#doing the base sprite sets for each main character is the worst part of every episode lmaaaooo

[abby-howard]

I love everyone's outfits in Scarlett Hollow (especially Kaneeka's) so I wanted to ask how do you go about designing multiple outfits for each character that are different yet still fit that characters general aesthetic. Also do you have a favorite/least favorite outfit.

Aw thank you!!

Designing outfits is definitely not something that came very naturally to me at the start of Scarlet Hollow, but I've been gettin' the hang of it as I go-- I'd say a lot of it is about the vibe. I sketch a new outfit, and if it feels like they're in a costume, I scrap it. Color in particular gets tricky... one color can throw off a whole look and make them feel like their aura is off. Picking a palette in advance is a good idea!

I think it's mostly about understanding your character and the kinds of choices they make; Kaneeka cares a lot about how others view her, so she presents as very put-together, thus her outfits are always a little complicated and carefully constructed. Whereas Stella is laid back and probably hates having to think about what she's wearing, so she goes with roughly the same combination of jeans and a t shirt every day.

More of my rules for each main character under the cut! Minor spoilers for Scarlet Hollow:

I answered a similar question during an AMA, so I'm paraphrasing from those answers~

Stella: her shirt must match the theme of the episode while also being a believable cryptid/folklore t shirt design. She has a red/neutral theme, plus jeans. Butch sense of fashion with casual sensibilities.

Kaneeka: is a nu-goth, so no corsets or elaborate frills, and no techno-goth or scene/emo accoutrements. Her emo days are far behind her... so now she wears all black, no color besides her red braids, with interesting clothing shapes and the occasional lace or metallic accent. This is pretty close to how I dress so I just think about if it's something I would wear.

Oscar: he's a professional! So suits and button-ups, except his undershirt episode. He has a tan/yellow theme with unsaturated red accents, which he shares with his daughter Rosalina. His outfits are the toughest to mix up, because he dresses nice for work and only owns one suit. But I try to get creative where I can!

Avery: a plant theme, which includes mostly greens, with some purples, oranges, and earthy yellow allowed. Definitely has the widest palette, since they have to have interesting patterned button-ups. Can have a coat if needed, always tan, and nice dress pants that have a little bit of a bellbottom.

Reese: Wears whatever. A vague blue theme. Nothing looks like it fits him right. I have given him a cool jacket for Episode 5, but I can't post that sprite... too spoiler.......

[dialovers-translations]

DIABOLIK LOVERS MORE, BLOOD OFFICIAL VISUAL FANBOOK ー Interview Vol. 1 feat. Saki Ito

Source: DIABOLIK LOVERS MORE, BLOOD Official Visual Fanbook

Release date: 2013

Huge thank you to @keithvalentinex​ for providing the raw scans!

SECTION 1: Q&A

Q1. How did you feel when a sequel game got green light?

A: Not only were we fortunate to receive many passionate messages and feedback from the players, but we also received the news of an anime adaption alongside a game sequel, so amidst the joy, I also remember a distinct feeling of responsiblity and pressure.

Q2. Does the feedback you received from the players reflect in any parts of the game?

A: The series features characters who all have very strong and distinct character traits, so they tend to stand out based solely on these specific elements, which is what made us reflect upon the scenario parts of the previous game. Therefore, in the sequel, we decided to flesh them out so we let Idea Factory know that we would like to create sceranio’s on events of their pasts, so we can give a better understanding of how they think as individuals. We received a positive response but this ultimately required quite a bit of scenarios so later both me and Nakamura suffered because of it. (lol) However, even though there is still room for improvement, I would like to think that we succeeded in creating scenario’s in which the players will get to know them on a deeper level.

Q3. Who did you struggle most with when creating the setting for the new characters?

A: Ruki. Both in terms of design and personality. At first we thought of having him be on an almost equal footing with Karlheinz in terms of power and status, so basically the character who stands at the very top of the Mukami family, with everyone following his lead as they have no other choice but to acknowledge his superiority . But he’s a Do-S...We played with various ideas like that.

Q4. What did the process of creating these characters look like?

A: After settling on their visuals and personalities, we moved on to building a set image of them. I was impressed that at the time of initial recording where we would add the voices to these characters, there was already an agreement amongst the production staff about how they viewed these brothers inside their minds. 

Q5. Were there any moments during the recording which left a strong impression on you?

A: I am sure everyone feels the same in this regard, but I was very much impressed by Midorikawa Hikaru (Ayato’s VA) and his ability to voice a single line in so many different ways and apply minor adjustment time after time. I was baffled how the same phrase could be voiced in so many different ways, and while this may be embarrassing to admit as part of the production staff, I felt as if I could learn a lot from him.

Q6. How did you approach the blood-sucking scenes?

A: We start by creating a fixed image inside our heads of how each character would suck someone’s blood. However, we initially opted to leave things up to the casted voice actors. We figured that if their voicing was somewhat off from how we envisioned it, we would guide them into the desired direction afterwards, but so far that has yet to happen! The voice actors seem to understand that the blood-sucking scenes are a huge selling point of the Diabolik Lovers franchise, so they anticipated on this and had already thought about which personal quirks they want to include in these scenes before the recording. Afterwards they would tell us things such as ‘I wanted to make it sound a little dirty’ or ‘I imagined ____ would suck blood like this’, showing us their effort to voice these characters while thinking about their personalities, which is why we - the production staff - were able to feel the unique traits of these boys through their performance as well, I believe. I cannot express with words just how greatful I am for everyone’s excellent voice work. 

Q7. When writing the scenario’s and the character dialogue, were there any conscious changes you made from the first game?

A: In the first game, there were very little interactions between the different characters, but with the introduction of the Mukami brothers, we focused on these kind of interactions where one of the Sakamaki brothers would fight with one of the Mukami brothers. Additionally, this would allow for us to express the changes in their feelings towards the main character.

Q8. What did you struggle the most with while writing the script?

A: There were just so many different scenarios to write, I recall feeling as if there was no end to it. Every time you think you’re done adjusting one part, you have to move on to the next and by the time you’re done with that, something just doesn’t feel right about the first scenario again...This game includes many scenarios about the characters’ pasts so there would be times where we suddenly went ‘...Hold on!? I feel like the previous scene doesn’t quite make sense anymore...,’ So we’d have to go back and make sure everything remained consistent.

Q9. Which character caused you the most problems while writing the script?

A: Every single one. In case of the Sakamaki brothers, all because of the same reason. For starters, despite this being a sequel game, the intial setting remains the same as before with the main character having arrived at the Sakamaki manor, , so we were worried whether or not the audience would accept this without it feeling weird or off. The Mukami brothers are then added on top of that, so we struggled a lot expressing the wavering feelings of the main character. Each of the Mukami brothers has their own dark past and setting which we came up with beforehand, so it was very difficult to then later add the element of romance to this.

Q10. Is there a character who underwent drastic changes compared to the last game?

A: No. Although the ‘MORE, BLOOD’ games feature the Sakamaki brothers struggling with an immense ‘thirst for blood’ which is different from our previous approach, so we hope this allows the players to enjoy a different side of them.

Q11. The endings are now named ‘Vampire Ending’, ‘Manservant Ending’ and ‘Brute’ Ending. Could you tell us what kind of thought you put into these names?

A: They do each have their own fixed image attached to them. We divided them into the ‘Vampire Ending’ which is supposed to be the most natural ending. The ‘Manservant Ending’ which emphasizes the element of sadism the strongest and lastly the ‘Brute Ending’ which is the most violent. Depending on the character, there might be minor changes such as the main character developing sadistic tendencies herself or it being another character who grows violent. We hope the audience will enjoy this wide array of endings.

Q12. What are parts which have greatly improved or parts you want us to focus on in comparison to the first game?

A: My apologies for repeating myself, but it would have to be the scenarios. Also please pay attention to the upgraded sprite artwork for everyone, as well as the addition of the sprites for the brothers as children!

Q13. Why do you think the series has received such a great amount of support?

A: During the development of the first set of CDs, we made them with a specific niche audience in mind, so never did we expect the franchise would grow this large. We truly are grateful. We would like to believe that Satoi-sama’s illustration are the biggest contributor in this case. I was already acquaintanced with Satoi-sama at that point but due to certain circumstances, we weren’t able to work on a project together. However, when the development for Diabolik Lovers started, I immediately reached out to her. I believe that the way she draws these Do-S Vampires as handsome guys is what the fans enjoy the most!

Q14. Please leave a message for the fans.

A: First of all, thank you all from the bottom of my heart. If it wasn’t for you guys’ reactions, we wouldn’t have been able to deliver this much content. I won’t go as far as to tell you to continue to loving ‘DIABOLIK LOVERS’ and its characters forever...! Even if it’s somewhere in the very back of your mind, I’d be happy if you could at least hold onto the fond memories of these characters. Honestly, thank you so so much.

SECTION 2: THEIR FAVORITE EPISODES

Sakamaki brothers: Laito’s Vampire Ending. It conveys that feeling of loving someone, yet still keeping you on the edge of your seat as he doesn’t quite fully want to admit to his own feelings, even though you can tell that he does properly love the main character, which made me feel joyful inside.

