What games are you playing?

[raekuul]

Advance Wars Grimm Strike - oh no it's hawke

Final Fantasy VII Beacause - We'll meet you at Kalm.

[KobaBeach]

Summon Night 3 - I beat it and I think I almost cried at both

Ishlar's death scene again

and

the scene where you see Hynel's spirit talk to you and the Summon you romanced (Yafha in my case)

.

This is such a good game oml

[raekuul]

Final Fantasy VII Beacause - Wark?

[KobaBeach]

Beyond the Beyond - Grinding gold to buy Mithril equipment at Mistrall, before heading to the Sand Cave.

Everything from the Zalagoon revisit to the Fifth Shrine, Dragon Cave and Ice Cave done.

[Bean]

Started up Pepper Grinder on the Switch. Fun little platformer where you drill through stuff to get to the goal. You can either go the collector route which is my style or do time attack stuff. Just halfway through World 2 about an hour in. It's a fun enough game so far.

Also took down Julius Mode from Dawn of Sorrow in the Castlevania Dominus Collection. Went right back to working on Richter Mode in Portrait of Ruin right after. Yeah, they really liked the team up deal for these first two DS games. Can't say I blame them either. It was pretty well received.

[raekuul]

still can't afford the TTYD remake but that's because I had to replace a hard drive on short notice.

Final Fantasy VII Beacause: Did Sephiroth... do this?

[KobaBeach]

Beyond the Beyond - The grind sesh to prepare for the endboss sucked but I'm glad I did it because it allowed me to fill up everyone's inventories with Mage's Potions, which basically made the Devil King of the game,

Akkadias

, actually possible?

He's very RNG, and I basically got lucky this time with him not really using any attacks outside of Soul Blast.

Cute game if mediocre, but dogshit final boss.

[Noelle]

Castlevania (NES) - Yeah, it's a fun game, just like I remembered. Later levels feel like they might be unbeatable, also just like I remembered. Thankfully I know how to better approach them, I know how to better detect suspicious blocks that have wall meat™, but a lot of them also just have stuff for points, which I couldn't care less about in a game like this. lmao

[KobaBeach]

Lucienne's Quest - Hole of Grub, the Exner, Kaminafew Mine and Elkahon Ruin done. Currently getting equipped at El Corazona.

Kaneyung and Be-o-Melda look damn cool. Also I finally found the Shaman at Babachop, it was at the very north of the map, though due to the shoddy camera, I thought it would lead to the overworld. raocow moment? idk I dont think it was 100% my fault lol. Thank god for these scans of the Saturn guide.

[Noelle]

Castlevania (NES) - Dracula is so damn hard, weirdly enough, the last level is easier than the previous one, even if it initially seems more annoying, but it's mainly that, annoying. The real challenge is the boss (which hasn't been the case during most of the game, where the levels were the real hard part). It's interesting how it reverses during the end, which makes sense I guess, it probably would have been too much to have the boss and the level unbearable (not that it stopped from happening later on in the series, looking at you Dracula X). I can see myself beating this game eventually. I'm actually so close.

EDIT:
I did, I finally beat it! Pretty sure it took me longer than the rest of entire game, which makes sense, I've played these levels a lot today, and even back then, but it's only now I actually got to beat it, so I did have some more practice and knowledge of how to deal with the earlier parts of the game. I'm legitimately so happy, even though it was really stressful just a little bit before doing it.

[KobaBeach]

Lucienne's Quest - Game cleared and I know this is a janky as fuck 3DO game, but it has so much charm that I think it's one of my favorite games now?

Sadly I overlevelled by trying to get properly equipped, though I don't mind too much? I wish I was less levelled so the game had more bite. idk this owns.

Highlights:

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[raekuul]

Final Fantasy VII Beacause - You mean, Mouth-to-Mouth?

(I did take the time to recruit Yuffie Fake Aeris and am working on uncorking the Lv. 2 limits for everybody but Cloud)

[HatKid]

Been playing Castlevania Curse of Darkness on a PS2 whose laser is dying so every loading screen has been tense because the game might hang. I also have to skip FMVs because they WILL stutter and they WILL freeze. Fortunately this is a game where you can skip FMVs lol.

As for the game itself, it's fine. It's corridor simulator, no matter the environment and the gameplay is pretty basic. Despite that, I'm still having fun with it I like being able to use multiple different kinds of weapons and they all feel different and unique from each other, which is nice. The gameplay loop seems really basic, but there's nothing inherently wrong with that. I am having a lot more fun with it than Lament of Innocence, which I never did play a lot of (also makes a difference I was playing my brother's copy of it lol). Feels less awkward and stiff. It's still not perfect and really, Castlevania just works better in 2D... at least, when it comes to whip cracking.

