TheMaxine
The vibe of the the first Nights game is one of the closest things to magic that I'm capable of feeling as an adult. Thanks to its combination of nostalgically polygonal graphics, an easy to get into gameplay loop, a vibrant art style, and an absolutely sublime soundtrack, I feel one with Nights, in the same way that its main protagonists do. Though it may not necessarily be a Christmas-themed game, it elicits that same sense of wonder I had as a kid. Watching those old Christmas DVD's, finding myself escaping to a world where everything feels exactly right, exactly as it should. Free of worries, and full of joy. Life is but a dream, and the night is synomous with beauty, not the risk of getting mugged in an alley.
Admittingly, I just said that the gameplay is easy to get into, but during my first couple attempts, I didn't actually get what Nights wanted out of me. You do combo chains by collecting as many things as possible, okay, I'm with you so far. You can draw circular trails to attract nearby objects, that's pretty cool too. You break open the capsule with enough collectibles gathered, and then you head over to the goal, to proceed with the next segment of the level. But the one thing I couldn't grasp is why did I keep getting D ranks and F ranks for my efforts. In hindsight though, my effort was bare minimum.
Nights is a score-based game, and though it leaves the option of heading straight for the endgoal open to you, unlocking the game's finale requires a series of high scores. To get them, what you really want to do is go AROUND the endgoal instead, and do another loop of the stage, which causes all of the collectibles to respawn. And then you do another loop, and another. And all the while, your time limit continues ticking down, meaning that while each loop is a chance to score additional points and improve your rank, the time you have to do so grows tighter, and at some point, you'll have to choose whether you want to risk another loop, or call it there and move on to the next segment. Playing Nights this way turns it into a game all about risk, seeing how much you can chew off, and how much faith are you able to place on your skill and efficiency. I don't normally say stuff like this, but I think it's valid enough to say that if if you're not playing Nights in this way, you are gonna get very little out of the experience. Otherwise, what's at play is an incredibly unique gameplay system that elegantly combines a simple control scheme with a satisfying depth in how you utilize it, and what sorts of choices you make with it.
I think the only real problem with Nights into Dreams is kind of the one we echo for more recent Nintendo Switch games: The fact that it was made for the Sega Saturn, instead of a more powerful console. Though arguments can be made on just how underpowered the Saturn was, fact is that most developers didn't know how to utilize it to its fullest potential. Nights itself suffers from its console's limitations, resulting in a depressingly low draw distance, and a poor field of view that gives the classic Sonic games a run for their money. Especially as you start picking up speed, it's really not easy to plan ahead for anything before you ram into it head-on. The modern ports provide a better draw distance, and I consider them the better way to play. But the field of view still remains an unfixed problem. At some point, it'd be nice to have a version of the first Nights game where things get zoomed out a bunch, but considering the nicheness of this franchise, it may take another 10 years before we get anything that nice...
Ah, well. Even with this flaw at hand, Nights is very short and really not that hard to play. Anyone who carries the same fascination I have with these sorts of old 3D games owes it to themselves to try it out. Unconventional games like this don't get greenlit often these days, they'd be deemed too much of a risk to even make it out of the pre-production phase. The very idea that Sega even allowed Sonic Team to go through with this instead of putting them on a major Sonic title is in itself an insane decision. Were mistakes made? Oh, no doubt there were several. But I respect the freedom of Nights into Dreams's existence way too much to call it one of them.
Admittingly, I just said that the gameplay is easy to get into, but during my first couple attempts, I didn't actually get what Nights wanted out of me. You do combo chains by collecting as many things as possible, okay, I'm with you so far. You can draw circular trails to attract nearby objects, that's pretty cool too. You break open the capsule with enough collectibles gathered, and then you head over to the goal, to proceed with the next segment of the level. But the one thing I couldn't grasp is why did I keep getting D ranks and F ranks for my efforts. In hindsight though, my effort was bare minimum.
Nights is a score-based game, and though it leaves the option of heading straight for the endgoal open to you, unlocking the game's finale requires a series of high scores. To get them, what you really want to do is go AROUND the endgoal instead, and do another loop of the stage, which causes all of the collectibles to respawn. And then you do another loop, and another. And all the while, your time limit continues ticking down, meaning that while each loop is a chance to score additional points and improve your rank, the time you have to do so grows tighter, and at some point, you'll have to choose whether you want to risk another loop, or call it there and move on to the next segment. Playing Nights this way turns it into a game all about risk, seeing how much you can chew off, and how much faith are you able to place on your skill and efficiency. I don't normally say stuff like this, but I think it's valid enough to say that if if you're not playing Nights in this way, you are gonna get very little out of the experience. Otherwise, what's at play is an incredibly unique gameplay system that elegantly combines a simple control scheme with a satisfying depth in how you utilize it, and what sorts of choices you make with it.
I think the only real problem with Nights into Dreams is kind of the one we echo for more recent Nintendo Switch games: The fact that it was made for the Sega Saturn, instead of a more powerful console. Though arguments can be made on just how underpowered the Saturn was, fact is that most developers didn't know how to utilize it to its fullest potential. Nights itself suffers from its console's limitations, resulting in a depressingly low draw distance, and a poor field of view that gives the classic Sonic games a run for their money. Especially as you start picking up speed, it's really not easy to plan ahead for anything before you ram into it head-on. The modern ports provide a better draw distance, and I consider them the better way to play. But the field of view still remains an unfixed problem. At some point, it'd be nice to have a version of the first Nights game where things get zoomed out a bunch, but considering the nicheness of this franchise, it may take another 10 years before we get anything that nice...
Ah, well. Even with this flaw at hand, Nights is very short and really not that hard to play. Anyone who carries the same fascination I have with these sorts of old 3D games owes it to themselves to try it out. Unconventional games like this don't get greenlit often these days, they'd be deemed too much of a risk to even make it out of the pre-production phase. The very idea that Sega even allowed Sonic Team to go through with this instead of putting them on a major Sonic title is in itself an insane decision. Were mistakes made? Oh, no doubt there were several. But I respect the freedom of Nights into Dreams's existence way too much to call it one of them.
1996
So, here I finally am. Face-to-face with THE childhood game, the one that I have so much nostalgia for, it should speak enough to how completely skeeved this review could turn out to be. As much as I did always wish to get my hands on a copy of Crash 2 or 3 as a kid, at the time I could only ever experience those games at a friend's house, or via a short-lived rental. My game collection as a whole, was poor and miserable compared to my friends. I had approximately 20 games I could not give a single shit about, a copy of Final Fantasy 8 that froze on the CG opening, Spyro 2 & Rayman 2 were fun until they mysteriously disappeared from my house, Crash Bash was a thing until I tried putting it into my pocket and effectively crumpled the disc... oh, and one day, I got super excited to find a copy of Tekken 3 hiding behind one of the drawers! Only to be underwhelmed when I found out it was just the demo. Also, no memory card for any of this. At least I still had my PS2- oops, my sibling gave it to a friend who then literally ran off with it and never gave it back. Hm, I guess that only leaves Rayman 1... and this game as the two remaining things I could play for months upon months. Hey, at least those had the password system.
So, I've been thinking about who do I actually want to write this review for, and from what sort of perspective. I mean, just because I've amassed triple digits worth of playthroughs on Crash Bandicoot 1, that doesn't mean I wanna blindly defend it as the best platformer ever made, or whatever the fuck. Even with my bias, I wanna try looking at this from an objective viewpoint. And for most newcomers, the objective viewpoint of Crash 1 is gonna likely be "the Super Mario 64 competitor that is nowhere near as impressive." Despite this criticism, the PS1 trilogy of Crash games still ended up being highly profitable. They were a major cornerstone of the console, and even deemed to be the unofficial mascot of PlayStation for its 64-bit tenure. Why? What do people see in this basic run-of-the-mill platformer that goes beyond just blind nostalgia goggles? Let's figure this out first.
Personally, the first Crash was put in a rather unfair position by its own marketing team, and to a certain extent, by its own creators. Which might not've felt like it at the time, but it certainly feels more poorly aged now. Crash Bandicoot strolling up to Nintendo's HQ with a megaphone, cementing himself as "the moustache man's worst nightmare," also cemented himself as a revolutionary. With the PlayStation succesfully swooping in and establishing a lucrative playerbase, the internet was pining for a war. The elusive Mario killer, the people's craving for a 3D PlayStation platformer properly satisfied, and one that would give them a reason to shittalk Nintendo fans for "still playing those baby Mario games." The burden of all that fell to Crash.
But the matter of the fact is, Crash was never going to live up to those expectations. Naughty Dog was a team of like 8 to 9 people, the main leaders of which have never even created a 2D platformer before. By '94, Nintendo have exhausted everything they wanted to do with the 2D Mario formula. They had the experience, and were ready to design a wholly new type of game. Naughty Dog meanwhile, had to stay behind, and play catch-up on what even makes a platformer fun at all. Whereas Nintendo was ready to ask themselves "How do we design a 3D platformer," Naughty Dog was over there figuring out how to design a 2D one. And then they simply adapted that design into a 3D space. The ambitions were there, but they were more humble. Yet, they were needlessly blown out of proportion to be on the same level as fuckin' Mario, I mean, come on. It's no wonder newcomers expect more out of Crash than what they actually get.
Now, the thing is, Crash 1 did not have the open-endedness of Mario 64, nor did it have the huge moveset. The most that could be argued is that Crash looked pretty damn good for its age, and looks appealing even today thanks to prioritizing cartoonism over realism. So, is that it, then? Did people only like Crash just because it "looked" good? Just a bunch of style over substance? And here's where my defense comes in: It's worth noting that I did not grow up with Crash Bandicoot 1 back in 1996. I didn't exist back then. Really, my era of playing video games came around 2007 or 2008. And our family was ALWAYS several console generations behind. My cool friend with the sweetest, kindest mother you could imagine, he owned an Xbox 360 and GTA4. I pictured him as the god of the neighbourhood, because me and the rest were stuck with consoles like the NES, the Gameboy, and the PS1. I had the comparison point, so I was firmly aware that Crash 1 was not the pinnacle of graphical prowess, nor innovation by the time I started playing it. So then, if I wasn't impressed by its sheer novelty, then what was it actually about Crash 1 that stuck with me to this day? And, it's really not that complicated: It's not about nostalgia. The game is simply fun.
Sometimes, you don't need a game to reinvent the wheel. Sometimes, what you want is something familiar, something that has been done before, something simple that you can figure out how to play within 20 seconds. Leading industry publishers keep trying to tell me how linearity is an antiquated concept that nobody wants anymore, and I think that's genuinely insulting and ignorant to say. Sure, I like squeezing in an open world into my docket every now and then, but I can't deal with that sort of scope ALL the god damn time, it's an exhausting commitment. There is still room for 5-hour hallway platformers out there. These are my palette cleansers between longer titles, this is my comfort food. There was room for this sort of platformer even back then. Have you seen how people played that Mario 64 beta booth? They were utterly befuzzled by the game, because half the challenge was learning a new, daunting control scheme, a new type of analog controller, all within a completely new and unfamiliar dimension. Crash 1 was criticized for a lack of innovation, but that doesn't mean it didn't have a place back in 1996. Because Crash 1 was capable of offering comfort and familiarity, that in turn gave it something that Mario 64 did not have. The ability to ease into this new era of 3D gaming.
The only condition left is that the game has to flow. And, I don't know about everybody else, but to me? Crash 1 absolutely flows. A big mistake that many failed attempts at mascot platformers committed at the time, often fell to the level designers having next to no grasp of what makes a platformer flow. Their solution was to either make everything a maze, to create a needless amount of open space, make their levels three or four times as long than they needed to be, or, worst case scenario: Copy and paste. It's a relief then to say that Crash 1 avoids just about every single one of these trappings, albeit I can think of at least two levels that go on for maybe twice as long as they should. Yes, hello, I see you, Sunset Vista. Aside from this, I do think that the highly streamlined nature of each level allowed Naughty Dog to gain a solid grasp on how to escalate the challenge, starting off from the first stage that takes you through a simple and cozy variety of setpieces, before slowly ramping up the precision required from you over the course of time. The game is notorious for getting pretty difficult in its 2nd half. Unfair, though? Not at all. Everything comes together with practice. Part of what helps make this practice possible is that that extra lifes are extremely abundant throughout. So abundant, that part of the fun of Crash 1 is seeing just how quickly I can get up to 99 lifes, which generally, I max out about 40% through the game.
In the end, all you're doing is walking, jumping, and spin attacking enemies and crates alike. It's a horrendously basic gameplay loop, but it's made engaging through the skill and reaction timing it demands out of you. There is no such thing as going through the motions here. The stages are constantly testing you to stop and think about the right positioning and timing. This is coupled with a strong amount of level variety - far stronger than games like Crash 2 or 3 even - where level themes are at most repeated only once, but as you start getting closer to the end of the game, plenty of stages start introducing level themes that are unique to themselves, and never repeated anywhere else. Each level theme introduces you to a new set of obstacles, enemies, and at times changes the camera perspective to shake things up. Some levels are 3D only, some are 2.5D, one's a top-down exploratory stage, and of couse there's the iconic boulder chase stages. Though graphics may not be everything, visual variety is important to keep aspects of the gameplay fresh, and considering Crash 1's simplicity, these are highly important additions to retain engagement in what sort of challenge awaits you next.
Alright, now let's balance things out here. The criticisms. Crash 1 sports two stages themed around riding a hog. A neat way to keep in line with the goal of variety, but the hitboxes on these seriously needed another pass. You know the fucking bit I'm talking about if you've played Crash 1, the obstacle with the rotating pole thing? The one where everytime you jump over it, you clench your ass over the 50% chance that it might just kill you no matter how precisely you timed your jump? Yeah, that, and the one part where you gotta zig-zag left and right to break open all the crates, but god is just begging for you to somehow miss one of them so that way he finds us too amusing to be deemed a mistake. The silver lining is that though these sequences were spiritually brought back in Crash 2, they were vastly improved on.
Speaking of "breaking open the crates" and "mistakes", let's get into Crash 1's biggest mistake, the one that pertains to completionists. So, there are all these crates scattered across every stage. You bounce or you break them open so you can get the wumpa fruit, you collect 100 wumpa fruit, you earn a life. The act of breaking the crates is pretty satisfying in itself, but get this: if you break ALL the crates in a stage (not counting the ones found in the bonus levels), you get a gem at the end of it. Get all gems in every stage, you unlock an alternate ending. Ooh, it's a collect-a-thon now! How fun! What's more, there are certain stages you won't be able to immediately do a 100% crate run on... but there are these special Colored Gems, which unlock new paths in previous stages. Sometimes it's just these very small rooms that contain the remaining crates you need, but other times they're total extensions of the level, about 1-3 more minutes of platforming that you wouldn't be able to see otherwise. In the end, the game is still pretty short in spite of these additions, so this all sounds like a pretty nice way to appeal to collectible fans, right?
Okay, now imagine if they fucking hated you though, and made it so aside from having to obtain all crates in a level, you also have to perform a no-death run. Die once in a stage, and all those crates you collected won't mean anything, the game will simply not grant you the gem. Why????? Well, I know why. It was to prevent rentals. This sort of needless artificial difficulty was the justification to pad out game length. If you're just playing the game casually without worrying about the gems, you will objectively have a better time! Otherwise however, going for the gems effectively means that you will be abolishing all checkpoints. Every death will be followed by the two loading screens required to restart each stage. I have gotten good enough at Crash Bandicoot 1 to be perfectly capable of clearing a 100% run. I do not expect many people will have the patience to do the same. The no-death requirement makes this a stupidly stressful ordeal.