Mukami brothers: Rather than one specific scene, I loved the interactions between the Mukami brothers. When they are all enjoying a meal together, they would fight over the food, or Kou would make a fuss because he wants to eat Vongole Bianco. I found it cute how they would talk in a way you’d expect from normal high school boys. 

SECTION 3: SAKI ITO CHOOSES ー SITUATION-DEPENDENT CHARACTER SELECT

Who would you choose in these situations? What’s the developer’s opinion?

S1. To sleep together with?

Best: Shuu, he probably wouldn’t bother me.

Worst: Reiji, he seems like the type to get upset if you don’t keep perfectly still while sleeping.

S2. To go on a trip together with?

Best: Ruki, I feel like he would come fully prepped. 

Worst: Azusa, I wouldn’t be able to enjoy my trip if I get hurt because of him.

S3. To eat together with?

Best: Shuu, I feel like our eating styles would match.

Worst: Reiji, I’d constantly feel nervous.

S4. To study with?

Best: Ruki, I feel like he’d be able to explain things in a comprehensive manner.

Worst: Laito because he might just blow air into my ear all of a sudden.

S5. To go on a date with?

Best: Kou, he probably knows all the good places so it could be fun.

Worst: Kanato, I can’t stand the thought of him suddenly lashing out at me.

S6. To play a video game with?

Best: Yuma, I feel like he wouldn’t be the best at it, but it’d still be enjoyable regardless.

Worst: Subaru, he would destroy the console!

S7. To play sports with?

Best: Kou, I can imagine his sweat sparkling in the light as it bounces off him.

Worst: Reiji, he seems stiff.

S8. To go on a drive with?

Best: Ayato, it just seems fun.

Worst: Yuma, he strikes me as a speed devil. 

[satoshi-mochida]

Tobyfox has provided a status update on the second chapter and beyond of Undertale sequel Deltarune in celebration of Undertale‘s fifth anniversary today.

First, here are the latest screenshots from Deltarune‘s second chapter:

Get the full update below.

Introduction

Hi everyone.

If you’re reading this, you must have been sticking around for about five years.*

I want to express my gratitude for everyone that has supported and encouraged me over this time.

Thank you.

I’ve said it many many times before, but I didn’t expect the simple game I made to receive so much attention. Because of that, many interesting things have happened, and now I can even spend my time making another game.

It seems both of us received a lot of happiness from this occurrence.

If it’s okay, I would like to keep striving to do things that make both of us happy.

Let me know what you think about that.

*Since the Undertale demo released in 2013, the game has really existed for 7 years. It’s already been more than 25% of my life…

Deltarune

I will make another.

I am making a game called “Deltarune.” It is the second game in the Undertale series.

The game will be released in many “Chapters,” the first of which I released two years ago on Halloween. Since that time, I’ve been working hard to figure out the rest of the game.

However, it’s a game that’s much harder to make than Undertale.

Graphics are more complicated and several times more involved.

Systems are more complicated.

Exposes the weak points of my creative and artistic ability.

Plot is much harder to tie together (more characters, more important locations).

Significantly more content than Undertale in one playthrough (especially cutscenes).

I have only made one game ever.

Unlike Undertale, this is the type of game that would normally have many designers working on each aspect of the game.

A story writer, a composer, an audio director, a map designer, a battle designer, a minigame designer, and an overall director. Instead, all of those roles end up handled by me.

The good news is that a few months ago, I completed a significant milestone regarding the game’s design. I completed readable outlines for every chapter in the game, including first-pass dialogue for almost all the cutscenes, examples of the music, etc.

Although certain details are still hazy, the flow of the game and all major events and battles that take place are now clear.

In summary, I largely spent the past two years writing, composing, designing, and drawing. However, that’s not the whole story.

We had actually attempted to develop the game since the time too. Development started around March 2019 and a 99% work was spent on investigating engines alternate to GameMaker, which I used for Chapter 1.

Without getting into the details, I decided a few months ago to go back to GameMaker after all. It still felt like the best fit for the project. So using Chapter 1 as a base, we’ve started creating Chapter 2 since May 2020.

A lot of progress has been made since that time. I believe we can complete this chapter, content-wise, before the end of the year (not accounting for translation, bugtesting, and porting).

I feel very confident. And the strange thing is, even though we ended up using the original engine, I don’t regret the lost time, either. Not only was I still busy designing the game, but during that long period, I was able to think of many ideas that make the game’s story and characters better.

I’m glad that I’m making the Deltarune that I have now and that we are making healthy progress.

Deltarune Status Estimate

■ Chapter 2 (04.15.20 – 08.13.20)

Phase 1: Design

Main Design: 100% (dialogue, etc.)

Initial Setup: 100% (stuff involved setting up people to make the game, adding debug tools, documentation, etc.)

Phase 2: Implementation (05.01.20 ~ 08.13.20)

Art: 90%

Cutscenes: 80% (90% are started, needs 2nd pass)

Bullet Patterns: 70% (enemies are mostly completed, bosses are about 40% done, needs 2nd pass)

Non-Bullet Battle Elements: 30% (Some ACTs are done and enemies are fightable, but interactive ACTs need to be completed and polished and the bosses aren’t programmed outside of bullet patterns)

Audio: 80%

Maps: ??% most are started or placeholder, most need 2nd pass. NPC interactions are completed in all spots where written.

Other: 65%

Phase 3: Finishing

Balancing: 0%

Bugfixing: 0%

Translation: 0%

Porting: 0%

(Honestly, a lot of stuff FEELS like 80% to me, but the truth is that what’s there is quite rough now. Polish ends up taking a lot of time, so the real actual time value may be around 50% done…? We’ll see what happens. It’ll be a lesson for everybody.)

■ Chapters 3 and Beyond

Phase 1: Design

Story and General Game Progression (first-pass): 100%

Cutscene Dialogue (first-pass, lacking cutscene instructions): 95%

Map Design (textual): 70% (varies per chapter, earlier chapters totally completed)

Map Design (drawn): 0% (this takes a lot of wrist energy so I don’t do it until we start programming)

Enemy Design (conceptual): 90% (all bosses are known)

Enemy Design (bullets / visual): 80% (varies per chapter, earlier chapters totally completed)

Music (concept): 95%

Music (completed): 50%

Visual Design:BG Concept (first-pass): 75%, Important Character, Bosses (first-pass): 100%

Phase 2

Sprite Art: 20%?

Other Content Creation: 0%

Phase 3

Release Readiness: 0%

(These numbers can be somewhat deceptive though. My true design style is to reach the moment where we have to make something, then suddenly think of something different at the last minute. This is always how it’s been with me and my work. It feels like no matter how much I plan, everything comes down to what I think of at the last second…)

Team and Disability

You may have noticed from my phrasing, but yes, there is a team helping me create the game. Other than me, there are about three active team members working day-to-day, with a few other people pitching in from time to time.

Their roles of the main members are overall content implementation and organization, bullet pattern implementation (part-time), and art (Temmie). Other than designing, I still have the role of system programmer.

I’m extremely grateful to have a team helping me carry out my design especially because of my disabilities, which have also made development more difficult.

Although I have long suffered from wrist and hand pain, about five months ago my wrist was the worst it’s ever been. I could not play the piano, use the mouse, and barely could use the keyboard. I navigated everything through voice to text.

Through weightlifting, exercise, and various equipment I have been able to somewhat increase the stamina of my wrist to an extent. Various solutions have included trackball mice for each hand, using voice to text whenever possible, using a foot pedal to click the mouse, etc.

Now I can use the mouse and keyboard for a certain amount each day provided I take frequent breaks. I wish I could work without stopping. Once the world situation improves I would really like to take physical therapy again and/or investigate surgery to repair my wrist.

Future Plans

Once we finish Chapter 2, I would like to use it as the base to create future chapters from. After gaining experience from this chapter, I think making future chapters will be easier.

Part of me wonders if we could make the game faster if we increased the size of the team and did something insane like create multiple chapters in parallel. However, another part of me understands that, adding more people doesn’t guarantee that the game will be created faster if it’s not done properly. I’m already just barely avoiding becoming a bottleneck on development even with a team of this size, due to my physical limitations.

To that end, I am interested in making a list of people that could potentially help me make the game. I’m not 100% sure if I’m going to ask anyone to help, but I think if I could find just 1 person that works well with me, it’s worth asking.

Chapter 2 is proceeding at a good pace, so if we do take anyone on, it will probably only be for Chapter 3 onward. So please understand that anything you send in may not have an immediate result.

People I Am Looking For

Feel free to send in your portfolio if you have the following qualifications:

Worked in the game industry before

Worked under NDA before

Have professional references

A degree of creativity while also being okay with just following directions

Fluent in English

People I Might Actually Use

Music Transcription / Basic Arrangement (Part-Time)

I usually start making songs by playing the piano and singing. An important step after this is to take this basic outline and transcribe it into melodies and chords. Though there are not too many remaining songs to transcribe, it would still help my wrist to have someone else start this process for me. Although I know many musicians, I’m sheepish to ask for help to them, because the main role is actually just to help me compose my own music…

Helpful qualities:

Good at transcription.

