A look back at: Brain Lord

Hey look, Google finally fixed image uploads, yeah. I still hate them for that. Anyways, this game didn't take me a week to beat. However, it's been somewhat of a while since I last made a lookback, so let's blame ALTTP Randomizer. I was having just too much fun with that game so much that I played other stuff simultaneously with it, including some Doom stuff as well as eventually this game, which I got to once I was finished documenting some more map secrets.

So yeah, this didn't last long, which I am quite thankful for as I wasn't really feeling like playing a long game at the moment, but they really didn't call it Brain Lord for nothing. You will have puzzles, the game has special rooms that require a ton of knowledge on how to push certain objects to fit for certain switches, or do other stuff outside the box. Other than that, the game's combat is super wonky, enemies are actually not too concerning considering how dumb their AI is, and how you have multiple tools at your disposal. I mean, the sword range is great, the ranged weapons have infinite ammo, the magic spells are just a charge without any MP consumption, and the morning stars were fun to use. Plus, the jades helped out in battles a lot, though ultimately I didn't rely on them, which mind you is a GREAT THING. You don't really need them, but they make things easier for combat. You can grind them to good levels so they are of more help, but again, not really necessary. I appreciate it when helpful game mechanics aren't required, after all.

Overall though, the difficulty is all about the puzzle-solving, as well as figuring out where you need to go. Five dungeons, and yet they are all memorable. The Tower of Light sets the stage, it's huge to go through but has basic puzzles. The ancient civilization and its tech spice things up a lot, as it's even bigger and has more things to it like dark rooms and floating platforms. The ice palace, well I don't need to go into detail with those ice floors, but I will say the game trolls you with poisonous springs and even poison signs. The Droog volcano is my least favorite owing entirely to those rock mazes that shift and really don't have a good pattern to how they work at all. And the Platinum Shrine is appropriate for a final dungeon, backtracking to make things longer, crazy statues that attack, but those damn dark rooms (which the light jade can't even illuminate) end up being the biggest trial and error show with where the walls are. I won't forget these.

A look back at: Alundra 2

GREAT JOB GOOGLE YOU ROGUE COMPANY YOU RUINED THE ABILITY TO POST IMAGES ON BLOGSPOT NOW I AM USING A URL.

So I had of course planned to play Alundra 2, or should I say Flint, since that's the protagonist's name? Whatever, we can actually all tell that despite being a sequel, this game has literally nothing to do with the first Alundra, and many people hated it for that. I hated this game for something totally different.

The game, it's just honestly ugly. And I'm not talking about JUST the graphics. One of the things that I can't really get with certain action games is if the action gets to a point of tedium. And that's what actually can happen easily here. Alundra 2 thankfully allows the usage of combos, but you must unlock them with puzzle pieces as an optional sidequest. And then there's magic, which gives you both long-animated summons that do tons of damage and the simpler spells that are more on-the-spot. That's cool. The game is super awkward about its mercy invincibility after a successful hit, on either you or enemies. And the knockback, jeez, this is it, and even the first few enemies will do it, taking you like five seconds to get back up after just one blow. Not every enemy does this, thankfully, but it prevents the bum rush strategies that some other action RPGs or Zelda-like games seem to be okay with. Damage discrepancies are another thing I disliked, you seem to do very low damage, but this is fine since the enemies don't have a whole lot of health. But at the same time, it looks like you'll always be dealt tons of damage in return since you have so much more.

Not helping matters is that game cutscenes seem out of sync, or maybe that's just emulator settings, which I still don't know what the absolute best ones are for this game. And the bosses? Well, they are quite predictable after a while, some still annoying especially the ones where you have to wait until you FINALLY can charge in for an opening, and you can usually only hit them with one combo before the invisible mercy invincibility comes in and you have to wait again. Yeah, the bosses aren't really hard, they just take a while. The first Alundra also had this issue though. And of course, the puzzles take some getting used to to figure out, with the timed ones being the worst. Magic is, unfortunately, the game breaker here too, you will WANT to use it to defeat the most annoying enemy encounters in a single hit, and hey, notice those health and EP bars? Yeah, they're high enough that they go all the way to 999.

