What games are you playing?

[KobaBeach]

^What the fuck is this game.

i found out about it through a tamashii hiroka video from 2007 and it vibes with me so hard it's ridiculous

it has a lot of parallels with asmt1 which is actually super hilarious

like demo is like some dumb bitch from outer space who came to get groceries and winds up on the mushroom kingdom after her transporter fucks up
jino-chan is some dumb bitch who crashlanded in planet liyon after cat-packet star got destroyed by her idiocy while fighting doppa

demo gets strongarmed by the yoshi resistance to fight against the charlie empire in exchange for the teleporter the charlies retrieved
jino gets hired by the cat kingdom to fight the sheep kingdom in retaliation for them killing off soldiers in a fake attempt at establishing relations and making them into catburgers that they sent back to the cat kingdom

everything in the games' stories Just Happens there's no rhyme or reason to most of the cutscene events

both games are hopelessly janky and only recommended to people who like weird cult classic shit

not asmt1, but there's also a purple bitch with knives as their gimmick (gertrude in turb who is a man (and extremely adorable in a scrunko kinda way, i love his little chibi gremlin meta knight ass), and brainwashed!iris in a2mt who is a girl)

around halfway through turb it shifts to a sort of weird alien wasteland, where you find that doppa was behind everything
and halfway through asmt it shifts to fucked up corrupted australia, where you battle black plague because memes

i think a lot of bio_100%'s old pc98 games were just Like This, because this /is/ a reimagining of their Sengoku TURB doujin freeware (furige??) title on PC98, they just revamped the gameplay completely and redid all the maps, and it's in 3d. also nonorin nomeu from the original TURB games was replaced with jino-chan here.

yoko kuroyanagi (the character designer) also helped with tamagotchi design i think, at least in the early period?

PLEASE look at how this game looks

I'm good enough at abusing how the time limit works that it's not an obstacle any more; but I have to be in the right mood to play it so I'll go years without playing it. Right now the main obstacle is just I don't have a dedicated television for my switch, which is probably the weirdest excuse I've had yet but for N64 games I would rather use a proper N64 button layout and I can't really do that in handheld mode (while I do have an NSO-compliant wireless controller I don't like using controllers during handheld mode because handheld)

My biggest issue with Majora is just how. You can wait a long time for events to happen if you do everything super fast, which I do bc I use guides.

Also WOW the 3DS version sounds like shit

[Ashan]

Though with that said the changes to the Giant's Mask are actually fun but because it's now actually mandatory for completing the boss fight it becomes decidedly less so on repeat playthroughs (in N64 it was optional but also the fastest method as long as you had the MP for it, and if you're Doing Everything^TM you have easy access to cycle-infinite MP by that point).

You're the first person I've ever heard say anything good about the remade Twinmold fight. That's like the only thing I remember from MM3D because it actually made me rage quit and come back the next day. I don't even really remember specifically what was happening, but I refreshed myself by watching the famous MM3D review everyone had in their suggestions for a few months for some reason and it seems I wasn't the only one who found that fight incredibly frustrating.

Many people found the same
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/87 ... d/71221803
https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/boards/87 ... d/71454661
https://www.reddit.com/r/zelda/comments/4hvbko/twinmold_3d_is_the_worst_boss_in_zelda_history/

[Ashan]

Oh, I actually found my old post from when I was doing my original playthrough:
https://talkhaus.raocow.com/viewtopic.p ... 86#p273886

Kinda funny searching this forum for "twinmold," you can see everyone complaining about it:
https://talkhaus.raocow.com/viewtopic.p ... ld#p286766
https://talkhaus.raocow.com/viewtopic.p ... ld#p276054
https://talkhaus.raocow.com/viewtopic.p ... ld#p273581

Except for Bean who liked it too I guess
https://talkhaus.raocow.com/viewtopic.p ... ld#p274910

edit: now I'm reading all of my posts from my initial MM3D playthrough and this is kinda funny

Then I was told I needed to play the song you learn for the person who laid the eggs, and I hadn't even seen her at this point. I happened to notice that the one cliff by the beach had a giant hole in it which was a giant entrance to an entire new area I missed the whole time I was doing the egg hunting.