Which is why... I'm tempted to recommend that newcomers should play the remake version of Crash 1, found in the N.Sane Trilogy. They've done some very commendable things to streamline the 100%ing of the first game, primarily by removing the no-death requirement almost completely. The only exception is that you still have to do a no-death run for the 6 levels that contain the Colored Gems, but that's a way more reasonable compromise over having to do a no-death run over the whole goddamn game. There's just one catch... the remake is infamously known for its questionable hitboxes, which make certain levels that demand precision far harder to beat than they are in the original. I've gotten used to these physics myself personally, but far too many horror tales are told about the bridge level.
This all leads to the following conundrum: There is no definitive way to play Crash Bandicoot 1. The original is tight and precise to play, but its 100% requirements are awful. The remake makes these 100% requirements much better, but the gameplay loses the tightness and precision in the process. As a long-time fan, my personal recommendation is that you should do a casual run of the original Crash 1. But that's only if you're really interested in a chronological look in the series. If you're willing to go out of order, then I wholeheartedly recommend the original Crash 2. If you thought Crash 1 was too simple for your tastes, Crash 2 expands on the moveset in some very fun ways, makes its difficulty more accessible, and its 100% requirements considerably more doable. Worst case scenario if you can't emulate, the remake is generally fine for what it does, though it does require some adjusting.
Regardless, I have a lot of thoughts about the other games, but... I think this is where I'll wrap it up for now. Crash 1 is not incredible. I was so swept up in writing the rest of this review, I didn't even mention the native american stereotyping going on here, which yeah, I could certainly fuckin' do without. It is not the Mario killer and it sure as shit ain't gonna get anywhere close to the level of Mario 64. But it doesn't need to. It never, ever needed to. It is the simplicity of Crash 1 that I adore. That total confidence in delivering a platformer that everybody just gets instantly, was Crash 1's biggest strength in an era where companies tried to deliver unfamiliar experiences all the time. A lot of it must've been really overwhelming to people who had a harder time adapting. And it's thanks to Crash that there was still some speck of appreciation for the older era of gaming to be found. Innovation is a great thing. But there are times when I just wanna go backwards, to see that 3 hours is all I need to feel completely satisfied with a game.
Just as long as, y'know, you price it accordingly.
So, I've been thinking about who do I actually want to write this review for, and from what sort of perspective. I mean, just because I've amassed triple digits worth of playthroughs on Crash Bandicoot 1, that doesn't mean I wanna blindly defend it as the best platformer ever made, or whatever the fuck. Even with my bias, I wanna try looking at this from an objective viewpoint. And for most newcomers, the objective viewpoint of Crash 1 is gonna likely be "the Super Mario 64 competitor that is nowhere near as impressive." Despite this criticism, the PS1 trilogy of Crash games still ended up being highly profitable. They were a major cornerstone of the console, and even deemed to be the unofficial mascot of PlayStation for its 64-bit tenure. Why? What do people see in this basic run-of-the-mill platformer that goes beyond just blind nostalgia goggles? Let's figure this out first.
Personally, the first Crash was put in a rather unfair position by its own marketing team, and to a certain extent, by its own creators. Which might not've felt like it at the time, but it certainly feels more poorly aged now. Crash Bandicoot strolling up to Nintendo's HQ with a megaphone, cementing himself as "the moustache man's worst nightmare," also cemented himself as a revolutionary. With the PlayStation succesfully swooping in and establishing a lucrative playerbase, the internet was pining for a war. The elusive Mario killer, the people's craving for a 3D PlayStation platformer properly satisfied, and one that would give them a reason to shittalk Nintendo fans for "still playing those baby Mario games." The burden of all that fell to Crash.
But the matter of the fact is, Crash was never going to live up to those expectations. Naughty Dog was a team of like 8 to 9 people, the main leaders of which have never even created a 2D platformer before. By '94, Nintendo have exhausted everything they wanted to do with the 2D Mario formula. They had the experience, and were ready to design a wholly new type of game. Naughty Dog meanwhile, had to stay behind, and play catch-up on what even makes a platformer fun at all. Whereas Nintendo was ready to ask themselves "How do we design a 3D platformer," Naughty Dog was over there figuring out how to design a 2D one. And then they simply adapted that design into a 3D space. The ambitions were there, but they were more humble. Yet, they were needlessly blown out of proportion to be on the same level as fuckin' Mario, I mean, come on. It's no wonder newcomers expect more out of Crash than what they actually get.
Now, the thing is, Crash 1 did not have the open-endedness of Mario 64, nor did it have the huge moveset. The most that could be argued is that Crash looked pretty damn good for its age, and looks appealing even today thanks to prioritizing cartoonism over realism. So, is that it, then? Did people only like Crash just because it "looked" good? Just a bunch of style over substance? And here's where my defense comes in: It's worth noting that I did not grow up with Crash Bandicoot 1 back in 1996. I didn't exist back then. Really, my era of playing video games came around 2007 or 2008. And our family was ALWAYS several console generations behind. My cool friend with the sweetest, kindest mother you could imagine, he owned an Xbox 360 and GTA4. I pictured him as the god of the neighbourhood, because me and the rest were stuck with consoles like the NES, the Gameboy, and the PS1. I had the comparison point, so I was firmly aware that Crash 1 was not the pinnacle of graphical prowess, nor innovation by the time I started playing it. So then, if I wasn't impressed by its sheer novelty, then what was it actually about Crash 1 that stuck with me to this day? And, it's really not that complicated: It's not about nostalgia. The game is simply fun.
Sometimes, you don't need a game to reinvent the wheel. Sometimes, what you want is something familiar, something that has been done before, something simple that you can figure out how to play within 20 seconds. Leading industry publishers keep trying to tell me how linearity is an antiquated concept that nobody wants anymore, and I think that's genuinely insulting and ignorant to say. Sure, I like squeezing in an open world into my docket every now and then, but I can't deal with that sort of scope ALL the god damn time, it's an exhausting commitment. There is still room for 5-hour hallway platformers out there. These are my palette cleansers between longer titles, this is my comfort food. There was room for this sort of platformer even back then. Have you seen how people played that Mario 64 beta booth? They were utterly befuzzled by the game, because half the challenge was learning a new, daunting control scheme, a new type of analog controller, all within a completely new and unfamiliar dimension. Crash 1 was criticized for a lack of innovation, but that doesn't mean it didn't have a place back in 1996. Because Crash 1 was capable of offering comfort and familiarity, that in turn gave it something that Mario 64 did not have. The ability to ease into this new era of 3D gaming.
The only condition left is that the game has to flow. And, I don't know about everybody else, but to me? Crash 1 absolutely flows. A big mistake that many failed attempts at mascot platformers committed at the time, often fell to the level designers having next to no grasp of what makes a platformer flow. Their solution was to either make everything a maze, to create a needless amount of open space, make their levels three or four times as long than they needed to be, or, worst case scenario: Copy and paste. It's a relief then to say that Crash 1 avoids just about every single one of these trappings, albeit I can think of at least two levels that go on for maybe twice as long as they should. Yes, hello, I see you, Sunset Vista. Aside from this, I do think that the highly streamlined nature of each level allowed Naughty Dog to gain a solid grasp on how to escalate the challenge, starting off from the first stage that takes you through a simple and cozy variety of setpieces, before slowly ramping up the precision required from you over the course of time. The game is notorious for getting pretty difficult in its 2nd half. Unfair, though? Not at all. Everything comes together with practice. Part of what helps make this practice possible is that that extra lifes are extremely abundant throughout. So abundant, that part of the fun of Crash 1 is seeing just how quickly I can get up to 99 lifes, which generally, I max out about 40% through the game.
In the end, all you're doing is walking, jumping, and spin attacking enemies and crates alike. It's a horrendously basic gameplay loop, but it's made engaging through the skill and reaction timing it demands out of you. There is no such thing as going through the motions here. The stages are constantly testing you to stop and think about the right positioning and timing. This is coupled with a strong amount of level variety - far stronger than games like Crash 2 or 3 even - where level themes are at most repeated only once, but as you start getting closer to the end of the game, plenty of stages start introducing level themes that are unique to themselves, and never repeated anywhere else. Each level theme introduces you to a new set of obstacles, enemies, and at times changes the camera perspective to shake things up. Some levels are 3D only, some are 2.5D, one's a top-down exploratory stage, and of couse there's the iconic boulder chase stages. Though graphics may not be everything, visual variety is important to keep aspects of the gameplay fresh, and considering Crash 1's simplicity, these are highly important additions to retain engagement in what sort of challenge awaits you next.
Alright, now let's balance things out here. The criticisms. Crash 1 sports two stages themed around riding a hog. A neat way to keep in line with the goal of variety, but the hitboxes on these seriously needed another pass. You know the fucking bit I'm talking about if you've played Crash 1, the obstacle with the rotating pole thing? The one where everytime you jump over it, you clench your ass over the 50% chance that it might just kill you no matter how precisely you timed your jump? Yeah, that, and the one part where you gotta zig-zag left and right to break open all the crates, but god is just begging for you to somehow miss one of them so that way he finds us too amusing to be deemed a mistake. The silver lining is that though these sequences were spiritually brought back in Crash 2, they were vastly improved on.
Speaking of "breaking open the crates" and "mistakes", let's get into Crash 1's biggest mistake, the one that pertains to completionists. So, there are all these crates scattered across every stage. You bounce or you break them open so you can get the wumpa fruit, you collect 100 wumpa fruit, you earn a life. The act of breaking the crates is pretty satisfying in itself, but get this: if you break ALL the crates in a stage (not counting the ones found in the bonus levels), you get a gem at the end of it. Get all gems in every stage, you unlock an alternate ending. Ooh, it's a collect-a-thon now! How fun! What's more, there are certain stages you won't be able to immediately do a 100% crate run on... but there are these special Colored Gems, which unlock new paths in previous stages. Sometimes it's just these very small rooms that contain the remaining crates you need, but other times they're total extensions of the level, about 1-3 more minutes of platforming that you wouldn't be able to see otherwise. In the end, the game is still pretty short in spite of these additions, so this all sounds like a pretty nice way to appeal to collectible fans, right?
Okay, now imagine if they fucking hated you though, and made it so aside from having to obtain all crates in a level, you also have to perform a no-death run. Die once in a stage, and all those crates you collected won't mean anything, the game will simply not grant you the gem. Why????? Well, I know why. It was to prevent rentals. This sort of needless artificial difficulty was the justification to pad out game length. If you're just playing the game casually without worrying about the gems, you will objectively have a better time! Otherwise however, going for the gems effectively means that you will be abolishing all checkpoints. Every death will be followed by the two loading screens required to restart each stage. I have gotten good enough at Crash Bandicoot 1 to be perfectly capable of clearing a 100% run. I do not expect many people will have the patience to do the same. The no-death requirement makes this a stupidly stressful ordeal.
Which is why... I'm tempted to recommend that newcomers should play the remake version of Crash 1, found in the N.Sane Trilogy. They've done some very commendable things to streamline the 100%ing of the first game, primarily by removing the no-death requirement almost completely. The only exception is that you still have to do a no-death run for the 6 levels that contain the Colored Gems, but that's a way more reasonable compromise over having to do a no-death run over the whole goddamn game. There's just one catch... the remake is infamously known for its questionable hitboxes, which make certain levels that demand precision far harder to beat than they are in the original. I've gotten used to these physics myself personally, but far too many horror tales are told about the bridge level.
This all leads to the following conundrum: There is no definitive way to play Crash Bandicoot 1. The original is tight and precise to play, but its 100% requirements are awful. The remake makes these 100% requirements much better, but the gameplay loses the tightness and precision in the process. As a long-time fan, my personal recommendation is that you should do a casual run of the original Crash 1. But that's only if you're really interested in a chronological look in the series. If you're willing to go out of order, then I wholeheartedly recommend the original Crash 2. If you thought Crash 1 was too simple for your tastes, Crash 2 expands on the moveset in some very fun ways, makes its difficulty more accessible, and its 100% requirements considerably more doable. Worst case scenario if you can't emulate, the remake is generally fine for what it does, though it does require some adjusting.
Regardless, I have a lot of thoughts about the other games, but... I think this is where I'll wrap it up for now. Crash 1 is not incredible. I was so swept up in writing the rest of this review, I didn't even mention the native american stereotyping going on here, which yeah, I could certainly fuckin' do without. It is not the Mario killer and it sure as shit ain't gonna get anywhere close to the level of Mario 64. But it doesn't need to. It never, ever needed to. It is the simplicity of Crash 1 that I adore. That total confidence in delivering a platformer that everybody just gets instantly, was Crash 1's biggest strength in an era where companies tried to deliver unfamiliar experiences all the time. A lot of it must've been really overwhelming to people who had a harder time adapting. And it's thanks to Crash that there was still some speck of appreciation for the older era of gaming to be found. Innovation is a great thing. But there are times when I just wanna go backwards, to see that 3 hours is all I need to feel completely satisfied with a game.
Just as long as, y'know, you price it accordingly.
2024
Why she walk like Sly Cooper tho
Anyway, it's... pretty good! I was so instantly captivated by its moody atmosphere and strong sound design, it only took 20 minutes of playing for me to stop just to tell my friends that they should probably check this out. Part-time Hotline Miami in its surreal choice of colors, and part-time Killer7 in its viscerally gushing fountains of blood. The blend of sniper and puzzle genres is a very unique one, and the emphasis on taking out every enemy with nothing but a single ricocheting bullet leads to some very satisfying victories once you nail down the right order.
Puzzle games are not usually my strong suit, and I grow impatient with them far more easily than I should. Most of the time, my brain just ain't capable of thinking several steps ahead, I think in the moment instead. Despite this, I've found that Children of the Sun's difficulty is relatively lenient for the majority of the game's 3-4 hour duration, and allows for multiple solutions to one problem with a little bit of improvisation. At the same time, none of it felt mindless, and I still felt like I had to put in the effort to clear a good chunk of the stages. The balance was struck very well here to make dumbos like me feel a little more clever, while at the same time leaving the option for more skilled play depending on what you can come up with.
I feel like the only exception to this was the final level, which I think escalated the difficulty way too suddenly from the previous stages. We've gone from somewhat tricky but short-length stages, to a marathon that demanded twice the amount of steps than anything before. Losing here felt really draining, and having to think about replicating everything I just did was even moreso. I think this could've been in part fixed if the game remembered the position from where you fired at, so I wouldn't have to walk over there each time. Hiding a bunch of the mooks inside buildings was also a bit of a frustrating process that led to a bunch of time wasted just trying to scout them out across several failed attempts. I nearly gave up here, but eventually pushed on through and won. It's just a shame that for every single level I felt satisfied in, the finale was the only one where satisfaction was replaced with a feeling of relief instead.
Even so, it can't be ignored that for 95% of Children of the Sun's duration, I had a ton of fun. One subjectively frustrating level aside, this is still a raw as hell video game, and one that paints a very strong first impression for its developer. They're definitely on my radar now, and I'm looking forward to seeing what they'll create next.
Anyway, it's... pretty good! I was so instantly captivated by its moody atmosphere and strong sound design, it only took 20 minutes of playing for me to stop just to tell my friends that they should probably check this out. Part-time Hotline Miami in its surreal choice of colors, and part-time Killer7 in its viscerally gushing fountains of blood. The blend of sniper and puzzle genres is a very unique one, and the emphasis on taking out every enemy with nothing but a single ricocheting bullet leads to some very satisfying victories once you nail down the right order.
Puzzle games are not usually my strong suit, and I grow impatient with them far more easily than I should. Most of the time, my brain just ain't capable of thinking several steps ahead, I think in the moment instead. Despite this, I've found that Children of the Sun's difficulty is relatively lenient for the majority of the game's 3-4 hour duration, and allows for multiple solutions to one problem with a little bit of improvisation. At the same time, none of it felt mindless, and I still felt like I had to put in the effort to clear a good chunk of the stages. The balance was struck very well here to make dumbos like me feel a little more clever, while at the same time leaving the option for more skilled play depending on what you can come up with.