Can stand listening to me sing.

Optional: can use an old version of Fruity Loops.

Bullet Pattern Programming (Part-Time)

I’m looking for someone to help me program bullet patterns into the game. These people will work from text and visual designs to create fun battles that match the feeling of the game. I already have one person helping with this, but I think a second person would help a lot. You have to be able to use Gamemaker Studio 2 to manipulate objects on the screen / okay with using pre-existing scripts to accomplish this.

Helpful qualities:

Sense of fun and understanding of player perspective and gameplay balance. This aspect is [many times] more important than programming ability.

Reliable.

Able to make patterns based off of visual/text instructions.

Fine working with a poorly made battle system.

Able to sprite bullets.

Good visual / timing sense.

Minigame Programming (Part-Time)

There are a few minigames and small interactive events in the game, which appear in and outside of battles. These could take any kind of form… who knows what I’m thinking! Have you made a game before?

Helpful qualities:

Same sense of humor as me.

Some level of spriting ability is useful.

You have to have made a game that is fun.

Ability to work together with me.

Unlikely to Hire, But Send Me Your Information Just In Case

Cutscene Programming (Part-Time)

Besides the battles, the largest amount of content in the game is definitely the cut scenes. You will have to understand Gamemaker Studio 2, but the majority of the work is simply using a scripting system that I created to make characters move around the screen. The most important quality you can have here is not programming ability but the ability to efficiently use the system in order to create scenes with a good sense of humor, timing, and emotion.

I’d strongly prefer to hire someone I know to do this because it involves the story. So I most likely won’t hire anyone else.

Helpful qualities:

Can take text instructions and impart a proper sense of timing, humor, and weight to them.

Fine working with a custom scripting system (or smart enough to make something better that makes the game easier to make).

Art (Part-Time)

Sprite art—Temmie has already drawn a massive amount of art for the game, and continues to do so. And I actually already have a few other artists that have helped me that I’m more than happy to keep working with if things become more overwhelming. So currently I actually don’t need any more artists.

However, personally, I’d really like to build up a portfolio of available pixel artists and even concept artists. It’s not as if this is the only game I will make during my life. Anyone chosen for this game needs to be able to match the style of the game, but I’m interested in seeing people with different styles as well. Knowing that I have different options can open my mind up to different creative pathways.

Helpful qualities:

Can take bad looking sketches and turn them into art that looks good (magic).

Don’t mind if your work gets completely drawn over or thrown out.

Anyone that can draw cute or cool poses is good.

Uninterested in seeing people that have an art style outside of the scope of the game.

Write (Full-Time)

Someone needs to transform into a new wrist for me.

Helpful qualities:

Flexible.

Doesn’t hurt.

Musical sense.

That’s everyone I’m looking for. The only other kind of person I might hire would be a single jack-of-all-trades type that can do any sort of things such as cutscenes, bullets, or even system programming, with a good degree of visual flair. (But if you can do those sorts of things, aren’t you busy making your own game already!?)

Anyway, I’ll show you the e-mail now. Just make sure you read these rules first:

Don’t send in e-mails about anything else!

Don’t send to other team members, Fangamer, etc. about helping out!

Got it? Then please send your information to this e-mail address:

deltarunejobs@fangamer.com

Since Fangamer will be sorting through the e-mails for me, we’ll stop taking e-mails at the end of September so they don’t get overwhelmed. Ultimately, I’m only looking for one or two people, and to make a list of the rest of the potentially helpful people in the world.

Undertale is available now for PlayStation 4, Switch, PS Vita, and PC via Steam and GOG. Deltarune Chapter 1 is availble for PlayStation 4, Switch, and PC via Deltarune.com.

[ranger-report]

Thoughts On: Heretic

Earlier this year, just before the beginning of quarantine, I played a little game called AMID EVIL, something I would not have done were it not for the enchanting video skills of YouTuber Civvie 11. In his video, Civvie demonstrated the awesomeness of the retro shooter, both in graphics and gameplay, and since I was jonesing for something a little more dark fantasy than I was used to, I decided to give it a try. The game is a thrilling rush, and worthy of its own post here, but that game was a segue into me finally picking up and playing a game series that I had been intrigued by for nearly twenty some odd years: the Heretic and Hexen games.

AMID EVIL owes a lot to these games; in fact, it's not much of a leap to say that it owes everything to these games. It's even less of a leap to say that most first person shooters, whether dark fantasy or no, owe a lot to these games. Raven Software introduced a monster of a franchise when they dropped Heretic in December of 1994, working in collaboration with id Software as Raven was creating their games using the DOOM engine (or, as I think we're calling it now, “id tech 1”). John Romero helped in-house, giving advice on how to work with the engine, which was instrumental for Raven to push id tech 1 to its limits. They made changes to the engine which eventually became staples in other FPS games: an inventory system, translucent objects, pushable objects, the ability to look up and down, and the ability to fly. While the game itself was objectively a reskinned version of DOOM, it was stylish and engaging and reworked the most popular game engine at the time. In short, it won accolades in no small amount, and sealed itself in history as a high watermark for boomer shooters, hell, for PC gaming in general. So when we're looking backwards into the foggy past of our ancestors, is Heretic a game that we, in the Year of Our Lord Gaben 2020, should consider playing, either for the first time or as a throwback? Roll up your sleeves, party people, we've got a deep one to dive into today. Because we can't simply look at Heretic alone; oh, no. We're going to have to look at the whole franchise.

Heretic is not a complicated game per se, but it has a lot of tricks up its sleeve. We have the standard issue Run-Gun-Have-Some-Fun gameplay that Wolfenstein and DOOM brought to the table. There's three keys of different colors – yellow, green, and blue – there's a variety of weapons that almost line up point-for-point with DOOM's stack of damage inducers, and there's a horde of enemies that are around every corner waiting for you to come out magic blazing. But where DOOM has a mostly straightforward path from point A to point B, Heretic is a trickster which can and will give cause to tear one's hair out. Secret doors, invisible walls, fake walls, and hidden switches are everywhere, which means that nine times out of ten you'll either be consulting your map to figure out where the fake walls are, or you'll be pressing the space bar on every surface to see if it will open or activate something useful. Raven did a bit of a whammy on the game, setting up the simplistic stuff to lure you in, as though promising a hot night out with the kind of experience you think that you're used to, but then they strap you in for the kinky stuff that you always imagined you'd be into, but now that we're here you're not so sure. Make no mistake, I did consult a walkthrough at least once, maybe twice if I'm remembering right, during my playthrough. And the game is punishing the deeper you get: enemies lie in wait immediately behind doors, around corners, hidden out of sight or just above you since some of them can fly, and as your limited ammunition dwindles down into the red, you'll be forced into running risk-and-reward of melee weapons and inventory items to keep moving. Fortunately, each weapon has its own ammo stock, and some enemies are more susceptible to different weapon types. Adding to the bonus in the player's favor are inventory items that boost weapon damage, specifically the Tome of Power which magnifies the current weapon's attack power into a secondary fire that more often than not is absolutely brutal. But, unlike future entries in this series, the motto of the day is: Keep Moving, Keep Shooting, Don't Stop Moving, Don't Stop Shooting. It's Fun, Fast, and Furious in an entertaining way that only occasionally leaves you pondering why you even booted up the game this morning.

However you may feel about the gameplay itself, it can't be denied that the visual aesthetics and gamefeel are dripping with atmosphere. Everything from top to bottom feels like the best of cheesy 80's style fantasy art, from the front cover to final screen. Gloomy castles, underwater domes, craggy hellscapes. Weapons impress with over-the-top magical properties. The default staff acts like the DOOM pistol, lobbing nearly harmless yellow energy, while the Etheral Crossbow shoots multiple energy arrows at once, like a magic shotgun, easily the most versatile weapon in the game. Besides that one, my other favorite weapons are the Hellstaff (which blasts rapid-fire red energy, and causes acid rain to fall when Tomed up) and the Phoenix Rod (basically a magic rocket launcher that belches fire when overpowered). Depending on what you're facing, proper usage of these weapons (all finely drawn sprites, natch) can either chew through a mob with ease or leave you scrambling to get back. Stun lock Disciples with the Dragon Claw while obliterating Golems with the Crossbow; save the Phoenix Rod for big bads. And enemy creatures run the gamut from the simplistically annoying Gargoyles (red bat-winged creatures who also shoot fireballs) to the sturdy Golems (which come in a secondary variety which throw flaming skulls at you) to the Disciples of D'Sparil (faceless hooded monks who fly, chant, and shoot fireballs at you, on theme). Usually these damage sponges come at you in packs, rarely doing so in solo numbers because otherwise the game wouldn't be a DOOM clone. What really gets challenging is when boss creatures start popping up like regular enemies – in packs. Take the Iron Lich for example, a massive floating skull wearing a spiked helmet that throws walls of fire and tornadoes that do continual damage, they appear as a boss at the end of the final level of the first episode, then appear later on in groups. They take incredible amounts of damage and return fire constantly, which leads to a tense game of bobbing and weaving and staying as far away from them as possible. But the absolute worst is the Maulotaur. Basically, a minotaur that stands head and shoulders taller than the Iron Lich, carries a huge mace, and shoots waves of fire at you which can one-shot you if you're not paying attention. Staying away from them is key, but they can charge forward fast in order to close distance and take a few swings at you with the mace. These assholes also start as a final bosses, then appear as regular enemies surrounded by waves of other mobs. Maulotaurs are the dealbreakers of the game; they require ridiculous amounts of ammo to kill, and will force you through most of your inventory items if you're not already powered up. Thankfully, your inventory can hold quite a few helpful items, such as quartz flasks for health, the aforementioned Tomes of Power to boost weapon damage, invisibility spheres and wings of flight, and even motherfucking time bombs. But amongst all these, the most ridiculous and yet satisfying item is the Morph Ovum. Shaped like an egg, when used it gets thrown outward and whatever it hits is transformed into an easily killable chicken. Got a wave of monsters crowding too close and you need to thin the herd fast? Turn them into chickens, then turn them into fried chickens.