This exact same thing happened to me on this playthrough too. I knew there was that Zora area somewhere, but I thought maybe I had to do the Pirate's Cove stuff to get access to it or something. Once I had the song I was swimming around for a while trying to figure out how to get there and then I stumbled onto that cave opening in the beach. I guess it's just not really obviously in your path, and neither is it obviously marked on the map.

I will say, in the same post I complained about the seahorse thing being too cryptic. I actually managed to figure that out myself this time (I had no memory of it), and I can give the game credit for pushing you in the right direction. It's not like there's a lot of places to go from the beach, just the skulltula house and the house with the guy who has the seahorse and offers to trade you for it. I had talked to him earlier, and later when you try to get Pinnacle Rock, a Zora is there to give you the hint that a certain gold fish knows the way or something. I was able to put it together.

Great Bay Temple
...
There were 2 parts in particular I got stuck:

1. When you get the piping setup to get the one upward-shooting fountain in the first room to start spitting, so you can jump on it and turn the other valve to get the waterwheel to turn the other way: I didn't know how to get onto the spout you turn on. I tried jumping and looking around for platforms I was missing, and trying to shoot out of the water, etc. and then I looked up and saw there's a hookshot panel on the super high ceiling. That took me like 5-10 minutes to figure out.
2. When you have to set up the brown pipes to get the upward water shooting in the room with the boss door entrance: I couldn't find the last valve to enable it, cause I thought my overall objective with the brown pipes was to turn off the waterfall blocking the ladder in the main room with the spinning water. Eventually I realized I had been freeing/unfreezing waterfalls just like that the entire time, and the last valve was actually behind that waterfall I thought I had to stop with the valves. So I ran around for probably 15 minutes before figuring out I just needed to stop the waterfall with ice arrows and then I could access the last valve. Whoops.

1st one also happened to me again. Possibly the second too? I can't remember.

[raekuul]

Though with that said the changes to the Giant's Mask are actually fun but because it's now actually mandatory for completing the boss fight it becomes decidedly less so on repeat playthroughs (in N64 it was optional but also the fastest method as long as you had the MP for it, and if you're Doing Everything^TM you have easy access to cycle-infinite MP by that point).

You're the first person I've ever heard say anything good about the remade Twinmold fight. That's like the only thing I remember from MM3D because it actually made me rage quit and come back the next day. I don't even really remember specifically what was happening, but I refreshed myself by watching the famous MM3D review everyone had in their suggestions for a few months for some reason and it seems I wasn't the only one who found that fight incredibly frustrating.

The worst part about Twinmold 3D is that you have to do the same thing every time. It's cool to have Link fight like a luchador... the first time. It becomes considerably less fun on repeat playthroughs, and that's the bulk of my issues with the MM3D boss fights - the removal of agency. Granted, they also managed to shoehorn Gigantic Eyeball Weak Spots into every boss fight but that's a franchise problem rather than a grezzo problem.

[Bean]

Still playing that Castlevania collection. Over the last couple nights, I went through Castlevania II: Belmont's Revenge, and it was pretty fun. Yeah, the Mega Man like ability to pick your stage order in the beginning's nice, but it doesn't really matter since there aren't any special powers or anything. The actual game held up pretty well and was definitely more fun than the GB original I played ages ago. Dracula was kind of annoying until realizing he teleports in the same order every time. Pattern recognition and figuring out where to dodge got me through this one just fine.

Also got through one of the branches in the AEW: Fight Forever story mode. It's like a lesser version of No Mercy in that regard since there's not title paths for each belt. Instead, it's just four blocks of three paths. Won two of the three titles along the way. Not really sure if that counts as beating the game in my eyes, but whatever. It's a fine game, but I'm also glad it was checked out and not purchased.

