Today's game finds: May 27, 2015 

Mostly random stuff I've been after but that rune factory looks badass! Also the majora is for nicks set as I have one. Mine was a gift many years ago! Haha also 25 cent NES manual, can't beat it

Yesterday and Today's NES Finds: May 23, 2015

Some rare and uncommon stuff, bought the same day as the big item which I will show when it comes this week!

Today's Game Finds: May 14, 2015

Today's NES Finds: May 11, 2015

Silver Surfer on NES which came in the mail today, epic soundtrack, price was rising, never seen it in person so had to buy it! Game hunting yielded an Ico/ Shadow of the Colossus Collection, a 25 cent dragon quest 8 manual, and the elusive harvest moon 64 in great condition, of which I've only ever seen once before! That one isn't for me though, gotta help out your fellow collectors when you score sometimes.

May 9, 2015

Today I finally beat Final Fantasy 13 and resolved my side of the deal between me and mayabb where he is now obligated to beat Dragon Quest 8.
Anybody who knows me knows I have a lot of issues with this game. It's tedious, there's a lot of waiting in battle, the story isn't very coherent, there's not much to the characters, etc but I'm not going to harp on this linear, freedom crushing 60 hour RPG that much as I'm working on a video where I compare its flaws to a better RPG. Rather, I'm going to make this short and sweet this time.
To me this game violates a lot of really key design issues and is the premier example of why style over substance doesn't work very often. This game is a long slog with nuggets of potential that are excellently shown off in the last 5 hours which really brought me into the game and made me enjoy it, but just those 5 hours. The lack of freedom, determined linear path, and dull plot/ characters really kill the expirience as a whole.
The battles are cool for a while but become boring in time and wear on you when you realize you often don't need to think to hard about it. Shift paradigm for healing or magic, press x, let the game do the rest. And yet bosses were excellent (other than sometimes overstaying their welcome by taking forever) and there's a lot of variety to what's here. The weapons' upgrade system is some of the most grindy bullshit I've ever heard but in a way it's cool for those who actually are into it.
The cinemas and visuals are really good and if this was a 2-3 hour movie I'd be floored by the quality but the fact is that this is a 60 hour game padded with areas that don't contribute anything, especially for about the first 20 hours or so. There's a lot of down time that bogs down the experience to really detract from anything good here. And there is good here but it's about 10 hours tops of this 60 hour adventure.
I could go on for years about what's wrong here but I won't and I'll just say this: it's not worth investing the 60 hours in. If you have that sort of time to throw down on an RPG get Persona 4 instead and you'll thank me later. I wanted so bad to kill this game in the ratings but overall I'm giving it a 3/10 because the ending really saved something for me but also really showed me what sort of potential we missed out on.
If you want a more in depth analysis of my feelings for this game I'll be making a video on it down the road so stay tuned for that and until then thanks for reading.

NES Games I (and sort of my friends?) Beat #56: Swords and Serpents 

It’s no secret I’m a fan of old school, turn based role playing games. As a fan of this genre there’s not a lot of selection on NES. You have your Dragon Warrior Quadrilogy and your Final Fantasy 1 and that’s it for most people. While there are others like Might and Magic, Advance Dungeons and Dragons: Pool of Radiance, Ghost Lion, and Dungeon Magic, outside of action RPGS like Crystalis and Faxanadu that’s about it. Enter 1990’s Swords and Serpents, developed by Enterplay and published by Acclaim. It’s bit of an oddity in more than a few ways.

RPGs weren’t a huge genre here yet in 1990 but something like this is a bit more approachable to the average gamer. Gone are towns filled with fetch quests and shops, rather the whole game takes place in a singular dungeon with 16 floors of chaos to explore. While there are shops and helpful monks and clues scattered throughout the floors the pacing in this game is not to be bum rushed by all the villagers with exposition instead you, the player, is given the freedom to go where you want, when you want. As long as you survive the random battles, there’s no fear in jumping up a few floors other than how comfortable you are doing so. Also the freedom to pick what kind of team you want at the start between a theif, warrior, and mage and any combination of those classes. 

