The last few games you beat and rate them 5

[PeteWorrell]

Was The Man Who Erased His Name a return to the old style of the Yakuza games or was it a continuation of the Like a Dragon style?

It's a return to the old style.

 

[Jovavic]

Was The Man Who Erased His Name a return to the old style of the Yakuza games or was it a continuation of the Like a Dragon style?

The older games. Kiryu has his normal brawler/dragon fighting style and an agent style where you can call down Drones to harass the enemies or flick an exploding cigarette, among other moves.

 

[WeDislikeEich]

Was The Man Who Erased His Name a return to the old style of the Yakuza games or was it a continuation of the Like a Dragon style?

As others mentioned, it’s regular combat like the old games (not turn based).

“Like a dragon: Ishin” was also a return to the old style of combat as well. I just recently finished that game and if you like the old Yakuza games I highly recommend playing Ishin!

 

[Unholy Diver]

As others mentioned, it’s regular combat like the old games (not turn based).

“Like a dragon: Ishin” was also a return to the old style of combat as well. I just recently finished that game and if you like the old Yakuza games I highly recommend playing Ishin!

I think I have played the first two mainline games, and a zombie game that was on the PS3 maybe? by the time I get around to them, I will be 20 games behind

 

[Frankie Spankie]

Warstride Challenges - 9/10

This game came out of nowhere and got absolutely no praise since release. It's a speed running game in an arena shooter game. Every level has a collectible as well as time limits you're looking to beat. As you play the more difficult stages, there are requirements for some enemies. If enemies are highlighted blue, you have to spin 360 degrees before you can kill them. If they're highlighted yellow, you have to perform a flip in order to kill them. Don't worry, there's a slow mo button to allow you to perform these stunts and still hit your targets.

Speaking off slow mo, most things are limited. Many levels will have unlimited ammo but a lot also have limited ammo so you have to manage your shots. The slow mo timer is limited so you have to be careful not to over use it. There are other abilities like stomp that will send you to the ground quickly and killing everyone nearby, those abilities are also limited so you have to plan your route accordingly for what you use and when you use it.

The game play is really tight. Everything is fun to do and the game makes you feel like you're incredibly skilled. My only complaints is the air control is rather limited. There is some but I would prefer more. You get air control with the grappling hook in the final chapter of the game which is strange because there's not much reason to have more control with the grappling hook but not in the air. My other complaint is you're often crouching for a speed burst from sliding, particularly when landing. It always slides you in the direction you're looking rather than the direction you're moving. This can get frustrating when you're trying to shoot behind you and you land a bit earlier than expecting and slide in the complete opposite direction.

Fortunately when minor things happen to ruin your run, it doesn't feel too punishing as most stages are very short. Just restart your run! The game's an absolute blast and it's great to see a very polished game like this in a very niche genre. If you like speed running games, I definitely recommend this one.

 

[WeDislikeEich]

I think I have played the first two mainline games, and a zombie game that was on the PS3 maybe? by the time I get around to them, I will be 20 games behind

You don’t really need to play previous Yakuza games to play Like a dragon or like a dragon: Ishin. They both stand alone. Ishin has more ties to old Yakuza games than Like a dragon, but it’s mainly just old Yakuza characters re-cast into new roles, so it’s no big deal if you haven’t played previous games.

The first Yakuza game I ever played was Yakuza 6. So I started WAY out of order lol. But I’m glad I did because I don’t know if Yakuza 0 would have hooked me the same way Y6 did.
I was so intrigued by the story, characters and Japanese culture in the game after playing Y6 that I went back and started at Yakuza 0. Then 1, 2 and 3. I I can’t remember if I left off half way through #3 or #4 (it might have been #4). I do plan to eventually finish it and play #5. Then I want to play #6 again. But I’m going to play the newest (man who erased his name) first.

It’s cool seeing the story develop but each game can be enjoyed on its own. So don’t let not playing in order stop you from playing them.

 

[Frankie Spankie]

Zen Chess: Mate in One - 7/10

A simple chess puzzle game with 300 puzzles where you have to find checkmate in a single turn with the board that's given to you. It's not overly difficult but some puzzles will leave you really thinking of over. It's pretty enjoyable for what it is.