[KobaBeach]

Minelvaton Saga: Ragon no Fukkatsu (The Resurrection of Ragon) - It was either this or Mega Man Battle Network.

Been following Keyblade999's messy walkthrough, guy used a lot of cheats, but got equipped at Olphan, delivered Charon's Staff to him and escorted him to the Temple of Ramulun; escorted Lou from Roland to his mother in Arkasas, who gave the Prince a Golden Key, which I instantly used to unlock the Rusty Key; travelled through the Cave to the Ice Palace and freed Reina from Aida's clutches; assisted in delivering the Pendant of Tears that Izam lost, which was stolen by Aida and kept in the cave, to the Siren, so Izam and her can be together again; and obtained the Ice Doll and Seal Tome from Reina at the Ice Palace itself.

After re-recruiting Gino at Dorf, I unlocked some doors with the Seal Tome, unlocking a few spells, got the Hero's Armor set as well, and with the help of Zen from Shibai, I unlocked the path to the town of Ash, where I'm currently getting equipped with the way more expensive, but still worth it gear, after getting Mog in my party to replace Zen.

It's an incredibly non-linear Action RPG (really gives me the same vibes of a later Western made RPG) that takes a lot of influence from Falcom's Xanadu and it's honestly great for a game by Seta. Silva Saga 1&2 would not be this good I feel, but damn. Do check it out if this interests you, but probably use a guide, the overworld is incredibly sprawling. Absolute hidden gem wrt NES RPGs.

Also here's a bonafide GameFAQs moment:

By the by, you can speak with the blue-clothed man on the way. This is Mog, a Red Mage you can have join your party. (And before you get into all that "They ripped off Final Fantasy!!" crap like I began to, keep in mind Mog was first featured in Final Fantasy VI ... on the SNES/SFC.)

I wish all
people who only play Final Fantasy
a very
drink Listerine

[KobaBeach]

Minelvaton Saga: Ragon no Fukkatsu (The Resurrection of Ragon) - And complete!

Honestly a pretty fun game, though, it got pretty frustrating at the end. The endboss was also terrible, true to the spirit of Xanadu, Ragon's 1st phase has a full screen attack that it constantly spams, I basically had to war of attrition him using Medicines. Meanwhile his second phase has a homing bullet that deals decent damage.

More over, I had to exploit the game so it'd function properly, Xena and Luna are very set on staying in front of him to deal damage, though Xena doesn't realize she has a full screen magic attack, so they're effectively blocking eachother off with Luna being unable to set off her bow. This effectively made Ragon impossible. I had to get in the way of Xena so Luna would get in position to start striking, while Xena can still set off her magic.

For the second half I had less Medicines, and this is keeping in mind that I made sure to have a near full stock thanks to a respawning chest of 30 Meds in the final dungeon. I effectively had to savescum and try and bait the attack into landing on Luna and myself as I healed, and then once Luna was down, Xena would take the last few shots as she went from casting Flare+ to Zan+ as a Kamikaze attack.

It wound up resulting, but it did NOT feel good. Regardless it's an impressively ambitious (/sonictwt) game for its time and I had a decent chunk of fun with it on the way. It's really rough around the edges, but that's just the nature of NES games.

Also another bonafide GameFAQs moment:

Additionally, Guinn will note that Luna and Xena are destined to be your allies once you are the Warrior of Light (Final Fantasy is ripped off here):

Damn I can't believe Final Fantasy invented the sentence "Warrior of Light" and also that Final Fantasy is apparently the only RPG Japan ever made. What a shock!!!!

Also I'm gonna be mean for a sec and say, I dont know how GameFAQs walkthrough writers can mix up "west" and "east" this semi-consistently. Like this happened on several goddamn walkthroughs and I have no idea how, but considering how a lot of these writers can't even understand basic media literacy, I can get a bit of an idea (it's that they don't read books)

Like I fucking learned that shit when I was 5.

[raekuul]

Final Fantasy VII Beacause - (no story progress this time since I'm still working on Level 2 limits but I did manage to grab Beta from the Midgarsomr. It took me a couple of attempts since the first time I accidentally killed it before it could fire off Beta; it turns out it's scripted to cast Beta in response to attack damage and I had poisoned it and was just defending with everybody.)

