I come back to the game properly after all these years and now 40 boxing is a cinch. Took me a couple hours of attentive grinding every day for a week straight in the past, and now it took me a few hours of pressing one button. God bless powercreep.

Granblue IP has been winning too hard lately for me to ignore, between Relink standing tall after 7 years of tumultuous development, and Rising commanding the accursed FGC's respect. Eased myself back into it during the 10th (that's right, 10 years) anniversary festivities, read some dissertations that would make an FF11 player tremble to get myself caught up, and then boom, it was like I never left. Hit 1b honors of my first GW back, gave a gold ring to Sakura Kinomoto, and I still have every version of Narmaya. There is great peace to be found in doing the same thing over and over and over again.

Time to physically and emotionally prepare myself for the next Guild Wars. This one will be a doozy.

The guy below DEFINITELY got stuck on mission 4.

Here's a little Japanese-only 3D action-adventure game by Fromsoft based off the Spriggan manga. The intro is sick so naturally, as the kino whisperer that I am, I had to check it out. It's nothing special; it's faster than King's Field but slower than Armored Core, there's rudimentary melee and gun combat, and you eventually get armor that can boost your stats or speed. It feels clunky at times, since melee range is so short, inputs don't feel consistent, and gun combat and lock-on is very finicky, but at least the soundtrack goes insane, and the level design is a strong suit (as usual with Fromsoft).

It's certainly a worthy experience, especially for real Fromsoft fans that want to explore the nicher aspects of the company's history. And if you do play it, PLEASE make sure you level up the speed suit before the penultimate mission.

Ambulating baked goods guy was right. Puzzle Bobble with rhythm game elements and Touhou remixes. Genius idea. The single player is really fun. ZUNTATA went crazy on their Necrofantasia mix. Playing it with your friends is the best part, especially if you beat them Parsec'ing Ryujinx with 10 frames of input lag and stick drift. They should make one with Armored Core tracks next. I do wish there was some way to sort by original tracks, like based off the original song titles or even the original games.

After being astounded by the sheer SOUL that Ys I and II and Xanadu Next exuded, the Ribose gene inside me awakened and I craved more Falcom. One HG101 article later and I learn about Sorcerian Original, the 2000 remake an 80s 2D ARPG originally released on the PC-88, and the fifth installment in Falcom's seminal Dragon Slayer series. I saw a few screenshots, listened to few tracks, felt the pure SOUL course through my veins, and I knew I had to at least try it out. With the power of the Google translate app, no Japanese characters were gonna stop me.

The preparation phase of the game works just like Wizardry; you can go into town to create and organize a party of four with different sexes and races, buy equipment, appraise items and get magic, and train to raise stats or learn new skills. The magic system in particular is relatively fleshed out, as you can enchant equipment with "planets" to increase certain stats and allow you to use some of the surprisingly large amount of spells in the game. There's over a 100 you can mix and match, although you'll probably settle on a few mid-game, as the different offensive magic is by and large redundant, and experimenting is expensive and time-consuming.

The actual gameplay, on the other hand, controls kinda like Zelda II. You run and jump around exploring the dungeon, fighting enemies, and helping NPCs. Combat feels extremely haphazard; because enemy behavior is so erratic, damage is low, and your melee characters' ranges are extremely short, evasive manuevers are useless and fighting mobs (and bosses) quickly devolves into just running into them and staying on their ass while you spam everything. Dungeon exploration feels more deliberate, with branching paths, puzzles, secrets, loot, and backtracking. A TON of backtracking. EVERY quest had you going back and forth for whatever mandatory reason. It didn't bother me much, especially since you move so quickly, but it can be annoying since the game can get pretty obtuse. It's REALLY bad in some quests, like the murder mystery on the boat, which was made especially painful by the seemingly random triggers to progress.

While the assessment so far might seem pretty negative, I really did have fun with this game. Outside of the great, memorable soundtrack, Sorcerian excels at leveraging your imagination. The idea is similar to that of the earlier Wizardry or the later Etrian Odyssey; provide the player with a basic quest storyline and the tools to make a party, and let their imaginations run wild and fill the blanks. The simple fetch quest of the first mission can quickly establish archetypes and characterization for your blank slate party. Characters even age after quests and training, and can become middle and old-aged, and even die, leaving behind a successor, further encouraging players to write their own personal stories. The game even comes with a little handbook that fleshes out the backstory for quests and describes items and enemies, and a "Book of Magic" that describes what each spell does and how to make them. Makes me feel like an adventurer, reading notes and doing research before I embark on quests.

