sonicbacon123
101 Reviews liked by sonicbacon123
Alright, Devil May Cry. You got me. I'm all in.
And here I was thinking this series wasn't for me because I didn't love Devil May Cry 1. As it turns out this is very much my kind of franchise, I just wasn't able to see it because I started with the wrong game. Devil May Cry 3 is a great prequel - so much so that it does a better job at setting up the origin mythos of this franchise than the original game does. Not only that, but it's a giant improvement over the first game in almost every possible way. So in my opinion DMC 3 makes for a better starting point than DMC 1.
The story of DMC 3 has a simple premise: stop Vergil from opening the portal to the demon world. It's not particularly complex storytelling, but where the story shines is the sibling rivalry between Dante and Vergil. This rival dynamic elevates the story in a significant way. I cared about the events of the story because I knew it was all leading to an epic showdown between these two brothers. It does end up happening in an unexpected way though.
[Skip this next paragraph if you don't want to be spoiled]
Dante and Vergil team up at the end to fight off a twist villain who's seemingly the final boss. This fight feels like conclusion to the story, but right afterward Dante and Vergil have the final confrontation with each other that the whole story was leading up to. I loved this because it took the story in an interesting new direction while also giving a satisfying conclusion to the initial premise. Speaking of satisfying conclusions, I really enjoyed Lady's story as well. She's on a quest to get revenge on her father, but in his final breath her father claims to have been controlled by Vergil. Lady confronts Vergil only to see the grand reveal that her father was still alive and in full control of himself the whole time. Her father becomes the twist villain and seemingly the final boss. When the father is defeated, Lady deals the final strike. I love how this story misdirects you into thinking that these characters won't get satisfying conclusions only to revert to the original course and give the story the resolution it was building toward from the beginning.
[End of Spoilers]
Let's talk about the combat. DMC includes a much larger array of weapons than DMC 1. This gives Dante plenty of creative freedom to handle different situations. During the course of the game I was able to find certain scenarios that favored each weapon I had. With all these weapons Dante's movepool is huge even under normal conditions. However, using the swordmaster style can expand the moveset even further, giving dante new moves for every weapon. I absolutely loved the expessiveness of DMC 3's combat that this giant movepool made possible. I was never bored by the combat or frustrated by losing to hard boss battles because I always felt like I could drastically change up my strategy and find new ways to enjoy the game. And this Switch exclusive version of DMC 3 allows for Style switching during combat, which expands Dante's moveset even further. Just like the weapons I was able to make great use of all the styles as well. All of this adds up to make DMC 3 one of the most fluid action combat systems I've ever seen.
My biggest critique with this game is that the camera isn't great. Don't get me wrong though, it's nowhere near DMC 1 levels of bad. There's still the occasional PS1 Resident Evil style camera in DMC 3 but it's usually reserved for non-combat sections. In DMC 1 the average combat arena would have the camera experimenting with "artistic" angles for every five steps you took, rendering the game extremely frustrating to play. DMC 3 has a free camera... in theory, anyway. It's extremely slow to control and it doesn't even work sometimes. Better to just rely on the auto camera which naturally turns to show the enemy you're fighting. ...Well...in theory. The camera has a mind of its own and frequently doesn't show the action you want to see. Locking on doesn't yield great results either. The camera doesn't snap to lock on targets like you would expect. Oh well. The camera may be bad, but on the bright side it doesn't ruin the game like the camera from DMC 1. We're making progress here.
Devil May Cry 3 is a fantastic game. I loved the whole experience from beginning to end. I am aware of some of the criticisms that DMC 1 fans have with it... But these don't bother me. Dante might not have the same personality he has in DMC 1 but he's a far more interesting and entertaining character here. Also I know there are people who prefer how the ranking system/harder difficulties were handled in DMC 1, but if I were to play that game at a high level then that game's flaws would become even more pronounced. DMC 3 is just a more enjoyable game in every possible way for me, so that would extend to higher difficulties as well.
If you're looking to start the Devil May Cry series then I recommend starting with Devil May Cry 3. It's easily one of the best games I've played all year, if not the best game flat out.
And here I was thinking this series wasn't for me because I didn't love Devil May Cry 1. As it turns out this is very much my kind of franchise, I just wasn't able to see it because I started with the wrong game. Devil May Cry 3 is a great prequel - so much so that it does a better job at setting up the origin mythos of this franchise than the original game does. Not only that, but it's a giant improvement over the first game in almost every possible way. So in my opinion DMC 3 makes for a better starting point than DMC 1.
The story of DMC 3 has a simple premise: stop Vergil from opening the portal to the demon world. It's not particularly complex storytelling, but where the story shines is the sibling rivalry between Dante and Vergil. This rival dynamic elevates the story in a significant way. I cared about the events of the story because I knew it was all leading to an epic showdown between these two brothers. It does end up happening in an unexpected way though.
[Skip this next paragraph if you don't want to be spoiled]
Dante and Vergil team up at the end to fight off a twist villain who's seemingly the final boss. This fight feels like conclusion to the story, but right afterward Dante and Vergil have the final confrontation with each other that the whole story was leading up to. I loved this because it took the story in an interesting new direction while also giving a satisfying conclusion to the initial premise. Speaking of satisfying conclusions, I really enjoyed Lady's story as well. She's on a quest to get revenge on her father, but in his final breath her father claims to have been controlled by Vergil. Lady confronts Vergil only to see the grand reveal that her father was still alive and in full control of himself the whole time. Her father becomes the twist villain and seemingly the final boss. When the father is defeated, Lady deals the final strike. I love how this story misdirects you into thinking that these characters won't get satisfying conclusions only to revert to the original course and give the story the resolution it was building toward from the beginning.
