Messages

1

TalkBack / Re: Metroid Fusion Launching Into Game Boy Advance Expansion Pack Library March 8

« on: March 04, 2023, 11:36:05 AM »

Anyone who wants to play this should download the Japanese version of the GBA App, since the Japanese version of the game has more content then the American/PAL.

For anyone that doesn't know, the Japanese version of Fusion was released at a later date and included a Hard mode and the Gallery that saved the ending photo's after you unlocked them.  Both things that many thought were introduced in Zero Mission, where in the Japanese version of Fusion.

To give you an idea, the American/PAL verions of the game has 5 different ending photos, while the Japanese version has 11 ending photo, with an actual Gallery that saves them.  So the Japanese version of the game has a lot more replay value to it.

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Nintendo Gaming / Re: Xenoblade chronicles 3 music is sick

« on: March 01, 2023, 10:55:55 AM »

I agree.  The music in the Xenoblade games is great and Xenoblade 3 has some great tracks as well.

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TalkBack / Re: Nintendo Switch Game Library Adds Game Boy Color, Expansion Pack Game Boy Advance Games

« on: February 08, 2023, 10:29:12 PM »

Not going to lie, this was the part of the Direct that got me the most excited.  The OG Gameboy is a very underrated system so it's great to see some of it's best games will now be on the Switch.  It's also great to see they'll be giving the option for the Gameboy Color palette options to all games as well.  That's the thing that was disappointing about the 3DS GB emulation is they didn't offer that for all the games, even though they were releasing GBC games along side them.

Now I would have liked Super Gameboy options as well, but I'll be grateful for the GBC ones.  Seriously, playing OG Gameboy games with the GBC palettes improve them since the added different colors makes enemies and environmental hazards easier to see now.

Oh and with GBA games being added to the Expansion Pack, that $50 price tag is almost a steal with the amount of games available on the service now.

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TalkBack / Re: New Tears Of The Kingdom Footage Shown, Limited Edition And Amiibo Announced

« on: February 08, 2023, 10:18:26 PM »

Well that's one way to change the map of the first Breath of the Wild.  Ganondorf just nuked the **** out of everything.

And that extra $10 is the Game of the Decade tax.  

I mean, Nintendo must be feeling pretty good about this game if they think this is the best game to start increasing the price.  They could have tried that last year with Pokemon since that would have been guaranteed to sell as well since it's Pokemon.  So they must feel Tears of the Kingdom is going to be pretty mind blowing to do it now.

So yeah, can't wait to see more of the game.

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TalkBack / Re: Metroid Prime Remaster Available Now

« on: February 08, 2023, 10:10:37 PM »

I'm kind of surprised Nintendo is only charging $40 for it.  They released Skyward Sword HD for $60 and that game didn't have the graphical enhancements this one does. 

Well no one can say Nintendo isn't trying to make Metroid more popular.  A remaster of one of the high rated games of all time, with better graphical enhancements then most other remasters have gotten, being sold at a lower price kind of shows Nintendo is really trying to get more people to give this game a shot.

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TalkBack / Re: Ghost Trick: Phantom Detective To Revive This Summer

« on: February 08, 2023, 10:04:52 PM »

Nice, another game I was interested in but never got around to buying.

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TalkBack / Re: Pair Of Baten Kaitos RPGs Being Remastered For Switch In Summer

« on: February 08, 2023, 10:03:00 PM »

All you uncultured swine (  ) who played the 1st Baten Kaitos but didn't play the superior Baten Kaitos Origins have no excuse now.

**** Yes, this is exactly what I was hoping to see. Nintendo has historically refused to acknowledge their GameCube games, so this needed to happen. These are 2 exceptionally unique RPGs more people should play.

Well Nintendo has basically ran out of Wii U games to port so now it's time to raid the Gamecubes lineup of games less people played so they can basically advertise them as new games to the larger gaming audience.

Either way this is great news since I was always interested in both Baten Kaitos games but never got around to buying.  They came out in my late High School and Early College years were I just bought one game at a time and played that game as soon as I bought it.  So naturally I missed out on a lot of titles that way.

Now I'll these remasters and they'll go into my backlog and eventually be played in 2035.

