acidic, but anything that gives off smoke when it touches something probably isn’t good for your health, which is why owning a pet Khezu is so dangerous; their drool can literally kill you. 7/10.

Equipment: Most Khezu weapons are as interesting as you’d expect them to be, considering the monster they’re made from. Most of them have a horror aesthetic, like this Great Sword called the Khezu Shock Sword:

I just noticed that the skin is actually stretched over the blade, rather than being what the blade’s attached to. Gross, but I never expected Khezu weapons to look pretty. There are also weapons which emphasize the monster’s electric aspect, like this Gunlance called the Full Voltage:

It still has Silent Hill vibes due to its “rusty hospital” aesthetic, and looking at it long enough reveals little details it inherited from Khezu. Speaking of hospitals, there are a couple of weapons based off of syringes, such as the Khezu Syringe, which is a Light Bowgun, and a Lance from MHFG that’s literally a giant hypodermic needle, but I didn’t want to show those off in case they triggered anyone with needle phobia. The last weapon I’m gonna show will be very familiar to those of us who’ve played the Rise demo a lot: the Insect Glaive known as the Bolt Chamber!

I like the green tube running from the sac between the blade and the shaft of the glaive; according to the Bolt Chamber’s in-game description, it uses that “pulsating device” to steal energy from its targets. If you mentioned that to me before I grabbed its image for this review, I probably would have asked how it did that. If you then pointed out the mouth at the glaive’s end, I would have thanked you for cursing me with the knowledge of its existence. Seriously, I’ve used this thing probably more than 20 times, and until I saw this render, I never noticed that. As for the armor, here’s the Blademaster Khezu Armor from MHGU:

The male armor here is almost identical to the one from Rise--which sadly doesn’t have any pictures on the wiki yet--and yes, it does look like the main character from Assassin’s Creed. The female armor, on the other hand, looks almost like a nurse’s outfit, especially with that metal thing on the woman’s head with the cross. The more I look at this equipment, the more I feel like they wanted people to think of Silent Hill, and if so, that’s pretty cool. I’ve got another armor set to show you; the Gunner version of the Khezu R Armor from MHGU:

Jesus, is this an armor set or a medical emergency? I can’t imagine bandages are very effective at protecting your body from physical damage, but thankfully it looks like most of them are just covering actual armor...meaning that the people who designed this stuff in-universe wanted the people wearing it to look like they were in an accident. Not sure I get why, but I’m not here to--actually, I am here to judge, so never mind; it’s gross. Also the female set has Khezu mouths as arm coverings, which is someone’s fetish, I’m sure. The equipment as a whole is macabrely interesting (TIL that macabrely is a real word) and calls to mind a fascinating horror game franchise, so 8/10.

Final Thoughts and Tally: I figured that Khezu was gonna be interesting, but I didn’t know how far the devs would take the horror theming. Everything about this monster is creepy; it looks disturbing, it acts even worse, and its equipment makes me feel like I need a tetanus shot just from looking at it. But that’s not at all a bad thing...unless you’re really squeamish, in which case you were likely cringing this whole review. I’d apologize, but you made the choice to stick through ‘till the end. 8/10.

[mooglesorts]

man. it's weird, because there's a lot of things about me that are Very Badger Primary, to the point where i would probably pick it with a strong bird model over anything else at this point... except that i hate dehumanization. i saw primaries described recently as 'things you wouldn't be you anymore if you went against,' and more than just about anything else that's it. even when i think people are monsters, i can't see them as not human; i'd be hard put to define exactly what i consider a 'monster,' but it's more about like. good faith than personhood, i suppose?

it's not necessarily a permanent status to be one--people can change--but my deeply held instinct is that once you have done something monstrous you will always be a person who has been a monster by your own choices, and that it's your duty to learn how to accept that while still living your life, and act accordingly from thereon out. you have to reconcile that you are a person with the fact that some doors are closed to you now, and it's up to you to decide what you do from there.

just. like. even when i hate someone and as far as i'm concerned they can go fuck themself, even in the multiple Heavily Badger social environments i've been in over the course of my life--church, progressive circles, the way the structure of the internet kind of just affects you in general--even on occasions where i've gotten swept away and given in to the pressure to dehumanize (or perform it) for a minute, there's always, always been a voice in the back of my head saying this is a person. this is a person. this is a person. this isn't right.

unintentional dehumanization sets off my '...should we really be doing this? we are getting into not good territory here, it's time to pull up and start questioning' alarms. explicit, intentional, purposeful dehumanization sets off the whole ass tornado sirens. if people on my side are doing it it's enough to throw me into a system-destabilizing crisis, because NO NO NO I WANT TO GET OFF THIS RIDE, I WANT NO PART OF THESE PEOPLE'S MORAL SYSTEM, I FEEL UNCLEAN. it's a good way to make sure i will never, ever, ever trust someone again.

things that are Really Really Badger, off the top of my head (after the cut because Long and trauma talk):

[[MORE]]

---

-i've always loved playing adoptable games, pet simulators, etc? any game with randomly generated characters that are Yours Now and a Community, in a deeply badgery way. including games where they can die (the satisfying part is making sure they don't). except that, no matter how much fun the gameplay is, if it gets to the point where they start feeling disposable, and the only way to really keep playing is to stop humanizing them, i lose interest. it's super fucking depressing. it feels like part of me dying inside a little. i don't like it at all.

-i've always been drawn to fandoms and roleplaying communities. i was fiercely loyal to, and proud of, my first rp community on dragoncave as a 13-year-old. when my abusive mom found out about it and completely isolated me for half a year, the promise of being able to make it back to them--just sneakier this time--kept me going; when i finally got back and the group had drifted apart in my absence, it.... was absolutely devastating. i never really recovered from it. even then, i spent years trying to get the group back together every now and then, until i finally gave up.

-i am always keenly, painfully aware of the life cycle of a community. every time i hear the sentiment 'you guys are all great and i love this group' my stomach drops, because i know it's only a matter of time before things go sour or the group dissolves. rp groups, skype chats/discord servers, fandoms, you name it, i am always bracing myself or staying away entirely to avoid the inevitable and it hurts. and it hurts to see people taking part in a community i don't dare be part of, which makes lurking in fandoms... really rough. frankly, it takes me a lot of courage every time i express my appreciation for the shc community because i've been burned so many times.

-on that note: i went through some really traumatic stuff at the end of 2020 that completely turned my life upside down, and i was doing bad until i stumbled across the shc community. the moment i started engaging, it was a huge boost to my mental health, and my ability to cope with circumstances under which i was about to break down spectacularly. and it has been ever since! contributing to The Group Project and seeing other folks being friendly with each other gives me the happy feelings.

-i used to go out of my way to build and run spaces, mainly fandom and rp spaces, and took a lot of pride in engineering them so that they Functioned Well. unfortunately it wore me the hell down over the years for Burnt Badger Reasons, and now i'm too jaded, bitter, and exhausted to give a shit about being a mod/community leader anymore because of it lmao

-among those burnt badger things i relate HARD to the Red Ledger narrative. hoo boy.

-i wish i could find it again, but there was an mlp comic i saw once which went into luna's observations of what each element of harmony Means. with the element of friendship, she says that twilight has a massive amount of love to give; right now it's all focused on celestia, but when she learns to expand it outward she'll have grown into her full potential as a person, and she'll change the world. that struck a chord with how i used to feel, hard, and it's really stuck with me ever since. (hello, unhealthy snake model)

-emphasis on 'used to feel,' lmao

-got super invested in a really toxic '''mental health''' community at a low point in my life; exploded HARD trying to help everyone i could; got into vicious, protracted fights with the shitty mods for years about the harmful way they ran their community until i finally managed to go 'fuck this it's not getting better' and leave.

-had to numb myself emotionally to the people around me for a long time once i really started learning about mental health and trauma stuff, because now i was seeing signs of their pain and baggage everywhere i looked, and i couldn't handle not being able to help.

-the imagery with which i think about my bird primary is overwhelmingly negative. whether it's my actual primary or a model, i uh. i feel like a healthy relationship to one's primary doesn't involve associating it with gore.

-i saw a conversation recently about how birds think of morality in terms of 'if you can, you should,' and how that's scary for badgers because their definition of 'can' involves destroying yourself for the sake of that 'should,' and... yeah, that's a mood. that's a BIG mood. thinking about bird primary stuff is hard--and i had to pick up my lion model to deal with it--because it's so easy for me to spiral into a self-shredding spiral of other people are counting on you to do the right thing, how dare you pull back for your own health and sanity. how dare you turn your back for even a minute. how dare you rest. the work is never done.

which is... a very exploded badger approach to exploded bird morality. whoops.

-fix-it and time travel fiction in which Everything Went Right This Time and It's Going to Be Okay are one of my very favorite self-indulgent fantasies. i will enjoy putting characters through the wringer in all kinds of creatively horrific ways which may or may not end on a downer note, certainly, i love that shit, but i will also 90% of the time have a backup version of the arc or dynamic that's softer and lighter and Actually Healthy This Time. it's the dichotomy there that really gets me tbh, a story where Everything Ends Happily by default will mmmaybe pull me in? but stories where there's the constant shadow of this could end horribly, it's supposed to end horribly, and we got a happy fucking ending anyway are just... that shit will make me cry, man.

it's also why i kind of really hate stable time loop stories where it initially looks like this is going to be The Good Timeline this time around, but OOPSIE everything went to shit anyway! we're right back where we started, just like it was meant to be all along! it's a tired cliche by this point and an unsatisfying one for me, and it makes me roll my eyes every time.

-this is relevant to the bird vs. badger because like... my gut instinct is to prioritize people over systems. when shit hits the fan, when someone's fallen into the machinery and is about to get hurt, i don't feel right about it if i just let it happen. i'll break the machinery if i have to to keep it away from them; i won't feel great about that, and it might cause problems, but fuck it, we'll figure it out later. throwing people into the gears of a system when i'm convinced it's the only option makes me feel Awful.

-related to the above, another trope that really speaks to me in fiction is when a character defies the rules of reality through sheer force of will. no, this is not happening, i don't give a shit what the limits are supposed to be. i refuse to let this be the way things are. (there's that lion model.)

-i've just kind of... always wanted to be an Everyone Badger. it makes me sad how much of that i've lost over the years as i've gotten more cynical, but it's what i wish i could be.

---

doubtless i'll think of more the moment i hit send, and there are just as many things about me that are Super Bird Primary, but like... mamma mia that's some spicy badger. the main thing stopping me is the Can't and Refuse to Dehumanize bit. i also... hm. i think i can function okay without a community? they just help a lot, and it sucks when i'm confronted with one i don't have a (stable) place in. any thoughts? is it possible for a bird system's foundation to run so deep that eventually it overrides the bird?

[raeynbowboi]

How to Play as Yugi Muto in DnD 5e

A long time ago, I made a build for the Dark Magician (I’ll leave a link [here].) At the time, I’d considered trying to make a build for Yugi, but since Yugi lacks any real powers of his own, there wasn’t really enough to go off of. But with new UA spells that prioritize summoning and new UA subclasses, the time has finally come to give Yugi his proper build. For this build, we are considering Yugi and the Pharaoh to be one character. We will also be treating this build as though Yugi has the Dark Magician as his Deck Master, a special feature used in some side content and video games where the Deck Master actually assists their duelist. So Yugi’s spell list will merge two primary conditions: summoning creatures to fight on his behalf, and spell effects of cards in Yugi’s deck, including one-off cards and less famous cards he’s used to fill out his Wizard Spellbook.

Yugi is an anime character. In the past, my general rule for anime characters is to make them Variant Humans. This is primarily because Anime Characters are stronger than normal humans and often have magical powers that make them not quite human. I’ll be using the Variant Human option, however Kalashtar also works due to Yugi’s split minds and resistance to psychic mind games. Halflings aren’t my favorite race to play, but Yugi is abnormally short, and the Pharaoh is uncannily lucky, so it can definitely work for their build. As a Variant Human, we’ll pick up the Lucky feat and give ourselves +1 INT and +1 DEX.

The Pharaoh is willing to kill Kaiba to win a children’s card game. Yugi is not. They average out to Neutral Good.

The Pharaoh was the King of Egypt. Obvious Noble Background is obvious.