[KobaBeach]

You're the first person I've ever heard say anything good about the remade Twinmold fight. That's like the only thing I remember from MM3D because it actually made me rage quit and come back the next day.

The worst part about Twinmold 3D is that you have to do the same thing every time. It's cool to have Link fight like a luchador... the first time. It becomes considerably less fun on repeat playthroughs, and that's the bulk of my issues with the MM3D boss fights - the removal of agency.

I haven't played 3DS Majora yet, I only own Triforce Heroes and ALBW (pronounced albwuh), and I'll pirate the remakes eventually (and Four Swords GBA bc I'm curious, I'll still need to finagle Dolphin+mGBA or whatev for FSAdv 1P. and FFCC). But I feel like Twinmold only being fun for the first time and then never again is what matters here. Not telling you how to feel but I don't feel like Raekuul was saying anything positive about Twinmold, just that the Giant's Mask is kinda more fun to use.

I'm definitely playing 3DS Majora alongside another game so I don't go insane, even if I like Action RPG-esque games. Ocarina seems to be a noted improvement in most areas so pog, but a lot of the appeal of N64 Ocarina to me is how it feels like it's really really close to falling apart and kind of a janky gotdam mess. See: Sonic Adventure.

[EllenHouraisan]

PLEASE look at how this game looks

Yo, this rules. I don't know if I'll ever play it, but I'm glad to know it exists.

[KobaBeach]

Secret of Mana - Leveled up Primm's weapons to their max for now, working on Popoi's before moving towards the Witch's Forest and her castle. Hopefully this grinding will mean I wont struggle as hard with The Goddamned Spiky Tiger

Will continue in a jiffy.

i should draw spiky tiger and the jackal from sword of mana/adventures of mana

[KobaBeach]

Secret of Mana - Finished grinding Popoi's proficiencies, went from the Haunted Forest all the way to Matango. Spikey Tiger was cleared on my first go due to the grinding, but Fire Gigas was a bit clutch due to me running out of magic for Popoi early on. No Faerie Walnuts. The rest of the bosses, I went for a Magic usage strategy where Everything Just Dies™.

I'm levelling up outside of Flammie's cave, working on Randi for now, specifically, I've gotten his Gloves and Axe to Lv3 (Sword and Spear are still at Lv2, no orbs yet) and I'm working on getting the Whip from Lv1 to 3 on his end. Forging has been kept up with.

My opinion now is that it is a good ass game, very much informed by its predecessor (FFAdv). It plays a bit better than Trials, but the slight focus on leveling proficiencies and the attack buffering (waiting for it to charge to 100%) knock it down a peg. Overworld movement is a fucking pain too, I feel like the maps were better in Trials and Sword.

No comment on Legend of Mana's maps since it's mostly structured like a beat 'em up/belt scroller, think Final Fight, Kunio-kun or Streets of Rage.

EDIT:
Kingdom Hearts II: Final Mix - Leveled up Valor Form to Lv3 so I could use High Jump Lv2, and with that I've gotten a few Puzzle Pieces I could have gotten before.

So far I have the following (X are what I have, ? are what I don't have):

Twilight Town: X
Hollow Bastion: XXXXXX
Beast's Castle: ?X?XXXXX
Olympus Coliseum: XXXX???XX
The Land of Dragons: X??XX?XX
100 Acre Wood: ?
Disney Castle: ?XXX?
Timeless River: ?XX

Order is based on Jiminy's journal, there is a Puzzle Pieces FAQ on GFAQs for more details.

As you can see from the spoiler, I also did the first visit to Disney Castle (the Minnie escort missions were the worst), and I went through Timeless River. Timeless River's graphics and just the general vibe, were superb. I love the way the voices sounded super low quality. Retro!Pete and Mickey are also so, so cute compared to the current designs. Modern!Pete is still somewhat cute though...

