Games Beaten In 2023

[neogeo1982]

9 hours ago, newtmonkey said:

The last 75% of the game is actually a joy to pla

This is exactly how I felt with the cosmic fantasy games and first couple dragon quests. I think it was just the era they all came out in.

[+thegoldenband]

13. Aces of the Air (PS1)

 

Aces of the Air is a localization of a Simple 1500 Series game, and while some of those are quite decent, some aren't. This one is probably in the wrong half of that equation -- though I do love the optimistic, lighthearted vibe that 5th-gen flight games tend to have, and Aces of the Air has a nice dollop of it.

 

But turning around is a chore, everything's super-easy except when it's a pain, several basic gameplay elements don't really work, and there's just not much content here.

 

Still, Simple 1500 junk food always has a place in my heart. Aces of the Air provided a couple hours of low-stakes amusement, and sometimes that's just what you want. D.

[newtmonkey]

Cosmic Fantasy (PC Engine)

You probably could not make a more generic 16-bit console RPG than this.  The structure is completely linear and repetitive, with you going from one town and dungeon (boss) to the next, over and over, for 20 hours or so.

 

I'll start with the good stuff.  There are some semi-animated cut scenes sprinkled throughout the game, which is pretty impressive for a first-generation PCE CD-ROM game.  You don't need to grind at all.  The dungeons are actually pretty good, not extremely complex or anything, but also not straight lines to the boss.  You find a lot of really good equipment in these, as well.  The best feature, though, is that your spells actually level up; for example, when you get Heal 2, it just replaces Heal 1 but still costs the same MP to cast.  I wish more games would do this.

 

Now, my complaints.

 

You're stuck with a two-character party, where the main character is strong but has basically no magic ability (the game takes it away from you 99% of the time), and the second character is weak but has strong magic.  There's not much you can do with that.

 

Combat is extremely simple.  Your two characters always go first in every round and most enemies have no special attacks whatsoever.  Once you get both characters, your "strategy" for literally every combat is to cast the defense spell, wail away on the enemies round after round, and then heal using your full HP restore spell or one of your many cheap full HP/MP restore items if you get low on HPs.  This is true even for most of the bosses, including the last boss!  Unless you are just not paying attention at all, and walk into combat with low HPs, no MPs, and no items, losing a battle is basically impossible.

 

The graphics are quite poor, though at least a step up from the hideous Tengai Makyo ZIRIA.  The music is all PSG, except for two audio tracks (opening and ending).  Eliminate those two tracks and the voiced cutscenes, and this could easily have been a HuCard release.

 

Even worse, the game feels unfinished.  It's is full of spells and items that have no effect whatsoever, including a "magic shield" spell (there is not a single enemy or boss capable of casting magic) and an "exit" spell (that doesn't work in most dungeons).  This even extends to the RUN command in battle, which failed every single time I tried using it.  You have no way to swap items from one character or another, or even any way to drop items.  You also spend most of the game with your gold pieces maxed out (even without a single second of grinding!), since there's nothing to buy for long stretches of time.

 

Hopefully the second game is better.

[Keir]

On 7/27/2023 at 12:50 AM, newtmonkey said:

The best feature, though, is that your spells actually level up; for example, when you get Heal 2, it just replaces Heal 1 but still costs the same MP to cast.  I wish more games would do this.

I like that! Shame about all the bad stuff.

[+thegoldenband]

14. Sampras Extreme Tennis (PS1)

 

This relatlvely early 3D tennis game was developed by Codemasters and only released in Europe and Japan, i.e. not North America. Fortunately, my Sanyo CRT will apparently accept a 50Hz signal, so I was able to play the PAL version at the intended speed (though with the top of the screen truncated a bit). This made a big difference, as while it's possible to force 60Hz with a bootloader, that was clearly too fast, with twitchy serving controls.

 

To beat Sampras Extreme Tennis you need to play through the game's Tournament mode twice (the first time unlocks Super Tournament mode, which is only slightly harder). This comprises 8 matches at a series of venues, with the last one against Sampras himself. Happily, you're allowed to play 3-set matches, though you have the option of choosing 5 if you really want. I played as the German Gunther Dressel, with power and speed maxed out, serve in the middle, and other abilities left low.

