A much more welcoming experience than Ecco’s original outing, Tides of Time does away with most of the obtuseness and repetition of the original and is a much more well-rounded game for it. Unfortunately, I couldn’t help but feel rather indifferent about the overarching narrative in this one, it’s hard to top traveling 50 million years into the past with a time machine sitting in the heart of Atlantis in pursuit of the alien civilization that abducted your clan. Tides of Time will instead gently remind you at times that something truly horrible is on the horizon… but it never quite manifests in a meaningful way during the events of the game, giving you a little taste during the conclusion before leaving as quickly as it showed up.

I’m happy to say the gameplay can stand on it’s own, keeping Ecco’s base mechanics and controls from the first game and destroying whatever previous expectations you had of how high a dolphin can fly. The progression of this game is much more straightforward, focusing more on moment-to-moment platforming and exploration than it does escort missions, while also mixing it up occasionally with transformations and “3D” rail-shooter levels that echo better games but have the decency to not outstay their welcome. When its at its most ambitious Tides of Time starts to fall into the same traps of its predecessor, forcing the player to rely on dumb luck rather than presenting situations a player could reasonably get through on their first try. These difficulty spikes are less pronounced than anything in Ecco 1, but it’s unfortunate that these moments of triumph often leave the player feeling more frustrated than satisfied when the rest of Tides of Time flows so well.

I would highly recommend playing the original Genesis/Mega Drive version, the soundtrack is superb through and through; the foreboding, menacing tone of the title theme stands unparalleled among its 4th gen peers, it gives me chills just thinking about it! The game is no slouch visually either, 94’ saw Sonic the Hedgehog facelifted into a gremlin with tude' while Ecco quietly became sleeker and sexier, his sprites redone and the backdrops much more colorful and vibrant than his last gig. Easily beaten in an afternoon, I recommend this game wholeheartedly to fans of Sega and the Mega Drive with at least a mild tolerance for pain, suffering, and existential horror… that should be most of you.

"Ecco, if we breathe air, why do we live beneath the waves?"

Before you read on, I'd like you to listen to the music I linked to in that quote. There's a chance it might not hook you, but that track in particular used to mesmerize me when I was little. It kind of perplexes me how beautiful it is, especially coming off something like the GEMS driver, which is often derided for sounding like well....flatulence. Nevertheless, to this day I still think it's one of nicest pieces of music I've heard out of the 16-bit generation. The entire opening sequence still captivates me, from watching Ecco and his pod swim through their home to the close up of Ecco himself at the title screen, it always entices me to watch the entire thing and stay there for a while before I begin the game proper.

Like many I too also enjoyed the start of the game where I just swam around with my pod and got to talk to my fellow dolphins. Not many people like the controls, but I think they're okay. Maybe I'm just in denial and have grown accustomed to them throughout the years, but Ecco's ability to torpedo through the water never ceases to put a smile on my face. It definitely kept me entertained as a kid for the longest time despite never actually progressing from that starting area for a while. I was just enjoying my time as a dolphin, doing tricks and chatting with my pod! Hanging out with my friend Ecco, what more could I ask for? Of course, at some point though...I jumped too high.

WHAM!!

The biggest jumpscare that absolutely shattered me when I was little. Make no mistake, that entire sequence shellshocked me for a very very long time. Not just the sudden disturbance and loud noises, but also the fact that I was now all alone in the unforgiving ocean. No friends here, not even the passerby fish for me to munch on. It was just me...alone...

What awaited me beyond these waters? Regardless, this is when I talk about something else that always astonished me about Ecco's game, which was...just how mean it was. As a young one, I stood absolutely no chance against this beast. Ecco's game...did not want me to beat it. The puzzle solutions made no sense, and checkpoints did not exist. Oh, you died? I guess that's too bad, you'll need to start the sequence over again. Super R-Type back on the SNES trained me on the ways of never messing up, but that game was a walk in the park compared to Ecco, it was straight-forward at the very least. By the way, do you by chance like auto-scrollers?

Welcome to the machine, welcome to hell. Stay a while, I hope you're comfortable...