The fact Timeless River was a bunch of Crisis Bar segments was kind of annoying but, eh. Definitely getting more use of the Drive now. Locked Timeless River's other door, locked Disney Castle and now I'm heading to the second visit to Olympus Coliseum. I'll try to level up the Wisdom and Valor Forms and then see about levelling up Summons before I get Genie later on, and I'll try to do 100 Acre Wood soon (got a page from DC).

Also did some synthesizing to level up my shopkeep Moogle, but he's not a priority. Don't wanna max him out, unless it's something that requires a non-absurd or nil amount of grinding. Also did the Awakening Puzzle (very dummy easy).

didney gaming

[raekuul]

Pokemon Silver: I abused save-states to do it (because fuck level grinding off of wild pokemon) but I beat the Elite Four and Lance.

• Quagsire Bertha
• Girafarig Faron
• Typhlosion Quilava Koal (he evolved after I beat Lance)
• Parasect Kahlihara (Only directly knocked out Karen's Umbreon but Kahlihara tanked a shit-ton of physical attacks that by all rights should have knocked her out, including Rock Slide from Bruno's Machamp and Hyper Beam from Lance's Level 50 Dragonite which allowed me to Spore in situations I really had no business landing a Spore in)
• Ampharos Guiseppe
• Haunter Portina

[KobaBeach]

haven't finished my session yet but firehazard canopy from A Super Mario Thing is still one of the worst 2d platformer stages i've ever played in my whole fucking life no cap frfr

i hope kinkyoats gets shot in the asshole like that guy from inmu (joke)

EDIT:
A Super Mario Thing - trying to do high sky fly normal exit

no more games for today

[KobaBeach]

Ys II (Chronicles) - Finished getting every mascot keychain in Lance Village + Moondoria Ruins. Grinded three times in Ice Ridge of Noltia, thank you to the now dwindling Neeli, Eggrid and Gworter populations, beat Tyalmath and I'm at the Moat of Burnedbless. Not going for Steam cheevos.

[KobaBeach]

i wanted to like play vidya or draw or code smth yesterday but like. my whole body was aching and my friends theo and roach told me to go to bed. all i did was play ys 2 and organize my personal bara archival (art by others) folder... ;w; thankfully they also told me i was a good boy

still need to continue commenting and merging the VIP5 zingers

for AAT related purposes

, same with the ASMT cookie sprites (those can be separate ASM files tho). also in the mood to make some mario and rpg maker 2k3 stuff but no ideas (U ºAº)

Star Ocean: The Last Hope (PS3) - Felt like seeing the Steam prices for the SO games (still kinda expensive), and then I was in the mood to play SO4! Getting pretty close to finishing the stuff at Aeos for now. I'm mostly just trying to get First Aid on everyone (only Reimi left) as well as the Skill Manuals for everyone.

Will do quests and Item Orders too, and try to get the optional items I can get right now on the Calnus and the Eldarian Base. I think I missed the Recipe Memo 05 earlier, but that seems to be a common missable Kaizo Trap. I can redo the 2 hours I spent so far in my last two sessions to get it again, but I don't want to rn.

Armaros was super tough, even at Galaxy Mode (normal mode). I had to look up a walkthrough to know the proper strategy, which was

focusing on breaking apart the sheet of shell armor on its right hand side to reveal its weak spot

. It's a very neat piece of design, especially since you can tell it's effective by the

shell shards flying off

. It's just not very obvious, which I also appreciate in a sense. I'm too used to Star Ocean and Tales bosses you can mostly mash your way through ^^

Fun boss though, I made sure to get enough Blueberries through harvesting outside of the Calnus before giving it another go. I was also at around Lv7 with Edge and Reimi. Gotta just get a bunch of Fol for shopping purposes, right now. Thankfully it isn't as stingy and reliant on bonus multipliers as SO3 on that front. (^w^)

[raekuul]

Pokemon Silver - Officially arrived in (Coastal) Kanto. Got dah Thundabadge

Might and Magic: Clash of Heroes - I miss having a ds. The HD/Definitive editions just aren't the same. It does not help that the relics are different enough that your playstyles will shift enough to be noticeably different.

