A look back at: Deep Dungeon 3

I haven't been frustrated at a game since Golvellius. It really does take a special kind of unfair to throw me over the age.

What the third Deep Dungeon game is compared to its previous iterations is what Dragon Quest II is to the first. It adds the multiples of party members and monsters, and it tries to combine it with the Deep Dungeon gameplay style. Not to mention more towns and dungeons to deal with! Good, right? Well let's get to the gameplay issues. "But it wasn't very useful" GREAT JOB NOT HAVING A MAGIC STAT and making spells act like the ones from Dragon Quest where they randomly don't work. But it's WORSE than Dragon Quest because usually they apply to just the damaging spells. Here, they apply to buffs and debuffs. Holy crap. So for a boss strategy I would get my priest and wizard to use attack and defense buffs on my main character, except it will never work ever. I literally set every character to infinite HP, had my main be the only one attacking, and everyone else attempt to buff the main guy, and it took a boatload of turns and not a single one of those turns did any buffs work! It gets way worse when you factor in the spells that remove poison and paralysis only work outside of battle, never inside. WHY? At least the Acid debuff spell actually works. Even stupider is that the enemy buff spells always work, even though their own offensive spells for some reason always fail.

And then you get into what you're fighting against. Some enemies have evasion rates that literally have you hoping for a deathblow, because you can spend a turn of four people attacking and failing and the lone enemy with high evasion seems completely impervious, all the while kicking your ass all the same. I can spend nine turns attempting to hit a Vampire enemy and never do it. Even his weaksauce weakness Sunshine (which would normally instakill because he's undead) doesn't want to work. And he can paralyze with his hits and such. Enemies after him have abnormally high defense, I mean actually abnormally high defense, because I can buy and equip the best weaponry prior to fighting them and my swordsman only does single digit damage. The fact that I am required to use the debuffing Acid spell until it works is more than enough to piss me off.

Perhaps the explanation behind all this utter unfairness (and I loathe having to use that word, cause it elicits a "git gud" attitude from some other players, but honestly just know that this borders to unplayable) is the fact that the fan translation of this game ended up being a straight up ROM hack. Some coding changes were made that really tweaked certain "bugs", although it made things way more impossible to deal with. This is likely either my worst RPG so far, or second worst. You have to know that it must frustrate me greatly to actually put it at a worst category, and only Golvellius has done that so far.

A look back at: Deep Dungeon 2

Deep Dungeon 2 is a basic sequel game, with the emperor somehow still being alive in the underground and making a few marginal improvements that don't really mean all that much. I appreciate the sentiments though, especially with picking bonus points upon leveling up, something that is very rarely seen especially for a FDS RPG.

It's so easy to forget to equip the first items you buy, meaning that when you encounter your first enemy, you're dead. You'll be missing, and should you actually hit you'll do mere scratch damage, but it hits home when you're always hit. Now that's of course assuming the character is unarmed. With a weapon and armor, survivability is now possible. For leveling up, my strategies were to up the hell out of agility so that enemies always miss and I always hit and give a few points to luck too (for critical hits I'm pretty sure). Then just sort of sit in a place, hit the turbo button and speed the emulator up and watch the HP as my guy just sort of steamrolls through things. It's already boring enough to grind, but standing in place and having enemies come to me at least alleviates the need to run around like an idiot until an encounter appears.

The ending of Deep Dungeon 2 from a gameplay standpoint makes me angry. I can get all the six items needed to get to the fourth dungeon floor (which in itself is actually a problem, again they take up inventory slots), but the map I followed is somehow different than the one I was given. I was forced to do the standard D+D navigation to even understand where I was really going, and then once I find nothing of interest, the only way out is to use the Pegasus Wing, oh wait, it has a random chance of just killing you! That's just a huge headache to get through. Also how come none of the guides mention how to get the Jewel item? I'll make it easy for the viewers, once you have the Crest, go back to town and attempt to sell it. You won't lose the Crest, but will gain the Jewel. This doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me, and it seems that the only uses for these items are to instantly end battles against fake demon kings or in the case of the Demon King Ruu, the Crest makes him confess something. It's weird. It really doesn't make sense that MY game had a screwed-up fourth floor, even after I do all that stuff well before I even step foot in that floor.

A look back at: Deep Dungeon

(Player attacks!)
(But the enemy dodged!)
(The enemy attacks!)
(But Player dodged!)
(Player attacks!)
(But the enemy dodged!)
(The enemy attacks!)
(But Player dodged!)