What gets me is that this game doesn't feel nearly as highly regarded as its indirect sequel, Hexen, and that's probably because for the most part this is a full-on DOOM clone. There were a lot of them back in the day, too many to count, and I think that if wasn't for the legacy of Raven and Hexen, this might have fallen through the cracks of history. Is it uninspired? No, not in the slightest. The quality of the spritework and animations are top notch, the production values are stellar, putting it just above the quality of the average obvious Doom clone. The amount of innovation, with the aforementioned inventory system and modifications to the engine, mesh well with the ambitious world/story crafted in the background of a single warrior trudging across worlds to defeat an evil tyrant who has taken over his people's lands. The current version on Steam is actually the second version released; initially, the game launched in 1994 with three episodes, the first one being the shareware version, and then later on in 1996 had a second physical release which added on two new episodes. It was like an expansion pack folded into the main game, and considering that Hexen was released in 1995, it makes sense that the two new episodes of Heretic feel so much more brutal in difficulty by comparison. And thematically it makes sense for them to have a higher base difficulty, since it’s about escaping the dark world you had to break into, and now you're crawling your way back out of it. Kind of a neat trick, having the hero beat the bad guy halfway through the story, then showing his journey to get back home. Hell, even the name of the main character is awesome. A later game in the series will reveal that his name is Corvus, but originally the character was simply referred to as The Heretic, and in a gaming landscape featuring such characters as Doomguy, the Quake Ranger, and the Doomslayer, the Heretic ought to stand right up there with the rest of them.

So is the game worth playing today? Absolutely. Any fan of boomer shooters or retro gaming in general should absolutely play this game. Utilizing DOSBOX (which the Steam release uses) is fine, but doesn't allow for the best playing experience currently. A quick download of GZDOOM to launch the game will give better controls, easier mouse compatibility, and smoother graphics. There's a method to tie GZDOOM into your Steam page so you can even track how long you've been playing it (for those who this is important for). And it's super cheap, meaning there's little to no excuse to not play it. So why then is this game sitting in the background, kind of like the little engine that could? You know, I'm doing my best to get into the meat and potatoes of this game, to be more descriptive of it and really entice you, the reader, into wanting to play this game. The powerups are fun, there are segments where you absolutely get to go apeshit on monsters and laugh hysterically while you do so, there are moments where the “AHA” is so enlighting that the relief is palpable. Some of the bosses are so memorable that to find them around the corner later in the game as minibosses – in multiple! – is downright frightening and adds to the risk/reward, since they're usually guarding something good that you want to pick up. Long story short, if you like DOOM, you'll like Heretic, which feels like selling the experience short. But the real reason I think Heretic is overlooked is because it is overshadowed by the more complex, more engaging, and more brutal Hexen.

If it hasn't become obvious yet, this is going to be a multi-part Thoughts On post. You've read Heretic, which is a fine game that does what it does and is memorable and fun and fine. But next, we're going to dive into the second course of this delicious fantasy meal, Hexen, and talk about how the second game in this series is the one that got everyone to sit up and take notice of what Raven Software was doing.

[danbevanwriting]

The Ranking of Final Fantasy: Final Fantasy II

After the runaway success of Final Fantasy, Square wanted to capitalise on it and release a sequel as soon as they could. As such, Final Fantasy II was made a mere year later for the NES for Japan only. What made this sequel special is in how little it actually resembles its predecessor. Instead of taking the easy route, Square decided to change how the combat system worked, worked in a more elaborate story with more in the way of characters, and crafted a whole new world. Very impressive work considering the single year gap. Some assets were understandably re-used (such as character sprites being close to identical to FFI) but there was a fair amount of original designs too. Of course, none of this came without a price...

All of the above sounds pretty good on paper, right? Well, I'll start with the combat system. More specifically, the leveling system. Experience as a leveling up system is gone, and in its place is a system that levels up stats and abilities with their use. So, as an example, you level up your sword skill by using swords in battle, and you level up your intelligence or MP by casting magic (magic costs points to use now rather than the charge system in the last game, which is an improvement in my eyes). Again, on paper this sounds pretty good and logical! However the amount of time it takes to level up these skills to a high degree is insane, requiring literally thousands of casts to reach anywhere close to top level magic, and each spell has to level up individually. This means if you want to cast high level elemental magic for the 3 major elements (fire, ice, lightning) then you'd have to cast each about 3,000 times. The same issue applies to the weapons too, which means that despite there being a whole host of different weapon types, you are at a complete disadvantage if you level anything other than swords, bows, or axes as most of the types have little to no late game tier weapons. This is probably why the encounter rate in this game is so high. It's far higher that FFI from what I can tell, or at least it feels significantly higher. The constant battles make the game feel like a chore to get through, draining you of your resources in game and patience out.

Another flaw with this system is that to be able to increase your maximum HP or MP then you have to take damage or use MP in battle and finish the fight. This leads to a problem with the way the game calculates the damage taken. If one of your characters takes damage in battle but you heal it up during the fight, it'll negate the damage taken and not count for the trigger to increase maximum HP. The way this is all calculated means that a common 'power levelling' tactic is to fight the weakest enemies in the game, beat the ever loving crap out of yourselves for as long as you can, then finish the fight, resulting in massive stat increases. This easy work around means that the game can become trivialised pretty easily. It also makes the game in general very unsatisfying to play as the game is either way too hard or way too easy due to a lack of balancing and huge difficulty spikes for the unprepared. Instead the gameplay is an exercise in tedium rather than being enjoyable like the first game due to level ups not feeling as good as they did in FFI nor the exploration aspect of the game being very enjoyable either.

The exploration aspect of the game is the same as the first game: world map, towns, dungeons. The world map aspect is pretty standard and follows in the same vein as the first with the same sort of transportation options open to the player. I only have a couple of issues with it to be honest, both of which are relatively minor. Firstly it's deceptively small, which means that the game requires you to back track through a lot of it with quests sending you back and forth across the same parts of the world and getting you back to a home base of sorts. Not a massive issue as it is not a bad thing, thematically, to return to the base of the resistance between missions. This does slow the pacing of the game right down though. Secondly, the map has an issue with signposting difficult enemies. For example in the last game, as the map was significantly larger, harder enemies were gated in to zones you could only get to with the use of a vehicle or tool locked behind a dungeon or boss. Not the case here. It's very easy early on in the game to wander just a little bit to too far to the West and get one-shot by enemies meant to be fought a lot later in the game. It does give the world a more hostile feeling but it's not exactly fair either. The towns that litter the world map are fine, nothing too interesting of note as they all are pretty similar, although I do like how they change throughout the game at times, such as Fynn being re-occupied by normal citizens when you liberate it from the empire and Altair showing signs of damage after it's attacked. Helping exploration a bit is the key word system which lets you learn and ask key words to certain NPCs. It is somewhat limited in scope however and isn't utilised as well as it could have, but this was a NES game after all so I wouldn't have expected anything too amazing. The fact it is in this game at all and utilised how it is is impressive in itself, honestly.

The dungeons are a different story though, and is part of the major failing of this game. You'll spend the vast majority of the play time crawling through these dungeons which take a few different shapes but are mostly caves and stone fortresses. The tile sets look fine but the way that the dungeons themselves are designed is among the worst I've ever played. They're so tedious. Not only are they complex to a fault, having many twisting paths and dead ends that provide little to no reward, but they seem to be designed to create as much ire in the player as possible. Throughout all the dungeons there are doors, either in corners or at the end of a corridor with a few of them in a row, but unfortunately these doors more than often lead to empty rooms which drop you in to the middle of them. Not only is it annoying that there's nothing in the rooms (especially when you choose the wrong door out of several next to each other, only one of which progresses the dungeon), the encounter rate in these rooms is tweaked incredibly high. This means that it is more than possible to encounter enemies with every step you take back to the door which can be lethal if you're in the wrong situation or get a bad mix of enemies. Not helping the dungeons is the boring music, which certainly doesn't negate the tedium.

