shylaxgameblogs

[shylaxgameblogs]

Top 10 Games (that I played in 2018)

I’m lazy so this will be much more concise.

HONORABLE MENTIONS

- Just Deserts - I loved the characters, art, and music, but the gameplay was just a bit too tedious.

- Pokemon Duel - The Pokemon figures are really cute, but the randomness of the gameplay didn’t sit well with me and I gave it up.

- Elminage Gothic - The monster designs are amazing and it’s Wizardry taken to the next level, but it’s not for everyone.

- Dropsy - A cute game, with great music, but didn’t care for the art style or usage of pictographs to convey information.

- HuniePop - Fun puzzle game, the voice acting can be kind of grating and the sexual content not for everyone, but a good game.

- Vagrant Story - An obtuse political story and gameplay that’s not very accessible, but fun once you get into it.

- Shin Megami Tensei ...if - Great music, but negotiation is frustrating, and so is having to wait many moon cycles to advance the story.

- Princess Remedy in a Heap of Trouble - Great sequel, just not a lot of content.

- Lufia and the Fortress of Doom - Great music, but dated and frustrating gameplay

- Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals - Even better prequel, but the game is way too easy and is very glitchy in some areas.

THE TOP TEN OF 2018

10. Spec Ops: The Line - Shooter with great atmosphere and an interesting story. Won’t go into details - find out for yourself!

9. Tetris Plus - The music and announcer draw me back every time, the puzzle mode is an interesting twist. Get the professor to the floor before he is killed by spikes!

8. Magic: the Gathering Arena - Very fun free to play platform for Magic that makes it accessible to those with more time than money. Doesn’t completely replace the feel of paper Magic, and new booster smell, but much better than Magic Online

7. Danganronpa: Trigger Happy Havoc - The mysteries were fun to solve, but I must be jaded because the story was good, but not blow-me-away good.

6. Root Double - Tons of content, an interesting story by one of the writers of the Infinity games (Nakazawa). Senses Sympathy is really interesting!

5. Doki Doki Literature Club - The only game on this list I won’t be completing, but not because it’s bad. I just couldn’t handle it!

4. Strange Journey Redux - An even better and more accessible experience than the original without stripping the soul of the original. Go dungeon crawling in the Schwarzwelt!

3. Fallout: New Vegas - Even better than Fallout 3, it actually feels more organic and like an open world, and with a better story with several factions.

2. Tabletop Simulator - The last game to be eligible for the list, holy shit! Have a virtual board game night! Actually manipulate the cards and dice! Play mini-golf mods! (Gotta have a golf game on the list, you know.)

1. Danganronpa 2: Goodbye Despair - Like the first, but even better, and the story this time did blow me away.

[shylaxgameblogs]

Retro Gaming Magazines Year in Reviews: January 1993 (Wonder Dog, GamePro)

The game: Wonder Dog (Sega CD)

Released: Late 1992

The review: “Bro’ Buzz” from GamePro, January 1993

(I will do my best to hold this game to 1993 standards.)

When I thought of my “Year in Reviews” project, I wasn’t really sure what kind of games I wanted to find in them. I wanted to find hidden gems lost to time, but as I was poring over the January 1993 issue of GamePro, nothing was really striking out at me, then I noticed this review of Wonder Dog. I wasn’t really paying attention until I looked at the score at the end. Straight 5.0 scores, and for a game I’ve never heard of! This would make a great test case for the Year in Reviews project. Was this a hidden gem? Did the game’s producer pay off GamePro? As Game Sack says, do they just give out scores like candy? You’ll find out.

Since GamePro uses four categories, Graphics, Sound, Control, and Fun Factor, I’ll use those same four categories when going over this game.

Graphics: I’m not a big fan of the game’s Saturday morning cartoon art style, but it does work well here. The colors are vibrant, and the sprites are crisp and clear. Weirdly, all GamePro says in the review about graphics is “This game’s graphics are gorgeous.” There’s also multiple parallax scrolling in one world, which is a pretty awesome effect for the time.