I feel like the only exception to this was the final level, which I think escalated the difficulty way too suddenly from the previous stages. We've gone from somewhat tricky but short-length stages, to a marathon that demanded twice the amount of steps than anything before. Losing here felt really draining, and having to think about replicating everything I just did was even moreso. I think this could've been in part fixed if the game remembered the position from where you fired at, so I wouldn't have to walk over there each time. Hiding a bunch of the mooks inside buildings was also a bit of a frustrating process that led to a bunch of time wasted just trying to scout them out across several failed attempts. I nearly gave up here, but eventually pushed on through and won. It's just a shame that for every single level I felt satisfied in, the finale was the only one where satisfaction was replaced with a feeling of relief instead.
Even so, it can't be ignored that for 95% of Children of the Sun's duration, I had a ton of fun. One subjectively frustrating level aside, this is still a raw as hell video game, and one that paints a very strong first impression for its developer. They're definitely on my radar now, and I'm looking forward to seeing what they'll create next.
1996
THIS REVIEW IS SPONSORED BY RED BULL
I really don't have a lot of racing game experience. I'm planning to fix that in the future, but for the time being, the PS1 Wipeouts have been one of my most prominent investments into the genre, especially as a kid. I liken them somewhat to a grittier Mario Kart, mostly just because of the arcade racing structure, combined with item usage to get an edge in the course. But, I'm aware that's a pretty insane generalization of what this series is.
In any case, I absolutely fuck with this. I don't have to worry about number crunching stats on vehicles because there's only like 4-5 to choose from, alongside a pretty limited amount of tracks. These would've been negatives back in 1996, but in emulation form, Wipeout XL lends itself well as an entry point into the genre, and a game that I can spend one peaceful afternoon on, get some thrills out of it, and move on. The learning curve is braindead easy, but the vehicles feel weighty in just that right way. Narrowly scraping against the walls as sparks come flying out, instinctively leaning left and right as I brace myself against those tougher turns, and feeling each and every bump like it was impacting me in reality. The items themselves pack a lot of punch, and on that rare occasion where you nail the use of the insta-kill laser to take out your opponent, it makes you feel like the harbinger of doom. The AutoPilot item is the true harbinger though, I can't even count the amount of times It sent me directly into a wall. Fuck that thing.
Bonus points go to the overall presentation and the readability of its race tracks, on top of that very specific UK-produced assortment of techno music that could've only existed in that era of video games. No doubt a lot of my fondness can be attributed to nostalgia, as has been the case for my other recent reviews. And if I were to look at it from another way, it's true that Wipeout's appeal lies more in a niche techno sci-fi aesthetic than a wide-ranging amount of character and personality. Without an appreciation for the currently existing appeal, Wipeout's probably closer to a 3.5 or a 4 star rating. But for me, this game has never let me down. It has only ever promised me a good racing time, and that's exactly what it gives. Sometimes, I only wish there was more of it. And I don't mean more Wipeouts, or spiritual successors. I mean like, 6 more levels for this game. Maybe 8. But then again, short and sweet is better than long and stale.
I really don't have a lot of racing game experience. I'm planning to fix that in the future, but for the time being, the PS1 Wipeouts have been one of my most prominent investments into the genre, especially as a kid. I liken them somewhat to a grittier Mario Kart, mostly just because of the arcade racing structure, combined with item usage to get an edge in the course. But, I'm aware that's a pretty insane generalization of what this series is.
In any case, I absolutely fuck with this. I don't have to worry about number crunching stats on vehicles because there's only like 4-5 to choose from, alongside a pretty limited amount of tracks. These would've been negatives back in 1996, but in emulation form, Wipeout XL lends itself well as an entry point into the genre, and a game that I can spend one peaceful afternoon on, get some thrills out of it, and move on. The learning curve is braindead easy, but the vehicles feel weighty in just that right way. Narrowly scraping against the walls as sparks come flying out, instinctively leaning left and right as I brace myself against those tougher turns, and feeling each and every bump like it was impacting me in reality. The items themselves pack a lot of punch, and on that rare occasion where you nail the use of the insta-kill laser to take out your opponent, it makes you feel like the harbinger of doom. The AutoPilot item is the true harbinger though, I can't even count the amount of times It sent me directly into a wall. Fuck that thing.
Bonus points go to the overall presentation and the readability of its race tracks, on top of that very specific UK-produced assortment of techno music that could've only existed in that era of video games. No doubt a lot of my fondness can be attributed to nostalgia, as has been the case for my other recent reviews. And if I were to look at it from another way, it's true that Wipeout's appeal lies more in a niche techno sci-fi aesthetic than a wide-ranging amount of character and personality. Without an appreciation for the currently existing appeal, Wipeout's probably closer to a 3.5 or a 4 star rating. But for me, this game has never let me down. It has only ever promised me a good racing time, and that's exactly what it gives. Sometimes, I only wish there was more of it. And I don't mean more Wipeouts, or spiritual successors. I mean like, 6 more levels for this game. Maybe 8. But then again, short and sweet is better than long and stale.
1996
The existence of this game is infinitely fucking funny to me. Like, imagine being a Sega fan back in September of 1996. You have owned a Saturn for over 2 years now (i know this is a review for the genesis version, but bear with me here for a sec). The Genesis hasn't let you down, so you have faith that Sega will deliver a breakout hit for their 3D console anyday now. A new Sonic game that will make that 399$ price tag and 2 years of waiting totally worth it. Meanwhile, your friends at school are talking about Super Mario 64, Crash Bandicoot, and how cool as hell those games are, and oh my gosh, the 3D!!! It's so amazing!!! But all you have is your Saturn. And unless you dipped your hands into Panzer Dragoon, or Nights into Dreams, neither of which proved to put the console on the map... you don't really have anything you can boast about. All you can do is wait, while listening to your friends talking about how they made all the right life choices.
But, November rolls around, and you finally get your Mario 64 competitor. And this is it. This is the representation of your revolutionary new console. Sonic 3D Blast. This utter fucking marketing lie of a title, is all you're getting for the foreseeable future. Sega simply couldn't deliver a 3D Sonic title in time to compete against everyone else, so they figured if they would just slap the word "3D" into their isometric pre-rendered platformer, it'd be enough to fool the dumb children who were unfortunate enough to put their faith in a game publisher. I mean, I guess at this point you have something you can talk about to your school friends. But are you really going to?
Within historical context, I consider 3D Blast to be a disaster of comedic proportions. This one game single-handedly disqualified Sonic as Mario's rival for the rest of eternity, even if people may have not felt this at the time. From here on out, there was no more consistency to be found in a Sonic game, no gurantees made, all expectations belonged to the fools, fools such as me. Whereas Mario was an experimental playground with consistent rules, Sonic began to no longer care about rules, cohesion, or its audience as a whole. We have now entered an era where Sonic just kinda does whatever the fuck it wants. Sometimes, this leads to some great things, other times it doesn't. Next to Knuckles Chaotix, Sonic 3D Blast is one of the first examples of where it really doesn't.
Taking out all historical context however, it's not like 3D Blast is the spawn of satan, or anything... by itself, this is just a very okay game. Probably the biggest mistake it commits is citing one of its inspirations as Sonic Labyrinth, which I cannot imagine anyone in their right mind doing today. But, as a whole, it's functional, beatable, and even a casual player could see its true ending. We were only just exiting out of the age of insanely difficult games mind you, so having something like this back then was pretty nice. That is, if you cared less about challenge, and more about just having an experience that doesn't frustrate you.
Perhaps this is my just my fondness for collect-a-thons coming out, but I do enjoy the loop of exploring a level to find the 5 flickies required to progress onward. Labyrinth influences aside, it's pretty difficult to get lost in here, everything is very contained and exploration segments are segregated into digestible chunks. It's doable, and that's good. The bad, is that once you've cleared one level, you've basically seen them all. The only thing that sets them apart from there on is visual variety, but the gameplay loop fails to introduce new elements at a consistent enough rate to not make every level feel like you're doing the same thing. Perhaps introducing more inventive ways of catching flickies would've helped, alongside new types of flickies that behave in different manners. But the game shows all its cards in just one stage. From there on, you catch them in the exact same way, every single time.
I think it also goes without saying that a game like this absolutely does not lend itself to the style of gameplay that Sonic is known for. Being originally created for the Genesis, means that the isometric field of view can't be too large, and the field of view being like this means that you can't make Sonic go too fast, lest you'll be running into obstacles all the time. So, out goes the speed that Sonic is primarily known for, in favor of a leisurely jog. Which in hindsight, makes me realize that this game could've probably made a lot more sense if they didn't use Sonic for it at all. But, that'd of course means less copies sold, so here he is. In name only.
I've never been a big fan of the previous special stages that accompanied the classic Sonic games, and the ones found here aren't all that better either, buuut... they are pretty easy. This leads back into me saying how even a casual player could see the game's true ending, as it honestly takes very little effort to access the special stages in this game. And the special stages themselves are shockingly banal, a literal short-width bridge you run straight across, with some spikes you occasionally jump over. Missing the rings here is near-impossible, they all last less than 20 seconds, and there is barely any difficulty ramp-up to speak of. As long as you explore the stages a tiny bit, you'll get the 7 chaos emeralds in no time.
Interestingly, the Saturn version completely redid the way its special stages work. While the rest of the game was created by Traveller's Tales, I hear that Sonic Team stepped in for the Saturn special stages. And get this: They're the best part of the game, and a huge reason to play that version of the game over this Genesis counterpart. They're like the Sonic 2 special stages, but done right. They're in actual proper 3D, ensuring smooth scrolling and movement, Sonic himself feels pretty good to control in them, and they're just better designed, maintaining a good flow throughout. If the entire game was just an endless runner version of these stages, I'd hop into it more often. Unfortunately as it is, they're just one small good part of an ultimately mediocre package.
But wait! There is something else I can praise about this, and - you guessed it - it's the soundtrack! I have absolutely no idea what caused Jun Senoue to score Sonic Superstars the way he did, because if you go back all the way here... he did the entire soundtrack for the Genesis version of 3D Blast, and it's great! This is what I'm talking about! It feels like an extension of the music found in Sonic 3. Same style, same general instrumentation, but more strong melodies, and a unique song for every single act. The CD Audio soundtrack composed by Richard Jacques for the Saturn port is no slouch either. It's a very different style compared to the type of Sonic music we're generally used to, but it's very bright, cheery, and nostalgically welcoming. Completely unlike Richard, when he finds out people make covers of his songs!
Well, in any case, a good soundtrack and a series of excellent special stages for a specific port of the game is not quite enough to save the whole thing. It's only enough to elevate 3D Blast into a totally passable experience. It sure as heck functions, but it couldn't have been possibly made in a worse time and place. Accompanied by a true follow-up to Sonic 3 & Knuckles, 3D Blast could've been remembered as a neat distraction for when you're bored. In the present reality however, 3D Blast IS the Sonic 3 & Knuckles follow-up, whether that was its intention or not. The circumstances made it that way. Now, that's all I'll remember it for. And the memory will make me giggle.
But, November rolls around, and you finally get your Mario 64 competitor. And this is it. This is the representation of your revolutionary new console. Sonic 3D Blast. This utter fucking marketing lie of a title, is all you're getting for the foreseeable future. Sega simply couldn't deliver a 3D Sonic title in time to compete against everyone else, so they figured if they would just slap the word "3D" into their isometric pre-rendered platformer, it'd be enough to fool the dumb children who were unfortunate enough to put their faith in a game publisher. I mean, I guess at this point you have something you can talk about to your school friends. But are you really going to?
Within historical context, I consider 3D Blast to be a disaster of comedic proportions. This one game single-handedly disqualified Sonic as Mario's rival for the rest of eternity, even if people may have not felt this at the time. From here on out, there was no more consistency to be found in a Sonic game, no gurantees made, all expectations belonged to the fools, fools such as me. Whereas Mario was an experimental playground with consistent rules, Sonic began to no longer care about rules, cohesion, or its audience as a whole. We have now entered an era where Sonic just kinda does whatever the fuck it wants. Sometimes, this leads to some great things, other times it doesn't. Next to Knuckles Chaotix, Sonic 3D Blast is one of the first examples of where it really doesn't.
Taking out all historical context however, it's not like 3D Blast is the spawn of satan, or anything... by itself, this is just a very okay game. Probably the biggest mistake it commits is citing one of its inspirations as Sonic Labyrinth, which I cannot imagine anyone in their right mind doing today. But, as a whole, it's functional, beatable, and even a casual player could see its true ending. We were only just exiting out of the age of insanely difficult games mind you, so having something like this back then was pretty nice. That is, if you cared less about challenge, and more about just having an experience that doesn't frustrate you.
Perhaps this is my just my fondness for collect-a-thons coming out, but I do enjoy the loop of exploring a level to find the 5 flickies required to progress onward. Labyrinth influences aside, it's pretty difficult to get lost in here, everything is very contained and exploration segments are segregated into digestible chunks. It's doable, and that's good. The bad, is that once you've cleared one level, you've basically seen them all. The only thing that sets them apart from there on is visual variety, but the gameplay loop fails to introduce new elements at a consistent enough rate to not make every level feel like you're doing the same thing. Perhaps introducing more inventive ways of catching flickies would've helped, alongside new types of flickies that behave in different manners. But the game shows all its cards in just one stage. From there on, you catch them in the exact same way, every single time.
I think it also goes without saying that a game like this absolutely does not lend itself to the style of gameplay that Sonic is known for. Being originally created for the Genesis, means that the isometric field of view can't be too large, and the field of view being like this means that you can't make Sonic go too fast, lest you'll be running into obstacles all the time. So, out goes the speed that Sonic is primarily known for, in favor of a leisurely jog. Which in hindsight, makes me realize that this game could've probably made a lot more sense if they didn't use Sonic for it at all. But, that'd of course means less copies sold, so here he is. In name only.
I've never been a big fan of the previous special stages that accompanied the classic Sonic games, and the ones found here aren't all that better either, buuut... they are pretty easy. This leads back into me saying how even a casual player could see the game's true ending, as it honestly takes very little effort to access the special stages in this game. And the special stages themselves are shockingly banal, a literal short-width bridge you run straight across, with some spikes you occasionally jump over. Missing the rings here is near-impossible, they all last less than 20 seconds, and there is barely any difficulty ramp-up to speak of. As long as you explore the stages a tiny bit, you'll get the 7 chaos emeralds in no time.
Interestingly, the Saturn version completely redid the way its special stages work. While the rest of the game was created by Traveller's Tales, I hear that Sonic Team stepped in for the Saturn special stages. And get this: They're the best part of the game, and a huge reason to play that version of the game over this Genesis counterpart. They're like the Sonic 2 special stages, but done right. They're in actual proper 3D, ensuring smooth scrolling and movement, Sonic himself feels pretty good to control in them, and they're just better designed, maintaining a good flow throughout. If the entire game was just an endless runner version of these stages, I'd hop into it more often. Unfortunately as it is, they're just one small good part of an ultimately mediocre package.
But wait! There is something else I can praise about this, and - you guessed it - it's the soundtrack! I have absolutely no idea what caused Jun Senoue to score Sonic Superstars the way he did, because if you go back all the way here... he did the entire soundtrack for the Genesis version of 3D Blast, and it's great! This is what I'm talking about! It feels like an extension of the music found in Sonic 3. Same style, same general instrumentation, but more strong melodies, and a unique song for every single act. The CD Audio soundtrack composed by Richard Jacques for the Saturn port is no slouch either. It's a very different style compared to the type of Sonic music we're generally used to, but it's very bright, cheery, and nostalgically welcoming. Completely unlike Richard, when he finds out people make covers of his songs!