At the end of the day, although it's rudimentary and rough around the edges, I've never played a game before that so purely served as a vehicle for your own creativity. There really is great value in exploring Falcom's (and in turn, JRPGs') roots, and playing an untranslated late 90s Japanese Windows game feels so nostalgic. There's even demos for the future games Lord Monarch and Brandish VT on the disc. Hopefully one day they remake all of the expansion pack missions in this style, or at least release them in English.

I've been waiting on this game for quite a while. A Mega Man X fangame with Touhou characters? Sounded right up my alley. Honestly, it's quite good!

First off, don't let the name of the game fool you. Outside of the "8 stages in any order, followed by 4 castle stages" progression structure and how the game generally plays, many of the main features of the X series aren't really present here. There's only like, three different weapons here: your normal shot and its charged variants, a bomb that, when upgraded, clears bullets around you, and a barrier that takes a few hits for you and costs three bombs. No special weapons from bosses or anything. There aren't as many upgrades to explore for and collect, either. In addition to the one dropped by the boss, every stage has one hidden P item, which are used to buy upgrades in the shop. It's pretty basic; besides the obligatory health and charge time upgrades, you also have upgrades that make your bomb more useful, allow you to aim your shots, strengthen you when you're low on HP, etc. It's neat stuff, but nothing very exciting.

Although the hallmarks of the X series may come off as half-baked in this game, I didn't really mind too much; I was never THAT big on that stuff. The level and boss design is much more important to me. And I'd say that Udongein X delivers on that front. Each and every level is well-crafted, and maintains a consistent level of quality. Unlike most of the X games, there was never really a point where I was like "wow, I'm not having fun at all!" Even when I was running into the same set of spikes over and over, I could still confidently say that I was enjoying myself. A few of them even have some really fun gimmicks. Seija's stage flipping feature was nice, and Doremy's hori shmup gimmick is so much better than literally every non-traditional stage in the X series, by virtue of actually being an enjoyable experience. I do have one problem with the stages though. The enemy variety. It's not a problem in EVERY stage, to be fair, but I did get a little tired of seeing the same two fairies and kedamas everywhere.

Speaking of enemies, the bosses are a joy to fight. They were a lot closer to Mega Man Zero fights instead of X boss fights, where you have to put a little effort into learning the boss patterns to succeed. The lack of weaknesses or subtanks further prevents any brute-forcing. A few of them can feel just a TAD bit bullshit, like Seija and the final boss' dash attack (yeah, fuck that one move in particular).

All things considered, it's a pretty good game. I keep flip-flopping between 7 and 8 out of ten because while it feels a little barebones and unpolished, the core design is very solid. Don't tell anyone I said this, but it mogs the FUCK out of like, half the X series. I'd definitely recommend it if you're a fan of action platformers and Touhou. Looking forward to Konpaku Zero!

Actually a pretty good game. The controls felt really clunky at first and the beginning was a slog, but the game slowly grows on you with its cast (most notably the Bonnes), the music (especially in town and the later dungeons), and the fun dungeon exploration with all sorts of items and treasure to find. Eventually the game peaks with a super cool final boss and some interesting revelations, and I'm surprised that I actually really want to see where it's going. I'm also amazed at how good this game (a 1997 PS1 game) looks, holding up perfectly even to this day.

There's something relaxing about booting up the game, and jumping into a run without a care in the world. No routing, no resource management, no spellcard practice, just good old-fashioned random dodgin' and shootin'.

That is, until Stage 7 and onwards, where the game slaps you in face and ridicules you for your SHEER naiveté, thinking you could play an entirely random STG without consequences. Some days, you'll barely stumble through Aya/Medicine and Komachi with 2-3 lives intact, and then you'll be greeted by Eiki and her literal TAS evasive abilities. And as she jumps in, out, and WITHIN reality to weave though WALLS of bullets, she'll make sure to send you patterns that would make Remilia blush. Oh, and did I mention that the first round is essentially unwinnable? God help you if you didn't bring an extra life.

Of course, on other days she and the rest of them will be nice and turn off the ultra-instinct after two minutes. Such is the nature of PoFV.

Short and sweet dungeon crawler. The dungeons are a lot of fun to explore, the combat is straightforward yet satisfying, and progression (though not very involved) feels great, and there's lots of weapons and skills (magic especially) to fuck around with. The music manages to both complement the atmosphere of the game, and still be a joy to listen to. Much like the game itself, the story is also pretty simple, but still very engaging nonetheless. Speaking of interesting, I also appreciate the presentation of lore and backstory; unraveling the mysteries of Xanadu through tablets and memoirs was pretty intriguing.

Xanadu Next is a wonderful game, and I'm holding out for a proper sequel someday; Tokyo Xanadu looks like garbage. We need less Persona, and more Vagrant Story.