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TalkBack / Re: First Nintendo Direct Of 2023 To Air February 8

« on: February 07, 2023, 08:55:53 PM »

Wooo! Always great to check in and see the news of a Direct about to happen. And tomorrow afternoon. I don't know if I can get myself properly hyped up enough in time so that I can be disappointed by it when it's over. Quick! Start posting all the wildest fantasy stuff you can. I need to get that pure hype coursing through my veins!!

Xenoblade Chronicles X2! F-Zero Battle Royale!! GameCube app for the Switch!!! 1080 Avalanche & Ice Climbers crossover game!!!! Nintendo buys Sega and takes over all their IP!!!!! Aw yeah!! That's the hype I neeeeeeeeeeeddd!!!!!!

That rumored Metriod Prime 1 remaster will probably be shown so there's your Gamecube game.

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TalkBack / Re: First Nintendo Direct Of 2023 To Air February 8

« on: February 07, 2023, 12:54:14 PM »

Here we go, it's finally Zelda time.  We're only 3 months away from release so it's now within the normal Nintendo hype cycle for releases.  No more teaser trailers, tomorrow we finally will get the real deal.

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Nintendo Gaming / Re: Not a hater but... (future prediction)

« on: February 07, 2023, 12:26:39 PM »

The results of the last fiscal quarter are out, and the Switch has officially passed the Game Boy to become Nintendo’s second-highest selling system ever at 122.55 million units. It has a real shot to be #1, needing 31 million and change to pass the DS, which seems doable at this point. 

At this point it's pretty much guaranteed.  As we see from the recent hardware and software sales, the system still has a lot of momentum yet.  Nintendo says the main reason for hardware sales being down last year was because of supply chain issues, and the software sales were pretty much flat from the previous year, which is pretty insane for a system that was in it's 6th year on the market.

Seriously, if Pokemon Scarlet/Violet could sell over 20 million in less then 2 months, and it was the sequel to Sword and Shield which did over 25 million, then Tears of the Kingdom is going to be just as big since Breath of the Wild did 29 million on Switch, with another million plus on the Wii U.  Tears of the Kingdom will pretty much dominate all gaming conversations in May and June giving the Switch a lot of attention again.

I also think there's a good chance we'll be getting a new 2D Mario at the end of this year that will be huge.  Seriously, NSMB U Deluxe is now close to 15 million on the Switch.  If we get a brand new 2D Mario that's seen as the next evolution for the franchise, you're looking at an easy 30 million seller, like NSMB DS and Wii were.

Plus they still have the price cut card they can play, to give them a boast.  The Switch is still $300 with it's best selling games from launch being sold for $60.  If Nintendo decides to cut the price to $250, or hell, down to $200 and games like Mario Kart 8 Deluxe and Breath of the Wild are now being sold for $20-30 that right there will get a lot of people to finally jump on board as well.

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General Gaming / Re: Games Beaten, Completed, or Played in 2022

« on: January 15, 2023, 03:48:36 PM »

It looks like Luigi Dude and broodwars both played all the TMNT games. I am going to start that collection soon, but will just be playing one game every once in a while I wanted to start with Turtles in Time, but and deciding between the SNES version and arcade version. I am guessing the arcade version looks nicer, but the SNES version is better balanced for completing without needing unlimited lives/credits. What are your thoughts on the better at home experience?

The SNES version is better.  It's got an extra level, and is much better balanced game.  For one, the SNES version lets you actually do the move where the Turles grab an enemy and smash them left and right, which is great for handling situations when you're being swarmed by enemies.  In the Arcade version that move just randomly happens.  The SNES version also lets you double tap to run in the options menu, while in the Arcade version you have to move for a while before you start to auto run.  The double tap to run is a much better option for trying to get away from bosses attacks and larger groups of enemies.  It also adds some new boss fights that are better then what's in the Arcade version as well.  You'll need to beat Hard mode to get the ending, but you can set the game to let you have up to 7 lives and 5 continues so even Hard mode is still very beatable.