Heart of the Cards

WIZARD    Order of Scribes. This ended up being a perfect storm. Firstly, the new UA batch of summoning spells primarily landed under the Wizard umbrella. So, this gives Yugi a nice variety of summoning options. But it gets even better once you look at your subclass abilities. The Wizardly quill is about the only thing that doesn’t really fit for Yugi, but everything else will. Awakened Spellbook grants the pages Yugi summons from a level of sentience. In Yugioh the cards house duel monster spirits, and Yugi’s grandfather taught him to value the Heart of the Cards, the very idea that Yugi’s deck is a sentient thing. This subclass technically talks about a bound book, but Yugi’s still channeling his magic and spells through his cards, so I’d consider Yugi’s deck a reflavor of his spellbook, thus he’s able to use it as his spellcasting focus. Yugi’s able to alter the damage type of a spell he casts. You could flavor this as classic season 1 Yugioh where nobody played by the rules, or as Yugi pulling a card out of his deck that he’ll never use in any other duel, which tended to be a common deus ex machina for him. Master Scrivener can allow Yugi to copy a card onto a scroll and pull it out of his butt whenever he wants. a fun cheeky way to mock his plot armor. It also casts at 1 level higher, meaning Yugi is one again breaking the rules because he’s the King of Games. Manifest Mind is where the Deck Master concept becomes more clear, as you can create a tiny spectral form of the Dark Magician fighting beside you, and really lets you fully embrace the partnership between Yugi and the Dark Magician in combat. Since this feature does specify using a tiny specral creature, Kuriboh is another good Deck Master monster for Yugi. Finally, One with the Word allows Yugi to swap places with the Dark Magician to avoid one or both of them from being killed. Yugi can also destroy some of the cards in his collection to bring him back to life if Dark Magician is on the field and his spellbook has the resources. This also motivates Yugi to want to collect as many cards/spells as he can, even if he doesn’t prepare them all or use them in his deck. If you really want to play up the roleplay aspect of this build and commit to the gimmick of playing as Yami, you could write spells on sheets of paper and treat them like an actual deck of cards. It’s really just for roleplaying purposes, and could make the game needlessly challenging, but it could also be a fun challenge to hope you draw the spell you need right when you need it. This could be as vague as just having a card that says “3rd level spell”, or as specific as having say as many copies of a specific spell as you have spell slots to cast it. As it’s just flavoring and roleplaying mostly, come up with your own fun ways to incorporate the deck aspect into a mechanic for gameplay and tell me your ideas. I’ll bet there’s many fun ways to make this character work in an inetersting way. 

King of Games

SUMMONING

Find Familiar Flock of Familiars Spirit Shroud Summon Fey Spirit Summon Lesser Demons Summon Shadow Spirit Summon Undead Spirit Conjure Minor Elemental Summon Aberrant Spirit Summon Elemental Spirit Summon Greater Demon Conjure Elemental Infernal Calling Summon Fiendish Spirit

SPELLS & TRAPS

Brain Control // Dominate Person, Dominate Monster, Enemies Abound Change of Heart // Charm Person, Charm Monster Lightforce Sword // Banishment, Plane Shift Magic Jammer // Antimagic Field Burning Land // Blight, Abi’s Horrid Wilting Magical Hats // Blur, Mirror Image Raigeki // Lightning Bolt, Chain Lightning Trap Hole // Circle of Death Magic Cylinder // Counterspell De-Spell // Dispel Magic Heavy Storm // Whirlwind Spellbinding Circle // Hold Person, Hold Monster Swords of Revealing Light // Imprisonment Thousand Knives // Power Word Kill Mirror Force // Prismatic Wall, Wall of Force, Wall of Light The Eye of Truth // True Seeing Yami // Darkness Makiu, the Magical Mist // Fog Cloud, Cloudkill, Stinking Cloud Cursebreaker // Remove Curse Dust Tornado // Dust Devil Premature Burial // Animate Dead, Create Undead Ragnarok // Melf’s Minute Meteors General Magic // Mage Armor, Magic Missile, Shield Setting a Trap Card // Glyph of Warding Anime Protagonist Plot Armor // Wish

As a Wizard, our most important stat is going to be Intelligence for casting. Our Manifest Mind feature gives our Dark Magician our AC, so we’ll want a high Dexterity modifier to improve our Armor Class. Yugi is pretty hard to fool, so that’ll give us a good Wisdom score. Yugi is pretty good at destiny speeches and turning enemies into allies. We’ll give him a pretty decent Charisma score so he can persuade people to adopt his philosophies, or send people running into the shadow realm with his Intimidation. Our build prioritizes amassing strong minions between us and enemies, so we can neglect our Constitution a bit. That leaves our Strength stat to be ignored. Lifting all those small thin pieces of paper doesn’t exactly get Yugi ripped.

Name: Yugi Muto  Race: Variant Human Background: Noble Alignment: Neutral Good Class: Order of Scribes Wizard (20)

Base Stats:

Strength: 8 (-1) Dexterity: 20 (+5) Constitution: 12 (+1) Intelligence: 20 (+5) Wisdom: 14 (+2) Charisma: 10 (0)

Saving Throws:

Strength: -1  Dexterity: +5 Constitution: +1 Intelligence: +11 Wisdom: +8 Charisma: 0

Combat Stats:

HP: 102 AC: 18*  Speed: 30 Initiative: +5 Proficiency Bonus: +6 Passive Perception: 14  Dark Vision: 0 feet

Proficiencies:

Acrobatics (+5) Animal Handling (+2) Arcana (+11) Athletics (-1) Deception (0) History (+11) Insight (+8) Intimidation (+6) Investigation (+5) Medicine (+2) Nature (+5) Perception (+2) Performance (0) Persuasion (+6) Religion (+5) Sleight of Hand (+5) Stealth (+5) Survival (+2)

Spell Slots

1st (4) 2nd (3) 3rd (3) 4th (3) 5th (3) 6th (2) 7th (1) 8th (1) 9th (1)

Yugi’s Deck

Cantrips    Firebolt    Frostbite    Lightning Lure    Message    Mind Sliver

1st Level    Charm Person    Find Familiar    Fog Cloud    Mage Armor    Magic Missile    Shield

2nd Level    Blur    Darkness    Dust Devil    Flock of Familiars    Hold Person    Mirror Image

3rd Level    Animate Dead    Counterspell    Dispel Magic    Enemies Abound    Glyph of Warding    Lightning Bolt    Spirit Shroud    Summon Fey Spirit    Summon Lesser Demons    Summon Shadow Spirit    Summon Undead Spirit

4th Level    Banishment    Blight    Conjure Minor Elementals    Summon Aberrant Spirit    Summon Elemental Spirit    Summon Greater Demon

5th Level    Conjure Elemental    Dominate Person    Hold Monster    Infernal Calling    True Seeing    Wall of Light

6th Level    Chain Lightning    Circle of Death    Create Undead    Summon Fiendish Spirit

7th Level    Plane Shift

8th Level    Antimagic Field    Dominate Monster

9th Level    Imprisonment    Wish

Features:

Arcane Rociety. covery. Regain 10 or less level 5 or lower spell slots on a short rest.

Awakened Spellbook. You can alter spell damage type and cast a ritual spell instantly once per long rest.

Lucky. 3 lucky points, add a d20 to rolls before you know the outcome.

Manifest Mind. Your spellbook projects a tiny spectral construct. Its HP is your INT + your Wizard Level and it uses your AC and saving throw die. It has darkvision at a range of 60 feet, sheds dim light at a range of 10 feet, and can pass through solid objects.

Master Scrivener. Copy a 1st or 2nd level spell from your spellbook onto a scroll. Use the scroll any time, and the spell is cast as being one level higher.

One With the Word. When you would die while Manifest Mind is active, purge spells from your spellbook whose level adds to 3d6. They can only be restored with a Wish, and are otherwise lost to you.

Position of Privilege. You belong in high society. People bend over backwards to accommodate you, and you can get an audience with other nobility.

Signature Spells. cast Summon Fey Spirit and Summon Undead Spirit once without using a spell slot.

Spell Mastery. Cast Mage Armor and Hold Person without spell slots.

Wizardly Quill. Less time and money copying spells into your spellbook.

A major downside to this build is that all of his summoning spells require a gold cost, but if you’re fortunate, your DM will be generous enough with the gold to support the costs of this build. Technically, this build really could work for any duelist, and there’s plenty of other yugioh cards that could translate to DnD spells, but we were focused on Yugi’s canon spell and trap cards. We’re also extremely reliant on summoning, so if Yugi can’t summon, he’s going to have a bad time, and the build won’t be so useful.

[demonfox38]

Completed - Zelda II: The Adventure of Link

Oh, my language is going to be vulgar on this one.

So, I'm a crusty millennial who likes old garbage. Most of the media I like is old enough to drink and be a member of the US congress, but probably couldn't be due to the country that produced it. Now, I'd like to think that I've got good reasons to like older media, particularly when it comes to video games. It's a bit hard for my NES to bug me for microtransactions/DLC and emanate the screams of children and man-children alike. But, as much as I like my retro junk, there's one thing I'm very, very happy about regarding modern video games. The variety of game types now-a-days is a blessing. It's rare that someone is stellar at all game types, and I sure have my weaknesses.

It took me a long time to realize that I could be good at video games, and I wholly blame the glut of 1980s platforming games on that.

Look, platforming is not a forgiving genre. Particularly, back in the day where you had characters dying in 1-3 hits before factoring in death pits. It existed then for the reason that fourteen million instakill indie horror games exist now. Instantly killing the player is a lot easier to code than, say, having to track a health bar or their new position as an enemy swats them into a different room. Sometimes, a coder's gotta do what they can to keep themselves sane.

But, from a player's perspective, this style sucks!

Getting good at a platforming game requires practicing the same levels over and over again, developing a sense of your character's inertia and limitations. Without a save state or a warp to narrow in on a particularly troublesome location, it's hard to get learning to stick. You could lose a lot of games and time trying to put it all together. And some poor little character is always suffering because of your ineptitude! Such failure feels like a fork in an electrical socket. Succeeding in these circumstances requires a great deal of emotional resilience and a contrary attitude. And you know what? That's just not something I had as a kid. In fact, one could say I had my aggression and competitive drive scolded out of me. I'm just now getting that back.

So, yeah. I had a little trouble with "Zelda II: The Adventure of Link."

"Zelda II" is part of a trifecta of NES games that get routinely shit on by retro reviewers. Like its peers "Super Mario Bros. 2" and "Castlevania II", this game is generally considered an inferior game due to an extreme change of gameplay and appearance from its predecessors. And you know what? That attitude sucks. I'd rather have a variety of different games with a cast I like than have them pigeon-holed into one genre. In "Zelda II"'s case, however? The game mechanic shift was so extreme that I can easily see the ire it raises. Hell, I felt it. I wouldn't go so far to say that it's the worst Zelda game ever, but man, does it have structural defects.

In "Zelda II", Link's goal is to save an ensorcelled Zelda from eternal slumber by picking up a Triforce chunk that was pitched into a fuck-off palace way at the edge of Hyrule. (No, not the Zelda from the first game. Another Zelda. Same Link, though.) To do that, he's got to slap six gemstones into various temples across the countryside. Naturally, that includes picking up his trusty sword, leaping into battle, and then maybe straight into a death pit.

That's right. This Zelda is actually a Mario.

Further complicating the matter is a sharp switch in battle style and item accruement. While the previous Zelda game was about room management and ranged combat (or at least, as much as that was allowed), this game is all about jamming Link's dinky sword into an enemy's face and running off as fast as he can. Now, Link can learn a few tricks to help with the slash and dash, like directional stab mechanics and spells. But, as far as getting new weapons to help you? Sorry, bud. No bombs or boomerangs here. Well, except for the assholes throwing boomerangs at you, anyway. You just can't steal them.

The game encourages polishing the player's skill with Link through a level system. After acquiring XP through good ol' fashioned monster murdering, Link can cash his points out, improving his life, magic, or attack power. As the player levels him up, stats become more costly to improve. If Link gets a total game over before you use your XP, it is wiped out. Alright, fine. Fair, I guess. But, I wouldn't recommend looking at Japanese footage of this game if you don't want to give yourself a migraine. It turns out that as a part of some rebalancing, the level-up system was stacked to try and keep players from dumping all of their points into a single stat early into the game. Particularly, attack. Considering how painful and annoying enemy logic gets in this game, it's such a drag to learn that Japanese players literally could cut their way right out of that struggle. Thanks for dicking with the game design again, American publishers.

