Reviews

Triangle Strategy is Better than Fire Emblem: Three Houses

by

For no apparent reason, I have pitted (often unrelated) things against each other since I was a child. Well, probably for deeply disturbing psychological reasons. Sega had to be universally better than Nintendo, chocolate better than vanilla, coffee better than tea, and orange juice with pulp truer to nature than that pulp-free orange water drink. No Country for Old Men is a better movie than There Will Be Blood, and Shenmue is just superior to Yakuza. In a weird variant of this psychosis, I once told a friend that Meshuggah should be a melodic metal band like the other bands from Sweden and not whatever rhythm based, incorrect metal they were. Lines must be drawn and sides must be taken, damn it.

It is in this spirit I bring you a comparison between Fire Emblem: Three Houses and Triangle Strategy. Both are SRPGs (tactical RPGs according to Chris, who has chosen different battles to fight than I) on the Switch. Both tell grand stories and are something of a throwback (one of them deliberately, the other because it kind of just looks shitty). →  Tokyo Xtreme Reader: Drift 2

Review – Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising

by
Currently playing: Tyranny

Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising is a “companion game” to the core game Eiyuden Chronicle: Hundred Heroes, which is still in development. Hundred Heroes is a Kickstarter headlined by Yoshitaka Murayama (story) and Junko Kawano (art), veterans of the original Suikoden. The Kickstarter is clearly designed to invoke the feel of the Suikoden series. Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising serves as a kind of teaser for the game world as well as a standalone, relatively casual, action RPG. As a teaser for a future game, it works reasonably well. Isolated from that context, I’m not sure it’s a great action RPG, although I did enjoy it.

As Jay observed in a comment on a prior post, Eiyuden Chronicle: Rising is similar to Ys III (not just because many of the environments line up – that’s just a happy coincidence). It’s a simple action RPG focused around exploration and resource collection. Although you get a few extra character mechanics over time, and you unlock additional party members, the pace and structure of the game incentivize you to play as main character CJ much of the time. →  Final Fantasy Mystic Post

White Flag – Giving up on Saga Scarlet Grace and Monster Train

by

I recently came to the conclusion that only chumps play every game until completion. And so here is the first entry in what will likely be a long, if not entertaining, series of posts on games I gave up on. I got lucky in that both are very good games that just couldn’t hold my attention until the credits rolled.

Saga Scarlet Grace: Ambitions

Scarlet Grace is the best Saga game I have played, which is similar to being the smartest Qanon believer. The series has managed to improve in stature amongst people who care about long running JRPGs, no doubt assisted by Jeremy Parish’s constant Kawazu fawning. I am happy the games exist because having something weird and different is preferable to not having it, but the games do not really come together from what I have experienced. Yet in a twist I did not see coming, Scarlet Grace is actually pretty good.

The game is like a nice gift wrapped in the obituary section of a newspaper – combat is a lot of fun, but the plot, characters, and questing is all off putting. →  The post still burns.

On the Rejection of Writing Formal Game Reviews

by
Currently playing: Grim Fandango

Being a magnanimous business owner (of videolamer Corporate Consolidated Holdings LLC), I allowed Editor in Chief Pat to take a week off for vacation with his family on the condition he return with a Panzer Dragoon Saga write-up. This means that there is no one here to make my writing less bad or to talk me out of posting short, pointless, half-formed thoughts. So enjoy this one while you can.

In this site’s first run from 2005-2011ish I reviewed some games. Being in my 20s, I didn’t put much thought into my qualifications – I had a keyboard, a poorly reasoned and loud opinion, and an internet. All the pieces were there for insightful critique, as far as I could tell. The game industry was also smaller in those days and it was possible for a single person to comprehend huge chunks of context, history, game design lineage, developer and studio formation and attrition, and so on. So I had the confidence of youth and actually knew a pretty good amount about video games and the industry. →  I regret learning to read.

Review of Samus Returns for the 3DS

by
Currently playing: Earthbound Beginnings

Samus Returns is a game that wants to be something, but can’t. After all, it is a remake of an existing game, Metroid 2: Return of Samus. On top of that, not only is the original game a beloved classic, but it’s also very old, and runs on a piece of hardware that was outdated even when it was brand new.

All of these factors work to dictate what a game like Samus Returns can and cannot do. By the rules of Modern Videogame Design, the following elements of 1991’s Return of Samus are unacceptable:

  • Its stark, mostly-black backgrounds.
  • It’s creepy chiptune music, despite the fact that it helps to create a certain mood that is absolutely perfect for the game’s setting.
  • The fact that the planet is mysteriously drained of deadly acid as you kill Metroids.
  • The relative lack of upgrades compared to other, more advanced Metroid games.
  • The general lack of story elements.

All of these things get “fixed” by Samus Returns, and the result is an experience that feels all too predictable:

  • The backgrounds are now filled with stuff: ancient ruins, (still working) mining equipment, robotic defense systems.
 →  Illiterates hate her! Click to read this one weird trick.