 

[MetalheadPenguinsFan]

Beat Again Via Original Gameboy Emulation:

8/10

 

[Blitzkrug]

The world needs more Wario games.

Sucks he's been relegated to spin off fodder.

 

[PeteWorrell]

The world needs more Wario games.

Sucks he's been relegated to spin off fodder.

Bigger developers have taken less and less risks as game development costs have grown over the generations. The void has been somewhat filled by smaller independent developers but it's not the same.

 

[Jovavic]

Nintendo could farm Wario out to another studio, they've done it in the past with Mario and Zelda

 

[Mikeaveli]

Resident Evil 4 - Separate Ways

More of the same great gameplay from the main game. Ada's grappling hook adds a nice new dimension to the game and even the combat as you can use it to get rid of enemy shields. My only real complaint is that Ada's voice acting is still terrible lol. Hopefully they bring back the VA from RE2 for her next appearance, or at least make the recording sound good. It sounds like she recorded these lines through a Zoom call.

8.5/10

 

[LEAFANFORLIFE23]

Legend of Zelda Link's Aweakening 7.5/10.

3 things about this game are true.

#1 overall It's very good It is a great time for the most part.

#2 at 7.5/10 It's the weakest game I've played in the series which should tell how good I think the series is when a 7.5/10 is the weakest game in the series that I played.

#3, and this is why It's 7.5 out of 10, it has the worst dungeon in the ENTIRE series.

From the bottom of my heart the Bird Tower can go f*** itself, you are NOT going to beat this dungeon without a guide,that's not going to happen.

And before somebody brings up the water temple from OOT, I beat that game when it came out and while the water temple was a pain in the ass especially in 1998 it doesn't have shit on the bird tower.

The bird tower is a confusing that only exists to piss off the player.

 

[Blitzkrug]

Decided to play Ocarina of Time for the first time in over a decade with that reverse engineered PC port.

Still a phenomenal game. 60 FPS with that game looks a bit jarring at first but once you get used to it. my god does it feel good. Graphics/art style actually hold up pretty well too. Still the best soundtrack in the franchise. So many songs here just invoke a feeling of warmth and nostalgia for me. Greudo Valley, the Forest Temple, Zora's Domain, pretty much all the Ocarina songs (Bolero of Fire might legitimately be my favorite piece from the entire series)

In a weird way, playing through this again was also bittersweet. So good, but then there's the feeling when you realize we probably won't ever get this style of Zelda again outside of the odd remake/remaster. I loved Breath of the Wild but something about Tears of the Kingdom just leaves me a with a feeling of "eh" the further i get away from it. I think a lot of it being similar (same Hyrule, largely the same enemies/weapons/gear) kinda caused that. Which i get why they did it since it's a direct sequel.

Another thing i kinda noticed. Despite claims of the contrary...the combat in this series has barely evolved, at all. Ocarina gets shit for being "hurr durr stand and wait" but the game actually rewards if you learn to play aggressively/reading enemy patterns. Stalfos for example, can be killed with two well timed jump slashes if you read their jump slash and just step back. "Well the newer games reward you for timing your dodge with stuff like flurry rush!" Right, which is literally the same idea essentially.

 

[The Nemesis]

In spite of wanting to finish all the Zelda games I've been stalled like 3 dungeons into Twilight Princess (not for any reasons relating to the game, just that I had to disconnect my Wii U from my TV's inputs and it's a massive pain in the ass to climb behind the TV to re-connect everything) but in the mean time I'd picked up the Mega Man Battle Network Collection and finished the first game.

It was... fine. I love the Mega Man games (probably my second favorite franchise after Zelda) and I love classic RPGs. I like the concept of the battle system being like real-time movement married with a sort of deckbuilder mechanic for special attacks. But I know a lot of people and reviews have said that the first game doesn't do anything that later games don't do better and I can see how this would feel like a sort of rough draft/beta. The deckbuilding is cool but it's rarely clear how to get the chips you need to build a properly synergistic folder, synergies are hard to come by as the lettered "class" system meant to allow chaining different chips is too spread out (instead of having, say, 6 classes of chips and every chip could come in A through F variants, a lot of them have fairly unique letters which means they either link to nothing, like navi chips that are pretty much on their own island except with other copies of their variants) so ultimately you either build a folder that's only got like 5 different chips and 6 copies of each or you say "eff it" to the synergy thing and just cram as many powerful ones in there and hope that it doesn't bork you up too much when it comes to needing a bunch of chips in one round.