I guess we got better looking sprites and sound effects out of the deal? Hooray for wiggly Barba.

Even with leveling mechanics and a handful of heart and magic containers, this Link feels much frailer than the original Zelda's Link. Like, it's hard to believe he's supposed to be the same guy. Even at max health and defense, you could get Link wiped out with 8-32 hits (as opposed to 16-64 hits from the first game.) Exacerbating that is a life system that can yoink those health bars at any pit's whim and Link's range/health restoration being tied to a limited pool of magic. It feels like you're playing with a ceramic replica of the original character. You can make it work in a fight, sure, but you'd rather have a sword than a shard of a broken teapot.

If you don't have a bushido-level acceptance of death, you're not going to make it very far in this game. I'm not being hyperbolic. You have to accept that you are going to kill Link. You're going to watch that little fairy boy fade to black as the world flashes around him, and you're going to see that a lot. You're going to toss his bitch ass into the river to get a game over and restock your lives because fuck if you're going to wipe out inside a dungeon and have to start your bitch ass back at Zelda's temple again. That little counter on the main menu isn't how many times you have wiped out. It's how many times you've clawed your way out of the abyss with a middle finger raised.

Oh. Minor epilepsy warning on boss and Link deaths, by the way.

Having gone full bleak there for a moment, there are a few pieces of knowledge that can help slow down the cycle of life and death:

There are towns with nice ladies in red dresses and orange robes that will heal your ass for free. You should talk with them a lot.

There are classes of enemies that will drop items after they have been killed six times. Most of the time, this is a magic bottle that restores MP. Sometimes, it's a bag of experience. No monster will drop anything to heal your HP.

Also, some enemies are literal rat bastards that steal your XP. Some also give you no XP on killing them. Yeah. I know. Annoying.

The Life spell is in Saria. The downward stab is in Mido. (I realize these are very strange sentences if you're more familiar with "Ocarina of Time.") Getting these can make a night and day difference in surviving the game. So, keep that in mind.

You do get a spell that will turn you into a fairy. You can use it to game pits and sneak past lock doors. Just don't abuse it too much. It's expensive.

The dungeons have this little statue in front of them that you can whack with your sword. In most locations, it'll drop either a magic bottle or an Iron Knuckle. Game entering and exiting a dungeon as much as possible to restore yourself to full vitality.

You can get into random fights on the overworld (represented either by a little black blob or a more threatening human-sized blob.) Staying on gold roads will mean these encounters produce no enemies.

Also, you can use those random battles to override forced platforming sections. Not that I would recommend cheating in such a fashion. 😉

The game will give you a level up after you plug a gemstone into a dungeon. If you're close to leveling up anyway, turn around and grind up to the top, cash in what you've got, and then go pitch that gem.

Link has a crouch, not a duck. You think pressing down on the D-pad will evade projectiles aimed at your face, but it does not. Crouching is only good for blocking floor-level garbage. It's best not to think of the down button as much as possible, really. Only use it to pick up crap off the ground and cheese the final boss. Otherwise, jump.

I know that I said earlier that "Zelda II" is mechanically like a Mario game, but you know what other perspective might help? Try and play Link as a Metroidvania Castlevania character. There's an attack style in games like "Castlevania: Symphony of the Night" and "Aria of Sorrow" where you walk, jump, and attack in such a way that you never stop moving forward. That's what you've got to do. Walk, jump at an enemy, bonk on forehead. (Depending on how fast you press the attack button, you may need to delay swinging your sword just a teeny bit. At least, I had a bad habit of swinging too early.) With any luck, when you hit the ground, you will be able to keep on moving. You do not want to get stuck playing "poke-the-hole" with your enemies, particularly with how turtle-y some of them can get.

So, the game's a brutal bitch, but I don't want to spend the entire time shitting on it. Let's talk about improvements.

Honestly, I like the sprite style of the side-scrolling sections better than the previous game. Everyone/thing has more room to be rendered, so they look clearer. I can't say the monster or dungeon design here is my favorite, but hey. Easy to see. Yippie. Could have used a map though. Maybe some more tile textures in the dungeons?

NO. STOP. BE NICE.

There are more people around that want to help Link out. Like, whole towns filled with helpful healing ladies and dudes that will teach you magic and the occasional sword strike. Most of their conversation makes sense (although, there's a memetastic fault in translation regarding a character being named Error instead of what I'm assuming should have been Errol.) People good. Want to help people. People help me.

Except for towns where some of the people are monsters, and one of the times they overlapped a healing lady to get text box priority, and then they killed me. Boo.

I'M SORRY. I HAD A HARD TIME.

The music variety is pleasant. Only a few tracks have escaped the game to go into use elsewhere, but there's only one that I'm really iffy on. The NA release did a fine job transposing what they could using a different sound chip, and there are striking uses of the sample channel being used in ominous situations.

But…like…I struggle to see where fighting through this game is worth it. And maybe it comes down to the final boss. Like, the penultimate one? Absolutely cool. A bitch to fight, but I can't knock how massive and intricate its sprite is. But, the final boss? I suppose it comes down to personal tastes, but I find mirror matches/rivals to be exceedingly dull. Like, good for you. You know how I fight. I do too. Come back to me when you know the weaknesses of my style and use a fresh set of skills to throw at me.

Like, it's not the worst ending in the Zelda series. (My vote for that would go to "Link's Awakening.") You do get Zelda saved. But, given that the final boss is some kind of dark clone of yourself…it begs a lot of questions. Was there any concrete plan for the forces of darkness in Hyrule, or were various monster tribes just scuffling around, being dicks without any overarching plan? Were some monsters trying to keep you out of the Great Palace for a good reason? Would there have been any threat of Ganon reviving at all if Link just…sat on his ass behind a castle for the next century or managed his anxiety in a different way? Why does the manual bother to separate Zeldas and the game does not? Oh, wait. The Japanese intro correctly distinguishes this and the American one does not. Why am I not surprised? What's the difference if you don't see the Zelda you saved from the first game, anyway?

This game is a lot of work. I had to psych myself up to play it every time, and by the end, I was rattled enough by my nerves that I literally camped in my bathroom for a few minutes just to make sure I didn't get sick on the couch. Very stressful. And I'm not sure that stress was worth it, frankly. Life's hard enough as it is right now. I literally have a stress rash on my neck from the shit I'm going through in real life. No, you did not need to know about that. But maybe you need to know that I've been having a hard time lately, and this game did nothing to alleviate me from the stresses of reality. And what's the point in checking out from reality if a fantasy world is just going to make me miserable, too?

There are better games to play in this style. Hell, there are better games on the NES in this style. You know what you should go play? "Faxanadu." It's uglier than "Zelda II", sure. An absolute idiot when it comes to basic mathematics. But it's very chill about platforming and death. And maybe I just want to chill the fuck out for a while.

[mistressmedia]

Is Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles Worth It?

A little less than a month ago, Nintendo hosted a partner showcase that was in all honestly, pretty lackluster. However, something that caught my eye was Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles Remastered Edition. I’m in the middle of playing through Final Fantasy VII right now and having a great time. The game looked cute but a lot different from the other Final Fantasy games I’ve played. For this reason, I was hesitant to drop thirty dollars on it, since there was a chance I wouldn’t like it. Luckily, Square Enix has a demo version that allows players to try the first three dungeons. I want to preface this review by saying that I haven’t played the whole game, just the demo. I’ve researched elements of the game I want to talk about that I didn’t encounter, but I’m not an expert or anything.

There is a synopsis on the Square Enix website, however it doesn’t really go in depth. The gist of it is that your character’s homeland is coated in a substance called ‘miasma’ which is essentially poison. The only way for the inhabitants to survive, is for caravanners to venture our and gather a substance called myrrh. The only way to obtain myrrh is by exploring one of the games thirteen dungeons. After you defeat the final boss, you will be able to collect a single drop of myrrh into your crystal chalice. If it sounds like there’s not much room for plot there, that’s because there isn’t.

The trailer features a variety of different characters, so it was rather surprising to discover that they don’t actually exist. One of the first things you do upon opening the game is create your own. Final Fantasy games tend to host casts of dynamic characters, so it was shocking to realize that essentially there were none. In addition to this, the character creation is quite limited in comparison to games that normally feature that type of thing. You can choose from one of four races, these are the Clavats, the Litlies, the Yukes and the Selkies. Each race has different strengths. After this, you can set your gender and select a preset character design. There are a few different options but you can’t change anything about them, not their skin color, not their hair color or length, eye color, clothing, nothing. Considering the variety of races, one would think there’d be options that resemble people of color, but there’s not.

Next up you can choose a family job for your character. The options are shown below. The job that you choose can have an impact on gameplay, but this isn’t featured much throughout the lite version. Once your character is complete, you are quickly seen off by your family and encounter another caravan. Here, you are given a tutorial on how to play the game. You learn how to fight, how to use magic, etc. How do you do it? You press A. Want to use your weapon? Press A. Defend? Press A. Use magic? Press A. Use a strong attack? Hold A. Basically, the combat in this game is far from rivetting. You use the L and R buttons to switch what you want to do and that’s all there is to it really. Monsters usually die within a couple of hits, though the final bosses obviously take longer. 

I think the worst part of this game for me is the world map. The player can guide the caravan to different places on the map. Not only are there dungeons, there are also shopping areas and character events. The latter happens super randomly, it will interupt the game as you’re bringing the caravan from one location to another. The map is a little hard to navigate (at least on the switch) so I would often find myself going to the wrong place by accident. Normally this wouldn’t be a very big deal, the thing is, every time you go somewhere or a cutscene occurs, there’s a loading screen in between. The screen goes blank for about 20 seconds with a little moogle animation in the corner. So if you go to the wrong place and have to click out, guess what you have to sit through again? That’s right, the loading screen. It gets really annoying after awhile. Since the game is just a remaster, you would think it wouldn’t take so long to load.

I wasn’t sure what the dungeons would look like going in, but they’re not very ‘dungeon like’ at all. However, I would say this is more of an observation than a critique. The first is called the River Belle path and is actually quite pretty, as the name suggests. The music is rather soothing and since the monsters are fairly easy to beat the experience is almost relaxing. The only annoying part about the dungeons is if you get out of range of the crystal chalice you start to lose health. There’s a moogle that will carry it around for you, so basically you can’t go any faster than him. This definitely can get tedious, especially if it happens while you’re fighting a monster, but there are definitely worse game mechanics out there.

All in all, I think that this game has both good and bad to it. It definitely could be fun for kids, the dungeons aren’t very complex so they probably won’t get too frustrated playing through it. There are also probably a lot of adults who played it back when it came out the first time in 2003 and enjoy it for nostalgia reasons. However, I still don’t suggest buying the game and here’s why. While Square Enix wants to charge you $29.99 to play on the Nintendo Switch or PS4, the game is available for free on IOS and Android. If you ask me, that hardly seems fair. The App Store warns that the game includes In-App purchases however, it says right in the description that you can, “Play up to 13 dungeons for free!” 

If you’d like to pay thirty dollars for a phone app, be my guest. I can genuinely see why someone might want to support their favorite gaming company in this way. Maybe they want to experience the game on the big screen. To each their own. Personally, I’d pass on this one or play it on my phone for free. There are multiplayer options that might make the dungeons a bit more interesting (I didn’t use them because I don’t have friends who game). Since I liked the dungeons as is I don’t really feel the need to include that in the review. So, what do you think of Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles? I’m a little disappointed but, at least I still have Final Fantasy VII.

[chartreuse-gale]

Dragon Warrior/Quest ramblings/collective review

I rant about the Dragon Quest franchise a lot.

Two of my video game pet peeves are when people laude the original Dragon Warrior/Dragon Quest as ground breaking (it’s not, see Wizardy/Ultima), or the great grandfather of JRPGs (it’s not, see Hydlide/Dragon Slayer/Fantasian/) I’m generally not a fan of silent protagonists. I rarely identify enough with a character to feel like I’m “in” the game, so I prefer to be playing the role of a character with some kind of dialogue and a personality. Every dragon quest (that I’ve played) has a silent protagonist. That said, I do have some love for the series. I’ve suddenly found myself interested in giving Dragon Quest XI a spin, but instead I went back to Dragon Warrior IV. I remembered liking it as a kid and I’m happy to say I’ve been having as much fun playing it now as I remember having back then. Here are my thoughts on the dragon quest games separated into the ones I’ve finished and the ones I haven’t (mainline only).

