The unflinching hostility of this game became a more prominent aspect of the experience on this 2nd playthrough that I did on the NES version instead of the SNES one. Dragon Quest 2 is already somewhat notorious for being the most unforgiving game in the series, but the way that this is handled is interesting to give some deeper consideration to. The original Dragon Quest game presented a harsh world that could coldly kill you in mere seconds if you were unprepared, forcing you to carefully make your way through, with each new area being a risk that you could only overcome if you had sufficiently powered up enough. While Dragon Quest 2 is similar to this, it has the one key difference of often feeling as if it doesn’t even want the player to succeed, instead being content with repeatedly beating you to death no matter what you’re doing.

The game leans into this difficulty to effectively reinforce its tone, with its sense of hopelessness pervading each town you visit. The threat against the world feels so much scarier without the underlying optimism and belief that the legendary hero will be able to save the world, everyone is despondent, there are Kings that have hidden themselves away from the shame of being unable to do anything to stand up to Hargon, and any attempt at stopping the evil priest’s reign seem so out of reach. I don’t blame everyone for feeling so hopeless in the face of these threats either, because there’s very little working in favour of the player. While the combat system evolving to give the player a party and have battles move away from pure 1 on 1 encounters would seemingly make things easier, giving way to a wider range of strategies to employ and giving the enemies multiple targets to make it harder for the stunlocking nonsense of DQ1 to happen, the encounters are just, so much scarier for the most part. While your party caps out at 3 members, there can be up to 5 dangerous enemies that jump you at once, usually having spells that will damage your entire party, forcing you to divert a lot of your attack power into healing everyone back up before you can strike again. Adding to the problem is that your other party members completely suck, being extremely frail and mostly specialising in magic in a game that makes most spells entirely obsolete by the endgame. It hits a point where the other 2 members do such little damage that the optimal strategy is genuinely to just attack with your main character, and make the other 2 people block every turn unless they outright are required to cast a spell.

This reaches its peak in the last stretch of the game, where every fibre of the experience’s existence is pushing back against you, containing multiple excruciating dungeons in conjunction with enemies that genuinely just feel unfair, having capabilities that can decide to completely wipe you out even when you’re of extremely high levels, doing things such as putting your entire party to sleep, or having constant critical hits that bypass any defence that you have. This is also my favourite portion of the game however, and the one that works best for the game’s atmosphere, because of course the entire world is feeling hopeless to stop Hargon when this is the resistance he presents when you’re trying to reach him, it’s complete justification for why everyone is so terrified here, because it’s brutal in a way that nothing else in the game even comes close to touching. Everything from the Cave to Rhone to the end is a constant uphill battle that keeps escalating even when you swear that it surely has reached its peak by now, every fight is a close one where death is just one unlucky turn away, and your only safehaven leaves you entirely isolated at the top of a snowy mountain with your only quick way back down being one-way, effectively stranding you in this inhospitable wasteland unless you’re willing to brave the horrors of the cave once again, all culminating in a constant feeling of tension as you’re trying to get to the final castle time and time again, only to be met with a string of 5 bosses that each feel insurmountable on their own.

While the game’s final act spectacularly hits its target to make all the buildup worth it in some weird, twisted way, a large swathe of the rest makes the game as a whole feel pretty insufferable. While the escalating enemy difficulty that constantly pulls out some pretty cheap tricks plays nicely into the world being a more hostile place than ever, it completely kills the pacing of the game when you’re more often grinding than actually exploring in any serious capacity. The world is so big, but there’s no way to properly orient yourself most of the time, leading to situations where sometimes the next step you need to take is locating another town that you’ve barely heard anything about, and this is where the line between interesting player hostility and hostility that negatively impacts the experience comes in. While it’s true that the spirit of adventure can be found in aimless exploration of an unknown land, it feels a bit too obtuse here, there are clear places which you need to go, but you’re expected to get there just by wandering the open seas which feel too big and landmasses which feel hard to fully distinguish, combined with the middle portion of the game flatlining difficulty to the point where almost nothing feels like it can get in your way, further contributing to the confusing boredom. The talisman hunting isn’t great partially because of this, but also because of how most of them are hidden in extremely uninteresting locations that makes collecting them all feel like a huge anticlimax.