[End of Spoilers]
Let's talk about the combat. DMC includes a much larger array of weapons than DMC 1. This gives Dante plenty of creative freedom to handle different situations. During the course of the game I was able to find certain scenarios that favored each weapon I had. With all these weapons Dante's movepool is huge even under normal conditions. However, using the swordmaster style can expand the moveset even further, giving dante new moves for every weapon. I absolutely loved the expessiveness of DMC 3's combat that this giant movepool made possible. I was never bored by the combat or frustrated by losing to hard boss battles because I always felt like I could drastically change up my strategy and find new ways to enjoy the game. And this Switch exclusive version of DMC 3 allows for Style switching during combat, which expands Dante's moveset even further. Just like the weapons I was able to make great use of all the styles as well. All of this adds up to make DMC 3 one of the most fluid action combat systems I've ever seen.
My biggest critique with this game is that the camera isn't great. Don't get me wrong though, it's nowhere near DMC 1 levels of bad. There's still the occasional PS1 Resident Evil style camera in DMC 3 but it's usually reserved for non-combat sections. In DMC 1 the average combat arena would have the camera experimenting with "artistic" angles for every five steps you took, rendering the game extremely frustrating to play. DMC 3 has a free camera... in theory, anyway. It's extremely slow to control and it doesn't even work sometimes. Better to just rely on the auto camera which naturally turns to show the enemy you're fighting. ...Well...in theory. The camera has a mind of its own and frequently doesn't show the action you want to see. Locking on doesn't yield great results either. The camera doesn't snap to lock on targets like you would expect. Oh well. The camera may be bad, but on the bright side it doesn't ruin the game like the camera from DMC 1. We're making progress here.
Devil May Cry 3 is a fantastic game. I loved the whole experience from beginning to end. I am aware of some of the criticisms that DMC 1 fans have with it... But these don't bother me. Dante might not have the same personality he has in DMC 1 but he's a far more interesting and entertaining character here. Also I know there are people who prefer how the ranking system/harder difficulties were handled in DMC 1, but if I were to play that game at a high level then that game's flaws would become even more pronounced. DMC 3 is just a more enjoyable game in every possible way for me, so that would extend to higher difficulties as well.
If you're looking to start the Devil May Cry series then I recommend starting with Devil May Cry 3. It's easily one of the best games I've played all year, if not the best game flat out.
Super Mario Land
1989
This game is a Google Chrome Dinosaur tier distraction, just with far worse physics and hit detection
This review will contain spoilers for Trails of Cold Steel I and II.
The best way I can sum up my feelings about this game is that I played all the way through to the final boss with only a mild interest in the events, but as soon as Lloyd from the Crossbell duology popped up on screen I instantly became ten times more invested. It was like if you were to watch an amateur comedian's standup set only to see Robin Williams walk onto stage as the follow-up act. Sure, you can find things to appreciate about the amateur comedian's performance, but there's just no comparing to the effortless brilliance of a master of the craft. This comparison applies to how I feel about Rean versus Lloyd as characters, yes, but it also applies to my feelings about the first two Cold Steel games versus the Crossbell duology in general.
The story of Trails of Cold Steel II isn't bad but there's a large difference in how interesting it is versus the Crossbell games, for example. In those games you were constantly working towards solving the mysteries of Crossbell city, which kept the story interesting the whole way through. Trails of Cold Steel II is more of a war story, but it doesn't commit to the bit. A story about a civil war of all things is going to leave little impact with so few on-screen casualties. The main characters inherit the attitude of "let's incapacitate our enemies and then leave them behind" from previous games, although it doesn't make sense here. Sure, that attitude makes sense for a policeman like Lloyd, but for active participants in a war? Not so much. It's like a civil war fought with nerf guns, which is just one of the numerous ways in which this game's story feels compromised.
Trails of Cold Steel I and II are effectively prequel games. They take place before the end of Trails to Azure, so Cold Steel II has to arrive at the same conclusion to Azure. As you might be aware, writers run into various problems while creating prequel stories. Prequels frequently end up feeling like stories told unnaturally. The situations aren't allowed to unfold as they normally would in non-prequels because of predetermined story events that have to happen. And while it's subtle, I think this game falls into that trap. During this game's second half there are plenty of events... but very little of them actually move the greater plot forward. A typical mission in Act 2 would consist of saving one of Class VII's family members from the royal alliance, which allows the imperial army to gain some more territory. These are certainly events, but they don't feel like they're leading up to a conclusion and building on each other. For a comparison, think of the way that Trails from Zero revealed nuggets of information in order to slowly build to a conclusion of the mystery. The events of this game's second half don't feel like they're building to anything, rather just filling space until the finale. Even the first Cold Steel game had a better build up. It feels like they had a hard time bridging the gap between the story of Cold Steel II and the ending of Trails to Azure. It's weird that the parts of the story where Rean is an active participant in the war are the least interesting, but I would have to say that I did enjoy the first half where Rean is just a fugitive more.