Sound: The soundtrack isn’t the most memorable, but it is very good. GamePro says “Wonder Dog sounds great, too. No howling at the moon here. Unlike typical video game tunes, the jazzy music actually has rhythm and a toe-tapping melody. The character voices are crisp and clear, too.” I largely concur with this, but no mention of the sound effects. Some of the choices are a bit odd, like the large enemies sounding like Homer saying “D’oh!” when you hit them.

Control: This is where I start to have major issues with this review. The control is not a 5.0, not even close. Wonder Dog uses throwing stars against enemies, and getting the trajectory right to shoot them is kind of a pain in the ass. Not to mention his weird momentum when coming to a stop. Let’s just say if Wonder Dog was a car his braking distance would be very long, which can make technical platforming very difficult. It also doesn’t seem like he jumps high enough, I think the game would be better if he could jump just a bit higher. The GamePro review details what Wonder Dog can do, but doesn’t really talk about how WELL it controls.

Fun Factor: This is also my other point of contention with the GamePro review. The fun factor is barely there with this game, and it’s very fleeting. The game is way too easy at some points, and way too difficult at others, and there are some very frustrating things. I only played this game to Planet Weird stage 1, but...the game sometimes requires you to make blind jumps to see if there’s more stage or just a pit. If it’s going to make you make blind jumps, it should drop a few collectibles to earn your trust. Only seldom does it do this, and you’ll get some cheap deaths because of it. Sometimes the game can change things without warning, too. In Loony Moon Act 1, there are some floating cheese platforms that ferry you across the level. In Act 2, however, they drop after a second, which you’re not expecting the first time. The control issues also hamper the fun factor, and not to mention the bosses. There’s not a lot of strategy involved with some of them. The clock boss in Loony Moon can be killed before he starts attacking, and you can blitz most of the bosses. I think the hardest boss was the rolling pin lady in Dogville, and that was the second world. Not to mention, you can just go through the game constantly throwing your stars and hitting enemies before they enter the screen.

Here’s what I would have given the game, and remember this is by 1993 standards as much as possible, and based on GamePro’s 5 point system with half point increments.

Graphics: 4.0

Sound: 4.0

Control: 2.5

Fun Factor: 2.0

Challenge: Intermediate (I can’t in good conscience give it Advanced, but it’s not Beginner either.)

In short, there’s a reason why this game was left to the dustbin of history. GamePro says at the end of the review, “Until Sonic the Hedgehog discovers discs, the Dog rules.” Sonic CD would come out in November 1993. This game really did not reward early adopters of the Sega CD, and having to wait a year for Sonic CD sounds awful but it was definitely worth it.

[shylaxgameblogs]

Another 2017 Honorable Mention...

I forgot about this game originally. I don’t want to take any game off my top 10 for it, but I really liked it and it almost made my list. Consider it #11.

[shylaxgameblogs]

Shylax’s Top 10 Games (Played in the Year) of 2017

Yep, it’s the return! You’re going to be here a while, so...

10. Mario Golf World Tour (2014)

Yep, that’s right, a golf game. It wouldn’t be right without one, and here it is.

I really wanted to play this game because @pawelcyril kept gushing about it, but I don’t really play it anymore. It’s not a bad game, it wouldn’t be on this list if it wasn’t, but it could have been a lot better than it was. There are a lot of 9 hole only courses, which is disappointing. The single player story mode is fun, but short. Online’s loading times are disappointing. Being able to create and customize a Mii golfer is fun, but the Mii’s driving distance sucks compared to Star Mario. The tournament system is fun, and solves World Invitational’s cheating problem by just letting you go as many times as you like, but...Hot Shots Golf World Invitational was so much better. That game had so much more staying power, even with its own flaws.

9. Fire Pro Wrestling World (2017)

I remember playing Super Fire Pro Wrestling X Premium on a SNES emulator. That was my first experience with Fire Pro, and it was so much different than any other wrestling game I had played before. Probably the closest that comes to the Fire Pro experience are the aki wrestling games, most notably WWF No Mercy.

If you’re a fan of American-style wrestling, this game will probably disappoint you, because even though you can create your American favorites and have them battle each other, this game doesn’t feature the wild and crazy antics that make American wrestling tick. There are no storylines here, and no cutscenes. This is pure puroresu. Japanese wrestling is treated more like a legitimate sport, and so does this game. It’s all about the competition.