But ultimately I think what might've soured me a bit is that a) a lot of areas look kind of samey so there isn't a ton of variance visually (especially when the final dungeon is basically just a frankendungeon of segments from each previous one), b) there's a lot of fake longevity/stalling with excessive random encounters (especially given that you don't earn experience or level up from combat. It's entirely for battle rewards which are sometimes chips and most of the time pitiful amounts of money for how much you need to buy the few good chips available from stores.) and really repetitive and lazy puzzles (a section of the final dungeon requires you to do like 10 iterations of a "password cracking" minigame that simply consists of trying to guess a 2-digit number where you get told if the number is too high, too low, or if you have one of the digits correct. It's fine the first couple times but after a while it just get sooooooo dumb) and c) the final stretch of the game is unforgivably poorly designed.

Your last save point is before the 2nd to last boss. So if you die on the last boss you have to repeat the prior boss, the run up to the final enemy and then the final boss all in sequence. This is made worse by how the penultimate boss is incredibly cheap and his difficulty is entirely based on whether his random summoning of support enemies gives him crappy helpers or really irritating ones that end up making it next to impossible to dodge everything without taking damage. Plus the last boss has a shield that you have to crack with an extremely strong chip attack (100+ damage when most regular chips are around 80 damage) and it regenerates almost immediately after it breaks. So combined with how I said above that synergized chip sets are incredibly hard to construct, you're left having 1 or 2 chips you can use at a time so you might break the shield and then not be able to follow it up except with pathetically tiny damage from your mega buster.

Overall I'd give it a 4/10. Probably a 6/10 for the bulk of the game weighed down by a 1/10 for the last 45 minutes to half hour (in a game that reasonably probably takes 10-14 hours to finish)

I'm now debating whether I want to progress right to the second game to wash the mediocrity of this one away, or take a break from the series to let me come into the second game with fresh eyes unburdened by my negative experience with this game.

 

[Blitzkrug]

T

In spite of wanting to finish all the Zelda games I've been stalled like 3 dungeons into Twilight Princess (not for any reasons relating to the game, just that I had to disconnect my Wii U from my TV's inputs and it's a massive pain in the ass to climb behind the TV to re-connect everything) but in the mean time I'd picked up the Mega Man Battle Network Collection and finished the first game.

It was... fine. I love the Mega Man games (probably my second favorite franchise after Zelda) and I love classic RPGs. I like the concept of the battle system being like real-time movement married with a sort of deckbuilder mechanic for special attacks. But I know a lot of people and reviews have said that the first game doesn't do anything that later games don't do better and I can see how this would feel like a sort of rough draft/beta. The deckbuilding is cool but it's rarely clear how to get the chips you need to build a properly synergistic folder, synergies are hard to come by as the lettered "class" system meant to allow chaining different chips is too spread out (instead of having, say, 6 classes of chips and every chip could come in A through F variants, a lot of them have fairly unique letters which means they either link to nothing, like navi chips that are pretty much on their own island except with other copies of their variants) so ultimately you either build a folder that's only got like 5 different chips and 6 copies of each or you say "eff it" to the synergy thing and just cram as many powerful ones in there and hope that it doesn't bork you up too much when it comes to needing a bunch of chips in one round.

But ultimately I think what might've soured me a bit is that a) a lot of areas look kind of samey so there isn't a ton of variance visually (especially when the final dungeon is basically just a frankendungeon of segments from each previous one), b) there's a lot of fake longevity/stalling with excessive random encounters (especially given that you don't earn experience or level up from combat. It's entirely for battle rewards which are sometimes chips and most of the time pitiful amounts of money for how much you need to buy the few good chips available from stores.) and really repetitive and lazy puzzles (a section of the final dungeon requires you to do like 10 iterations of a "password cracking" minigame that simply consists of trying to guess a 2-digit number where you get told if the number is too high, too low, or if you have one of the digits correct. It's fine the first couple times but after a while it just get sooooooo dumb) and c) the final stretch of the game is unforgivably poorly designed.