Just repeat that over and over and you have the gist of Deep Dungeon: Madō Senki. With Phantasy Star dungeon navigation and Dragon Quest gameplay AND plot, there's next to nothing here that is interesting. Well other than standing still and an enemy shows up, which is better than making paces all over the place. But then the combat is basically the sentences above and it is b-o-r-i-n-g. Throwing a few bones helps, enemies in trash, enemies that escape since you can be overleveled, traps on the grounds, the invulnerable fake princess, numerous empty rooms. Does it all save the game? Not really. Heck, the final boss does exactly what the Dragonlord from Dragon Quest does, offer the player a choice, except you'll just fight the guy because the bad ending isn't interesting at all.

The other shortcomings are the inventory spaces, especially when key items are concerned. Cool, lemme throw away a key item, it stays where I threw it away right? Well then I need to backtrack, ah crap, gotta find it again. It would also help to have more than 9 of Bread or Holy Water, but I'm guessing due to limitations it ain't feasible. Man, I can see loads of potential with this dungeon crawler, especially considering it's so similar to the PC Wizardry games and such, but the modern gamer sure as hell won't be pleased with this stuff at all. When your game requires more luck than ever just to hit something, there's a huge problem.

A look back at: MOTHER 3

Only 13 days? Even I'm genuinely surprised by how quickly I managed to beat MOTHER 3. I was all looking at this being quite a long one, but in actuality the game was quite short. However, being short means that it would have a deciding fun factor to it, and MOTHER 3 delivered. Memorable characters, funny NPC dialogue, heartbreaking moments, familiar tunes and characters, a beat-themed battle system, frustrations and fun were had when they were had.

Growing up, I've taken interest in a few things I never thought I'd take interest in, most notably politics and the economy. MOTHER 3 surprisingly does well in molding just how corruptible society is with the introduction of wealth to a backwater village (in Chapter 3) as well as promises of happiness. It's so crazy how this subliminal political message makes a statement so well. Tazmily in the beginning was just a nice village without worry, then Fassad comes in with the promise of happiness and wealth, Tazmily evolves, and residents become more cynical. It's truly maddening. Then they all migrate in the end, reaching a richer city of riches, leaving their old homes behind.

That isn't the only cool thing MOTHER 3 manages to convey. The heartbreaking loss of Hinawa has a huge effect on the rest of the family, the horrible tortures Salsa has to put up with, the always messed-up ambitions Porky has, it all makes the experience so much more memorable. And while the fabled exposition dumps that other RPGs have tend to bore players to death, the one offered by Leder in the final chapter is something that is not boring. It is actually interesting, calling back what I said earlier about how corruptible humans are, as well as the loss of memory and the greed Porky so gleefully displays. The fact that an exposition dump manages to be interesting is truly a high mark for the game.

If there's only one thing I can say I don't really like that much in MOTHER 3, it's trying to time my button presses to the beat of the background music. Of course, it's not really necessary, but it does make battles faster. I'm never really a fan of action command-centric gameplay all that much anymore. It did not detriment this game enough for me to put it out of at least the Top 20 in my opinion though.

A look back at: Secret of Mana

Welcome back to my look backs. Often it's been way too long before I make one of these, obviously due to me doing other things or being caught inside an RPG myself. Though Secret of Mana isn't entirely that long of a game. Plus it's super easy to play through. Surely enough, a lot of what Sword of Mana takes came from here, chest traps, enemies on field, ring menus, spell and weapon levels, AI controlled partners, and a mostly simple storyline. Secret of Mana surprisingly was more linear than I expected, which I sort of am getting tired of at this point.

The game's overall plot ends up being pretty interesting at first, although the part about "finding a weapon and getting monsters released then getting banished from home" was something I saw in Wild ARMs before this, I know this game had that first. The girl's plot of finding her preferred lover was a nice tie-in that manages to combine well enough with the boy's plot of being a chosen one and finding the mana seeds. The sprite's plot is a little less so, but has the somewhat typical amnesia plot, yet the sprite still stays with the group long enough to make things more fun.

Really if there's anything to really take away from Secret of Mana, it's that the game is perhaps one of the few early tries at making a cooperative RPG, one that can have extra players join in and control a character, making the usually frantic action a lot more interesting in ways. The ways characters and enemies flinch ends up being strange and awkward, especially if reactions are delayed in some ways. There's a lot of time I spent grinding weapon and magic levels, then I stopped altogether when I found out the last few weapon orbs end up being random drops in the end dungeon. These kinds of things aren't worth busting your butt over getting, the game is already easy enough at that point where you can beat the final boss in several 999 damage hits. Oh and speaking of hits? Evasion is something I don't understand about this, some enemies just flat out don't get hit at all here, which is because of their evasion stat, but it doesn't make sense often how it occurs. Same with characters at times. Secret of Mana really is a strange game and while I had my fun I'm not sure if I want to relive it again.