The Arcade game is cheap, even by Arcade standards.  The better you're playing, the more enemies will keep spawning on screen until it reaches a point where you'll be overwhelmed.  If the Arcade version let you do that enemy slam move at will this would make it more doable, but since that move just randomly happens in the Arcade, it pretty much means you have to rely more on luck then skill.  This is why the games pretty notorious for being almost impossible to 1CC, even among the very hardcore.

Of course since you can just keep spamming credits to win, the Arcade game will take less then an hour your first time through so it'll still be worth playing just too see the differences between it and the SNES version.  The sprites and animations are better so it's worth a playthrough to see what a pretty version of Turtles in Time looks like.

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General Gaming / Re: Games Beaten, Completed, or Played in 2022

« on: January 15, 2023, 01:32:02 PM »

Alright, finally got time to look back on what I played.

Games beaten in 2022

3DS

Shin Megami Tensei IV
Fire Emblem Fates: Birthright
Fire Emblem Fates: Conquest
Fire Emblem Fates: Revelation

Switch

Gato Roboto
Oniken
Turok
Turok 2: Seeds of Evil
Timespinner
Gunbird
Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night
Castlevania: Circle of the Moon
Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance
Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow
Kirby and the Forgotten Land
Journey to Silius
Shadow of the Ninja
Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition
Doom Eternal
Panzer Paladin
Xenoblade Chronicles 2: Torna – The Golden Country
Doom Eternal: The Ancient Gods Part 1
Doom Eternal: The Ancient Gods Part 2
Steel Assault
Demons of Asteborg
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (Arcade)
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles (NES)
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 2: The Arcade Game
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles 3: The Manhattan Project
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time (Arcade)
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time (SNES)
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Fall of The Foot Clan
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Back From The Sewers
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles III: Radical Rescue
Blasphemous
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Hyperstone Heist
Mechstermination Force
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turles: Shredders Revenge
Super Earth Defense Force
Travis Strikes Again: No More Heroes
The Ninja Saviors: Return of the Warriors
Wallachia: Reign of Dracula



Games played but not beaten

3DS

Rhythm Heaven Megamix

Switch

Danmaku Unlimited 3
Super Bomberman R
Samurai Aces III: Sengoku Cannon
Crash Bandicoot
Crash Bandicoot 2: Cortex Strikes Back
Xenoblade Chronicles 3


Xenoblade 3 is on the not finished list since I started the game in mid November and am still playing it.  I've currently at about 120 hours in the game so it's pretty much been taking up my time the last 2 months.

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Nintendo Gaming / Re: Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

« on: January 14, 2023, 07:52:23 AM »

I imagine we'll still have Shrines or something similar to them since those were great rewards for exploration and were mostly well liked.  The biggest complaints were too many Test of Strength shrines and the music and look of the Shrines being the same.  I'd imagine Shrines in Tears of the Kingdom will probably have a variety of looks and music to help make them feel more unique, and the Test of Strength Shrines will either be greatly reduced, or have a much larger variety of enemies to fight so they don't all feel too similar as well.

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Nintendo Gaming / Re: Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

« on: January 13, 2023, 11:00:37 AM »

The size of any underground area will probably depend on how big the Sky sections will be.  If the Sky Islands end up equaling a size similar to Hyrule then I have a hard time seeing an equally large underground section.  Even if normal Hyrule has remained mostly unchanged, creating all those brand new area's in the Sky is still a large task for the developers.

Even though they've been working on this for close to 6 years, that would still be a massive undertaking to create 2 completely new worlds and still update the existing Hryule.  Now I imagine new caves will have been created for the original Hyrule to give new things to find there but I don't know how doable it will be to have a giant underground section comparable to other area's.

I think part of the reason for this game taking so long is because we'll be getting some massive dungeons this time.  The biggest complaint about BOTW was the Divine Beast weren't a good substitute for traditional dungeons, so I think the Zelda team has found a way to make some massive dungeons like the previous games, but still make them work with the open world gameplay of BOTW.  That's the part I'm most interested in seeing what they've done for this game.

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Nintendo Gaming / Re: Upcoming Switch games! What's on your wishlist

« on: January 12, 2023, 11:00:04 AM »

Well out of the games on the list.