Your last save point is before the 2nd to last boss. So if you die on the last boss you have to repeat the prior boss, the run up to the final enemy and then the final boss all in sequence. This is made worse by how the penultimate boss is incredibly cheap and his difficulty is entirely based on whether his random summoning of support enemies gives him crappy helpers or really irritating ones that end up making it next to impossible to dodge everything without taking damage. Plus the last boss has a shield that you have to crack with an extremely strong chip attack (100+ damage when most regular chips are around 80 damage) and it regenerates almost immediately after it breaks. So combined with how I said above that synergized chip sets are incredibly hard to construct, you're left having 1 or 2 chips you can use at a time so you might break the shield and then not be able to follow it up except with pathetically tiny damage from your mega buster.

Overall I'd give it a 4/10. Probably a 6/10 for the bulk of the game weighed down by a 1/10 for the last 45 minutes to half hour (in a game that reasonably probably takes 10-14 hours to finish)

I'm now debating whether I want to progress right to the second game to wash the mediocrity of this one away, or take a break from the series to let me come into the second game with fresh eyes unburdened by my negative experience with this game.

Twilight Princess is the most polarizing game in the series. Absolute dogshit first half of the game with the combination of awful pacing and a bunch of story beats that are completely pointless.

The second half of the game legitimately might be some of the best stuff in the series. Clever/unique dungeon design, game picks up its pace and goes back to the more simple "travel to place and get into dungeon" unlike the first half of the game throwing a bunch of garbage between point A and B.

Still refuse to play it ever again though. That first half is that bad

 

[The Nemesis]

T

Twilight Princess is the most polarizing game in the series. Absolute dogshit first half of the game with the combination of awful pacing and a bunch of story beats that are completely pointless.

The second half of the game legitimately might be some of the best stuff in the series. Clever/unique dungeon design, game picks up its pace and goes back to the more simple "travel to place and get into dungeon" unlike the first half of the game throwing a bunch of garbage between point A and B.

Still refuse to play it ever again though. That first half is that bad

I think I got to nearly halfway through originally on a Wii copy when it came out, but that was right before I got sick of required motion controls and having to flail my arm around to sword fight while sitting in a chair. So I bailed and never ended up returning. Then when the Wii U shop was closing down and prices were slashed I bought the HD remake for it. Problem is that with all the stuff plugged into my TV I have to keep one console disconnected at any given time because I don't have enough HDMI ports even with a little hub thing, so it's undone at the moment.

I think I am registering the slowness and lack of interest in the early portion of the game though because instead of ripping through a couple of dungeons at a time when I sit down and play, I would get in like half an hour to 45 minutes of play and think "Ok, I think this is enough" and go do something else.

I can't remember for sure but looking at a walkthrough table of contents I think I'm either doing the Goron stuf or am at Lake Hylia

 

[Blitzkrug]

I think I got to nearly halfway through originally on a Wii copy when it came out, but that was right before I got sick of required motion controls and having to flail my arm around to sword fight while sitting in a chair. So I bailed and never ended up returning. Then when the Wii U shop was closing down and prices were slashed I bought the HD remake for it. Problem is that with all the stuff plugged into my TV I have to keep one console disconnected at any given time because I don't have enough HDMI ports even with a little hub thing, so it's undone at the moment.

I think I am registering the slowness and lack of interest in the early portion of the game though because instead of ripping through a couple of dungeons at a time when I sit down and play, I would get in like half an hour to 45 minutes of play and think "Ok, I think this is enough" and go do something else.

I can't remember for sure but looking at a walkthrough table of contents I think I'm either doing the Goron stuf or am at Lake Hylia

That sounds about right. The pacing makes itself real apparent once you get out of the first dungeon. There is so much crap between stops it's absurd. For salt's sake let's compare the path to the second dungeon from Ocarina of Time and Twilight Princess;

OOT:
- After leaving the forest, someone tells you to go to Hyrule Castle to talk to Zelda
- Do that, Zelda then instructs you to find the three McGuffins. her attendant points you to death mountain. Death mountain is where the second McGuffin is. Zelda gives you a letter to let you get past the guard
- Go to death mountain, big goron guy tells you ganondorf is a dick and cut off their food supply and he needs you help clearing out their feeding ground (this is the dungeon). He'll give you the stone for doing so.
- Go clear out dungeon, stone acquired, move on to Zora's River.

