There was a story going around way back in the day about people waking up in a bathtub full of ice with a scar. I had no idea that organ theft was a thing before and it kind of freaked me out (as intended). Much later, I watched a movie called SPL 2 about organ theft. Well, I didn't actually watch it but I sure as hell watched the fight scenes a ton. (Max Zhang is so bad ass!)
Pretty much the only parts I watched
So why the hell am I talking about this in a post about a Jinguji game? I'd like to think I've played my fair share of detective ADV games. They may be about serial killers, criminal masterminds, or grand conspiracies. A bit of a spoiler warning here but this is probably the first "hard boiled" detective story I played about illegal immigration, unsafe working conditions, and harvesting umm "reusable assets". Sorry about the spoiler but honestly, how many of my 3 readers were actually planning on playing Mikan no Rupo? Don't worry, you're not missing out on much.
The game starts out with a pretty good opening sequence of a murder, pretty typical of this genre. This series came back after a long 6 year hiatus with quite a big leap in technology on the PS1 compared to its Famicom days. While most of the game is not voiced, there are few anime cutscenes with voiced dialogue. There are also a couple odd but brief 3D sections where you walk around talking to people. Finally, there's a pretty crude car chase minigame. Besides the brief dabble into I guess "cutting edge" PS1 technology, it's an ADV menu game just like the previous entries.
The copious smoking part at least is accurate
Odd coincidence but this game asks you to pick a character to play as, at different points during the game just like the last game I played, Jui. I'm not sure if I missed anything significant based on who I picked but just like Jui, I have no desire to play it again to see the differences.
I missed this part because I picked Yoko instead
Score: 2 lung cancers out of 5. Don't worry kids, smoking was totally healthy back in the 90s! (Disclaimer: This is absolutely not true.)
I dunno, I thought the game was alright even though it did put me to sleep quite a number of times. I mean literally fall asleep as I deliriously tried not to drop my PSP before the sweet embrace of sleep rendered me unconscious. To put it mildly, it was not as exciting as SPL 2 fight scenes. I already dumped my 1500 yen budget re-release copy of the game.
I honestly don't remember this part, probably was unconscious
Still, the story had some moments of good human drama, and the main plot as I said certainly covered some interesting topics. It was also much better than the Famicom games I've played so far so hoping to see the series get even better over time. Especially since there still so damn many games left to play.
Scale
0 - Awful
1 - Bad and not worth your time
2 - Has some flaws but still enjoyable
3 - An average enjoyable experience
4 - A great game
5 - Masterpiece of a caliber only found very rarely
As I grow older by the day, I can't help but look at the pile of games that my sister keeps complaining about and try to gain some perspective. Like geesh, sis, you're barely even using your basement. And no, why should I go out and get my own place and a "real" job when my patreon and twitch revenue is earning plenty enough for all my essential needs (buying games, dew, and doritos). I don't know why you keep bothering me about rent and utilities. I don't even rent games and all my utilities are freeware!
Shut up, sis! I'm just about to get the Janus coin. Geez!!
What I actually meant by perspective is whether I would even live long enough to finish my games. I kind of thought about making a bucket list of sorts for all the best games I should probably play instead of oh, I don't know, fucking NIGHTRUTH? (Though to be fair, that one was so bad, it was hilarious.) I decided one of the series I definitely want to finish before I kick the bucket is Persona. Though I ended up beating P3 and P4 before I started playing things in order, I'm happy to announce that I just finished the first Persona game. For some reason, they removed the Megami Ibunroku part from the title in the PSP version.
What? A Japanese game title with less than 10 words? Blasphemy!
I know I've ranted about this before but notice that the Japanese cover makes no mention of SMT. Even the original PS1 title "Megami Ibunroku" has no "Shin" anywhere. So yeah, this is the only Persona title labeled as a spin-off to the Megaten series and boy, does it sure play like one.
YAMR (Yet another Megaten RPG)
First of all, while you do talk to people and walk around rooms in a top-down isometric view, the dungeon exploration is all 1st person, just like the various Megaten games that came before it. You can also equip both swords and guns. However, the big difference is the battle system where you have to place your members on a grid via a formation.