Fire Emblem Engage
Wonder Boy Anniversary Collection
Octopath Traveler 2
Kirby's Return to Dream Land Deluxe
Mega Man Battle Network Legacy Collection
The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom


Of course Zelda is the only one I'll be buying at launch for full price since I still have a huge backlog.  Hell, over the holiday season I won a $500 gift card at work and bought about 20 games on the eShop holiday sale using that thing, and I still have about $300 left on it.  I still have over 60 games on my wish list I haven't bought yet.  This is why I don't give a **** what games come out what year since there's so many games to play I'll never run out.

Oh and this list is missing a ton of indie games.  I mean just today Vengeful Guardian Moonrider came out and looks amazing.  I'll probably take a break from Xenoblade 3 to play this since the developer, JoyMasher, previous games, Oniken, Odallus and Blazing Chrome were all great as well.

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Nintendo Gaming / Re: Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

« on: January 09, 2023, 06:48:35 PM »

Don’t really think anyone is anticipating this game at all, honestly.

…okay, so jokes aside, I’m pretty stunned at how little we actually know of the gameplay and narrative for this game. We didn’t really know much about the original BotW prior to launch but we had some idea of what gameplay would be like. I think the excuse for this is very similar to Super Mario Galaxy 2: this game is a sequel. Because it is not a “new” title, it will rely heavily on the gameplay functions of its predecessor and maybe add some new, minor elements. I imagine this game will be about vertical exploration in comparison with BotW’s horizontal traversal. Which is fine.

We do know about some of the new gameplay from Nintendo's patents they filed for the game over a year ago.  One patent allows Link to phase through platforms from below the surface which they showed in one of the trailers.  Another patent showed the ability to rewind time on objects, which was also shown in a trailer when Link has a bolder move back up a hill.  The last one was for Link to be able to move into different positions when aiming the bow while free-falling.

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Nintendo Gaming / Re: What will Nintendo release in 2023?

« on: January 03, 2023, 02:30:36 PM »

Jeez I screwed myself out of points last year once again by going into too much detail.  Seriously, need to be brief this year to get the win.

1.  No Switch successor will be released in 2023
2.  A new 2D Mario game will be revealed
3.  A new 2D Zelda will be revealed
4.  A DLC expansion for Pokemon SV will come out
5.  The rumored new Donkey Kong platformer will finally be revealed.  Not going to predict if it'll be 2D or 3D though since I think it could go either way.
6.  Kid Icarus Uprising HD remaster announced
7.  Regular Gameboy and Gameboy Color get added to basic NSO, while Gameboy Advanced title will be part of the Expansion Pack.
8.  The Metroid Prime 1 HD remaster is finally announced
9.  An HD remaster of F-Zero GX will be announced
10.  A new Wario Land from Good Feel will be announced

Prime 4 is turning into Duke Nukem Forever

Not exactly.  The original developer was Bandai Namco who screwed things up so badly, the entire project had to be rebooted from scratch.  Retro themselves have been working on the game since late 2018/early 2019, which is only 4 years now.  The game will probably be out in 2024 which would give it a 5 year development cycle from Retro which is pretty normal from some of the more ambitious 3D games Nintendo releases.

The only reason I didn't predict a Prime 4 trailer this year is because part of my does wonder if the game might have been moved to the Switch successor.  The Switch successor is probably coming out in the 2nd half of 2024, so if Prime 4 has been moved to it, we won't see any trailers until early 2024.

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TalkBack / Re: United States Federal Trade Commission Suing To Block Microsoft Acquisition Of Activision Blizza

« on: December 11, 2022, 10:44:07 PM »

Microsoft has a ton of their own IP's they don't do anything with.  Anyone who thinks Microsoft will care about the more obscure Activision properties is going to be very disappointment.

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TalkBack / Re: United States Federal Trade Commission Suing To Block Microsoft Acquisition Of Activision Blizza

« on: December 08, 2022, 05:55:50 PM »

Good, companies like Microsoft shouldn't be allowed to buy up large sections of the industry.  Yeah everyone talks about how great Phil Spencer is but he's not going to be head of Microsoft's gaming division forever.  As we've seen time and time again, large Western companies love to do complete 180's when someone new is in charge. 

Does anyone want Microsoft owning half the industry when some like Don Mattrick is in charge again who will have no problem gutting many of the studio's they've bought these last few years and pushing crap like always online, mandatory Kinect and no used games.