Even though I'm critical the story, I actually did enjoy the game's finale. Crow is a really enjoyable adversary for Rean because he's always challenging him to improve. He genuinely cares for Rean and the rest of class VII which makes him a refreshing antagonist. And Chancellor Osbourne is looking to be an absolutely monumental villain. He comes back from the dead and reveals that Class VII was just playing into his hands all along, while also revealing that Rean is his son, and then proceeds to annex Crossbell. A villain who can outsmart the heroes at every turn is a force to be reckoned with. I really like how they built up Osborne as a villain over the course of multiple games. I just wish Trails to Azure hadn't spoiled the fact that he was still alive.
On the combat front, Trails of Cold Steel II is EXTREMELY easy for the majority of the game. There are so many powerful combat options that you'll rarely feel like you have to use anything except for those overpowered tactics. There are the S-Crafts, Rean's white-hair power, Valimar, overdrive, special arts you get from defeating cryptids, and overpowered normal arts like Chrono Burst that can give you infinite turns. I was just spamming these moves a lot without even reading what the normal crafts do. There was just no point, because better options were available. The game ramps up in difficulty at the finale, which showed that the game could have been more fun if it was this difficult throughout. Having a lot of powerful options is fun if the enemies are powerful enough to match. But even so, I still didn't find the finale to be as challenging as previous games. And the option to use chrono burst infinitely is always there, so to some extent it feels like any challenging parts of this game were self imposed.
The music is a step down from Cold Steel I due to the annoying new battle theme. It's not a bad track overall, but being forced to listen to that intro over and over again is genuinely grating. The developers have to recognize that some songs don't lend themselves well to being a normal battle theme.
Another thing that the developers have to recognize is that putting an entire pointless dungeon after the finale isn't cool. This game ended up going for like 10 hours after the story reached its conclusion, which is absolutely ridiculous. Just let me roll the credits and put the extra dungeon in a side mode if you really want to include it. There are plenty of games I like more than this one where I never even bothered playing the extra content, so the developers shouldn't assume I actually want to do that. I just want to see the conclusion to the main story. The fact that the extra boss tells you how pointless the act of defeating him is indicates that maybe this part of the game didn't need to be mandatory.
Trails of Cold Steel II is an improvement over the first game, but it's still a pretty low-tier game for me. If I had to choose right now I'd say that the Cold Steel arc is my least favorite vs. Crossbell and Sky, but I know Cold Steel III is going to be a huge change so I'll wait and see. I'm excited for all of the Crossbell stuff to come back into play in Cold Steel III. I enjoyed Cold Steel I & II for what they were. They're not my favorite story ever and don't contain my favorite cast of characters, but they work fine enough for an isolated story within this grander universe. But I do hope that these two games stay as the lowpoint of the series and that there's nothing worse on the horizon.
The best way I can sum up my feelings about this game is that I played all the way through to the final boss with only a mild interest in the events, but as soon as Lloyd from the Crossbell duology popped up on screen I instantly became ten times more invested. It was like if you were to watch an amateur comedian's standup set only to see Robin Williams walk onto stage as the follow-up act. Sure, you can find things to appreciate about the amateur comedian's performance, but there's just no comparing to the effortless brilliance of a master of the craft. This comparison applies to how I feel about Rean versus Lloyd as characters, yes, but it also applies to my feelings about the first two Cold Steel games versus the Crossbell duology in general.
The story of Trails of Cold Steel II isn't bad but there's a large difference in how interesting it is versus the Crossbell games, for example. In those games you were constantly working towards solving the mysteries of Crossbell city, which kept the story interesting the whole way through. Trails of Cold Steel II is more of a war story, but it doesn't commit to the bit. A story about a civil war of all things is going to leave little impact with so few on-screen casualties. The main characters inherit the attitude of "let's incapacitate our enemies and then leave them behind" from previous games, although it doesn't make sense here. Sure, that attitude makes sense for a policeman like Lloyd, but for active participants in a war? Not so much. It's like a civil war fought with nerf guns, which is just one of the numerous ways in which this game's story feels compromised.
Trails of Cold Steel I and II are effectively prequel games. They take place before the end of Trails to Azure, so Cold Steel II has to arrive at the same conclusion to Azure. As you might be aware, writers run into various problems while creating prequel stories. Prequels frequently end up feeling like stories told unnaturally. The situations aren't allowed to unfold as they normally would in non-prequels because of predetermined story events that have to happen. And while it's subtle, I think this game falls into that trap. During this game's second half there are plenty of events... but very little of them actually move the greater plot forward. A typical mission in Act 2 would consist of saving one of Class VII's family members from the royal alliance, which allows the imperial army to gain some more territory. These are certainly events, but they don't feel like they're leading up to a conclusion and building on each other. For a comparison, think of the way that Trails from Zero revealed nuggets of information in order to slowly build to a conclusion of the mystery. The events of this game's second half don't feel like they're building to anything, rather just filling space until the finale. Even the first Cold Steel game had a better build up. It feels like they had a hard time bridging the gap between the story of Cold Steel II and the ending of Trails to Azure. It's weird that the parts of the story where Rean is an active participant in the war are the least interesting, but I would have to say that I did enjoy the first half where Rean is just a fugitive more.