The music in general is rather lackluster to be honest. The only music pieces I can think of that are good are the normal battle theme, the over world theme, and the rebel theme that plays when you're in the rebel base. Everything else is really boring, or repetitive, or just bizarre like the boss theme. Seriously, what is up with that boss theme?(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fprhlzyl30s) The one used for later game bosses is better but still not incredible or very memorable. Honestly that's a word that can sum up the majority of the soundtrack despite how repetitive it is: forgettable. This is where the Chocobos are introduced for the first time, but they somehow ruin that through the music which is literally just one bar long and is repeated ad nauseam, and I don't think I need to explain why that is so terrible...

The story of the game ranges from boring to 'okay'. Characters are more than mere cardboard cut-outs like in FFI but they still aren't amazingly fleshed out. There isn't much in the way of character development for the main characters, despite them being distinct characters this time around. You never really learn much about Firion, Guy, or Maria during the whole game other than they're orphans and really don't like the empire because they destroyed their home. This is a shame as they are obviously with the party the whole game and just get nothing to say really. The supporting characters aren't too much better either. Through the game you get extra party members that take up the fourth slot in your party, however you'll quickly learn that this is sometimes just a death sentence for them, or you'll learn just to simply not care about them at all. Often times the party member will come in weak and underpowered, meaning you have to baby sit them as they gain levels, only for them to leave the party forever (taking all equipment with them) or they die to save the three protagonists in a dramatic moment. While it does provide a context for the fight and shows how desperate the war on the empire is, but it's also dramatically repetitive. Of course this is a really good story for a NES game and has far more complexities than anything else at the time. But now the story is mostly just not engaging. The story is mostly predictable, characters are mostly one note, the big bad, the Emperor, is pretty flat and starts the trend of Final Fantasy antagonists either being only one part of a bigger unseen picture, or coming back from the dead because 'evil magic'. Honestly I don't think there's a single memorable character here, and there isn't much I could tell you about the ones I do remember, aside from Minwu looks cool and unique? The story starts surprisingly strong though, with an unwinnable fight to wipe the party in order to set the tone and the pace of the story is pretty snappy too, setting you off in to the world and making decent progress with exposing or routing the empire from towns and even destroying their Dreadnought ship. Unfortunately the story's pace just nose dives after that, padding the story out with a world spanning fetch quest where the story just treads water until the end with boring long dungeons and an ending which is rather flat.

In conclusion, Final Fantasy II isn't very good. It's boring, frustrating, repetitive, tedious, but also has a couple of bright spots in the premise and the idea of the levelling up system. I played through this game on the PSP/ mobile version which is far less frustrating than the original or PS1 version. In the original game on NES, the frustrating stat increase system was even more annoying with a stat degradation that would take away points from skills or stats that weren't used for a while. I think that would have made me quit the game pretty early on to be quite honest. The original also only ever let you save your game outside, and with the length of some of these dungeons combined with the high encounter rate would also lead to an ungodly amount of stress and frustration.

So how does this game compare to the rest of the series so far? Well comparing the game to FFI alone, this is a night and day difference. You can tell this game was made quickly as the developers seemed to have forgot to make the gameplay fun before they focused on telling a more complex tale within a video game. Not only is this a bad Final Fantasy, it's a bad RPG, and is the black sheep of the series for a reason. Obviously this is going to the bottom of the list, where I predict it will stay for the rest of this series.

And that's it for Final Fantasy II! I won't lie, I'm glad to see the back of it. It's part of why I took so long getting this done, I lost a lot of motivation to get through the game due to some of the rubbish the game threw my way. It's only up from here though! Just for the record too, I plan to do all direct sequels in this series too, which means I'll be reviewing and rating Final Fantasies IV: The After Years, X-2, XIII-2, and XIII: Lightning Returns. The only one I probably won't touch is XII: Revenant Wings due to me mostly just being uninterested in it. Anyway, thank you for reading, and please look forward to when I review and rate Final Fantasy III!

Current Rankings:

Final Fantasy

Final Fantasy II

[rustbeltsinologist]

Final Fantasy IX Review

Am I the only person who didn't like playing Final Fantasy IX? I just finished it and I gotta say it's the second worst in the series of the ones I've played so far. So far I've played 1, 2, 3, 7, 8, 9, 10, 12, and 15. But everywhere I look on Steam, Youtube, and Reddit, this game is absolutely beloved and cherished by some as the best in the entire series. There are, broadly speaking, a few major types of Final Fantasy games: story heavy vs customization heavy, 2D vs 3D, fully customizable characters vs set character jobs, turn-based vs action RPG, etc. There are the best and worst games in each of those categories. For me, 9 was the worst of the PS1 generation and only second to FFII as the worst FF I've ever played so far. I don't know if the MMO's (11 and 14) are really includable in these discussions because those are just a totally different kind of gaming experience. There is a difference between saying a "least favorite" and a "worst" game, and this one is definitely one of the worst, not worth calling a "least favorite." This game is actually bad in my opinion.

First, I will get the good out of the way because obviously it's not all terrible and I understand that many people love this game. If I grew up in the late '80s to early '90s playing the original NES and SNES FF games, I can see how 9 would seem like a loving tribute and last hurrah to the classic style after seeing how much 7 and 8 changed up the franchise so much. The best parts of this game, to me, were the characters Quina and Steiner for comic relief, and Vivi's story. In gameplay, I guess I enjoyed grabbing blue magic spells from enemies for Quina and beating some of the tougher bosses. The movie cutscenes were very good quality for an original Playstation game. But that's about where it stops for me.

The bad: battles are too slow, designs are unappealing to look at, most of the main cast of characters are unlikable, and the equipment-based ability learning system is just the worst to grind through. The amount of time it takes from the start of a random encounter to when you can actual do anything in combat is too long. After that, some of the battle animations from enemies are way too long, and when you fight three of them at a time who all cast the same 20-second long spell every turn, you're in for a long battle. Leveling up is easy in this game, and you can reach your desired level with little grinding, but the real big kicker in this game is the ability learning system. You have to learn new spells, upgrades, and abilities by equipping the right items and then grinding with them for AP. The problem with this is that some abilities can take over 100 AP to learn, and you usually can't earn more than 3 AP per random encounter. Boss fights dole out more, but on your first run through this game good luck with being able to predict and plan all that out ahead of time. I spent a good 10+ hours of my playthrough of this long, long game just trying to gain AP for abilities. That's too much. I am going to go out on a limb here and say that I think that even FFVIII's junction system was better than this because at least it didn't take tens of hours to utilize properly.

Regarding the art style, I just cannot get past it. For me, this was not a Wind Waker effect. I do not enjoy the aesthetics of this game after some time. Specifically I do not like Zidane's giant hair, Vivi's overly bulky clothes, Steiner's armor shorts, and the fact that you can see Dagger's buttocks the entire time you play the game. It's like they made everyone's head too big and smushed everyone down into hamburgers in this game. I get that it was supposed to be a stylized 3D version of the older 2D sprites, but this did not look good to me. The Nintendo DS remakes of 3-6 in 3D did a better job with that attempt, I think. I can't be the only one who doesn't like the visual style even after all this time, can I? It seems that every glowing review acknowledges that they are perhaps unappealing but that they don't care and eventually it grew on them. That never happened to me.

I sat through this game because I thought that it has to get better at some point. It's gotta pick up eventually, right? Some other Final Fantasy games are way better in the latter half or final third, but this one did not satisfy.

[postgamecontent]

Landstalker: SEGA Genesis RPG Spotlight #3

Original Release Date: October 30, 1992

Original Hardware: SEGA Mega Drive

Developer/Publisher: Climax Entertainment/SEGA

I've already gone into the history of Climax Entertainment and SEGA's ultimately fruitless search for their own Zelda-killer, but both topics are quite relevant as we discuss Landstalker, the 1992 Genesis action-RPG most well-known for its isometric perspective. The game's developer, Climax Entertainment, was founded in 1990 by a former programmer on the Dragon Quest series named Kan Naito. Its first two projects were jointly developed with Sonic! Software Planning and should be familiar to anyone who has found their way to this article. Shining in the Darkness is a first-person dungeon crawler that kicked off SEGA's long-running Shining series. Shining Force, a turn-based tactical RPG, is perhaps the most celebrated entry in that series. Climax's contributions to those games included vital elements such as art and programming, but the series was ultimately the child of Sonic! and would proceed solely in their care after the first two installments.

Having worked on a dungeon crawl RPG and a tactical RPG, Climax had already started making a name for themselves with fans of the role-playing genre. It made sense that their first wholly-developed title would also be an RPG. While Climax was independent of SEGA, they had a good relationship with the publisher at this point. Perhaps out of a desire to get away from turn-based games and try something new, or perhaps to help SEGA try to find its Zelda, Climax decided their new game would be an action-RPG. Someone on staff must have been a fan of British computer games, because they also opted for an isometric viewpoint for their game, a relatively unusual choice among Japanese-developed games of the time.

