#had to tone things down a little to make an actually playable character in a campaign w a first time player
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Yayyy OC asks!!! I request A, B, D, & E for Antoine, Arzel, & Lorenzo because I can't choose :'3 Thankie!
thank youuu <33
Anton
A) Why are you excited about this character?
He's pretty fun to play, he's trying very hard but also acts without thinking which is great bc it means I get to do some stupid things I want to do every now and then.
He's mortified about his fucking ups but I'm not, he's my chew toy and my punching bag, I want to make his life worse 💖
B) What inspired you to create them?
I was interested in clan Malkavian and the Madness Network + found out about the archetypes of the 6 main mathuselahs we hear about ; the Dionysian whose name is self explanatory, Addemar the hermit/scientist, Tryphosa the Sybil/advisor, Brude the scholar/historian, the Black Hag witch/prophet
All six of these archetypes were pretty interesting but I picked Brude for a bloodline, then I read more about kindred historians, found out about the Mnemosyne cult, and I tossed the Church of Caine in the mix bc it made sense for a scholar to be involved with it
For his wet cat personality, I just thought it was funny to play a vampire w no backbone, and malkavians make great depressed sad wet cats. It transformed over time into him being deadly afraid of the Beast. He’s not (always) afraid of people or situations per say, he’s afraid of losing control, which is very fun to me personally
D) Have they always had the same physical appearance, or have you had to edit how they look?
He’s a recycled version of an older OC, so I already had the big lines, he just looks more fucked up and a little older, I didn’t have to change much over time
E) Are they someone you would get along with? Would they get along with you?
I think we'd get along at first, then he'd infuriate me so much, then we'd get along super well forever as we go through different stages of friendship
He gets along with everyone who isn't actively trying to kill him
Arzel
A) Why are you excited about this character?
He's pretty fun to play, I like playing characters with high strength or high charisma and he has both
He fits more than well into the vtm victorian world and he's pretty nosy which means I can go and be as nosy as I, the player, want to be
B) What inspired you to create them?
He's a recycled version of another OC of mine, who was built to be ruthless but still charming
I was invited to play VTM V5 but I didn’t know ANYTHING about the setting like, aside from the fact that it was about vampires. I read a lot of lore and I thought the 'warlord' side of the Ventrue clan was under-exploited and it's a shame. I also liked the idea of a Ventrue with humble origins but enough ambition and leadership to grab every opportunity to climb the ladder
Still hesitated between clan Brujah and clan Ventrue but in the end he kind of made a stereotypical Brujah and a more interesting Ventrue
D) Have they always had the same physical appearance, or have you had to edit how they look?
He always had roughly the same looks, I already had a solid base with Ombe, I didn't have to tweak it much once I had decided on the general vibe
E) Are they someone you would get along with? Would they get along with you?
I think we'd get along but in a polite colleagues way
We wouldn't be friends but I'd be happy to work w him and have a chat from time to time and I think he'd be in the same state of mind
Lorenzo
A) Why are you excited about this character?
he’s a little freak who does crimes
I can't wait for the consequences of his actions to come bite him in the ass
B) What inspired you to create them?
Spite, mostly. And I think necromancy is always fun to play with
In the VTMB game one of the reasons someone might not be embraced was bc he's gay, so I decided to make a gay trans Giovanni, that was literally my main motivation
Then I read the Giovanni handbook, which has all the trigger warnings in the world bc they really, REALLY wanted to make the most edgy and gross clan soooo bad, and I knew I just had to make that character out of spite
Then I had the brilliant idea to go "but wait. they're italians, they're all related, and spanning multiple generations. the petty personal drama must be INSANE" and it went downhill from there
I also thought the "you're bored out of your mind" archetype was an interesting base
D) Have they always had the same physical appearance, or have you had to edit how they look?
We don’t talk about my very first draft where he looked like a 12 years old with greasy long hair
E) Are they someone you would get along with? Would they get along with you?
I think if we were stuck at a party we can’t leave we’d have a decent conversation then never cross paths again
#I just noticed you wrote 'antoine' and I assume you meant 'anton' I'm so sorry we have two characters w such similar names#I can ask the DM to fill in the questions for Antoine too tho#about the giovanni thing I do think it's very fun that they're so gross#but I also think it's VERY funny how hard the writers tried to make them as gross as possible#reading the handook was like doing a gross things bingo#the writers had a list of all the trigger warnings they didn't get to use for the other clans and shoved them all in there#had to tone things down a little to make an actually playable character in a campaign w a first time player#but they're still disgusting little freaks (heart emoji)#V1 Lorenzo and Matteo were a lot more gross and mean#I don't want to go back to that tho I love them the way they are rn
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SWTOR and Staffing Changes
Some story spoilers up through 6.3
So there have been some staffing changes for SWTOR. It's really not a surprise. After the debacle that was 7.0 I would have been surprised if there hadn't been. On the official forum and Reddit it seems to have been met with skepticism and who can blame anyone?
At this point, I think the dev team has lost all trust from the playerbase. There's a good reason for that. It's been year after year of dwindling content, increasingly disjointed story, gme breaking bugs, trying to shove a solo-oriented playerbase into grouping and PvP, and with 7.0, changes that noticeably detract from gameplay. The so-called 'grand 10th year anniversary' has been little more than a whimper. I quit the game the day 7.0 dropped, and while I miss running around with Viri, I am very glad not to have the stress.
Honestly, at this point I think it would have been better to end the game's story at the end of Echoes of Oblivion. The player character defeated Tenebrae/Vitiate/Valkorion once and for all and flies off into the stars, hurrah. At this point I've accepted that when and if I have the inspiration to write Lana/Viri again, they won't be on book for much of anything.
The new lead producer is one of the devs who is said to be on private discords that are very heavy with NiM raider dudebro types. He was one who asked questions and wanted feedback on the Public Test Server but almost every single bit of that player feedback has been ignored. I have no confidence he is going to veer from that direction.
The new gameplay designer apparently used to work on Ops which does not bode well for making things more playable. This is something that has become noticeably worse over time. The fights at the end of Echoes of Oblivion, all of Spirit of Vengeance and the first boss fight in Dantooine are train wrecks. Confusing, very hard on the hands, very tedious, nothing but mob after mob as filler. The heroics at Dantooine and Mek-Sha are very difficult and can't necessarily be done solo. From what I have read the boss fight in the newest flashpoint can't even be completed sometimes. I don't see good things here.
The new UX Director states that he's been working since 2020 to make the game more accessible. I've seen a few places that's actually been true, like toning down flashing lights. But the new gameplay/gearing, scaled tertiary stats on planets and emphasis on group play make the game far LESS accessible. And the new inventory/UI has given people headaches.
The new head writer states "my primary responsibility has been working with writing, design, art, and cinematics to ensure our story content adheres to a particular standard of quality." Much of the art and design over the past five years in SWTOR has been stunning. Onderon? Ossus? Umbara? Copero? Mek-Sha? Dantooine? chef's kiss from a design standpoint. The new Dantooine swoop races have been a delight, as well.
Unfortunately the story from KOTET onward has been pretty horrid, with the sole exceptions of the Lana and Theron proposals and most of Echoes of Oblivion. Those are literally the only two points that everything seems okay to me.
From an art standpoint, the dressable models of Lana and Senya were notably made thinner, younger and more traditionally feminine looking in their dressable models. I will never even like a screenshot with Lana if it's the Barbiefied version. Koth's dressable model was also quite weird because his head was not in proportion to his body.
From a story standpoint:
There have been plot holes you could drive a truck through.
Our characters are back to shedding as much blood as possible for their factions (or the one they're secretly working for) after the entire theme of KOTFE was to find alliances outside one's faction and one's personal worldview and work toward peace.
The main goal of Nathema seemed to be to murder as many remaining supporting characters as possible. In one neat swoop they eliminated so many characters who could have had key roles or supporting roles later.
Quinn came back, but if a Sith Warrior didn't trust him and didn't want him in their Alliance, assuming they stay Imperial the only way out was to brutally murder him in a scene that was clearly designed to satisfy the edgelords in the audience.
We had a betrayal that made absolutely no sense.
The group involved with the betrayal had a name that was almost a carbon copy of an existing group.
We had companions return, but many of those return cut scenes made no sense whatsoever and had open lapses in continuity from what we remembered about those companions from the class story.
We had a "somehow, Big Bad survived" moment that truly made no sense other than to provide a new Big Bad.
The plot point that drove Iokath was relegated to operations that most people did not want to play. If you have not played those Ops, the plot point randomly dissolves into thin air without any resolution whatsoever. Why didn't they learn their lesson with that from Oricon?
I don't find any quality there. I just find the story flailing and drifting from one point to another. I find frustration.
The bottom line is that there's really no reason for anyone to trust that SWTOR is on anything other than a continued downward trajectory. That's a shame. But it is what it is.
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OK I’LL GET WU CHANG THEN. SHOULD I GET FEMALE DANCER OR PRISONER AFTER THAT?? WHICH ONE⁉️ ALSO I’LL GET NAIAD AFTER GETTING THE REST SO YEAH!! Anyways I am thinking of saving up for the grey haired blue eyed guy cause uhh..simp y’know?! Also I agree about the skin tone part we barely have any dark skinned characters that are playable. The only one that comes to mind is Kaeya (sorry if I forgot an others) also! When the dendro archon was released MANY people were annoyed at the fact that she was WHITE A GHOST, SHE’S WHITER THAN KLEE AND DIONA!! From what I heard she’s based off a Buddhist poem about a very pale fairy who’s short and how you shouldn’t hudge someone’s height off their wisdom. Honestly I didn’t really mind that much that she was short and that pale, Mihoyo has done worst and also she’s like hundreds of years older than us so we can’t judge our elders 👵 and now I’m sad that I won’t get yoimiya, I’ll still pull for bennet tho he’s good to have so yeah!! I was scrolling through my YT and found a pretty funny/entertaining video, it’s gacha. Which I used to be a part of but drifted away from because I no longer played nor watched on so yeah!! Laugh at me 😭😭 please whenever gacha is mentioned you will get poked fun at 😤😭😭 Sorry for grammar errors but bye!! - ☁️
https://youtu.be/2ihjYIHx448 (the gacha video and the comments basically saying more about the archon)
UHHH GET PRISONER. HIS CONNECTION THING IS PRETTY EASY TO UNDERSTAND. ITS BASICALLY HOW MUCH OF UR CIPHER SPEED U WANT TO PUT INTO THAT OTHER CIPHER.
And are you talking about Photographer? Haha he's pretty easy to play too. Just have to find the survivors before they can finish the ciphers too quickly. He does half the damage that would've been in the real world when he's in the camera world. Chairing a surv in the camera world = downed. Find them quickly before they can get back up again!
Card trick is harder to understand, but you'll understand it with practice and time.
And yes he is veryyyyyyy fineeeeee (I was obsessed with him when I first entered the fandom)
I actually do have Bennet! Got his second constellation last night while trying to pull for Mona AGAIN. But it's okay ig since it's Benny boy 😊 He is nice support for my team and all, but uh, I still don't really understand his ultimate. I think it's maybe to heal ur teammates while also kinda damaging other enemies when you use it? Idrk lol
My sister had a gacha phase like 2-3 years ago. One of her really bad quality videos kinda got attention lol
It had like 63k views or smth. The comments were either telling her it wasn't good or it was incredibly amazing. But she deleted it now SO I GUESS THATS JUST TOO BAD 😭😭
And dw all interests are welcome on this blog! I love it when people share media that makes them happy! Just as long as it's not too weird or nsfw or something lol
Although I did laugh a little at the mention of Gacha Life hehe
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I REALLY hope they don’t remake Bioshock 1 since the remastered version is as good as it’s going to get (in my eyes at least), but if they did remake it whats something you’d like to see changed?
ME NEITHER- They're not just gonna repackage the game and update the graphics and mechanics, if they're gonna remake it, it'll end up being a whole new game in a BioShock skin.
There are small tweaks to the base game I wouldn't mind tho:
- bring back the ethnic little sisters cowards
- less serious note but let me carry the girls to the vents 2K!!!!
- All named characters getting their own unique models (yeah like Tenenbaum and Atlas- BUT ALSO Jasmine and Diane, if they've got a name they should have their own model. I think it would be really good if characters like the Lutz family and Anya Andersdotter had their own models so we could follow minor characters better)
- a REAL neutral ending (harvest pre-reveal, rescue post-reveal) so when Tenenbaum beckons Bad End!Jack to change he can.
- also if you harvest there are less sisters in the sanctuary- and if you go full bad end the sisters don't show up to finish Fontaine and Jack would take care of it on his own.
- Model Jack some legs and feet- so i can see his fancy shoes
- Add in some extra accuvoxs: give us more Jasmine and Anna Culpepper logs they are GREAT and Jasmine is so important she deserves to have more than one log and a ghost. Also I'd like some more logs post reveal from Tenenbaum and Fontaine's perspective on working on Project WYK instead of just Suchong's- I REALLY want to hear some of Tenenabaum's thoughts and eventual guilt over Jack.
- TBH if we lived in a timeline where we got Anna Culpepper running the fort frolic level instead of Cohen I would not complain
- make the game PLAYABLE so it doesn't CRASH EVERYTIME I TRY TO SAV-
- I actually don't hate the final boss fight and it has a lot of good narrative meaning for the story and character arcs- but the fight 100% need to be balanced and reworked to make it more challenge, along with some better pacing in Point Prometheus to build up to seeing Fontaine all big and blue
- Redo the pacing on the ending scene, the stuff there is 10/10 but you can blink and miss it.