Kingdom Hearts But Disney/Square won't let me play offline - so this game sucks for me right now because every time I hit the power button to put the switch to sleep it has to crash out because of a loss of connection to the cloud server. It'll get marginally better once I have a dedicated TV for videogames but it'll still be annoying to play since I can't really play it during work hours. Otherwise - raft-building complete, tomorrow is the gathering of supplies.

Icewind Dale - broke into Kresselack's Tomb. I actually didn't want to be in here yet, it's just been long enough since I last played through that I forgot which tomb was Kresselack's.

EDIT:
Speedchoice Pokemon Red - I got the itch to do a Flying monotype run thanks to something coming across my facebook feed (an alleged water monotype victory screen but that included Nidoqueen who very much is not a water type).

[Bean]

The usual here. F-Zero 99 where I won the newly added Queen League this morning, AEW: Fight Forever's at the trophy grinding stage where I'll just do a couple that are fun and move on for now, and went back for the monthly random session or two with Advance Wars 1 + 2. Down to the final four missions of the AW2 campaign now after doing five this week.

[thatguyif]

AEW: Fight Forever's at the trophy grinding stage where I'll just do a couple that are fun and move on for now, and went back for the monthly random session or two with Advance Wars 1 + 2.

What's your take on Fight Forever? Friend of mine (more into wrestling than I am) is on the fence about it

[Ashan]

Last year I was planning to play through all the Ace Attorney games, and I got as far as playing through the first 5 mainline games but just kind of stopping after Dual Destinies. I think maybe I had burnt out after that one, especially cause I had a lot of issues with it. That was back in a frame of time from January to April of 2022. Well I was needing something to play and I thought... I should really finish off the last mainline game. So I booted up Spirit of Justice and played through the first episode tonight. I can't remember how long other first episodes are, but I figured I'd do this one in a sitting and it ended up taking 3 full hours. Now that I think of it, I think Dual Destinies had a pretty long episode 1 too, maybe that was a thing that started with the 3DS games, I can't remember.

It was alright I guess. "Pees'lubn Andistan'dhin" is just an incredible name. It also triggered me to check the other people's names and finally get the joke of Ahlbi Ur'gaid. They're really leaning into those name puns.

[Bean]

What's your take on Fight Forever? Friend of mine (more into wrestling than I am) is on the fence about it

It is a game that would've been considered a perfect rental back in the day or pickup at $20-$30 or so now. It's fine, it plays well enough, but there's not a ton of content and a few funny glitches. Nothing gamebreaking, but yeah, it's just an okay game at best.

[raekuul]

Speedchoice Pokemon Red, Flying Monotype - Up to two badges. Thanks to Speedchoice offering both "start with a drink" and "easier game corner" I now have my main team

• Charmeleon
• Dratini
• Scyther
• Gyarados
• Golbat
• Farfetch'd (is currently a Cut/Fly specialist and will get switched for Aerodactyl once I get to Cinnabar)

[camwoodstock]

so another PvZ2 mod released that we had our eyes on, that being Garden Rush, and

we have beat Garden Rush,

...

okay no we'll share a bit more. uhhh this is our first experience with a kingdom rush-paced tower defense game, and we feel kinda good-to-mixed on it. because like, on the one hand, we definitely liked our time playing this! it's short but also this mod was a side project for a dude most known for making videos, its launch would probably be small by default. and like! we kinda love the back-and-forth! at no point do you kinda just hit a part of the stage where you just kinda hit fast forward and set the phone down, there's always at least a Little micromanaging to do, which feels pretty fun!