Hell, what's to stop Phil Spencer himself from doing this a decade from now if Microsoft gets to a point where they own so much of the industry he doesn't have to pretend to be a nice guy anymore.  Seriously, Microsoft history is filled with so much shady **** I don't trust anyone from that company. 

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Nintendo Gaming / Re: 2022 NWR Forum Awards - Best Nintendo Game

« on: December 05, 2022, 06:05:55 PM »

In that regards, I decided to tackle my first Fire Emblem game with Fates: Birthright earlier this year. I was playing it pretty steady at first and then slowed down and trailed off around Chapter 21. The story became pretty filler after a strong start and I was trying to keep partnering people to progress the little conversations they can have with each other and ended up just killing interest in it.

However, I'm not too concerned with playing the Fire Emblem games in order of North American release. But this does remind me that I should get Revelations before the eShop closes in the hopes Conquest and Revelations are indeed better than Birthright.

The gameplay in Conquest and Revelations is indeed better then Birthright.  If I had to score the 3 Fates games they'd go like this.

Conquest - 9/10
Revelations - 8/10
Birthright - 7/10

Conquest in particular is easily one of the best games I played this year.  I was playing the game on Hard mode with perma death turned on and lost some of my best characters right before the last chapter.  Beating the last chapter alone took me about 10 hours, and for awhile I thought I was completely screwed but eventually I created an epic suicide charge that basically cost the lives of almost my entire team, but I was able to protect my main character and his wife who was paired with him, with their stats boasted by every item I had left so that they could successfully kill the final boss.

That was probably my top gaming moment of the year.

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General Gaming / Re: 2022 NWR Forum Awards - Best Multiplatform Game

« on: December 05, 2022, 02:08:44 PM »

The only game on that list I've played is Shredder's Revenge so that will get my vote by default.  Of course it was still a very enjoyable game that did a good job of modernizing the TMNT beat-em-up formula.  I would rank it number 3 in my list of TMNT games with Manhattan Project for NES as my favorite and Turtles in Time for SNES as my second favorite.  The overall gameplay of Shredder's Revenge is great with combat being very fluid and it's got an amazing soundtrack, but the game is very unbalanced.  The normal mode is way too easy and the hard mode while overall is better, has several sections and boss fights that are fundamentally broken making it pretty frustrating at times.

Seriously, you can't tell me they playtested Level 13 on Arcade mode and said, "Yeah this is fine."  The boss of that level on Hard mode is such broken garbage that I almost stopped playing.  Hell, the only way I was able to eventually beat it was by every time I played the game unless I was playing well enough to the point where I thought I could get to Level 13 with at least 4 lives, I'd restart the whole game.  I need at least 2 lives to beat the boss of that level and the rest of that level usually kills me at least once, so unless I can get there with 4 lives, I'd be fucked since the default 3 lives that you have when you use a continue just wasn't enough.

Actually, I wonder if I'm one of the few crazy enough to even beat Arcade mode on Hard.  When I finally beat it, my score on the Switch leaderboards has me at number 195 for solo hard mode scores. I see on Steam, only 1.8% of people who bought the game beat Arcade mode on hard as well.  So I guess my complaints are something the average gamer isn't going to care about since most don't even seem to care about the Arcade mode, let alone its hardest setting.

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Nintendo Gaming / Re: 2022 NWR Forum Awards - Best Nintendo Game

« on: December 05, 2022, 12:51:29 PM »

The only games on that list I've played are Kirby and Xenoblade 3.  I do plan on playing Bayonetta 3 early next year.  I still have to play Splatoon 2 and the first Mario + Rabbids before I play their sequels.  I'll eventually get Live A Live but already have a big RPG backlog with Final Fantasy 7,8,9 and the Saga Gameboy Collection, as well as the remake of Saga 2 and 3.  Still need to play the remake of Trails of Mana as well since I loved the SNES original when I played it for the first time in Collection of Mana over 2 years ago.  Oh and then there's Octopath Traveler which is getting a sequel next year as well.