This game has no license, but it has a robust Create-a-Wrestler system, allowing you to create your favorite wrestlers, characters outside of wrestling, or original characters. You can even create bear wrestlers if you’d like, which is a major plus in its favor in my book.

However, the meat of the game is its robust wrestling engine. It’s 2D at its very best, relatively unchanged since the SFPWXP days, although it does look much better. The action is displayed in a 3/4 isometric view, and the grappling system is unique, and unlike American wrestling games, punishes button mashing, instead of rewarding it. There are three styles of grapples - weak, medium, and strong. You have to build up with successful weak moves before moving up - if you try to go for medium and strong moves too early, you’ll get countered.

The only reason I don’t play it more is it’s still in Early Access, and more features are being added and refined. Online play is there, but the netcode is pretty laggy. There’s not a story or career mode, so unless you have friends who are ubercompetitive at this game, its only other real use is as a supreme @tangobunny Watch Mode game.

8, Parascientific Escape Gear Detective (2015)

The sequel to 2014′s Parascientific Escape Cruise in the Distant Seas, which was a refreshing take on the Zero Escape formula, adding in powers you could use during “escape” sequences, and being able to backtrack to rooms you already completed, was a huge improvement over the original. The first game felt like a teaser for a much larger story, and felt pretty generic and cheap (the localization didn’t help).

Gear Detective (the Parascientific Escape games are eShop only games for 3DS) wasn’t anything groundbreaking either, but it was a much better use of your $5 than the original. While it seems to abandon the story the original set up, it is a more fully fleshed out story, feels more complete, and has multiple endings, which the original did not feature.

It still doesn’t compare to more full-budget and full price titles like the Zero Escape series, but the escape room genre is pretty limited, and this game is well worth your $5. I’m hoping to play the third game in the series soon so it can be eligible for next year’s list.

7. Pokemon Moon (2016)

This game was a mixed bag for me. I really enjoyed it, but there were some annoying decisions that prevented me from playing it more.

First, the good. I really liked the character designs in Sun/Moon. I enjoyed Alola more than Kalos, I enjoyed the new Pokemon in Alola more, and I appreciated that they tried to do something different with the Trials instead of the Gyms. I liked that they tried to breathe new life into old Pokemon with Alolan forms.

The downsides: Breeding is still a hassle, even with quality of life improvements, so competitive is still a hassle. Online was a huge step back, no more Super Training, no more being able to access online features while playing, you have to go to a separate screen. For its flaws, the PSS >>>>>>>>>> the Festival Plaza. Let us be able to chat via text and speech online, you cowards! There was a golfer character, but no golf minigame.

6. Pocket Card Jockey (2016)

Pocket Card Jockey was an unheralded 3DS eShop game that combined horse racing and solitaire. But while I played it, it was oh so addictive. I loved raising my horses, racing them, and naming them after obscure video game systems. If you don’t have it, you should definitely buy it. It’s a great way to pass the time.

The art style is incredibly cute as well, you’ll love your horses.

5. Dream Daddy: A Dad Dating Simulator (2017)

I almost forgot this game. @hopeies would have killed me if I had, so I put it on the list. I’m not super keen on romance-based visual novels, although I did put Katawa Shoujo on there last year. Being a heterosexual male, I did not think I would enjoy this game, but I was pleasantly surprised. I got to enjoy meeting and getting to know the various dads (Damien and Hugo were my favorites), but the game got some things right with the whole visual novel experience (and some things wrong).

My favorite thing about Dream Daddy, is that you can romance who you want. You can just go, “I want to romance that guy”, and YOU CAN FUCKING DO IT. No decrypting mysterious route conditions, no looking up a guide. And if you don’t know who you want to romance? You can get to know the various dads before committing to one. It also makes it very clear when you’ve pleased or displeased a dad, and pleasing or displeasing a dad is obvious if you’ve paid attention to what they like and don’t like. It takes a ton of the crypticness out of visual novels, and other VNs should take heed.

On the other hand, it doesn’t feature basic visual novel features like being able to backtrack or see a chat log, which is disappointing. DDADDS manages to mix up things by including minigames, made possible by the Unity engine. It also allows you to create your Dadsona, averting the typical blank slate protagonist of most visual novel games.