The plot is okay, nothing like the harrowing nature of the first Alundra, but still quite terrifying considering the main villain puts wind-up keys that turn things into homicidal creatures, which can include humans or even a gigantic whale who of course ends up being an entire dungeon. The music is nowhere near as great as the previous game, which oozed of atmosphere, and the cutscenes show off the slapstick comedy which may or may not be quite overdone (seriously how the heck can pirates build a raft out of a destroyed ship while BEING IN MIDAIR). So the plot oddly enough ended up being the game's strongest point, the gameplay revolves around annoying knockbacks, waiting for bosses to come through for an attack, and overpowered magic spells. Oh, and minigames, which were honestly more fun than the main game itself.

A look back at: Alundra

Three in one month, let's go! And I do plan on doing the sequel game next.

This game is one that certainly has been on the backburner, and its strongest quality has to be its sensational music track. I'm familiar with Dust to Dust, the somber theme, Coastal Cave, as well as Kline's Nightmare from playing Doom wads for a while, so to actually hear them in the original orchestration was great. Better yet, the tracks can all be listened to in one room! Though you do have to progress in-game to get to some of this stuff eventually, that's fine.

On to the gameplay, and it's basically a Playstation version of The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past. A fine game in and of itself, so that's a hurdle that can't be crossed. But at least this game has plenty of hallmarks to coincide with its attempt at a similar yet different premise. Sword-swinging, arrows and bombs (here you get infinite ammo), medicines to heal, seven crests to pick up (like the seven crystals), life vessels (the heart containers), a religious sanctuary with a cemetery next to it, a swamp, lake, desert, and mountain, boss fights with strategy, just one village, upgrading weaponry, and plenty, and I mean PLENTY of annoying dungeon puzzles. What makes it even moreso here than in ALTTP is that you do have platforming and puzzles combined, and many dungeons actually feel way longer than they should because of these puzzle moments. If the music wasn't so good, I would have hated this.

I was hoping for a truly perfect playthrough of this, but unfortunately I capped out at 49 hit points and 49 Gilded Falcons. Three of each can be done in the casino section, and I got two, but for some reason, the roulette section was unfortunately completely bugged and I was in a dead-end room with no way out other than reloading, so that was the only one I couldn't get to. Also sometimes some textures end up disappearing when I try to save and load and speaking of loading, those loading times are quite annoying. So would I consider this a true action RPG? It's really complicated. There's significantly more immersion in this plot in my opinion, and the upgrades to weapons are certainly a thing. So I really could care less. This one does feel RPG enough to me.

A look back at: Shining Force II

A.K.A. Shining Force-but-with-a-different-plotline-that-isn't-exactly-original-because-a-hero's-hometown-is-destroyed-demons-did-it-a-princess-gets-kidnapped-and-also-many-character-names-are-recycled-and-the-gameplay-is-not-different.

Literally all this game is.in hindsight. It's seen as the better Shining Force, since you can actually progress in a nonlinear fashion at certain points, and have a much easier time to grind up your characters. Of course, this most likely means Egress'ing away from battle before you finish it, but there are some locations that trigger the closest thing this game has to random battles. The caravan is excellent for depositing items, especially those hidden Mithril pieces, but we'll get to THAT soon enough.

Yeah, plotwise, it's got the clichés I summarized above. And the character class archetypes are in display here, as is the completely intact battle system. Misses due to dodging, possible double attacks, counterattacks (I can't remember if this was new though), and experience discrepancies making several character classes like the Warrior really suffer. Thankfully, you can get secret character promotions like Baron and Master Monk, and I aimed for this stuff, it really works out so well. Bowie the Hero has to keep himself alive, and Peter the Phoenix is certainly an overpowered character. These two make the game easier, but getting the Master Monks as well as Ninja for Slade also are big deals. Some characters who join much later are worthless due to circumstances, like Rohde being horrible for movement despite being a strong long-range attacker.