- Maybe lay down a nod on why Sisters got left behind for BS2 (This is the only thing that trips me up about BS2- I can't picture Tenenbaum leaving Rapture for 8 years if there was a chance there were still girls left, ESP if its Good End and she knows she has a place she could send girls too on the surface- and I think Jack would be more than willing to stick around in the city to pick up any children that got missed [personal HC is that when Lamb took over Persephone her and her followers also abducted some little sisters in the chaos of the riots and then locked down the prison- so they'd have their own stable source of ADAM while being safely disconnected from the city, and then those girls grow up into the big sisters- and that's why Tenenbaum leaves, because she thinks they got all the girls and the one's lamb took are dead after all this time])
- Never acknowledge BaS, don't even touch that stuff with a 10 yard pole unless its to subtly retcon it with Atlas being like "we were only ever cooped up in Apollo Square- What department store"
- tweaking Tenenbaum's character so the holocaust survivor isn't also a Nazi Scientist- I'd have her pick up science after the fact as a way to cope with what she saw in the camps.
Thats most of the stuff I can think of atm- i wouldn't mind them adding variety to the skin tones of the cast though I can already hear people complaining about 'forcing politics into my video games'- same with LGBT characters to balance out Cohen.
REALLY tho I'd want to keep most of the story beats and characters the same because thats what creates the narrative i enjoy from this game.
#bioshock#bioshock 4#jack wynand#jack ryan#jack bioshock#brigid tenenbaum#bioshock little sister#jasmine jolene#anna culpepper#cardboard cutouts#long post#i gotta GO TO CLASS NOW BYEEEEE
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An AU of DC with a mass crossover of PS4 properties.
Provisional name: Players Searching for Detectable Changes (Get the pun?)
The setup:
This is the future of DC, a world where the old guard has slowly withdrawn and the newer generations have risen to the occasion. The original Titans in particular, most of which have formed the new Justice League while many other, very similar teams had started to form across the world. One of which was a resurgence of the Teen Titans, led by an older and purified Raven. She wanted to make the Teen Titans something akin as it was for her, a place to belong and learn to use one's powers.
The first 'class' of such individuals include:
Stargirl (of the now-disbanded JSA and still getting used to the Starrod)
Blue Beetle III (Freshly attached to his alien symbiote and freaking out a bit)
Robin V (to work on his anger issues, mostly at the new Batman's request)
Kaldur (a half Atlantean half metahuman who is struggling with his identity and the surface world, Aquaman feels a kinship for the boy seeing their similarities)
Static Shock (a promising new hero but little experience working outside his city or in groups)
Mary Marvel (she's... she's going through alot. Fresh from a coma, her brother is distant as he acts as the new Wizard, and she may be, sorta kinda, being corrupted by Black Adam's gifted power)
The team was rough and there was plenty of head butting (Mostly between Stargirl and Robin/Damian as one is almost the unanimous leader while the other thinks he should be) but they were getting there. They were more of a clean up crew for the Justice League, they did more than the "kiddie missions" that the Outsiders didn't do, and they meant more than the PR grab that was the International team. Though they didn't seem to amount to more than that. They still did their best, pushing past the silent ridicule, as they went about their missions.
This may be why tempers were so high that day.
One day, outside a little city by the name of Weller's Point, the prisoner transport for the villain Plasmus had an "accident". Released and awakened the creature went on a rampage, heading ever closer to the populated area. Luckily, the mentor of the New Teen Titans could teleport. The new team did fairly well in the fight, though they did struggle a bit as Plasmus was not a being where simple brute force would work. It made the fight tricky and more than a bit... messy.
Messy enough that juvenile and emotionally compromised Mary Marvel lashed out against the downed villain but was stopped by her teammates... things escalated from there. Restraint turned blows and the whole team struggled to stop their powerhouse without hurting her. The ones who do the best are Raven, Stargirl, Blue Beetle, and oddly Static.
While both of the former could use their abilities to restrain her to a very effective degree Static was actively draining her of strength, or at least of the electic aura she was radiating and blasting with. Frustrated, done with the situation, and a bit petty Mary launched her largest attack yet by saying her magical word.
SHAZAM.
Virgil did what he did best, he handled that lightning as it came crashing down towards Mary and the Titans restraining her. Well, he tried. The bolt was just too powerful, too unlike anything he had ever encountered. He could not handle it and it was dissipating, if anything it clung to him or tried to jump towards the girl. He had to get rid of it and he had to get rid of it quickly, safely too if he could help it.
He shoved it into the ground, into the power lines. He did it as carefully as he could, trying to prevent overload or flashover as guided the charge into the power grid.
What happened next was a combination of a few things. 1. The Mystic and transformative properties of the Lightning, 2. It is effectively being filtered through a bang baby, 3. The kryptonite power plant owned by, provided by, and operated by Lexcorp.
This interaction, this new charge, cycling through the power grid interacted strangely with a number of devices but none more so than PlayStation 4s and the devices connected to them. This new electricity changed things, literally. It brought fantasy into reality.
Whatever game was loaded into became a part of our reality in a small way. Sometimes TVs, Controllers, and even the system changed to reflect items from the game but the bigger change came with the Players. If a person was playing their console during the surge then they would become a metahuman with abilities based on the playable character they were playing.
The city, the county even, was now flooded by an abundance of metahumans and items of varying power of devastation. Static felt horrible.
He couldn't help but compare what has happened here to what happened in Dakota City but on a wider scale. And this time it was his fault. His sense of responsibility wouldn't, couldn't, let that stand. He had to fix his mistake and his team was dragged along for the ride.
The story to follow is a mix of Final Crisis and Kingdom Come with a bit of the Young Justice cartoon in events and themes, a few twists and likely a bit lighter in tone but to the DC geeks this should give a rough idea… Maybe a bit of Marvel's Civil War but hopefully not the rushed knee-jerk mess that that ended up being.
But it's here that I start having issues with my planning. One part in worry as outside the set up we start to follow the perspective of OCs (something rarely smiled upon) and another part in wondering which OC to focus on.
Now, one thing I love in fiction is progressive powers and the conflict escalating from the different paths people take in said progression. In that vein, I have a pair of protags in mind as well.
The main two/co-protagonists:
The Lawkeeper- a cop before the change and now a member of a task force made up largely of those affected by the surge. A gamer, a man of color, and a believer of the spirit of the law. He doesn't always get along with his fellow officers but he believes in what the blue does. He believes that an organized response is what is best.
His abilities are based on those of Jesse Fades of Control. Meaning he has tremendous psychic potential but he needs 3 things to reach his full potential.
1.Items to bond to so he can generate these psychic abilities. Jesse's used altered items of her universe to get thematic abilities from them (ex: a safe to generate a shield, a carousel horse for a dash ability, ect). Here he can use items generated by the surge.
2. A patron/partner entity to help guide, give insights, and empower. It also let's the user enforce reality, basically becoming an anti reality warper.
3. A bonded morph weapon or a weapon to come to his hand when called.
The knight- a recent college graduate who instantly decided to go the route of the caped hero. She, after figuring out how to get her powers to work, instantly went the route of a caped crusader. Going out to the streets, saving lives, stopping instances of surge item abuse, and (in the humble opinion of the local Police Department) getting in the way of operations. In her opinion they were taking too long to get things done.
Her abilities are based on those of Prince Noctis of Final Fantasy XV. This means she has tremendous physical and magical potential but like the above she has a number of check marks needed to gain access to the character's full power.
1. A gem/crystal to draw power from.
2. 13 magical weapons to boost strength. The generated game weapons will do and I have most picked out in a way that likely would help the plot progress.
3. The blessing of 5-6 gods.
4. A power ring of some king to channel all this power.
I keep debating the two above as I do like the idea of both of them climbing in power and clashing over conflicting ideals of what to do with their power. At the same time, I think that just smooshing aspects of both into one (which is actually where they started, a single character) and play off the different ideologies of how best to help people from within her friend group and precinct along with internal conflict. Maybe have the one be a fellow officer they butt heads with because of the... precarious nature
Another OC I was thinking on, keeping with the theme of what to do when you have power, is a thief who played Persona 5. Like both of the above they would be crippled in their ability to use their abilities without a way to fake the connection to. In this case, without the Mementos App, they would need an item that could affect or enter the hearts of others. Luckily, more unlucky really, there are plenty of items floating around that can do just that. Namely Keyblades.
Most other Players are an odd mix but most are variations of the Shooter build. Peak physical humans who heal quickly and often have bullet time. But there are enough other variations to cause trouble. Demigods of unreal strength, men and women who can easily tap into a patron for powers from the outside, 2 variations of spider powers, cat eyed men and women who can cast magic with simple gestures, and so much more. But the real issue was the first two, the demigods without a parent to protect them and those easily connected to a divine source.
The disembodied New Gods of Apocalypse were very happy with those groups. For how bad this can be please look at what happened to Mary Marvel in canon Final Crisis.
Thoughts and opinions would be appreciated.
#dc community#fanfiction#dc fanfic#dc fandom#playstation#mass crossover#orginal character#dc fanfiction#dc fanfiction idea#outline
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Hypothetical P5A
Okay, gonna make this clear right up front, I wanted to make this post for a while but the main reason I decided to do it now is because the Atlus announcement thing is almost here, and also cause I saw a video on this topic by Thorgi’s Arcade (go watch it btw it’s good) and while I agree with a lot of what he said, there’s also some things I’d change, not just cause I disagree, but also cause I think it would be fun. Anyway enough beating around the bush, let’s do this
Gameplay
I’m a firm believer in the phrase, if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it, and the Arena games are already really good so not much to change. That being said, I still wanna change some things. First off though, we are keeping this 1 vs 1, no tag team matches. The arena games already have a lot of Mechanics going on and trying to keep everything as well as some new stuff WHILE adding a tag team button, yeah no let’s not outside of maybe a bonus mode.
This means I can’t add Batton Pass in as a new mechanic to represent P5, but I have a solution, that being Technicals. Status ailments already exist in this game, so how about when you inflict one and do a specific combo you do more damage, also providing risk vs reward as the player with the status will have a better idea of what the opponent will do making them more predictable. Also as for Persona’s, mostly everyone’s will be fully evolved, minus Yu cause him getting a final boss persona normally is a tad to OP, meanwhile the P5 characters will have their starting Persona’s, but they will evolve for big moves, like awakened mode supers and instant kills
I’m also borrowing Thorgi’s Arcade idea of having supports giving a slight buff in battle, like if you pick Fuuka your meter can build faster for a bit, meanwhile if you pick Futaba you’ll get an attack and defence buff. It’s the fairest way to include them without having to make them playable. I know Rise is already playable but this roster is going to have to be small as it is, and being a support doesn’t mean you can’t be DLC later.
Also, we’re not bringing back the Shadow Characters, just, we are not dealing with the likes of Shadow Naoto again.
:readmore:
Story
I am about to cop out a bit here, but Thorgi’s Arcade video had a really good idea for the story so I’ll just link it here https://youtu.be/yyB5rEM9UVU
youtube
To summarise for people who don’t want to watch, Nyarlathotep, the main villain from the Persona 2 games, has been gaining strength from all the suffering humanity has gone through due to 3, 4 and 5, and has gained enough strength to create a new Joker to try finish what he started and destroy the world. Mitsuru might think the Phantom Thieves are behind it cause this is clearly persona related and the fact that the leader of the PT’s is also named Joker is public knowledge, Naoto gets largely the same idea, Katsuya and Maya decide to have their own investigation, meanwhile the Phantom Thieves are trying to prove their innocence and help save the world. Nice excuse to bring everyone together, but who will the everyone be?
Base Roster
Okay, I know the dream is getting everyone from Ultimax back plus the new P5 characters, but given Arc System’s standard for small base rosters, I’m not holding my breath. The ideal would be everyone plus who I’m about to say for P2 and P5, but I’m keeping it… somewhat realistic. Anyway onto the actual size, 16 seems fair enough. One more than the most recent Guilty Gear game for a series that had pretty big success so that sound fair enough. Let’s get the obvious out of the way though, all the base 8 Phantom Thieves besides Futaba are making the cut
Okay so that’s obvious but how will they play? Starting off with Ren/Joker, Smash Bros already laid a great foundation with him being very fast on the ground and in the air plus being great at combos, so I see no reason to change that. Also no need for him to be a Jack of all trades either cause spoilers, Yu is coming back and he already fills that role.
As for the others, Ryuji I can see being a slugger charge hybrid. Basically starting out he hits pretty hard but is a bit on the slow side to compensate, but just like any good athlete, give him a chance to warm up, ie do a charge input, and he becomes a lot faster and has better combo potential. Or we could make him a toned down version of Little Mac where he’s great on the ground but he’s in trouble the second aerial combat is involved. Then there’s Morgana who with his ability to turn into cars and the fact he introduces thief tools like smoke bombs, I can see him being a faster but frailer successor to Teddie.
Then there’s Ann who, no doubt, she’s a Zoner, and with her fire she’ll be Yukiko’s sort of successor. However instead of healing, I’d implement the fact that she learns concentrate and have it so the more she charges it up, the stronger her attacks get, but the Meter will gradually go down over the match. Yusuke, as tempting as it is to cop out and say ‘have him play like Vergil in Marvel vs Capcom’, I have a different idea. Namely, take advantage of the fact that Yusuke can learn counter by having him be the defensive specialist, set up ice traps to freeze the opponent, and if they get close, he can either counter or go for some combos.
Then there’s Makoto who would definitely be a grappler. I mean, she practices Aikido and is really strong, she can 100% pull it off. Finally Haru…… TANK! I mean come on, Haru wields an axe, has a grenade launcher, and Melady is literally a dancing tank in a pink dress, it just makes too much sense. I’d also give her a bit of armor cause if she’s slow she at least needs a chance to get her attacks in.