4. Mystery Chronicle: One Way Heroics (2016)

I bought the original One Way Heroics for 78 cents on Steam and loved it. It was a delightful hybrid of 16-bit JRPG and roguelike, and I was so excited when I heard Spike Chunsoft was doing an enhanced remake of this game. I haven’t played it as much as I want to, but it’s the original game but better, and that’s all I wanted.

To keep you from dawdling, you have to keep moving forward, or else the left edge of the screen will consume you. You also have to keep track of HP and hunger levels. Once you die, that’s it - but you can transfer items between playthroughs and gain perks that will help you do better in future playthroughs.

It’s such a delightful throwback to the old days, and a fun roguelike.

3. Love Live! School Idol Festival (2014)

This is the first ever mobile game to make the list. I knew I wanted to download this once I joined the mobile world - Cute girls, trading cards, and music? What’s not to like? The rhythm game aspect is very good. It’s very responsive, and fun. The visual novel aspect is kind of hit or miss, but I love the girls, so it’s all good. It’s basically just the characters being themselves, and no real story of importance. I wish the game was a bit less stingy with love gems, but otherwise, I love it.

2. Nier (2010)

Nier is kind of punching above its weight here. While the game itself isn’t anything special, it’s wrapped up in this awesome music, beautiful graphics, and innovative storytelling that makes it something special. Besides, Yoko Taro is just a great guy. I can’t wait to get a chance to play Automata, so I can surely put it on a future list.

1. Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (1997)

This is the video that convinced me to give SOTN another try:

It truly is a masterpiece, but some of my own thoughts: It’s a shame Sony discouraged 2D games on the PS1, because the 2D games on the PS1 are timeless. 2D is timeless. 3D ends up looking like shit later, and the PS1 3D games surely do look like shit.

[shylaxgameblogs]

Shylax’s Top 10 Games (Played in the Year) of 2017: Honorable Mentions

These games did not make the list, but deserve recognition. The actual list will be released at a later time.

[shylaxgameblogs]

Town of Night makes me think of Phantasy Star. It doesn’t have a world map per se, but its dungeons are mini-dungeons that are spread out. It doesn’t seem to have in-game mapping, but it also doesn’t seem necessary, at least so far, the first dungeon was linear.

[shylaxgameblogs]

Oh, she looks cute...

oh shit, better add her to my party, I’d rather have her on my side than against it!

[shylaxgameblogs]

I’m going to try out Town of Night.

It’s a dungeon crawler I paid 49 cents for on Steam during the Winter Sale.

The title screen seems kind of messy, and there’s no option to full screen that I know of. Thankfully, I can maximize the window.

It’s the odd dungeon crawler where you don’t make your main character (at least). You can recruit other party members at the tavern. It also has controller support, which is nice.

[shylaxgameblogs]

Shylax’s Top 10 Games (Played in the Year) of 2016!

It’s a long one, so...

10. Zero Time Dilemma (2016)

I'm going to start off with a game that is going to be very controversial, and one that I almost left off of my Top 10 list. I am a major Zero Escape fan, and Zero Time Dilemma (or as it was generically known before its title was revealed, Zero Escape 3) was my most anticipated game of the past 4 years, since the second game, Virtue's Last Reward.

Zero Time Dilemma is the third game in the Zero Escape series, a game that features escape-the-room puzzles, but is so much more than that. It has an incredibly gripping storyline that melds pseudoscientific concepts with great personal drama to create a gripping, barely implausible storyline.

Why was the release of Zero Time Dilemma so anticipated? Due to aspects of Virtue Last Reward's ending, which I won't go into further detail, we knew that Zero Time Dilemma was going to be important to how the story threads set up in VLR were going to resolve. The reason this game is so controversial, is that it did not do a very good job, and in some areas it did not intentionally try. There was a point in the game where everything unraveled, and the resolutions were delivered in an unsatisfying way.

Why is this game #10, and not a honorable mention, then? Until that point, I was invested hook-line-and-sinker into this game. It was shorter than other games in the series, but even so, I beat it in about 4 days. Leaving this game off the list would be a disservice to its characters. Zero II, one of the most intriguing villains I had ever seen. Q, the precocious and scared masked child. Eric and Mira. The returning characters, as well. It would be a disservice to Rui Tomono's great art. It would be a disservice to Shinji Hosoe, whose music really amped up the atmosphere.