So yeah, I keep dragging my feet on RPG's since they take so long to play, which just keeps making my backlog of them more and more overwhelming.  I mean I finally played all 3 Fire Emblem Fate games this year and together they ended up taking over 130 hours to do, which makes it my most played game of the year with Shin Megami Tensei 4 being the 2nd most played game with over 110 hours into as well.  Which reminds me I still need to play Fire Emblem Echo's and Shin Megami Tensei 4 Apocalypse for the 3DS, before I can play Three Houses and SMT 5 on the Switch.

So yeah I'll finally get to play Live A Live around 2030.


Anyway, getting back to the two games I've played this year that are on this list, it's basically a coin flip between Kirby and Xenoblade 3.  I currently still playing Xenoblade 3 so I'm not going to vote just yet.  I would say that Kirby is the much better balance experience being way more consistent from beginning to end, but Xenoblade 3 has had some higher highs so far.  The game just took forever to finally get started, but ever since the entire battle system finally opened up I've been having a blast.  Lets see how I still feel about the game a week from now.

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General Gaming / Re: Shocktober III: Season of the Witch

« on: November 01, 2022, 01:28:57 PM »

The last 2 weeks I played through the Castlevania Advanced Collection again.  I play the 3 GBA games on it earlier this year, but stopped after completing the normal modes on each one.  Now I came back to do some of the more advanced modes.

Castlevania: Circle of the Moon

Finally played Magician mode that gives you all the cards from the start.  This is basically speedrun mode since having some of the cards the late game enemies drop lets you just rush though the game.  No seriously, one of the abilities makes your body unable to be injured and lets you just run though all the enemies.  Now you wont get any experience from them, but it doesn't matter since when you fight the bosses, you can just spam the Thunderbird summon to cheese all the bosses and the experience they give you will easily catch you up.  When I beat Dracula, my overall level was only a few levels lower then my normal playthrough, despite being several hours less.

Then I did Fighter mode, and this mode is basically easy mode.  Your whip attack is buffed up so much, most enemies die in a few hits, and your defense is so high can take a ton of damage now.  Plus even though it's called Fighter mode, the Cross item also has it's attack power buffed up and just destroys bosses.  Seriously, the bosses in Fighter mode died faster with spamming the Cross item then the bosses in Magician mode did by spamming the Thunderbird summon.  I also didn't die in any of the bosses except for my first time in the Dracula fight, while in Magician mode I still died several time in some of the bosses including several times against Dracula, since Magician mode nerfs your defense a lot so if you do Thunderbird at the wrong time, the boss could kill you once you lose the invincibility frames.  Fighter mode on the other hand you can just stand next to the bosses and keep spamming Cross, and if you get hit it wont really matter since your defense is so high you can afford to take the hits since the bosses will be dead before they even have a change to kill you.  The only boss that can still kill you in this mode is Dracula since if you don't time you jumps and Cross throws right, the bats that circle the eye can still catch you off guard like they did my first time, but the second time I was ready and easily got it.

Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow

This is my first time playing Soma Hard Mode.  Well it certainly makes the game up until the Death boss fight harder.  Had to be more careful in during this time since enemies and bosses take more damage and cause it.  After the Death boss fight though, you can then gain access so some of the best weapons and armor in the game and at this point have plenty of money to buy lots of potions at the shop, so the second half isn't really that much harder then normal mode.

Castlevania: Harmony of Dissonance

Did this games Hard mode as well and it's pretty much the same situation as Aria.  The first half of the game is noticeable harder then the normal game, but the second half isn't really that much different.  I still have to wonder how the developers didn't notice how cheap potions cost at the shop and didn't even try to put a limit on how many could be bought.  I guess if you do a Hardmode run and refuse to buy potions from the shop, it would be a pretty challenging game the whole way through.  Of course the fight with Maxim at the end is such cheap BS, that the game is pretty much encouraging you to buy potions.  The fact the Maxim fight is the one boss fight that's not in the Boss Rush mode shows you even the devs realized how terrible that thing was, and took it out since it would have made Boss Rush mode impossible had it remained in.


So yeah, that's it for the GBA Castlevania games.  I'll eventually do Sniper and Thief mode in Circle of the Moon, as well as Julius Hardmode and Maxim mode in their respective games.  But right now I'm burnt out on Metroidvania's.