Okay so that’s 7 out of our 16 slots down, and given that one slot will have to be saved for the Evil Joker who would be the villain, we’re halfway done with 3 games to go, lord help me.
Okay, starting this off with P4, I’m gonna give them more than the others purely because they were the focus of the originals and there’s less realistic cuts I can make compared to 2 and 3. To make things simple, every returning character would play the same, and as for the ones I’d bring back for the base roster, we’ve got Yu, Yosuke, Chie and Naoto. Why them specifically? Well Yu is the main character, Naoto being a detective would basically mean she’d be the one getting everyone involved in the first place, Chie is currently training to be a cop as confirmed in P5 so her getting called in makes sense, and Yosuke is the best investigator after Yu and Naoto, he’s always up for a mystery and the second he learns Yu is involved he’s joining in. I just couldn’t cut him.
Now before the really painful cuts, Persona 2 is really easy. Out of Innocent Sin party members, by the end of the series Maya is the only one left with a Persona, and Katsuya is not only older brother of Innocent Sin’s protag Tatsuya, but he’s also pretty important and a detective so he’s definetly the one Maya’s dragging into this. As for how they play, they both use guns like Naoto, but how I’d mix them up is with Katsuya, I’d let him attack while moving (unlike Naoto who has so stay still to fire) at the cost of less combo potential, meanwhile Maya dual wields her guns so she’ll probably play like Noel Vermillion from BlazBlue where she’d more or less just use the guns to get longer reach melee attacks instead of shooting.
Now, for the hard part. There’s only 2 slots left, one of them basically has to go to Mitsuru (not that I’m complaining I’d probably add her anyway) meaning now I have to choose between the rest of the Shadow Operatives/SEES for the last slot. I narrowed it down to the 3 that were in the original Arena cause they’re the most plot relevant, but that still meant I had to choose between Akihiko and Aigis. I ended up deciding on Aigis though cause A, with Labrys not making the base roster someone has to represent the robots of the series, and B, with Akihiko currently pulling a Ryu by travelling to get stronger, it makes more sense that Aigis would be closer and easier for Mitsuru to call up. Honestly I was tempted to bump the roster up to 17 so I could have both of them on the base roster, but this is ArcSystems, 16 is already kinda pushing it.
DLC
Given that this is a modern fighting game, DLC is inevitable. However since this DLC will likely be like Ultimax where the story acts to wrap up loose ends and have a new story, it’s going yo be big, especially since there’s going to be a fight with Nyaraloptep, so go big or go home in this case. Okay so first order of business, anyone who was in the previous arena games who wasn’t in the base roster is getting added back in, it’s only fair. That out of the way, the new faces I’d add are Futaba actually being playable now and the big 4 P5 characters I skipped, Akechi, Yoshizawa, and Sophie. Before anyone asks though, Sophie was added into a Dragalia Lost collab with Koei Techmo not being credited so she’s likely Atlus’s copyright so she's safe to add.
With that out of the way, how would they play? Starting with Futaba, I’d think she’d be the resident puppet fighter, sitting on top of Necinomicon and only occasionally adding in some of her own attacks like a projectile. Also she'd also probably act as a bit of a grappler cause her Persona has tentacles (no hentai jokes please) which have long reach so that'll be perfect for it. Next up is Akechi who I can see as semi being two characters in one. My basic idea is that at first Akechi will be fighting with Robin Hood and he'll be a solid jack of all trades with a slight focus on rush down. However once he goes into his awakened mode he'll gain Loki, which will increase his speed and attack strength, at the cost of his defence, turning him into a glass cannon.
Next is Yoshizawa, or 'Sumi as I like to call her, and her thing will be she's the mobility focused fighter, namely constantly moving around the stage and poking at her opponent while doing it, at the cost of being frail. Finally there’s Sophie who would be a combo focused zoner, as in her standard projectiles (the yo-yo’s) wouldn’t hurt that much on their own, but she can string them together into the fancy yo-yo tricks to potentially do big damage. As for how much this DLC would cost, it’s going to be very big, so €25 to €30 sounds fair
I think that more or less covers my thoughts. I could keep going on about this for a while, but I think this is a good place to stop. Hope you like my idea!
#Youtube#persona 5#persona 3#persona 4#persona 2#persona arena#phantom thieves#investigation team#SEES#shadow operatives#happy 25th anniversary Persona!
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Dark Deity Pre-Release Character Opinions
This isn't actually a tier list, but someone helpfully created a template for this game and it's as good a way as any to do a little visual showcase for this cast. Characters are listed by their class sets, which are fixed but offer a nice variety in terms of promotion options. My opinions on each are as follows, from left to right in each row. Most characters have introductory profiles written up on the DD subreddit, if you'd like to check them out yourself.
Warriors
Alexa
You know those buff female blacksmiths in Echoes and Three Houses that some people wish were playable characters? That's pretty much Alexa. Can't say I'm too hyped about her myself, but warrior + tomboyish female character will do that for me...or not do it, I suppose.
Benji
Seems to have been written to become a meme, and I still can't decide whether that's clever or stupid. Kind of like Raphael only with a bigger emphasis on training than on eating, and with brotherly devotion replaced with brotherly angst that might theoretically go somewhere if the character isn't reduced to being a goofy joke all the time.
Fenton
Doesn't have a character profile, so as far as I know he's just a generic dwarf because DD swaps out its inspiration's loli dragons and other vaguely fetishistic shapeshifters for the two most cliché non-human races in Western fantasy. I wonder whether his VA will voice him with a Scottish accent, to go all in on the (ironic?) laziness. There are a handful of elves in the playable cast, but Fenton is the only dwarf so for better or worse he's representing.
Helena
She's the embodiment of the FE exotic swordswoman archetype, but curiously DD seems to have turned that broad ethnic brush inward. Helena's last name is apparently a Japanese verb, her art shows her with a spear (as in the association of the naginata with women), and she studied and trained in a monastery that seems to blend elements of Buddhism and Shintoism. Not sure how all that fits into the larger setting yet, but at this point she's still got more background development than Petra.
Irving
Our Hero, the one front and center on the cover art. He sounds a bit on the blander side as far as lords or lord equivalents go, with his most promising hook for me being his established friendship with Garrick (see the ranger section). At best I can hope for a bit of a romantic friendship dynamic, although they sound a bit rougher overall as they're military academy schoolmates I wonder why DD went with that instead of lordlings of different territories.
Rogues
Brooke
Looks like Camilla; has a backstory like Niles. Cleavage aside though the sexual element of both is toned down here, and there might be some sapphic bodyguard shenanigans to be had as her current employers are a pair of highborn sisters further down this list.
Cia
For some reason she reminds me of Tressa from Octopath Traveler, only bustier and a bartender rather than a merchant. She's still just a small town girl with big city dreams, and this being a tactical war game following those dreams will inevitably involve stabbing people.
Corvan
Hard to judge him at the moment, as his profile was only the second written and so isn't terribly detailed. He's a moon elf with scholarly interests, apparently. Still, as of right now he's the only rogue who doesn't slot loosely into either a ninja/assassin or pirate aesthetic, so that's kind of neat. Also, he's one of several characters to have FEH-esque beach fanart made of them already, so clearly someone's into elf twinks.
Ford
A former officer at the military academy Irving attends and a smuggler who dotes on his niece, Ford has major dad energy. Per developer reveals he's also bi, and as I mentioned before I'm totally fine with that. More bear sex, please - but what guy in this cast would hop in the sack with Ford? Only time will tell. His personal skill makes him extra dodgy, which combined with the mug of booze in his art makes me think of WoW brewmasters who dodge-tank through the power of being wasted.
Wren
Like Brooke, he's an assassin from a foreign nation - in his case the same one as Helena so presumably he's a not!Japanese ninja. I'm not really feeling him at the moment. What is it about Hao'Fen (the city/territory he and Helena come from) and massive families? That comes up in both their backstories.
Rangers
Caius
I feel like this is the third or fourth character to grow up in some slum or other; at least they've all been in different towns so far. The relative rarity of noble characters is certainly different from FE, but it reduces the political stakes which leaves me wondering a bit about the story. Anyway, Caius is a small town desert hunter who learned how to make arrows out of animal bones. How aerodynamic is bone, I wonder?
Garrick
Irving's BFF and seemingly the Hector to Irving's Eliwood, only with more flirting (his intro doesn't specify that Garrick is flirting with women, but I'm not going so far as to say that indicates anything). He's the academy headmaster's son, with a strained relationship with his father for some of that hotheaded lead tension. Notably, his VA is the one I'm most familiar with in this cast, as he's the voice of Revali from Breath of the Wild as well as love interests in two different erotic gay dating sims I've played. In other words, I know what this guy sounds like making awkwardly simulated sex noises...and I have no idea what to do with that information.
Maeve
She's a half-elf with a very storied background, so much so that it's all rather hard to follow her exploits when little of what's being described has been fully revealed yet. I'm expecting her to be a mid/lategame recruit, unless she's dropped in early on to reveal that (sun) elves exist or something.
Rose
Imagine if Bernadetta were a commoner, although we can only hope they'll be less screaming. Alternatively, Neimi without an obvious boyfriend. She won the beach contest so now she has official swimsuit art, which I guess makes her a top-tier waifu in the eyes of players who care about such things.
Sophia
A ranger in the "has animal companions" sense, although whether that will come into play mechanically aside from her personal skill - Butter the ferret can attack with her! - remains to be seen. Her preference for the company of animals is explained by a lack of social graces, so prepare for klutz-related humor. Of note to those interested in F/F is that her introduction specifically brings up her connection with Sloane (see the mage section) and how close the two of them are.
Clerics
Faust
Doesn't have a profile yet, so not much to go off other than his decidedly unhinged look. The cleric class set does feature some darker-flavored options, so presumably he's more naturally aligned with those. His VA was announced to be the YouTuber behind So This is Basically Fire Emblem and other similar videos, so I'm picturing a kooky and somewhat demented Henry type.
Lincoln
Also lacks a profile at time of writing...clerics get so little love. The Discord has identified him a bland blond paladin sort, but as we know from the likes of Perceval and especially Dimitri that doesn't necessarily mean he'll be boring (or not gay).
Maren
The soft-spoken healer type, and also a childhood friend of Garrick although her intro sibling-zones him but then this game is inspired by FE so who knows if that'll stick. She may have some interesting thoughts on the theology of the setting, as there seem to be several faiths and she's said to have a complicated relationship with her own. I will be utterly shocked if she's not either Irving or Garrick's eventual love interest.
Samara
One of two princesses of the country of Aramor, which appears to be loosely inspired by the Middle East. Heaven help us if the Khalidstans ever get wind of this game. Unfortunately aside from her bond with her older sister (in the mage section) and the knowledge that Brooke has been hired as their bodyguard there's not much to Samara at the moment. Hopefully the clerics all do some comparative theology in their bond conversations, and this isn't like Sacred Stones where none of the clergy characters from different countries ever compare notes. The succession crisis involving Samara and her sister vs. their less-loved cousin the king's son might be a major plot hook? It's still too early to tell.
Vesta
Much like Maeve her backstory has entirely too much going on to really follow at the moment. Basically she's a human who grew up in a sun elf city because Reasons (seriously, I don't know what they are) and was called to a clerical vocation and also something about taking a journey. Has an unfortunate case of silly boob armor, which unlike a certain other character probably won't be rectified this close to release.
Mages
Alden
Maren's precocious younger brother, also basically Ricken up to and including the comically oversized hat. As a unit he follows the tradition of Donnel, Mozu, and Cyril of having a personal skill that buffs his stat gains, so it's safe to say he's a growth unit. At least he'll probably join early.
Liberty
Comes with dead brother angst and a connection to the "aspects" system that will hopefully make more sense once I've played the game and know how it functions both mechanically and from a storytelling perspective. Otherwise she looks to be a busty older - as in, not a teenage - mage in the vein of Calill.
Monroe
Got the first ever character profile, so it's really short. He's the son of a duke and sounds like a bit of a snob, albeit one that can make explosions happen to back up his haughtiness. He's got some scarring around his eye that surely must come with a story. Someone also made featured fanart of him in Heroes summer banner style, so I guess he's got somebody horny already.
Sara
Samara's half-sister, with comparable fantasy Middle Eastern flavoring. Has an interest in discovering magical artifacts and being a just ruler in the event she winds up on the throne (so, almost definitely), and she and Samara travel around with the assassin Brooke as their bodyguard. There's maybe some lesbian possibilities there? Either way, Sara has enough development where I could see her as a major supporting character.
Sloane
Comes with a genuinely fascinating backstory involving manipulative double-crossing parents, an education in the cruelties and deceptions of social life (reflected in her personal skill), and disinheritance - and yet it's all likely to be overshadowed because she may go down as DD's equivalent to Fates's face-touching. Her initial art is even more revealing than Camilla's, and while the developers later gave her a more modest redesign after negative feedback I get the feeling that this controversy may live on. Her introduction mentions her hunting for both heirs and heiresses and she's now been linked to Sophia, so safe to say she's another confirmed bi character.
Adepts
While the other class sets are standard fantasy fare adepts require a bit more explanation. They have innate magical abilities and appear to be feared and distrusted most places in the setting. Functionally they remind me of adepts from the Golden Sun series, if anyone is familiar with those games. The classes in the adept group tend more toward physical/magical hybridization than those of other sets, so that will probably be their mechanical niche. Oh, and their default weapon type is lances, which is a plus in my book.
Aurima
Along with Caius and the royal sisters, he's another one from the desert nation of Aramor. An arena fighter who got touched by a god in what I assume was a non-sexual way and came out of it with a new appearance and adept powers. Also, he's confirmed to be over 40 - how often do you see that in games like this?