on the downsides though, but on the other hand we feel like we fundamentally just Did Not Understand some game mechanics. see: the heroes which we're assuming are the analogue for the fabled "Big fucking unit that does a lot" in the OG kingdom rush. we literally just kinda defaulted to the one that gives us more sun because. 99% of our PvZ gameplay just kinda defaults to amassing as much sun as possible, because the overall DPS of every other hero plant was... kinda bobo ngl. doesn't help like half the offensive ones were "attack the leftmost zombie on the whole screen", aka the Worst targetting known to man, like the only reason sling pea got away with it was his fuck-off huge DPS

overall: we have been feeling the draw to replay PvZ1 again because that ALWAYS fucking happens to us around halloween, and this only fed into that more (but in like a "i am now in close proximity to PvZ and this is enabling us" way, not in a "ughhh i hate this i'd rather play PvZ" way). we've heard they finally released a mod for PvZ1 that is MORE than "Just another super hard mode that makes you find the 3-4 plants the dev wants you to spam and spam them, otherwise you lose". We are interested in how much it stands up to the tall order of being better than those sorts of mods that pollute the PvZ1 modding scene. oh, and garden rush is pretty fun, it's no AltverZ but also it 100% was not trying to be AltverZ,

[KobaBeach]

someday i will go to hell for drawing so much furry and non-furry debauchery but that day is not today

i think im one of the few people who actually drew grapleomon fanart, ever

Final Fantasy VIII - Quistis told me to get dressed for the Field Exam in Dollet, but instead I'm racking up my card collection for refinement purposes?? Savestates are being used so I don't have to slog through the game's startup sequence and loading a file when I lose, but I'm playing the matches fairly.

Got the Quistis and MiniMog cards, talked to the girl who has a crush on Zell, eavesdropped on the three Novice SeeDs in the cafeteria and listened to the Cafeteria Lady's whole speech. The latter three affect very minor things lol

"Just another super hard mode that makes you find the 3-4 plants the dev wants you to spam and spam them, otherwise you lose"

yo i Love the 16bit jrpg modding scene!!!!!!!!!!!!!! /killme

[camwoodstock]

"Just another super hard mode that makes you find the 3-4 plants the dev wants you to spam and spam them, otherwise you lose"

yo i Love the 16bit jrpg modding scene!!!!!!!!!!!!!! /killme

pvz1 modding 16bit jrpg modding paper mario 64 modding
Oops! All Hardmodes!

[KobaBeach]

pvz1 modding 16bit jrpg modding paper mario 64 modding
Oops! All Hardmodes!

jrpg fans need to get a taste in GAMING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

idiots!!!.gif (3.14 MiB) Viewed 3795 times

[KobaBeach]

Hanero Puunosuke - I wanted to play Akuji the Demon, because Yelsey mentioned it on Discordhaus this morning (my time, it was like midnight for him) but then I was like "huh I wonder if I can find more cute looking action game furige" and I did! Thank you Free Game Mugen.

Got all the medals in World 1 (the Grasslands) and beat Yamamoto the sea turtle. At World 2, which seems to be the Forest. A very Yoshi's Island and Super Mario World inspired game, seems to have 12 stages + 4 bosses? We'll see though. The way Puunosuke moves by hopping about instead of just waddling and jiggling like in say, Smart Ball, makes his jumps a bit harder to manipulate, but you thankfully can just hold Z or Spacebar to hop constantly, which is good.

Some of the royalty free music is cacophonic and the sound effects aren't well mixed, but my only real complaint is that I wish this game had a "quit the level prematurely" option. Getting the medals is a bit of a hassle this way, I have to beat the stages every single time! The only reason I'm not recommending this to raocow is that, despite me liking it, it's kind of a nothingburger compared to say, La-Mulana or Nezumi Man, the latter of which I want to replay soon!

Download here if you're curious.

Will continue Final Fantasy VIII card games soon, still taking a break from arting.

[Ashan]

I had some podcasts to catch up on so I played through Donkey Kong Country 3 today. It was pretty good, and I like that they got rid of having to pay coins to save your game. Difficulty and level length seemed kind of all over. One level I'd be dying for like 20 minutes, and the next I'd run through without dying once. Not a horrible problem I guess but kinda weird.