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General Gaming / Re: Shocktober III: Season of the Witch

« on: October 29, 2022, 05:31:54 PM »

This makes me wonder what your favorite Metroidvania is (not counting Metroid or Castlevania games)?

Well my favorite non-Metroid or Castlevania game that could still be considered a Metroidvania would be Wario Land 3.  I mean it's got Wario unlocking new abilities to use to help access new area's in the games levels that are quite large and filled with multiple treasures to find in each one.  Yeah it isn't one giant interconnected world, but it's got everything else that can be considered a Metroidvania, even if it's a more platformer focused Metroidvania.  But still, the amount of gameplay variety in the game is insane and pulls off what it's trying to do very well.

Of course Wario Land 3 is not the most fair comparison since it's more of a platformer Metroidvania hybrid.  For a game that would be more comparable to the traditional Metroidvania's that focus more on action, I'd have to go with Shantae and the Pirates Curse.  It does the best job out of any non Metroid/Castlevania Metroidvania to incorporate new abilities into your moveset that not only help change the gameplay up, but make backtracking much smoother as well.

For some games that are more recent, I do think Monster Boy and the Curse Kingdom and Hollow Knight are also truly great Metroidvania style games.  My only problem with both of them is they have slow intro sections that go on longer then this type of game should and have other parts later in the game that drag on longer as well.  Other then that, they're both solid titles with a lot of great moments and gameplay variety.

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General Gaming / Re: Shocktober III: Season of the Witch

« on: October 28, 2022, 03:44:50 PM »

Blasphemous

Well this game fits this theme pretty well.  It's one of those indie Souls inspired Metroidvania games, so of course it's filled with creepy and grim dark imagery all around.  The pixel art and sprites look great so the presentation is top notch.  That was one of the reasons I had had my eye on this game for quite a while.  I finally played and beat it earlier this month, and for the most part it was pretty fun, but it does suffer from some annoying flaws that keep it from being truly great.

The biggest problem is despite it being a Metroidvania, you don't really gain any new abilities that change the gameplay and how you move.  Yeah there's some new attacks you can unlock but there's nothing like what an actual Metroid or IGA Castlevania give you in terms of increasing your mobility, which makes the backtracking in the second half of the game very tedious.  The gameplay also feels very repetitive in the second half as well since because of the lack of new gameplay abilities, nothing really spices up the core gameplay like other Metroidvania games will do all throughout.

The combat for the most part was pretty fun, but once again it would have been nice if they gave you more options.  The Dash attack you unlock it very useful, but the charge and downward strike you unlock are almost pointless since the charge time on both of them ends up leaving you open to attacks more often then not.  It also sucks that even when you upgrade your swords attack power, even some of the most basic enemies at the early parts of the game stick take several hits to kill.  This once again makes backtracking tedious since you cant just easily dispose of most enemies when going back to old area's.

Speaking of the difficulty, the game starts out pretty challenging but gets much easier in the second half.  It's kind of weird because some of the earlier bosses you fights love to shoot a lot of **** at you from all over the screen, but then the later bosses have simpler patterns that are easier to avoid.  It almost feels like the developers switched around the bosses and accidentally put the harder ones in the first half and the easier in the second.  Of course if you're trying to get the True Ending, there are 2 optional bosses that you'll need to beat that are pretty challenging, and if you do that, it makes the 2nd to last boss much more challenging as well.  Plus if you play the game on New Game +, there are 5 new optional bosses the game adds which were a nice challenge as well.

Oh, and anyone that wants to see the True Ending needs to use a guide.  The requirements are pretty much impossible to find on your own, and require you talking to a certain character before you fight a certain boss halfway through the game, or else you'll be completely locked out of that ending.  Also use a guide since the game does have things you can unlock that helps make traveling less tedious that the main game either does a terrible job at hinting at, or outright doesn't even tell you about.  This is why my second playthrough on NG + was way more enjoyable then my first, since I was able to cut down on a lot of the really tedious and boring stuff that trying to play blind in my first playthrough was filled with.

So overall it was a good game, that had the potential to be great.  I hear the developer is working on a sequel, so I look forward to seeing how they improve on this.