I'm a millennial so girls fight in the front (or at least those who identify as a "girl")
I don't think anybody likes this battle system? If an enemy isn't in your attack range, you just sit around and wait for your better placed allies to finish them off. Sure, you can set up various formations in advance but 1) it's too much hassle, and 2) you lose a turn to change formation so fuck that noise. Also, you can only put like 3 people in the front because for some reason, each person has to be a couple squares away from everybody else. You really only need to set up 2 formations, the second is so that when you get fucking back attacked, you have a second one to switch to. It's REALLY annoying.
Overall, the gameplay was just a mess with pretty much everything you could imagine thrown in. First of all, there's a stupid amount of elements that were (wisely) cut from later games such as "gravity", "nuclear heat", "revelation", "shock", and others I don't really even understand such as 「降魔」(descend demons?) and 「破魔」(break demon?). Oh, that's where hama comes from! Thank god at least that analyze happens automatically after defeating the enemy.
Unfortunately, my 奇跡 ("miracle") element(??) skills were lacking against these guys
As for recruiting demons, literally the only thing you care about is increasing their interest level to get their spell card. Each character has a bunch of dialogue options so you have to choose the right character AND the right dialogue choice. Fuck that, google time. Also, everybody has 2 levels, your actual level and another one for the level of persona you can use. Both levels are almost always around the same so the second one is completely pointless (hence removed in later games). You also need to increase a Persona's rank by using their skills repeatedly to unlock new skills. Thank god their rank at least carries over even if you reassign to another party member.
The stats distribution is super weird too since the Persona's stats override yours. If you spread your points evenly across, they'll be wasted if your Persona's stat is higher. I dumped every point into TEC and AGI as they increase more of your base attributes. Anyways, you get the idea. It's a big hot mess.
Oddly SP is fixed for each Persona so there is no reason to ever use a weaker skill
In addition, at least in the PSP version, the economy is totally broken. I read that they lowered the difficulty in this version and added a bunch more save points but I played on EXPERT mode so I assume that the difficulty is on par? But boy, the last boss was pretty easy when you can buy 99 restore full HP items. It was so ridiculous that I ended up with almost 3 million yen with nothing to spend it on.
I'm no game designer but revive + full HP for 6000 yen seems a TAD unbalanced...
Still, even though the gameplay was a mess, I had fun with the game. At the very least, it was a relief to finish off the last boss on my first try after the grueling hell that was P3 FES on hard. Once you get used to the game, off you go, just good ol' regular dungeon exploring, leveling up, and googling demon negotiation and whatnot. I sure wished I read the manual however because the PSP version has a skip option for battles that I only discovered by accident during the final dungeon. Probably would've saved a lot of hours that way.
As usual, I liked the Persona aesthetics
As for the story, I guess I liked it well enough. There's no voice acting except for just one guy, which was kind of odd. As fit for the first game in the series, the theme centers on the various personas and masks we put on as members of society.
Hey, is that a Uzaki-chan poster? Why is the white underwear transparent??
Another interesting aspect of this game is the whole Snow Queen Quest thing. Basically, it's a completely different branch of the game that you can end up in during the first couple hours of the game. I did not play this scenario yet, something to do I guess on a rainy day... if I'm still alive by then.
One more game done! How many years I got left?
Score: 3 What? No Christmas date? No summer beach swimsuit break? This is NOT a Persona game! out of 5 (48 hours to beat)
This is not exactly a title I would wholeheartedly recommend but meh, it was still pretty fun overall. Obviously, I would have loved to use the skip option from the start but whatever. It was a serviceable RPG and the story is... not bad. At the very least, it's interesting to see how far the series has come from its humble roots. I liked the music as usual but man, I have to say the battle theme was a bit too much Persona to hear ALL THE TIME. However, the new PSP ending credits song was #BAE.