 

Oddly Sampras wasn't the hardest enemy at all: I had much more difficulty with Charles Chumley, whom I faced in Australia on my first playthrough and London (aka not-Wimbledon) on my second. He's very fast, almost never misses, and sends the ball back at a variety of speeds. More than once I found myself looking like the batter in that cartoon where Bugs Bunny throws a slow pitch, leaving the batter swinging at empty air. Maybe Chumley is the best because he's British and so were Codemasters?

 

Overall this is certainly one of the better tennis games I've ever played, and among the best polygonal 3D ones. Unlike many other games, Sampras Extreme Tennis recognizes that half-volleys are a thing, so you can hit the ball just after it bounces and actually put some mustard on it, redirecting it to the open court with velocity. Amazing! It's tactical, allows for multiple play styles, and rewards combinations like drop shot/lob and the classic American wide serve followed by a forehand to the open court. And the UI has a few nice touches: quit a match and want to try again immediately? We've got you covered!

 

It has a few small, but real, flaws. The time between points is several seconds too long, and can't be skipped. The feeling of extra "dead air" was something my wife noticed right away when she watched me play for a few minutes. That takes a surprisingly large toll on enjoyment since the rhythm of the game is affected.

 

What else: certain opponents, like Chumley, paint the lines a little too much. A few errors would add realism. The ending is pretty disappointing, just a single-screen congratulations, and forcing you to unlock Super mode is a silly way to extend the game's length. The game's implementation of spin is weird, though I don't have the manual so I can't suss out the details. The Pete Sampras Tennis games on Genesis and Mega Drive had very quirky spin mechanics, especially Sampras Tennis '96; this isn't nearly as bad in that department.

 

And the biggest flaw: there seems to be a bug that reverses the CPU's logic for first and second serves! Most of the time the CPU was hitting very mild first serves, and then if it faulted, it'd unleash an absolute bomb of a second serve. This didn't quite always happen -- Sampras seemed marginally less prone to it than other players -- but it was omnipresent enough that I think there's a programming error. Chumley was challenging enough as it was, though, so maybe I'm glad the bug is there.

 

Anyway I quite like the game, even if it could be improved in a bunch of ways. The play's the thing, to butcher Shakespeare, and this one captures the dynamics of real tennis far, far better than most. It certainly beats the hell out of the US tennis lineup on the PlayStation, which ranges from mediocre to abysmal. Why'd they only give us the lower-tier games, anyway? A-.

 

[newtmonkey]

Cosmic Fantasy 2 (PC Engine)

Join local hero Van and cosmic hunter Rim on an adventure through space and time to save Van's girlfriend (and the world) from evil wizard Garam.

 

It's a significant improvement over the borderline awful Cosmic Fantasy.  The graphics and music are much improved over the first game, complete with sprites and tiles that begin to approach the quality of early Mega Drive or Super Famicom games, and some great CD audio tracks instead of PSG tunes. You are also frequently treated to semi-animated cutscenes;  I found these to be pretty cool even today in 2023, so back in 1991 they must have been very impressive indeed.

 

The biggest problem I had with the first Cosmic Fantasy was how dull it was; the characters are boring, the story flat, and every scenario is exactly the same with you just solving each town's problem by slaying a monster or witch in the conveniently nearby tower or cave.  Cosmic Fantasy 2 is thankfully a huge improvement.  The characters are very likeable, the story is quite interesting with some fun twists and turns, and there's a lot of variety in the scenarios you encounter.

 

Having said all that, while Cosmic Fantasy 2 is much better than the first Cosmic Fantasy, it's still only a mediocre RPG.  Sadly, combat is even worse and more broken here than it was in the first Cosmic Fantasy.  Every enemy in the game, including bosses (including the last boss!), just hits a single character for damage every round.  Your entire party always goes first in battle, so you basically cannot lose this game unless you fall asleep on the controller.  Due to how frequent random encounters are in this game, this all means that you spend the majority of your time playing this game engaged in what is basically busywork.