Even though I'm critical the story, I actually did enjoy the game's finale. Crow is a really enjoyable adversary for Rean because he's always challenging him to improve. He genuinely cares for Rean and the rest of class VII which makes him a refreshing antagonist. And Chancellor Osbourne is looking to be an absolutely monumental villain. He comes back from the dead and reveals that Class VII was just playing into his hands all along, while also revealing that Rean is his son, and then proceeds to annex Crossbell. A villain who can outsmart the heroes at every turn is a force to be reckoned with. I really like how they built up Osborne as a villain over the course of multiple games. I just wish Trails to Azure hadn't spoiled the fact that he was still alive.
On the combat front, Trails of Cold Steel II is EXTREMELY easy for the majority of the game. There are so many powerful combat options that you'll rarely feel like you have to use anything except for those overpowered tactics. There are the S-Crafts, Rean's white-hair power, Valimar, overdrive, special arts you get from defeating cryptids, and overpowered normal arts like Chrono Burst that can give you infinite turns. I was just spamming these moves a lot without even reading what the normal crafts do. There was just no point, because better options were available. The game ramps up in difficulty at the finale, which showed that the game could have been more fun if it was this difficult throughout. Having a lot of powerful options is fun if the enemies are powerful enough to match. But even so, I still didn't find the finale to be as challenging as previous games. And the option to use chrono burst infinitely is always there, so to some extent it feels like any challenging parts of this game were self imposed.
The music is a step down from Cold Steel I due to the annoying new battle theme. It's not a bad track overall, but being forced to listen to that intro over and over again is genuinely grating. The developers have to recognize that some songs don't lend themselves well to being a normal battle theme.
Another thing that the developers have to recognize is that putting an entire pointless dungeon after the finale isn't cool. This game ended up going for like 10 hours after the story reached its conclusion, which is absolutely ridiculous. Just let me roll the credits and put the extra dungeon in a side mode if you really want to include it. There are plenty of games I like more than this one where I never even bothered playing the extra content, so the developers shouldn't assume I actually want to do that. I just want to see the conclusion to the main story. The fact that the extra boss tells you how pointless the act of defeating him is indicates that maybe this part of the game didn't need to be mandatory.
Trails of Cold Steel II is an improvement over the first game, but it's still a pretty low-tier game for me. If I had to choose right now I'd say that the Cold Steel arc is my least favorite vs. Crossbell and Sky, but I know Cold Steel III is going to be a huge change so I'll wait and see. I'm excited for all of the Crossbell stuff to come back into play in Cold Steel III. I enjoyed Cold Steel I & II for what they were. They're not my favorite story ever and don't contain my favorite cast of characters, but they work fine enough for an isolated story within this grander universe. But I do hope that these two games stay as the lowpoint of the series and that there's nothing worse on the horizon.
Not my favorite 2D Zelda ever but I had a pretty good time. Oracle of Seasons gives off the first impression of "Link's Awakening but worse". There are many reused elements from Link's Awakening in OoS. The artstyle, the overworld theme, some of the sprites and Link's base control scheme are all lifted straight from LA. Knowing this, it's hard not to make comparisons and notice when some aspects don't work as well as in Link's Awakening. For starters, the overworld of Oracle of Seasons is a lot less suited for exploration. Sure, Link's Awakening likes to tell you where to go a lot, but you can explore pretty seamlessly around the area you've unlocked. In Oracle of Seasons you have to solve tiny puzzles to get around the overworld, which slows the pace down dramatically. In addition, it's less charming than Link's Awakening because it lacks the clever dialogue writing and originality.
As the game went on I was glad to see that Oracle of Seasons has a lot of its own charm and originality. I'll never be a huge fan of the way the overworld works but this game definitely stands on its own. There are mounts in this game like a kangaroo with boxing gloves and a flying bear with tiny wings. You get new dungeon items like the magnetic gloves and a slingshot that can shoot elemental seeds. There's a whole underground lava world called Subrosia which is pretty interesting. And of course, there's this game's main hook, which is that you can connect it to Oracle of Ages to get the other half of the story.
It's pretty cool that you can play either game first and the other game will act as a sequel when you link them. I chose to play Oracle of Seasons first, so I got a cliffhanger for an ending. Even though I haven't experienced the endgame of the Oracle duology yet, I'm still pretty satisfied with Seasons as a standalone game.
Oracle of Seasons is a good game but it's lacking a little bit of the usual Nintendo polish. You can tell the staff behind this game wasn't the usual Zelda team. It's a lot less of a seamless experience than Link's Awakening and it's easier to get bored because of that. But it's still worth playing through, even just to see how the Oracle games connect with each other.
As the game went on I was glad to see that Oracle of Seasons has a lot of its own charm and originality. I'll never be a huge fan of the way the overworld works but this game definitely stands on its own. There are mounts in this game like a kangaroo with boxing gloves and a flying bear with tiny wings. You get new dungeon items like the magnetic gloves and a slingshot that can shoot elemental seeds. There's a whole underground lava world called Subrosia which is pretty interesting. And of course, there's this game's main hook, which is that you can connect it to Oracle of Ages to get the other half of the story.
It's pretty cool that you can play either game first and the other game will act as a sequel when you link them. I chose to play Oracle of Seasons first, so I got a cliffhanger for an ending. Even though I haven't experienced the endgame of the Oracle duology yet, I'm still pretty satisfied with Seasons as a standalone game.