Dragon Quest 2 has some interesting ideas and is sometimes able to craft a very compelling atmosphere, but it’s also unfortunately a slog to get through that didn’t quite grasp how to effectively utilise its far greater scope in a way that didn’t feel cumbersome. It’s an ambitious title, but not one that works for me a lot of the time due to how much of it felt as aimless as it did. The NES version especially has these issues due to how you get much fewer resources to work with, along with no map or a way to warp to anywhere other than your last save point, making everything feel that much slower. Nonetheless was still happy to replay this and gain a deeper appreciation for it even if I still don’t really like playing it though, especially since I now have a greater point of reference to what it originally was like.

Origin is an interesting entry in the Ys series, as it drops many qualities that I would generally expect from one. The biggest one is that instead of an adventure, we get a straight-up dungeon crawl exploring the tower from the first game. There are various biomes, although I still ended up missing some variety. The game also has to be completed 2-3 times to get to the canon ending with most of the layouts remaining the same - something I am also not a big fan of. It is quite short as is and I feel like making the paths more unique would have added a lot to the experience. The saving grace here is that the combat is damn solid. Very similar to Felghana, but just a tiny bit tighter. It just feels really good to play. It was nice learning more about the lore of Ys as well and getting to beat different incarnations of all the bosses from the original game was very fun. Not fun enough to be in contention for my favorites in the series, but a damn good game regardless.

Finished my replay of this game on hard mode. There wasn't much of a difference with normal except that obviously you take fewer hits before you go down. Perhaps one day I'll play on realistic but something tells me that will cross the line into being annoying for my playstyle.

If you've followed me for a while or even if you've been in the same room as me for more than 15 minutes you might now that I despise stealth games. I've tried, but I genuinely hate them all. MGS, Thief, Dishonored, even stealth sections in games I like (shenmue, max payne, disaster report 4). I've had bad luck with so called Immersive Sims because of it, as most of them are essentially stealth arpg hybrids like Deus Ex, but so far its basically only the OG (and consortium by virtue of not having stealth) that I mess with. Its not exactly a mystery why, and consider this a plea for other games to follow suit : let me murder everyone. Give me an actual choice between stealth and combat and not just stealth and "you fucked up the stealth you idiot! you might as well reload a save"

Importantly, Deus Ex's combat is deceptively fun to get to grips with. Its so simple but really effective the way that you start out as someone who takes 2 business days to line up a pistol shot to being able to run around with the gep gun blowing people up like nothing. I'm surprised no one else has tried emulating the system, with your RPG esque weapon stats determining how fast your crosshair takes to narrow and become fully accurate, presumably imitating how it takes someone to aim down the sights and prepare to fire a shot.

Now, obviously for this kind of game there has to be push back, and even with a combat build your ass is not going to last if you're trying to play the game like half life, which is precisely why its satisfying to completely forgo stealth and murder everyone through traps, ambushes etc. This playthrough I discovered how useful the non lethal gas grenades are for murder runs (ironically) cause it makes enemies freeze up to rub their eyes, lining up to get headshot with the pistol for maximum murder efficiency.

The playthrough did however highlight Deus Ex's biggest flaw : the save system. Its one of those systems which is simultaneously too annoying and too forgiving. Its annoying because I am forgetful, and losing 15 mins of progress because I forgot to save is just... frustrating. On the other hand, there is basically nothing stopping you from hardcore save scumming every 5 seconds. Ironically, there is nothing more appropriately "mean" for a choice based rpg than an aggressive auto save, as it is, you can basically game most of the big decisions and encounters. Maybe even a save room system like RE4 might be appropriate? Could even lock them behind doors with an interesting weighing up of resources if its worth risking a loss of progress for a lockpick or multitool? Idk now Im playing armchair designer but either way.