This is probably the longest part of the game too.

TP:
- After the forest temple, the game points you in the direction of kakariko village
- Like the faron woods before it, Kakariko needs to be de-twlighted. spend far too long chasing down stupid bugs to complete this.
- Try to climb death mountain, but in this game the goron are dicks and won't let you pass. Guy in Kakariko tells you to go back to the town where the game starts because the mayor can help you
- The mayor tells you in order to climb death mountain, you need to toss the gorons aside. He gives you the iron boots
- Go back to kakariko, the stupid f***ing kids get abducted and you have to chase king lardass on his boar across hyrule field to rescue them
- King lardass stops at the big bridge and you have a jousting fight with him essentially (admittedly kinda sick)
- Beat king lardass, kids are saved, NOW go back and climb death mountain
- Goron chieftain won't let you pass until you beat him in sumo match. Do that, he informs you there is a creature causing issues in the mines and asks if you can help him out
- finally enter the dungeon

Lake Hylia doesn't get any better but i can say pretty firmly once you get the game's other big mcguffin in the lost woods the game picks up a ton and that basically serves as the dividing line

 

[The Nemesis]

That sounds about right. The pacing makes itself real apparent once you get out of the first dungeon. There is so much crap between stops it's absurd. For salt's sake let's compare the path to the second dungeon from Ocarina of Time and Twilight Princess;

OOT:
- After leaving the forest, someone tells you to go to Hyrule Castle to talk to Zelda
- Do that, Zelda then instructs you to find the three McGuffins. her attendant points you to death mountain. Death mountain is where the second McGuffin is. Zelda gives you a letter to let you get past the guard
- Go to death mountain, big goron guy tells you ganondorf is a dick and cut off their food supply and he needs you help clearing out their feeding ground (this is the dungeon). He'll give you the stone for doing so.
- Go clear out dungeon, stone acquired, move on to Zora's River.

This is probably the longest part of the game too.

TP:
- After the forest temple, the game points you in the direction of kakariko village
- Like the faron woods before it, Kakariko needs to be de-twlighted. spend far too long chasing down stupid bugs to complete this.
- Try to climb death mountain, but in this game the goron are dicks and won't let you pass. Guy in Kakariko tells you to go back to the town where the game starts because the mayor can help you
- The mayor tells you in order to climb death mountain, you need to toss the gorons aside. He gives you the iron boots
- Go back to kakariko, the stupid f***ing kids get abducted and you have to chase king lardass on his boar across hyrule field to rescue them
- King lardass stops at the big bridge and you have a jousting fight with him essentially (admittedly kinda sick)
- Beat king lardass, kids are saved, NOW go back and climb death mountain
- Goron chieftain won't let you pass until you beat him in sumo match. Do that, he informs you there is a creature causing issues in the mines and asks if you can help him out
- finally enter the dungeon

Lake Hylia doesn't get any better but i can say pretty firmly once you get the game's other big mcguffin in the lost woods the game picks up a ton and that basically serves as the dividing line

Yeah, I'm going to have to bite the bullet and push ahead until hopefully things pick up for me.

It's weird. I've always said that Zelda is my favorite franchise but a couple of years ago I realized that I had only played like 7 or 8 games out of the franchise and only beaten 4 of them. So I set out on a quest to play and beat every major game in the franchise. I went slightly out of order to finish the DS games and now I'm down to just Twilight Princess, Skyward Sword, Breath of the Wild and (once I actually buy it) Tears of the Kingdom. The only one I tapped out on and didn't finish was Adventure of Link. Heck, I barely even got into it before I just found that I don't like the side-scrolling parts at all.

It should be smoother sailing once Twilight Princess is done too because I have the Skyward Sword Switch remake so I don't need to worry about different systems at that point.

 

[Blitzkrug]

Yeah, I'm going to have to bite the bullet and push ahead until hopefully things pick up for me.

It's weird. I've always said that Zelda is my favorite franchise but a couple of years ago I realized that I had only played like 7 or 8 games out of the franchise and only beaten 4 of them. So I set out on a quest to play and beat every major game in the franchise. I went slightly out of order to finish the DS games and now I'm down to just Twilight Princess, Skyward Sword, Breath of the Wild and (once I actually buy it) Tears of the Kingdom. The only one I tapped out on and didn't finish was Adventure of Link. Heck, I barely even got into it before I just found that I don't like the side-scrolling parts at all.