Well, in any case, a good soundtrack and a series of excellent special stages for a specific port of the game is not quite enough to save the whole thing. It's only enough to elevate 3D Blast into a totally passable experience. It sure as heck functions, but it couldn't have been possibly made in a worse time and place. Accompanied by a true follow-up to Sonic 3 & Knuckles, 3D Blast could've been remembered as a neat distraction for when you're bored. In the present reality however, 3D Blast IS the Sonic 3 & Knuckles follow-up, whether that was its intention or not. The circumstances made it that way. Now, that's all I'll remember it for. And the memory will make me giggle.
For what it's worth: it's more of Donkey Kong Country 2, and that ain't bad. I mean, the music isn't as strong, and the setting is a lot less interesting (Where even are we? Canada? Some sort of tropical island? Canada after the earthquakes made the ocean level rise?), but I just can't let myself be underwhelmed by the overall package, everything that I liked about DKC2's gameplay is more or less still intact. The loop of hunting down bonus rooms & DK Coins to unlock extra levels continues to be enjoyable, and the variety of mechanics keeps the levels fresh. And I know I said the music isn't as good, but actually, the underwater theme knocks it out of the park! Different vibe from Aquatic Ambience, but still very soothing to the soul.
Even Kiddy Kong is okay! Well, for now, anyway. The Kong family suffered a great loss on that fated Autumn. But until then, I'm happy that the clunk I felt while playing as the heavy-type character in DKC1 does not apply to Kiddy. While I can't say I'd pick him over Dixie if given a choice, the controls on him are refined enough that it wouldn't be a big deal to play as him whenever needed. It's a little like they brought over some elements of DKC1 to DKC2's formula, but polished them up to make the best of both worlds.
Of course, all of this means that if you didn't enjoy the platforming and steep difficulty of the previous DKC's, DKC3 is gonna do little to sway you. Conversely, if you DID enjoy DKC2, DKC3 feels like a pretty nice extra set of levels to sink your teeth into. Sometimes, I get the vibe that DKC3 was thrown together in more of a haste, and out of a contractual obligation (like, they signed up for a trilogy of games, something like that), just so Rare could get it out of the way and move on to the N64. Maybe that'd explain why it feels weaker than the rest. Yet even at its weakest, DKC3 still delivers a competent and polished platforming romp. I wouldn't come back to it often, but everytime I would, I wouldn't regret it either.
RIP Kiddy Kong 1996-1996 (Killed by Canada)
Even Kiddy Kong is okay! Well, for now, anyway. The Kong family suffered a great loss on that fated Autumn. But until then, I'm happy that the clunk I felt while playing as the heavy-type character in DKC1 does not apply to Kiddy. While I can't say I'd pick him over Dixie if given a choice, the controls on him are refined enough that it wouldn't be a big deal to play as him whenever needed. It's a little like they brought over some elements of DKC1 to DKC2's formula, but polished them up to make the best of both worlds.
Of course, all of this means that if you didn't enjoy the platforming and steep difficulty of the previous DKC's, DKC3 is gonna do little to sway you. Conversely, if you DID enjoy DKC2, DKC3 feels like a pretty nice extra set of levels to sink your teeth into. Sometimes, I get the vibe that DKC3 was thrown together in more of a haste, and out of a contractual obligation (like, they signed up for a trilogy of games, something like that), just so Rare could get it out of the way and move on to the N64. Maybe that'd explain why it feels weaker than the rest. Yet even at its weakest, DKC3 still delivers a competent and polished platforming romp. I wouldn't come back to it often, but everytime I would, I wouldn't regret it either.
RIP Kiddy Kong 1996-1996 (Killed by Canada)
1996
Going back to this game and realizing just how weak the drift boosting feels in comparison to later entries is its own form of whiplash. Well, there's that, and honestly one of the weakest Rainbow Road courses out there. It sure is a road, alright!
But I like Mario Kart 64 all the same. The combination of pre-rendered drivers and low poly 3D graphics has its own appeal, and there's more than a couple race tracks that have set a precedent for the rest of the series. You got your first major city stage in here, an Excitebike-like stadium full of bumpy roads... the desert level with the train is pretty fun to me, especially in those moments where you manage to just barely get past the train, while everyone else has to wait for it to pass by. Sherbet Land's probably my favorite stage, I dunno why. Could just be that the music is nostalgic, but I also just like winter-themed settings in general.
I don't revisit this game often, as it feels like you can quickly get all the mileage you need out of it within an hour or two. But it'd be nice to play it with a couple friends sometime, even if there's technically better options for a Mario Kart experience out there. I guess that's probably 64's biggest problem, isn't it? It's not a bad game by any means, it was just made obsolete the moment later Mario Kart entries started adding past courses into their selection. Now, you can experience them at 60fps, with remade graphics, and with better controls. That just leaves Mario Kart 64 to sit in a corner, saddened and forgotten. But at least I'm still here. It doesn't have to be THAT lonely. Anyway, see you in 5 years!
But I like Mario Kart 64 all the same. The combination of pre-rendered drivers and low poly 3D graphics has its own appeal, and there's more than a couple race tracks that have set a precedent for the rest of the series. You got your first major city stage in here, an Excitebike-like stadium full of bumpy roads... the desert level with the train is pretty fun to me, especially in those moments where you manage to just barely get past the train, while everyone else has to wait for it to pass by. Sherbet Land's probably my favorite stage, I dunno why. Could just be that the music is nostalgic, but I also just like winter-themed settings in general.
I don't revisit this game often, as it feels like you can quickly get all the mileage you need out of it within an hour or two. But it'd be nice to play it with a couple friends sometime, even if there's technically better options for a Mario Kart experience out there. I guess that's probably 64's biggest problem, isn't it? It's not a bad game by any means, it was just made obsolete the moment later Mario Kart entries started adding past courses into their selection. Now, you can experience them at 60fps, with remade graphics, and with better controls. That just leaves Mario Kart 64 to sit in a corner, saddened and forgotten. But at least I'm still here. It doesn't have to be THAT lonely. Anyway, see you in 5 years!
1996
There's a couple different starting points I could recommend for the Mega Man newcomer, and they tend to vary based on your ability to adapt to antiquation. If starting from the beginning is ruled out, then I'd recommend Mega Man 3. If you don't want even a sliver of antiquation, then you could try 6. If the NES series as a whole is not your forte, I'd recommend 7- (bursts into laughter)
No, but seriously. Up until now, the series has had its share of good mixed with mid, and a rough difficulty that alienated those who don't have the patience required for it (or aren't using save states, anyway). And in the case of games like Mega Man 7 & Mega Man X3, if playing those caused you to say "fuck this" to the rest of the franchise, I wouldn't be surprised. But I think that'd also be an unfortunate shame. Because you would've been THIS close to the short-lived "PS1 Capcom reneissance", which bestowed upon us such classics as Resident Evil, alongside Mega Man X4, Mega Man Legends, and, our main subject for today: Mega Man 8. The first entry in the whole series that I would feel absolutely safe recommending not just to seasoned run 'n gun players, but to anybody.
However, this leads me into a thought that - while I generally do my best to avoid on Backloggd - I just couldn't help but think "How in the world do people think this is a 3/5?" I mean, look, if a person gave it a shot and all they got out of it is "average", I'll just have to respect that, we're all knocking heads about something as trite as game opinions anyway. And I ain't expecting a perfect score either, y'know. Still, here I am scratching my chin, and thinking to myself "Isn't this... what people trying to get into Mega Man wanted?"
It makes me wonder just how much of that opinion stems from a case of franchise burnout, combined with the expectation that the series will eventually innovate and modernize itself. Only for the disappointment to hit, when Mega Man 8 could be jadedly summed up as "just another one." "A prettier Mega Man 7." Well, I'll have to face the facts too. I don't think Mega Man 8 is ground breaking in any way. But comparing it to 7 - and every other prior game for that matter - the difference in accessibility is night and day.
You're not gonna hit the same levels of bullshit here that 7 threw at you, for one. The difficulty is lax enough, that if you wanted to, you could do the final boss without the need for recovery items, because guess what! The attack patterns are actually fair this time, whoOAOAOoaAOaoA! The same goes for every boss, which telegraph their attacks a lot better, making learning them a lot more fun. Bass's boss fight is such a huge glow-up from the one in 7, and goes down as one of my favorite boss encounters amongst the classic Mega Man series.
I even think that something like the snowboarding sequences are really not as bad as some people make it out to be, especially now that Mega Man 8 sports a "permanent checkpoint" feature. Reaching the halfway point of each stage allows you to always restart at that halfway point, even if you lose all your lifes. No more getting booted back to the very beginning, means that the challenge is more reasonable this time around. I don't think the Dr. Wily stages have those halfway checkpoints, but they tend to be half as short, with only one stage testing your limits. But even then, I really have to stress that nothing can reach the disaster that were 7's Dr. Wily stages, so, c'mon. You can do it!
The currency system has also been revamped, so that the bolts you need for the shop can only be found in specific nooks 'n crannies now, instead of being dropped by enemies. To compensate for the lesser quantity, the shop is now dedicated to purchasing permanent abilities. (E-Tanks have been replaced by your robot dog, who you can order to refill your health per every checkpoint, and every death too I think?) It's definitely worth going for them, they'll help you in the long run, but it's important to know that you will not be able to buy every ability in a single run. It's better to concentrate on a "build", by purchasing only the stuff that you think will appeal to your playstyle. Me personally, I've never understood the usefulness of stuff like the Laser & Arrow Shots, but being able to buy stuff like "Start the stage with 4 lifes instead of 2", or being able to recover more health from energy capsules helps tremendously.
Okay, so far my entire sales pitch has just been "It's good because it's easier", but that may not be enough to sway anybody from a 3/5 rating. And I suppose I'll have to accept that if you just don't have interest in the Mega Man formula as it currently stands, period, then... maybe this one ain't gonna do much for you. But right now, I'm focusing on that one guy that DOES see the fun in Mega Man's gameplay, they just don't jive with the difficulty. And if you are that person, then this is the earliest example of a Mega Man title you should be able to enjoy.
On top of the accessible difficulty, I also think the presentation here holds up pretty well. Just because the series didn't transition to 3D, doesn't mean it's not taking advantage of the PS1's capabilities. The spritework and backgrounds took a step-up in detail, and every stage sticks out in its vibrant and distinct choice of color. It's nice to stop and soak in the visuals once in a while. The soundtrack's up there as one of the series's chillest, but still manages to capture the essence of what these games are known for, while going for a unique sound that's difficult to find in other places. Both of these elements contribute to giving Mega Man 8 its own sense of identity. A stark contrast from the 6 NES Mega Mans that all felt like expansion packs to each other, Mega Man 8 toys around with presentation and mechanical variety in such a way that feels entirely familiar, yet suitable for a new generation of console.
I really like the cutscenes too, and I will die on this hill. Not that I'm blind to just how objectively terrible they are, but you're no fun if you think that's a detriment to the experience! The way the dubbing on this came out is its own miracle to appreciate, just so utterly "we don't give a fuck" in its energy that it goes back around to being just as entertaining as the Resident Evil 1 cutscenes. There ain't that many of them, but each one is unforgettable. Shoutouts to Wh- Mega Man's actress for tanking that 30-second scream. As a kid, it made me go "jesus christ." As an adult, it still makes me go "jesus christ", but now I'm more baffled than unsettled.
I don't know, man, this game just hits right. This is a properly polished Mega Man, right here. I could probably set my standards higher and ask for more, but considering that this would be the last classic Mega Man game for over a dozen years, I'd rather appreciate that the series managed to get a pretty pleasant one in before it got shelved in favor of its spinoffs. I'm not the type who needs innovation. I need heart. 8 has mine.
Now, if somebody could get Mega Man out of that recolored Looney Tunes background in the cover art, I would much appreciate it.
No, but seriously. Up until now, the series has had its share of good mixed with mid, and a rough difficulty that alienated those who don't have the patience required for it (or aren't using save states, anyway). And in the case of games like Mega Man 7 & Mega Man X3, if playing those caused you to say "fuck this" to the rest of the franchise, I wouldn't be surprised. But I think that'd also be an unfortunate shame. Because you would've been THIS close to the short-lived "PS1 Capcom reneissance", which bestowed upon us such classics as Resident Evil, alongside Mega Man X4, Mega Man Legends, and, our main subject for today: Mega Man 8. The first entry in the whole series that I would feel absolutely safe recommending not just to seasoned run 'n gun players, but to anybody.
However, this leads me into a thought that - while I generally do my best to avoid on Backloggd - I just couldn't help but think "How in the world do people think this is a 3/5?" I mean, look, if a person gave it a shot and all they got out of it is "average", I'll just have to respect that, we're all knocking heads about something as trite as game opinions anyway. And I ain't expecting a perfect score either, y'know. Still, here I am scratching my chin, and thinking to myself "Isn't this... what people trying to get into Mega Man wanted?"
It makes me wonder just how much of that opinion stems from a case of franchise burnout, combined with the expectation that the series will eventually innovate and modernize itself. Only for the disappointment to hit, when Mega Man 8 could be jadedly summed up as "just another one." "A prettier Mega Man 7." Well, I'll have to face the facts too. I don't think Mega Man 8 is ground breaking in any way. But comparing it to 7 - and every other prior game for that matter - the difference in accessibility is night and day.
You're not gonna hit the same levels of bullshit here that 7 threw at you, for one. The difficulty is lax enough, that if you wanted to, you could do the final boss without the need for recovery items, because guess what! The attack patterns are actually fair this time, whoOAOAOoaAOaoA! The same goes for every boss, which telegraph their attacks a lot better, making learning them a lot more fun. Bass's boss fight is such a huge glow-up from the one in 7, and goes down as one of my favorite boss encounters amongst the classic Mega Man series.
I even think that something like the snowboarding sequences are really not as bad as some people make it out to be, especially now that Mega Man 8 sports a "permanent checkpoint" feature. Reaching the halfway point of each stage allows you to always restart at that halfway point, even if you lose all your lifes. No more getting booted back to the very beginning, means that the challenge is more reasonable this time around. I don't think the Dr. Wily stages have those halfway checkpoints, but they tend to be half as short, with only one stage testing your limits. But even then, I really have to stress that nothing can reach the disaster that were 7's Dr. Wily stages, so, c'mon. You can do it!
The currency system has also been revamped, so that the bolts you need for the shop can only be found in specific nooks 'n crannies now, instead of being dropped by enemies. To compensate for the lesser quantity, the shop is now dedicated to purchasing permanent abilities. (E-Tanks have been replaced by your robot dog, who you can order to refill your health per every checkpoint, and every death too I think?) It's definitely worth going for them, they'll help you in the long run, but it's important to know that you will not be able to buy every ability in a single run. It's better to concentrate on a "build", by purchasing only the stuff that you think will appeal to your playstyle. Me personally, I've never understood the usefulness of stuff like the Laser & Arrow Shots, but being able to buy stuff like "Start the stage with 4 lifes instead of 2", or being able to recover more health from energy capsules helps tremendously.
Okay, so far my entire sales pitch has just been "It's good because it's easier", but that may not be enough to sway anybody from a 3/5 rating. And I suppose I'll have to accept that if you just don't have interest in the Mega Man formula as it currently stands, period, then... maybe this one ain't gonna do much for you. But right now, I'm focusing on that one guy that DOES see the fun in Mega Man's gameplay, they just don't jive with the difficulty. And if you are that person, then this is the earliest example of a Mega Man title you should be able to enjoy.