It's a disappointing game, but until then, it had me hooked. I highly respect that, and that's why it's #10 on my list.

9. The Dark Spire (2009)

The Dark Spire is not going to be for everyone. It's an intentional throwback to a time where RPGs featured more challenge than story, when danger lurked around every corner, and every enemy encounter was a threat to your life. It's a first-person dungeon crawler, where thankfully unlike its predecessors, the Wizardry games, you do not have to draw your own maps, but you do have to keep track of your own position.

You have to go into a seven floor tower (with a basement) to defeat the evil Tyrhung at the top of the tower. As you climb the tower, things get crazier and more bizarre, and the monsters get more difficult. Every so often, you have to solve puzzles to advance, kind of like old adventure games. They can be very obtuse, stopping your progress until you finally think of the solution or give up and consult a guide.

There are three different endings, although you have to get them in order. (Thankfully, you don't have to replay the entire game over to see them.) The main reason why I love the game is its soundtrack and its art style, they're so distinct. When you get to the seventh floor, you have your own majestic anthem.

The gameplay isn't bad either, the RPG system is pretty good, although you only have 4 characters as opposed to 6, and the puzzles can be kind of annoying. I wish there would be a sequel, but it seems kind of improbable.

8. Wild Arms 2 (1999)

I had come into playing this game having beaten Wild Arms 3 and Wild Arms 1. Wild Arms 1 was kind of a generic RPG, albeit in a unique wild-west setting. Wild Arms 2 blew it away, though. It's still kind of hampered by graphics that didn't age well, and a crummy translation, but I loved the game.

It's very different from most RPGs, instead of forging your own destiny, you spend most of the game under the thumb of an organization called ARMs, doing missions for them. The story takes wild twists and turns, and the story seems to have been written by someone doing the best drugs, and I say this in the best way.

The characters are very cool and likable, and the combat system is really cool, although it can kind of get annoying at times. Instead of MP, there's FP (force points). The FP scale goes from 0 to 100, and each character starts with FP equal to their current level, and they get more by normal attacks and getting dealt damage. FP and force levels power big attacks which can deal serious damage to opponents.

Like other Wild Arms titles, its in-dungeon gameplay is defined by puzzles that are based on the tools your characters have available. Unlike other Wild Arms titles, I only had to look up a FAQ to advance a handful of times. The soundtrack is also really good.

7. Makai Toushi SaGa (Wonderswan Color remake) (2002)

Check out that badass game box above. If it doesn't get you excited, nothing will. This was a Japanese-only remake of the game released as Final Fantasy Legend for Game Boy in the US. I played it with an English translation patch. The remake was very good, and it has quality of life improvements over the original, but the game itself is very good.

You start the game knowing you have to climb a tower, but it's locked. You have to explore a fairly standard RPG world in order to advance, and at first it feels like any old NES RPG, but once you get into the tower and explore, it gets...weird. There are moments where it gets surprisingly dark for an old school Nintendo game.

As far as the gameplay goes, you make your party, and you can have male or female humans, male or female espers, and mutants. Each improve in different ways. You buy stat boosts for Humans, but they have the most slots for equipment and items. Mutants grow organically and can learn skills, but only have half as much room for equipment. Monsters improve by eating monster meat, but can't equip anything. Weapons have limited uses, so you have to keep stocked in case your weapons break. It's such a simple, old school game, but the graphical and gameplay upgrades give it a fresh coat of paint, and I highly recommend this version.

6. Katawa Shoujo (2012)

(This game is for 18+ only.)

I'm a big fan of visual novels, but I tend to stay away from visual novels that feature a great deal of romance and sex as their main draw. I don't mind them over the course of the game, but I prefer stuff like Steins;Gate and Zero Escape that are not heavy on the romance. I was finally encouraged to try this game on the recommendation of @pawelcyril. I didn't know if I would enjoy it.