Can we also discuss these names? Cause many of them are reused, plenty from the Sword of Hayja which I already checked out. Sarah for instance is a name already used by a priest in that game, and Chester was an archer. It's more egregious with names like Eric and Jaha, since the characters of those names here are in the SAME CLASSES as the ones from there! Eric starts out as a centaur knight, and Jaha starts out as a warrior. The name Luke is used for a bird warrior here, and that was used in the previous two Shining Force games I played. Could they at least give newer names so I don't get confused? This is a sequel after all, and the Sword of Hayja established that not only does Nick return in that game (he was the hero in the first Gaiden game), but also the ninja and samurai from Shining Force 1 also come into play too.

Anyways, what I definitely won't miss is the smithing of penultimate weapons. I say penultimate first cause the ultimate weapons are either the Hero's Holy Sword or cursed weapons with drawbacks like lowered defense. Finding the Mithril basically requires a guide, this is the easy part. Then you give the Mithril to a special smithy, leave town, come back, and you get your weapon. And it's always a frickin' Critical Sword. I had suffered a lot from trying to get Gisarme for Slade or Levanter for Bowie, looking all over the internet and thankfully, people HAVE been researching this RNG issue for quite a while. Therefore, it's not necessarily new. But I just wanted those weapons and timesinked a lot of the endgame until I basically gave in and finished the game. Yeah, that's certainly something that even with the research done is still a frustration moment.

At least the game can still be beaten without this stuff. It feels easier but that's cause of my experience with the former game overall.

A look back at: Final Fantasy X-2

 

I had fun. I also didn't have fun. That's the gist of it. Oh wait, did I quote some character here? I did.

Funny enough, I had a choice to check either this game out first, or Final Fantasy Crystal Chronicles. Considering the fact it is summer break and I don't have a lot of work in the summer, this was the better option at the moment. I knew this game would take a long, long time to go through. I knew there were sidequests, minigames, and grinding. That last part, well, it's mostly the ability grinding. By the end my girls were pushing Lv75 but levels don't matter. Abilities and dresspheres do, as do all the rewards for doing all sorts of things as well. More garment grids! More dresspheres! More accessories! Half the time it felt like I was really doing a nonlinear collectathon.

That's arguably the game's biggest strength in my opinion. It's nonlinear from the start. Final Fantasy X-2 only has a measly 5 chapters, those who want to do the story will realize that the chapters don't really take as long as they really do. But since you can explore every part of Spira (except in those scenarios where places are locked), that lends way to all the sidequests, which could impact other chapters and DEFINITELY impact the percentage of completion later on. Sadly, I didn't really get 100%, this is because I decided that doing Via Infinito (among other things) was gonna take way too long, and I wanted to check out other games later. I still used a cheat code to actually put the game's completion at 100% and found out that the only thing that it really does is add new ending scenes.

I'm a little desensitized with Final Fantasy as a franchise from having played so many games in it. Tons of stuff make this a good game, the customizable garment grids and ability grinding were the gist of my gaming experience here. The return to the Active-Time battle system works out alright, being able to change your dressphere in the midst of combat is a nice touch, but in the end not entirely necessary for most battles that aren't boss battles. This is cause bar specific enemies, a good-leveled party just breezes through encounters. You only have problems whenever the encounter rate dictates you have a battle every three steps, you get ambushed quite a lot (me thinks it is an attempt to balance easy encounters), and most encounters that are troublesome have fixed-damage attacks (those annoying amorphous gel enemies in particular). Oh, and the Oversoul gimmick! Kinda cool, kinda annoying with some encounters, but really not as consequential as it looks.

Character-wise, it's nice to see new faces, who were arguably the most interesting, and the returning ones are either moving on or unfortunately got on my nerves (looking at you, Rikku and Brother). Minigames are so worth talking about. Blitzball is significantly worse but thankfully not truly necessary, but it's better playing than coaching. Gunner's Gauntlet is a kind-of fun third person shooter gimmick but I got all the prizes after figuring things out. Sphere Break is a fun math game but unfortunately requires some luck and math knowledge. The massage minigame is ENTIRELY luck, you want to hit the right spots and that is up to total chance. Shoving the band into the airship elevator was completely unnecessary. The Calm Lands minigames are also not necessary but the publicity stuff sucks. That Cactuar war minigame is beyond stupid, thankfully it's not necessary to win. Thunder Plains tower calibration was quite fun the first time, then not once you got to the last few towers. They give you directions and tutorials on most everything at least. So a varied experience, and honestly a quite worthy sequel in my book, but given how much time things took, and how I felt my usual RPG fatigue at the end, it's obvious that no NG+ playthroughs of any kind will come in soon.