Like in most RPGs these random battles give you experience but not just to who finishes the enemy off or whoever is still alive, no your party has a collective level. They shift the focus more on the gear you find and the stronger gear you have, the stronger your individual stats are. This incentivizes exploration even more so as not only do you want to explore even nook of the level for stairs to advance but also to find all the awesome hidden items as well as spells. There’s also warp zones and sometime switches you need to find to advance. As the levels progress, their design gets even more challenging to navigate as the game adds almost puzzle tier elements with some of the later spells you obtain like the ability to walk through walls. It is a little obscure to know which walls to walk through but in the modern day of the internet I don’t hold it against this game as Zelda has plenty of that too.

The presentation in this game is really impressive for NES as well, think the dungeon crawling segments of like Dungeon Magic (a game released much later I might add) but done so much better with a handy map that fills in as you go. The animation on the sprites of the characters and in battle are really detailed too and are impressive in their own right. The music is good, a bit repetitive given there’s only 3 tracks but at least their pretty good.

Battles are standard attack, heal, spells, all basic stuff. They can get a tad bit repetitive but for its time it certainly could have been way more grindy. Mostly you’ll find yourself watching your health and then mashing A until the enemies are gone but that’s really most RPGs for ya. They can seem a bit boring when you take advantage of the insane 4 player feature and allow everyone to take on a character as a well due to the warriors and thieves just mashing A, not realizing or caring that the mages have been saving them from death countless times. All the intensity of battle is thrust onto the mages because their actually engage in what’s happening on screen. This is why my recommendation is two players that way you can both control a mage and a fighting class or just go in solo like I did after my friends lost interest in the game. It’s not as easy as people might make it seem either as if a character dies you have to take them to a temple to heal them, basically this game’s inn and church rolled into one. These are only located on certain floors though (in intervals of 5) and thus the tension is real when your characters are low on health and MP. If you die you start again at your last save (which can be done anywhere but it warps you to the last temple you hit up) but there is a catch, there’s no save feature in the game, instead you get a series of passwords, one for each character and then a game code. In the modern days of cell phones, just take a picture of each. This still means if you die you have to reinput all these codes to start from where you last saved which is a pain as it takes a bit of time however it’s not a big issue as this game isn’t too unforgiving. I don’t think I ever managed to die as even when you low on health you can just flee battles and hope it works long enough to get back. But will it? That’s the tension. 

The nice thing is Swords and Serpents will allow you to choose how many players will join at the start and continue any previous game with any amount of players, another level of freedom to how and when you can play the game, it’s not situational, I can play it by myself of with friends. It’s this kind of freedom that modern game design doesn’t always account for. This would be a pretty standard game if not for the freedom it provides the player. The ability to completely take the game at your own pace and do it your way is that Zelda feeling that we’ve been missing in games for so long and it’s crazy to see that great level of game design implemented here. When I analyze this game more in depth in my video review of it I’ll delve more into why these aspects of freedom are truly what I’m looking for in games and why Final Fantasy 13 has failed so miserably by violating all the rules games like this set up.

There’s not much to complain on here, this is a great RPG with fantastic presentation in terms of graphics and design. The game’s sense of exploration and freedom are its strongest suite and while the battles are pretty standard fair they do the trick. Aside from the password system and the serviceable but lazy 4 player implementation this an absolute gem and hey for once a cheap obscure game! It can be had for around $5 and for the 20 or so hours you could get out of it I’d say it’s well worth the price. I’m giving Swords and Serpents an 8.7/10.

May 2, 2015

Well, I beat Megaman Legends 2 and while i'm too tired to give a full review, I just want to say that its a worthy follow up to the original that surpasses it in its own ways and changes it in others. There were some frustrating sections but for the most part everything is bigger and more refined. While I'll always prefer the original, this game really was a lot of fun and it stepped up the story to the next level while managing to cliff hang everything important that was supposed to be answered. Since we're never getting Legends 3 its very sad to see such a fantastic series die off since now I can fully appreciate the potential it had. Here's looking forward to when I finally obtain a Misadventures of Tron Bonne, even though I doubt it yields any of the answers I seek.