Games I’ve Finished

Dragon Quest: This is grinding the game.

Strategy is almost nonexistent in the battle system outside of “Grind XP to LVL UP/Gold to buy better equipment”. You have 1 character and you never fight more than 1 enemy, so all fights are one-on-one. There isn’t any equipment with special traits or functions (just better Attack/Defense). You get access to a total of 6 spells in the game: Heal Heal More Heal Most Hurt Hurt More Hurt Most (these last 3 are usually a waste of MP) The plot is linear (except for potentially at the very end of the game). At least there’s a decent amount of exploration. Worse than Final fantasy I and Phantasy Star I by far, but to be fair, Enix did better with Dragon Quest II, which beat both of these competitors to the punch. Dragon Quest II: So much better than the original.

The grind is mediated by choices that matter in regards to equipment and combat. Also, you have an actual party this time (of 3), Also, Also, you can fight multiple enemies at the same time. Dragon Quest II added a much wider variety of spells (buff, debuff, and elemental damage spells); Equipment that had special functions when used as an item in combat (e.g. the Lightning Staff can cast whoosh), and a smidge more plot. Many people say more grinding is required in II than in the original, but I would argue that Dragon Quest I is nothing but grinding whereas Dragon Quest II breaks up the monotony with a dose of strategy. Comparable to Final Fantasy I. Far worse than Phantasy Star I. Dragon Quest V: Decent.

Also the first game originating on the Super Famicom (although we didn’t get an official English translation till the DS remake)

Allows for a party of 3 (4 in the DS remake). Considered groundbreaking by many for it’s monster recruitment system but it wasn’t the first game to have one by any means (Megami Tensei beat it by 5 years and Wizardry IV by 4). The game is divided into sections based on time periods as you grow from a kid to a teen to an adult, which is a cool way of pacing the games content, and gives you a little more perspective on the setting than you typically get in a Dragon Quest game. Characters are mostly boring outside of one (or two) of the love interests. Did I mention this game has love interests? I think I would have liked it better if there was only one, because it punched me in the heart for not picking the one it leads up to as the primary love interest (who also happens to be the canon one). Has really frustrating setting/plot-gender dynamics with two characters late in the game who I won’t name because spoilers.

Games I’ve Played but haven’t finished

Dragon Quest III: My least favorite game in the series (out of the ones I’ve played).

This time you have a protagonist and you can hire adventures to join you on your quest. They are all nobody characters. Their personalities are assigned at random, and (from what I can tell) only effect their growth. There’s no fucking dialogue with them (which is something I expected after DQ II). Personalities and seeds are fucking annoying, because both of them are random, have huge differences in their effects, and their effects make a huge difference in character capabilities, so it makes me want to spend hours saving/reloading until I get the effects I want. Fuck this game for introducing seeds to the series which appeared in many Dragon Quest games after this (thankfully I haven’t run into personalities again yet). Often lauded for having the “groundbreaking” option of changing character classes/jobs. Yes this came out before Final Fantasy III (Japan), but I would like to make the following points: - Final Fantasy I let you pick your character classes (which came out beforehand) - Final Fantasy III had a class change system you could actually make use of throughout the game (unlike DQ III where you need to get about halfway through the game first) - The original Wizardry came out 7 years earlier and also had a much more accessible class change system than DQ III I played very little of Dragon Quest III (I dropped it before even getting to my 2nd town). Two great thing about this games: It’s the first in the series to give you the option of playing as a woman, and I heard it’s the game that introduced the casino/mini games to the franchise. Dragon Quest IV: This game is Great! Also, Unlike the first three games in the series, Dragon Quest IV might actually be groundbreaking. You ever play Wild Arms I, II, or III? Did you enjoy playing through the prologues that introduce your early party members? Well Dragon Quest IV does a similar thing: The game is divided into chapters. Each chapter has a different protagonist. In their chapter you play them as silent protagonist, but when you encounter them later in the game they have dialogue. This does a lot to develop much of the cast, because you can see how people react to/talk with them and later on you can see how they engage with the player character (who you’re actually introduced to last). The cast is great and falls into a mix of both very old school and very uncommon tropes for a JRPG: You have an aging knight who goes on a mission to rescue children and then goes on a journey to find more about the ominous forces behind their kidnappers (Ragnar). Then there’s a princess who wants to go on an adventure against her fathers wishes so she kicks a hole in the wall of her room and jumps out of the castle (Alena); she’s joined by a young priest (Cristo) and an elderly mage (Brey) employed by her father, who give up on bringing her home and instead ask to travel with her to help her out. Next you have a merchant who wants to raise enough money to buy his own storefront (Taloon). After that you play a Fortune Teller (Nara) who travels with her dancer sister (Mara) on a quest to avenge the death of their father (an alchemist who was murdered by his apprentice).  Each chapter ends on a climax related to motivations/goals of its lead character and each chapter shows more of the world/gives out more info on what is going on behind the scenes. While you actively control the primary characters of a chapter other characters are either controlled completely by AI (in chapters I-IV), or loosely follow a tactical strategy you select (chapter V). I’ve been getting on fine with it, but this might be a deal breaker for some. The music is better than any of the Dragon Quest games I’ve finished (and what I’ve heard from any of the ones I’ve played, but not finished). A remake of this game has an interesting flaw: they cut all the party chart dialogue from the foreign language versions of the DS version; so if you don’t know Japanese, you’ll probably miss out on a lot of character interaction with that version. (I heard this had something to do with concerns that the game wouldn’t make enough sales to cover translation costs of the party chart [which was reputedly two thirds of the game’s script]). Dragon Quest VI Honestly I’ve barely played this one. You have actual characters for party members (a big plus in my book). I’ve heard there’s a job system as well. Plot/setting seem decently interesting on first glance. I might come back to this one later. Dragon Quest VIII I got about halfway through this one.

They included a character-specific skill tree system which is cool, except that there are objectively best routes to take for some (possibly all?) characters and these best routes are not even close to obvious from the outset. It introduced a pretty fun crafting system.

There’s  a decent cast of characters, but they don’t have quite enough going on for my tastes (my fave is Yangus). Plot has an interesting premise, but feels very barebones, and the environments/towns/npcs aren’t very interesting (maybe about as good as DQV, but worse than IV).

This game gets lauded for the 3D models of characters/enemies, but honestly I’ve never been a fan of the character designs of Dragon Quest (especially the monsters), so I feel pretty “meh” about it outside of being able to see your party members in combat (for I think the first time in the series), which is very nice. The music is very ambient a lot of the time. It does a good job of fitting melancholy moments, but doesn’t do such a great job of building excitement during battles and high-tension events. Dragon Quest IX This game feels a lot like Dragon Quest III.

You don’t have any actual characters, you just recruit them and use them in battle (no meaningful intraparty dialogue, character development, etc.) I think I played around 10-20 hours before dropping it.

Final Thoughts

Dragon Quest games vary from game to game in terms of gameplay mechanics, but they vary a great deal more when it comes to characters.

If you like having a lot of control over your party composition and don’t care about having characters with personality, you might like Dragon Quest III, V, or IX.

If you want a party comprised of characters who interact, have personalities, and might even develop over time, you might like Dragon Quest IV, or (sort of) VIII (I haven’t played much of VI, or any of VII or XI, but I heard they also fall into this camp). If you want to play an old school, 8-Bit JRPG that launched a spectacular franchise, might have actually been ground-breaking for its time, and is still fun to play today, check out the original Phantasy Star. . . . . . . (at least, for me it’s still fun to this day) [notes: - edited some typos, and mistakes most notably regarding the Hurt series of spells in Dragon Quest I - Revised some word choices - Added a comment about being able to see your party in combat in Dragon Quest VIII]

[botslayer]

Top Ten games of the 2010′s

This trend seems to be doing the rounds at the moment and seeing as I’ve been gaming for about as long as I can remember, It just feels right. So, let’s get into it. But first, worth saying: These aren't really in any specific order, it's just the games I've personally had the most fun with overall, but it's pretty hard to decide what the hard numbers on things you enjoy for different reasons are if that makes any sense. 10. The 2010's weren't exactly the best time for anyone, I think. For me they were a slog of finding myself and learning things I wish I didn't. Amid all those things I wanted some levity. The world needs something and stupid. We got a lot of it ion 2013 but I feel like we could have used it scattered around a bit more. In that spirit, allow me to show you one hell of a pick me up:

Saints Row 4

Saints Row 4 does not give a fuck. It is aggressively demonstrating that the entire time you play. It doesn't care in the slightest what you think or why, It just wants to show you cool, if juvenile, and interesting, if weird shit. It's the finer points of Ratchet and Clank's arsenal, SR3's humor, And superpowers that genuinely put Prototype and Infamous in a blender and tell you to go ape shit with them. The soundtrack isn't top shelf, it's the roof of the building the shelf is in. Saints Row Two had a better story overall but SR Four's was just plain fun and a solid enough story to still be invested.

The DLC was just as irreverent and madcap, Featuring everything from an evil Santa Clause to evil Gimps on Game of thrones chairs made of dildos Or Tropey-ass costumes and weapon reskins that I'd be genuinely surprised the game dev didn't get sued over. It has earned its place in my top 10 and I will die by that decision.

9.

2016 saw the advent of a new genre. They blended TF2 and MOBAs, and we got hero shooters in their first AAA forms, Overwatch and Battleborn. But neither of these games is on this list, much as I liked them. Partly because the whole time, I kept thinking of one simple question: "Why do I keep thinking of...?"

Anarchy Reigns

Anarchy Reigns is my favorite Platinum game. Full Stop. The Story mode is interesting and has genuinely good character moments, the characters themselves are completely mental, ranging from a mercenary with a bionic cat leg that secretly has a gun built into it to a giant cyborg bull-man with a jet-powered hammer. The soundtrack is mostly angry hip-hop, making every song a banger and fittingly speedy for things like random bombing runs from jet fighters that come from absolutely nowhere.

There are giant monsters, cars with mounted flame throwers, giant robots, and the online is still pretty sweet because even when abandoned, loading it up with bots still rules. I regularly have more fun with this than I ever did with Overwatch, and I don't care how insane that sounds.

8.

Some games want to make you feel something and fail. Some games make you feel some things accidentally, for example, a desperate need to laugh. This game made me feel like a human blender. Like a Chthonic god of mangled flesh and raw destructive power. Nyarlathotep ain't got nothing on me. I speak, of course, of...

[Prototype] 2

There's no end to the absolute destruction you feel like you're causing in this game. It feels more fluid than the first, the main character is a pinch more relatable, and all the body horror, superpowers, zombie hordes, and big old monsters make for some of the most memorable and fun moments and fights in gaming. The DLC is also pretty solid, adding new fun side challenges, and new powers and weapons that elevate you from "Flesh god" to "Screw physics, I made them" Omnipotent. Best god/monster simulation of all time.

7.

Sometimes some games are at an honest tie in your mind. Be it that you like them for essentially the same reasons, or for completely different reasons, but the overall total joy or entertainment they bring is roughly equivalent. Here, we have a case of the former:

Furi/Cuphead

Both games have a tight focus on giving players a unique, boss-centric challenge, both have interesting, somewhat minimal narratives, and both are absolute eye candy.

Furi has a more "Samurai Jack" Quality to me. A complete badass on a relatively simple quest with a somewhat minimalistic art style learning some things as he goes.

Cuphead on the other hand, nails that rubber hose animation style, and the fun levity of such animations while still making the player's ability to interact with the world damn impactful and fun.

They share a spot in my soul, games I love everything about but will never be able to finish. Hats off to both dev teams.

6.

Now here we have another tie. Mostly because the games are so close together, they need to be evaluated more or less as one product IMO, not enough changed for me to consider them separate games, fortunately, that is the furthest thing from an insult it can be in this situation. I present to you, my next pick(s).

Costume Quest 1/2

Now, This might seem pretty random considering my other picks, but honestly, I love Halloween, I love creative madness, I love subversion, I love good characters, and I love cool action, these games have all these things by the bucketload.