Oracle of Seasons is a good game but it's lacking a little bit of the usual Nintendo polish. You can tell the staff behind this game wasn't the usual Zelda team. It's a lot less of a seamless experience than Link's Awakening and it's easier to get bored because of that. But it's still worth playing through, even just to see how the Oracle games connect with each other.
This game kinda rules.
This is really where metal gear got its stride going. So much of this game sets the tone and trajectory of the series going forward. The level design in this was solid with good pacing, and it’s insane how many segments from metal gear solid are just ripped out of this game exactly.
I also played the msx version/translation that came with the mgs collection volume and 1 and I much prefer the art and sprites here. I fucking hate the Sean Connery big boss and shit. gross ew.
You better make it in time for Christmas dinner snake, gotta be tired of those rations.
This is really where metal gear got its stride going. So much of this game sets the tone and trajectory of the series going forward. The level design in this was solid with good pacing, and it’s insane how many segments from metal gear solid are just ripped out of this game exactly.
I also played the msx version/translation that came with the mgs collection volume and 1 and I much prefer the art and sprites here. I fucking hate the Sean Connery big boss and shit. gross ew.
You better make it in time for Christmas dinner snake, gotta be tired of those rations.
Metal Gear
1987
Had to use a guide otherwise my brain would explode, but that being said, it’s a pretty charming and neat little game you can beat in a few hours. And the music kinda rocks.
Yeah it is just that good.
MGS3 improves a lot with the overall level progression and level variety in a huge way. the bouncing back from forest, enemy camps, and buildings is great. It does drag a bit in the mountain section but the quality of variety and story between all of it is some of the finest game experiences you will get. The ps2 was a mighty console.
MGS2 is still my favorite cause the aesthetic of the colors and more cell shading with the environments is just, idk more appealing to me. And the solid/Raiden combo rules. However, that does not stop 3 from being an insanely well crafted game front to back. Insane shit that holds up so well.
MGS3 improves a lot with the overall level progression and level variety in a huge way. the bouncing back from forest, enemy camps, and buildings is great. It does drag a bit in the mountain section but the quality of variety and story between all of it is some of the finest game experiences you will get. The ps2 was a mighty console.
MGS2 is still my favorite cause the aesthetic of the colors and more cell shading with the environments is just, idk more appealing to me. And the solid/Raiden combo rules. However, that does not stop 3 from being an insanely well crafted game front to back. Insane shit that holds up so well.
Going back to this game after years is great. I love it way more, and understand its ideas way more now than I ever have. The controls are way better, less frustrating bosses(although in every metal gear game I end up getting frustrated cause I kinda suck at action games, but I have fun regardless), an so many more options on how to stealth and take out them out. And I love Raidens character so much. Kojima and team cooked so hard with this.
Metal Gear Solid
1998
Still holds up and is one of the coolest to ever do it.
It was a treat to come back and replay this beautiful game. One of the most daring and insane games that I still have ever experienced. The creativity here is off the charts, and there is even so much beauty in its faults as well. This remaster is pretty solid, it had updates to fix some performance stuff but it still kinda runs like shit sometimes. That didn’t stop me from having a great time though. Perfect game
Year 0
Dear diary,
Since failing to get GBA linkage working in Dolphin netplay however many years ago, we were unsure of when we'd finally be getting around to this. Especially since the remaster was out of the question, as it lacks local co-op and not all of us have a Nintendo Switch Online / PlayStation Plus subscription. But we've finally found the opportunity (and the Link Cables) to play it on original hardware. With character creation now out of the way, we can introduce ourselves:
Player 1, our de facto leader: a male, long-beaked Yuke from a family of tailors
Player 2 (that's me): a female, red-masked Lilty from a family of alchemists
"Player 3": a female, shark-eyed Selkie from a family of fishers
I'll refrain from including our names to protect our anonymity should this diary become compromised. I'll keep the formalities short for now: adventure awaits!
Year 1
Dear diary,
Our first year has come to a close. We've settled loosely into "builds" based on each of the 3 primary stats: P1 is focusing on magic, I'm focusing on defense, and P3 is focusing on strength. It's reassuring that the chalice mechanic, which I had been led to believe was an abitrary piece of busywork, isn't that bad. It may not be a deep mechanic, but it's a decent solution for circumventing the lack of splitscreen functionality, especially since everyone can take turns on chalice duty. The dungeon crawling so far has been pretty uneventful, except the Mine, which featured lanterns with Bombs trapped inside - a creative integration of classic iconography with the world design. Also, unlike the other dungeons, it had an actual gimmick. Not a terribly interesting one, just standing on buttons to make a minecart break through a wall, but the other two were just flat areas with chests and enemies. Pretty generic action RPG stuff, but we've only just begun.
Year 2
Dear diary,
It suddenly dawned on me how the radar mechanic works. Each player is randomly assigned one of four features: enemy locations, treasure locations, a map of the layout, or enemy info (since there's only 3 of us, we're always guaranteed that one person will have the map). But what's the context here? Is gosh itself shuffling these components between us each time we enter a dungeon? Why can't we trade these features with each other, or at least choose which we want? Anyway, the narrative experience is rather strange so far. Besides the basic premise, the "main story" is shaping up to be nothing more than "trudge through a dull dungeon, kill a boss who's probably just acting in self defense, steal their myrrh, dance at a bonfire after doing that 3 times, rinse and repeat." Is the real meat of the narrative in the overworld events? Most of them just involve some group of people showing up on the road, saying some random stuff, and then it ends before anything really happens. If they're meant to be episodic subplots, then for each "episode" to be so barren must mean these subplots are spread quite thin.