Bianca
Looks like a more carefree Mathilda from Echoes. She's a ranking officer in the Delian army which sounds like it'd sit uneasily with her adept powers. Her profile describes Lincoln as her close friend, which is still about the most we know about him at this point.
Elias
This guy's writing plays more into the fairly standard coding that comes with adept powers, as we know they manifested shortly before he was going to confess his feelings to a male paramour and afterwards he was forced to flee his homeland and wander the world. He also spent time among dwarves, so insert short bear jokes here? In the present he's attached to Cia in what seems to be a platonic way; maybe she's a fruit fly, or maybe she just likes having a friend who can light drunken assholes on fire? Elias is definitely into guys, but I would still be a little surprised if he turned out to be totally gay as that's such a rarity in these sorts of things.
Iris
Oof, another lengthy and rough backstory. Iris had better parents than Sloane, but she also had to deal with permanent facial scarring (hence the mask) after a bandit kidnapping and the stigma of manifesting as an adept pretty much eliminating the prospects of her making a good political marriage. Also, she and Elias both come from Neullais, which is prominently featured on the continental map on the DD subreddit but doesn't seem to come up all too often in backstories. I think it's a not!France? Hard to tell.
Thae'lanel
A World of Warcraft blood elf, flowing anime hair and apostrophe'd name and all. I like WoW so that's not terribly grating, but as he has no profile yet there's little else I can say. Thae'lanel is mentioned in Maeve's introduction as a member of a sun elf group called the Exiled, which I'm guessing is tied to his adept status in some way. He and Maeve form yet another adventurer/bodyguard duo.
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Final Fantasy VI Review
Year: 1994
Original Platform: Super Nintendo (originally released as Final Fantasy III in the West)
Also available on: Playstation One (Final Fantasy Anthology), Game Boy Advance, Android, iOS, Steam
Version I Played: Game Boy Advance
Synopsis:
Terra is a slave used by the Gestahl Empire because of her magic powers. The Gestahl Empire seeks to hunt down espers (summons) and harness their powers too, effectively killing them. Terra escapes their clutches and falls into the hands of the Returners – a small band of rebels hoping to return freedom to the world.
Gameplay:
Final Fantasy VI doesn’t exactly add anything super-new to the gameplay unlike its predecessors. That doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong or boring with it. It has an ATB system and each character, like in Final Fantasy IV, specialize in certain jobs. Therefore, each character has a special unique ability that no other character can perform.
I find the style of the game unique for its time because you can easily split the game into two parts. There's a pivotal point in the story that changes everything. The first half is a typical story-driven RPG. The second half is actually more open world. With a huge cast of characters, you are not actually required to end the game with all of them. The second half of the game offers a unique style where you can take on the final boss with what you’ve got, or hunt down the rest of the cast members and then take on the final boss.
Graphics:
This is the SNES in its prime. Character sprites are much bigger, and the world looks so much more detailed and vibrant. Shadow looked weird though. Sometimes you had to squint to discern what his face actually looked like. Other than that, the game looks great! It’s notable for utilizing more graphics power from the SNES in some cutscenes, and also when you fly an airship.
The PlayStation One version again has a FMV sequence that hasn’t aged well at all. Okay, maybe it’s a tad bit better, but that’s not saying much.
Story:
One of the biggest debates in recent Final Fantasy fandom is asking whether Final Fantasy VI or Final Fantasy VII is better. While I won’t get into Final Fantasy VII much now, it was always the most popular game in the series. It seems that in recent years, gamers have retroactively judged Final Fantasy VI as the best Final Fantasy game of all time.
I wish I had appreciated more when I was a kid. When I first played it then, I actually despised it. I was much more critical about stories back then. For whatever reason, I didn't think the world building was coherent. I also wasn’t used to Final Fantasy games by then.
I finished Final Fantasy VI about four years ago, and that time I was taken by it. I became enlightened and completely changed my opinion of it from sour to sweet. I wish I could erase my memory on playing it only so that I could experience it for the first time and appreciate it for the first time. I had already known most about what happened in the story, so I really wish I could experience the shock and awe of it brand new. Final Fantasy VI does things with its story that no other Final Fantasy game has done. It has drama, it has brevity, it has an amazing cast of heroes and villains. To date, it has the most playable characters in a Final Fantasy game.
The plot even incorporates a little opera that you sit through.
At first glance, Final Fantasy VI seems derivative. There is once again an evil empire seeking to control the world, and there is once again a rebellion. People often make the parallel to Star Wars, much like Final Fantasy II. The name “Returners” doesn’t quite stick with me personally as the name of an epic rebellion. Final Fantasy VI also created the recurring characters Biggs and Wedge, a further nod to Star Wars.
But you have to look past the simple setup of a ragtag rebellion fighting an evil empire. First of all, the steampunk setting is one of the most original in a Final Fantasy game to date, and hasn’t really been revisited. The world dabbles in late 19th century architecture, with fine arts and opera. The empire is only beginning to realize the ancient power of magic, and combines it with technology to make “Magitek”, starting a sort of “industrial revolution”. The opening scene to this game is one of the most memorable. Terra, under the empire’s mind control device, in her magitek armor with Biggs and Wedge, trudging through the snow as the opening credits roll by, comes off as a real live-action movie.
While the official creators say that there isn’t a main character, I still say it’s Terra. If not, she’s at least the most important. She propels the plot forward. She’s one of those rare great female protagonists in a video game RPG. She’s more than just “a strong female character”. She has depth as she tries to find her place in the world, and other characters, such as the thief Locke, try to help her.
Also, just like Final Fantasy V, Final Fantasy VI has its own villainous goofball - Ultros.
He’s not quite as charming as Gilgamesh, but he acts in the same manner regardless.
Each character has their own story – no matter how small or big. They’ve all lost loved ones, or suffered hardships, and the central theme about the entire game is really about grief and dealing with it even in the face of nihilism.
Nihilism comes in the form of Kefka - Emperor Gestahl's court mage. Kefka did the whole nihilistic evil clown thing before Heath Ledger's Joker in The Dark Knight. Kefka retroactively rose to popularity, rivaling longtime favorite villain Sepiroth from Final Fantasy VII as the best Final Fantasy villain.
Final Fantasy VI deals with heavy topics. I was shocked that it even dared to show a scene of attempted suicide. Things get dark. Really dark. But Final Fantasy VI deals the darkness with such elegance. I admire its ability to treat such heavy plots for basically children.
The ending to this game is probably the most epic out of any Final Fantasy game. I can gush with details but this is meant to be a spoiler - free review. I just have to say – E P I C. But the most admirable thing I just have to say is that it treats Terra’s journey with the utmost respect and tact. It doesn’t try to define her by having some hokey romantic subplot.
Music:
Another legendary score. Given the tone and atmosphere of the story, the score reflects something darker. Right away, the opening titles before you begin is accompanied by foreboding music. With the exception of battle themes, the story demanded that Uematsu put away most of his drumming and rock undertones for a more conventional, instrumental score with pathos. It sounds most like the score to an actual fantasy movie, very operatic and Wagner-like.
Shadow’s theme sounds inspired by typical Western movie fare, being that he is a drifter. In fact, Final Fantasy VI’s score is diverse in tones with its character themes, which is obvious once you think about where all the characters come from. Cyan’s theme has Asian influences. The theme for the Veldt, a stretch of wilderness, has a jungle beat. Then of course there’s the opera music. Many Final Fantasy concerts, such as Distant Worlds, play the opera about the fictional characters Draco and Maria. Kekfa, the villain, has a jovial but sinister theme scattered throughout. Terra’s theme is practically the main theme of the game, and it too is referenced throughout.
The end credits song is a whopping 21 minutes and 36 seconds. It goes through every single character’s theme and more. The entire soundtrack is 3 hours long. I don’t think any other game at the time had a soundtrack that long.
Notable Theme:
“Dancing Mad”
To me, Dancing Mad is Nobuo Uematsu's magnum opus. It is a sprawling 8-minute epic for the final battle.
youtube
Verdict:
A must-play. Any RPG fan will love this game. Any RPG fan SHOULD play this game. There’s nothing obnoxious or vainglorious here. Every subsequent Final Fantasy game tried to live up to its drama and scope, but with all of them falling short ever so slightly.
Direct Sequel?
No. Thank God.
#final fantasy#final fantasy vi#final fantasy kefka#kefka#kefka palazzo#square enix#fantasy rpg#rpg#video games#video game rpg#onvideogames#terra branford#terra
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What was the honest reaction to Sonic 06 back in 2006?
It was a long time ago, so I can only really speak to my own perspective.
Sonic 2006 was the time that Sega’s marketing department really started cranking the hype train really, really hard. Sonic 2006 was announced as a fresh start. A soft reboot. Sonic Team said they were treating it like “the first Sonic game on the Sega Genesis.” You still had Tails, and Knuckles, and Shadow, but it was the start of a new era. A new type of Sonic the Hedgehog. More serious, more realistic, more “epic.”
At this point, there was no reason to necessarily distrust any of that. Yes, Sonic games had been slipping in quality, and yes, Sega was still more or less pretending that everything was “okay.” But that was always in the typical, “we’re trying to sell a video game and not go bankrupt” sense. This felt like a tacit acknowledgement that things weren’t so great and they were going to start over and refocus. Set things right.
Early gameplay footage looked rough. I distinctly remember a Gametrailers hands-on where they were demoing the Mach Speed Zone in Kingdom Valley, and the Sega representative was very clear and upfront that the game wasn’t done yet, and all of the empty space Sonic was running through would be filled in later. (It wasn’t.) There was also the typical debate over the TGS 2006 “Bringing it Home” playable demo, where people argued then, too, that the game wasn’t done yet, and not to judge things too harshly. The final version will be better.
The final version also wasn’t done yet. So, y’know.
I had effectively bought an Xbox 360 for this game. I was broke as per usual, but I’d gotten lucky and won a Gametrailers video competition, which landed me $1000 in Gamestop gift cards. I bought a PS2, a Nintendo DS, and an Xbox 360, plus more than a dozen games between the three platforms. I knew there would be more Xbox 360 games besides Sonic 2006, and I’d even originally wanted a 360 primarily for Elder Scrolls Oblivion, but the simple fact is that once the money was in my hands and I spent it, Sonic 2006 was the only actual Xbox 360 game I owned.
Or was going to own, anyway. I think I’d won the contest in September or October of 2006, when Sonic came out in November. So I bought the 360 a few weeks early with some original Xbox games, and spent the interim with Spider-man 2, Ninja Gaiden Black, and the copy of Halo 2 I borrowed from my cousin.
Sonic 2006 was the first game I’d ever pre-ordered. The second game, pre-ordered on the same day, was The Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess for the Gamecube. I still have the tiny pre-order statue that came with Sonic. His gloves and socks, once white, have begun to yellow with age, and the skin tone on his face and body is turning an ashy gray.
Even 72 hours before launch, there was not a clear picture what Sonic 2006 actually was. Sega was deliberately obfuscating certain features; early in development they’d sworn up and down that there were only three playable characters in the game, something that blatantly wasn’t true. Perhaps it was miscommunication from Japan, but it meant they were now going out of their way to hide how many other playable characters were actually in the game. I naively distrusted most (if not all) professional reviewers back then, and the earliest scores for Sonic 2006 were all over the map.
As a Sonic fan, you kind of had to know how to read between the lines on the more negative reviews, because we were definitely in the era where it felt like critics were starting to dogpile on the Sonic franchise now that Sega was a third party developer. There weren’t a lot of professional reviews you could trust regarding Sonic games, or at least, that’s what it felt like. This was the rise of the podcast, and snarky hosts were taking whatever low hanging fruit they could get.
I remember waking up on launch day -- friends had gotten up early and picked theirs up in the morning, when I’d rolled out of bed somewhere closer to noon (or maybe even afternoon). I had plans to pick up my copy later that evening, after sunset. My friends did not sound happy, but again, there was always this vibe of “Wait and see.” They had only just started the game. First impressions were still too fresh to really call.
But I had this moment, this cold spot in the pit of my stomach, where I thought “Maybe I can cancel the pre-order and get Gears of War instead?” Reviews for Gears seemed pretty good. I’d probably be happy with it instead of Sonic.
I couldn’t let myself do that. I was a Sonic fan. This was the first big Sonic game of a new generation. A new start. I bought the console for this. First game I ever pre-ordered. The second Sonic game in the history of the franchise I’d bought on launch day. This was it. This was the event. No backing down. Besides, Sonic 2006 was a big 15th Anniversary celebration game. They wouldn’t make such a big deal about the anniversary without just cause, right? Sonic 2006 was going to be great. I just needed to calm down.
So we drove out to Gamestop -- and it was the sort of thing where I think we couldn’t do the pre-order at my local Gamestop for some reason, so this one was a town or two over. It was a journey. I was nervous the whole way there. Something told me I was making a mistake. But I had to do this.
I think it may have been starting to rain as we rolled up on the store. It was around 8pm, and people were starting to camp out on the sidewalk. Literally camp out, tents and all, because of the rain. Today was the launch date for Sonic 2006, but tomorrow was the launch of the Playstation 3. These guys were here for Gamestop’s “Midnight Madness” launch event. They were going to be some of the first to get a PS3. I was probably the last person to pick up a Sonic 2006 pre-order.
Sonic 2006 might have been the first Sonic game to ever make me angry. I’d had a lot of internet debates on how I felt about Sonic Adventure 2, but most of those amounted to splitting hairs about things that felt disappointing when compared to the original Sonic Adventure. I was not angry then, I was simply let down. I was similarly let down when I finally got a chance to play Sonic Heroes. But again, not angry. Baffled, maybe. A little sad. But not angry.