The first game is a wild ride through Halloween in multiple very lively locations and the second, slightly confusing as it is, is pretty awesome for the things it introduces, including time travel. Other elements, like the battle stamps, the truly epic forms of everything in the fights, The ability to customize your costumes, etc. they blur together in a pretty big way, but again, there's not a thing wrong with that when both games rock like crystal candy. 

5.

Now, if you hadn't noticed, all of the games on this list have had some hard action at their core, and while I don't HATE calmer games, a lot of the time, so many are kinda dull to me in that with the exception of easter eggs of some sort, most farming sims, for example, just have you doing normal farm stuff with very few twists, may as well start a real farm in that case. My most chill entry is a game that tosses that to one side, asks you to grab a suck cannon, and start harvesting gelatinous monster poop.

Slime Rancher

While you don't spend a lot of time actually interacting with other characters, they just talk at you, the story of the game is pretty effective, the player character of Beatrix has left Earth for a simpler life of Slime Ranching, which entails the raising of alien crops, delightfully derpy and colorful chickens, and going all around in an attempt to farm new breeds of slime for their genetic material to sell off or trade-in for the creation of gadgets while being surrounded by a cast of interesting characters. It's all very wholesome family fun.

The game looks great, has great ideas, and is genuinely the best farming game I have ever played. @ me all you want.

4.

The 80's are almost fetishized nowadays. Given all the property reboots, games that go for the vibe and aesthetic of the time, etc. It almost seems as though the eighties vibe train ain't gonna stop rolling any time soon. But we owe it to ourselves to remember the first big swipe of madcap neon-colored actiony B-movie bullshit and how mind-meltingly epic it was. Ladies, Gents, and whatever else, I present:

Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon

Blood Dragon's story is relatively simple, you play Sargent Rex "Power" Colt (A name said in full so many times I thought his last name was "Powercolt" for the longest time), a former "Omega force" cyborg. Rex and his friend "Spider" were sent into a secret island base to investigate the supposed defection and treachery of their old commander, Ike Sloan. It turns out he has gone rogue and taken an army of "Mark 5" Omegaforce cyber-soldiers with him. What follows is a long story of betrayal, science fiction of the highest nonsensical level, comedy, and brilliantly cathartic action.

The collectibles range from data on animals, to research notes from a scientist, to literal VHS cassette tapes that have full descriptions of movies that I would legitimately watch if I could. "You may now kill the brides" is not a real film and I am angry for every day that that is true. Anyway, play Far Cry 3: Blood Dragon, I dunno if it's on PS4 but it's one game I'd buy a new/old console for.

3.

A lot of superhero games NEED to railroad you. Your goals MUST be to save the lives of the people and help the weak and all that. But one dev asked the simple question: "What if it didn't?" "What if the player chose how to use their power? What if the player could be as evil or as good as they damn well pleased?" One game gave you the powers of thunder and lightning and asked what you'd do with it. It's sequel asked you the same, but against more... interesting forces.

InFamous 2

InFamous 2 is a game about making choices, just like the first one, also just like the first one, it can have an effect on gameplay. That effect went from "What does this particular power do in this allignment?" To "Which new set of NEW powers would you like?" The forces of the last game went from “Three flavors of gun-toting whackos” To “Possibly an allegory for the Klan, Swamp monsters, and Ice-powered super soldiers.”

This was, and still is, the best game in the whole series, The powers felt distinct from anything else and still do, the story is solid as a rock, and the enemy types were still varied enough to be interesting, I miss the Reapers from the first game, but that's about it. Everything else was a massive step up. If you have something that can run it, play it.

2.

Action is something I think we can all appreciate on some level. We can understand when it does or does not work, we can understand when we do or do not like how it feels when we are the ones partaking in it. EX: Any schlep can tell you when the weapons in your game lack impact, or when your character moves too slow for the game to be fun. The following game is something I can't say anything of the sort about. And it's kind of like Wolfenstein, when you have enemies this bad, who the hell cares how many you kill?

Doom 2016

Y'all are lying if you say you didn't expect this one. It's DOOM 2016. This game is made of hate and fuck. AND I LOVE IT. You move so fast, you may as well be half cheetah and half sports car. You slaughter the dregs of hell by the dozens and even the biggest, baddest things this game throws at you can be beaten with the starting pistol if you have the stones for it. It looks amazing graphically, the demons all look appropriately threatening, and even the Multiplayer is a great deal of fun in my book.

Something worth noting: The story presented by default is pretty barebones, but that's where supplementary material fills in the gaps, the difference between supplementary material in most games and supplementary material here is the material is till IN THE GAME. You're free to ignore most of the plot as it happens around you, and even interesting tidbits of the lore like how certain demons function. Not only are these things missable collectibles, prompting continued play to find them, they are also pretty interesting reads. So yeah, just about everything you could want in a sequel/remake, builds the on lore and gameplay very organically. 

1.

And here we are, the last game I'd put in this category. An entire decade, and here, we end on the last game that left such an impact I'd put it in my top ten. But first, let's talk about expectations and delivery: When you say a game is coming out, there are certain expectations you have for gameplay, EX: I say "Ratchet and Clank" and you expect a TPS with platforming elements and crazy guns. I say "Gears of War" and people expect something to do with lumbering about in big armor, dismembering things with a chainsaw gun and otherwise shooting them to paste. We might also expect changes to things, better graphics, innovations in grenade variety, something as that franchise goes on.

After the last game in this series was released, there were tons of people who felt let down and disappointed by it. Then they released the still somewhat disappointing special edition of it. They were both still fun, but neither really felt like the full next step in the series. After a failed reboot, they returned to the original story and the lot of us rejoiced. And when it finally came out? It was a step up in most, if not, all regards, to its predecessors. You know what this last one is. Please, give a warm round of applause to:

Devil May Cry 5

A game that was not only a return to form, but a major escalation in gameplay for one character, and a new style of gameplay all together by way of yet another new character. It didn’t exactly hurt that the story kicked ten kinds of ass and that the game looked spectacular in both the design of everything and the actual graphical fidelity.DMC 5 is, like DOOM, Like InFamous 2, Like [PROTOTYPE] 2, everything you want in a good sequel. It built very well on already solid foundations and it was generally just a fun, slightly goofy, massively stylish, and ultra badass ride. I recommend this, and all these games, to anyone.Good night everyone, have a great 2020. And the rest of the decade, for that matter. 

[biscuitreviews]

Biscuit Reviews The Witcher III Wild Hunt (2-year Anniversary Review)

The Witcher III: Wild Hunt is perhaps my favorite game to come out of the PS4/Xbox One/Wii U-Switch console era. It’s won tons of awards and was game of the year for many people in 2015. I didn’t get into the Witcher series until Witcher II: Assassin of Kings was a free download for Xbox Live members in 2016. 

After I finished Witcher II, I immediately went to Witcher III and my god, talk about an amazing sequel. It was bigger, it was better, and for being the end of Geralt’s story, it did a great job for making newcomers such as myself, not feel lost at all.

I’m going to be spoiling the game so if you haven’t played Witcher III, definitely play it before going into this review.

The story of Witcher III, revolves around Geralt of Rivia, a witcher looking for his adoptive daughter Ciri alongside his on and off again lover Yennefer of Vengerburg.

Geralt will travel through large open world zones during his quest. Velen took inspiration from the Polish and Northern German countryside, Novigrad is reminiscent of the Polish city of Gdańsk during the medieval era, and finally you have the Skellige Isles, taking inspiration from Ireland. Each of these areas are massive and beautiful to look at. It’s easy to forget that you’re in a world currently being ravaged by war or filled with monsters until you stumble across areas that give you a stark reminder that there is a war happening.

One thing that I love about the game is how it handled decisions. There’s no clear good or bad decision, everything has a shade of grey. Sure there are choices that sound better in the short term, but it could have long term ramifications that could come back to haunt Geralt. One example is Triss’s quest line in Novigrad. Sure, you’re helping mages escape the city to where they no longer have to fear for themselves, but by doing so, you give the witch hunters a new target to pursue, which are non-human races such as elves and dwarves. However, if you don’t help mages escape, than later in the story Geralt’s dwarven friend, Zoltan, can help him with a jailbreak. If you do help the mages, Zoltan won’t be able to assist Geralt due to not wanting to face the wrath of the witch hunters.

Even the types of decisions you make are fantastic as well. All of these choices are actions that Geralt himself would make and do in that situation, it’s just a matter what you believe would be the overall choice he would go with. With many choice based games, dialogue options cover many aspects of a character archetype, because normally, you are making a character and are taking that character on the journey. In this case, Geralt is a character, he has his own beliefs, likes and dislikes, and dialogue choices reflect his specific personality rather than a personality a player would create.

It’s also why some aspects in gameplay are limited such as crafting. Geralt is able to craft oils and potions on his own as long as he has the formula and the ingredients. Applying the proper oil and drinking the necessary potions are necessary for fighting monsters in this game, which I’ll discuss more about later. When it comes to making armor and swords, Geralt has to seek out a Blacksmith to make these items as Geralt himself doesn’t have the kind of skill set, therefore he has to seek out a person able to build these items.

I also love how story quests and side quests interact with one another. Main story quests could go differently if you’ve done some side quests that relate to that specific quest and vice versa. Also the fact that side quests have just as much weight as the main quests make them feel more important and worth doing for that extra bit of lore or for that impact it could have on the main story.

As well polished and built the Witcher III is, it does have some minor glitches being an open world game. Sometimes you’ll find objects just randomly floating in air. Occasionally the input to talk to NPCs won’t work and you’ll have to either step back and walk forward to have the prompt reappear or just reposition Geralt himself for the NPC to talk to you. The fact that Geralt can either die or get heavily damaged from ridiculously low heights is also highly annoying and instills a fear of any small dropping points.

Another issue I would like to point out is that it’s not exactly the most socially inclusive. A lot of the main women are highly sexualized and sometimes feel that they’re nude for the sake of it. There are moments where you can choose anti-LGBT dialogue options when you encounter those characters, which I found exteremly baffeling that it was an option considering Ciri is bi and Geralt seems supportive in the dialogue they exchange. I get it, it’s a choice, you don’t have select those options, but the fact that they’re there to begin with just leaves a bit of a bad taste. Let’s not forget the entire ocean of white people in this game. I’m sorry, but including two people of color in a DLC just doesn’t cut it. Does it break the game for me? No, but I think not acknowledging that this exists within the game is even worse.

As mentioned previously, monsters have certain weakness and you are expected to exploit those weakness when fighting monsters. Using the proper tools to easily take down a monster feels great and makes you feel more invested in the world as you have to research these creatures in your bestiary to know their weaknesses. 

Going above and beyond to take on an extra tough enemy or a monster clearly above your level although feels great at first, it’s quickly brought down when the experience gained is very little and the loot isn’t something that equates the struggle you went through. It’s just a bit disappointing that you’re encouraged to research monsters and exploit weaknesses and when you do just that, the rewards just don’t reflect that.

There’s also one quirk with dialogue as well that’s honestly more funny than terrible, but the way it happened just made it more memorable to me.

This instance is going to a wake party with Yennefer in Skellige. She’ll comment on how she likes that Geralt is growing out a beard. Now if Geralt does have a beard in this instance, it makes sense, however if Geralt is clean shaven, Yennefer will still make the comment which I always found that to be a funny little programming quirk. It’s obvious that this response was to happen when Geralt has a beard and the programming within the game was supposed to read that. There are a couple of instances that NPCs will react to Geralt’s appearance and the reaction is appropriate in those moments. But the beard moment, always brings out a chuckle.

Granted for a game as massive as Witcher III to only have a few minor issues, it’s actually rather impressive. However, I will admit that it has been four years since it’s initial release and there might have been more bugs then, but now it’s a mostly smooth experience.

As mentioned in a previous post, I do refer back to this game a lot for professional research as well. CD Projekt Red used a branching writing program known as Articy Draft, a program I use in my day job. I’ll do different decisions, I’ll change the order of when I do quests and just imagine how the branching dialogue looked within Articy and the type of variables used to determine how certain events play out.

One also can’t talk about Witcher III without mentioning Gwent, what is perhaps one of the best mini-games within a game since Final Fantasy VIII’s Triple Triad. Gwent is an easy to learn, but tough to master card game at the start. It’s tough at first as Geralt doesn’t have many cards at his disposal, but once you finally get a win, the dam starts to break little by little. Geralt will begin winning more powerful cards that can be added to his deck. Eventually it does get to a point where everyone becomes a bit easy to defeat as you gain more powerful cards and build your deck for effective strategies. Regardless it’s a game within a game that you can easily get lost in. 