Area 51 is still kinda annoying, I didnt use console commands to noclip through it this time but I still fused with Helios because it was the fastest way to complete the level, the later bits of the game are kind of a downgrade from the initial half of the game.

essentially the video game equivalent of that one south park production story about how trey and matt made an entire episode centered around baseball just bc they thought the idea of the cast in baseball uniforms was cute. princess peach as a cowgirl or a pastry chef is rlly rlly cute and it does kind of seem like the devs and artists behind this came up w cute looks for peach before actually designing the levels or their structure,,, and that’s perfectly fine w me lolol. idk obsessed w how often mario games mess w artifice and play in rlly cool ways,, possibly some of the better meta design elements in pop-game philosophy. cool stuff I love tonya harding princess peach,,, apjvff Ass game

personally I think more games should be eight hours long and allow u to wear cowprint dress and also only use one action button idk !!

You have probably heard a gazillion times that this game is my favorite game. For those that know me, you should know that my most favorite game of all time is this one, Terarria. Developed by Andrew "Redigit" Spinks with Re-Logic in May 16th in 2011, Terarria I done hell of a unique sandbox game for it's time period, featuring  a lot of elements of exploration, combat, and even building! Every feature that the game provides us useful in every way, and I believe that this review will be the ultimate guide for those that have asked me, why is Terarria the game of all time.

Well  for starters, I do want to also get into a point that a good amount of players are familiar with: Terraria is just 2d Minecraft. Before you start ge/gathering the pitch forks, I'm an here to say that there's reason for everything, even if its a saying like this one. The reason for this? Terarria came out 2 years after Minecraft's 1.0 release, if I'm getting my information correct. And during both of their early stages, they lacked features that made the games unique. Yeah there were still bosses, NPCs and such within Terraria, but that wasn't enough to change people's comparisons of the game as a whole. BUT as time goes, more features for the two games have been added, and at the time of 1.2.4.1 (last 1.2 update for Terraria) it would've made sense for at least the veterans to stop making the comparisons because there's clearly a difference. Probably much earlier when 1.1 was done, but 1. 2 I believe would be a good solid point.

Another problem that I notice within this game is how new players tackle this game. From my experience, a lot of them would tend too mess around with the game, figuring out the absolute basics on what you can do in pre-hardmode, and using the wiki to guide them whether it comes from the in game guide, or the wiki.gg guide that's lore helpful. Anyway that you look at it, there's nothing wrong with looking up something in this age to figure out what you're supposed to do. For my first consecutive playthroughs on 1.1 mobile, I've done the daunting task of figuring them out myself too even find a flaw in the games system to make me create duplicated of my characters to cheat and such, and was sticking to the same method for a while until I've learned to get over it. Whichever way you learn, the result will be you learning more about the game though it's many ways. Normally, I would've said that cheating would make the experience bad and morally speaking it still applies, but cheating does have it's perks: it makes you feel what the game is going to become in the future, having later game stuff in the progress that you've had, and when it comes to figuring out how you've normally get it, its rather easy to find it out becsuse it'll become one of your most favorite weapons to use against enemies and bosses. I've done this primarily with modded Terarria (Which I  over in this review) due to the different nature's of the other mods.

