SNES

Reviewmancing Saga – Romancing SaGa 2: Revenge of the Seven

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I often feel that things I have missed out on are better than things I have experienced. I’ll occasionally read a breathless article about a game I haven’t heard of that does something unique, and I want to experience it. Trying to stay on top of modern games coming out is difficult on its own, to say nothing of entire backlogs’ worth of games that we never saw even back when the United States wasn’t a dystopia. This odd form of nostalgia-FOMO is often unwarranted. I’ll occasionally pick up one of these games to find it isn’t particularly compelling compared to what we got, but the feeling remains. Romancing SaGa 2, though, is worth the play, particularly in its remake form.

The Romancing SaGa series, originally on SNES, has been fully accessible since its remasters about a decade ago, but they are dense games at best, convoluted at the worst.. My experience with the Romancing SaGa 2 remaster was initially positive, but it is a difficult game to understand, it has very frequent combat, and it requires quite a bit of fiddling with each generational change (which can happen at least a dozen times). →  The post still burns.

Old Disappointments Revisited: JRR Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, Volume 1 (SNES)

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Over the past decade or so, I’ve tried to play every SNES RPG I can find, even if I don’t beat them all. I played most of them at some point via rentals, and I have fond memories of many of them (even Lagoon). Over the years, I have built my collection to include as many as I can reasonably justify (ex: I might pick up Brain Lord, but I’m probably not getting Dragon View). Even the most mediocre of these games has had some redeeming quality, but I’m here today to tell you about one that really doesn’t. J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings, Volume 1, which should probably have been named “Volume 1 of 1” in retrospect, really doesn’t have that much going for it.

The good news is that it looks good enough. The bad news is that half the environment is half as navigable as it appears, and the other half is half riddled with boring fetch quests.
 →  Post of Tsushima

eBay + Japanese Games = Financial Ruin

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I was recently banned from a forum I frequently frequent for a matter I’d rather not discuss in detail (suffice to say playing devil’s advocate on matters of morality can be quite dangerous). After looking through a handful of other gaming forums and being disappointed because the big ones are full of stupid people and the good ones have new posts at a rate of one every three days, I found myself on eBay.

It had been months since I’d won any auctions and years since my brief and costly bidding war addiction. After randomly skimming through pages of games I found the links to my saved sellers. This was a mistake because it led me to yamatoku, purveyor of extremely cheap Japanese retro games. Winning six of his auctions in two weeks and reading through hundreds of listings, I was struck with how many Japanese titles I have never even heard of.

For those curious, here are a handful of the games I hadn’t heard of –
Death Bringer, Gdleen, Regret of Wind, Soldnerschild, and Dark Kingdom. →  This post are sick.

Review – Chrono Trigger

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Chrono Trigger is an embarrassment for the gaming industry. Straight up embarrassment. It’s embarrassing that a game that is over ten years old can be so well made as to put many current games to shame. It’s like the Roman Empire, without all of the strange pedophiliac tendencies but all of the impressive works of art.

Chrono Trigger is the latest in a series of Square-Enix remakes designed to milk old titles for every last dollar and yen. Like Dragon Quest, Chrono Trigger is a game that I somehow missed (though I did play the under appreciated Chrono Cross at some point).

Chrono Trigger is, simply put, a pleasure to play. The casual gaming experience (by which I mean, the fights, going from A to B, etc) completely trumps a game like Dragon Quest. The characters have diverse skill sets and magic, individual elemental affinities, and attacks that allow them to team up in pairs or trios depending on who is in your party. →  Harvest Moon: A Wonderful Post

Short RPGs for fun and profit

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Almost a month ago, Persona 3: FES was released. It not only contains the definitive version of my favorite RPG, but it has an extra “epilogue” chapter as well.

This is a cause for much rejoicing. I started playing it immediately, and so far I’d say I would pay the $30 just for the improved first game. But herein lies the problem, and the crux of this article: It has been a month and I am still playing it. Not only that, I’m still in the first section; the remake.

I love RPGs. I love playing lots of RPGs. But I also like having time for other, trivial things, like working, sleeping, eating, and the occasional shower. Most games in the genre are long; sometimes the length necessary for fleshing out the story, but more often it is just padding. Over the past couple of years alone, I’ve completed more than a few RPGs that clocked in at 60 or more hours. →  You may say I’m a gamer, but I’m not the only one

Random Old Game – Drakkhen

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There are few games that can inspire a sense of true exploration – a feeling of awe at how large or detailed they are. Fewer still are the games that can bring out that feeling even after you’ve beaten them. For some reason, despite being only a so-so game in nearly every other respect, Drakkhen (of a few systems, though most notably the SNES) still holds uncounted mysteries in my mind.

Seems fair.

The most likely source of this awe is simply that the game is so abominably random. I never owned the instruction book, and the introduction only gives vagaries as to the plot (blah blah, 4 elements, 2 poles of power). Fact is, you create a party and start in the middle of the Earth area with little direction. You’re told that you have to collect 8 Tears of Power, and that you should check at the nearby castle first. Oh, the introductory information tells you a decent amount about the game’s system. →  Destroy All Articles! 2

Playing catch up: Chrono Trigger

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I finally finished Chrono Trigger, and only 12 years late. Not too bad. Much like Super Mario World, this is another classic that deserves the accolades it has received. I only hope Link to the Past and Final Fantasy 4 are Chrono Trigger good. Though because of the game’s quality characterization, I am now slightly depressed.

It has been pretty uncommon in my life, but now and then a game comes along that affects me like a great movie or novel does. Now that there is no more to see, what happens to the characters? Crono, whose name is a typo because of the apparent five character limit in the game, was the standard silent protagonist and I don’t give a damn about him. But Frog, Magus, Lucca and Robo I do care about. The game’s ending was almost like these new friends’ deaths. Maybe it’s better this way since I’m still coping with the guilt of not saving Lucca’s mothers legs and trying to justify recruiting Magus even though it damned Frog to live and die in his current form. →  Lamers so loved the world that they gave their only article, so that everyone who believes in reading won’t perish but will have eternal lives.