 

Still, I enjoyed playing through the game.  I found myself looking forward to what crazy situation Van and Rim would get into next, and I really enjoyed the somewhat large and mazey dungeons full of nice treasure to find and gimmicks to figure out.

Edited August 3, 2023 by newtmonkey

[Razzie.P]

Finished Shining the Holy Ark on Saturn over the weekend.  At times this felt like a masterpiece and other times, it was a complete slog that made me think the level designers just quit trying.

 

I really liked it overall, though.

 

 

[neogeo1982]

Roniu's Tale

Very cool puzzler. Reminded me of the Lolo games. Catchy soundtrack, and decent graphics. Still frame cutscenes at the beginning and end that tell a neat little story. And even the ending leaves it open for another game. It adds mechanics and switches up your thinking every couple levels all the way to the end. A password feature was nice for continuing fairly frequently. It never felt overly hard at anytime. Still put in around 12 hours to finish it. 

 

[Keir]

Commodore 64 - King's Bounty

I wasn't planning to play King's Bounty (it wasn't even on my list of games I played as a kid but never beat, though it should have been). However, I had a photocopy of the manual in a stack of scrap paper and one of my kids found it which sparked a whole discussion that led me to replay it. It's quite fun actually so I'm not sure why it had slipped from my memory. In the end it was also quite easy to beat (I didn't even capture the last 3 villains before finding the sceptre, and probably could have found it sooner if I tried).

[neogeo1982]

On 8/27/2023 at 8:21 AM, Keir said:

last 3 villains

On the Genesis version I've never been able to finish the last couple villains and just seek out the sceptre. Several 100 dragons and giants isn't fun to walk into.

[CreeB]

The games i've beaten this year are all ones i've done before,,,, so i'll go with touhou 19. The soundtrack is getting more and more complex with each new game.. nice to see a return to vs games like the 3rd and 9th were.. also got to see some characters like nazrin again.. my favorite is suika,, she has ginger hair like me..

[neogeo1982]

Dungeons&DoomKnights - NES

    Got both endings to see how they differed. May play again as I missed a lot of things and extra life heart containers. Got ~12 hours out of it on first playthrough though.

 

[+wongojack]

58 minutes ago, neogeo1982 said:

Dungeons&DoomKnights - NES

    Got both endings to see how they differed. May play again as I missed a lot of things and extra life heart containers. Got ~12 hours out of it on first playthrough though.

 

 

Looks like that says "Queso" at a quick glance.

[neogeo1982]

Game Gear - Last Bible

    English patched. Interesting story and ok demon recruiting/combining mechanics. Sunk about 40 hours into it. Even in English I struggled through trial and error for the spells and items. Most guides are for the GBC which helped enough to get through. Very grind heavy, every few steps. Regular encounters even at the end I felt underpowered. Yet every boss fight the whole game, I finished them quickly and it felt I was overpowered. Really good for a Game Gear RPG, tough but good.

 

[newtmonkey]

Live A Live (Super Famicom)

Live A Live has you selecting from one of seven characters, each with his own unique scenario.  The scenarios themselves are quite short (ranging from 10-15 minutes at the shortest to several hours at the longest), but each has its own quirks and game mechanics:

 

• Pogo the caveman: This takes place before humans invented language, so the story is told through gestures and pictures.  It's otherwise a pretty standard RPG.
• Oboromaru the ninja: You have to infiltrate a massive castle and take out its lord.  The cool thing about this scenario is that you have multiple paths through the castle, and can choose to kill everyone, sneak your way through, or a mix of both.
• Master of Shinzanken style kung fu: The quirk here is that you're an aged martial artist who must choose one of three pupils as his successor.  Quite short and mostly just fighting, but pretty fun.
• Sundown Kid the cowboy: You have to defend a town against bandits, but instead of going around dueling them, you have to set traps up all over town.  There's not much to this one, but it's a nice change of pace.
• Masaru Takahara the martial artist: This is basically a turn-based version of Street Fighter II.  It's kind of cool at first, but doesn't really work imo.  It's definitely the shortest scenario.
• Akira the psychic: This is a pretty standard RPG, but the quirk is that you're a weak guy with psychic powers, but get increasingly powerful as you learn new powers.  It ends with a giant robot fight.
• Cube the robot: This is mostly an adventure game where you just have to explore a spaceship and follow the story.  It's a good story, though.