[AmeijinMayo]

Metroid: Zero Mission - It was just a few days ago but I was playing this as a podcast I listen to happen to pick it out for the game of the week. Aside from that fight at the end where it did take a few attempts, I had a pretty good time playing it and it's a nice spin on the first Metroid Game. I could see myself returning to it in the future for maybe a 100% attempt at it, but it's a small chance of that happening as there are few games that I actually go out of the way to 100%

Metaphor: ReFantazio Demo - Haven't played it yet, will probably try it out this afternoon today

[Ashan]

Been playing Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom

Been pretty fun, it's interesting how they translated the spirit of BotW/TotK into a 2D game. Lots of puzzles that may have an intended solution but can also be worked at in whatever way you want with creative item usage, and it makes you feel smart when you find solutions that clearly weren't intended. Unfortunately the summoning system does end up making a lot of the gameplay just... navigating menus. Which maybe it could be argued it ties it closer to the fact summoning monsters to kill other monsters is just Pokemon. And they have enough sort methods to toggle to that it's rare I spend that much time looking for the thing I want to select. For the most part I'm usually in the "last used" and "most used" menus and can get to stuff quick, but that also creates a self-fulfilling problem of "the item I want to use is nearby because I use it a lot" and "I use this item a lot because it's always quick to access", so you kinda end up biasing yourself towards using the same handful of tools for everything. And there are a handful of tools or monsters you can summon that immediately are so much more useful than everything else that it makes similar items basically a waste of menu space. And like... why do we need an item slot for every type of jar?

Anyway it's fun but also like the Link's Awakening remake, you can tell this game probably would have been a 3DS game if it released in 2017, and therefore be like half the price. Such is life with a hybrid handheld + console. And speaking of the LA remake, I can't remember what performance was like in that, but man this game struggles to keep its framerate up. I thought it was locked to 30fps at first, but you get random spikes to 60 revealing they are actually targeting 60, but like... For how rare it is they may as well have locked it to 30 so you don't get random and regular reminders of how good the game could look if they optimized better. You can adapt to 30 but not when you get occasional flashes of 60. It almost makes me think this game was developed targeting the Switch 2 and will maintain easy 60 when that releases.

[KobaBeach]

Mega Man Battle Network - Netbattled NumberMan V2, FireMan V2, StoneMan V2 and V3, defeated the ColdBears and finished the IceMan scenario, collecting a few PowerUPs and HPmemories along the way.

Also bought the WoodArmr.

Unfortunately the summoning system does end up making a lot of the gameplay just... navigating menus. Which maybe it could be argued it ties it closer to the fact summoning monsters to kill other monsters is just Pokemon.

I see they brought back the Gamecube-era Kameo prototypes

[Bean]

Same two games, more the Castlevania Dominus Collection than Pepper Grinder at the moment. I could totally take down the latter if I just put in 2-3 hours more on it, but having more fun going through those DS Castlevanias again. All that's left is Dracula in Order of Ecclesia and then the never played by me Albus Mode for the platinum. Have to say that Ecclesia continues to be one of the more challenging games in the series unless you use certain glyph combos just because so many enemies hit like a truck.

[KobaBeach]

Mega Man Battle Network - ColorMan and ElecMan scenarios done.

Also battled SkullMan, WoodMan v2, SharkMan, IceMan v2. And ProtoMan which is mandatory, I expected him to be more of a gimmick battle considering the guide was like "Do not use any projectile chips like Cannons or your Buster during this fight due to ProtoMan having a shield.".

Like you can literally just damage him if you bait him to attack like a Sniper Joe, and since my buster was pretty high level, that was no biggie.

I kinda have to take a break, and will probably get back like later today or tomorrow. Will probably advance a bit further in Cagesong's second main chapter ig.

[KobaBeach]

i opened Cagesong of the Ocean on 86box, i'm so glad moving folders around didn't kill my virtual harddrive, and then slept for 6 hours because i was very exhausted and have been waking up at stupid hours (bed at 8 pm, up at 4 pm-ish?)

and all i gotta say is that i think im gonna start playing on this server alongside midgard tales, ragnarok-wise.

i dreamt abt OSRO midrate again and i was almost gonna redownload the client until i realized everything in that server only exists for grinding and powerlevelling. and i know this is a kmmo and im the dude who plays hydlide and shit, but i'd rather Actually Die, im too much of a minority to care about pvp or interacting with the community

i also dreamt about turnabout sisters (this one) so i had that in my brain for the past hour

speaking of korea,

imagine getting heated about this specific hand pose. couldn't be me

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[KobaBeach]

The Legend of Heroes V: A Cagesong of the Ocean (Windows) - Heading to Mooth and how do I make this game stop trying to murk me with Octies and Turtans in Ezna Road

[KobaBeach]

The Legend of Heroes V: A Cagesong of the Ocean (Windows) - ah yes i am falcom i will make these players strategize with the worst fucking menu and real time battles with barely any way to pause i am smart



(im still not done)

EDIT 18 minutes later: Chapter 2 done and this fucking sucked. If the rest of the game is like this then this is PSP White Witch J all over again and that fucking sucks

[Bean]

First time clearing Albus mode in Order of Ecclesia. That got crazy with Dracula since you have to use his touchscreen warp (R2 on the Collection) to avoid one nasty wave of bats that change their arc up. Anyway, that's the Castlevania Dominus Collection complete. On to finishing off Pepper Grinder.