It should be smoother sailing once Twilight Princess is done too because I have the Skyward Sword Switch remake so I don't need to worry about different systems at that point.

Adventure of Link is such a bizarre game. Zelda also happens to be my favorite franchise of all time and i also can't stand it. Even if the brutal difficulty spike was gone i still wouldn't like it. It's just so f***ing weird given the ground rules the first game set (and pretty much every game up until a link between worlds followed)

Not even the weird flip between styles in Mario Bros 2/the actual Mario Bros 2 bothers me that much. Still weird, but it also makes sense.

As for the bolded, that in my opinion is also the worst period of the Zelda franchise. Twilight Princess sucked, Spirit Tracks and Phantom Hourglass (backtracking to that stupid ocean king temple every time drove me nuts) felt like half-assed versions of actual games with everything being done on the touch screen. Same with Skyward Sword. Crazy amounts of reused areas/padding the game out. Tried playing that last year for the first time since i missed its inital run on the Wii and good god, it couldn't be more obvious this game was just another way for Miyamoto to shoehorn crappy ideas in the name of innovation. The switch version tries to rectify some of this but be prepared to be frustrated.

1986-2005 was the golden period for Zelda, 2006-2010 we don't talk about, and then the start of a second golden age from 2013 to now.

Kinda glad Nintendo got away from the gimmick crap too and just went back to making actual, honest to god video games again.

 

[PeteWorrell]

Adventure of Link is such a bizarre game. Zelda also happens to be my favorite franchise of all time and i also can't stand it. Even if the brutal difficulty spike was gone i still wouldn't like it. It's just so f***ing weird given the ground rules the first game set (and pretty much every game up until a link between worlds followed)

Not even the weird flip between styles in Mario Bros 2/the actual Mario Bros 2 bothers me that much. Still weird, but it also makes sense.

As for the bolded, that in my opinion is also the worst period of the Zelda franchise. Twilight Princess sucked, Spirit Tracks and Phantom Hourglass (backtracking to that stupid ocean king temple every time drove me nuts) felt like half-assed versions of actual games with everything being done on the touch screen. Same with Skyward Sword. Crazy amounts of reused areas/padding the game out. Tried playing that last year for the first time since i missed its inital run on the Wii and good god, it couldn't be more obvious this game was just another way for Miyamoto to shoehorn crappy ideas in the name of innovation. The switch version tries to rectify some of this but be prepared to be frustrated.

1986-2005 was the golden period for Zelda, 2006-2010 we don't talk about, and then the start of a second golden age from 2013 to now.

Kinda glad Nintendo got away from the gimmick crap too and just went back to making actual, honest to god video games again.

Creators that always want to push boundaries and innovate are a blessing and a curse. Akitoshi Kawazu created the battle system in the first Final Fantasy and everyone loved it. The same man also created the controversial battle system in Final Fantasy II. The SaGa series is all about Kawazu experimenting with ideas based on his love for tabletop games which has produced great games and sometimes duds like Unlimited SaGa.

I think creators like that get things right more often then they get it wrong. I will take people like Miyamoto and Kawazu over people like Yu Suzuki and Yuji Naka who were once innovators but showed how out of touch they are with modern gaming. You might get some games that leave your head scratching but you at least won't get games that seem like they were made in 1999.

 

[Frankie Spankie]

Zen Chess: Mate in Two - 5/10
I enjoyed Zen Chess: Mate in One so I figured I'd pick this one up too but it's not nearly as good. Some puzzles have multiple solutions but they only accept the one they want to accept. Also, there's a handful of puzzles where the opponent makes a move that doesn't make any sense. Those particular puzzles get very frustrating. You find yourself just guessing turns to see what the game wants you to do in some of these puzzles and it takes away from them being actual puzzles. Zen Chess: Mate in One is definitely worth your time, this one is not.

 

[Jovavic]

Finished Assassin Creed Mirage, around 26 hours to beat it and maybe three hours more if I wanted to get the platinum, so its definitely in line with the older games than the sprawling epics they became. Nothing really new or groundbreaking, just back to basics stabby stabby. Obviously fleshes out Basim's character. If you like the older games I would wait till its 30 bucks or less, to get good value for your money.