Suffice to say, even as an adult Ecco's game is nothing but a stone wall of tedium and frustration. In a way it perfectly represents the ocean itself. It's beautiful in every way you can imagine, the ocean's serenity is captured perfectly and the screen even darkens as you descend lower to the depths of the bay, where it then displays the sheer terror and danger of the abyss itself with it's outrageous difficulty, of which I'm sure it would be just as hard to survive there as it is to survive in this game. I marvel at this game every single time I boot it up, as it is a true work of art, a hard to play work of art, but a work of art nonetheless.

Why do I bother playing this game then if it so terrible? To see my friend Ecco, that is why. I still enjoy spending time with him and his pod in the starting screen, jumping for joy in the bay until the game decides to jumpscare me and begin the adventure. An adventure of hardship and dread. Will I ever beat it legitimately? Who's to say? Maybe one day I'll finally get through it, but for now...

Goodbye Ecco, see you my friend....until next time......

Stop me if you've heard this one before, Batman is dead. Its been done better before, twice in recent memory: Batman RIP/reborn and Batman: Endgame/Superheavy. Both of these featured major character shake ups which explored the different aspects of Batman's archetypical character. In Gotham Knights Batman's death causes the "batfam" to look vaguely indifferent sometimes, while mostly being inoffensive quipsters. Being a modern Batman property Gotham Knights forsakes any interest in the world of Gotham: its strange architecture, its mysterious villains, and its storied history- a glaring omission considering that the Court is the secret Gotham historical society. Instead you just get a nice filed down version of the four main characters who speak in robotic platitudes while fighting interchangeable brutes.

This sort of laziness permeates the whole game, if there is one silver lining here is that its made me appricate Batman Arkham Knight even more. Its easy to assume that kind of power fantasy game is easy to make since the focus is primarily on "batman factor" rather then any difficulty itself, but Gotham Knights manages to take all of Arkham Knight's mechanics and make them worse.

The RPG systems make your character feel pointlessly weak- "Sorry Batgirl this random freak thug is x levels higher then you so you do chip damage to it compared to the one you fought 5 minutes ago", the focus on contextual animations makes everything feel slow and unresponsive, the stealth arenas have been greatly simplified, you have no gadgets for puzzle solving or combat, the driving is anemic, and roof top traversal is dull without the Arkham games signature glide. Even things as incidental as the idle grunt dialog are worse having been turned from a fun way to add not only jokes, but references, lore, and plot depth in the city traversal downtime. Have now just been turned into a very unfunny joke dispenser in the small amount of time spent canvassing combat arenas. There is a near infinite number of tiny flaws which build up to make a game that is just slow and tiring, while Arkham Knight was fast and snappy.

By the time you get out of the tutorial the game basically reveals its hand, to unlock the actual linear in-door plot levels you will have grind through a bunch of cut-n-paste filler (save the hostages, save the armored car, protect the cops ect) until the game lets you progress, and this is on top of all the randomly generated crimes you can fight in order to grind and stay leveled up for story missions. At this point I have no interest in playing an endlessly generated skinner box of bare minimum functional gameplay. Off to the recycle bin you go.

no doubt in my mind: roadwarden will be the 2022 sleeper hit for some time to come. a powerful reminder of not only the economy that's afforded by interactive fiction but the power it has to sustain, to enthrall. the ambition here is felt in the narrative complexities time and time again, in all that you can do for the worst case scenarios amidst best intentions. a lot of built in forgiveness in the save system but the amount of open narrative here, you'll find yourself committing to decisions regardless of outcome. that's everything for me, personally -- when the story continues after setback, after a loss. when you're afforded a holistic experience. and i get the impression that when i revisit this world a second time, i'll be afforded that rich rpg experience novelty. going through it all again with different contexts leading to different words said, familiar doors closing for those yet opened. such a rich experience to be left with this sense of total possibility. beyond this game itself, i can't wait to see what this leads to further, through iteration or inspiration.