Back before hardware could easily handle a lot of polygons, you basically had a few choices if you wanted to make a 3D game. To start with, no matter which route you took, your camera would almost certainly have to be fixed. Many developers opted to use an overhead view, which allowed players to move easily in any direction and see the world around them without any issues. This worked well for many genres and was quite popular as a result. The only catch is that the player is usually so far above the action that it hardly feels like a real 3D space. In fact, most of these games simply swapped one dimension for another, as the ability to move in all directions often took the place of any real verticality.

Another option was to go with a first-person view. Again, the camera was essentially fixed in most of the early games that went in this direction. The hardware simply couldn't handle a player moving about and looking as they liked. As such, games played from this point of view usually had the player move in fixed chunks of distance. This kind of stop-and-go gameplay was best suited for games with a more leisurely pace, such as RPGs or adventure games. Some clever programming and design was being applied to bring this perspective to PC action games around the time of Landstalker's development, but it would still be a while before consoles would enjoy the fruits of that. The benefits here are obvious. Having the player look through the character's eyes makes the game feel more lifelike and the world more three-dimensional. The main drawback is that it gave players a very limited view of the area around them.

Then there was the isometric perspective. Skewing things at that angle allowed the world to express depth without giving up the player's ability to see all around them at a glance. With this method, it was easier to create games that afforded players the ability to move in all directions while still being able to jump and climb. It could also be quite cinematic if things were set up the right way. This viewpoint was popularized by Ultimate Play the Game's Knightlore, which spawned a cottage industry of clones in the British computer gaming scene in the 1980s. While this seems like the ideal choice for an action-adventure, there's a serious drawback that becomes almost immediately obvious to anyone after playing one of these games for a little while.

Simply put, the depth is an illusion. Our ability to perceive how far or close objects are to us depends greatly on methods that could not be easily replicated by a 2D television at the time. Polygonal games could alleviate this issue by allowing the player to move the camera, giving them the chance to compare objects and figure out where they were, relative to one another. Sprite-based games had no such luxury for the player, who was at the mercy of the developer's ability and/or desire to lay things out in a manner that wasn't confusing. This is not an easy task by any means, and many developers simply couldn't resist using depth perception issues to hide secrets and trick the player. It's that specific respect that makes the isometric viewpoint somewhat controversial among players.

On top of that, most controllers since Nintendo's 8-bit hardware launched use a directional pad for movement. Such pads typically emphasize the cardinal directions, and that left the developer with a difficult choice. What happens when the player pushes up on the pad? Will they go to the upper-left, or will they go to the upper-right? Do you force them to use diagonals so that things match up properly? I think there's a good reason why the most popular isometric games tended to be slower-paced affairs. But there's always someone who tries to ice skate uphill, and over the course of their first decade of existence Climax would keep on taking a run at just that.

Landstalker in a lot of ways is asking more of this perspective than any of Climax's other isometric games. Battles are often crowded and take place right on the map, requiring you to quickly turn directions to stave off enemies coming at you from all around. There's a fair bit of complex platforming, much of it involving moving platforms whose relationships to each other aren't always obvious. Missteps will send you hurtling back to the start of whatever you were trying to climb. Secrets are hidden behind pieces of the scenery that the camera can't see, and some of them require you to jump onto ledges and objects that aren't visible to you. Should you happen to run out of life hearts and have no healing items left, you'll be unceremoniously dumped back to the title screen, forced to replay from your last save point. Said save point is likely in a nearby town, so you pretty much have to complete dungeons in one go. Naturally, you can't move the camera an inch.

What this all comes down to is that while Landstalker has a lot of qualities that almost everyone can agree on, it's an incredibly divisive game. Its gorgeous visuals, strong soundtrack, and interesting puzzle designs make it hard to outright hate, but the line between mediocre and masterpiece appears to lay in how well the individual can get along with the necessary outcomes of its isometric perspective. I've noticed that those well-versed in those Knightlore-inspired UK computer games have less of a problem getting over that hurdle than those who were raised on a diet of Japanese console games or American arcade games. That makes a lot of sense, given that learning to cope with the quirks of the viewpoint weren't part of the education of a lot of players outside of that particular group. Arcade players had Marble Madness, but that controlled with a trackball. Console players only had the odd PC port from Electronic Arts or the occasional release from Ultimate Play the Game themselves under their new name of Rare.

I feel like I grew up on a relatively mixed diet of computers, arcades, and consoles. The first games I played were in arcade cabinets. The first machine I had in my home capable of playing games was a Commodore 64. But though I was late to the console party, once I got my Nintendo Entertainment System I was in, all the way. Yet for all the British classics I played on that C64, I never did get into isometric games all that much. In turn, it's something I feel like I'm fighting with every step of the way when I play Landstalker. I have a good time with literally every aspect of the game except the basic controls. Curiously, it's a far greater issue for me here than it is with Dark Savior, one of the game's follow-ups. But then again, that game allows me to move the camera a little, isn't as punishing when I fail, and moves its combat to a far simpler arena.

Outside of that admittedly major issue, I have nothing but praise for Landstalker. The environments are varied, the overworld feels big, and the dungeons are cleverly designed with puzzles a-plenty. I love the art style, and the designs fit the Genesis's capabilities perfectly. The story isn't nearly as simple as it initially appears, though like Dark Savior its ending sort of fizzles to nothing. You get a surprisingly good sense of the characters in spite of relatively little dialogue for some of them, and the more developed characters really come out well. It's about on the level of a silly Saturday morning cartoon in most respects, but it's at least a good one. I love that wherever it feels like there should be a secret, there is one. I also genuinely appreciate that this is a game where effort is typically rewarded with something of appropriate value. The game aggravates the heck out of me, but after I get through one of those wall-punching situations, I usually feel pretty good about it.

In some ways, I find Landstalker more enjoyable on a replay. You know what to expect, you've seen your way through the worst of it once before, and you know what you can look forward to. But the controls and perspective, so annoying at the time, feel worse every time I come back. I also find myself less tolerant of the many moments where the developer knew exactly what kind of unfair trickery they were relying on and did it anyway. It's a bizarre habit of Climax. Instead of designing their games around obscuring the weak points, they tend to shine a bright flashlight directly upon them. This isn't a problem, Landstalker says. It's so very much not a problem that we're going to force you to deal with it as much as possible. I'd love to chalk that up to their relative newcomer status at the time of Landstalker's release, but it's a behavior that persists in their work. The most recent Climax game I played, the dreadful Kingdom of Paradise for the PSP, was similarly proud of its shortcomings.

Looking at Landstalker from a design standpoint, it's clear that Climax could have made a high quality action-RPG that might have pleased a wider crowd had they only stuck closer to the conventions of the genre. That said, it's hard to be too down on a developer for trying something different. There are a lot of people who have no problems with Landstalker's controls and platforming, and for them, it's a game that gives a Zelda-like feeling without directly copying Zelda. That's something precious, particularly in Landstalker's era. I think it says a lot for Landstalker that in spite of my borderline hatred of its fundamental mechanics, I still think it's a really great game. It just has a really big asterisk next to it, is all.

Interestingly, if you want to play Landstalker today, your options are quite limited. It's available on the Wii Virtual Console, the PC SEGA Genesis & Mega Drive Classics Collection, and in its original cartridge form. None of the console SEGA Genesis collections include the game, and although it would have benefited better than most from a SEGA 3D Classic treatment on the 3DS, there's no such luck there either. Wherever you choose to play it, make sure you've got a good directional pad to work with. The game isn't terribly long, so if you can deal with its flaws, it's certainly worth the time for a playthrough.

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Nioh 2 review – a vast and engrossing if dutiful follow-up to a landmark Soulslike • Eurogamer.net

The measure of a good Soulslike isn’t the might of its (Nameless) kings, but the deviousness of its pawns. Marquee adversaries like Ornstein and Smough might command the lion’s share of Youtube uploads, but they aren’t, or shouldn’t be, the source of all dread in the moment. Nioh 2 offers plenty of bosses, most plucked from the grottier tracts of Japanese folklore and all endowed with the ability to shift the proceedings into the “yokai” or spirit realm, where their attacks are more ferocious – a nifty variation on the idea of boss phases. My standouts include a massive owl demon who periodically turns off the lights, forcing you to track the creature by its glaring red eyes. But this terrific, if conservative and overloaded follow-up to 2017’s blend of Ninja Gaiden and Dark Souls isn’t really about the giants. It’s about the dirty little bastards in the undergrowth, the rank-and-file grunts with tricks up their sleeves.

Nioh 2 review

Developer: Team Ninja

Publisher: Koei Tecmo/Sony Interactive Entertainment

Platform: Reviewed on PS4

Availability: Out March 13th on PS4

For instance: you’ll meet a demon hag whose abilities include a sort of arthritic spin attack, cackling and flailing around as though trying to free herself from a net. It’s easily evaded and rather silly, more senior moment than special move. Often, it ends with the hag tumbling over in a heap. But sometimes, it ends with her bowling a knife at your head. Elsewhere you’ll encounter bandits who are easy prey till they’re about to die, whereupon they’ll Hulk out and wrestle you to the floor, and deceptively polished samurai who are host to demons that spit fire and poison.