Year 3
Dear diary,
I'm warming up to the radar mechanic. Not for some hidden merit I've discovered in it, but rather because the light amount of cooperation it enables spices up the dungeon crawling so much more than anything in the dungeons themselves. There was only one dungeon in this batch (the Manor) which provided some fun of its own, if only for its brevity and the cute story context. Speaking of story, I'm also warming up to the overworld events. They're so cheesy and bizarre that they're quickly becoming the only thing I look forward to anymore. It's ironic considering how slow and boring of an overworld this otherwise is, ESPECIALLY the miasma streams. Even for ones you've crossed before, you still have to sit there and watch as your character (yes, singular character, since funnily enough you can just have one person cross while the others sit at the beginning and slowly die of miasma poisoning) slowly inches along the path while you wonder how someone could possibly be enthralled by this more than MAYBE twice. And every miasma stream is nearly identical of course. I'm afraid the mindless monotony of the gameplay loop will just keep wearing on until the end. But hey, we're halfway there, right?
Year 4
Dear diary,
Some of the worst dungeons yet: same old tedium, but Rebena Te Ra had some obnoxious puzzles, and the difficulty is spiking hard. The combat has really been wearing out its welcome, particularly spellcasting. Spells are becoming much more crucial, and it's very common to be struck with a halting status (freeze, stone, etc) before you can finish casting one. This is doubly dreadful for spells which require two people. One of these, Holy, is practically required to kill some recently introduced enemies (and bosses!). It doesn't help that the equipment feels so restrictive. Theoretically, we could spend additional miserable hours grinding materials for a plethora of armor and accessories which give +1 poison resist or something (whatever that means). But is it worth it? If a relevant opportunity arises to use said equipment, I'd have to push Select, bend my face over the GBA, fumble fatfingeredly through the menu to equip the correct thing, then look back up at the mangled corpse I left behind in the meantime. We're approaching the light at the end of the tunnel anyhow, so I'll just hope we won't have to resort to grinding.
Year 5
F***ing diary,
Hades must have been looking over my shoulder and decided Sysyphus wasn't the only one who needed a cruel and unusual punishment. We should've known by how freakishly powerful the enemies in this final dungeon were, but we pressed on. And we tried, we really did, but it's just not feasible for 3 undergeared caravanners - with what I'm realising are abysmal defense stats - to stand up to this ungodly monstrosity of a boss at the bottom of this hellhole. We were desperate to miraculously pull through to prevent throwing away the progress we made through this place, but it wasn't meant to be. We'll have to grind. Hard. Apparently each dungeon has cycles, and only by making it to the 3rd cycle (yeah because these dungeons were so much fun the first time) will we be able to upgrade our gear from Mithril to Diamond. Diamond is the NEXT STEP UP from Mithril, but I digress. Let's just get this over with.
Year 9
Good riddance,
Gear has been grinded, our GBAs have lost power at least 87 times, and unfavorable comparisons to Nicktoons Unite! have been made. I don't know what else I could say. We're entering the final dungeon for what I hope is the final time. Let's mosey.
Year ?
Dear diary,
I must admit, this sequence following the final dungeon's boss may have sparked the most engaging cooperation I've experienced in any game. We needed to put our heads together and place desperate faith in one another in a way I never could have expected. I wouldn't dare spoil the details of this, but not out of respect for any potential readers of this diary who may want to experience it firsthand. Rather, if we had to endure 9 years of torment to get to this moment, then I refuse to offer anyone a shortcut. Suffer like we did.
Year ????????
Diary,
This may well be my final entry. We've gotten a few "Game Over"s fighting this final boss, but we've learned how it works and sussed out some basic strategies to sufficiently stay afloat. This current attempt will probably be "the one," but we've been on it for a while now. Has it been 10 minutes, 10 days, 10 years? Is the boss' health nearly depleted, or is it actually infinite? If this takes much longer, I'm not gonna make it. I'll... lose the motivation to bother writing a review of this game. Should that be the case, then I hope someone manages to find this diary, because it'll be the only record left of what has transpired. So I'll offer these final thoughts to whoever may be able to read them: if you want to follow in our footsteps (or GOSH forbid drag some friends into our footsteps as well), just know that there's always a better way. If you really want the novelty of a multiplayer game which necessitates each player to connect a GBA to a GameCube, I'm sure Four Swords or Pac-Man Vs would suffice. If you want a multiplayer RPG on the GameCube, there's Tales of Symphonia. It may have shallow combat, a convoluted story, and a bizarre tonal clash between the graphics and the subject matter, but Symphonia clearly had at least 100 times more passion and effort on display than this. Or maybe you grew up with this, which unfortunately means you're already cursed beyond any hope of salvation. But if you're like us, and you're on a mission to play every Japanese role playing game with cooperative multiplayer, well... your fate is sealed of course, but just try to save this one for later. In the meantime, go play some Monster Hunter or something.
