kragor
2016
This game owns.
2.1
They got rid of a lot of the handholding with the tutorial, which is great! You can outright skip it now after a point, and my issues with the challenge race seem to have been addressed. You still gotta do some setup before starting but at the very least it doesn't feel like you're being forced to understand every little thing about the game with exhaustive detail. It's ok to not know every little thing and get lost in a game. You also unlock addons at the same time as online now, which is nice. The "Wi-Fi Warrior" and "McDonalds" passwords will still get them both unlocked if you just want to get things going asap with some friends though.
Overall I've been playing the game some more and a lot of the mechanics I was iffy on are warming on me. As I've said the tumble state still feels extremely punishing but you have a good amount of tools to get back into the race. My biggest issue with the game at this point is how much slopes will slow you down if you don't have any rings to boost up them. Like yeah it makes sense that they would slow you down a bit, but most of the time the amount they can slow you makes it feel like you're going up a much steeper surface than what you're looking at.
Also the rubberbanding in singleplayer is just a little absurd, I could get it on the higher difficulty but even on normal it really feels like you're better off playing from the middle and trying to boost into first at the last minute with how aggressive the AI gets.
If the minutiae of new features and adjustments aren't your cup of tea, SRB2K isn't going anywhere though I don't blame people for feeling divided on all the new stuff, it really does feel like a totally new game at this point, even if previous knowledge of SRB2K will still get you pretty far.
It's also kinda unfortunate that addons from SRB2K aren't forwards compatible at all. I want to play as JP Arle :(
They got rid of a lot of the handholding with the tutorial, which is great! You can outright skip it now after a point, and my issues with the challenge race seem to have been addressed. You still gotta do some setup before starting but at the very least it doesn't feel like you're being forced to understand every little thing about the game with exhaustive detail. It's ok to not know every little thing and get lost in a game. You also unlock addons at the same time as online now, which is nice. The "Wi-Fi Warrior" and "McDonalds" passwords will still get them both unlocked if you just want to get things going asap with some friends though.
Overall I've been playing the game some more and a lot of the mechanics I was iffy on are warming on me. As I've said the tumble state still feels extremely punishing but you have a good amount of tools to get back into the race. My biggest issue with the game at this point is how much slopes will slow you down if you don't have any rings to boost up them. Like yeah it makes sense that they would slow you down a bit, but most of the time the amount they can slow you makes it feel like you're going up a much steeper surface than what you're looking at.
Also the rubberbanding in singleplayer is just a little absurd, I could get it on the higher difficulty but even on normal it really feels like you're better off playing from the middle and trying to boost into first at the last minute with how aggressive the AI gets.
If the minutiae of new features and adjustments aren't your cup of tea, SRB2K isn't going anywhere though I don't blame people for feeling divided on all the new stuff, it really does feel like a totally new game at this point, even if previous knowledge of SRB2K will still get you pretty far.
It's also kinda unfortunate that addons from SRB2K aren't forwards compatible at all. I want to play as JP Arle :(
Horse
1991
this game's awesome. You think it's about always going fast.. but you gotta go slow first.... and then learn HOW to go fast.. Movement has a real weight to it; it's not like Sonic can stop on a dime like in something like super mario. This creates a fun dynamic that encourages you to test the limits of what you can get away with and push for going even faster each time. This especially comes into play when the relative flat safety of green hill zone transitions into the deadly platforming of the later stages. Heck yeah.
1996
this game kicks butt's
1986
classic
one of the greatest games in which you don't play as Mario
This game rules if you can get into it. In some ways it feels like a proto-ffxiv but in many others it's a whole different beast. It's very much not for everyone with some of it's "fuck you, now die" levels of difficulty and the often detrimental but appreciated focus on immersion, i.e. having to walk.... EVERYWHERE (I love it). You won't get much direction unless you surf the wikis and other resources or talk to other players, but when you come out on top of the challenges the game presents you with it feels awesome. If you know other people who play, definitely try to get a gold world pass from them and start on the same server as them, but also don't sweat too much about being on a high-pop server like Asura (I currently play on Bahamut, btw). So long as the server isn't totally dead there will probably be other players you can connect with. Even if XI is something you don't want to get into now and you're afraid it'll go away at some point, you can probably put those worries to rest as the game is currently pure profit to square-enix at this point in it's life (20 years old at the time of writing this!) and the servers are dirt cheap, albeit a little wonky due to a dependency on PS2 devkits, to run, so as far as we know, they have no plans to end online service at this point.
they fucked up the combat and there's nothing to do, by far the most barren expansion in the game if you don't fw savage or ultimates
great story though
great story though
This review contains spoilers
Aesthetically, no Castlevania has ever, and probably will never top this (i.m.o.)