Terrible RPG Dungeons: Part 7

Oh of course, you didn't really expect there to be a shortage of these, right?

Sylx Tower/Forbidden Land Eureka/World of Darkness - Final Fantasy III

Nothing quite describes ending fatigue as much as this set of dungeons, particularly in this game's original Famicom release. These are the last few dungeons in the game, but you'll be dealing with not only their longevity, but the complete lack of savepoints. Luckily Forbidden Land Eureka is optional, and near the Sylx Tower entrance, but you might as well make an attempt to tackle it, because it has the best jobs and shops. But to get through the tower and the World of Darkness without a single point of saving is an issue, and then there's the rule of four with taking out bosses once you reach the World of Darkness. Lots of items and magic points are needed as well as lots of time.

The final lairs - Secret of the Stars

The above dungeon is bad enough for ending fatigue, but Secret of the Stars' endgame is downright insulting for an already bad game. It's cool, we go to a familiar location to beat the bad guy. Hey, remember those Kustera guys you may or may not be using? Hope they are up to snuff! We've got resurrected generals to kill again! It involves going through mazes and having both parties solve them! Why did they barely do this before the endgame I wonder? Each of these mazes is a slog with numerous encounters before the boss. Then you take the spiral of random encounters to the bad guy, oh wait he's not beatable yet cause it's an illusion! Time to backtrack to find the secret power to get past the illusion, and then...oh boy...GO ALL THE WAY DOWN THE SPIRAL AGAIN! Outright nauseous, and one of the worst things about this entire game.

Victory Road - Pokemon games

Why? Why would we need yet another cave area just to get to the league? There's next to nothing interesting in terms of Pokemon to catch, yet the twisting and turning Victory Roads of the series pull in the encounter rate with numerous high-level trainers as well as segments requiring the use of HMs. And yes, the requirement of HMs is more than enough to make me hate this crap. It's a blessing there's a free heal at the league at least. My biggest problem is it tries to be a "last challenge before the finish line" yet no one really wants this kind of thing in the first place.

Space Fortress - Robotrek

Prison floors, difficult random encounters, fatiguing bosses, generally long length with loads of backtracking, an easy case of ending fatigue right here. At least in the grand scope of the game this final dungeon isn't entirely memorable, but like every other final dungeon I just want it to end already.

Doraat - Suikoden V

Alright finally something that isn't ending fatigue, which luckily this game does well. You might wonder what this is doing here especially since it's a town anyways. Well, having been familiar with the first few Suikoden games having dungeons that are essentially one-time only (Toran Lake Fortress, North Window) I would imagine that the treasures in Doraat when you first infiltrate it would be gone. They still stay after liberation, but I never knew that at first. But the town layout has an outer wall that is laid out in a stupidly unorthodox way with chests well out of the way, then there's the street fork where the side paths are unusually long. All this compounded by the random encounters being Godwin soldiers, enemies that are always easy but the game will actually not let you run from them (it just flat out doesn't give you the option to).

Up next, dunno.

A look back at: Star Ocean: Blue Sphere

Guess I didn't finish yet another game. That's what happens when I get bored with something that has an unfinished translation and I have no idea what I'm doing. At least gameplay-wise it's very, very impressive for the GBC, managing to have an active-time battle system as well as item creation mini-games and a skill system. That's sure a lot of work. Enemies tend to be quite annoying though, since they are what I would call "move spammers" where they use the same thing over and over again. Kinda like those moronic players who miraculously beat experience Tekken/Mortal Kombat/Street Fighter/Fatal Fury/Guilty Gear/any other fighting game franchise I can think of by finding a move they find super good on the whole and just using it over and over. Indeed, the fighting game-like battle system is privy to that.

Landing combos is hard work in itself, having to press A at the proper time. Getting killer moves though? I couldn't get it for anyone who wasn't Bowman or Ashton, and I STILL don't have a clue how to really unlock killer moves overall. Apparently female fighters like Opera and Chisato get theirs through the machinery skill, while other male fighters get theirs through, I guess fighting? Can't really tell. And statuses get really debilitating, especially the ones that knock you unconscious, basically meaning free attacks. Not to mention attempting to potentially unlock that killer move or get that killer 20-hit combo, then realizing your character is completely fatigued and won't make any moves until hit. This game makes mages seem a whole lot more useful than in Second Story.

Again, though, despite my complaints above, it's obvious gameplay is the true highlight of Blue Sphere, since I can't figure out a damn thing for plot and the unfinished translations somehow make things worse with lots of gibberish. I don't think I'm gonna bother with this game for a long time.