A look back at: Lagoon

 

Lagoon for the SNES, mind you. Not related to Bahamut Lagoon, considering it's made by Kemco, who I'm really not familiar with much of their work at all. But it is a port for the original game that was on a long-forgotten console of sorts, excuse me, computer.

And if you like Ys. If you like Soul Blazer, well, this one could be up your alley, but it just does not seem to hit the right stride. No contact damage from your end, you do swing a sword, but damn if that isn't the smallest sword range ever. It's extremely small, you'll only know if you hit if you hear a *DING* and even then you might also get the white flash indicating damage alongside the enemy. Sometimes the enemy just gets pushed back instead. If it weren't for regenerating health and magic when standing still, no matter how slow it would be, then I wouldn't be liking this game at all. The music is a true standout, the plot is cookie-cutter in a number of ways, but gameplay matters more than most.

Speaking of magic, once I got a hole of it, it ends up becoming more of a primary means of attack. It's great until you run into the enemies who are immune to magic, where you then are forced to use the super-short-ranged sword again. You at least get several staves and crystals to experiment with magic, and I found myself using the basic staff for single-target magic the most. The higher level magic uses up a lot for screen-clearing magic but it is totally useless for me. I did level grind a lot, and this factors into strength and defense and made my sword overpowered, so the game ended up being easy, at least until the boss rush at the very end of the game. Yeah, there's one of those, you have four bosses at the end, two of which have alternate forms so essentially that means six. And oddly enough bum-rushing some of the bosses at a high level actually does work, though not with all of them.

Well, at least I finished it in a week, or actually about four days to be honest. I took two days off because I was sick. Anyways, summer break is on me so the next game will hopefully get through soon enough.

A look back at: Moon: Remix RPG Adventure

Thank you Toby Fox.

Okay, he's not the guy who made this, but whatever, a lot of his inspirations for Undertale basically came from this Japan-only release. He saw the stuff about this, an unnamed boy falling into a strange new world (though this one is the video game he was playing), the coming into contact with the strange and idiosyncratic  characters, and saving the monsters, the strange and cliche damage numbers during the beginning and ending. It seems like Undertale took it all and then some. Of course, other games Toby has experienced also helped in his craftsmanship, namely one song from Live-A-Live is the inspiration behind Megalovania.

So this is ultimately a pacifist RPG. You don't kill anything as the invisible boy at all. The hero does, and you get to experience the hero at first, but then you as the bystander boy end up catching their souls, sending them to the Moon for safety, and all sorts of things. The game essentially parodies all the conventions that fantasy RPGs have. Hero on a quest by a king and minister? Yeah, that's here, and the minister deemed him a "chosen one" and looks eerie enough to have sinister intentions. A "rabid dog" that attacks the hero? Turns out it's your Gramby's dog. And thankfully doesn't die from this. Legendary armor? It's hilariously some girl's bikini that the hero steals for some reason. The Perogon monster? An actual American family's pet which you don a suit and SET YOURSELF ON FIRE to trick the hero and save. The airship? A rocket you actually craft with the weird doctor Stein Hager. There's a weird oracle, a weird fisherman, weird Kukunte tribes, everything is weird but still manages to be interesting. Oh and the Penultimizer opponent that the hero fights near the end is really just all the monsters who die to protect the queen Aphrodite, who's you're guide fused with a dragon.

Weird, but can be frustrating early on. It's really bad that I've been working my ass off so much that I have only time on weekends and late nights to pick up this game again, luckily with summer on the horizon I'm looking at a decent enough break period to play more RPGs. But the frustration comes with not being able to do much action early on due to your action limit being small. The game actually gets easier the more you play it, you get more maximum action limits to avoid dying of fatigue or so, and doing things right also increases the love level. That's right, a game about making lots of love so you don't die. That's what this game is!