 

[Voodoo Child]

Speaking of things that are not as good as they used to be re: Zelda - though I'm not the man to compare because I loved every second of BOTW and TOTK and haven't played a 64-GC title in a decade.

And a page or two back a user is mentioning going through all the FF games.

Final Fantasy IX Switch (2000, 2019)

@Blitzkrug Are you here yet?

I made a review of CC: Radical Dreamers not long ago. No, I thought I did - okay, beautiful art and soundtrack, memorable battles, f***y story and no character development, 9.3/10. It’s in the games you’re currently playing thread.

For the longest time I had it ranked above FFIX, and yes, it certainly does some things better; better art style, better score, better combat and a better overworld.

But FFIX doesn't lag too far behind in art or music (CC is just that good) or overworld (CC is more compact), but combat...that's a 1st round KO to CC.

But what it has that CC lacks are:

A SSS-Class roster of characters. Zidane, Eiko, Garnet/Dagger, Steiner and Quina stand out for their development, arcs and realism. Freya and Amarant kinda get shafted but aren't on the Vincent or Kimahri tier of 'just there'. It also has the best romance in the series because it starts small and builds.

A story that makes sense the first time you play it headed by a memorable villain with clear, changing motivations. No last minute dick pulls (The last boss is foreshadowed if you pay attention starting around the Iifa Tree).

A definite sense of progression without coming across too linear and a lot of enjoyable, rewarding sidequests (Chocobo Hot and Cold is IMO the best sidequest in the series).

A sense of humor about itself while also tackling mature themes like destiny, mortality and duty adroitly.

Are the battles slow? Yeah but you can now speed them up. Does the story plod at times? Yeah but it never completely stops like it does at some point during every other FF.

It might be the new king - it was always up there and I haven't played the others in a while and will need to. I've played I (I was like 9), IV (pretty awesome), V (okay), VI (god-tier), VII (lesser god-tier; stalls in spots and marked the end of character classes), about 30 hours of VIII (the f*** were they thinking!?), this one, X (lesser god-tier because it's the beginning of modern 'hallway simulator' JRPGs), XII (god-tier mixed with what the f*** were they thinking?) and VIIR (that's some cool lore you have there...it'd be a shame if someone took a crap on it).

As good as VI, VII and X are...IX is the only one I enjoy every second of. The ending? I'm not crying, you are! 'That' scene in Pandemonium, and you know the one I'm talking about - more soul and passion in it than there has been in every title combined since the merger.

9.6/10

Stats:
52:36:07

Memoria party:
Zidane with Ultima Weapon, L77
Vivi with all spells, L68
Garnet with Ark, L69
Steiner with the four big sword arts, L71

All with Auto Life and Haste, Vivi and Garnet also Auto Regen and every single status breaking ability available for the final boss.

Sidequests:

Ozma - no, been there done that.
Chocograh quest - completed, best way to get the best gear.
Mognet Central - see Ozma.
Stellazio - see Ozma.

I mention Chrono Cross several times in this post, and I hear there's a remake of FFIX in the offing, and combining both games is the direction they should take.

Don't do what you did with FFVIIR and;

- Take 15-20 years to release the whole thing.
- Add in lore from side games no one gives a shit about.
- Completely alter the complexion the the story by introducing the villain and alluding at length to Cloud's turmoil ten minutes in.

To Square-Enix President: You are NOT going to make a better open world adventure game than BOTW (or TOTK, or Tsushima…), and you are NOT going to make a better WRPG than Witcher 3 - stop trying. Cut-for-cut, scene-for-scene with better graphics and an orchestrated score, on-screen enemies and the ability to flee any battle (like Cross) and a New Game+, change Quina’s pronouns for the snowflakes if you have to it’s an irrelevant detail. I just rescued Square-Enix.

 

[Unholy Diver]

Resident Evil 4 Remake - 8.5/10

Never played the original release as I played the first 3 then skipped 4 & 5 before jumping back in with 6, 7, & Village. Big changes from the first 3, as you leave Raccoon City and the evils of Umbrella behind and take Leon Kennedy to rural Spain to save the President's daughter from a murderous cult. The new locale and story was a great refresher for the series, and it might be my favorite thru the first 4 entries of the series. Excellent game