You play as a boy who, as a result of circumstances, has to go to a school for disabled people. Every student at the school has some kind of disability, including the girls, some of whom you romance over the course of the game. One of my fears is that the game would be incredibly exploitative, but it is not. (Disclaimer: I only played through one path, Emi's path.) The girls in the game are incredibly fleshed-out characters who feel like their own people. The nudity and sex wasn't especially titillating, but I enjoyed the visual novel because of the themes it explored. The main character has to come to terms with what it means to be disabled, and what it means to him. Surprisingly, the payoff to each relationship isn't sex, just realizing your love isn't the end of the story, as in real life, Katawa Shoujo has an element of maintaining your relationship.

The game balances comedy and drama very well, and I'd like to finish the other routes eventually.

5. Tales of Xillia (2013)

This is the first game I had beaten in the Tales of Xillia series, although I had played a brief bit of Tales of Destiny.

Tales of Xillia is an RPG where you're given the choice of two viewpoints, Jude or Milla, and while their paths are mostly in sync through the story, there are important differences at points. This game is very similar to Star Ocean 3, which makes a lot of sense considering Tales started as a tri-Ace series (but isn't now.)

Combat is fun although it can get difficult at points, especially against later bosses. You control one character from a party of 4 and the combat is some weird hybrid of action and turn-based. You have special moves that can turn the tide of battle. The characters are cool, although they can be annoying at times. Although you have to beat both scenarios to get the full picture, I was burnt out by the middle of the other scenario.

I still highly recommend it, though.

4. Neo Turf Masters (1996) & Neo Turf Masters Pocket (1999)

I put these two games together because they're essentially the same, one is just a scaled down pocket version.

When I was a kid, even back then I loved golf and playing golf games, because the real thing was inaccessible to me, save for mini-golf, which is fun, but still isn't the same. There was one golf game I kept renting for the SNES, because it was basically the only good golf game on the SNES: Irem's Skins Game. It had good graphics at the time, controlled very well, had a very intuitive system where you set power and then set accuracy of your swing by stopping an up and down cursor as close to the center of a landing area as possible.

The folks at Irem eventually became the folks at Nazca, and they developed games for SNK's Neo-Geo  MVS arcade system. They developed Neo Turf Masters and released it in 1996, and it's an improvement over Skins Game in every way. Instead of only one course, there's four. There are some minor tweaks to gameplay, which is improved over Skins Game. The graphics are more vibrant and colorful, and there are more characters.

There are some quirks to the game, like getting a distance guide on putts and putts being essentially equal in difficulty in short and long distances, all else being equal. You can't badly hook or slice the ball unintentionally, you can either hit the ball too high, too low, or whiff/duff completely. You'd think this would make the game too easy, but it's incredibly difficult, but fair.

It's one of the top 2 golf games ever in my opinion, and the Pocket version is more or less the same. Instead of a realistic style, the Pocket version uses a chibi art style to make up for the reduced graphical capability, and one course was cut, but it's a top handheld golf game.

3. Rocket League (2014)

Soccer with rocket powered flying cars. What's not to love? This game appeals to my inner 8-year old, and it's no less appealing to me now at 28, although I wish I was much better at it.

There's no deep story, it's just you and whatever friends you scrounge up trying to be the best at Rocket League. There are single-player modes, with practice, single game, and season, but the meat of the game is online multiplayer. Teams of up to 4 (although 3v3 is the most popular game mode) play a game with soccer with their cars. There's an incredibly high skill ceiling in the game, lots of moves you can pull off, it's so satisfying when you score a goal. It's a game that's easy to learn but hard to master.

I don't really have a lot to say about this game, but I've put a ton of time into it, it's great, you should check it out, even if sports aren't normally your thing.

2. Lucid9 (2016)

The other game on this list from 2016. It's another visual novel, and it's free on Steam. Yes, it's free. I got excited when I heard about a free visual novel coming out on Steam, but I had low expectations for this title.

It blew me away. There was so much polish, the art was well-done, the soundtrack was amazing, the script was streets ahead of Aurora Memoria (a free VN I played last year), with proofreading also miles ahead of it.

You play as Yama Ishimoto, a student at Isamu Imperial Boarding Academy. He is kind of a cynic and a burnout, which is pretty amazing considering he's still a teenager, but let's just say he has some...issues. During the course of the game you meet friends and get sucked into a mystery. The beginning of the game is kind of slow but the characterization is so good I didn't mind.

