Stardew Valley is a charming and wonderful game. When it first came out, I played it so much that I started losing feeling in my head and I had to see a doctor. Stardew Valley is great for all the reasons you've probably heard of over the years, but this is not really a review for Stardew as much as it is a vehicle for the discussion of farming games.

I like to keep up with the latest ""cozy"" game releases because sometimes I'll find something that looks really interesting, but let me tell you, there are. so. many. farming games. There are so many farming games. And do you want to know how many farming games manage to at least do something vaugely different from Stardew? 0. Harvest Moon started it and Stardew basically perfected this specific atmosphere and formula, and now it seems like every developer is rushing headlong to depict that same exact kind of magic Stardew has without even managing slightly.

And I get so heated because, fucking what? It's a genre of game based on harvesting food and you can really only think of one exact scenerio and one exact way to go about doing it? People have been foraging and farming for an absurd amount of time, there are hundreds of ways and techniques to go about doing it that could be fun when projected into a video game. The art of forgaing specifically, nurturing and coursing nature into producing more food, seems like it would naturally go hand in hand with the themes farming games tend to go for, but all's lost in the realm we are trapped in where no matter the location (space, fantasy) we are forced to obtain property, till soil, and probably pay off some type of debt or at the very least participate in an economy thats strikingly similar to the one most of the planet has now despite existing in a fictional world where anything can take place.

There is a prehistoric farming sim called Roots of Pacha. I know enough about history to know that the concept alone makes 0 sense, and when people did start farming, it wasnt by clearing away large plots of land like we would now and laboriously carrying them to fruit. The first people that raised crops did it hand in hand with foragaing, in a type of cultivation called flood retreat farming in which one plants seeds along seasonally flooding beds of water, so that nature pretty much does all the hard work for them and nothing much has to get in the way of other activities. I personally hate this game for its wasted potential alone, because the concept has so many directions it could go in and it barely went in any of them except for the detail that there's not a money based economy present (i think?). This is just one example of how creatively lacking farming games seem to be, I know Roots of Pacha has you doing other things like hunting and all that but the outline in this game and all others pretty much follow in this order of doing the exact same shit you did in Stardew but with little (what if... it was prehistoric!) to no twist, and with no Concernedape flare.

Another trend I've noticed with these games is that, despite the full focus on community building, caring for nature, and usually overthrowing some type of rich guy villian, what you actually do in the game contradicts these themes entirely. Obviously, traditional farming involves a lot of deforestation. Thats a point that gets brought up a lot, quite reasonably, because it always is really weird when a magic spirit of nature comes down to thank you for restoring the natural balance when you just got back from tearing down two entire ecosystems for wood. But there's also just so little need for our own economy inserted in most of these games. We live in a town, seperated from all of society (occassionally on another planet) with 12 inhabitants and youre still making me pay rent? You would think these apparently very self sufficent people would have no need for money but I guess not. And the material focus gets in the way a lot with the other mechanics. For example, most of the relationship building that's popular in farming games takes the form of you constantly offering up some object to them with little or no actual imput from you. Give your girl 80 wild flowers and she will eventually fall in love with you.


I feel as though a lot of it is obviously borrowed from early Harvest Moon, which honestly felt a little too cyclical for me to enjoy it at all. Very hardcore traditional values in those early games, and especially when it comes to your bachlorettes in which the process of getting them seems eerily similar to obtaining a cow or something, to further min max your farm and make boohoo bucks. In this genre it's still that, but with a splat of paint on it that says "we ♡ community! we hate big business!".


Stardew Valley is a little bit exempt from this in my mind, because it's taking place in a world that seems to be basically our own. If Harvey charges me 2000 gil to be rescued from some scary caves, then at least that part makes sense. The community in Stardew is shown repeatedly to be an imperfect peoples anyhow, what from Pam's parental abuse and someone apparently throwing stones at a homeless person's tent. I'm pretty sure back when it came out farming games werent as popular, and for all of that the gameplay loop is near perfect and very fun to play. So we've been there, done that is basically what I'm saying. ConcernedApe made the best tradional farming game and now I am really interested in any other ideas or concepts from anyone, at all. If I wanted to play a farming game, there is no reason why I would spend many, many hours building a farm in a game that is likely less inspired and less polished than Stardew when none of them offer anything new to the table, in quality of writing, story, or anything else.

There are some exceptions, like Dinkum (which is barely a farming game but has way more spunk than all games in this genre do combined) but for the most part I'm just tired of every game trying to be Stardew but instead of ____ there's _____! The gameplay loop gets incredibly old when there is nothing else backing it up.