Witcher III also set what many gamers regard as the “Golden Standard” for how DLC should be treated. Witcher III includes 16 free DLC additions ranging from additional quests, items, additional costumes, and Gwent cards. Then there’s the two paid DLC expansions, Heart of Stone and Blood and Wine, which involves two new stories.

Both of these expansions also add additional gameplay mechanics to make Geralt stronger, which you will need to take advantage of for Blood and Wine as monsters and enemies in that particular expansion are a bit tougher than in the main game and Heart of Stone.

Blood and Wine also contains my favorite quest in the entire game. The quest is called “Paperchase” and it’s hilarious. Something about a legendary monster slayer still having to adhere to the bureaucracy of a bank to get a reward for saving a guy years ago is just amazing. It shows that not all great quests have to involve you having an encounter that puts you on the edge of your seat.

The Witcher III is a game that deserves the praise and reception it has received. It has made a mark on the RPG genre that many developers are taking note and implementing in their games. The most famous case being Ubisoft with the Assassin’s Creed series by following a similar dialogue decision based structure and having side quests impact the main story and vice versa. This is a game that has earned its status as a modern classic, which I’m sure will keep that status for a very long time.

As I’m sure it’s no surprise to anyone on Tumblr or any denizen of the internet, The Witcher III: Wild Hunt receives a 5 out 5

So far it’s been quite an interesting two years on this site. Frankly, I expected to just be a reviewer that would continuously scream into the void. To my surprise, I’ve had quite a few of you that like and share my posts adding more to the conversation whether you agree or disagree. I’ve also recently passed the 50 reviews milestone as well so the 50 and the two year mark happened rather quickly!

Here’s to the march on getting to 100 reviews...at some point!

[scoutception]

Final Fantasy I review: a pragmatic evolution

Final Fantasy; one of the largest and most influential game franchises out there, and my personal favorite video game series. It’s kind of surreal to think that it started out as what was basically an unlicensed Dungeons & Dragons adaptation from a failing company that only approved it to try to top Dragon Quest, like so many others back then. For all the faults it had, like being so utterly buggy that it artificially increased difficulty through things like mages not actually being able to gain more power for their magic, and several spells not even working, period, it pulled through with an innovative team building system, a great soundtrack that would help cement Nobou Uematsu as one of the great video game soundtrack composers, and a much more developed exploration system compared to Dragon Quest, giving you access to vehicles like an airship. For this review, however, I shall be reviewing the PSP version of Final Fantasy I, which is quite a different experience, for reasons I shall tackle shortly. Otherwise, in we go.

Story

The story is about a world home to 4 elemental crystals of earth, fire, water, and wind, which once blessed the land and its inhabitants with peace. However, the Four Fiends, the Lich, Marilith, the Kraken, and Tiamat, have since corrupted the crystals, depriving the world of their blessings and causing the appearance of monsters across the land. Despite the bleakness, however, the people keep faith in one thing: a prophecy stating that four Warriors of Light will appear one day to restore the crystals and defeat the Four Fiends. 400 years after the first of the fiends appeared, the Warriors of Light finally arrive at the town of Cornelia, where they are tasked by its king to save his daughter, Princess Sarah, from Garland, a traitorous knight, who has taken her to the Chaos Shrine. Afterwards, the king builds a bridge in gratitude, allowing them to skip over to the next town and beat up some pirates for their ship. Most of the “plot” of this game takes the form of fetching key items and chains of deals that stand in the way of you actually taking the fight to the Fiends, with the worst taking place right after getting the ship, involving almost every single area you can even visit at that time. It was probably a bit more interesting at the time, especially compared to Dragon Quest, but it’s a huge drag nowadays.

After killing all of the Fiends, the game decides to pull a twist: as it turns out, an evil force 2000 years in the past is still stealing the power of the crystals, originating from the Chaos Shrine. After traveling through a time portal, and killing all the Four Fiends again, the game pulls a bigger twist: they find Garland at the bottom of the shrine, having been sent back in time by the Fiends. Using their power to transform into the monster Chaos, he then used his power to send them into the present, creating some time loop that allows him to live forever. After defeating him, the Warriors of Light are returned to the present, having retroactively prevented any of the disasters from taking place, even ensuring Garland would never betray Cornelia. Doing this erases their memories of their journey, but the legend of it still lives on.... somehow. It’s not exactly a deep plot, but it can still be decently entertaining to go through, especially with the vastly improved translation of the later versions, which gives quite a bit of dialogue a surprising amount of charm.

Gameplay

The gameplay of Final Fantasy I is about the most standard NES era RPG you could get. You travel on a world map, exploring towns and dungeons and getting into random encounters, with the battle system also being a very standard turn based system, selecting all your party’s actions at the beginning of each turn, and having choices of attacking, using magic, using an item, defending, or attempting to escape. You gain the use of a ship, a canoe, and eventually an airship which pretty much invalidates any other form of travel for navigating the world map, though the ship can only dock at certain spots, and the airship can only land on grass tiles. This can pose a problem to a new player, as the continents are large and often force you to land farther away from your goal than you might expect. This is doubly bad as the game initially seems to lack a map feature, which can make navigation very difficult sense the map loops when you reach an edge of it. While there is actually a map you can access on the world map, which even displays the locations you’ve discovered, you can only bring it up by hitting a button combination the game never outright tells you, only being mentioned, and backwards, at that, by some brooms in an early area (it’s ok, it’s the home of a witch), which could be passed off as random nonsense if you’re not in the mood to think laterally.

The most interesting gameplay feature FF1 has to offer is its party building system. Instead of just gaining predetermined characters as you go on like, say, MOTHER, or only having one character, like Dragon Quest itself, you have 4 party members all the time that you select at the start of the game, picked from 6 different classes: the Warrior, the very standard physical fighter with great attack and defense, whose only real downside is being very reliant on equipment, the Monk, who is pretty much the opposite of the fighter, being a physical fighter who specializes in fighting unarmed, to the point of equipment actually lowering his attack and defense after a while, making him very cheap to use, and very broken after the first few levels. There’s also the Thief, which is bad on defense, but is good for attacking and has superior speed. The second half of the classes are magically focused. The White Mage specializes in healing and support magic, though they also have offense in the form of the Dia line of spells, which is effective against undead, and Holy, one of the major attacking spells of the series. The Black Mage, conversely, focuses on offensive magic, though they also have access to some very good buff, though they’re perhaps the most vulnerable of any class, with abysmal HP growth, at that. Lastly, there’s the Red Mage, the jack of all trades, master of none. They can use swords, have good defense, and access to both white and black magic, though they’re worse at all of those than the classes that focus on them individually, and can’t use most of the later game spells or equipment, though since you’re stuck with your chosen classes all the way, they’re never an outright burden, and plenty of people find them great regardless.

Aside from leveling up from fighting random encounters, you power up your party by buying equipment, or finding it in dungeons or other areas, and buying spells from towns. There’s 8 spell tiers in all, with all having 4 different spells per tier for both black and white magic. However, the spellcasters can only know up to three spells for each tier, with the red mage having to use those spaces for both white and black magic. Some tiers have better spells than others, with most spells more complex than simple healing or damage usually not being worthwhile. However, a lot of spells and equipment available around the time you get the airship is not actually usable by your party members, and this is because of a sidequest offered by Bahamut, the king of the dragons, to go within the Citadel of Trials and retrieve a rat tail. Doing so will cause for your party members to class change, aka basically promote into stronger classes. The Warrior becomes the Knight, the Monk becomes the Master, the Thief becomes the Ninja, the White Mage becomes the White Wizard, the Black Mage becomes the Black Wizard, and the Red Mage becomes the Red Wizard. This grants them better stat growth and access to stronger equipment and spells, and the Knight and Ninja gain white and black magic, respectively.

The NES version of FF1 is infamously difficult, but over the many ports, starting with the Playstation version, and most notably advanced with the GBA version, the game became much, much easier. Whether it be the fixing of damaging bugs or the ability to save anywhere instead of the world map, which, granted, was only sensible considering portable console, to switching the spell system from each tier only being usable a certain amount of times before needing recharging at an inn, something borrowed from Dungeons & Dragons, to switching to a much more traditional MP system, to just a general rebalancing of the classes, it makes for a much easier game to get through. Too easy, honestly. You gain experience much, much faster, so as long as you fight the majority of the encounters you get into, you’ll quickly end up overpowered. It’s very easy to reach level 99, and much of the best equipment is easy to get. However, I don’t think the easier difficulty, and the general simplicity of the gameplay, are necessarily bad things. On the contrary, it makes the game very easy to pick up and play through, and it’s surprisingly fun despite how simple the combat is. This, I think, is the saving grace of the game, and even if that doesn’t satisfy you, the bonus content added in the later ports are the highlights of the game.

The GBA version added four bonus dungeons collectively called the Soul of Chaos, unlocked after each Fiend you defeat. These dungeons consist of a set amount of different, and often wacky, floors that load in a randomized order. While the first two dungeons are fairly standard and short, stuff begins picking up with the third, and the fourth is a 40 floor gauntlet of fun and creative little challenges and maps. In addition, each dungeon contains cameo bosses from Final Fantasy 3-6, complete with remixes of their boss themes for the PSP versions. These include Shinryu and Omega, who are the hardest bosses in the GBA version, and Gilgamesh, one of the most famous characters in the series. All in all, these dungeons are actually really fun to go through, as long as you’re properly leveled, and are definitely refreshing compared to how most RPGs handle bonus dungeons. On that subject, however, is the Labyrinth of Time, added in the PSP version. It consists of time puzzles, 30 in all, though you only do so many in each run, that ends with a fight against a newly added superboss, and the usurper of the title of hardest boss in the game, Chronodia. The catch is that Chronodia has 8 different variations, with different rewards and bestiary entries for each, and which one you encounter depends on how many puzzles you finish in time, and how many you only complete after running out of time, causing a fog to roll in that saps you of your HP and MP, and allows random encounters while in the puzzle areas. While creative, the Labyrinth of Time is overall maddeningly difficult and not fun. This is one to skip if you value your sanity.

Sound & Graphics

The graphics of FF1, again, judging the PSP version, are actually really good. The characters look distinct, and the monster graphics especially are great, and represent Yoshitaka Amano’s designs for them very, very well.

The areas are also surprisingly well designed. From the ruins of the Chaos Shrine, and the complete version of it as the final dungeon, to the underwater ruins that house the lair of the Kraken, to, most notably, the flying fortress of the Lufenian civilization, home to Tiamat and far advanced compared to all the other locations, especially in the original NES version, where it’s a space station, of all things.

As for the music, it holds up amazingly. Aside from many of the most famous themes of the series, such as the Preude, themes like the town theme and the Chaos Shrine theme are amazingly atmospheric, and it overall still stands out as one of the best soundtracks in the series to me. Even if he wasn’t involved in the rearranging for the remakes, this was a significant step for composer Nobou Uematsu.

Conclusion

Despite how fond I am of this game, my recommendation rating depends. If you’re looking for a nice, easy to pick up RPG, perhaps as an introduction to the series, or to RPGs in general, I would give this a recommended. If you’re looking for much past that, however, I would give it a not recommended. As transformed as it is, it is still a very old game underneath, with unclear goals, very barebones gameplay systems, and with all the innovation it did have swept away over the years. Still, if nothing else, it’s a very respectable start to Final Fantasy. Until next time.

-Scout

[selie1412-blog]

 Lets see how many Waluigi fans I can trigger with this post. Super Smash Bros Ultimate will be my first video game review. I believe everyone of there internet is familiar with this game series by now. If not, then what rock have you been living under for the past 20ish years.

The review will be split into two parts. First the review for the storyline, and then the review for the multiplayer section. It will become obvious as you continue reading. I sure hope you do so...

Spoilers of the story mode will be shown below. Proceed with caution. 

Super Smash Bros Ultimate: 

With an arsenal of 76 fighters to choose from and various assist trophies, cough Waluigi cough, from many different games and pokemon to also join in the battle the possibility for this game seems endless. Although, then Mr. Sakurai of course had to go above and beyond literally everyone’s expectations to add the spirits section which includes characters from countless other games, adding approximately 1200 new characters to the game. (I know that there is more than this, but the last hundreds is just spirits of all the fighters so I was not counting them.)