On top of the accessible difficulty, I also think the presentation here holds up pretty well. Just because the series didn't transition to 3D, doesn't mean it's not taking advantage of the PS1's capabilities. The spritework and backgrounds took a step-up in detail, and every stage sticks out in its vibrant and distinct choice of color. It's nice to stop and soak in the visuals once in a while. The soundtrack's up there as one of the series's chillest, but still manages to capture the essence of what these games are known for, while going for a unique sound that's difficult to find in other places. Both of these elements contribute to giving Mega Man 8 its own sense of identity. A stark contrast from the 6 NES Mega Mans that all felt like expansion packs to each other, Mega Man 8 toys around with presentation and mechanical variety in such a way that feels entirely familiar, yet suitable for a new generation of console.
I really like the cutscenes too, and I will die on this hill. Not that I'm blind to just how objectively terrible they are, but you're no fun if you think that's a detriment to the experience! The way the dubbing on this came out is its own miracle to appreciate, just so utterly "we don't give a fuck" in its energy that it goes back around to being just as entertaining as the Resident Evil 1 cutscenes. There ain't that many of them, but each one is unforgettable. Shoutouts to Wh- Mega Man's actress for tanking that 30-second scream. As a kid, it made me go "jesus christ." As an adult, it still makes me go "jesus christ", but now I'm more baffled than unsettled.
I don't know, man, this game just hits right. This is a properly polished Mega Man, right here. I could probably set my standards higher and ask for more, but considering that this would be the last classic Mega Man game for over a dozen years, I'd rather appreciate that the series managed to get a pretty pleasant one in before it got shelved in favor of its spinoffs. I'm not the type who needs innovation. I need heart. 8 has mine.
Now, if somebody could get Mega Man out of that recolored Looney Tunes background in the cover art, I would much appreciate it.
Played using the PC re-release. Much, much better than the N64 original, thanks to a smooth 60fps frame rate and other minor conveniences.
Y'know, when I first began playing Turok, I was really pleasantly surprised. Back in this era of gaming, my expectations for FPS releases are really low. Games like Wolfenstein and Doom don't appeal to me all the way, because of their over-reliance on mazes and keycard hunting shenanigans. It's no fun to have your demon-killing spree be interrupted by 20 minutes of "fuck, where do I go next?" That's why I generally prefer more linear campaigns, the likes of Half-Life and such.
Turok's first couple stages hit a different stride than the likes of Doom or Half-Life though. It's a type of level design that reminded me more of a race track, with platforming elements thrown in. The stages are a series of long (and i mean LONG) stretches of pathways, the length compensated by a sense of flow that allows you to zoom your way across them at a bit of a ridiculous rate. Once you figure out that diagonal movement makes you twice as fast, you become the fucking bishop piece of FPS games, there is simply no other method of movement you'll be wanting to use.
I really, really liked this part of Turok. It was far from the most complex FPS design I've played, but what was there really filled out that "comfort game" part of my brain. Hunting down collectibles, secrets, vibing to the percussion-heavy drum beats while mowing down dinosaurs, with weapons that honestly felt really good to use. It was mindless, but in a very polished and easy to get into kinda way. I'd be down to revisit those parts of the game again at some point.
Buut, there are other parts that I would genuinely love to have a skip button for, and they rear their ugly head in the 2nd half of the journey. The temple level. A nice change of scenery at first, until I realized that Turok was no longer doing the thing that was setting its level design apart from others. This is a maze. An obnoxiously big one. You do have a map! But it's not going to help here. I got lost, and that dragged the pacing of the stage so hard that I almost considered stopping there. The next stage right after though somewhat returned to the more standard level design from before, so that was thankfully a one-off.
Well, it was a one-off as far as "maze levels" go, but it's not the only bad stage in the game, there's an even worse one. I don't use these words lightly, the final level deserves nothing good in its life. The previous stages were already pretty long as is, but this final one seems to be doing everything in its humane power to pad the distance between you and the credits. Miles upon miles of copy-paste level design, it is an excruciating test of your patience, and a clear indication that the developers just gave up right there and then. They ran a pretty good marathon, and shit on the track just before the finish line. A genuinely terrible shame, for what was honestly a mostly pleasant FPS before then.
There's a couple other nitpicks I have, like the concept of putting extra lives into an FPS is pretty silly. I didn't really like that enemies respawn, and that ultimate weapon that you can unlock was a huge waste. You're only able to get it about 5 minutes before the game is over, at which point I guess you could... replay stages with it? But I'm not doing that. I've beaten the game. There's nothing else to do. Imagine only getting the BFG at the final boss, this is what it felt like.
To summarize, Turok could've been a potential 4/5 if it kept the quality up all the way through, but man, those 2 stages out of 8 are so repulsive that they risk ruining the entire thing. I know for a fact that my opinion was soured, and my fondness runs dry after the 1st half of the game concludes. But as much as I'm tempted to go with a score of 2.5, I really want to give Turok some slack, because the parts that WERE fun about it, really did hit the sort of dopamine I'm looking for in these sorts of games. I only wish the experience was consistent, and that the developers could've been more concerned about the quality of the journey, rather than a mind-numbing quantity.
Y'know, when I first began playing Turok, I was really pleasantly surprised. Back in this era of gaming, my expectations for FPS releases are really low. Games like Wolfenstein and Doom don't appeal to me all the way, because of their over-reliance on mazes and keycard hunting shenanigans. It's no fun to have your demon-killing spree be interrupted by 20 minutes of "fuck, where do I go next?" That's why I generally prefer more linear campaigns, the likes of Half-Life and such.
Turok's first couple stages hit a different stride than the likes of Doom or Half-Life though. It's a type of level design that reminded me more of a race track, with platforming elements thrown in. The stages are a series of long (and i mean LONG) stretches of pathways, the length compensated by a sense of flow that allows you to zoom your way across them at a bit of a ridiculous rate. Once you figure out that diagonal movement makes you twice as fast, you become the fucking bishop piece of FPS games, there is simply no other method of movement you'll be wanting to use.
I really, really liked this part of Turok. It was far from the most complex FPS design I've played, but what was there really filled out that "comfort game" part of my brain. Hunting down collectibles, secrets, vibing to the percussion-heavy drum beats while mowing down dinosaurs, with weapons that honestly felt really good to use. It was mindless, but in a very polished and easy to get into kinda way. I'd be down to revisit those parts of the game again at some point.
Buut, there are other parts that I would genuinely love to have a skip button for, and they rear their ugly head in the 2nd half of the journey. The temple level. A nice change of scenery at first, until I realized that Turok was no longer doing the thing that was setting its level design apart from others. This is a maze. An obnoxiously big one. You do have a map! But it's not going to help here. I got lost, and that dragged the pacing of the stage so hard that I almost considered stopping there. The next stage right after though somewhat returned to the more standard level design from before, so that was thankfully a one-off.
Well, it was a one-off as far as "maze levels" go, but it's not the only bad stage in the game, there's an even worse one. I don't use these words lightly, the final level deserves nothing good in its life. The previous stages were already pretty long as is, but this final one seems to be doing everything in its humane power to pad the distance between you and the credits. Miles upon miles of copy-paste level design, it is an excruciating test of your patience, and a clear indication that the developers just gave up right there and then. They ran a pretty good marathon, and shit on the track just before the finish line. A genuinely terrible shame, for what was honestly a mostly pleasant FPS before then.
There's a couple other nitpicks I have, like the concept of putting extra lives into an FPS is pretty silly. I didn't really like that enemies respawn, and that ultimate weapon that you can unlock was a huge waste. You're only able to get it about 5 minutes before the game is over, at which point I guess you could... replay stages with it? But I'm not doing that. I've beaten the game. There's nothing else to do. Imagine only getting the BFG at the final boss, this is what it felt like.
To summarize, Turok could've been a potential 4/5 if it kept the quality up all the way through, but man, those 2 stages out of 8 are so repulsive that they risk ruining the entire thing. I know for a fact that my opinion was soured, and my fondness runs dry after the 1st half of the game concludes. But as much as I'm tempted to go with a score of 2.5, I really want to give Turok some slack, because the parts that WERE fun about it, really did hit the sort of dopamine I'm looking for in these sorts of games. I only wish the experience was consistent, and that the developers could've been more concerned about the quality of the journey, rather than a mind-numbing quantity.
1993
Ohhh, boy. It looks like I'm about to join the collective of hot takes surrounding one of the greatest games of all time. This is a place there's no coming back from, so first, let's at least try and be fair about it, and take a little time talking about what I liked about Secret of Mana:
The graphics! There was clearly an evolution of talent happening within Squaresoft around this point of time. The previous Squaresoft releases used these tinier, chibi-proportioned character sprites. By comparison, you can look at Secret of Mana, and think "Okay, yeah, this is where the Chrono Trigger art team had their roots." Everything is brimming with more detail here, and the characters were scaled up to match. Larger character sprites means that their ability to emote and strike poses is no longer as constrained too.
I imagine this sort of detail was made to get a good first impression going for the SNES-CD, the ill-fated Sony addon that Mana was initially being developed for. It must've been far from an easy task to condense all that work into the 2-megabyte SNES cartridge, but I think it makes it fascinating to perceive the final product as a bit of a "port", rather than the original version. Looking at it that way, Mana feels especially impressive in just how much graphical fidelity it managed to cram into its small space, even if that does mean the game's frame rate tends to struggle at times. Its flower-coated grassy plains, and fake water reflections must've set a pretty high standard for other developers to keep up in crafting worlds that felt as alive, and as nature-loving as this one.
And then you have the cover art. It's just an actual fucking painting, dude, this belongs in a gallery, not on an SNES box art. But I appreciate that the developers felt like the game deserved that much. "Chin down, eyes up" box arts, or any box art that tries to mimic the design of movie posters are a poison on the game industry's creativity, and they are never gonna sell me on your product if I see 20 more of them next to it. But seeing the size of this tree, lush forest, and the insignificance of humanity reflected in how tiny they are compared to it? Yeah, no, I wouldn't even need to look at the screenshots, I'd buy this the moment I'd see this art. This leaves a mark.
Next up, the music! There's something beautiful in many of the tracks found here. The composer found a great balance of atmosphere and catchy melody. A lot of it is owed to the softer selection of instruments, differing greatly from other Squaresoft titles that used trumpets to emphasize "adventure" as the primary feeling. Mana emphasizes something closer to melancholy, I'd say. It reflects the dying world around you (well, that's what the plot says is happening anyway), the desolate palaces that used to be populated with people, and your main character's status as an outcast who bore a responsibility heavy enough to put everyone else around them in danger. You don't feel like a hero, more like a boy who was forced into being one. The solemn nature of the music reflects that heavily.
After completing the game, I looked up a music album called "Secret of Mana+". The wiki cannot seem to make up its mind on whether it was released in 1993 or 1995, but it features remixed arrangements from both Secret of Mana, and the then-upcoming Trials of Mana, created by the original composer of both games. I already enjoyed Secret of Mana's soundtrack, but I think it was this album which really opened my eyes that Hiroki Kikuta is someone truly special. Imagining that this is the soundtrack we could've gotten if the SNES-CD came to pass, this feels like Kikuta without any technological restraints. He has a passion for breaking conventions on what a fantasy RPG could sound like, an unpredictability that makes each song a mystery to look forward to. Secret of Mana had this strange penchant for combining modern technology with its fantasy setting, something that I think this album leans into as well, and it's something that Squaresoft themselves would go on to increase the focus on for later Final Fantasies. In any case, having stepped into the rabbit hole that is Kikuta's effortless talent, I'm really excited to get to his later work now.
One thing, though. And this'll be the one problem I'll voice with Secret of Mana's soundtrack: This boss theme is really not good. In a soundtrack where about 60% of it could be mixed together with rain ambience, a boss theme with an intensity this dialed up does not belong here. On top of the lack of buildup, It's a jarring shift in tone everytime it happens, and takes you right out of whatever atmosphere the game has steeped into before. Literally anything more subtle could've improved things by a ton.
Okay, what else? Those co-op features are pretty cool! I mean, it's the big thing that Secret of Mana was known for, right? And unless you're playing MMO's, it seems like even to this day, the concept of multiplayer in an RPG is not one that's commonly explored. These big 30-hour RPG adventures tend to feel a little lonely when you have to pretend that your party members are real by naming them after your friends. Though, in the case of me and my friend who played this game together, we decided to name the girl character after Karl Marx, for some reason. There were times when we coordinated by taking turns to attack an enemy in order to stunlock it, and getting into that sense of rhythm felt quite conducive to the spirit of teamwork. And it must've been nice to be young in the 90's, to be able to experience a game with two or three people, sharing in your imaginations over what a world like Mana could still hold for you. At the age of 25, though...
Alright, I don't think I can hold this in any longer. Secret of Mana tried its best. But its best was not good enough to propel this gameplay. Everything about it is a complete and total fucking mess. I don't know if I can blame this on the programmer, but everytime I see "programmed by Nasir" on the front of a Squaresoft title screen, the phrase is like a curse that dooms whatever game has it into an oblivion of clunk, jank, and bugs. On the other hand, I have to consider that the Gameboy predecessor to Mana had its own share of jank to contend with. I thought it was because of Gameboy limitations impeding the ambition of the gameplay. Perhaps something similar is happening here, but worse. A game with the ambition of an SNES-CD title, that had to get squeezed into an SNES cartridge instead, is now actively struggling under its own weight.
How about that hit feedback, for starters? Do your attacks fail to connect because the hitboxes are utter nonsense, or is it because the enemy's evasion stat kicked in and caused them to dodge your attack? These are questions that never, ever went away throughout me and my friend's experience. And these are questions that could've easily been solved if there was a little "Miss!" piece of text that popped up if your attack missed. But there isn't one. If the attack connects, it feels pretty okay, better than what it used to feel like in the Gameboy Mana anyway. But when it doesn't (and you bet your ass it won't), you cannot fathom why. You are not told why. You do not know what to blame it on. You don't know whether the game is even working correctly, but one thing you DO come to know, is that your characters are woefully incompetent at combat. Like trying to chase down a rabbit in a dream, but your legs are made out of jelly, Secret of Mana's sluggish game feel makes you just as incapable of performing the most basic of tasks.
The enemies, though? Oh, one thing's for sure, they are far from incompetent. You know how this game's combat is referred to as being in real-time? I think that's just an illusion. I think that by modern standards, the implication of real-time combat is that you are in constant control of your actions. There will be times where the enemy takes control away to dish out a powerful attack, but those moments tend to be infrequent in modern RPG's. In Mana, those moments are relentless, and brutal.
It's like the enemies have been taught every trick that RPG players usually deploy to cheese their way through battles, except now you get to see how annoying it feels. Sleeping spells, petrifying spells, a series of attack spell combos that freeze you in place each time, flame spells that lock you in place for an upwards of 10 seconds, freeze spells that turn you into a snowman where you can't do anything, physical attacks that knock you unconscious. There is so much shit in this game that stunlocks you, and almost every enemy makes use of something like that. Don't forget the variant of stunlock where an enemy traps you against a corner, and unless you manage to kill them fast enough, you are about to be instantly killed yourself.
There's also a substantial amount of enemies that like to multiply themselves just when you think you've almost killed them. The one time we considered depleting our magic resources on them, there was not enough left for the boss, which turned it into an excruciatingly tedious war of attrition. Turns out, this led to the mentality that half this game's enemies were not fun, or worth fighting whatsoever, so we ran right past them. There were at least two dungeons where we did not feel like fighting even a single enemy. We Paper Mario Sticker Star-ing over here, playing an RPG where the act of fighting an enemy in an area predominantly dedicated to fighting enemies had zero appeal to it.
On our last session, I've realized why this was a problem for us. Our magic was underleveled. Even though we've tried focusing on a select few categories of spells that we thought would've been more useful, we were 3 hours away from the game's credits and none of our magic was doing enough to the regular enemies to make it worthwhile. We were too generous in thinking that the usefulness of the magic would naturally scale with the progression. But much like most other RPG's of its time, grinding was the only real solution to this issue.