It's a refreshing approach to an RPG, because each scenario was designed to be completed in a single day.  You can just pop in, complete a scenario, and then put the game down for another day.

 

Once you complete all of these you start the seventh scenario, which is a very typical RPG story taking place in a fantasy medieval world (Oersted the knight).  It has a cool story twist, though... and then you're off to the final scenario, where you get to create a party of your four most favorite characters from the other scenarios and explore the world to find awesome equipment.  Each character has a unique dungeon to explore with an ultimate weapon at the end, and each dungeon has its own gimmick (puzzles, time limit, etc.).

 

It has a turn-based combat system, with battles taking place on a grid.  Each character has a variety of moves that can be used as much as you want, each with its own special effects and range.  The more powerful moves tend to take longer to do, so it's important to keep in mind exactly what each attack does.  You can run from pretty much any fight at any time (other than bosses), and also get healed up to max HP in between battles... so instead of conserving resources like in most RPGs, you are actually better off doing everything and anything you can to win each battle.

 

What a game!  I became quite addicted to this, and would rank it right up there with Square's best on the SFC.  Highly recommended!

Edited November 22, 2023 by newtmonkey

[+thegoldenband]

15. AD&D: Cloudy Mountain (Intellivision)

 

Beat this a couple of times on Hero difficulty in the process of testing an Intellivision earlier this year. Still great! A.

 

16. Blockade Runner (Intellivision)

 

I had vague ambitions of rolling the score on this, but I settled for what I've done before, simply completing the main mission. When I beat it in 2012 I gave it a generous C-minus, but it's too frustrating and one-dimensional to really justify that. D.

 

17. Princess Quest (Intellivision)

 

After having owned it for some time, I finally pulled this out in August briefly, then did so again today and beat it on my second try (third or fourth attempt overall, I think). I don't grade homebrews, but it's obviously a marvelous technical achievement to implement a Ghosts'N Goblins-ish game on the Intellivision, though the controller doesn't lend itself to that kind of action and my thumbs were getting fatigued. n/a

[newtmonkey]

Phantasy Star II

I finally completed this monster of an RPG!  I've attempted to complete this game many times over the years, but always got turned off by the massive and very difficult to map dungeons.  I did actually map all the dungeons in the first one-third of the game, but once you reach the dams mapping becomes way too difficult (for me anyway).  From that point on, I downloaded some unlabeled maps and marked them up as I explored, making sure to try every teleporter/chute.

 

I used Rudger (Hunter) and Anne (Medic) for the first part of the game, and then once I lost Nei I replaced her with Amia (Huntress).  This party worked out quite nicely, and I had no trouble completing the game.  It's cool that you can choose which characters to travel with, but sadly the other characters are mostly useless (Shilka [Thief]) or way too situational to be very useful (Huey and Kinds).

 

The game has a reputation as a difficult and brutal grindfest, but I found the encounter rate to be just about right.  I was also surprised to find that I didn't need to do any artificial leveling at all; just through normal exploration, I ended up reaching level 31 or 32 for all four characters by the final battle, and this was more than enough to defeat both bosses with little trouble (in fact, I defeated both on my first attempt).

 

---

 

Although I ended up really enjoying this game, it has some major problems.  It has some great songs, but a lot of them tend to sound very similar... and this is not helped at all by the horrible snare drum instrument in every single song (which was wisely replaced with something less annoying in the US version).