Coming from a  veteran, there's no bad way to play this game. Using the wiki.gg wiki is your best bet in terms of playing the game as normal as you cam. Or using the Guide works! Whichever way you play it, it'll help with connecting you into the world of the game had to offer, and that's where I talk about it's gameplay. When I usually review games, the gameplay is one of my most important details rhat I discover about, and for Terraria? The gameplay is magnificent in every way. EVEN if pre-hardmode is boring. Wanna know why it's boring at least in my opinion? Because it's the initial test to see if you've done enough of what tbe game has to offer before you move onto hardnode. No matter what difficulty you're playing on, you're going to always see pre-hardmode as the most boring part because barely anything is happening. You don't know what to do. You need help with what to do. Now the Wiki has you covered in terms of figuring out what to do next, along with the in game guide! But yet despite this, a lot of people would never end up past even Skeletron because the game can't seem to have it's essnece be captured by its viewers. It's all of a matter of time and dedication. Becsuse the game can't play by itself. A good way to circumvent this is by playing the game with the person that introduced you to it and purposefully take long within that stages of the game so they can get used to the task of having to deal with said obstacles. They won't like it and they will usually say to hurry up to the better stage of hardnode but you need to make them learn about the importance of pre-hardmode and hard mode once you finally get into that point.

I'm going to take this paragraph to talk about the goblin Invasion one of the many kinds of invasions are going to get into Terraria. pretty much what happened is that a bunch of goblins come from the west or the East at a random point in the game  to come take over your world. They're not that hard of a challenge because most of the enemies just have the usual fighter ai and can be a easily defeated the more they are. If you want to hear more about invasions, just stick to reading more of this thread (even if it's long) because pre hardnode in terms of invasions is honestly not interesting outside of the goblin tinkerer, an important character that is rigged helps you with modifications to your tools to give them upgrades to make them the worst or the best.

Speaking of Hardnode, why don't we get into that stage of the game? Hardnode is one of the well known parts of Terarria, and honestly makes things much more streamlined and linear to the path into defeating the god of this game, the moon lord. But, from just beating tbe Wall of Flesh to either beating your first mech or queen slime is going to be definitely rough. The game will introduce you to hardnode with keeping the gear hay you've have but the core elements of hardnode will make things difficult. Your job at this stage is to take a long gander at your evil biome, to break the altars that lie there in order to gain access to better ores with the molten pickaxe that you've crafted from hell stone. After that, it's a matter of going through another adventure throughout your world because hardnode doesn't being anything extremely new to the table in world generation outside of the hallow, a place that's supposed to be the purifier of both of the evils in the story. Idrk if I can really get more into the story in this review because I am a little fuzzy on what this game provides officially and the developers stating that some of the info are false and just a better way to mess up with some popular things fans theorize about the game. Back to what I was saying though.

While you have your ore collecting, enemies drop other items and materials to further expand the items you're able to craft and collect. Most of them are usually optimal into beating the hardnode bosses whole some of them can be shown as gimmicks just for fun, but it's always best to try them out against the bosses to make you know which item is for next. But primarily, the mech bosses are your main targets: Destroyer, Twins, and Skeletron Prime. If you're a master of the bosses they're based on (Eater of Worlds (no brain variant LOL), eye of however you're supposed to pronounce it, and Skeletron), most of these shouldn't really been an issue. Although It's still best to understand how the boss works by either playing the game or for more specifically finding out  using the wiki to find some tactics. It's much better fighting them and suffering the consequence yourself though be sure you're able to easily develop a strategy to fighting the bosses even if they appear officially in the wiki or as a strat other people say.

Now we are at post mech, and honestly, this part of the game is the mort confusing one of the bunch. This is before Plantera, and there's not much in stock. While you have the Pirate army (another invasion similar to the Goblin invasion talked about previously), you also have an upgraded goblin army, the frost legion, the solar eclipse, and the frost/pumpkin moon. All of these are great ways to becone stronger in Terraria, and it's up for you to figure that out because I'm probably reaching that hidden cap on this site. With that said, I should talk about post Plantera. There's a bunch of opportunities opportunities that you can do at this stage like fighting Golem,to then tackle the pillars and then eventually beating moon lord finishing the game. Or actually doing what this paragraph has originally talked about, fighting the invasions again! At post plantera, most would say that this is the most confusing part of the game because you're so strong that you're able to cheese through most of the bosses with the gear that you've have. With the difficulties it can make things a bit mroe challenging than just running into the bosses, but still if you know what you're doing, you're better off just finishing things off with Golem and the rest.