Summary: 

The World of Light story mode for Smash Ultimate takes place when a new villain, Galeem, eliminates all the fighters and brainwashes them into serving its needs - basically turning them into his puppets. This all goes along to its plans except for the precious start child, Kirby, Mr. Sakurai’s beloved creation (well other then the entire Smash series). Kirby is then faced to *read in Morgan Freeman's voice* save the entire world! Then after beating Galeem for the first time a new villian emerges from the darkness, Dharkon, who seems to hold an impressive grudge again Galeem. The two seem to be in a constant battle with the recovered fighters only watching from the sidelines as their battle takes place. 

For the multiplayer section of the game the format of it has changed drastically from Smash 3 and Smash 4 respectively Smash 3Ds and Smash Wii U. The rule section is now a mandatory passage into the game and the stage selection now comes before the character selection. The rules also can not be changed once you select them unless you back out all the from the match to change them. Multiple other features have also been implemented such as smashdown and a tournament mode. Spirits can also be used in multiplayer battle as well between friends.

Review:

I have to give some kudos (Shinichi AUGGGG!!! Sorry little fangirl episode. I apologize for the interruption.) to the story line overall. The plot was something unique and unexpected, and oddly entertaining considering the sheer lack of cutscenes and lore to go along with it. Being able to come up with a interesting storyline like it has after the Subspace Emissary is quite impressive. When watching through the Smash Directs waiting for the game to release I absolutely knew that there was going to be a new story mode to go along with this game, but I was unsure on what exactly it was going to be because the Subspace Emissary seems almost perfect. The World of Light appears to be a battle of good and evil where one can not appear without the other, yet can not survive without each other. I believe MatPat's description of the lore can be one possible interpretation of the story mode, but I also believe that there are others as well. In creating my review of this integration I did use The Game Theory’s theory for some inspiration and guidance, so I will be drawing off of that as a source. 

Galeem and Dharkon physically seem to represent light and darkness respectively, so it would be obvious that they would be enamines. Then why do they both encapture all of the fighters who are supposed to be on the good side. Why would they both do so. Well the short and simple answer of that is that, as the cut senses show that is not the point. In the aspect of Galeem and Dharakon the fighters are meaningless, they have no value. Going back to the origin of it all, the fighters are supposed to simply represent a child playing with them and bringing them to life. In a matter of light and darkness the person playing or controlling the figure decides on how that they will behave. By the fighters being abducted by Galeem and Dharkon itis a simple change of hands. I mean even Master hand, general of Galeem, and then Crazy Hand, general of Dharkon, can easily represent order and discord. Each are traits of it varios counterparts. We, the player, are simply spectators watching a match between rivals of sorts. Each side has a general, 3 captains, various amounts of sargents (being the abducted characters), and then plentiful amounts of pawns (being the Spirits themselves). This battle we witness between the two is an war between light and darkness. 

The ending of story more is only obtained through defeating both Galeem and Dharkon at the same time. This is the true ending which will set all the spirits free. If only defecting a single one then the other will destroy the world. Each which is called the bad ending. This true ending then meaning that light can not exist without darkness and then darkness can not exist without light. If simply darkness exists then the world will be thrown into chaos and discord while is only light exists then nothing would get done and everything will cease to exist. A balance is needed for harmony to happen. Throughout the final map of the game as spirits were defeated Galeem and Dharkon constantly fought for power to overtake the other. The player, not shown, represent this balancing act. The act of calming and defeating both of the large giants restored order to the world, adn allowed life to continue. Quoting Kingdom Heart, (Its a good game series lay off!) “ The closer you get to the Light, The Greater Your Shadow Becomes.” In order to maintain a balance as light grows the darkness should also grow. As the balancer in the game you are returning balance to the world that was taken out of balance when Galeem first tried to overtake Dharkon by taking all of the fighters into its own ‘hand’, and then when it was taken out by the balancer the shift in powers went over to Dharkon who’s power rose. Think of it as a see-saw, as one side rises the other sinks, but if you then release the side the rose it will then sink and the other side will rise.

(Wow! That was a lot of writing just on the lore, lol. I congratulate all who actually read through that.)

The playthrough of the story mode itself I was sadly a bit disappointed int. With The Subspace Emissary you could play multiplayer and there was even some playforming that characters could travers. I was sad when both of those features were taken out of the game. The graphics of the story mode itself was impressive though. I could see the real dedication to each aspect of the map, and how they tried to fit each portal area to a certain theme to a game. Like there was a Monster Hunter area, Bowser's Castle, Legend of Zelda, and a Castlevania. The avatar of every single character was impressive as well. I mean creating all of the sprites especially fro this one small thing was no small feat, so that trait I appreciated. I know the big theme for Smash Ultimate is, “Got to go fast” as quoted from the Sonic the Hedgehog series, but sometimes its a little nice to stop and smell the roses. Like in the story mode! I would honestly sacrifice about half of the spirit battles in spirit mode to have some fun platform levels of some sort. Even if it was just put in as minigames I would be happy. Like Hit the Target or Find the Exit from melee, or maybe even just reskining some of the platform levels from Subspace with a HD addition to it and throwing it into World of Light. Any of that would be amazing! I believe that added a lot of fun to the overall story mode itself, and it was one of the main reasons that made me actually want to replay and beat the story mode multiple times because it was something a bit different from the rest of the game. It made the story mode very unique, and it made it stand out.

As for the multiple player section there was a number of new additions and fighting formats that actually improved the overall experience and gameplay of it, but there was also some aspect that made me frustrated at. My favorite aspects by far was the implications of the smash down and tournament sections. The have finally added a tournament section, and that makes me soooooo happy! I no longer have to make homemade tournament charts!!! T^T The shashdown is also very helpful to play with people who are really only good with one person, and that one person can pretty much wipe you out no matter what you do. It adds a lot of fairness to the game which succeeds in making it a lot more fun for the people out there who are good at a lot of characters, but not really good at just one (I actually sit in between these people. I have 3 mains who I like to fight as a lot, but I am decent at pretty much everyone else in the game. Well except for Mr. Game and Watch and Olimar. My mains by the way are: Mewtwo, Ganondorf, and Lucas.)

My main drawback with the multiplayer section of the game is actually how the rule selection is set up. For tradition Smash mode you have to go through the process of first choosing your rules for the match, picking you stage, and then choosing you fighter. This is path you always have to go down when entering in the smash mode after exiting the game. if you finish a match it just takes you back to the stage selection section. The problem exists when you finish a match, but you realize you made a mistake in the rule creation. In order to fix it you first have to back all the way out of the match, then open up the select rules tab that you specifically created for this match set, then edit what you want, finally save it, and then back out after selecting it and proceeding onto the rest of the match. Now this would not be as much as a problem if you were able to set a rule tab as default, so you could enterally skip that one step and continue onto the match. Also, if you were allowed to edit the rules while inside the match selecting process such as when you are choosing you stage because you forgot to turn off the stage morph or stage hazards or you start selecting you character and realize that the match is still on time and not on stock. If these features were implemented then the rule section would only need to be opened when it was needed to create a new set of rules. I am not saying that I dislike the aspect of creating a custom set of rules to use for match because I think that is a very nice user friendly option for the players, but I do think that it need a little more work to be better. This is a new feature that just needs a few bugs worked out, and the it would be perfect.

For the fighters and the battles themselves, I have stated previously that the theme of Smash Ultimate is, “Gotta Go Fast,” so that is what everything is. The speed of all the characters have improved - making all the heavy characters now usable competitively - as well as the final smashes. This speed change has really made the game itself into the fastest, most adgil, and adaptive are the best. So it is no surprise that Sonic, Mewtwo, and Inkling has all made it into the top tiers for being if not the fastest, most adgil, and adaptive characters in the game respectively. The final smashes on most of the characters have changed in one way or another, some for the better and some for the worse.  There is now a feature also to do diagonal air doges as well which helps out considerable for air movement and combat. Also the idea of perfect shielding has been improved, so it grants the player a chance attack the opponent when their defences are down a bit. There is not really much else to say in this area.

I am not going to touch on the classic mode much or the all-star mode much because they are pretty much the same as the previous game. Classic mode you fight about 6 battles with the last being either Master Hand or both Master Hand and Crazy hand at varying levels of difficulty. All-star mode is continuous matches with short breaks in between which goes on until you fight and defect every single smash fighter. I will only say this, which I have already stated before, I missed the small platforming levels inside Classic mode. It added something different to the overall flow which was a nice change of pace and mixed up the game some. 

Overall Smash Ultimate is an amazing game that has blown not only mine but everyone elses socks off. From the vast amount of characters included to the thoughtful and in depth storyline, and all of the new features that it includes. I sincerely believe that Mr. Sakurai has outdone himself, and is in need of a well needed vacation. He has done an amazing job at trying his best at making every fan and every series present in this game feel loved. With all of that though I will be honored to give Super Smash Bros Ultimate an astounding score of a 9/10. Splitting each part up into its various categories the World of Light Story mode receives a not too shabby 8.5/10. This is because of the lack of platforming areas (tear) and for the lack of official lore or true story line which has left a lot of fans trying to actually deceivers what it means, me included (given my own interruption above). Then with the multiplayer section receiving an impressive 9.5/10. Only docking off points for the wonky rules section which could possibly be fixed in a later update. 

Once again thank you very much for reading my update. If you actually succeeded in reading all of it. I apologize it was a bit long this time around, but there was a lot of content I had to cover.  If you have any further comments or additions I may have missed please put them in the comments below or simply PM me. Again, I will state this every time, if anyone has any requests for anything they wish for me to review in the future please once again post them in the comments below or PM,

Finally, if anyone is interested you are welcome to join my discord server where we will talking about various anime, manga, video games, and other sources of media. I have posted the link below! :)

 https://discord.gg/tvBR8Jn

[zydrateacademy]

Review: Dauntless (Open Beta)

I denote that it is in fact, in it’s open beta but I’ve played betas before and typically games don’t change too much upon release. There are a few changes in the works including fixing up the rather wacky UI and some weapon buffs. I’ll elaborate more on that shortly.

Dauntless is, as many are calling, a Monster Hunter clone. This is not an insult, in the same way many ARPG’s are called Diablo clones or passable MMO’s sometimes get called WoW clones. They’re simply the codifiers of a very specific kind of game, and there is no shame in riding their coattails to a degree. I have little to no experience with the Monster Hunter franchise except for a brief stint on the PSP during a road trip with a friend. I have little memory of it, but now I have what I guesstimate to be 40 to 50 hours and have reached the current endgame. Whatever the lore is, it’s minimal. You start as a recruit (naturally) on some magically inclined airship (as they do) which crashes on a floating island where you face a single behemoth called the Gnasher. What follows is several minutes of frantic slashing as the game does very little to tell you how to play. I didn’t learn that “TAB” brought up a combo menu until well after the fact, which tells you how to use the varied weapons in the game.

It’s not necessarily as complicated as it might look. Weapons don’t typically have more than three or four combos and there’s typically one or two go-to’s that you find works for you and just stick with. With the sword, I find that three basic attacks and a dodge is enough to get some hits in and then avoid the very inevitable spin attack most behemoths do. Each weapon functions a bit differently. Chain blades are noteworthy of being part-destroyers which is vital if you want to get any crafting done. However as of the beta they are considered underpowered and not often seen in higher tiers of play. Swords are solid all around and hammers are built for staggering enemies. Axes hit hard but are slow. War Pikes are mostly support, creating wounds that let the team do extra damage to certain parts. Most weapons are capable of staggering or interrupting a behemoth which is important, and it can only happen during certain windows in their attack patterns. I’d love to say every behemoth is unique but some are very easily seen to be reskins of others. The Pangar and Hellion for example are basically just Gnashers with extra armor plating and maybe a slightly different face. However they all have a very similar tail slam attack and they’ll even roll around the same way. Drask, Nayzaga, and Charrogg all look like they share the same skeleton but still manage to function a little differently in terms of how they fight. That’s fair enough, but on a visual standpoint I wish they stood out more.