Worst of all, though, are the pot-bellied Gollum equivalents who infest the game’s Sengoku Japan setting, a world of cherry-blossom villages, spoiling castles and torchlit carrion fields. It’s not just that they’re fond of playing dead near treasure. It’s not just that they spew paralysing fluid when you punch them too hard, or that they sometimes accompany larger threats – bouncing stones off your skull like unruly children as you duck under blows that will kill you instantly. It’s that when you knock one flat, another may pounce on and devour it, tripling in size. You skitter out of reach, and whoops, it turns out one of those hags was lurking in a closet behind you. These are the reversals that really set Soulslikes apart, the moments when no amount of levelling, gear bonuses, abject pleading or apoplectic rage can stop you dying at the hands of the very first enemy type you killed, 40 hours before.

If Nioh 2 is full of such surprises, it is not a surprising sequel. Branding it Nioh 1.5 is too much, but this is definitely a case of ornamenting the grip rather than changing the blade (forgery nerds, feel free to chime in here with a more apposite comparison). Set before the first game’s events, it casts you as Hide, a custom-created adventurer with yokai blood – a trait that allows you to wield the abilities of slain demons and briefly assume yokai form yourself. Early on you fall in with a wandering ragamuffin, Tokichiro, who embroils you in a quest for fame and fortune.

The gimmick is that you’re enacting the secret history of Toyotomi Hideyoshi, the real-life daimyo credited with unifying a wartorn Japan, who in this retelling was actually two people. The real Hideyoshi’s feats include confiscating swords from all over Japan and melting them down into a statue of the Buddha – a source of some irony here, given that you’ll spend much of Nioh 2 wondering how to dispose of all the worn-out gear filling your inventory. The first game was hardly feted for its storytelling and the second offers much the same, lavish but scatter-brained mix of period celebrities, eccentrics and pantomime manipulators. The dialogue and acting are sparky, but there’s little narrative backbone. Ultimately, it’s just a bunch of interludes stuffed into a campaign where you pick main and side missions from a Total War-style overworld view.

Returning players will find Nioh 2 looks and handles mostly as was, give or take some more lifelike animations and a richer colour palette. From Souls, Nioh derives the idea of dropping your collected XP at the point of death, granting you a single opportunity to recover it, together with moody, winding levels pegged together by shrines full of friendly sprites who restore you while also resurrecting non-boss enemies. Unlike in Souls, these are separately loaded areas, but they’re governed by a similar emphasis on unlockable shortcuts. Most consist of three or four shrines positioned near doors that must be opened from the other side, once you’ve fought your way round to it. The major geographical change-ups over Nioh are dark zones where the border between mortal and yokai realm has collapsed. Shrines and treasure chests are off limits, here, till you’ve purged the midboss responsible for the psychic overspill.

To Ninja Gaiden, meanwhile, the game owes its elaborate melee combat system, with dozens upon dozens of weapon-specific combos backed up by ninja tools such as poisoned shuriken, Onmyo spells such as fireballs or lifesteal, and the nuclear options conferred by your character’s Guardian Spirit. Of the weapon types – axe, katana, dual blades, switchglaive, spear, odachi, tonfas, kusarigama, hatchets, switchglaive – only the last two are new, and the remainder recycle most of their combos, parries and specials from the first game. Each weapon can be wielded in three stances with diverging movesets: high stance trades speed for power, low stance power for speed, and middle is… in the middle.

The supporting role-playing systems are essentially as before but with a lot more meat on them. Besides spending “amrita” or XP to level up stats that correspond to weapon types, and allocating points to each weapon category’s sprawling unlock tree, you build Familiarity with individual weapons that lets you deal more damage with them. This encourages you to master each one, rather than casting it aside the second you find a rarer specimen with higher base capabilities – which in my experience, happens roughly every couple of minutes. To all that, add armour effects like health regen when you imbue your attacks with the water element, together with the bonuses afforded by your choice of Guardian spirit. It’s a lot to swallow, and that’s before you start combining and forging your own equipment between missions, transferring bonuses to higher-level blades or dismantling them for parts.

A role-player this top-heavy needs something to catalyse the emotions in the moment. That thing is once again Nioh’s clever redefinition of stamina as “ki”, the all-pervading vital energy from traditional Chinese medicine and martial arts. Swing a weapon and you’ll scatter ki into the air, like sparks from a torch. Exhaust the bar and you’ll be unable to perform any action at all, not even the sagging blows that result when you empty the tank in the Souls games. Take a hit in this state and you’ll be stunned for a good couple of seconds, opportunity enough for pretty much any opponent to finish you off. So you do your best to keep the bar full – not just retreating and dropping your guard to regain poise, but tapping R1 as ki leaves your body to suck it back in.

Doing this also dispels puddles of ki-sapping static conjured by demons – bosses, especially, slop this vampiric substance all over, forcing you to nail those pulses or stick to uncontaminated areas. Ki restoration isn’t as punishing as it may sound – if you’re struggling to stir it into your combos, there are unlocks that trigger ki pulses when you dodge or perform other routine actions. But the system gives your presence in this world a certain poetic charge. It’s not just about catching your breath so that you can clobber somebody with your axe, but aligning inner and outer equilibriums, becoming one with your environment – and clobbering somebody with your axe while you’re at it.

The weapons themselves are a joy to wield, whether you’re crushing enemies into the floor with the odachi’s 12-foot blade or wrapping them in the kusarigama’s chain. The new toys aren’t transformative but have their share of lethal quirks: the hatchets can be thrown, returning to your hands by magic, while the switchglaive (a nod to Bloodborne) unfolds from a rapid-slicing razor into a sweeping polearm and a scythe for messy finishers. I’m less convinced by the new yokai abilities, which are equipped by plugging cores dropped by demons into your Guardian spirit. The possibilities range from yanking an enormous flaming hammer out of your backpocket, to bursting through the ground as a legless ogre.

They’re good fun visually, but some much more useful than others, and their tactical applications are blunt – either dealing a ton of damage at once or trying to stagger a foe (or both). Demon cores also add to the pressure on your inventory, which frequently saw me dumping helmets and cuirasses by the roadside (a less wasteful way of shedding weight is to trade weapons for currency at shrines). I also have mixed feelings about the new yokai transformations, which replace Nioh’s Living Weapons. Each of the three yokai forms has its own weapons, moveset and a “Burst” counter for use against more devastating attacks that are pre-empted by a boiling red glow. There’s another layer of skill here, but I mostly used transformations to spam my way out of corners or finish bosses I couldn’t be bothered to murder scientifically.

In general I feel like Nioh 2 is rather bloated, a feeling that intensifies over the course of the game as you spend less time clashing with monsters and more time taming the hydra-headed spreadsheet equation that is character customisation. I was dismayed to find, 30 hours in, that I’d unlocked yet another layer – one of those abstract “clan battle” modes where you join and donate items to a faction in return for passive bonuses. A man may tire of passive bonuses, even when he’s not on deadline. More controversially, this feature seems to have taken the place of regular PvP, though this is made up for by the expanded co-op options. You can now summon the AI-controlled shades of other players as both opponents and allies – handy indeed when there’s nobody online to help you through a bossfight, though the AI is too inept to serve as more than a distraction.

The more you play, too, the more you notice the project management that structures the levels. Each has its guiding conceit, such as a central elevator or a network of dams that expose patches of loot-rich riverbed when lowered. But the cadence of shrines and shortcuts, optional areas and boss chambers is the same throughout, which slowly erodes the curiosity generated by the game’s otherwise absorbing architecture. In Dark Souls, the world is an interlocking, eldritch conundrum. In Nioh 2, it’s a series of fiendish puzzle boxes. Engrossing and oppressive, for sure, but not that startling or intriguing.

Hence, perhaps, my delight when some grubby spearman in home-made armour catches me off guard. It’s the dose of adrenaline an oversaturated game needs, like discovering a razor blade inside your seventh slice of wedding cake. Nioh 2 is a work of immense skill and scale, but Team Ninja’s next project needs to be more about changing things than adding them. After all, no amount of equipment buffs can protect you against the element of surprise.

from EnterGamingXP https://entergamingxp.com/2020/03/nioh-2-review-a-vast-and-engrossing-if-dutiful-follow-up-to-a-landmark-soulslike-%e2%80%a2-eurogamer-net/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=nioh-2-review-a-vast-and-engrossing-if-dutiful-follow-up-to-a-landmark-soulslike-%25e2%2580%25a2-eurogamer-net

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OPEN WORLD VIDEOGAMES: A LOVE STORY

My first exposure to video games, a beginning that set into motion a life of love and sometimes obsession, was not a typical one. I was no NES kid at the start, back when Nintendo ruled the world, and the hearts of children. Neither was I a Spectrum or a Commodore 64 convert. My gaming education began with one of Commodore’s more obscure machines, the 16 + 4. This was a machine aimed more toward the business market (the + 4 referring to a package of office tools that came with the machine). But it played games also, and so it was that I received a battered and mysterious cardboard box, filled with a loose collection of tapes and wires. The origins of this box and who it came from is lost to time, but that stranger played an essential part in shaping my life and my interests.

