I was already aware of the foolishly-implemented leveling system here and I found a patch that supposedly gives double exp, so I fully intended for this review to be like “this is why you patch your roms, folks! Games from before the PSX era were inherently built to be unfair and waste your time, you can actually enjoy them now, who cares if it’s not on original hardware, you don’t have thousands of dollars for that and also one of my friends is now telling me his eyes are frying because of the blue light in his crt monitor, so it isn’t worth it anyway!”
Except I played it, and either the rom patch is straight up lying or this game is indeed still confirmed: #fuckingbullshit. It’s cute and fairly short (or would be without the leveling at least) but there is already hard-to-control attacks, enemies with a lot of hit points and attack patterns that are hard to navigate, and near the end of the game there is… wait for it… an ICE PALACE with a SLIPPERY FLOOR!!!! 😄😄😄👏👏👏👏 A patch that fixes the grinding for this game should make it so that simply playing and facing whatever baddies come to you will adequately level you up so you don’t have to interrupt the pacing and farm for spear-chucking garlic clove exp. As far as I can tell, the only thing the patch does here is just make it even more confusing as to what level you think you’re supposed to be at before you face a boss. For the second-to-last boss you have to collect a secret item that is his supposed weakness, and even after using it on him I was still hitting him with nothing. I don't want to play a game you tell me is patched and still have to deal with Dragon Ball Z-ass dialogue that's like "you, a level 11 sissy boy, you dare to challenge ME, I who have reached the highest echelons of level 15? Come back when you've advanced at least three more levels and your little vampire wrists are a little less limp."
If I had liked this after all my review would have been something like “the good guys eat tomatoes for health and the bad guys use garlic to attack, but maybe if they learn to set aside their difference and work together, I bet they could make a delicious marinara sauce.” Instead, I'm afraid I now have to settle for "hm, I guess I learned that I should really trust Jenny from now on."
Except I played it, and either the rom patch is straight up lying or this game is indeed still confirmed: #fuckingbullshit. It’s cute and fairly short (or would be without the leveling at least) but there is already hard-to-control attacks, enemies with a lot of hit points and attack patterns that are hard to navigate, and near the end of the game there is… wait for it… an ICE PALACE with a SLIPPERY FLOOR!!!! 😄😄😄👏👏👏👏 A patch that fixes the grinding for this game should make it so that simply playing and facing whatever baddies come to you will adequately level you up so you don’t have to interrupt the pacing and farm for spear-chucking garlic clove exp. As far as I can tell, the only thing the patch does here is just make it even more confusing as to what level you think you’re supposed to be at before you face a boss. For the second-to-last boss you have to collect a secret item that is his supposed weakness, and even after using it on him I was still hitting him with nothing. I don't want to play a game you tell me is patched and still have to deal with Dragon Ball Z-ass dialogue that's like "you, a level 11 sissy boy, you dare to challenge ME, I who have reached the highest echelons of level 15? Come back when you've advanced at least three more levels and your little vampire wrists are a little less limp."
If I had liked this after all my review would have been something like “the good guys eat tomatoes for health and the bad guys use garlic to attack, but maybe if they learn to set aside their difference and work together, I bet they could make a delicious marinara sauce.” Instead, I'm afraid I now have to settle for "hm, I guess I learned that I should really trust Jenny from now on."
Uma delícia de Top-down. Recomendadíssimo pra quem curte o estilo.
Não vai se arrepender.
Não vai se arrepender.
At what point do you think a game becomes "too grindy"? It's hard to really say, of course. There's no clear threshold set in stone, and it also seems to depend somewhat on the genre you're dealing with.
Not only that, but the pure subjectivity of it all. I had a friend some years ago who was like really into shit like NES Ghosts 'n Goblins and Battletoads, and he seemed to thoroughly hate it when I complained about "clunkiness" or "grinding" or any similar form of bullshit in any capacity. I silently ditched him over time because he was also a total loser contrarian about everything you could possibly think of, but I'd bet if I talked to him now he probably wouldn't have any issues with this game's grinding.