With Sonic 2006, I slammed head first in to all of my excitement and uncertainty at 200mph. This was a Sonic game unlike anything I’d ever played before, and in all of the worst possible ways. Enough has been said about the quality of the game that I don’t need to describe anything that’s wrong with it -- also because literally everything was wrong with it. Perhaps the first video game I’d ever played, ever, on any platform, that actually fought back against your efforts to play it. A disaster in every sense of the word. A broken nightmare. After finishing Sonic’s story, I was mad. How could they let this happen? What was wrong with them?
I was less angry after having finished Shadow’s story. Shadow had even buggier gameplay than Sonic, but it also felt more complex, more action-oriented. His story was better, too -- instead of the sappy Princess love story, Shadow’s story was about how the world was against him, and the crossroads that brought him to: rise above his past and strive to be a better person, or give in to the temptations of evil? It was still dumb as heck, but it was less dumb than Sonic’s story.
By the time the credits rolled, I had accepted the fact that this game was a mess. More of a mess than any Sonic game ever had been before. It was clearly a deeply unfinished game. Friends theorized maybe they could patch the game, because that was a thing games could get now. Sonic 2006 could still be saved. The PS3 version wouldn’t be out for another month, surely that means they’re working on a fix, right? Some were even theorizing over an achievement called “Nights of Kronos” -- it mentioned a “complete ending to the last hidden story.” Perhaps that meant there was going to be more? Maybe we got the bad ending, and a better, more finished ending was waiting for us on the disc somewhere?
There wasn’t. And no patch ever fixed the game. That was Sonic 2006 -- the kiss, the loading screens, the strange mannequin NPCs, the stiff controls, the glitchy physics, the empty overworlds, the bizarre dialog, the plotholes and time paradoxes, that’s just what the game was, and was always going to be, forever.
Before Sonic 2006, you could say that 3D Sonic games were bad, but there was always a place to defend them from. They had problems, but they were never irredeemable. Sonic Heroes may have had frustrating controls and repetitive level design, but it had great art direction, nice music, and fun concepts. They were always trying, dang it, and it was obvious to see that.
Sonic 2006 felt irredeemable. Offensively terrible. A failure on such a level that it was hard to comprehend. Beyond simply “a new low” for the franchise. This felt like rock bottom. It was the kind of bad that spread like a virus. Even good games, like Sonic 2 on the Sega Genesis, felt notably tarnished by the existence of Sonic 2006. It threatened to ruin the entire franchise by proximity alone. For some, it probably did. I definitely had a moment where I wondered if I would ever enjoy a Sonic game in the same way ever again. They were all tainted now. Infected by memories of Sonic 2006, the game that was supposed to save the franchise, but condemned it to the lowest pits of hell.
In isolation, that might have been the end for me. I might have continued to drift away, bit by bit, until I found greener hills outside of the Sonic franchise.
I’ve said this before, but what saved me was getting hired to write for TSSZ News. Now, suddenly, I was paid to play and write about Sonic games. It was a duty. And it helped that the first Sonic game I reviewed for TSSZ ended up being Sonic Unleashed, a game I continue to openly gush about to this day, more than a decade after its release.
But never forget that Sonic 2006 was such a disaster that it nearly made me give up Sonic the Hedgehog. It really was that bad.
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Ultimate^2
Super Smash Brothers Ultimate has finally unveiled its final DLC character, with reactions ranging fully across the spectrum. Hot takes abound.
I mean, statistically, just about every possible opinion is going to be represented. There were at least 500,000 people watching the reveal stream, and that’s not including those viewing through restreams. That’s insane for a trailer of any kind, let alone for a console-exclusive video game DLC.
Now that it’s been like… a day and a bit, I think most of the spciest takes have probably been made, which is the perfect time for me to chip in with my own milder opinion. More of a butter chicken, really.
(no images in this one i’m lazy tonight)
I figure I’m this late already, might as well drop some notes on the other ones first.
Piranha Plant was kind of the definition of an unexpected pick. Not only was it from an already well-represented franchise, being fucking Mario, it’s also just…not a character. As such it makes an odd choice for a DLC fighter…except for the part where it was free. If you owned the game in its first month. And frankly, I don’t think people would have been happy if it wasn’t. As it is, though, it’s a perfectly fine character- surprisingly cute, actually.
I’m unsurprised about Joker’s inclusion. With how huge Persona 5 became in both Japan and the west, capitalizing on it to make a shitload of money makes perfect sense. The character plays well enough, though the meter gimmick was kind of a daunting sign of things to come. All that in mind, though, the most surprising thing about Joker being in the game is that they still haven’t put P5 on the Switch. Atlus please.
Hero and Banjo/Kazooie were announced on the same night, and I distinctly recall someone saying that this was one for the Japanese audience and one for the Americans. I mean, I’ve never played Dragon Quest, so I guess I fell into the latter? Both series have a long, well-regarded pedigree (Banjo’s lack of recent offerings notwithstanding), so both arguably deserve their respective positions. Hero is the much more notable character gameplaywise, though, with the incredibly complex mana and spellcasting mechanics. Complaints about RNG in Smash aren’t completely unfounded- though it has existed in the past in the form of, say, Luigi’s misfiring side-B- but I know a lot of people think Hero took it too far. If I’m honest, though, the weirdest thing is just having Akira Toriyama-ass 3D models in the game. Banjo’s gameplay is…awkward. The kit is kind of a mess, but at least the gimmicks weren’t going too hard, you know?
Next was Terry, perhaps the most obscure character on the entire list in 2021. I actually really like Terry in this game- while he’s still trying to emulate a similar feel to Ryu/Ken, the difference feels more natural, if that makes sense. Maybe it’s because I’ve never really devoted significant time to them, but Terry’s kit feels easier to work within than the Shotos when going between characters.
Finally for the first Pass, we had Byleth. I think it’s for the best that they announced the second Fighter’s Pass before this released, because if both 4 and Ultimate had ended their run on Fire Emblem DLCs then people would have been pissed. I mean, people were already pissed, but like…moreso. As someone who has played Three Houses, I do think the game is worth celebrating, but having yet another Fire Emblem Protagonist (read: basically a blank slate) in the game over all the substantially more interesting characters 3H has to offer is just really frustrating. Also the final smash looks like dogshit, like FE3H has overall worse animations than Smash for obvious reasons but I’m pretty sure this attack looked better the first time around.
FP2 opened with Min Min, which brings ARMS to the table. ARMS. The only first-party fighting game Nintendo has outside of Smash, so it looks a bit less weird next to everything else but…come on, man. I think this was the most confusing pick of all of them- the game came out in 2017, and having Min Min in Smash would serve as promotion for a sequel…which hasn’t been announced. There was a graphic novel in the works, but it was cancelled earlier this year. Oops? At least the stage was fun.
As much as playing them is awkward and complex, the Minecraft addition was fitting. Only the best-selling game around. I think people weren’t sure if Microsoft would go for it, but they let us have Banjo, so sure. I’m mostly just annoyed that they couldn’t get any of the songs from the actual game in there- like, you got one in from the fucking mobile game, but you couldn’t just get C418 on the phone?
Sephiroth is definitely one of the hype-ier releases from this pass. The character is iconic, as is his theme and his home game. I’ve never played any Final Fantasy game, but I can still respect the name. Once I remember how to spell it. The whole bossfight aspect to his release was also quite cool, while it lasted.
On the other hand, I have no love for Pyra nor Mythra. There’s so much wrong with these ones, frankly. They’re another swordy character, immediately following Sephiroth too, and they go back on Smash’s very deliberate decision to split characters like Zelda/Sheik and Samus/ZSS up (Yes I know Pokemon Trainer does the same thing but I have a lot more leniency for them). Add in their being from a JRPG much less well-known or remembered than the previous couple characters and the designs being…questionable, I have a big issue with the whole thing. This was also around when I kinda stopped playing the game in general, and they definitely didn’t help pull me back in.
Kazuya might have, though. With the exception of him and Sephiroth, all the characters from the Fighter’s Passes were pretty much protagonist-types, but this motherfucker pulses with the essence of bad guy. What I’m saying is that he’s fucking cool, and while he’s ludicrously complex, that makes perfect sense since…I mean just look at the combo lists from Tekken 7. His inclusion also kinda rounds out the list of biggest fighting game franchises out there being rep’d in the game, though I imagine now I’m going to have stans from Mortal Kombat or whatever on my back. They’re not going to put a fatality-capable character in Smash, guys!
Finally, this rounds us around to the original point of this article. Let’s talk about Sora. And by that I mean…I don’t really have a huge amount to say about him. Kingdom Hearts is a franchise that completely passed me by growing up, and I don’t think I have the time or energy to devote to it now. I’m sure it’s good, people seemed really excited for him to be in the game so they have to have gotten that love from somewhere, but I don’t share that feeling.
That’s not to say that I don’t think he deserves a slot. The idea of “deserving a slot” in Smash Bros is kind of an odd concept, even though it’s come up a lot so far this post. But a slot in this roster isn’t just a place in a popular fighting game, because at this point, Smash is kind of a museum of (mostly Nintendo) games- and so having representation is a forever acknowledgment that the franchise is, or has been, an icon to so many. Kingdom Hearts, to my knowledge, has 100% earned that position, and so Sora getting to be playable here makes perfect sense. He wasn’t my pick (Touhou representation never I guess), but I’m happy for those who wanted him.
As far as the actual gameplay looks, he reads like a character that kept in mind what people didn’t like about Hero when he released. It’s another sword-based character, which I think at this point speaks more about the demographic of video game characters than it does about Smash. But I appreciate that the Magic Bullshit is toned down, and that it’s also his only real gimmick (The 3-hit combo feature is A Thing, but other characters e.g. Bayonetta have already done that, so whatever). His recovery potential looks patently absurd- like he just gets Pikachu/Pichu’s Up-B as a Side-B that can also be chained with his actual Up-B? This guy better be light as hell or he’s going to be super hard to take out. I dunno, I think he looks solidly fun enough- more dynamic and aerial than the other swordfighters, at least- and that’s good enough for me.
And I guess that marks the end of Smash Ultimate. Not with a bang, but with a key…dude. It’s been a very solid run, the game managing to keep itself fresh across several years of development, even as other games have risen and fallen. Smash is kind of forever at this point, I think, though the finality of Ultimate’s ultimate character implies that this particular iteration may be coming to its end. And seeing as it is always one Smash per console, I wouldn’t be shocked if the Switch itself was nearing its endgame as well.
Okay but also it’s pretty funny how they heavily censored everything Disney out of Sora’s DLC except for that little Mickey charm on the trailer, like how much must that one shot have cost them, was it even remotely worth it, I don’t know but I kinda want to
#ramble#ssbu#ssbu spoilers#ssbu dlc#smash ultimate#video games#still mad they didn't put a song in with the doomguy costume
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15 Best SNES Platformers Ever
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Platformers have long been an entry point for new gamers. Video games may have greatly expanded in scope over the years and now offer so many different genres and experiences that it’s nearly impossible to keep track of them, but that’s actually a big part of the reason why it’s still so much fun to look back at these timeless games where the main objective was often to simply jump from one place to the next.
There is no console that celebrated the brilliance of the platformer better than the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. The SNES may be best known for expanding the adventure and RPG genres, as well as raising a generation’s expectations for video game graphics, but few consoles have come close to rivaling the Super Nintendo’s library of classic platforming titles.
It’s hard to narrow this list down to just 15 games, but from action-based platformers to pure platforming classics, these are the best examples of this timeless genre that the SNES gifted the gaming world.
15. Jelly Boy
Putting you in control of a jelly baby (a candy that is popular in the U.K. and surrounding areas), Jelly Boy was only released in Europe when it debuted in 1994. The game has a colorful aesthetic and some unique platforming elements built around the main character’s ability to transform into a myriad of vehicles, tools, and other objects. Those metamorphoses will be familiar to anyone who has played a Wario Land title or Kirby’s Epic Yarn.
Admittedly, Jelly Boy‘s mechanics can be a little clunky and the controls are deficient compared to some of the later games on this list. Still, you will be hard-pressed to find a more original platformer on the console that isn’t made by Nintendo themselves. You can even play it now via the Nintendo Switch Online service.
14. Demon’s Crest
Released by Capcom in 1994 as the third game featuring the character Firebrand (who debuted in the Ghosts ‘n Goblins series), Demon’s Crest is a forgotten gem in the SNES catalog. It adds some variety to the traditional action-platformer by giving the playable protagonist the ability to fly and shoot fireballs as well as access other upgradeable attacks and maneuvers as their quest rolls along. That feature adds a little Zelda-like adventuring to the mix, and you’ll certainly need those late-game power-ups because this platformer means business.
There are many difficult platformers on this list, but few boast the plethora of boss battles seen in this one. It’s actually similar to Mega Man in terms of its fighting style and jumping requirements, so if you are looking for an alternative to the Blue Bomber that keeps the basics of the genre intact, you’ll have a hard time doing better than Demon’s Crest.
13. Joe & Mac
Joe & Mac is honestly a fairly basic platformer for its era. What gets it onto this list of the best games in that genre, though, is the creativity and execution of its setting.
The game sees you control two different cavemen who rely on basic prehistoric items such as fire, bats, bones, etc. The bosses are pretty cool (dinosaurs are fun for all ages) and the controls hold up well enough that you won’t ever feel like you have to force the avatar into doing something that the interface simply won’t allow for. The game spawned a sequel that was also released on SNES, but the original is unique enough to get the nod here.