And so the grinding commenced, and it's only then that I realized the egregious amount of grinding required to see your magic leveled up to a useful potency. At low levels, the grind is reasonable enough. Once you start getting halfway there? You would have to use these spells hundreds of times, far beyond the amount the game would naturally require of you. So the strategy is that you go to the cheapest Inn you can find, proceed to start spamming magic on yourself, and then rest everytime you're out. Rinse, repeat, until the magic levels are looking good enough. Using fast forward at a speed of 4.0x, this process took 2 hours. Without that, it would've been like, what, 5 to 6 hours? Of doing nothing but standing around in an Inn like a dumbass, and watching the same magic casting animation over and over.
The kicker to all this? You would probably think to yourself that there's no way that "Go to the nearest Inn and spam magic to level up" is what the developers actually intended you to do. And then you look at the official manual. And they tell you to do exactly that. That is an official recommended tip. And it shows! Because if you proceed to do this, offensive magic goes from mediocre to the most useful tool you'll have in the game. Using Magic Absorb to restore your MP for free, and then just dishing out the strongest spells becomes THE way to deal with every enemy, and every boss remaining.
But it's out of the frying pan and into the fire now, because this over-reliance on magic brings about a problem exclusive to the game's biggest selling feature: the co-op. Bear in mind, there is only one character that is proficient in dealing magic damage. And everytime you want to use magic or do anything in your menu, the game freezes and the other players are waiting until you finish making your choices. Soooo, when the moment comes that you rely on offensive magic more and more, the agency of the other players vanishes, because one player is constantly opening and reopening their magic menu to repeatedly spam magic attacks. All the others players can do is watch. In the case of my friend, while his character was standing around in a corner, he took his phone out and ordered some food while I was wailing on the final set of bosses. At that point, the co-op becomes a novelty. A little optional extra, but clearly one where the game was not designed around giving every player an equal amount of involvement.
Oh, right, speaking of the menus, this Ring Menu is a nifty little way of doing things, and it technically makes sense for a game with co-op in it. Only problem was, I'm in the middle of the final boss and I still can't fucking efficiently navigate this thing. I can't even count the amount of times I tripped up on selecting the wrong menu, or overshooting the menu I really wanted, or thinking the menu I want is one button press away, but oops, wrong way, should've pressed up instead of down! It's a nitpick, sure, but the seconds do add up when your friend has to watch you constantly select the wrong things, and when you observe them doing the same.
Even with a series of paragraphs that reads like a new chapter to the constitutional amendment, I still don't think I've expressed my feelings of disdain on this gameplay well enough. But just to sum it up: This does not feel like a real-time RPG. This feels like a turn-based RPG where enemies have thrice the amount of turns you have, and every one of those turns is designed to make your experience a tedious hell. AI partners get constantly stuck on corners, one time they went out of bounds and almost got me softlocked if it weren't for the nearby whippable spot... oh yeah, did I mention that the game did softlock during one of the room transitions? Oh, oh, and what about those 6 text box designs you can select from, none of which make reading the game's text any less of an eyesore? The art and sound design is hitting it out of the park. The people in charge of everything else, have fucked it up on so many levels.
Something still perplexes me. I mean, throughout my life, I've seen plenty of retrospective reviews that tout Secret of Mana's gameplay to be just as fun as it was back then. That this isn't called "one of the greatest games of all time" just because of its innovation and presentation, but because this game IS fun. All those things that I've complained about, the stunlocks and the magic spamming that enemies inflict on you, and the unruly and unclear evasion mechanics, is that just part of the intended experience? Is that what creates the push and pull for the people who do enjoy it? Most importantly, if I didn't come into this game with the expectation of combat being closer to something like Kingdom Hearts 1 or Crisis Core, would I have enjoyed it more? I can't help but feel, that maybe I'm not appreciating Secret of Mana's gameplay as much as I should, or that I "missed the point" of it.
But thinking about it from another perspective, I took a quick look on Backloggd's thoughts on Trials of Mana, and it looks like the people who didn't like Secret of Mana, enjoyed Trials way more. I get the feeling I'll be landing in the same boat as those people when I get around to that game. So what does that make Secret of Mana, if not a poorly aged wreck? A different game for a different audience? For a more patient audience? A nostalgic audience? An audience that acknowledges its flaws, but doesn't let them get in the way of the experience? I really don't understand the praise for this game, but I would really like to know. What is it about this gameplay that clicks with people not just back in the 90's, but to this very day?
Nonetheless, if you liked it, I'm glad you did. On top of a phenomenal atmosphere and soundtrack, you got a fun game out of it too. I wish I could share in the same feeling, but I can't lie to you. This was kinda horrendous. Not something I'd touch ever again without a major overhaul to its systems. I feel unsatisfied, but I'm not surprised. I already knew to keep my expectations low. Now if you'll excuse me, it is my duty as a girl, to become a giant fucking tree.
The graphics! There was clearly an evolution of talent happening within Squaresoft around this point of time. The previous Squaresoft releases used these tinier, chibi-proportioned character sprites. By comparison, you can look at Secret of Mana, and think "Okay, yeah, this is where the Chrono Trigger art team had their roots." Everything is brimming with more detail here, and the characters were scaled up to match. Larger character sprites means that their ability to emote and strike poses is no longer as constrained too.
I imagine this sort of detail was made to get a good first impression going for the SNES-CD, the ill-fated Sony addon that Mana was initially being developed for. It must've been far from an easy task to condense all that work into the 2-megabyte SNES cartridge, but I think it makes it fascinating to perceive the final product as a bit of a "port", rather than the original version. Looking at it that way, Mana feels especially impressive in just how much graphical fidelity it managed to cram into its small space, even if that does mean the game's frame rate tends to struggle at times. Its flower-coated grassy plains, and fake water reflections must've set a pretty high standard for other developers to keep up in crafting worlds that felt as alive, and as nature-loving as this one.
And then you have the cover art. It's just an actual fucking painting, dude, this belongs in a gallery, not on an SNES box art. But I appreciate that the developers felt like the game deserved that much. "Chin down, eyes up" box arts, or any box art that tries to mimic the design of movie posters are a poison on the game industry's creativity, and they are never gonna sell me on your product if I see 20 more of them next to it. But seeing the size of this tree, lush forest, and the insignificance of humanity reflected in how tiny they are compared to it? Yeah, no, I wouldn't even need to look at the screenshots, I'd buy this the moment I'd see this art. This leaves a mark.
Next up, the music! There's something beautiful in many of the tracks found here. The composer found a great balance of atmosphere and catchy melody. A lot of it is owed to the softer selection of instruments, differing greatly from other Squaresoft titles that used trumpets to emphasize "adventure" as the primary feeling. Mana emphasizes something closer to melancholy, I'd say. It reflects the dying world around you (well, that's what the plot says is happening anyway), the desolate palaces that used to be populated with people, and your main character's status as an outcast who bore a responsibility heavy enough to put everyone else around them in danger. You don't feel like a hero, more like a boy who was forced into being one. The solemn nature of the music reflects that heavily.
After completing the game, I looked up a music album called "Secret of Mana+". The wiki cannot seem to make up its mind on whether it was released in 1993 or 1995, but it features remixed arrangements from both Secret of Mana, and the then-upcoming Trials of Mana, created by the original composer of both games. I already enjoyed Secret of Mana's soundtrack, but I think it was this album which really opened my eyes that Hiroki Kikuta is someone truly special. Imagining that this is the soundtrack we could've gotten if the SNES-CD came to pass, this feels like Kikuta without any technological restraints. He has a passion for breaking conventions on what a fantasy RPG could sound like, an unpredictability that makes each song a mystery to look forward to. Secret of Mana had this strange penchant for combining modern technology with its fantasy setting, something that I think this album leans into as well, and it's something that Squaresoft themselves would go on to increase the focus on for later Final Fantasies. In any case, having stepped into the rabbit hole that is Kikuta's effortless talent, I'm really excited to get to his later work now.
One thing, though. And this'll be the one problem I'll voice with Secret of Mana's soundtrack: This boss theme is really not good. In a soundtrack where about 60% of it could be mixed together with rain ambience, a boss theme with an intensity this dialed up does not belong here. On top of the lack of buildup, It's a jarring shift in tone everytime it happens, and takes you right out of whatever atmosphere the game has steeped into before. Literally anything more subtle could've improved things by a ton.
Okay, what else? Those co-op features are pretty cool! I mean, it's the big thing that Secret of Mana was known for, right? And unless you're playing MMO's, it seems like even to this day, the concept of multiplayer in an RPG is not one that's commonly explored. These big 30-hour RPG adventures tend to feel a little lonely when you have to pretend that your party members are real by naming them after your friends. Though, in the case of me and my friend who played this game together, we decided to name the girl character after Karl Marx, for some reason. There were times when we coordinated by taking turns to attack an enemy in order to stunlock it, and getting into that sense of rhythm felt quite conducive to the spirit of teamwork. And it must've been nice to be young in the 90's, to be able to experience a game with two or three people, sharing in your imaginations over what a world like Mana could still hold for you. At the age of 25, though...
Alright, I don't think I can hold this in any longer. Secret of Mana tried its best. But its best was not good enough to propel this gameplay. Everything about it is a complete and total fucking mess. I don't know if I can blame this on the programmer, but everytime I see "programmed by Nasir" on the front of a Squaresoft title screen, the phrase is like a curse that dooms whatever game has it into an oblivion of clunk, jank, and bugs. On the other hand, I have to consider that the Gameboy predecessor to Mana had its own share of jank to contend with. I thought it was because of Gameboy limitations impeding the ambition of the gameplay. Perhaps something similar is happening here, but worse. A game with the ambition of an SNES-CD title, that had to get squeezed into an SNES cartridge instead, is now actively struggling under its own weight.
How about that hit feedback, for starters? Do your attacks fail to connect because the hitboxes are utter nonsense, or is it because the enemy's evasion stat kicked in and caused them to dodge your attack? These are questions that never, ever went away throughout me and my friend's experience. And these are questions that could've easily been solved if there was a little "Miss!" piece of text that popped up if your attack missed. But there isn't one. If the attack connects, it feels pretty okay, better than what it used to feel like in the Gameboy Mana anyway. But when it doesn't (and you bet your ass it won't), you cannot fathom why. You are not told why. You do not know what to blame it on. You don't know whether the game is even working correctly, but one thing you DO come to know, is that your characters are woefully incompetent at combat. Like trying to chase down a rabbit in a dream, but your legs are made out of jelly, Secret of Mana's sluggish game feel makes you just as incapable of performing the most basic of tasks.
The enemies, though? Oh, one thing's for sure, they are far from incompetent. You know how this game's combat is referred to as being in real-time? I think that's just an illusion. I think that by modern standards, the implication of real-time combat is that you are in constant control of your actions. There will be times where the enemy takes control away to dish out a powerful attack, but those moments tend to be infrequent in modern RPG's. In Mana, those moments are relentless, and brutal.
It's like the enemies have been taught every trick that RPG players usually deploy to cheese their way through battles, except now you get to see how annoying it feels. Sleeping spells, petrifying spells, a series of attack spell combos that freeze you in place each time, flame spells that lock you in place for an upwards of 10 seconds, freeze spells that turn you into a snowman where you can't do anything, physical attacks that knock you unconscious. There is so much shit in this game that stunlocks you, and almost every enemy makes use of something like that. Don't forget the variant of stunlock where an enemy traps you against a corner, and unless you manage to kill them fast enough, you are about to be instantly killed yourself.
There's also a substantial amount of enemies that like to multiply themselves just when you think you've almost killed them. The one time we considered depleting our magic resources on them, there was not enough left for the boss, which turned it into an excruciatingly tedious war of attrition. Turns out, this led to the mentality that half this game's enemies were not fun, or worth fighting whatsoever, so we ran right past them. There were at least two dungeons where we did not feel like fighting even a single enemy. We Paper Mario Sticker Star-ing over here, playing an RPG where the act of fighting an enemy in an area predominantly dedicated to fighting enemies had zero appeal to it.
On our last session, I've realized why this was a problem for us. Our magic was underleveled. Even though we've tried focusing on a select few categories of spells that we thought would've been more useful, we were 3 hours away from the game's credits and none of our magic was doing enough to the regular enemies to make it worthwhile. We were too generous in thinking that the usefulness of the magic would naturally scale with the progression. But much like most other RPG's of its time, grinding was the only real solution to this issue.
And so the grinding commenced, and it's only then that I realized the egregious amount of grinding required to see your magic leveled up to a useful potency. At low levels, the grind is reasonable enough. Once you start getting halfway there? You would have to use these spells hundreds of times, far beyond the amount the game would naturally require of you. So the strategy is that you go to the cheapest Inn you can find, proceed to start spamming magic on yourself, and then rest everytime you're out. Rinse, repeat, until the magic levels are looking good enough. Using fast forward at a speed of 4.0x, this process took 2 hours. Without that, it would've been like, what, 5 to 6 hours? Of doing nothing but standing around in an Inn like a dumbass, and watching the same magic casting animation over and over.
The kicker to all this? You would probably think to yourself that there's no way that "Go to the nearest Inn and spam magic to level up" is what the developers actually intended you to do. And then you look at the official manual. And they tell you to do exactly that. That is an official recommended tip. And it shows! Because if you proceed to do this, offensive magic goes from mediocre to the most useful tool you'll have in the game. Using Magic Absorb to restore your MP for free, and then just dishing out the strongest spells becomes THE way to deal with every enemy, and every boss remaining.
But it's out of the frying pan and into the fire now, because this over-reliance on magic brings about a problem exclusive to the game's biggest selling feature: the co-op. Bear in mind, there is only one character that is proficient in dealing magic damage. And everytime you want to use magic or do anything in your menu, the game freezes and the other players are waiting until you finish making your choices. Soooo, when the moment comes that you rely on offensive magic more and more, the agency of the other players vanishes, because one player is constantly opening and reopening their magic menu to repeatedly spam magic attacks. All the others players can do is watch. In the case of my friend, while his character was standing around in a corner, he took his phone out and ordered some food while I was wailing on the final set of bosses. At that point, the co-op becomes a novelty. A little optional extra, but clearly one where the game was not designed around giving every player an equal amount of involvement.
Oh, right, speaking of the menus, this Ring Menu is a nifty little way of doing things, and it technically makes sense for a game with co-op in it. Only problem was, I'm in the middle of the final boss and I still can't fucking efficiently navigate this thing. I can't even count the amount of times I tripped up on selecting the wrong menu, or overshooting the menu I really wanted, or thinking the menu I want is one button press away, but oops, wrong way, should've pressed up instead of down! It's a nitpick, sure, but the seconds do add up when your friend has to watch you constantly select the wrong things, and when you observe them doing the same.
Even with a series of paragraphs that reads like a new chapter to the constitutional amendment, I still don't think I've expressed my feelings of disdain on this gameplay well enough. But just to sum it up: This does not feel like a real-time RPG. This feels like a turn-based RPG where enemies have thrice the amount of turns you have, and every one of those turns is designed to make your experience a tedious hell. AI partners get constantly stuck on corners, one time they went out of bounds and almost got me softlocked if it weren't for the nearby whippable spot... oh yeah, did I mention that the game did softlock during one of the room transitions? Oh, oh, and what about those 6 text box designs you can select from, none of which make reading the game's text any less of an eyesore? The art and sound design is hitting it out of the park. The people in charge of everything else, have fucked it up on so many levels.
Something still perplexes me. I mean, throughout my life, I've seen plenty of retrospective reviews that tout Secret of Mana's gameplay to be just as fun as it was back then. That this isn't called "one of the greatest games of all time" just because of its innovation and presentation, but because this game IS fun. All those things that I've complained about, the stunlocks and the magic spamming that enemies inflict on you, and the unruly and unclear evasion mechanics, is that just part of the intended experience? Is that what creates the push and pull for the people who do enjoy it? Most importantly, if I didn't come into this game with the expectation of combat being closer to something like Kingdom Hearts 1 or Crisis Core, would I have enjoyed it more? I can't help but feel, that maybe I'm not appreciating Secret of Mana's gameplay as much as I should, or that I "missed the point" of it.
