Originally designed for the Sharp X68000 as somewhat of a Ys clone, the SNES port of Lagoon ditches the bump combat in favor of just mapping each swing to one button press. The game isn't rebalanced in any capacity to accomodate for this, and the sword you carry hardly extends out of your own hitbox at all, and so this change fucks up the entire rhythm and balance of everything going on to a completely absurd degree. It becomes insanely difficult and excruciating in this "fake" kind of way where it shouldn't be as bad as it is. The entire game is only about 5-6 hours long, but you will not get used to your wet noodle (according to Terri) of a sword even as it draws to a close. It is fucking inconsolable. It's too mediocre in its other suits to make up for the gameplay failures.

I would replay it before replaying Drakkhen, though. Somehow, it's not the worst of the console's launch year RPGs. No idea why you'd play either over Final Fantasy IV, though.

I have never been into Pokémon, I was the person who was mystified by other people's obsession with it as a kid, as everyone around me grew up playing Pokémon Crystal and Emerald, I simply watched. I got into RPGs through games like Dragon Quest VIII on the Playstation 2 so by the time I tried to play them later in life I wasn't impressed, Pokémon's brand of monster collecting RPGs wasn't for me, I thought, and I'd rather be playing Dragon Quest Monsters or SMT if I wanted a fix of that.

Not that long ago I gave Pokémon Red a shot and I found it interesting from a historical perspective, as it's a game that heavily borrows from older RPGs in terms of structure, you can see games like DQ3 influencing how it was designed, but I found it that, mearly interesting, as a game it was just fine. I felt similar with Emerald when I played it last year, it's a fine game that I didn't actually connect with on a personal level any deeper than "it's kinda fun in the moment to moment".

This game, Pokémon Violet, is the first time I have actually connected with a game on this franchise on any level deeper than that. Not only is the gameplay much improved but I actually like the cast of characters and exploration that the more open formula gives it. The game is buggy but I didn't really care aside from the occasional funny visual glitch. I was invested and I was having fun, meeting all these characters and building my team, which is something I seldom engaged with in previous games, I just didn't feel the games were compelling enough to bother. I know some older fans may disagree but since I've never liked Pokemon mostly 1 vs 1 combat system (I thought it was something we better left as an archaic remnant in games like Dragon Quest 1) I think sharing experience with your entire team is a really good move that the newer games do, it incentivizes me to actually use all my Pokémon more, and since I can't have a "in battle party" like in most RPGs, I see my entire team as my "active party" and as such all of them gaining experince feels fair to me.

Anyway. I don't actually have that much to say about it, it was more of a catalogue of my personal story with these games than a review. Good game. I love Penny.