Again, this wasnt really a review for this game but I just wanted to get my opinions out there and maybe see what others think. Thanks for listening to my ramblings (-:

Dragon Quest III is one of the best sequels (or prequel in this case) in video games, which marked a before and after not only for the Dragon Quest series, but for JRPGs in general. And this is a remake at the height of the legend.

In 1988 this game was a sensation in Japan, everyone wanted it. It was the first game to sell more than 1 million copies in a single day (which is remarkable for a time when video games were not as popular as they are today), there were endless lines of people with the sole desire to try the title, so much so that many of them were students or workers who skipped their duties. It was a social phenomenon.

~ And thus, the legend was born ~
Dragon Quest I and II were the foundation of JRPGs almost in their entirety, but in retrospect, they feel like portotypes of what a true solid RPG is. DQI had good foundations, but a combat system that was too simple, and while DQII was a giant step forward that improved and evolved many aspects, the development team had many problems during the production of the title as they still did not have so much experience and had a very limited time, making the final game had no clear direction and had many balancing problems. Well then, Dragon Quest III comes to be the pinnacle of the idea that Yuji Horii and Chun Soft had always dreamed of creating for an RPG, a game that had enough time to be developed and tested properly, and in which you can see its developers were quite satisfied, so much so that even Yuji Horii considered it a perfect game. This game was such a significant leap in game design and quality that it takes it to a completely different level, making even JRPGs that were released years after this one feel like mediocre products.

If you played the first game you will know that there was always mention of someone named Erdrick/Roto, who according to everyone's words was a very important figure in the story, so much so that being his descendant directly made you someone important as well, but what did he really do to earn that title, well, Dragon Quest III is the answer to that question. The story begins with an introductory cinematic that tells us how our father, the greatest hero of that time, once tried to stop the archfiend but failed in the attempt, and obviously, as offspring of the great hero, we are tasked with the mission to finish what our father left unfinished. I won't go into spoilers (even though it's a 35+ year old game), so I'll just say that, if you played Dragon Quest I, this game has a plot twist that makes it connect as a prequel in a pretty satisfying way. And it's impressive that only in the third game alone this kind of homage has already been made to the first title, the game that started it all, and it's something I loved very much the first time I played this title. Even with everything, though, the premise is just as simple as the previous games, a simple "go and collect the 6 magic items and save the world from this villain", but I think that what this game lacks in story it makes up for with adventure and simple to understand, but pretty solid gameplay.

This game allows you to customize your party, having a variety of 7 classes for 3 of your party members, it gives you total freedom to build and customize your play style, and it is quite entertaining to experiment with different combinations, because even though there can be difficult places because of having (for example) only warriors and a mage, the game is built in such a way that having a solid strategy, enough wit and a decent team is enough to overcome the adversities, and although I do not deny that the possibility of getting stuck for having a poor party at the end of the title is a possibility, but unlike the first Final Fantasy where if that happened you had to restart the whole game or grind to death, Dragon Quest III allows you to create more characters than you can fit in your party, thus opening up the possibility of you having reserves, and all of this expands further once you get to the place where you can change classes, allowing you to create "hybrid" characters, such as monks with the ability to cast healing magic or mages with better attack and physical defense. Each class levels up and grows in a very satisfying way, which for example with mages and priests, not only makes them more useful in battle by expanding their arsenal of attack or support spells, but they are learning magical abilities that are useful even outside of battles and make exploration more comfortable, for example, you can learn spells that help you get out of caves/dungeons instantly at any time.

Many of the elements that make this game great had already appeared for the first time in DQ2, however, it was in this game where they really made use of them properly, which as insignificant as this may seem, make a big difference between being just a good game and being a great game. For starters, the battles are incredibly well balanced and far more entertaining by far. Dragon Quest III is also the first game in the series where you actually need to strategize to overcome battles instead of just overcoming them by brute force as in the previous games. Something that highlights the difference between DQ2 and DQ3 despite having the same combat system, is the final battle, where one will require a simple strategy and the other will require you to really be careful and act cautiously if you want to have a chance to be victorious.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves, let's talk about what makes combat entertaining. Something I really like, is how Dragon Quest makes a lot of emphasis on not only using brute force to defeat your enemies, many times using the most powerful attack magic for example is not the most convenient, but the game encourages you to use status altering magic to overcome battles (even those against bosses), for example, it is of vital importance to lower the defense to enemies that are damage sponges to be able to defeat them or, on the contrary, when there's an enemy that with two hits could knock you out, raising your defense several times makes them not even have a chance to scratch you, not to mention that you'd be surprised how many common enemies are vulnerable to the "sleep" or "death" status, yes, their effectiveness is random, but when it manages to hit it feels incredibly rewarding. And another thing I love about the battles is how many monsters have a "personality" so to speak, you can tell by the way they fight and have their own strategies. For example, there are monsters that will try to call on other monsters to heal them in battle (we all know who I'm talking about), while others will be cruel and use vicious tactics to try to defeat you, such as attacking a specific member of your party all at once. There are also some that may look very scary but are so dumb that they will try to use spells even when they have no MP (others will be smart enough to steal MP from you). These are small details, but complemented with the fact that they are designed by Akira Toriyama, give a lot of personality and charisma to the enemies of this game and make the progression and the very fact of playing very fun and entertaining because of the great variety in the gameplay.