But thinking about it from another perspective, I took a quick look on Backloggd's thoughts on Trials of Mana, and it looks like the people who didn't like Secret of Mana, enjoyed Trials way more. I get the feeling I'll be landing in the same boat as those people when I get around to that game. So what does that make Secret of Mana, if not a poorly aged wreck? A different game for a different audience? For a more patient audience? A nostalgic audience? An audience that acknowledges its flaws, but doesn't let them get in the way of the experience? I really don't understand the praise for this game, but I would really like to know. What is it about this gameplay that clicks with people not just back in the 90's, but to this very day?
Nonetheless, if you liked it, I'm glad you did. On top of a phenomenal atmosphere and soundtrack, you got a fun game out of it too. I wish I could share in the same feeling, but I can't lie to you. This was kinda horrendous. Not something I'd touch ever again without a major overhaul to its systems. I feel unsatisfied, but I'm not surprised. I already knew to keep my expectations low. Now if you'll excuse me, it is my duty as a girl, to become a giant fucking tree.
1993
Ah, takes me back... this is where my RPG marathon began, back in the forgotten age of 2022. The year where I set out to beat as many RPG's in a chronological order as possible, starting with the first two NES Dragon Quests. Since then, my plans have admittedly changed a bit, because at the rate I'm going, I'm probably going to die before I get to something like FF7 Rebirth. So nowadays, I go a little out of order just to make sure I'm consistently playing the RPG's I really want to play, while still occasionally squeezing in the riskier, obscure titles.
Oddly enough, this series of SNES remakes counted as one of the RPG's I really wanted to play. It's odd, because recalling my experiences with the NES versions, didn't I think these games were average at best, really basic and depthless at worst? In the case of Dragon Quest II, I must've suppressed something traumatic about it, and yet, the thought of jumping back into a remake version sounded pretty appealing.
There is something cozy about these older titles, something akin to a blend of point 'n click adventure and collect-a-thon design mentality. Where every area is something you can mark off the map, as you procure important items to solve little fetch quests, gain access to further areas, and collect important McGuffins across the whole world map in order to unlock the final standoff. I figured that coming back to that was probably what I was looking forward to the most. On top of potential QoL, and a couple lessons learned from the days of NES difficulty, I was hoping to get a better version of Dragon Quest 1 & 2. And that's exactly what this provided.
But bear in mind, I make the distinction of saying it's better, instead of "the best." Because though I had some expectations for the remake, I also kept in mind that we're still in the year 1993, and RPG's weren't at the cutting edge of modern convenience yet. There were some that started thinking forward, but most did not get the memo. As for this? It kinda got it. Half of it. In the very least, I could say for sure that I'd choose playing this over the NES originals any day. But, well... am I being greedy for wanting just a little more out of this?
So in the case of the DQ1 remake, I had a pretty alright time. Length left me a little surprised though, did it always take only 5 hours to beat this game??? Anyway, it seems like the game was subtly rebalanced to be more in your favor. Grinding for money and experience was still a thing, but considering the short length, it wasn't a big deal. Another notable improvement are the extended music tracks. Loops that used to be short, now have more parts and variety to them, like they crammed down an orchestral score into a SNES cartridge. It would help tremendously in alleviating repetition, although they didn't fix the encounter rates, so hearing these songs constantly restart is gonna be a problem in itself.
More importantly, the remakes appear to run on the same engine as SNES DQ5, meaning that all the improvements from that game, are now over here! Auto-targeting's a thing, seeing equipment stats in a shop is a thing, a dedicated talk button is there, how cool! I think it would've been cooler though, if they didn't also bring back every single problem from DQ5. If you're looking for a run button, you're still shit outta luck. Shops remain as chatty and sluggish to purchase things through as ever, I will continue to complain about the limited inventory for as long as they don't fix it, and by JOVE, you gotta love the NPC's that literally block your way for what could be a whole minute of your time because that's just how their RNG works.
Again, in DQ1 none of this is necessarily a huge issue just because of how quick and to the point that game is. DQ2 is a whole other story, that's a 15-hour adventure right there, and every DQ5-related problem only makes it drag more as it goes on.
If they tried rebalancing DQ2, kudos. It really needed it. But I don't think they went as far as they should have, there is still an obnoxious amount of grind in this game. Equipment tends to cost more than my house, and as you head over to the field, you realize that the poultry amount of gold the enemies drop is not gonna get you close to buying that stuff anytime soon.
Now, considering the more open nature of DQ2, I understand that you're meant to be exploring the world in order to naturally procure enough gold to buy the better equipment later. But that's if you're not getting your ass constantly handed to you by how much pain the enemies dish out, losing your gold in the process. Of the three characters you control, only one of them is decently equipped until the endgame. The rest, are surviving by the skin of their teeth at all times, unless you're willing to spend hours of your life on that grind. And even then, an enemy can just say fuck it and instantly kill your entire party if they feel like it. Look, I'm fine with high difficulty in RPG's. But I think it's important to give the player the occasional break from these kinds of moments, to give them that breathing room to relax. But DQ2 being the same DQ2 it's always been, says "no."
Also, they brought the conveniences of DQ5 over, but NOT the fast travel spell? Like, you have the spell that brings you to the last save point, but what about the one where you can select any town you've previously visited? DQ2 is in such desperate need of this, what with all the back and forth backtracking and the long, elaborate paths you need to take to slooowly get back to the town you want, all the while enemies are raining down on you. Run button's one thing, but I think this was the most glaring omission from this remake, it's kinda crazy it's just not here.
Another problem pertains to the fan translation. It says it fixed all the bugs from an older English translation, but no it didn't. The reviews on romhacking.net that made note of this weren't just outdated, they are accurate to the day of me writing this. You've got basic typos that take you out of the experience, and potential softlocks and visual glitches that replace your entire dungeon with garbage data. And that's just what I ran into. It seems that DQ2 is the less stable of the two, since I didn't get anything like that while playing DQ1. And it definitely makes it a little harder to recommend, since you would have to basically be ready to constantly make save states, in the case that the game might or might not break soon.
So in total, I think I can at least recommend this package as a good way to play DQ1, y'know, if you just wanna see where did it all begin. You're not gonna get any interesting story or depth out of it, but set your expectations accordingly to "one of the first RPG series in history", and it won't be the worst use of your time. It's cozy, brief, and very harmless overall.
But when it comes to DQ2, my verdict is about the same as it was for the NES. Just don't bother, it's not worth it. The game may not be as hair-pullingly brutal as it used to be, but its tedious grinding and balancing was not fixed. Of course, that's assuming that the tediousness is something TO fix, and not just an inherent element of what DQ2 is. And the bugginess of the fan translation does not help its case either. At that point, surely there's gotta be a safer way to play this game, right...? Y-You're not gonna make me play... the ph-phone ports, are you...?!
This was a servicable way to return to these games. And it'll be a servicable way to experience them for your first time too. But it's still not quite there yet, it hasn't quite eliminated all the old-ass NES quirks of this franchise, and it still requires that sort of patience to really want to get through them. I would only recommend these early Dragon Quests to people who are capable of adjusting to a lack of QoL, and those truly dedicated to getting into this franchise, like myself. As for those who are just looking for a definitive entry point, every DQ I've played up to 1993 so far does not provide enough QoL to recommend them without caveats. I would suggest looking into the later games and remakes instead. Wake me up when the boat reaches the other side of the map.
Oddly enough, this series of SNES remakes counted as one of the RPG's I really wanted to play. It's odd, because recalling my experiences with the NES versions, didn't I think these games were average at best, really basic and depthless at worst? In the case of Dragon Quest II, I must've suppressed something traumatic about it, and yet, the thought of jumping back into a remake version sounded pretty appealing.
There is something cozy about these older titles, something akin to a blend of point 'n click adventure and collect-a-thon design mentality. Where every area is something you can mark off the map, as you procure important items to solve little fetch quests, gain access to further areas, and collect important McGuffins across the whole world map in order to unlock the final standoff. I figured that coming back to that was probably what I was looking forward to the most. On top of potential QoL, and a couple lessons learned from the days of NES difficulty, I was hoping to get a better version of Dragon Quest 1 & 2. And that's exactly what this provided.
But bear in mind, I make the distinction of saying it's better, instead of "the best." Because though I had some expectations for the remake, I also kept in mind that we're still in the year 1993, and RPG's weren't at the cutting edge of modern convenience yet. There were some that started thinking forward, but most did not get the memo. As for this? It kinda got it. Half of it. In the very least, I could say for sure that I'd choose playing this over the NES originals any day. But, well... am I being greedy for wanting just a little more out of this?
So in the case of the DQ1 remake, I had a pretty alright time. Length left me a little surprised though, did it always take only 5 hours to beat this game??? Anyway, it seems like the game was subtly rebalanced to be more in your favor. Grinding for money and experience was still a thing, but considering the short length, it wasn't a big deal. Another notable improvement are the extended music tracks. Loops that used to be short, now have more parts and variety to them, like they crammed down an orchestral score into a SNES cartridge. It would help tremendously in alleviating repetition, although they didn't fix the encounter rates, so hearing these songs constantly restart is gonna be a problem in itself.
More importantly, the remakes appear to run on the same engine as SNES DQ5, meaning that all the improvements from that game, are now over here! Auto-targeting's a thing, seeing equipment stats in a shop is a thing, a dedicated talk button is there, how cool! I think it would've been cooler though, if they didn't also bring back every single problem from DQ5. If you're looking for a run button, you're still shit outta luck. Shops remain as chatty and sluggish to purchase things through as ever, I will continue to complain about the limited inventory for as long as they don't fix it, and by JOVE, you gotta love the NPC's that literally block your way for what could be a whole minute of your time because that's just how their RNG works.
Again, in DQ1 none of this is necessarily a huge issue just because of how quick and to the point that game is. DQ2 is a whole other story, that's a 15-hour adventure right there, and every DQ5-related problem only makes it drag more as it goes on.
If they tried rebalancing DQ2, kudos. It really needed it. But I don't think they went as far as they should have, there is still an obnoxious amount of grind in this game. Equipment tends to cost more than my house, and as you head over to the field, you realize that the poultry amount of gold the enemies drop is not gonna get you close to buying that stuff anytime soon.
Now, considering the more open nature of DQ2, I understand that you're meant to be exploring the world in order to naturally procure enough gold to buy the better equipment later. But that's if you're not getting your ass constantly handed to you by how much pain the enemies dish out, losing your gold in the process. Of the three characters you control, only one of them is decently equipped until the endgame. The rest, are surviving by the skin of their teeth at all times, unless you're willing to spend hours of your life on that grind. And even then, an enemy can just say fuck it and instantly kill your entire party if they feel like it. Look, I'm fine with high difficulty in RPG's. But I think it's important to give the player the occasional break from these kinds of moments, to give them that breathing room to relax. But DQ2 being the same DQ2 it's always been, says "no."
Also, they brought the conveniences of DQ5 over, but NOT the fast travel spell? Like, you have the spell that brings you to the last save point, but what about the one where you can select any town you've previously visited? DQ2 is in such desperate need of this, what with all the back and forth backtracking and the long, elaborate paths you need to take to slooowly get back to the town you want, all the while enemies are raining down on you. Run button's one thing, but I think this was the most glaring omission from this remake, it's kinda crazy it's just not here.
Another problem pertains to the fan translation. It says it fixed all the bugs from an older English translation, but no it didn't. The reviews on romhacking.net that made note of this weren't just outdated, they are accurate to the day of me writing this. You've got basic typos that take you out of the experience, and potential softlocks and visual glitches that replace your entire dungeon with garbage data. And that's just what I ran into. It seems that DQ2 is the less stable of the two, since I didn't get anything like that while playing DQ1. And it definitely makes it a little harder to recommend, since you would have to basically be ready to constantly make save states, in the case that the game might or might not break soon.
So in total, I think I can at least recommend this package as a good way to play DQ1, y'know, if you just wanna see where did it all begin. You're not gonna get any interesting story or depth out of it, but set your expectations accordingly to "one of the first RPG series in history", and it won't be the worst use of your time. It's cozy, brief, and very harmless overall.
But when it comes to DQ2, my verdict is about the same as it was for the NES. Just don't bother, it's not worth it. The game may not be as hair-pullingly brutal as it used to be, but its tedious grinding and balancing was not fixed. Of course, that's assuming that the tediousness is something TO fix, and not just an inherent element of what DQ2 is. And the bugginess of the fan translation does not help its case either. At that point, surely there's gotta be a safer way to play this game, right...? Y-You're not gonna make me play... the ph-phone ports, are you...?!
This was a servicable way to return to these games. And it'll be a servicable way to experience them for your first time too. But it's still not quite there yet, it hasn't quite eliminated all the old-ass NES quirks of this franchise, and it still requires that sort of patience to really want to get through them. I would only recommend these early Dragon Quests to people who are capable of adjusting to a lack of QoL, and those truly dedicated to getting into this franchise, like myself. As for those who are just looking for a definitive entry point, every DQ I've played up to 1993 so far does not provide enough QoL to recommend them without caveats. I would suggest looking into the later games and remakes instead. Wake me up when the boat reaches the other side of the map.
1992
Alright, I cleared 5 out of 10 endings, I think I'm ready to complain now. I'm usually a pretty big fan of shlocky and dumb storytelling. But I cannot bring myself to play along with it here, when it goes against every single intent that this Sound Novel was supposed to promise. The wiki page for this game states that the developer wanted to create a game that's so atmospheric and scary, the hurdles would stem not from challenge, but from your very own fear of advancing the story forward. Furthermore, it was made with the developer's girlfriend in mind, so, I thought it was being catered for a more adult audience, or in the very least, an audience of all ages that could use this as an entry point into video games. And in all these senses, Otogirisou completely fails. It's not just that its scares are weak. Sometimes, it seems to forget that it's supposed to be a horror visual novel for adults at all.
What you actually have here is a 20 dollar budget haunted house attraction where depending on your luck, you're either gonna run into an ensemble of Scooby-Doo cliches (i know other reviews used this comparison too, but there really is no better way to describe it), or multiple fakeouts in a row. The pacing of it all frantically jumps between too much random shit happening at once, or literally fucking nothing happening ever. The characters themselves seem unable to decide whether they're actively in fear for their safety, blowing off everything they see as an illusion, or feeling so completely safe that an entire half hour scene will be dedicated to them figuring out how to get the shower working so they can wash themselves off. Right in the middle of a place trying to kill them.
This tonal inconsistency is likely owed to the way choices are handled here. Y'know, there IS something cool about the idea that you're not just deciding your outcome in a predetermined story, but rather, the choices you make are actively rewriting the story to fit what you want to see happen. But this system is so loose, that you can swap from one route to an entirely different one, and it'll start talking about things that have never happened, or forget the things that did. It's like playing around in AI Dungeon, you're generating a story that's only consistent when you don't try too hard to experiment in it. But there's nothing to account for the fact that you are capable of ruining the story, leaving gaping plot holes and unresolved Chehkov's Guns that leave the experience as a terribly unsatisfying one.
This already deflates the tension hard enough, but the final nail in the coffin is when you're hit with the realization that you are never in any actual danger of dying. The danger is an illusion, that the characters always escape from unscathed, no matter how hard you try to lean the choices into bad ideas. I couldn't even so much as get the girlfriend character to kick the bucket and get a bad ending where the protagonist grieves her! I mean, I sound like a psycho when I say that, but- you get the point! This especially drives the "haunted house attraction" comparison home, when it feels like the haunted house is going fucking easy on you. It's like this game isn't interested in utilizing the fear of your girlfriend winding up dead because of you, but rather, this is a chance to grow closer to her, to show her how brave, and cool you are, and-
Wait, that's why the developer created the game, didn't he...? Oh. Well, I guess it all makes sense now.