12. Super Ghouls ‘n Ghosts
Despite what the title may suggest, Super Ghouls ‘n Ghosts is actually the third game in the Ghosts ‘n Goblins series. Like the previous games, this classic sees you battle various monsters and bosses that fit the setting nicely. Although the game is maybe a little too action-heavy to get the nod over the SNES’ best platformers, it uses its platforming elements to elevate the entire experience.
The difficulty is insanely high and the sheer amount of sprites on screen at once can lead to some lag that only adds to the frustrations of this arduous journey, but the game has a way of keeping things light and humorous when the frustration sets in. How many other games see the protagonist stripped of their armor, quite literally, when he takes too many hits?
11. Donkey Kong Country 3: Dixie Kong’s Double Trouble!
The third installment in the beloved Donkey Kong Country trilogy certainly isn’t hated by many, but it is usually viewed as a step down from the first two games. Whether that has to do with a change in composer for the soundtrack, the inability to play as Donkey or Diddy, or the fact it was released after the Nintendo 64 was on the market, the title’s sometimes mixed reputation often prevents it from being appreciated as a divine platforming experience.
The environments and storytelling in this game are well-executed. If you’re observant, you may even notice that the developers were trying to say something about the sad state of ape habitats and pollution in the wild. Even if you didn’t dive too deep into that surprising bit of social commentary, you’ll likely find that the platforming in this one remains top-notch and that the overall experience remains severely underrated.
10. DoReMi Fantasy: Milon’s DokiDoki Adventure
As the only game on this list that wasn’t initially released outside of Japan, many gamers may not know that DoReMi Fantasy is a whimsical experience that features some of the key elements of Mario and Kirby’s best adventures in terms of gameplay and graphics. Starring a young child whose objective is to reclaim music for the forest, DoReMi utilizes some clever puzzles that may not be unusual for the platformer genre but certainly add to the fun.
The game got a Virtual Console release in North America in 2008, but that’s sadly the best chance many gamers have had in recent years to take a chance on this title. It’s a great example of how people should be more open to experiencing games that weren’t localized the first time around.
9. Donkey Kong Country
Perhaps the most famous game starring Nintendo’s lovable ape, the original Donkey Kong Country was Rare’s first big title for the SNES and practically started their decade-plus long relationship as a second-party developer with the Big N. Tasked with showing off off the console’s pre-rendered graphics system, the crew from Britain proved to be up to the task. Honestly, this game still looks halfway decent in 2021.
While the actual platforming is not as good as the Super Mario games on the SNES, it offered a different flavor of jumping that is still very much appreciated. The “weight” of Donkey Kong and Diddy means that the platforming is less flighty than in Super Mario games, and the rideable animal buddies you encounter along the way add a little flair to the experience.
8. ActRaiser
As a game that serves as both an action-platformer and a God simulator, this underrated and forgotten gem from Enix and developer Quintet showed off the visual and audio capabilities of the SNES in the early days of the console. You play as the “Master” who is tasked with building towns around the world and fending off the evils that threaten them. It’s hard to juggle two completely different genres like that, but ActRaiser finds a great balance.
The game was re-released for the Wii Virtual Console in 2007 but has otherwise been paid little attention in the years since its release. That’s unfortunate because there aren’t many games from 30 years ago that provide this much depth and versatility. Both parts of the experience are extremely solid in their own right, and together add up to become something truly special.
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7. Kirby Super Star
Even the most ardent Kirby fans would probably agree that the franchise can get a little stale at times. There are only so many ways Kirby can suck an enemy up, transform his powers to match theirs, and ultimately defeat King Dedede. That’s why Kirby Super Star is still arguably the best game that the pink cutie pie has ever starred in.
Featuring eight different games within the game, the genre-mixing in this one is really off the charts. There are racing elements, adventure tones, and shooting sequences amongst the different sections of the playthrough. The experience was so beloved that it was eventually remade for the Nintendo DS as Kirby Super Star Deluxe. There is something for everyone in this package, and it shows the best parts of Kirby’s history.
6. Mega Man X
The original run of NES Mega Man titles are arguably still more famous than all of the others, but Mega Man X just has more of what makes those games great. It retains the eight bosses and weapon upgrades that can be completed/acquired in whatever order the player chooses, and it even has that same incredible soundtrack that the Blue Bomber’s adventures are always famous for.
Mega Man X‘s graphical upgrades admittedly take some of that eight-bit nostalgia out of the experience, but the game ultimately makes up for it by offering new gameplay experiences. Jumping on walls and acquiring upgrades to defensive maneuvers gives Mega Man an even more badass skillset, and the game generally does an excellent job of emphasizing the “platforming” parts of its action-platformer mix.
5. Super Castlevania 4
Super Castlevania 4 is actually a kind of soft remake of the original game, and the developers at Konami did a great job of making that game more digestible for newcomers while keeping all of the iconic elements from the classic NES title.
The Castlevania basics are all here (you still control Simon Belmont, equipped with his famous whip and ax, and battle through the game’s 11 stages before reaching Dracula), but an ideal mix of combat and platforming makes this one of the most irreplaceable platformers in the SNES catalog. It’s still an airtight action-platformer experience in 2021.
4. Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy’s Kong Quest
The second game in the DKC trilogy took all of the best parts of the first title and refined them to create a truly unique platforming game that was a lot more than fancy graphics (a reputation the original game has had a hard time shaking). Diddy’s Kong Quest expanded upon the game design that fans loved while keeping the jungle hijinx, masterful soundtrack, and weighted platforming intact.
That last part is what truly separates the middle installment of this franchise from the other two. Many people have said that these games were sometimes more style than substance, but after playing through the myriad of environments on display in DKC 2, it becomes clear that this title has endured over the years because its tight mechanics are executed at a high level.
3. Super Metroid
If this list were just a ranking of 2D games or if it encapsulated the entire SNES library regardless of genre, Super Metroid would most likely take the top spot. Alas, this icon of game design settles in the third spot because it isn’t the best example of a “pure platformer.” It’s more of an action/adventure affair, though the game’s platforming elements are still as satisfying now as they were in the 1990s.
What separates this game from so many that have tried to emulate it in the nearly three decades since release is that every ability upgrade and every part of the map fits together with nearly flawless foresight and execution. It’s never a hassle to re-explore a section that you’ve already seen. The game has a masterful flow that is incredibly modern and perhaps even more popular today because of the prominence of this design style on the indie game scene.
2. Super Mario World
With its flawless controls, colorful sprites, cheerful soundtrack, and ageless platforming, Super Mario World is the title that all other 2D games in the genre are still compared to. The extra graphical power of the SNES gave Nintendo the opportunity to expand upon Super Mario Bros. 3‘s best ideas while exploring new concepts that simply weren’t possible before.
That is why this game remains so playable. Super Mario World combines the most enjoyable elements of the NES Super Mario classics and then elevates them to fully realize the world that Miyamoto imagined when this basic concept was created. It still doesn’t make sense to have a plumber jumping on top of turtles and occasionally getting lost inside of a house full of ghosts (those damn Boo mansions still haunt me), but when you combine this much creativity into one package, you have no choice but to admit how special it all is.
1. Super Mario World 2: Yoshi’s Island
Shigeru Miyamoto and his team knew that it was futile to try and surpass Super Mario World simply by emulating it. So when developing the sequel, they made the decision to craft an entirely different type of platformer in which Mario isn’t even the main protagonist. The concept was bold, but the execution needed to be flawless if the game was ever going to be more than another disappointing follow-up.
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It’s safe to say Yoshi’s Island exceeded all expectations. Putting Yoshi at the forefront of a platformer that included mini-games, evasion, puzzle-solving, item collection, and the most timeless color palette in gaming history was brilliance personified. Yoshi’s Island is not as famous as its older sibling, but its daring creativity and irreplaceable charm have inspired many to argue that it is the better game in retrospect. Whatever your opinion is, the fun and escapism of the green dinosaur’s finest hour (as well as the horrors of Baby Mario’s screams) will be remembered until the end of gaming.
The post 15 Best SNES Platformers Ever appeared first on Den of Geek.
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I beat Prey yesterday! here are the general thoughts i scribbled down.
i thought the opening was super strong. When you break the glass on the apartment window? *chef's kiss*
i’ve never played system shock 2 but understand this is heavily influenced by it. I've played Bioshock though so I did pick up on some of the similarities by proxy.
generally I liked combat. In the first half it's pretty tense and survival horror-y and there's certainly a difficulty curve. I liked using limited resources and thinking up creative solutions to problems.
However, most stuff became trivial halfway through. The shotgun is just busted after a couple upgrades. Once you know a surefire way to deal with each enemy type, the game gets pretty easy. from what I understand the difficulty settings do not affect this much (I played on normal). You can make the game more tedious, but not necessarily harder.
i wish there were more horror elements in the mid to late game. There are some genuinely great jump scares early on but they're basically gone past a certain point.
main quest in general was a treadmill of “go to point a, do x thing, oh no something stopped you from doing x thing, you need to go to point y and do b thing so you can go back and do x thing”. kind of disappointing; it mostly served as a way to get around and find more interesting stuff (with a few exceptions). i liked the side quests more.
the voice acting was great. In particular, Benedict Wong's performance as Alex stuck out to me.
the visual and world design was fantastic, too. I think its impressive that Talos I had a unifying design but each area still felt distinct.
visually the Looking Glass stuff was super cool. I think that Arkane developed this with the time travel Dishonored 2 mission and it was cool there too.
there's an impressive amount of extra flavor. All of the art, audio logs, emails, books, and even the ability to explore a bit in space. Just cool details that helped make it all feel real and believable. It adds a lot.
i wanted neuromods to be more like the plasmids in bioshock. While they are the same thing story-wise, in game they function as a talent tree. And some just don’t make sense. Like... how would jamming 4 neuromods in my eye make me physically better at lifting stuff? Why is it an incremental skill I have to invest in 3 times? This makes a little more sense with the Typhon powers since those are basically magic, but not the Human ones.
the ending and some of the mid story is clearly rushed, although I'm glad there's more stuff after the credits.
despite the underwhelming endings (pre credits) I do think the developers put an impressive amount of thought into the circumstances various playthroughs would have surrounding them. I looked it up and there's a boggling number of variations on what's basically two endings.
startlingly few bugs! Just some clipping stuff for me, mostly.
there were some cool small details. I like that if you go someplace before the main story officially tells you to, January will act surprised that you knew ahead of time to go there for the next step. This only happened to me once (on accident), but I imagine it's fun for replays.
SPOILER THOUGHTS BELOW THE CUT
LOVE the meta commentary on identity and autonomy in video games. Morgan is a little different between each reset in the early simulation, even though theoretically that shouldn't be possible. Characters constantly compare you to the Morgan they knew, whatever that means to them. Morgan the player character is a silent protagonist. Morgan the narrative character has several audio and video logs from their past and multiple robots with their voice. More broadly, each player will play a video game differently, even if they make similar choices. So is any playable character the same person between playthroughs? Is the player character narratively that person, or are they simply a vehicle that reflects what the player wants? It's no "would you kindly" but it's still interesting.
in theory i like the Nightmare. kind of a pyramid head type thing but more random. however there’s little incentive to defeat it and it’s easy to avoid, so it turned into a “wait for a 3 min timer to count down” simulator. also, if you accidentally spawn it in certain areas it can WRECK your ending (though it’s easy to reload).
so the Big Twist hints were pretty heavy handed. I figured it out early. It occurred to me after the first level that if the tutorial was a simulation, anything could be, and that was basically the big twisterino. Stuff like January saying "well good thing you're not an alien" in a super ironic tone of voice made me laugh out loud. Also, I did the Obvious Bad Ending for shits and giggles and it spoiled the whole thing. Really wish it had just cut to black since you can access it early. This potentially ruins any shock value for a lot of people.
on some level I like that the ending explains away certain "plot holes". Probably the most obvious is Morgan not remembering any of their past, which is... not how the neuromod memory loss works. But of course they wouldn't remember it, because the player is a Typhon going through a simulation, not the real Morgan.
you can also view the ending from the perspective of humans desperately trying to convince an alien they're worth saving, despite some "bad actors" (read: war crimes in space). Hence the sometimes on-the-nose moral choices and optional side quests. Even the fact that Morgan and Alex are characterized as total assholes in the past-- yet Alex in game and post credits is gentle and compassionate. Perhaps Alex in real life is trying to atone for his mistakes?
i kept expecting mirrors to be relevant? The Phantoms whisper about "what you see in the mirror", promo material shows Morgan looking at themself in the mirror, the Looking Glass tech, and the fact that mirrors are all over the place and DO NOT actually reflect Morgan. Which isn't a technical limitation since the Looking Glass is a whole thing. There's the whole mirror neuron thing but that's such a tiny line of dialogue I'm not sure it matters. Have to wonder if this was a story concept that got cut.
in a similar vein to "crap Phantoms say", there's a minor human character who just... says a bunch of Phantom lines in a row once you complete a quest. He’s seemingly unaware that he's echoing them. What was the purpose of this? Was this an abandoned plot thread?
why wasn't Dahl a bigger part of the story? or Alex and Morgan's parents? I assume it's due to a time crunch, but it just feels like a missed opportunity.
small detail: I love that one of the main story quests has you fake someone's voice using audio logs, and someone MUCH later uses the same trick against you.
another small detail which I missed: flying out to the space billboard to get an early horror twist about the fucking escape pods. there are lots of little things like that all over the place.
