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.

"Erm... 'war is bad' is kinda cliche... and uhhh if they like peace... why are they fighting??? 🤓"

Yeah whatever poindexter, if the beginning of mission 27 didn't at least make you smile, then your joyless, jaded ass better stick to Drakengard and keep that mouth shut. Out here we EMBRACE the cheesiness.

With that being said, the scripted nature of the game leads to missions that feel just a little too long, and in the event that you die, replaying them can feel like pulling teeth.

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.

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.

One must temper their expectations when they play a (remake of a) 35-year-old experimental handheld JRPG, but the novelty of playing the first SaGa game AND playing a Wonderswan game was just too enticing. Rest assured that the idea of playing this is a lot more fun than actually playing it, however.

Battles are repetitive, and are always either extremely easy or completely bullshit, no inbetween. Attempting any semblance of party composition or strategy is foolish, since humans are super expensive to power up early, mutant stats and abilities are completely random, and monsters suck until the end of the game. The world is a bit of a chore to explore, especially as random encounters are frequent and lose most of their value near the end of the game. My favorite part is the City world, where you are constantly accosted by an invincible random encounter boss that can one shot your party members, with a high failure rate for escaping. I don't appreciate how bosses near the end of the game started gaining immunity to every magic element either.

Thankfully it's a short game, clocking in at 6 hours. It's also a little charming, and seeing early forms of systems that would become series staples and expand and evolve is neat. Plus you can instantly kill God with a chainsaw.

I LOVE SAME TURN REINFORCEMENTS!
I LOVE FATIGUE!
I LOVE GETTING CAPTURED/DESTROYED BY UNITS IN FOG OF WAR!
I LOVE LOSING HALF MY SHIT IN THE PRISON CHAPTER!
I LOVE SUPRISE REINFORCEMENT BALLISTAS!
I LOVE 6 CON LIFIS THAT CANT STEAL A GODDAMN THING!
I LOVE CAPTURING EVERYTHING BECAUSE I HAVE NO FUCKING MONEY!
I LOVE BEING SLEPT/SILENCED FOR THE REST OF THE CHAPTER FROM THE OTHER SIDE OF THE MAP!
I LOVE RECRUITING XAVIER!
I LOVE SAME TURN REINFORCEMENTS!
I LOVE SAIAS AND HIS TEN (10) LEADERSHIP STARS!
I DEFINITELY DIDNT WARPSKIP CH22!
I LOVE SAME TURN REINFORCEMENTS!
I LOVE THRACIA 776!

Great game though. I got a fucking E rank. Sorry for not rescuing you Eyvel. I was NOT gonna play that chapter.

BEST OF 1 FORMAT ✅
MAXX C UNBANNED ✅
CARD POOL BEHIND TCG AND OCG ✅
STINGY F2P PROGRESSION ✅
TOO MANY ANIMATIONS ✅
MUST BE MASTER DUEL!

Please for the love of God if you want to play yugioh online, use a simulator like YGO Omega. You don't have to live like this.