But after you finish the Moon Lord, what do you have else to do? All I know is that THAT IS NOT ENDING SHIT. you might believe that you have no reason to play this game anymore, but YOU'RE WRONG. you're always free to play this game by yourself again changing certain elements (the class system you can follow within those restrictions Melee, Ranged, Mage, and Summoner), you can play adventure maps (pre constructed maps made by fans that have their own little objectives and such), play the game with more people doing what I've already said, building, cleaning your entire world's evil, whatever you can possibly think of. If you ever wished to play with me, I am almost ALWAYS down to play it. Especially if you're new! But, this unfortunately concludes my ultimate Terarria Review. I will be editing this sometime to include a tldr and to remove this message because it'll be good for those that don't read through these long reviews and only learn information through small increments. I hope you had an AWESOME time reading this, and to reconsider your last playthrough if you didn't touch it much.

Press on, employee.

My friend Larry has been acting a little weird lately. He keeps standing in the corner staring at me, telling me we should play Home Safety Hotline in a voice that's not his, and there's this really horrible smell like rotten eggs that's been filling up my apartment. I don't know if it's related, but Larry - who has taken to crawling on the walls and ceiling - showed me the trailer and explained that it's created by Nick Lives, who previously worked on Hypno Space Outlaw. I was intrigued and then partook in a large feast of cornmeal that had been curiously laid out on the dining room table, as the voices in the walls demanded.

Home Safety Hotline sits the player down with a bestiary of common home hazards ranging from bees to Boggarts, house flies to Dorcha, which the player must refer to in order to properly diagnose the problems of callers who are currently in various states of duress. True to the real-world experience of working in a call center, the loop of taking a call and finding a solution can be a bit rote, and much of the challenge is borne from callers providing inaccurate or conflicting pieces of information. On some level, it almost feels like a Loveline simulator. Lot of calls about kids getting eaten tonight... Must be a full moon.

Caller: It... It... It stole me...! It stole me!! I'm not me anymore, I'm... it took me! I can't see myself anymore, I'm gone! Help me!! Help me get b--

Adam: Alright, I'm putting her on hold. Sick of her already... Drew, how many times do we get calls like this and the answer is always carpenter ants?

Drew: All the time.

Adam: Helen? Get yourself some Raid, babydoll.

Those expecting the heavy puzzle solving and obtuseness of Hypno Space Outlaw might then be a little disappointed with how straight-forward Hotline is, but it's really more a vehicle for some very imaginative and entertaining writing, and the excitement of seeing new entries in the bestiary unlock during each subsequent shift dulls how samey most nights are on a mechanical level. You won't hack into a bunch of weird databases or decipher codes here, and Hotline's central mystery doesn't leave many unanswered questions by the end of its short 3-4 hour run, but that's fine. In fact, after biting into several incredibly long games over the last couple of months, it's preferable.

My only real complaint is that the game only leverages audio queues once, and calls rarely share the same answer, which trivializes the late game through a simple process of elimination. Otherwise, I am so into what the game is going for that it feels like targeted content. It's hard to dig into specifics without spoiling some of the more inventive entries or giving away the plot, but I do appreciate how ranged and varied a lot of Hotline's creatures are. You'll frequently diagnose problems caused by benign beings like toilet Hobbs, which enjoy cleaning your bathroom and can be placated by providing them a single egg at night. You'll also have to deal with more abstract and frightening entities like memory wisps, which essentially give their victims Alzheimer's. No cure for that, you have to let them run their course. What can you say other than "good times?"

Maybe I'm predisposed to whatever kind of weird horror Nick Lives is putting out into the world (Night Signal looks interesting and I'm way into the premise of Please Insert Disc), reviews on here appear more mixed, but I do think this is worth checking out if you want something short, simple, and backed by some really fun writing. I have to go now, the soil is calling me...