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Thoughts on Halo Reach's plot and best to worst noble team members?
you know ive actually been a lot more critical towards reach lately because i think it fails on the biggest thing it advertised: noble team. characters have never really been the strong suit of bungie’s writing (idk who destiny is so dont @ me) and while this isnt usually a major issue, it is an issue when a game wants to sell you on this squad of your teammates it wants you to care about or at least be fond of. ODST and Reach both have a cast of characters that could be really interesting but since halo is a shooter and not really a storytelling kinda game series all they really get are a few lines here and there and some cool moments, nothing really solid or anything to get a glimpse at who they are. maybe thats kinda the point though since spartans are all fucked up broken people like inherently. i dont think thats why bungie did that though
as for reach’s actual plot, i think it works well for what it is, a playable tragedy that tells you the conclusion up front. halo fans who are any level above completely casual knew that reach got completely glassed right before the start of halo ce and the advertising of this was very clear. the fact that you’ve never heard of spartan 3′s or noble team before was a pretty clear indicator of what their fates would be before you even turned on your xbox. the game literally opens with your smashed helmet embedded in the ground as a tombstone to your inevitable heroic sacrifice. reach invokes the same kind of feeling as star wars rogue one, you just know things wont end well for our main characters but you know that their deaths will pave the way for the main series protagonist to eventually win the whole damn thing 3 games/movies from now.
so even with this in mind you go through reach and you think “wow things are going pretty well, we’re holding out own against the covies and even striking back at key targets” and maybe you forget whats going to happen or you dont and you’re waiting for the other shoe to drop. and boy fucking howdy does it drop. jorge dies thinking he just saved reach and as you fall through the atmosphere you realize how hopelessly fucked you are. thats where the game enters its second phase, the “we’re fucked but still fighting” phase, as opposed to the first half of the game where things were still somewhat hopeful. noble six wakes up like a week later to half the planet burning and civilians being slaughtered as they try to evac. the first level of the second half of the game features you busting your ass hard to clear an evac point for civilians only to see them all get shot down and die. its brutal stuff, especially for halo who had never shown the conflict though that lense.
what follows is a parade of squadmate deaths as your numbers dwindle with every level until its just you and emile, and then just you. unlike in rogue one you actually aren’t immediately told what the key item in this quest is, in this case its cortana, the equivalent to the death star plans in rogue one, the most important thing in the universe since cortana will be the one to slipspace jump to halo 04 and kick off a series of events that will lead to the survival of humanity. but once you get this item suddenly it all makes sense, carter is told this is “what his spartans died for” and to you that means a lot more than it ever would to him.
reach ends with a profoundly impactful epilogue level where you just. are doomed. you can’t hold out forever and even if you could there’s no rescue coming for you. noble six gave their life to save the universe and never even knew it. the fact that their death isnt a cutscene but you actually yourself have to try to stave off death or just take as many elites with you as you can before they get you, it really adds so much to the impact of the final noble team death. nevermind that six isnt a real character it does work in this case because you’re seeing it from a first person perspective.
so overall my thoughts on reach is that despite the major flaw of not making you care enough about noble team (unless you do, this is my personal view) it does its job very well in portraying the desperate struggle of humanity against a threat that they cannot possibly comprehend or rightfully stand up against, but despite devastating loss the small victories they achieved still ended up mattering in the end.
now as for noble team i wont do a best to worst but ill give my thoughts on everyone
carter: hardass commander type, not much to say imo. his death scene was his best moment and i wish his relationship with kat had been fleshed out more because it was so so funny to see her pull his strings to get what she wants. you can tell he has the respect of everyone, especially emile.
kat: the only girl! i actually like cat, im glad they gave her a buzzcut instead of trying to make her sexy or anything even if they did give her that ass in her armor. shes the typical smartass better than you genius character but it works, especially with that accent. i wish i could be friends with her, there was that scene right before she died where she confided in six that this was also her first glassing. her death was kind of shock value to me and i wish she could have at least died with a little more dignity like the rest of noble team but alas :(
jun: probably my least favorite. i cant really remember much of this guy. he’s the only one who got to live and i kind of hate him for that because he was the least interesting of the bunch.
emile: certainly the most iconic of all the noble spartans. he comes off as sadistic but not a maniac, he listens to carter when he speaks and is on good terms with kat even through his obvious inability to really connect to other people. this is certainly because of the fact that he’s a spartan-3, he’s probably the most “inhuman” of the bunch. i wish his relationship with jorge was given a little more, i liked how despite his pushing jorge early in the game he still mourned his death, and yet refused to carry his dogtags because he knew six was the one who was entrusted with them. his death was very iconic i think everyone remembers that.
jorge: the big man himself, his death is what set the tone for the second half of the game and was probably pretty impactful to most people playing. i always thought it was interesting that he was a spartan-2 and not a 3 like the rest of noble, i wonder why that was. his relationship with halsey was interesting and it showed that not all spartans hated the devil woman for what she did to them. his defining characteristic was his big heart and that was especially interesting for a spartan-2, that he managed to hold onto something like that through all the shit he probably went through.
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Why Sam & Max IS the Best
Seing a vid by B- Mask on The Devil’s Playhouse and honestly, it made me think a lot about how Sam & Max essentially got everything it wanted as a franchise. For a long time, after playing the third and final Telltale season, I’ve been craving for a season 4; at least one more season after a long time to just give the dog & rabbit an easy string of adventures like old times. But after seeing that video and remembering the beautiful story that was Sam & Max's third season, it made me realize how much the duo was able to offer over the decades and how Telltale’s third season was a definitive send-off. Call this a big brained take, expanding on that video, but to me Sam & Max is what would’ve happened if Calvin & Hobbes was marketed outside its comic strip.
If you know the latter’s history, you’ll know that Bill Watterson had a strict rule against Calvin & Hobbes being merchandising beyond its comics or continuing in any way after the final comic in ‘95. “This isn't as hard to understand as people try to make it. By the end of ten years, I'd said pretty much everything I had come there to say. [...] I've never regretted stopping when I did.” I’ve always admired Bill’s stance on this, especially after seeing my declining interest in stuff like The Simpsons where I’ve realized that sometimes a good thing doesn’t need to exist all the time, less it becomes a zombie of its former self. With that in mind, it’s amazing that Sam & Max managed to not adhere to Bill’s philosophy yet be able to have the most simple yet cleanest franchises I’ve seen in history.
It was in 1987 when the comics started, a pulp detective comedy centered around the duo basically doing whatever they want to both stop the bad guy in question and get a laugh from the audience. They’re vigilantes at best, antagonists at worst where while they aren’t total monsters, they’ll gladly treat anyone and anything they see as a part of their playground. From the beginning, Sam & Max are kinda the Rick Sanchezes of the late 80s if Rick was more casual and optimistic about not giving a shit. The comic as a whole is actually not big in content, but engagingly dense in what it offers. With lots of cockroaches cuz I guess a bug really had an impact on Purcell. It was clever, happily mean-spirited, sometimes dark, and after 6 years of making the comic, we soon got the biggest hit that is...
Hit the Road honestly was the key to Sam & Max’s popularity. During the era of Point ‘n Click Adventures, it was the most fitting game genre in existence for the characters. Exploration was always Sam & Max’s forte, their special sauce of the comics outside the duo’s chemistry and bizarre encounters, so to center a game around a cross country road trip where the two fuck around in order solve a case is sheer brilliance. It of course captures the style of the comics, only in bright colors but the most memorable voice acting. This was where they had more of a voice. The game’s popularity would lead to them getting a cartoon which I say works well differently...
While Hit the Road was about the duo interacting with the world around them, the cartoon more adapted the comics where it was about the two getting in different situations; a day in the life if you will. For only 24 episodes, they certainly made the most of adapting the easy going yet absurd aspect of the comics for a younger audience. I mentioned before in a review long ago that it’s Freakazoid’s Pulp Fiction and it still holds up as such, where with this and Hit the Road, it’s credulous to believe that Sam & Max always worked better animated. To get the verbal and lively reaction of our duo is as equally compelling if not more than the subtler yet static page of a comic. And while it’s still a shame that while both the animated series and LucasArts got shut down, the new Telltale Games would pick up the slack and give us the next round of content.
Season 1 and 2 of the Telltale series go hand in hand where they shrink the scale of Hit the Road in favor of having one off adventures all tied to one big final boss at the end. Many have called them repetitive but I say they work well for they are, with the dialogue and special moments picking up for what could be considered formulaic by design. It’s still Sam & Max, only made a little easier to enjoy the story more. While I wish I could say this for Bone, it was these games that put Telltale on the map; what they were known for in the early era. As such, it’s sad to say that when the third season rolled out, looking back now, Sam & Max was truly reaching its end.
The Devil’s Playhouse is the biggest S&M adventure, one the developers were plotting to make the whole time. While each episode has a different style and scenario, everything plays to one continuous story where for the first time in this series’ history, our duo are actually challenged. Max isn’t just the sidekick, he’s both a playable character in the game and a huge target thanks to his newfound importance. This makes Sam show more concern than usual where the idea of losing his best friend can leave him feel irrelevant to devastated. While the two still fire off jokes at each other and others as usual, there’s the looming threat of them being forced apart; the real antagonist is the story’s increasing rift between Sam and Max. The Devil’s Playhouse essentially dissects the franchise’s heart, finally putting the two’s friendship through the wringer to a point of no return. It all somehow makes sense, both Max’s reality warping ability and Sam as a character on his own especially with the 4th episode. Not everything about the duo is revealed, but enough was where I unfortunately have to repeat that Sam & Max was “at its end”.
Before, our duo literally went to hell and back, fought a variety of monsters and villains, and have bent reality to their will countless times. The two could go on many absurd adventures as possible afterward, but where can you go when you finally rattle the core of the franchise? Devil’s Playhouse ties up not only loose threads for fans of the previous seasons, but flips the script on what the series has built overall. There were a couple times beforehand where the comical shtick was dropped and things got serious for the duo, but they weren’t as climactic and revealing as the third season. As good as it sounds to reboot the series, since the season ends on an optimistic note, to return back to Watterson’s words. “I said pretty much everything I had come there to say.” We got two games with Sam and Max making irreverent cameos and later merch, but The Devil’s Playhouse is otherwise the last we truly see of the two. No official talks of a comeback and for what it's worth, that’s enough.
I brought up the Calvin and Hobbes comparison because Sam & Max is where I say if Bill decided to market the comic, this is what the best outcome would be. From the comics to the games, not only have they got a sense of clean finality but every step of the way, Steve Purcell was there to handle it. Beyond the cartoon getting toned down for obvious reasons, it never felt like Sam & Max was warped to please execs or turn into something unfamiliar. Steve’s vision got to exist through and through with The Devil’s Playhouse being the best finale. Purcell’s moved on and with Telltale’s sour shutdown, I’m not sure how S&M could come back. It’s impossible to think of how this could’ve ended like The Simpsons, Garfield, Spongebob, etc, but it feels like bonafide luck that we got Sam & Max as is. It’s not the biggest comic or video game franchise around, but I can never argue that it’s a franchise that stayed true to itself all the way. I'll never know what the future holds for Sam & Max, if there truly is one anymore, but I at least have some belief that it’ll be there for our boys.
Cuz after all, isn’t that the beauty of this whole series?
#Sam and Max#sam and max freelance police#freelance police#comics#cartoons#video games#animation#analysis#long post#Good Stuff
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The Sims 4 Star Wars Journey to Batuu: Community’s First Impressions
When EA revealed The Sims 4 Star Wars: Journey to Batuu during today’s Gamescom Opening Night Live, players in the community took to social media to let their opinion on the game be known. The Fansite Simsvip ask players on Twitter what their initial thoughts were, so here is a collection of thoughts from players around the community…
It’s basically Strangerville but with a super niche audience. No one will get most of the references unless they’re a Star Wars fan. It’ll probably provide an hour of gameplay and that’s it. Ngl though it looks well made
— Sugar G (@appIause) August 27, 2020
I personally don't see a place for it in the Sims franchise as an actual in-world location. The Sims is supposed to be a life simulation at heart with fantasy thrown in. Not a badly disquised advert for a completely different I.P. If I wanted to play a Star Wars game I'd buy one.
— Alistair Stuart (@Alistu_Sims) August 27, 2020
It's a cool idea. For some reason I love shameless branding like this. It will probably be a nice change of pace at the very least.
— Paul (@ThePJBentley) August 27, 2020
It's not my favorite theme. But since it's here.. I'm going to take full advantage of it 😊
— Mimy S Flores (@mimysf1111) August 27, 2020
Definitely not a pack I would enjoy. Either for the game content. Storyline or the build and buy it all looked very uninteresting, I may still enter in some giveaways for the pack but this will be the 2nd pack including bowling I will never purchase. Just not enough in it:)
— JoJo🕵️♀️ (@JoJoPandaX) August 27, 2020
I’m not a fan of the movie series but this pack actually interests me
— Akane (@Aka_RoseGaming) August 27, 2020
Its unexpected but i think it'll be fun. And it also means i can make my swtor characters in sims so thats honestly what I'm looking forward to most with this.
— Shey (@Shey_Shen) August 27, 2020
I’m excited! I love the idea of missions to influence which side wins. I do think it will be fun to play with still might wait for a sale 😅
— Sophie is not Social (@SophienotSocial) August 27, 2020
I've sat idly by while knitting and laundry and university packs rolled around. They weren't my cup of tea or first choice, but I never tore down and ostracized those who were excited because the DLCs didn't fit my own personal expectations.
I'm really excited for this pack! 😊
— LanceChristophr (@lancechristophr) August 27, 2020
Literally the first pack I have absolutely no interest in buying. I am very disappointed. It's fine for those who are fans and all, but I feel like this pack is so specific. I usually can find SOMETHING I like even in the packs that really aren't my gameplay style but this? NO :(
— Louise Laursen (@PurpleMio) August 27, 2020
Feel like we already had enough star wars content in the game. I feel like a into the future pack mightve been more well received. At least there are people who enjoy it though so can’t say no one’s getting anything good!