As for everyone else, I've hypothesized that a decent enough catch-all threshold for Too Much Grinding is when it doubles the entire game's runtime, such as with Phantasy Star II or Spike McFang, today's central focus. I want to like Spike McFang more. It's a very cute action RPG in the style of Link to the Past or Crusader of Centy, it has great character designs and lots of charm and personality, but the amount of content doesn't justify the runtime. It features only about 5 areas or so in a 5-6 hour game, and with grinding removed you could cut it down to 2-3 hours, maybe the same length as Alcahest at most. Sure, it's still single digit hours in the end, not even that long, but it feels like it drags on for an eternity because it obviously should be shorter.
The issue with the grinding in question seems to be the rapidly increasing EXP requirements for a level up combined with a somewhat subpar set of attacks and enemies that typically give around 2 to 35 EXP until the end of the game. For one example, you're expected to be level 5 at the first boss and level 8 or so at the second, but there's only like 15-20 minutes worth of screens between the two, and with one quick rush from point A to point B you might not even be level 6. I don't find it very reasonable to stretch that small section to over an hour of going back and forth.
If you already guessed that the North American rental market plays some part in this, then give yourself a pat on the back. We can't have young kids beating this in one weekend, can we? Let's pad out this game that was already finished and released! It's fake difficulty on an otherwise easy and relaxing experience. Perhaps I just don't get it because I was born after this kind of practice phased out, but it all seems really stupid to me. Every instance of this. So stupid.
It would probably be best to grab a fan translated patch of the JP ROM for this one, lord knows I'll be doing the same if I replay it. Underneath the NA version's changes is a very charming little game. I would have liked to have said more about the game itself, but this first playthrough of mine was clearly more lethargic than I was expecting.
Not only that, but the pure subjectivity of it all. I had a friend some years ago who was like really into shit like NES Ghosts 'n Goblins and Battletoads, and he seemed to thoroughly hate it when I complained about "clunkiness" or "grinding" or any similar form of bullshit in any capacity. I silently ditched him over time because he was also a total loser contrarian about everything you could possibly think of, but I'd bet if I talked to him now he probably wouldn't have any issues with this game's grinding.
As for everyone else, I've hypothesized that a decent enough catch-all threshold for Too Much Grinding is when it doubles the entire game's runtime, such as with Phantasy Star II or Spike McFang, today's central focus. I want to like Spike McFang more. It's a very cute action RPG in the style of Link to the Past or Crusader of Centy, it has great character designs and lots of charm and personality, but the amount of content doesn't justify the runtime. It features only about 5 areas or so in a 5-6 hour game, and with grinding removed you could cut it down to 2-3 hours, maybe the same length as Alcahest at most. Sure, it's still single digit hours in the end, not even that long, but it feels like it drags on for an eternity because it obviously should be shorter.
The issue with the grinding in question seems to be the rapidly increasing EXP requirements for a level up combined with a somewhat subpar set of attacks and enemies that typically give around 2 to 35 EXP until the end of the game. For one example, you're expected to be level 5 at the first boss and level 8 or so at the second, but there's only like 15-20 minutes worth of screens between the two, and with one quick rush from point A to point B you might not even be level 6. I don't find it very reasonable to stretch that small section to over an hour of going back and forth.
If you already guessed that the North American rental market plays some part in this, then give yourself a pat on the back. We can't have young kids beating this in one weekend, can we? Let's pad out this game that was already finished and released! It's fake difficulty on an otherwise easy and relaxing experience. Perhaps I just don't get it because I was born after this kind of practice phased out, but it all seems really stupid to me. Every instance of this. So stupid.
It would probably be best to grab a fan translated patch of the JP ROM for this one, lord knows I'll be doing the same if I replay it. Underneath the NA version's changes is a very charming little game. I would have liked to have said more about the game itself, but this first playthrough of mine was clearly more lethargic than I was expecting.