I liked it about the first 200 times but... might want to tone it down
Scale
0 - Awful
1 - Bad and not worth your time
2 - Has some flaws but still enjoyable
3 - An average enjoyable experience
4 - A great game
5 - Masterpiece of a caliber only found very rarely
It's never good to go into a game over hyped. When I bought NIGHTRUTH, it was after a quick Google search revealing it as a shit game of legendary proportions (aka 伝説のクソゲー, JP search of course). I thought it was worth checking out for a few bucks with my expectations set way, way low. I mean look at the title. Is it NIGHT RUTH or NIGH TRUTH? The latter barely might make a tiny bit of sense as in it's "nigh (almost) true". But based on the way the words come together in the OP, I'm guessing it's the former. (WTF is a ruth?) Either way, unfortunately, perhaps my expectations for this game were not set low enough.
PS opening is almost identical to Saturn sans the naughty frames
As soon as the crazy ass intro video ends, I was assaulted by the shitty audio and shitty graphics. But then, I noticed the weird green line at the top of the screen.
Before I get into the shitty graphics, WTF is up with dat green line???
Was it some kind of bug? Would it go away if I restarted? Nope, it's just a fucking green bar that stays there the entire game. What the fuck is it for? Is it some weird aesthetic decoration? Otherwise, how could the devs not see nor care to fix it?
That was just the tip of the iceberg as the Titanic lunged forward at full speed. Not surprisingly, this game is a bit lacking in the features department. BGM and dialogue audio balance options? Dialogue backlog? Option to skip read lines? AHAHAHAHA. No, pansy, you don't even get a freaking option to SAVE! It auto-saves at certain points with absolutely no indication so if you want to stop playing, just hope you're near an auto-save point and prepare to replay from there. Fuck that, time to burn this disc and load it in an emulator.
No save feature? Man, so spoiled. GIT GUD.
Speaking of (the lack of) options. The BGM is terrible and the dialogue is barely audible through the poorly balanced BGM. What is audible sounds like it was recorded on a cheapo mic, then streamed via RealAudio (yeah, I'm old), and then rerecorded 10 feet away. From the packaging and the second CD of voice actor interviews, it's obvious that the VA was a major selling point of this game. If you're paying top dollar to hire the likes of Ogata Megumi (Shinji from Evangelion, etc.), why would you throw all that in the toilet with god awful audio recording quality?
Not the best screenshot of Ogata. Sorry, Megumi-chan!
I know it was before the days of cheap, high quality audio equipment so maybe they ran out of money to use a real, professional recording studio? Right away, you can tell when a line of dialogue was recorded at a different time when the same person sounds totally different from one line to the next. If you ever tried to create a single video with audio of your voice recorded on different days, you know what I'm talking about. At the very least, it made me appreciate just how difficult voice recording and editing must be in a good game. So... good job NIGHTRUTH??
Well, maybe, just MAYBE the story is good? It starts with you waking up to an all too realistically annoying alarm clock. As you get ready for school, you talk to your ring and out of the blue, it starts talking back. WTF?!
Man, this game would be so cool if the main character was clinically insane
The story is full of these WTF moments and to be perfectly honest, I laughed more than a few times because it was just sooooo STUPID. It really does read like something a middle school kid would write up during his recess complete with numerous spelling errors and terrible grammatical phrasing.
Little known fact: he wrote the plot for this game right after the Liger
To give you some more hints of the wonderful plot, I was able to get 4 different endings. The first route I ended up was the one where you find the dog when you arrive at school. The remaining routes depends on whether your ogle your English teacher's legs/butt or her hair. This is truly Shakespearean stuff at work here...
Your fate hangs in the balance, fool!!!
For some reason, on the dog scenario, the voiced dialogue switched off at a random spot in the game. Perhaps this is the additional scenario added to the PS version which would explain the lack of voice recording. If it is, well, it's not fucking worth it as the dog story was pointless and anti-climatic, much like the rest of the endings. I don't want to give away any of the wonderfully stupid story but honestly, it was so bad, I almost want to recommend everybody (Jhipsters only ofc) to play this game. It even has some great art even though the main visuals look like they were drawn in MS Paint.