TREASURE ISLAND

Two games stand out from this formative time in my gaming life. The first was Fire Ant, a fairly simple single screen maze game. A slower-paced Pacman with insects, that has the honour of being the first game I ever completed.  But another game, despite being one that I could never finish, cemented within me a love of open-world games that persists to this day. It was a game called Treasure Island. The gameplay was simple, still involving walking through some type of maze, this time however on multiple interconnected screens. Standing in place were pirates, who would throw swords at you if you ventured too close to them. Avoid the throw, and you could pick the swords up and throw them back. Fairly simple stuff indeed, with one caveat; after the initial screen, the choice of progression was handed to you– do you go to the left screen, or the right? A simply choice to be sure, but it was my choice. For Fire Ant, there was only one correct route to finish a level, with minor variations on the way. Treasure Island gave the impression of a much deeper and mysterious choice. One way might lead to a dead end, requiring a retracing of steps to find a new path that allowed progress. Sound familiar? The same roadblocks inhibit every open world game. “Go where you like, but this door is locked until the main quest gives you the key”. Exploration is the allure, and finding a working sequence to progress is the result of this exploration (and still in 2016, the newest Hitman gives me essentially the same feeling. Here’s a huge open level with so many possibilities, now to find the perfect sequence of execution within). Going back to Treasure Island now, it seems a very simple game, and maybe not as open as I once thought. But to an 8-year old seeing the possibilities of the medium laid before them for the first time, it was a revelation.  

MOONSTONE

Eventually the love for my Commodore 16 faded somewhat. Being a relatively obscure machine eight or so years removed from its release, it was almost impossible to find new games for. The lustre of the games eventually went away, the few times new tapes were found being marred by incompatibility and broken software. A future obsession might have been nixed right there, if it were not for the arrival in my life of, in my humble opinion, the greatest games machine of all time: The Commodore Amiga 500. It was Christmas of 1993, and I was 12, receiving, as I am sure many were that Christmas, the Cartoon Classics pack. It was love at first sight, and a massive expanding of my gaming horizons. I could talk for days, combing over every incredible game that I played, but one stands out as a natural progression of my taste for open-world games: Moonstone.

Mention this game to most that hold it dear and they will undoubtedly mention the gore. This game was brutal, making Mortal Kombat look like child’s play.  This game is essentially a single-screen beat-em-up in execution, 2D sprites moving about a plane and fighting. You control one of four knights, battling creatures of all shapes and sizes. And you will be eviscerated, over and over again. Eaten, decapitated, hung, and splattered in to the ground, your deaths were plenty, and brutal.

However there was another aspect to this game, an openness, which despite its fairly simple presentation drew me in. The overworld, if it can be called that, was a single-screen map of what seemed to be an entire continent. Littered around were icons showing places where you could enter a gameplay screen to fight monsters and collect treasures and keys. You avatar was a simple sprite of your knight’s head. It was basically the world map for a modern open world game, but interactive, and completely open for your exploration, in whatever order you wished. Looking back, it’s a very simple set-up, with maybe two dozen places to actually enter. My imagination filled in all the blanks it needed to though, and I spent hours lost as a noble knight, venturing across fields and plains, into dark and dank swamps and beyond.

GRAND THEFT AUTO

Another game from my Amiga days was a top-down driving game called APB. In the game, you drove a police car and apprehended criminals. Any further mechanics of the game are honestly lost to me, as I simply spent my time with the game driving around the fairly open map and ignoring any real objectives. It felt like a glimpse at something truly open-world, but would not be fully realised to me until I played a game for the PlayStation known as Grand Theft Auto. Another sprite-based top down game like APB, but in this game, you were free to go anywhere and do anything. Sure there were missions and critical paths, but no game prior to this had given the option to so freely disregard them and still have a complete and satisfying experience regardless. In APB I could drive around freely, but it was an aimless driving with no purpose. In Moonstone I could move my sprite around the map as much as I wanted, but to have a gameplay experience I still needed to enter the arenas dotted around.

Grand Theft Auto changed this in a major way. Firstly, you could leave your car, and then hijack any other vehicle you wanted. Get spotted, and the police are on your trail. You can leave the car behind and just wander the map, watching the city go about its business around you. Nowadays this is the common standard for open world games, but in this simpler time it was revolutionary. Exploration, police chases, stealing random cars, all of this had no bearing on the overall path, and didn’t push the story forward, but this was the game, or at least a tangible part of it. It was something to actively participate in; instead of something that you felt you had to push yourself away from the real game to experience. Other games needed their limits pushed to experience some freedom. Grand Theft Auto removed the limits and relished in it.

Grand Theft Auto continued to impress as the series continued, especially with the transition to Grand Theft Auto 3, which felt like the true realisation of the concepts on display from the first game. The original top down view obviously gave the game some hard limits, but these were shattered with the transition to a 3D environment. It truly felt like a limitless experience, with no corner unreachable and with every option you could imagine realised. The proceeding games are all fantastic experiences, but there was nothing quite like that feeling of starting up Grand Theft Auto 3. Some special mention must however be given to Grand Theft Auto 5, as it featured a city that felt truly lived in, alive and vibrant. The addition of the first person camera made this element of the game shine through, and it was an absolute pleasure to simply take in the world as it went about its business around you.

MORROWIND

I was never a PC gamer in my youth, and so many games that provided unique and very open worlds were hidden from me. That all changed one day when reading an article online about an adored PC game that would soon be coming to Xbox, a game in which it was claimed you could literally go anywhere and do anything. That game was of course, Morrowind.

This game was a revelation to me. The early games I loved were open essentially in map and your choice of direction, but still had clear and defined paths to completion. The Grand Theft Auto games pushed this further and allowed a sandbox of toys to play with, but whose core was still comprised of the basic building blocks of randomly generated, faceless characters and disposable vehicles, with little permanent consequence for their destruction or death. Morrowind allowed an unseen (to me) level of granular interaction, with a persistent world that granted limitless options.

Steal a car in Grand Theft Auto, and at worst, you’ll get in a police chase, and either get away or be killed. That car has no permanence in the world; it’s simply one of many toys for your sandbox. Steal an item in Morrowind, and that singular, tangible thing is affected forever. You can keep it, and another won’t respawn in its place, or take it somewhere and drop it where it will remain indefinitely. You are no longer causing trouble with generic pedestrians that repeat and respawn around you. Each character in Morrowind is a crafted individual with their own place in the world. When one dies, no algorithm generates a new one in their place when you return, to the point that you can completely cut yourself off from the main quest if you murder certain NPCs.

This level of detail, coupled with a fantastic fantasy setting, and a deep and interesting lore, combined to create something truly special that hooked me for dozens upon dozens of hours. Video gaming can be a good source of escapism, and at that time Morrowind was the closest realisation of another world, that I could enter and inhabit. Countless hours were spent simply roaming the land, on an unrivalled quest of discovery and wonder. I felt part of the world, and able to affect and influence it in at my choosing. It was often the smallest of interactions that left the longest lasting impression, as these gave the world that sense of tangibility that was so enticing.

HITMAN

The idea of open world games has become an industry standard in modern video gaming. Many games utilise the concept now, and has reached a point of much eye-rolling as a new or existing franchise goes that route. Games nowadays have maps that are saturated with icons and objectives and quests to complete, which can be extremely tiring. It might be that sense of wonder and awe has abated somewhat because of this, as developers seem too eager to point out all the awesome stuff that lies before you. The excitement at simply exploring and discovering the world has been lessened somewhat by many clichés and tropes that now come baked into almost all open worlds.

The 2016 release of Hitman seemed to be the perfect antidote to the bloated world maps of many recent games. It could be argued that it does not even qualify for the genre, but I see it as an open-world game that consists of six perfectly crafted, small open worlds. Its openness and freeform nature ignited in me the same love that all the games on this list provided. It has the detail and small-scale interaction of Morrowind, not quite as granular but still persistent and permanently affected on each playthrough. Once you leave a map and then return, everything resets, allowing endless chaos with little consequence in the same way as Grand Theft Auto. It feels like a perfect amalgamation of everything that appeals so much to me in an open world game.

Each map is so well crafted, with the smaller scale allowing a level of detail not present in many games, and is testament to the games design that it is a joy to simply walk the maps, noticing the details and discovering the world you currently inhabit. The size of your sandbox may be reduced, but the sense of wonder at wandering and learning the levels is not.

This list is not presented as some ultimate reference for the best of the genre, and is far from exhaustive in its history. Many games I hold dear are not present here, such as Just Cause, Saints Row, and Deus Ex. It is simply my way of paying tribute to a genre that I love by choosing those games that had the most impact and shaped the kind of experience I look for in my games. In much the same way as music, playing video games can help soothe a troubled mind, and being able to escape for a while into some other world and roam its lands can help immensely when our world might seem a bit too much to bear.