The gameplay is largely comprised of “hunts”. There are different forms of hunts but it’s all the same thing but with varied rewards depending on what you are trying to focus on. Are you suffering from a plant shortage to craft helpful potions? Go on an Expedition, where you’ll get a small boost of materials regardless if you pick them out of the ground yourself or not. You go on a Patrol when you need a boost in weapon and armor upgrades, and you can go on a direct Pursuit if you need a behemoth’s very specific part (for me it’s almost always those damn tails) but at the cost of lower resource gains. Chiefly, the gameplay is mostly just learning behemoth attack patterns and dodging the right ones or ideally, all of them. The idea is that behemoths will have certain attacks based around how they’re being hit. For example, the Pangar will kick its feet around if two or more players are slicing at its heels. If some people are hitting its tail, it will do a tail slap on the ground. Most behemoth’s attacks are random but they do follow a pattern and learning them is highly necessary, as they all have openings to exploit. I say that, with the utmost frustration when trying to fight the Kharabak, a flying insectoid type thing with openings that only last a couple seconds at a time.

He and his higher level “Razorwing” variant are easily my least favorite bosses. Attacks fast, moves quickly, rarely lands, and when he does I’m usually a mile away from all the running and strafing away from his high damage attacks. Yet his equipment boosts my stamina functionalities as well as part damage. I will not enjoy farming them. For those wondering; No, this is not an MMO. Every hunt is instanced for parties of one to four. The city will have a handful of players but they are not typically very chatty. Despite however many thousands of players actively playing right now, I never see more than a dozen running around the hub town (of which there’s only one, and could benefit from being just a touch smaller so the crafting vendors are closer together). Some may be concerned about the level of grind that may be involved and I can tell you, it’s not too bad. The game gives you quests to progress through each island and a lot of the earlier behemoths you may only face a time or two. Really, the most important part of the game is understanding the behemoths is the most vital part of playing the game well and there are a couple of learning curves that spike more than others. There’s the Hellion in the fourth island that you discover who acts as a test for players and I can tell you from personal experience, queuing with random players rarely ended in a success. Beyond a couple of walls, you only need to hunt the same behemoth a handful of times in order to get a full set of armor. This changes in the fifth island (or “tier” as they’re called) when you need more and more parts and upgrade tokens in order to maximize your equipment. In the endgame the upgrades needed become a bit more elaborate, so you will be facing the same behemoths a couple dozen times but you’ll very likely fetch some upgrades regardless.

Those upgrades come in the form of perks that can be added and removed, and consistently acquired through Slayer, Weaponmaster, and Alchemist ranks which function as the game’s “daily” system, always giving you something to focus on. In theory, you will never not progress. In practice, I find that randomly queuing with strangers in the higher tiers of play rarely ends in success, and you get nothing when you fail a hunt. Like many party-based multiplayer games, you’ll have a higher chance at progressing if you join a discord community, guild, or just gather your friends for behemoth ass-kicking. There are micro-transactions but good news, it’s all cosmetic. Well, most of it. You can actually purchase resource packs that give you chunks of useful potions which might help smooth out certain hunts. I bought one that had a whole fifteen “Bulwark” potions which reduce incoming damage by 45% for three whole hits, not even in a time window. Just three hits, whenever they may occur. I find this incredibly useful and they’re vital for keeping me in the fight.  However not one of those supply packs will give you any boost to your armor and weapon and you won’t have any technical edge otherwise, just pure utility. 

The game, as it stands, is very playable. There’s some difficulty spikes here and there, and plenty left to do once you hit the gear ceiling. It’s still an open beta so I’m not sure what their content plan is. Obviously I expect more behemoths in the future but I do hope they add some in-between tiers and not just an ever increasing top ceiling of powerfully annoying behemoths that some of the player base may never see. I hope they add more content in the downtime of hunts. I feel it could use some minor monsters to kill while looking for the behemoth, to charge up weapon meters for their special attacks and maybe gain some extra resource types to fuel some potion-like utilities. There’s much more for them to do and I’ll be happy to review it again when the time comes, where I may reiterate some of these points but time will tell if the experience improves overall. 

Happy hunting, slayers!

[tiny-princess-catherine]

a tiny princess’ big list of favorite games

It’s been about three years since I sat down and considered my top 10 favorite games, and I was curious to see how my tastes had changed. I love making lists, and this was really  fun! I ended up writing a whole fuckload of words about them so I’ll put them beneath a read more; feel free to read over them if you like!

Doom II is, for my money, the greatest videogame ever made. No other game has captured the purity of gameplay and design that was managed back in 1994; it’s nearly perfect in every way. Monster and weapon design encourage you to be moving constantly, never hiding behind cover but weaving between attacks. Every monster is threatening in its own way -- the deadliest enemy is the shotgun guy, one of the earliest and weakest you’ll see. Every weapon has its use in various situations (except the pistol, unfortunately). The level design was, by and large, better than the previous game, but even if you don’t like those levels, the game is infinitely moddable and tens of thousands of maps have been released over the last twenty-four years. I’ve sunk thousands and thousands of hours into the game and it absolutely never gets old. Doom II is perfection.

Chrono Trigger is a game that needs no introduction or explanation; anyone who has played JRPGs has assuredly played Chrono Trigger, and it’s much-lauded for very good reason. The characters are varied and interesting, the battle mechanics utilizing combos and positioning are compelling and encourage you to swap around characters in your party to find out what all the double and triple techs are. The plot is a masterful swerve from ‘extremely standard’ to ‘what the fuck is happening’, the prime antagonists extremely memorable (Magus, Queen Zeal, and Lavos are all much more complex than they seem at first glance, and the game fleshes them all out phenomenally), and the soundtrack puts pretty much every other one to shame. The game goes from comedy to pathos with ease, and it’s exactly long enough to finish right when it’s about to wear out its welcome. It’s a real, real good game, y’all.

Nearly the pinnacle of JRPGs, Suikoden II possesses, in my experience, by far the single most compelling story in a video game, and I think it’s largely in part because it keeps itself relatively simple. A story of war, of friends and family torn apart, allegiances shifting and loss and friendship; it never reaches further than it should nor ruins immersion for even a moment. It has some of the worst, saddest, most heartwrenching bad ends I’ve ever seen, and it was those that lingered in my mind far more than the ‘good ends’. The gameplay is fluid and a solid refinement of turn-based RPGs of the era, the spritework is beyond compare for each and every one of its 108 recruitable characters and the background art is perfect. The only real flaws it has is a bit of filler -- did we really need the Neclord subplot in Tinto? -- but it’s so minor as to not detract at all from the overall package.

I was six years old when Myst came out in 1993: my grandfather bought a new computer and Myst was a brand-new pack-in with the CD-ROM drive. From the moment I loaded it up, I was utterly blown away with the most gorgeously rendered, fully realized world I had ever seen in a videogame; keep in mind I was playing shit like SMB3 at the time, so Myst was a whole new world. It showed me that games could be so much more than what the NES could produce, it could be true worlds for me to explore. It helped me to learn how to read, hours spent in the library poring over the books there; it taught me my adoration for exploring empty, lonely places, and ultimately it was Myst that inspired me to legally change my name. Few games have had such a powerful impact on me, and it’s for that reason that I've forever loved the game (and the series that followed!) I cried and cried in simple joy when I learned about the recent kickstarter to rerelease all of the games; few things have managed to worm their way into my heart the way this humble little game did.

A much more recent addition, but no less important to me: Persona 5 was the first game in the series (including all of SMT) that I ever played, and the degree to which the fictionalized Tokyo is a world fully realized utterly blew me away. For dozens of hours, I lived with characters I came to love, I forged bonds and fought for justice, I agonized over which romantic overtures to accept (I went with Futaba my first time). The calendar and social link system is phenomenally cool to me, the battle system is fluid and intuitive, the Palaces had fun design (mostly; some exceptions exist). So deeply was I ensconced in that world that I ended up writing two hundred thousand words (so far) of fanfiction about it, as a result of one of the game’s few major flaws: for a game that seemed so willing to have the protagonist be such a blank slate and a cipher for the player, it saddened me immensely to be forced into one gender. Between that and a few other examples of somewhat socially regressive design (the gay panic scene, the treatment of Ann in some ways) I can’t say the game is perfect, but it’s awfully close to that for me.

I caught sight of the gigantic Earthbound box in a Blockbuster when I was a kid, and my curiosity demanded I rent it and see why it needed such a massive box - the answer, of course, was that it came with its own incredible strategy guide. Earthbound was my very first JRPG and welcomed me into a new kind of game I had never imagined. Fighting with numbers instead of jumping on an enemy's head! Equipment! Stats! A long, involved story that guided me through hugely diverse locations! Humor! Earthbound is a game that doesn't entirely hold up these days, gameplay-wise; there's way too much combat and there's not a lot to it, but its tone and writing remain absolutely top-notch, not to mention its soundtrack. Based on pure quality alone, Earthbound wouldn't be in my top 10, but its impact on my life is nearly more than any other game.

Guild Wars was a game before its time. It was perceived by many as a cheaper alternative to WoW, which had come out six months prior, but the comparisons between the games were never really fair. Guild Wars wasn't an MMO and didn't pretend to be one; it was a much cozier affair with many fewer people involved, the combat areas were all instanced to your party alone, and it had a massive emphasis on solo play with its NPC party member system. The story wasn't anything to write home about, the combat was effectively the same hotbar-based combat as WoW, and the level design was okay at best. All of that said, the character customization was incredible, forcing you to select only eight skills at any given time, so that along with the rest of your party, it was more like building a deck in a card game than standard class-based party composition. Its crossclassing was deep and helped to even further differentiate players from another, its mission system was memorable and fun, but what mostly makes Guild Wars stand out for me was the PvP content. Normally, PvP is something I have no love for, but the 8v8 guild battles were incredibly exciting, fast-paced, and frenetic like nothing else I've seen before or since. I fell in love with it right away and met a community of friends that lasted me for years, and ended up having another enormous impact on my life. I've spent four thousand hours in the game, enough to do literally every scrap of content offered, and still I go back every now and then to play through a mission; its systems just work so, so well. And this isn't even getting into a lot of the stuff that made it unique, like its super-customizable NPC party members, its incredible enemy AI, or the sheer uniqueness of the Mesmer class; there is a lot about the game that I just adore.

The RPG in which you don't have to kill anyone! Everyone knows about Undertale, so I'm sure I don't have to say too much about it. It took normal JRPG tropes and turned them on their head, its sense of humor and overall writing are absolutely outstanding, its characters memorable and varied, and the bullet hell gameplay a fun take on RPG combat. It marries its mechanics and plot more tightly than any other game I've ever played, its soundtrack is incredible, and its emotional moments took me all over the place; just thinking about the hug at the end of the game just makes me tear up. Past all the memes that spawned from it, Undertale is just an extremely solid game that more than lives up to the hype. Please play Undertale.

FFXIV, unlike Guild Wars, is a game that almost seems *after* its time. It came out in a post-WoW world where many MMOs had already played their hand and died, its combat isn't incredibly different from WoW and doesn't seem to have much to set it apart, especially considering it dares to ask a subscription. And yet, it has flourished to become one of the only subscription-based games remaining and has turned an incredible profit for its developers. This is all, I believe, because the game is a giant, well-crafted love letter to the whole series. Enemies, locations, plot mechanics are all deftly drawn from prior games and woven into a tapestry that clearly shows a great deal of love and affection for the previous entries. The story is phenomenal - not just for an MMO, but for games in general. The character animations, armor appearances, and glamour system make it one of the best dress up games available, and it helps that the combat is fun, the bosses true spectacle, and the developers remain wholly committed to the game, constantly releasing content every few months. It keeps a special place in my heart, again, for the people that I surrounded myself with while playing and the extremely fond memories I have of all of the things we did together ingame. FFXIV is incredible and more than just another MMO.

The last spot on my list was hotly contested, but I ended up having little choice but to give it to this bizarre, unknown little rhythm game. Thumper is incredibly unlike any other rhythm game you've ever played, however; even after I beat it I couldn't remember a single song, because it wasn't really about the music, which consisted primarily of pounding drums, howling screeches, and relentless, rising dread. The developers refer to it as 'rhythm violence', and that's an extremely apropos genre; the game is dark, heavy, and endlessly captivating. There's really no describing it, but it's an experience unlike any other. It's apparently available on VR, but I couldn't imagine playing it there - I'd have a heart attack.