Um... wha? WTF? Did they hire a real artist late in the game???
Score: 1.5 Graphics, story, music, features, and audio were absolute shit but you should totally play it! out of 5.
Overall, yes, I agree that this game does deserve the title of legendary shit game. It was so bad that it was almost... well it's still pretty goddamn bad. But hey, I got a few good laughs and I did make it through 4 endings (albeit with save states). I don't know if there are any more routes because nobody cared enough to write up a full guide online, which is surprising because even Prismaticallization has a full website dedicated to it. Frankly, I have to wonder if I'm not just wasting away my precious limited time on this mortal coil by playing this shit but if I don't do it, what Jhipster will?
To give the game credit, it does have some good art and even some rare snippets of good music phrases hidden in all the diarrhea. They did manage to poop out 3 more games of the planned 5-part NIGHTRUTH series (oh god) but who knows if I'll ever decide to buy a copy of the sequels. Honestly, the first one was more than enough for a looooooong time and I've already purged it from my shrinking closet of shame™.
Come to think of it, I almost want to get the next entry Maria, just for the making of disc to see what shitty tools they used.
Additional screenshots for the legendary shit archives.
In 96', you could play Biohazard but fuck that shit. NIGHTRUTH!
My favorite character. She looks cute. Good enough for me!
LOL Sonnet, way to go with product placement
If only I could tell you how Shiori shows up. It's hilarious! (Sorry non-Jhipsters)
Another WTF moment, busts out shades to cry (ie glasses are hard to draw)
One of the infamous(?) lines from this Shakespearean masterpiece
I'm not a Japanese expert but even I could spot this obvious typo.
Scale
0 - Awful
1 - Bad and not worth your time
2 - Has some flaws but still enjoyable
3 - An average enjoyable experience
4 - A great game
5 - Masterpiece of a caliber only found very rarely
My first reaction when I started up Dragon Quest III was OH MY GOD, it's SOOOO much better than DQ2!!!! Once again, it paid off to start the series chronologically because the graphical leap over DQ2 was huge. I mean, yeah, I'm comparing two Super Famicon remakes but it's obvious they put way more effort into the remake of the 3rd compared to the 1&2 "bargain" bundle.
Finally feels like I'm playing a SUUPA Famicon game.
Not just the graphics, the entire game feels like a breath of fresh air and restored my faith in the series after the awful previous entry. You walk way faster and the battles are fast and smooth. The killer feature is auto dismiss on the battle dialogues. Instead of having to press a button after EVERY SINGLE action, it'll just fly by based on your dialogue speed setting. Compared to DQ2 where a single turn could require up to 20 button presses, you'll only have 8 if you have four party members (attack+select enemy x4). In addition, the battle music is not absolute crap so I'm glad to be able to play this game with the sound ON this time.
Finally, battle music that's not vomit-inducing
The game starts out with an intro of your dad with some pretty awesome cut scenes and then some deity gives you a personality test and proceeds to give you some profound life tips based on your personality. I was told some deep advice that amazingly completely matched my current situation and basically saved me from a self-destructive path of sex, drugs, and rock'n'roll. The sex especially was tough cause you know chicks be all up in my biznass 24/7 G.
I'm now convinced that this game has deeply influenced Japanese society for us old fogeys... somebody should research that. Joking aside, it was definitely fresh and exciting to start off playing a short scenario that tests your personality. I got the one about the king but failed at getting the sexy personality. Though near the end, somehow my strongest equipment ended up being bikinis and garter belts so I ended up with a whole party of sexies anyhow. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
To be featured on next BBC documentary: "Shaping the weeb generation"
Speaking of sex, another nice customization is the option to pick the gender of you and your party members. Even though you look pretty much identical in my opinion, the other character classes have more variety. A nice touch is every time somebody mentions you as Ortega's son, they have to correct themselves. I'm sure it's still an sexist and misogynist game per SJW's standards but at least now I can finally create my standard waifu party.
Disgusted by sexist pink female armor, I went with a party of all bunnies and died instantly.