this shits kinda goated ngl!
this game starts off WAY more rocky than King's Field 1, you will absolutely feel ten times more confused throughout because not only is the world far more expansive and interconnected, there's also a lot more secrets to find, the game is two or three times as long, and the walkthroughs and online maps are way shittier than they are for King's Field 1.
but once you get used to it and push further into the game, you'll learn to love this game for its new features and changed design style compared to King's Field 1. the run button is a GODSEND, Crystal Flasks are way better than one-time-use consumable recovery items and allow for MP recovery, and NPCs are actual characters with individual stories, relationships, and sometimes even small questlines.
the technical aspects of this game are also very intriguing, the (mostly) seamless world with hidden loading zones leads to a very enjoyable and smooth experience without waiting for loading screens, and the graphical presentation is significantly more impressive across the board compared to KF 1, although it does come at the cost of somewhat poor performance. the game often hangs around the 15 fps mark despite aiming for a locked 30 fps, and the game logic speed is tired to framerate. this makes things pretty choppy often, but you'll get used to it sooner than you'd think. the game runs too fast to play properly at its intended 30 fps anyways, which is probably somewhat intentional as a lot of backtracking through areas without enemies is sped up significantly thanks to the increased speed. enemies and complex geometric objects or large rooms tend to tank the FPS, which are when you most need to be paying attention regardless.
Beyond the technical issues and rocky beginning, the game proves to be really enjoyable throughout!
you'll probably finish after playing for ~20 hours, so it's a pretty beefy game for its type. if you have a week of afternoons to spend playing this game and don't mind backtracking and using a walkthrough being basically mandatory, i'd say you should play this. Try KF 1 first, though, as it's a good 'taste test' to see if you like this kind of game before jumping fully into the much longer and more convoluted King's Field II.

final note: the story and characters in this game are really interesting, there's some intriguing and well-written character dialogue and stuff throughout, but i'm not sure if the English release's translation is any good, since i played it in Japanese. if at all possible, try playing the game in Japanese, since game translations of this era don't always have the best reputations.

have fun if you decide to play!

I think I used to buy into the idea of the auteur a bit too much. A few years ago I would have exclusively sung Miyazaki's praises for the high quality of the Souls games, but over the years as the collaborative nature of art became more apparent to me I started thinking, just because I hadn't heard of FromSoftware prior to Demon's Souls doesn't mean that one guy is responsible for the quality of the work they put out these days. Like, there's a lot of people working on those games, y'know?

It got to a point where I was talking to someone about how we should refer to the Souls games, with me arguing for the term 'Souls' over 'Soulsborne', which I maintain was always a silly and short-sighted name. They said, "I just call them FromSoftware games". I pointed out that From had many more games to which they replied "yeah, but no one cares about those". And it's like, fuck man. That sucks. Yet there I was, with nothing to stand on, having played all 7 Souls games extensively yet never touching anything else FromSoftware had ever produced.

So here we are, King's Field, the actual original Japanese-only game made playable through fan-translation. Both the beginning of the series with the most widley-touted influence on Souls and the first FromSoftware game ever. How did I find it?

By most normative standards, its bad. It's a slow, clunky, obtuse piece of shit. However, each of those elements represents a unity of vision that I did not expect in an early-3D game from a first-time developer in 1994. I see why this series is regarded as the predecessor to Souls; the game is defined by cryptic storytelling, exploration into deep depths, and the slow, high-commitment combat that defines the Souls games, particularly the first three. The notion that every characteristic we associate with Souls is Miyazaki's style is not true. It's the house style. Shit, the Moonlight Greatsword is even here.

What differentiates the first King's Field from Souls is both a lack of refinement regarding gameplay and level design, and the Souls games' commitment to giving thematic weight to its gameplay elements. While the "tough but fair" mantra might be a bit oversold regarding Souls, there's certainly an argument. King's Field, on the other hand, is a clunky motherfucker that will kill you and laugh about it. You're not avoiding damage or deaths here, let's be clear. More significant is the second difference; there is no narrative or commentary strongly underlining the gameplay here. Contrast this to Dark Souls, where the concept of Hollowing and the cycle of fire gives thematic and philosophical weight to the gameplay.

Cool game, fascinating history. However, I think it's probably a touch too obtuse for its own good. I needed an annotated map for this game, as I have too much important stuff going on right now to spend hours at a time not understanding where I am, or where I'm going, or what that NPC is trying to convey, etc. However, if I'd played this in 1994 with more time on my hands, I like to think I'd have been a little bit enchanted. Such a cool, flawed, atmospheric little game. I can't wait to see what other FromSoftware titles I've missed out on.