The world is gigantic, full of kingdoms, towns, shrines, towers and dungeons to discover, and although your mission is simply to stop the bad guy on duty, you must travel the world in search of the path that will allow you to reach your ultimate goal. From the very beginning the game is very open, you can go explore at your leisure and get to know the world at your own pace, you can go mostly in the order you want, even presenting you with many problems and places that are completely optional, such as awakening the sleeping village or returning the crown to the king in the second kingdom, and once you get the ship the world opens up even more and allows you to progress in the order you want, similar to an open world. I especially like how the 6 magic orbs aren't just obtained by beating a dungeon and that's it, but there are some that have very unique situations and are quite memorable. One of my favorite things and one that I am quite thankful to have is the "Zoom" spell, which allows you to instantly travel to any town you have previously visited, and it is to be admired that since this game there is the option of fast travel, something that other video game franchises took years and even decades to implement. Although a negative aspect of this game is that it has one of the worst defects of the games of that era, as there are many things that are a little ambiguous in their method of obtaining, it is not as serious as in DQII, but for example the strongest sword in the game is obtained in a very particular way, even so, it is nothing that a guide can not solve, although I only recommend the use of this when you are really stuck and do not know what to do. Dragon Quest III is simply a game that has a very good sense of adventure and that is about feeling that sense of progress and exploration in its purest state, because rather than being a burden, it feels like something engaging and a primary aspect of the experience.

Exploring villages is usually something fundamental, and Dragon Quest always makes it entertaining thanks to the NPCs who always have something useful, something interesting or even something silly and funny to say. Something I love about this game is the day and night cycle, which basically makes all the villages have two faces and there are certain changes accordingly, this is also a main mechanic, because many times in order to advance we will have to wait for nightfall, because that way some of the villagers' dialogues will change and with that different clues will be at your disposal, or simply because different things happen in some cases and it's just fun to see it. And something that I really love about this game is how it always rewards your curiosity, which encourages you to stay curious and keep exploring or going back to places that you had already explored so you can access and discover places that were previously locked and get a little reward.

Speaking of the OST, it's superb, if you like classical style music the tunes you'll find in this game will delight you. Koichi Sugiyama may have been a despicable person, but his work on the Dragon Quest series was vital in giving this series that heart and soul that we all love. The soundtrack of this installment shines from the rest of the series especially for the cultural representation that they tried to give to some of the locations that we can see throughout the game, like an Egyptian-inspired pyramid, or Jipang, whose name is self-explanatory of the place it is based on. But talking about the rest of the songs, the battle theme is simple, but it is entertaining and engaging unlike the first and second battle theme of the series which were a bit boring. The overworld theme is heroic, and conveys that feeling of being on an epic adventure very well. Strolling through the villages is always enjoyable when what's playing in the background is a sweet melody like this one. And there are other songs that I love, but I won't leave without mentioning my favorite song; Heavenly Flight. The moment I heard it tears came out of my eyes from how beautiful and majestic it is, simply one of my favorite songs in the whole series.

The graphics in this edition are gorgeous, they really enhance the immersion and are one of the most remarkable of the 16-bit era because of how colorful and well done the art is. I really like how the day and night cycle is very well portrayed, making the background of the battles match the time of day, the villages at night look very pretty especially. Each monster also has animations for each action they perform, which gives a little more life to the battles. And finally, Akira Toriyama's designs are still very nice to have, featuring many monsters and even characters that would become super iconic like the hero or the martial artist.

This remake was made by Heartbeat and is made with the Dragon Quest VI engine, which was the last game in the series at the time. Talking about the changes, it rebalances a lot the game without sacrificing totally its original difficulty curve, it adds many quality of life improvements like the bag and a more agile menu navigation. It also makes some small improvements to the gameplay, for example, now you can change equipment in the middle of the battle (as in DQVI). It renews and modernizes the graphics and adapts the songs to the Super Nintendo. And god, the result is amazing and in my opinion makes the game a thousand times better. The soundtrack is expanded by adding new pieces to the game, the graphics are some of the best the Super Nintendo could display, it still looks beautiful to this day and the range of random encounters was reduced considerably to make exploration and the overall experience much more enjoyable.

