this game gets really sold short just for not being as self serious as ff4 and not as grand as the series gets from 6 onward but it's a really spectacular game even outside of its stellar mechanics and practically outdoes ff4 in every way. definitely leans a bit more on comic relief than some people might like but there's some really great moments here and the cast is really strong, especially with galuf and bartz, and exdeath is undercut by fans for how interesting of an antagonist he is. neo exdeath is by far the coolest final boss design in this series to me other than safe sephiroth, and even if he's pretty stock standard on a surface level i think he deserves more credit as a villain. easily my favorite of the snes trilogy of final fantasy games and a game i can't recommend enough to fans of jrpgs

started to see the vision once I realized the grab (your only verb outside of jumping) gives you i-frames when you bounce off of whatever you're grabbing... pretty cool wrinkle on an otherwise plain set of mechanics. a lot of the game is carried by the dense mix of geometric terrain and organic outgrowths a la sonic; it's no surprise that much of this team got rolled into sonic team for NiGHTS into dreams the year after. said team really demonstrates their technical aptitude as well, with some stunning overlapping parallax on stages such as planet automaton and swirling line scrolling in the background of the itamor lunch fight. ristar emotes fluidly, with his walking scowl morphing into a grin and twirl upon defeating hard enemies. occasionally he'll even show a penchant for childlike play, such as in this snowball fight setpiece.

a first impression yields something a little dry on the gameplay front, with single-hit enemies and slow movement compounding into something more leisurely than interesting. thankfully around the halfway point the design veers into level-unique puzzles and setpieces. the one that stuck out to me the most was a series of areas in planet 4 involving babysitting this radio(?) item across various hazards in order to give to various birds who want them blocking your way. presages a klonoa style of puzzles built from manipulating objects in the environment rather than working with pre-defined aspects of the player's toolkit. near the end the game veers into some execution challenges as well, with mixed results. ristar's grab actually has a lot more going on to meets the eye: not only does he have the aforementioned i-frames, but he also gains a bit of height off his bounce, and he can hold onto some interactables indefinitely, swinging back and forth using his arms as a tether. the former gets used for a couple climbing challenges jumping between walls and swinging poles, which makes for some pleasant execution trials in the midst of the level-specific stuff. the latter never gets expanded on quite as much, probably because ristar maintains no momentum from his swinging when he releases due to bouncing back off of the fulcrum he's attached to, so actually manipulating the technique to achieve certain bounce angles is a bit unintuitive.

bosses are neat across the board; while somewhat cycle-based, the designers trickle a couple small points for attacking them before they're obviously wide-open. some of these (I'm thinking of specifically the bird boss on planet 4 and its array of non-linear projectiles) encourage the i-frame abuse in interesting ways. by the end of the game, however, it seems like they expect you to exploit it pretty openly to get anywhere, and by that point the bosses end up becoming grab spam. definitely makes the fights fly by quicker, but I find myself preferring the more cautious approach I took during the earlier bosses, although I would imagine upon a replay some of the same techniques apply.

I've always felt that these open-world sandbox games that get praised endlessly nowadays were borderline nihilistic. If you can do anything, then nothing matters and nothing actually stands out. Nothing has weight and the game doesn't have anything to say.
The idea that more options within the framework of a game mean that it's "better" at depicting freedom is so silly and childish to me, since it will always be constructed within the limited frameworks of video games anyway. It's a childish understanding of what expression is.
For example, the recently released Baldurs Gate 3 bored me out of my mind, since you could literally do anything you wanted, and nothing actually matters. Which is supposed to represent its message about freedom or something?

And yet, all games that say "you can do anything you want" are ultimately self-contradictory. As video games are confined by their hardware etc., so are humans confined within the metaphysics of reality. They can only make their choices within the frameworks of reality.

Therefore, games should just try to present a creative framework to challenge the player with, and it's alright if that's heavily minimalized or constricted. After all, a game should do what's best to tell its message, instead of doing everything, and therefore, doing nothing.