Dear diary,
Since failing to get GBA linkage working in Dolphin netplay however many years ago, we were unsure of when we'd finally be getting around to this. Especially since the remaster was out of the question, as it lacks local co-op and not all of us have a Nintendo Switch Online / PlayStation Plus subscription. But we've finally found the opportunity (and the Link Cables) to play it on original hardware. With character creation now out of the way, we can introduce ourselves:
Player 1, our de facto leader: a male, long-beaked Yuke from a family of tailors
Player 2 (that's me): a female, red-masked Lilty from a family of alchemists
"Player 3": a female, shark-eyed Selkie from a family of fishers
I'll refrain from including our names to protect our anonymity should this diary become compromised. I'll keep the formalities short for now: adventure awaits!
Year 1
Dear diary,
Our first year has come to a close. We've settled loosely into "builds" based on each of the 3 primary stats: P1 is focusing on magic, I'm focusing on defense, and P3 is focusing on strength. It's reassuring that the chalice mechanic, which I had been led to believe was an abitrary piece of busywork, isn't that bad. It may not be a deep mechanic, but it's a decent solution for circumventing the lack of splitscreen functionality, especially since everyone can take turns on chalice duty. The dungeon crawling so far has been pretty uneventful, except the Mine, which featured lanterns with Bombs trapped inside - a creative integration of classic iconography with the world design. Also, unlike the other dungeons, it had an actual gimmick. Not a terribly interesting one, just standing on buttons to make a minecart break through a wall, but the other two were just flat areas with chests and enemies. Pretty generic action RPG stuff, but we've only just begun.
Year 2
Dear diary,
It suddenly dawned on me how the radar mechanic works. Each player is randomly assigned one of four features: enemy locations, treasure locations, a map of the layout, or enemy info (since there's only 3 of us, we're always guaranteed that one person will have the map). But what's the context here? Is gosh itself shuffling these components between us each time we enter a dungeon? Why can't we trade these features with each other, or at least choose which we want? Anyway, the narrative experience is rather strange so far. Besides the basic premise, the "main story" is shaping up to be nothing more than "trudge through a dull dungeon, kill a boss who's probably just acting in self defense, steal their myrrh, dance at a bonfire after doing that 3 times, rinse and repeat." Is the real meat of the narrative in the overworld events? Most of them just involve some group of people showing up on the road, saying some random stuff, and then it ends before anything really happens. If they're meant to be episodic subplots, then for each "episode" to be so barren must mean these subplots are spread quite thin.
Year 3
Dear diary,
I'm warming up to the radar mechanic. Not for some hidden merit I've discovered in it, but rather because the light amount of cooperation it enables spices up the dungeon crawling so much more than anything in the dungeons themselves. There was only one dungeon in this batch (the Manor) which provided some fun of its own, if only for its brevity and the cute story context. Speaking of story, I'm also warming up to the overworld events. They're so cheesy and bizarre that they're quickly becoming the only thing I look forward to anymore. It's ironic considering how slow and boring of an overworld this otherwise is, ESPECIALLY the miasma streams. Even for ones you've crossed before, you still have to sit there and watch as your character (yes, singular character, since funnily enough you can just have one person cross while the others sit at the beginning and slowly die of miasma poisoning) slowly inches along the path while you wonder how someone could possibly be enthralled by this more than MAYBE twice. And every miasma stream is nearly identical of course. I'm afraid the mindless monotony of the gameplay loop will just keep wearing on until the end. But hey, we're halfway there, right?
Year 4
Dear diary,
Some of the worst dungeons yet: same old tedium, but Rebena Te Ra had some obnoxious puzzles, and the difficulty is spiking hard. The combat has really been wearing out its welcome, particularly spellcasting. Spells are becoming much more crucial, and it's very common to be struck with a halting status (freeze, stone, etc) before you can finish casting one. This is doubly dreadful for spells which require two people. One of these, Holy, is practically required to kill some recently introduced enemies (and bosses!). It doesn't help that the equipment feels so restrictive. Theoretically, we could spend additional miserable hours grinding materials for a plethora of armor and accessories which give +1 poison resist or something (whatever that means). But is it worth it? If a relevant opportunity arises to use said equipment, I'd have to push Select, bend my face over the GBA, fumble fatfingeredly through the menu to equip the correct thing, then look back up at the mangled corpse I left behind in the meantime. We're approaching the light at the end of the tunnel anyhow, so I'll just hope we won't have to resort to grinding.
Year 5
F***ing diary,
Hades must have been looking over my shoulder and decided Sysyphus wasn't the only one who needed a cruel and unusual punishment. We should've known by how freakishly powerful the enemies in this final dungeon were, but we pressed on. And we tried, we really did, but it's just not feasible for 3 undergeared caravanners - with what I'm realising are abysmal defense stats - to stand up to this ungodly monstrosity of a boss at the bottom of this hellhole. We were desperate to miraculously pull through to prevent throwing away the progress we made through this place, but it wasn't meant to be. We'll have to grind. Hard. Apparently each dungeon has cycles, and only by making it to the 3rd cycle (yeah because these dungeons were so much fun the first time) will we be able to upgrade our gear from Mithril to Diamond. Diamond is the NEXT STEP UP from Mithril, but I digress. Let's just get this over with.
Year 9
Good riddance,
Gear has been grinded, our GBAs have lost power at least 87 times, and unfavorable comparisons to Nicktoons Unite! have been made. I don't know what else I could say. We're entering the final dungeon for what I hope is the final time. Let's mosey.