 

The dungeons are pleasantly mazelike with lots of cool stuff to find, but some of them are just unbelievably difficult to navigate or map.  The absolute worst dungeon has you blindly falling down pits down seven tedious levels, with each pit often dropping you in a section with two or three MORE pits to choose from.  This one dungeon took me around three hours to fully explore, and not one second of it was fun!

 

The biggest issue is that combat is mostly mindless.  Very few enemies have special attacks, and your own characters never have enough TP to really make use of their techniques, so in 99% of the battles you are just trading blows back and forth until you win.  Once you start finding the equipment that can be used to heal for free in battle, the game completely drops any semblance of difficulty... though I suppose you could refrain from using that stuff if you want a real challenge.

 

---

 

Still, it's a great RPG and well worth playing today.  I plan on playing Phantasy Star III, but probably not until next year.

Edited December 2, 2023 by newtmonkey

[+thegoldenband]

18. Sydney Hunter and the Sacred Tribe (Intellivision)

 

Fun little platformer in the vein of Pitfall and Montezuma's Revenge. One point of confusion: the manual says you can't jump over snakes, but to beat the game, you have to do so several times (and it ain't easy). n/a

[newtmonkey]

Lunar: The Silver Star (Mega-CD)

I went into this one not knowing much about it, though I had heard of it (and its remakes).  I got mostly what I expected, which is a very linear 16-bit RPG where you go from town to town killing boss characters in nearby caves over and over until the end.

 

It does have one innovation.  The battle system takes positioning and range into account, though you cannot directly control the movement of your characters; you simply command them to either run toward to away from an enemy, and the game automatically moves them for you.  Sadly, combat is so simple and easy that the interesting combat system is basically wasted.

 

It's very beginner-friendly, though perhaps to a fault.  Several characters in the endgame party (which is established quite early into the game) have cheap but powerful healing spells, and the game also loads you up with items to restore HPs and MPs inside and outside combat.  Monster AI almost always targets the nearest character, which will almost always be your frontline fighters, so you are almost never in any danger whatsoever.  The boss monsters are basically no stronger than regular enemies (they just have a lot more HPs).

 

There are a ton of dungeons you have to explore, and they are thankfully somewhat mazelike with plenty of cool stuff to find.  However, because the game is so easy, dungeon exploration becomes dull.  You're never in danger of running out of resources (never mind dying), so all that's left is basically solving mazes and making sure you don't miss any important treasure chests.

 

Finally, although it has an excellent CD audio soundtrack, many of the songs are way too short and of course cannot be seamlessly looped.  I would have preferred a chiptune soundtrack during gameplay.

 

Having said all that, not every RPG needs to be a struggle to complete, and the likeable characters and fun quest make Lunar worth playing.  Thanks to its linear structure, easy combat, and quick pace, you could probably blast through it over a long weekend.

Edited December 12, 2023 by newtmonkey

[newtmonkey]

Final Fantasy USA Mystic Quest

This is the Japanese version of Final Fantasy Mystic Quest, which I played and completed back when it was first released.  I was in the mood to replay it, so I decided to play the Japanese version and see if there were any differences (besides the language, no).

 

Everything about the game has been simplified to the point where the game is just boring.  They removed random encounters, probably because some test group told them they were "totally bogus," and replaced them with visible enemies on the maps.  However, the enemies stand still in fixed locations and, due to corridors all being a single tile wide, cannot be avoided.  In effect, the game becomes a worse slog than even the grindiest "real" RPG with random encounters.

 

There is no utility magic, just healing and damage spells, so combat completely lacks any strategy or tactics.  Damage spells really aren't very effective unless the monster is weak to them, so you can't even blast through battles quicker by casting spells instead of fighting.  So, the game is just fight and heal.  Making this even worse is that you have just two characters in your party.  There's simply not much you can do with such a limited battle system.

 

The game is linear and lacks any sense of exploration.  There is no world to explore, just a map that basically serves as a menu to choose which dungeon or town to enter.  The story and characters are just lame.

 

The game is not completely horrible, though.  The monster graphics are colorful and fun, and actually show damage as the fight goes on.  The game has also got an excellent soundtrack, though there aren't very many songs and things get repetitive very quickly... even for a game that lasts only 10 hours or so.