— bag of bones (@savantavocado) August 27, 2020
I hoped it wasn't going to be star wars when I heard. I don't have anything against the franchise, it's the fact that it' so highly specific and caters to a different audience is what baffles me. It's obvious that it's something that was pushed by EA to advertise their new game.
— 🍞𝙇𝙀𝙀💕 (@imCement) August 27, 2020
My thoughts were "Where is my Harry Potter pack?" Like boarding school for children sims, werewolves, fairies, etc.
— 🌈Jordan aka Snow🌈 (@Bookfangirl742) August 27, 2020
I 100% didn't need it right now. I feel like this was more an EA/Disney move rather than the core Sims team. Mainly because we need so much more in terms of gameplay, representation and playability. I could've got behind it if it was released sometime next year instead of now.
— Camille (@CraftyGamer89) August 27, 2020
I think the reason everyone has such an issue is that there are so many things the sims 4 is missing as a life simulation game and then they choose to put the time and effort into a star wars pack..i happy for those who want it but i get why everyone else is so upset
— Lauren Attwood (@LaurenAttwood69) August 27, 2020
We wanted more realistic gameplay and the gave us Starwars?!?! Why??!?!
— willemijn kroon (@williekr2000) August 27, 2020
im just... wow, at least I wasn't mad but rather sad how EA is so disconnected to the Sims fanbase desires and pleas for our favorite game
— I build anything and I stan OT9, OT4, & OT7! (@J_Lanz16) August 27, 2020
im just... wow, at least I wasn't mad but rather sad how EA is so disconnected to the Sims fanbase desires and pleas for our favorite game
— I build anything and I stan OT9, OT4, & OT7! (@J_Lanz16) August 27, 2020
Not feeling optimistic about it at all tbh, looks like it may have about as much replay value as Strangerville buuuuut at the same time it opens up the option to lightsaber duel Judith Ward so I guess I’ll give it a shot
— Dex (@Theyhrite) August 27, 2020
Excited for the droids and lightsabers. Seem like they can be fun and I image there will be a mod out soon for a lightsaber death since the sims will probably not give us one
— 🐁 ғᴇᴀɴᴏʀ ⟴🐀 (@_neonheart_) August 27, 2020
maybe if the game was more complete then sure but, the sims feels very empty and is lacking a lot. the last thing we need is a star wars pack right now
— heather (@heathermk_) August 27, 2020
i think it could be cool if your sims could actually live on batuu (maybe after completing the story or smth idk) but if it just turns out like a vacation world you go to once and then forget about it's gonna be disappointing
— cali (@caligumu) August 27, 2020
baffled, honestly. like. why is this a thing?! I have zero interest in farming or "better babies" but this just feels *really* out of place?? Strangerville has its appeal and Eco Lifestyle was just a very very bad case of "poor marketing", but this is just. 🤔🤔🤔
— Fae (@fae_of_the_rose) August 27, 2020
I said this before but...
They are going to add light sabers before inclusive skin tones... let that sink in.
— Lil Ass Kicker (@Firelillx) August 27, 2020
THE SIMS 4 IS NOT IMMERSIVE ENOUGH FOR THIS TYPE OF NICHE GAME PACK!! They have refused to fix some of the most basic features (skin tones & babies) but they have the time and resources for these new special aliens??????? Make it make sense.
— whatamievendoin (@whatamievendo14) August 27, 2020
We already have Sixam which is not exploiting. Why take a franchise that does not reach the players. pic.twitter.com/aPhd1QBmZs
— The Queen alien -🛸 sims - (@The_Queen_Alien) August 27, 2020
Not at all interested.
— Sunshine (@sunshine0375) August 27, 2020
I was a little worried how this would combine with the Sims. It seemed so alien (no pun intended) to the rest of the gameplay. But after seeing the trailer I can’t help with being excited. It looks beautiful and definitely different. The build and buy objects look great so far
— Chantal Noordeloos (@C_Noordeloos) August 27, 2020
I’m still wtf’ing. It’s too niche for a game that is supposed to be a LIFE simulation game, too specific-to-star-wars-fans to appeal to a wider audience. It also makes me sad thinking about the future of the franchise when they seem so disconnected in what the community wants.
— Hayley Marie (@countrystrongau) August 27, 2020
What are your initial thoughts on the The Sims 4 Star Wars: Journey to Batuu Game Pack? Let us know in the comments below!
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INTERVIEW: After 13 Years, Indie RPG Masterpiece Ruina is Finally Available in English
All screenshots of Ruina: Fairy Tale of the Forgotten Ruins taken by author
This article was made possible through the invaluable contributions of translators Dink and bool, and further aided by context generously provided by writer, translator, and RPG Maker scene dweller Kastel (@kastelwrites). Sections from their answers were excerpted for this piece and edited for clarity and content.
Last year, at the start of the pandemic, a lapsed member of the RPG Maker community known as Dink stumbled across a screenshot while trawling Japanese free game websites: a black obelisk standing in the midst of ruins. “This is going to make me sound like I've been huffing paint, but this image spoke to something quite visceral for me — like I'd been waiting to find this game. Something about the sepia tones, the light and shadows, the elegance of its very archetype. I knew I had to play it.” Dink had stumbled across Ruina: Haitou no Monogatari (Fairy Tale of the Forgotten Ruins), one of the most acclaimed free RPGs ever made in Japan. Released in the antiquated RPG Maker 2000 engine in 2008 by developer Shoukichi Karekusa, it retains a strong cult following and has even been translated into Chinese. Yet unlike its RPG Maker siblings Yume Nikki and Ib, Ruina is practically unknown in English-speaking countries. Dink decided to change that. “Once I realized that it had yet to be translated into English,” he said, “it was like I’d become possessed.”
Ruina is unique. A role-playing game that takes direct influence from tabletop games and gamebooks, it boldly defies conventions established by classic console role-playing games like Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy. Rather than controlling the main character across a top-down map, the player slowly uncovers a hand-illustrated map of nodes. Survival in the dungeon requires the use of ropes, pickaxes, and oil for your lantern, resources that are all expendable. Your party members are valuable not only for their combat skills but for their out-of-combat abilities: thieving, sneaking, even swimming. Most of all, Ruina allows for choice and consequence, a phenomenon far more common in western RPGs than Japanese RPGs. Say you stumble across treasure in a dungeon, but are ambushed by thieves who want the treasure for themselves. Do you give the treasure to the thieves? Stand your ground? Or attack the thieves before they can do the same to you? Since your ability to save in the dungeon is heavily rationed, you may find yourself having to choose between restarting a save or living with the messy outcomes of your choices.
There’s something to Ruina that grounds it in the Japanese RPG tradition, rather than a straightforward riff on Wizardry or Might & Magic. Those earlier games gave you several choices as to building your party, but little in the way of story or character. Ruina is a far more curated experience. On starting the game, you’re offered four “backgrounds” that align you with certain other characters, just one year before Dragon Age: Origins would pull a similar trick. Rather than being given the full freedom to explore a sprawling world, your options are limited to navigating a single, contained dungeon. The characters available to be recruited into your party have defined personalities and quirks — some are already good friends of yours, others are insufferable, and still others have significant flaws that speak to the kind of person they are versus their gameplay function. These are NPCs out of the Baldur’s Gate school, given the illusion of life, rather than the team of personalized murderers you’d recruit in an Etrian Odyssey game.
Very little else in the Japanese games scene is like Ruina. You could draw comparisons with games like Unlimited Saga and Scarlet Grace, representing the legacy of controversial SQUARE ENIX auteur Akitoshi Kawazu. You could similarly connect Ruina with Yasumi Matsuda’s experimental Crimson Shroud, which takes influence from tabletop to the point that it has the player rolling dice in-game. But Ruina is more accessible and polished than a Kawazu game, and far more fleshed out than Crimson Shroud. Even Etrian Odyssey, with its comparatively barebones story and characters, doesn’t quite compare. Ruina stands alone in the Japanese free games community, a legendary title that people respect but don’t fully understand how to replicate.
A few days ago I reached out to Kastel, an academic, writer, and translator who is very familiar with Japan’s RPG Maker scene, about where Ruina fit in Japan’s wider field of indie games. “I know many people in the furige (free game) scene who love the game to death,” they said. “But they also found it to be a hard sell due to its unique, almost western take on the scene. The fact that the game is even this popular speaks to something.” Despite its crunchy mechanics and niche inspirations, the game is popular enough to have spawned light novels, an honor not unique to it (other RPG Maker games have accomplished the same) but certainly significant. Kastel drew a comparison between Ruina and Darkest Dungeon, another weird and uncompromising game that draws from both Japanese and western RPGs. “Ruina is sorta different from everything, but you also see dungeon crawlers get inspired by it,” they said. “Not all games take direct inspiration, but you can’t help but see a little bit of Ruina here and there.”
So why did it take so long for anybody to translate Ruina? Dink isn’t the only person to try his hand at translating it into English; just last fall, another forum dweller placed an ad recruiting a translation team to tackle the game. The unfortunate reality is that translating text within the RPG Maker engine into English requires intensive and repetitive labor. “There’ve been tools developed by vgperson [a prominent translator of RPG Maker games] for RPG Maker 2000 and some other machine translation tools for newer games, but they all remain difficult to use for translators,” Kastel says. “The way games are scripted uses events inside the map and developers rarely name them. So not only do you need to edit it via the appropriate RPG Maker engine, but you also need to go through each event contextless unless the creator actually notes things down.” So, the enterprising Ruina translator doesn’t just need to translate all the text in the game into English. It isn’t even a question of whether or not to manually edit the game’s many pictures and custom menus into English by hand. It’s the sheer difficulty of navigating between thousands of (often poorly labeled) events and variables in the RPG Maker engine, ensuring not to introduce any new bugs or errors in the process, while also finding the time to do all of the above.
Dink was assisted by a friend of his named bool, who played through the game alongside the translation process and gave invaluable advice and fixes. “Uncovering the mystery in the game's story sort of ran parallel with the translation of the game itself,” bool says. “As the story progressed, the characters would decipher and learn more about the lore of the eponymous ruins within the game, and as the translation progressed, the same held true for us. It really captivated me to be a part of this process, and I started to look forward to each new area that I could explore and each new morsel of the story I could understand.”
Without bool’s efforts, it might have taken far longer to put together something workable. As it was, it took four exhausting months. “I worked long hours — 12+ hours a day, 6, sometimes 7 days a week on top of my day job — and very rarely used my free time on anything else,” Dink says. “I did manually input the text in RPG Maker 2000, which has raised some eyebrows because there are some very nice tools available for game translation that would have saved me a lot of time. However, a huge advantage of working directly in the editor is being able to see the game more or less as it appears to players. A Notepad file streamlines the basic translation process, but it also heavily obscures context, whereas the editor allows you to see what switches and variables are being used, what music is being played, and sometimes even helpful creator comments, all in the same relative order you'd experience it from within the game.” Dink had one more secret weapon up his sleeve: the experience of working with the RPG Maker engine as an adolescent. RPG Maker has a reputation of being a tool designed to churn out Dragon Quest clones with ease; but nobody knows the intense difficulty of forcing the engine to do something, anything, like a former RPG Maker developer does.
The English version of Ruina, as it currently exists, is a workable but inevitably compromised version of the game. Running the game requires installing the Japanese RTP pack of visual and audio resources for RPG Maker to function, along with the use of the EasyRPG player to provide English-language player name entry. There’s the matter of the custom menus, as well. Several of the menus have been replaced with functional English equivalents, but by Dink's own admission they could use an expert's attention to better compare to the original. Other pictures, such as place name displays, have yet to be replaced by English-language equivalents at all. And the strict character limits of RPG Maker 2000 led to some creative truncating when translating from Japanese to English, especially with item and skill descriptions.
But the existence of an English-language Ruina, one that renders the whole game playable from beginning to end with a readable script, is a miracle. Speaking for myself, I started the long process of learning Japanese two years ago in part so that I could one day play this game, never expecting there might one day be an alternative. Others in the Japanese RPG Maker scene, knowing the brutal difficulty of translating a game made in the earlier engines, were shocked that a game of Ruina’s complexity and length was successfully translated at all. Speaking for themselves, Dink and bool insist that their own story doesn’t matter much. What matters is the quality of the original game and the hard work developer Shoukichi Karekusa put into its creation. Anything else is an addendum, another version of the game that — while it cannot ever be the original — might at least make something resembling that original experience accessible to others.
Frankly speaking, I think there’s something to that. The “true” version of Ruina will always exist in its original form, released for free by Karekusa in 2008. It stands as the defining work of a creator who sought to create a unique experience combining the appeal of console and tabletop roleplaying games, with no concessions to market sensibilities. A creator who not only released their baby on the internet for free, but insisted that a game like Ruina must always and ever be free. An austere monolith, it stands side by side with Yume Nikki, Ib, and even Cave Story as one of the great works to come out of Japan’s independent scene. Now any English speaker can pick up and play this new version of Ruina, and learn what that monolith is and where it leads to.
You can download the English translation of Ruina here. For those who want to learn more about the Japanese RPG Maker scene, I recommend checking out Kastel’s page here.
Are you a Ruina fan? Let us know in the comments!
Adam W is a Features Writer at Crunchyroll. When he is not working through exercises in Wanikani, he sporadically contributes with a loose group of friends to a blog called Isn't it Electrifying? You can find him on Twitter at:@wendeego
Do you love writing? Do you love anime? If you have an idea for a feature, pitch it to Crunchyroll Features!
By: Adam Wescott
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