Gameplay-wise, Aria of Sorrow is probably demonstrably the better game, but SotN has it too far beat in the departments of graphical fidelity and music, and the original voice acting implants the soul of old cheesy anime voiceovers so well that I would never so much as dare play any of the later versions that tried to "correct" it.
A major flaw of SotN is that very early on, you pretty much immediately outscale nearly every enemy in the castle and totally trivialize bosses. But in turn because of this, the game transforms into a sort of "chill out to the music and explore", kind of experience. And this is one of the game's biggest strengths, I think, despite the difficulty going into the gutter. It's a very different kind of exploration compared to Aria but the zenlike state one enters once they get into the pace of trying to fill out the map as quickly and efficiently as possible while pathing towards the game's objectives is really something special, because even if you aren't trying to speedrun it almost naturally just turns replays of the game into a race against your previous clear time.
Also the inverted castle rocks
Gameplay-wise, Aria of Sorrow is probably demonstrably the better game, but SotN has it too far beat in the departments of graphical fidelity and music, and the original voice acting implants the soul of old cheesy anime voiceovers so well that I would never so much as dare play any of the later versions that tried to "correct" it.
A major flaw of SotN is that very early on, you pretty much immediately outscale nearly every enemy in the castle and totally trivialize bosses. But in turn because of this, the game transforms into a sort of "chill out to the music and explore", kind of experience. And this is one of the game's biggest strengths, I think, despite the difficulty going into the gutter. It's a very different kind of exploration compared to Aria but the zenlike state one enters once they get into the pace of trying to fill out the map as quickly and efficiently as possible while pathing towards the game's objectives is really something special, because even if you aren't trying to speedrun it almost naturally just turns replays of the game into a race against your previous clear time.
Also the inverted castle rocks
This review contains spoilers
truckpump is me (real)
This review contains spoilers
SOULLESS. Combat feels awful compared to NMH; with the combination of attacking being way more float-y, stance switching feeling less responsive, and enemies feeling a lot cheaper by being able to just knock you down and keep wailing on you if you get hit by some uninterruptible attacks, it just sucks the fun out of the game. The few good bosses are only alright, and are only really notable because they stand above everything else in the game. The side jobs completely miss the point of the original, and because there's no longer an entry fee for ranked fights, they're pretty much useless to do after paying for all of the training at the gym. The gym minigames are lame. People say the soundtrack carries this game but I disagree: there are only really a couple notable tracks - anytime I really noticed the music were in those cases, or when the game just reused music from the first game. There are also significant spans of gameplay where there just isn't any music at all. So much of the game fails to impress and the stale as fuck final boss and lacklustre ending really just feel like a kick in the nuts at the end of it all. At least it's less than half the length of the first game. (according to my playtime at least.)
But also it has the Jeane minigames and it's awesome because of that so nvm.
But also it has the Jeane minigames and it's awesome because of that so nvm.
2014
I've gone through a lot of the emotions one could have regarding this game. I once thought it was Fine, I once hated it and I once loved it. It is awful, it spits in the face of any form of Good Game Design put forward by Demon's Souls and Dark Souls in service of pushing the idea of "dark souls is hard, right? let's just make it really hard they'll love that shit" without putting any thought into making the game Good in service to That. If Dark Souls is a Game For Freaks, Dark Souls 2 is a game for the Freaks that the Freaks can't handle. People love to hate this game and people love to be contrarians about Not Hating this game, and people love to hate this game to be contrarian towards the people who are being contrarians about liking this game (It often comes off as pointlessly cyclical discourse in which people are either liking or hating the game for cred through discrediting the people who feel the opposite way and I don't care to engage in it. These are my Raw Feelings. Like or Dislike Dark Souls 2 at Your Own Discretion). Dark Souls 2 is a Deep Pit of Depression from which I cannot escape. It is a shadowy enigma of undelivered-upon-vaguepromises and experimentally-safe-yet-horrid game design within an already experimental series of Video Games. Dark Souls 2 is a zero-sum game. Without Dark Souls 2 we don't have the massive over-correction of a Greatest Stinkers Album that Dark Souls 3 is. Dark Souls 2 is Two.
peak 3D zelda imo
2003
this is like the only gen urobuchi thing I've put to my eyeballs so far that I don't Completely Hate For Reasons. It's a short horror VN with some absolutely messed up gruesome subject matter. It's definitely very edgy and not for everyone. The soundtrack is pretty great.