[+wongojack]

I went back and checked that I haven't posted a game completed (in the classic thread) this year.  it has been a heavy year for modern gaming, but here I have something to post finally at the end.

 

River City Ransom for the NES.  I didn't know about this game when I was a kid, and I probably wouldn't have liked it even if I did.  The cartoonish aesthetic and the almost immediate reliance on RPG-style healing separate it from other beat-em ups (of which there aren't many for the NES), but those elements also detract from the arcade-heavy action that most of the games in this genre are known for.  The designer succeeds in creating a new gameplay loop for this type of game BUT forces the player to either take extensive notes about the various items that can be purchased or borrow from someone who already has.  So, your main activity while playing RCR will be tracking what all of the various shop items actually do.  I couldn't bring myself to take my own notes, so I looked all the attributes up.  That turned the game into almost 100% grinding until I got powerful enough and then went for my game-ending run.  EXCEPT that I didn't know I needed to backtrack a little and got into a no-win situation where I couldn't continue and couldn't go back.  A rare situation for a NES game where I actually had to power down the NES and reload using a password.  And boy - those passwords.  I was playing from an original cart that I resurrected with the help of a security bit and some de-ox, so I had to use the password system.  Good thing I am now in the era of instant digital photography.  Once I recovered from my no-win situation, I had plenty of money to power myself up to god-like powers, cruising to the end of the game.  So many a$$holes got a grand slam to the face or dragon kicks to the nuts that I should probably be put away for life.  I give River City Ransom a 2 out of 5.  Now I can finally move on to Retro City Rampage and all of the other games that have borrowed from this "classic" over the years.  My picture is of the dreaded password screen.  Likely a reluctance to use this system caused the original owner of my filthy cart to leave the game in the slot and the NES powered up so long that the contacts became dirty to the point of being unplayable.  RIP password screen:

[+wongojack]

All right, I have a couple of games from my childhood that I finally beat for the first time this past week.

 

Rygar (for NES) - This is a game that I used my allowance on in my younger days.  The game immediately turned me off, and I never really gave it any attention.  I wasn't aware of Rygar as an arcade game, and I was hoping for a more Zelda-like experience.  Back then, the game's non-Zeldaness and the lack of any real hints turned me off.  I gave up and traded it away, but I have thought about the game many times since then, and I did eventually beat the Lynx version (which is much more like the arcade).  Anyway, the time finally came for me to tackle this game as an adult.  It's short, unchallenging, a bit ugly and even a little unnecessarily complex at times.  However, in 2023, something about it ends up being a refreshingly straightforward experience that can be enjoyed completely in an afternoon.  Even if you take the time to see everything there is to see, you'll probably spend less than 6 hours.  I think I'd have a hard time recommending Rygar to someone who has no memories or nostalgia for it, but I was very pleased to revisit it after so many years.  I give Rygar a 3 out of 5. 

 

 

Mike Tyson's Punch Out.  Yep - it took me 37 years, but I finally beat kid dynamite.  This game is one of the greatest examples of classic gaming perfection from the 80's.  The combination of reflexes, memorization and pushing the technology to its absolute limits have stood the test of time very well.  To this day, the game can't really be emulated without sacrificing key gameplay speed and techniques.  It's a true gem whose music, sound, graphics and charm seem fresh and compelling even to this day.  For Atari fans, I'd compare this one to Kaboom as it requires the same intense focus and consistent practice while still offering a challenge to those that master it. 

 

But what really pushes this up for me is the inclusion of Tyson.  I just can't think of another game that so perfectly coincided with the peak stardom of an elite celebrity.  There's no way this game would have reached the same level of popularity or had the same urgency for the player without him.

 

If you can't tell, I REALLY like MTPO and felt a huge sense of accomplishment to finally beat this game.  It was extra special that I ended up using my very own childhood NES.  My 11-year-old self would have been happy for me.  I give Mike Tyson's Punch Out an almost perfect 5 out of 5.