This game fucks so hard. Notorious for some, I went in really expecting to hate it especially on my first playthrough with Mega Man but this really blew me out of the water with how good it is. It is challenging as hell, and definitely feels like a step up on difficulty from 7 and 8 before it, but it really hits that Mega Man sweet spot of feeling frustrating but still beatable. For most of the runtime anyway. The SNES Mega Man games really have a habit of being incredibly great right up until the final bossfights. This gauntlet isn't really as bad as Wily Machine 7 if I think about them, but I think I hated them a little more in the moment due to the sheer quantity of challenging bosses this endgame has. Two playable characters who both can get through the story with different strengths and weaknesses really gets a lot of points for me though. I haven't given 10 a fair shake as each character, but in my humble opinion right now this is the best multi-character setup in the classic series. One of the best, despite what people will tell you!

el b3313 es mejor castillo pero el final de mario 64 -> felicidad pura, majia potajia, peak

a veces pienso que en cuanto a sensibilidad estos de nintendo fueron prácticamente insuperables en los 80s y 90s dentro de este medio. cosas tan pequeñitas como ayudar o jugar con los npcs en tus viajes para que luego los créditos tal cual álbum de fotos te recuerden a los amigos que encontraste en el camino, y terminar con la despedida, de mario, la princesa, los kinopio (y por consiguiente el juego, como un amigo) despidiéndose alzando los brazos como si de alguien partiendo en un viaje lejano en tren o barco se tratase mientras la cámara lentamente se aleja al cielo

"can you hear the princess calling?"

perdón por el post webon después de ponerme a shorar con el final del juego por décima vez, para mañana recapacito

Fire Emblem 2 is a totally different game than any other FE, and has an incredible amount of unrealized ambition that is fascinating to play through. In many ways it's like they just created a standard JRPG first and overlayed FE characters and rules on top of it.

Sometimes a game thoroughly engrosses you and pushes you to a limit, and the last several nights I've been staying up late, addicted to pushing through as far as I could. At 300% speed and with most maps taking less than 10 minutes, I was on the climb and constantly optimizing my strategy. The game benefits by fast forwarding in long sittings, and I think if I took my time with it more I would not have as good of a time.

The game is repetitive and the maps aren't very thoughtfully designed (most are open battlefields), but I felt like it forced me to really understand my team's strengths and weaknesses. Even though accuracy/dodge felt punishing at times, the lack of vulneraries and inventory, surprising difficulty spikes, and not being able to see where you're deploying units, this game really spoke to me.

I love the magic system of this game, every spell costs your healers and sages EXP, but it also costs the enemies EXP so sometimes they will dig their own grave for you. Getting to customize your team felt really good, and every time you gain a promotion it feels significant. The stat growths in general are pretty small though, and I did have some early game stars fall behind later on. Having the option to return to a shrine or cave to grind did help, as there were a few times I was close to promotion with a key player and decided to just stick around until they earned it.

The game's story is great, and I love just hanging out in the different towns. Some of the storylines, such as Zeke and Tatiana said a lot very succinctly. As with any fire emblem game, much of the storytelling happens on a personal level with your units. I lost a few members of my team in dramatic fashion. Mathilda started great but couldn't keep up, and fell to the zombie dragon swarm. Atlus was ambushed by summons and I lost him in act 4. Even up to the last battle, I lost my dependable scout Robin in a very heartbreaking but attempt to move quickly to the final boss.

But I also had some characters really surprise me. My sniper Python was pretty useless most of the game until promoting to Bow Knight, and saved us in countless scraps. I was having a hard time feeding Est enough EXP to promote her, but once I did, the whitewing sisters made Celica's route a snap. Jennie and May also ruled. While Alm was stuck in the volcano, Clair almost solo killed 20 dragons.

Once Tatiana gained Fortify, the most broken healing spell in the game, I had mathematically won by teaming her with Silk. From there I just enjoyed melting away any enemies that got in my way like butter. The final showdown was truly fantastic. This game gave me a high in a way that I haven't felt in a long time.