Switch Mario Party Games Compared by a Dad Who Would Rather Play Something Else

by
Currently playing: King's Bounty (Genesis)

I’ve played Mario Party games off and on in the past. Sometimes I even enjoyed them. When you’re with a group of friends or family, and the down-time between turns and minigames doesn’t matter as much, they’re a great background game.

As a parent to a child who loves playing them, I have officially played enough Mario Party. The good news, for you, is that I have played enough Mario Party on the Switch to go in-depth on which one you should play, when you would really rather be playing anything else.

Super Mario Party

Although it’s a few years old now, there are several points in Super Mario Party’s favor. It has a large variety of gameplay modes – including 2v2 and 4-player co-operative modes, in case your gameplay companion is really insistent about winning. All of the board game modes are slightly more strategic – though obviously nowhere near Civilization VI – thanks to the differentiation of characters by their custom dice blocks. →  Ikari Warriors 2: Postery Read

Review – Ys IX: Monstrum Nox

by

So I just beat Ys IX. It was… better than I was expecting, but not as good as it could be. It takes nearly every feature and system from Ys VIII – features and systems, mind you, that were new and specifically built to work in that game’s very particular setting – and brings them whole hog into this new game, with a very different setting. Suffice to say that it doesn’t really work.

For example, in Ys VIII it made sense to earn rewards for mapping out the island, since it was literally uncharted. But it seems insane to be rewarded for mapping out a centuries old city (under the guise of “finding the places that tourists would be most interested in”).

Similarly, it made sense to have a crafting system on an island with no shops, and a bartering system that allows you to refine low grade crafting materials by essentially trading for them. But Ys IX has so many different shops – with so much good gear – that forging your own weapons usually isn’t worth it (meanwhile, you refine items by interacting with a magic lantern. →  Do a barrel read!

Affordable GOG Game Recommendations Part 2

by
Currently playing: Don't Starve Together

More GOG recommendations, continued from Part 1 here.

More Strategy games

Knights & Merchants: The Peasants’ Rebellion – If you’re into sims, this sure is a sim. When I had the time to play the original release (which had no fast-forward) I reviewed it. I find myself mostly agreeing with my earlier self; it’s an interesting game if you’re into the idea of building a supply chain from scratch, sort of like a peaceful, less dangerous cousin of Dwarf Fortress. I’d probably recommend the more recent Banished over this one, if only for the clunky combat K&M requires you to engage in – but if you want to build a medieval ant farm and then leverage it to crush your enemies, this might be your game.

Seven Kingdoms 2 – This is a deep, relatively slow-paced RTS that was largely ignored at release. I’ve never actually met another real-life person that played this, so if you claim to have played it I will assume that you are a robot but have good taste in games so you’re cool. →  PaReader the Reader

Affordable GOG Game Recommendations Part 1

by

Since videolamer has begun the process of following in Buzzfeed’s esteemed footsteps, it’s only natural that we reach for the low-hanging fruit of picking out games we played and telling you to play them. GOG (www.gog.com), briefly branded as Good Old Games, is stacked with tons of games created by incredibly talented developers years ago, most of whom will never see any of the money you spend because the rights have been sold and resold dozens of times over. But at least if you spend money on these 20-year-old games, it will assuage the slight twinge of guilt you might have felt if you pirated them.

Many of these games are more than 20 years old. Some run in DOS/DOSBox, but many have fan patches available. Check the corresponding GOG forum first – there is typically a stickied topic for mods/patches. All of these games are $9.99 or under on GOG, and many go on sale frequently.

Role-playing games

Dark Sun: Shattered Lands – I personally have been meaning to get back to this game for years, having not played it for at least 15. →  How many games must a gamer play before you call him a gamer?

Last Minute Nintendo 3DS and Wii U Virtual Console Game Recommendations

by

With eShop purchasing for the Wii U and 3DS set to end next year, and the majority of releases for the Wii U coming out in the 2012-2016 timeframe, it seems appropriate to bring up the immense loss of availability that we’ll see once the eShop is closed.

Digital-only releases are already only available to those brave few that bought a Wii U. There are fewer systems and games available on the Wii U VC than the original Wii VC (RIP), so even what is still available until next year is a stripped-down version of what once was. But many of the games available on Wii U VC are still unavailable to owners of the Switch via the Switch Online apps – so once the shop closes for new purchases, the selection will be further stripped down. Given the licensing and coordination required for many of the games on Wii U VC, many are unlikely to surface on the Switch’s various retro portals.

Consider the SNES alone – secondary sales for titles such as the original Harvest Moon fetch hundreds of dollars for just a cart, and the original’s minimalist style and quick gameplay are still a metric by which the modern sequels are judged. Mega →  Gotta get down on Friday.