Conclusion
Despite its age and simplicity, Dragon Quest III defines what a good RPG should be. It is able to offer a solid experience even today that generates an immaculate sense of adventure and a great feeling of accomplishment when you finish the game, thanks to its simple, yet solid design and gameplay mechanics that are still present in many games even today. It was the game that defined and set the gold standard in the JRPG genre. It is directly one of the most important and influential games of all time and to be honest, it is still a very solid and entertaining game despite being a 1988 original, but the fact that this remake puts it on par with any other SNES game is proof of how well designed it was from the beginning in its time.

Dragon Quest III is a game that defined me as a player forever. While not my top 1 of the franchise, this to me is the most important of them all because of the impact it had on me the first time I played it. I wouldn't be exaggerating if I were to one day consider it my true favorite video game of all time, because frankly, to me this game is that precious. It wasn't my first game in the genre, but I consider this to be the game that made me fall in love with RPGs and taught me to really appreciate them.

← Dragon Quest I & II - Review
→ Dragon Quest IV: Chapters of the Chosen - Review

Castlevania III unlike the second title is not as experimental, in fact, it is almost the same as the first Catlevania game, however, if you analyze it carefully you realize that it is not only the best of the NES trilogy, but it changed the Castlevania franchise forever by improving and defining the type of levels, the type of music and the artistic tone that the games would follow from this one.

This game is the prequel to the first games and tells the story of the time when the Belmont family first confronted Dracula and his dark forces. In general, the gameplay is exactly the same as the first game, as I mentioned before, however, the way in which this game expands the gameplay is by adding new playable characters, which you can recruit depending on which routes you take in the first half of the game, although only 1 will be able to accompany you at a time. Each character has their distinct advantages and disadvantages and it's great to experiment with each of them, as you have Sypha who has powerful magic attacks, but is extremely vulnerable, Alucard who doesn't have a great variety of attacks, but has an enviable mobility, and Grant who stands out for his versatility. If you play alone with Trevor this game can be even more difficult than the first Castlevania, but if you use the characters wisely you can overcome the challenges more easily and it's more fun that way I think. Still, the level design and enemy positioning are nothing to take lightly, so you'll need to have your skills at your best if you want to have a chance of getting to Dracula.

This game has an excellent setting thanks to its dark scenarios, although the graphical leap from the previous games to this one is not remarkable, what can be highlighted is how the art style has more identity and is much more refined, it is difficult to notice for an 8-bit game, but I am not exaggerating, being this game a turning point that would further define the kind of colors and places that a Castlevania game should have, almost all future games in the series include a reference or homage of some kind to this game.

The music is a great point to highlight, because in the NES era it was common for developers to include chips to expand the possibilities of the game, usually they were used to make the games have bigger levels or to have better graphics, Castevania 3 on the other hand uses a chip to improve the music. And god, the music is superb, the best soundtrack of the NES hands down.

Conclusion
Many say that the pinnacle of 2D Castlevania is Rondo of Blood, and while I agree with that, none of that game would have been possible without this one. If Super Mario Bros. 3 didn't exist, this would be my favorite NES game, its music and atmosphere are pervasive and although it's still not for everyone, if you're a fan of the classic Castlevania formula, be sure you'll have a great time with this game.

P.S: don't play the international version of the game, as it unbalances the difficulty making it harder than it should be and the quality of the music is considerably inferior, better play the Japanese version.

I've been playing this game on and off for about 2 and a half years at this point. I played for a few days and then would drop it, time and time again. It really wasn't until near the end of Act 1 that the game really clicked for me, now I wish I'd played it sooner. FYI, I played all the way to the end. This is as spoiler free as I can make the review for the full story.

Dragon Quest 11 is a JRPG refined to its limits. It doesn't need to reinvent the wheel, especially since this series invented it. While this does mean that the combat can seem simple or even boring early on, once you start getting some of the better abilities and more party members, it becomes way more palatable.

Music is great, so many memorable tracks. Sure, lots of them are recycled from previous games, but Overture/Departure is such a banger that I wouldn't mind listening to it for 10 more games.

The story doesn't do anything revolutionary, but it ties back in to what I mentioned earlier about being as refined as the tropes of a JRPG can be. What kept me hooked was the main cast. These are loveable characters who I didn't want to say goodbye to, but eventually you must. The final act of the game does make some choices I don't agree with, but I was just happy to spend more time with these characters. Some moments even got me a little teary.

Overall, I loved this game. As my first dive into this series, I couldn't ask for more. Right now I'm debating whether to play 4, 5, 8, or 9 next. I wanted to play Monsters: The Dark Prince, but that ties into 4. I guess I'll see soon enough.

I can finally say I'm a Dragon Quest fan