What are you waiting for? It's free and it's the best OELVN I've ever played. You should play it as soon as you can.

1. Trails in the Sky FC (released 2014 on Steam)

This is it, this is my #1 game that I played in the year 2016. This is the game that made me fall in love with Falcom, and it's such a brilliant throwback to older JRPGs (which it kind of is in a way, since the original game came out in Japan in 2004.)

The characters are very enjoyable, especially the ones in your party. Estelle is a fun and spunky RPG protagonist, and her adopted brother is the mysterious Joshua. You're joined by the pretty lush Scherazard, the pompous but hilarious Olivier, the schoolgirl Kloe and her pet bird Sieg, the stubborn Agate, and the cute Tita. They each have their strengths and weaknesses.

The combat is a fun mix of strategy-RPG and more traditional RPG combat, it's turn-based but you move around a grid and you have to get in range to attack or use skills/magic.

The graphics are adorably 2.5D which still holds up, the soundtrack is amazing, and the story has so many twists and turns, and this game is just the first part of a three part story, so if you want more there is more.

I loved this game every step of the way and that's why it's my #1 game of the year.

Here's to another year of playing video games!

[shylaxgameblogs]

Shylax’s Top 10 Games (Played in the Year) of 2016: Honorable Mentions

These are the games that did not make the list, but I still want to recognize.

That’s not to say I didn’t enjoy these games, I enjoyed them to varying degrees, and I ranked them of roughly inverse order of how I enjoyed them. There’s only 10 spots for a top 10 though, and there were a lot of contenders.

[shylaxgameblogs]

Please look forward to Shylax’s Top 10 Games (Played in the Year) of 2016 List! It is coming soon!

[shylaxgameblogs]

I finished Wild Arms 2, the first disc was great, the second disc was okay but the game wore on a bit. My only real gripe is the translation not being as good as it could have been and battles being slow as fuck. Thankfully battles are semi-random (You can stop battles from happening if you’re quick enough but sometimes you are automatically put into battle). The storyline and pacing were unusual for an RPG, too. 

[shylaxgameblogs]

(minor spoilers for wild arms 2 ahead)

I love that the Super Weapons talked about in the game aren’t some magical, divine, ray of light vaporizing weapon. They’re nukes. Nukes like the ones that exist in reality. Makes the threat seem more real since you can relate to something like that.

[shylaxgameblogs]

Naturally, the next game I am starting is a Japanese-only SNES RPG that is fairly obscure.

It is already very amusing!

[shylaxgameblogs]

Alien Soldier only has two difficulty levels: Supereasy and Superhard

[shylaxgameblogs]

Phantasy Star I review

I just finished Phantasy Star, and I wanted to use this spot to write down some thoughts as a bit of a post-mortem. First of all, as I played the game, one thing became obvious: The Master System’s demise as a console was incredibly regrettable. It kicked the NES’s ass in pretty much all fields, yet due to Nintendo’s practices limiting it from fielding a diverse library of games, it died prematurely.

It came out about a year after Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy, yet the difference is astounding, and in fact Phantasy Star in some ways is better than its sequels. For example, Phantasy Star has varied backgrounds in combat, which Phantasy Star II doesn’t have. Phantasy Star also comes across as less dated than 2 and 3, despite being released first.

Its graphics are amazing for an 8 bit system, there are short cutscenes as well. The one thing that suffers a bit is sounds, while the music is top-notch, the combat is filled with annoying bleeps and bloops.

The gameplay is very solid, too. Aside from certain choke-points, the game is fairly freeform, and while you may want to use outside maps, you can create your own maps and play if you feel daring. The walking speed is good, combat is a bit slow but acceptable. There are a lot of cash gates that force you to grind for money, however.

There isn’t as much story as I’d hope, which doesn’t do the amazing party of Alis, Myau, Odin, and Noah justice. I would have liked to have seen more party banter and Lassic actively antagonizing the party, but hey, it was 1988.

I’d give this game an 8 in 2016, which is an astounding achievement. If I played this in 1988, it’d be a 10 out of 10. That’s how good it is.

[shylaxgameblogs]

One of the greatest RPG parties ever.