And oh my god, I only described one half of the game! The other half is just a soap opera combined with family melodrama. The kind where I'm leaning my head against my hand, rolling my eyes as I'm scrolling through walls of "I felt my mother's love, in my heart, telling me to stop my fish monster brother and have him remember his true self..." What game am I playing? This was supposed to be horror, right? What is this? What IS this??? WHAT IS THIS. NAMI, STOP BRINGING UP YOU MEASURING HEIGHTS WITH YOUR SISTER IT'S NOT THAT AMAZING OF A MEMORY
Ohh, fuck me. And I've still got like 5 endings to go too. I hear there's some pretty funny dialogue options that get unlocked when you clear out all the endings (Edit: I reached them. Wasn't worth it). The fan translation's pretty cool by the way, I could never shit on people who bring these region-exclusive games for other audiences to experience. They deserve a ton of respect, and the way they translated this one got a few laughs out of me.
But like, fuuuck, the main ingredient is dry spaghetti, and it's got no sauce. No self-awareness. No tension. No focus. All its got is a pretty cool title screen theme, and a historical novelty. But the moment I started diving deeper into it, I realized that Otogirisou had one important promise that made up its entire existence, and that promise was swiftly broken. This review is my Otogirisou. You know the meaning of the flower, right?
What you actually have here is a 20 dollar budget haunted house attraction where depending on your luck, you're either gonna run into an ensemble of Scooby-Doo cliches (i know other reviews used this comparison too, but there really is no better way to describe it), or multiple fakeouts in a row. The pacing of it all frantically jumps between too much random shit happening at once, or literally fucking nothing happening ever. The characters themselves seem unable to decide whether they're actively in fear for their safety, blowing off everything they see as an illusion, or feeling so completely safe that an entire half hour scene will be dedicated to them figuring out how to get the shower working so they can wash themselves off. Right in the middle of a place trying to kill them.
This tonal inconsistency is likely owed to the way choices are handled here. Y'know, there IS something cool about the idea that you're not just deciding your outcome in a predetermined story, but rather, the choices you make are actively rewriting the story to fit what you want to see happen. But this system is so loose, that you can swap from one route to an entirely different one, and it'll start talking about things that have never happened, or forget the things that did. It's like playing around in AI Dungeon, you're generating a story that's only consistent when you don't try too hard to experiment in it. But there's nothing to account for the fact that you are capable of ruining the story, leaving gaping plot holes and unresolved Chehkov's Guns that leave the experience as a terribly unsatisfying one.
This already deflates the tension hard enough, but the final nail in the coffin is when you're hit with the realization that you are never in any actual danger of dying. The danger is an illusion, that the characters always escape from unscathed, no matter how hard you try to lean the choices into bad ideas. I couldn't even so much as get the girlfriend character to kick the bucket and get a bad ending where the protagonist grieves her! I mean, I sound like a psycho when I say that, but- you get the point! This especially drives the "haunted house attraction" comparison home, when it feels like the haunted house is going fucking easy on you. It's like this game isn't interested in utilizing the fear of your girlfriend winding up dead because of you, but rather, this is a chance to grow closer to her, to show her how brave, and cool you are, and-
Wait, that's why the developer created the game, didn't he...? Oh. Well, I guess it all makes sense now.
And oh my god, I only described one half of the game! The other half is just a soap opera combined with family melodrama. The kind where I'm leaning my head against my hand, rolling my eyes as I'm scrolling through walls of "I felt my mother's love, in my heart, telling me to stop my fish monster brother and have him remember his true self..." What game am I playing? This was supposed to be horror, right? What is this? What IS this??? WHAT IS THIS. NAMI, STOP BRINGING UP YOU MEASURING HEIGHTS WITH YOUR SISTER IT'S NOT THAT AMAZING OF A MEMORY
Ohh, fuck me. And I've still got like 5 endings to go too. I hear there's some pretty funny dialogue options that get unlocked when you clear out all the endings (Edit: I reached them. Wasn't worth it). The fan translation's pretty cool by the way, I could never shit on people who bring these region-exclusive games for other audiences to experience. They deserve a ton of respect, and the way they translated this one got a few laughs out of me.
But like, fuuuck, the main ingredient is dry spaghetti, and it's got no sauce. No self-awareness. No tension. No focus. All its got is a pretty cool title screen theme, and a historical novelty. But the moment I started diving deeper into it, I realized that Otogirisou had one important promise that made up its entire existence, and that promise was swiftly broken. This review is my Otogirisou. You know the meaning of the flower, right?
Amongst every Igavania released, Symphony of the Night feels especially unique, and it's not just because it was the first of its kind. Something I've always lamented is how these 2D Castlevania titles would later be relegated to handheld, with the small amount of space constraining and limiting what these games are capable of. As much as I like Aria of Sorrow, and as much as it makes sense to take advantage of the handheld market, SotN was a clear-cut example that you could do a lot of shit on a 660MB disc that you simply couldn't fit on a cartridge. If Aria of Sorrow's development was focused on cramming the most amount of content within the smallest amount of space, Symphony of the Night is about cramming the most amount of content, just because you can.
I love these sorts of games where you get the feeling there wasn't really much of a plan behind anything, the developers just threw in whatever they wanted, just for the hell of it. SotN has all these very little unnecessary and pointless details going for it, but these are the details that make up much of the game's heart, and add further layers to its mystery-based exploration. These are the things you find out about and share with your friends, like one mentor passing their knowledge to the next. Much of the game's excitement lies not in what items you discover, but what you do with those items, and the multiple hidden effects they may hide. Experimentation, and the surprise of what that experimentation may bring is the true essence of the game, the chaos that keeps it alive, and the gift that keeps on giving.
Another thing that a handheld title wouldn't be able to do, is voice acting. Look, we could go on another several dozen years of our life until the rebirth of Count Dracula, making fun of the "What is a man!" opening exchange between Richter and the aforementioned. But I'm not indulging in that take tonight. This scene isn't poorly acted, nor poorly written, it is exactly as it should be. It's a dramatic stage play, a theater performance spoken in verbose back-and-forths. It's dripping in over-the-top delivery, for sure, but what more could you imagine for Dracula, a character whose presence in theatre has been popularized for over a century? Castlevania's gothic aesthetics aren't for the sake of scaring you, they're there to add a sense of drama, elegance, and beauty to the nightmare that resides within. To have characters use flowery language, I believe was just one part of that goal.
Alucard's voice especially, is one that deserved more than just one game. Throughout SotN, you feel practically unstoppable. You're in a power play, enemies fall, explode, and scream as they evaporate before you, towering monstrosities collapse into pieces, your quest to reach Dracula is determined and persistent. And Robelt Belgrade, Alucard's VA, encapsulates his cool and collected aura - yet threatening at the same time - in just a few unrelenting words when he's warned to cease his assault on the castle. "I will not."
There's silent protagonists. And there's characters that talk a whole lot. Alucard is one of those special in-between cases where his dialogue is rare, but every bit of it enhances his no-nonsense personality in both story, and gameplay. The voice delivery is focused, undeterred, he has a duty to fulfill, and anybody who stops him, dies. Much of that is reflected by his effortless counquering of the castle's many dangers, actions speaking louder than words throughout. Here, less is more. Less adds to Alucard's mystery, less adds to his otherwordly nature, to his silent destructive rampage. And finally, less ensures that when Alucard DOES speak, it is an earned insight into a character who feels so much cooler than you could ever hope to be.
It is something that I hope more developers can understand in the modern age. That even though we have the space for hundreds of thousands of dialogue lines to have our characters talk as much as we want, there is an incredible magic in making that dialogue a reward, rather than an expectancy around every corner.
That's honestly all I wanted to go in-depth on for this review. I mean, the game is good, I don't think you need me to clarify that! I love the soundtrack too, "Wandering Ghosts" is up there as one of my top Castlevania songs, if not the best one. The one missing star is because of the Inverted Castle, as you may expect. Even though it hides the true final boss within, I've done playthroughs of the game where all I do is explore the normal castle, and stop at the bad ending. The Inverted Castle often does not count as "the 2nd half of the game" in my head, it is so shockingly undifferentiated from the regular castle, that it feels more like playing a hard mode. But even then, the new tougher bosses it tries introducing are completely worthless, seeing as you're so overpowered by that point, you can take most of them out in less than 5 seconds.
Symphony of the Night fails to correctly balance its challenge to remain actually challenging, and the Inverted Castle is just a total wash, such a wash that I don't even want to play through it most of the time. But the 1st castle is the peak of Igavania exploration, and remains a ton of fun to go through each and every single time, with lots of varied equipment, weaponry, spells, and other surprises to see. But most importantly, this is the most atmospheric that Castlevania has ever been. A GBA or DS title can only be what its specs allow it to be. Symphony of the Night creates the illusion that it can be anything it wants to be. Anything, and everything that you won't be able to predict. That's the sort of appeal that carries it for many.
I love these sorts of games where you get the feeling there wasn't really much of a plan behind anything, the developers just threw in whatever they wanted, just for the hell of it. SotN has all these very little unnecessary and pointless details going for it, but these are the details that make up much of the game's heart, and add further layers to its mystery-based exploration. These are the things you find out about and share with your friends, like one mentor passing their knowledge to the next. Much of the game's excitement lies not in what items you discover, but what you do with those items, and the multiple hidden effects they may hide. Experimentation, and the surprise of what that experimentation may bring is the true essence of the game, the chaos that keeps it alive, and the gift that keeps on giving.
Another thing that a handheld title wouldn't be able to do, is voice acting. Look, we could go on another several dozen years of our life until the rebirth of Count Dracula, making fun of the "What is a man!" opening exchange between Richter and the aforementioned. But I'm not indulging in that take tonight. This scene isn't poorly acted, nor poorly written, it is exactly as it should be. It's a dramatic stage play, a theater performance spoken in verbose back-and-forths. It's dripping in over-the-top delivery, for sure, but what more could you imagine for Dracula, a character whose presence in theatre has been popularized for over a century? Castlevania's gothic aesthetics aren't for the sake of scaring you, they're there to add a sense of drama, elegance, and beauty to the nightmare that resides within. To have characters use flowery language, I believe was just one part of that goal.
Alucard's voice especially, is one that deserved more than just one game. Throughout SotN, you feel practically unstoppable. You're in a power play, enemies fall, explode, and scream as they evaporate before you, towering monstrosities collapse into pieces, your quest to reach Dracula is determined and persistent. And Robelt Belgrade, Alucard's VA, encapsulates his cool and collected aura - yet threatening at the same time - in just a few unrelenting words when he's warned to cease his assault on the castle. "I will not."
There's silent protagonists. And there's characters that talk a whole lot. Alucard is one of those special in-between cases where his dialogue is rare, but every bit of it enhances his no-nonsense personality in both story, and gameplay. The voice delivery is focused, undeterred, he has a duty to fulfill, and anybody who stops him, dies. Much of that is reflected by his effortless counquering of the castle's many dangers, actions speaking louder than words throughout. Here, less is more. Less adds to Alucard's mystery, less adds to his otherwordly nature, to his silent destructive rampage. And finally, less ensures that when Alucard DOES speak, it is an earned insight into a character who feels so much cooler than you could ever hope to be.
It is something that I hope more developers can understand in the modern age. That even though we have the space for hundreds of thousands of dialogue lines to have our characters talk as much as we want, there is an incredible magic in making that dialogue a reward, rather than an expectancy around every corner.
That's honestly all I wanted to go in-depth on for this review. I mean, the game is good, I don't think you need me to clarify that! I love the soundtrack too, "Wandering Ghosts" is up there as one of my top Castlevania songs, if not the best one. The one missing star is because of the Inverted Castle, as you may expect. Even though it hides the true final boss within, I've done playthroughs of the game where all I do is explore the normal castle, and stop at the bad ending. The Inverted Castle often does not count as "the 2nd half of the game" in my head, it is so shockingly undifferentiated from the regular castle, that it feels more like playing a hard mode. But even then, the new tougher bosses it tries introducing are completely worthless, seeing as you're so overpowered by that point, you can take most of them out in less than 5 seconds.
Symphony of the Night fails to correctly balance its challenge to remain actually challenging, and the Inverted Castle is just a total wash, such a wash that I don't even want to play through it most of the time. But the 1st castle is the peak of Igavania exploration, and remains a ton of fun to go through each and every single time, with lots of varied equipment, weaponry, spells, and other surprises to see. But most importantly, this is the most atmospheric that Castlevania has ever been. A GBA or DS title can only be what its specs allow it to be. Symphony of the Night creates the illusion that it can be anything it wants to be. Anything, and everything that you won't be able to predict. That's the sort of appeal that carries it for many.
1997
Wish this game got a remaster, or something. It's a real pain in the ass to set up ancient PC ports like this one to work today. But if I had an easier way to play it that wasn't the nerfed PS1 version, I'd jump back in immediately. It's a weird fuckin' game, but you remember it after all is said and done. Helps too that its pretty simple to pick up and get right into. The camera perspective really makes the blend of platforming and shooting work, it feels a lot more right than trying to platform in first person or over-the-shoulder angles. It makes me really wanna yearn for more games of this type, ones that feel as just as tight, and have just as many random Mario 64 slide sequences injected into'em.
I still think about the ending sequence from time to time. I still don't understand why it exists. And I think it's all for the better that I'm not given an explanation. The whiplash it generates is so powerful when preceded by the rest of the game. MDK says fuck the story, fuck the lore, fuck logic, fuck thinking. Just start losing your mind, Murder, Destroy, Kill, thrash the place up, don't question anything. It's so easy to lose yourself in it. But the moment the ending starts playing out, it's like you're suddenly snapped back into reality, and aggressively trying to make sense of what's going on, and why. But why did I not question any of this beforehand? What was it about this ending that suddenly made me want to know?
Whether it meant to or not, or if the developer just felt like sharing a cool song he licensed... MDK ends on a note that's like a cold splash in my face. For all the destruction and mayhem I've amassed, my final lasting memory of the game is one where the surreality of a song made me stop and question everything more than the act of shooting up thousands of aliens.
I still think about the ending sequence from time to time. I still don't understand why it exists. And I think it's all for the better that I'm not given an explanation. The whiplash it generates is so powerful when preceded by the rest of the game. MDK says fuck the story, fuck the lore, fuck logic, fuck thinking. Just start losing your mind, Murder, Destroy, Kill, thrash the place up, don't question anything. It's so easy to lose yourself in it. But the moment the ending starts playing out, it's like you're suddenly snapped back into reality, and aggressively trying to make sense of what's going on, and why. But why did I not question any of this beforehand? What was it about this ending that suddenly made me want to know?
Whether it meant to or not, or if the developer just felt like sharing a cool song he licensed... MDK ends on a note that's like a cold splash in my face. For all the destruction and mayhem I've amassed, my final lasting memory of the game is one where the surreality of a song made me stop and question everything more than the act of shooting up thousands of aliens.
It's a cute concept in any case, but my willingness to play this game lived or died by how crazy the cat's jumping abilities were. After all, cats are capable of insanely high jumps. Playing this game for 50 minutes, this cat was probably the weakest jumping cat I've ever seen in my life. Can barely climb up a short ledge, felt like I had anvil weights attached to my legs. It's possible that the cat's jumping power improves as you make progress, but even so, the game in general had a heavy control feel that went against all my expectations of a nimble and agile cat. It did not make for a good first impression, and thus I couldn't muster up the will to play any further. That cat do be cute though