Year ?
Dear diary,
I must admit, this sequence following the final dungeon's boss may have sparked the most engaging cooperation I've experienced in any game. We needed to put our heads together and place desperate faith in one another in a way I never could have expected. I wouldn't dare spoil the details of this, but not out of respect for any potential readers of this diary who may want to experience it firsthand. Rather, if we had to endure 9 years of torment to get to this moment, then I refuse to offer anyone a shortcut. Suffer like we did.
Year ????????
Diary,
This may well be my final entry. We've gotten a few "Game Over"s fighting this final boss, but we've learned how it works and sussed out some basic strategies to sufficiently stay afloat. This current attempt will probably be "the one," but we've been on it for a while now. Has it been 10 minutes, 10 days, 10 years? Is the boss' health nearly depleted, or is it actually infinite? If this takes much longer, I'm not gonna make it. I'll... lose the motivation to bother writing a review of this game. Should that be the case, then I hope someone manages to find this diary, because it'll be the only record left of what has transpired. So I'll offer these final thoughts to whoever may be able to read them: if you want to follow in our footsteps (or GOSH forbid drag some friends into our footsteps as well), just know that there's always a better way. If you really want the novelty of a multiplayer game which necessitates each player to connect a GBA to a GameCube, I'm sure Four Swords or Pac-Man Vs would suffice. If you want a multiplayer RPG on the GameCube, there's Tales of Symphonia. It may have shallow combat, a convoluted story, and a bizarre tonal clash between the graphics and the subject matter, but Symphonia clearly had at least 100 times more passion and effort on display than this. Or maybe you grew up with this, which unfortunately means you're already cursed beyond any hope of salvation. But if you're like us, and you're on a mission to play every Japanese role playing game with cooperative multiplayer, well... your fate is sealed of course, but just try to save this one for later. In the meantime, go play some Monster Hunter or something.
Nicktoons Unite! for jrpg fans
Although to its credit Nicktoons Unite doesn't stonewall you at the final boss and force you to grind its tedious levels over and over to stand a chance
Although to its credit Nicktoons Unite doesn't stonewall you at the final boss and force you to grind its tedious levels over and over to stand a chance
I could write this more eloquently but i think i will just copy the shit i wrote in discord when i finished it. It cant handle the cast size, it doesnt know what it wants to be, the character development beam only hits certain characters while completely avoiding others, the plot was lacking direction and then at the end we get answers for weird questions i forgot i even had cause i was too busy being mad at how absolutely stupid the gnome memoey erasure masks are, humanity being the cause of everything should have been the focus instead of literally talked about 2 times and brushed over very quickly, prologue to the beginning of act 2 is some of the best cold steel has to offer and then act 2 is some of the worst cold steel has to offer, why is some of the best character writing in this entire arc delegated to bonding events why cant you write that in. They needed to have actual stakes and have their rules actually fucking matter, and you can fucking tell they planned to kill off or shelf some of the cast but idfk man they were going for with this its like theyre trying to appeal to a certain demographic by being like we have all these characters you can choose who to play, but its like they cant properly write scenes because they are accounting for everyones diffferent party makeup. FOR THE RECORD I LIKE A GOOD CHUNK OF THIS CAST BUT LIKE they are written like this is a tokusatsu for 8 year olds im losing my mind man. IF there was no act 2 and no cast bloat(as in they at least focus on a certain amount of characters and have like old class 7 do other shit) then this would prolly be my fav cold steel game. Why does everyone say nothing theres so much said that isnt anything, the side quests in this game however are some of the best in the series and at the very least the best cold steel has to offer. The atmosphere , the NPC's, the sidequests, a good chunk of the tracks, a lot of the bonding event scenes are the best part of the game and imo this game is the trails game to do the first 3 the best, but man if only the could actually write the main fucking scenario without copy and pasting the same paragraph 4 times. Also sucks that sometimes they can write the old cast well and then sometimes they fucking treat the old cast as hollow fucking call back fan service material. Anyways, sky through cs2 are some of my fav games ever, and i even enjoyed cold steel 3 quite a bit, and I LIKED A LOT OF WHAT THIS GAME HAS AND WHAT IT ADDED TO ZEMURIA but man this game just spent all of my goodwill sky-azure built up and i really hope falcom remembers they can fucking write cause ive seen em do it, dont know why theyre hellbent on writing like this but anyways. Crow altina juna 4 life, i am praying they can somehow salvage this shit in reverie but it would take a lot to pull this off, and im sayin this shit as a fan of cold steel 2, just so you know I really wanted to see the full potential of this arc realized.
This game is a slowburn 40 hour slice of life rpg, that generally is treated by the fanbase as a slog to get to through to get to the good stuff in SC. I can understand the viewpoint of someone who does not like this game if it is their first trails game but I think this game does an excellent job of using a simple rpg narrative to build up larger narrative intrigue, plant the seeds and hints of greater things to come, and make the cast of characters feel very genuine. It is a slowburn but it is immersive and warm and fun, the soundtrack is one of my favorite of all time, and it is just as good as the second chapter, its just less grand due to it being the start of the journey. Since this was my 3rd trails game, after cold steel 1 and 2, I kind of knew how to approach this mentally since they can be slow and it helps to be expecting this.
Even to this day it is the peak point of the series and I do not know if we will ever see a trails game this good again.