However, it was only later that I found out that there is NO pafu pafu with my all waifu party. Personally, as a gender-fluid sometimes lesbian female, this is EXTREMELY OFFENSIVE toward the LGBTKFCABCDEF community and we should all boycott Nintendo NOW.
ANYWAYS, getting into the gameplay, I can quickly summarize all the changes as "everything broken in DQ2 was fixed". They added the bag that allows you to carry EVERYTHING at all times and a line of text that explains what each spell does. FINALLY! No more having to google what Behoimi and Hyadaruko fucking does. However, being a classic DQ title, the random encounters are still very much a multitask repeatedly press 'A' affair or in my case 'L' for one-handed multitasking, though thankfully not as often as DQ2. I only wish holding down 'A' went faster than mashing it. Unfortunately, it's way faster to just mash. However, to its credit, this is the first DQ game where I had to use buffs and debuffs for boss battles namely Rukani, Sukuruto, Piorimu, and Baikiruto. Yeah, I have no fucking clue what those do either, which is why the in-game descriptions are so nice. It was kinda lame that Orochi has some sort of invisible health regeneration every turn but at least it made me use more than just attack and heal.
Holy shit! Explanations? Who'da thunk it?!
So yeah, on paper, this is the best DQ and probably one of the best RPGs on the FC (based on what I've seen). The SFC version definitely has some great graphics including some awesome spell effects. Yet somehow, I just enjoyed the short and simpler days of the first DQ more. There's a TON of content here and some nice surprises near the end but man, it just got kinda boring after a while. Yeah, you could conceivably play around with more jobs but you'd have to start at level 1 again. Or you could mess about with the board games and arena or hunt all those pesky metals down (meh). For me, besides the bosses, the gameplay and world setting was just too I dunno "Dragon Quest" to keep me interested. The personality stuff was cool but as far as I could tell, it has NO effect on the story or gameplay.
Score: 3 overrated JRPG reddit rant post time! out of 5 (also -10 points for no female on female pafu pafu)
Most of the game is just the standard DQ walking around + random encounter + attack + heal affair. So while technically there is nothing wrong with the game, I thought it was just OK. Also, the short, simple dialogues kind of made the story not as impressionable as it could've been. I mean, I guess it's cool for the kids since they can't read so good. I guess I should've played this like 10 years ago... ok ok 20 years ago.. ok I'm OLD, stop pushing it! There is an optional dungeon you can play after the game but I didn't bother. The sparse dialogue just didn't make the effort worth it for me.
I dunno, maybe I'm just not a big DQ kinda guy. I will however devour a Butterscotch dipped cone ANY day but wrong DQ.
Scale
0 - Awful
1 - Bad and not worth your time
2 - Has some flaws but still enjoyable
3 - An average enjoyable experience
4 - A great game
5 - Masterpiece of a caliber only found very rarely
I'm not exactly a expert gaming historian (if you haven't noticed by now) but according to Wikipedia, PaRappa the Rapper is supposedly the first modern rhythm game. I guess that's why I can't fault it too much for being such a SHITTY GAME.
First of all, the entire game has a total of 6 songs and I was able to beat it in under an hour if not closer to 30 minutes. Not only is the game incredibly short but the biggest problem is that the small amount of content ISN'T EVEN FUN!
I've played my share of rhythm games and this is the first one I've played where I don't even know why I'm sucking. The correct timing is still a mystery to me but I can say for sure that it's not based on the buttons on the screen. I mean, it's cool that the button presses actually make PaRappa rap but don't bother trying to do it according to the timing bar. The interface is awkward as well when the buttons are on two lines. The 6th and last song even has spots where you basically have to memorize the next button since it just pops up out of nowhere.
It's almost criminal how many better rhythm games there are (*cough DJMax cough*) that don't have nearly as much name recognition as this pile of poo. And yet here we are with an upcoming PS4 HD remake of so far the worst rhythm game I have ever played. If you don't believe me, try the demo available on PSN right now.
The HD remake nobody needs but hipsters will still buy I'm sure
Also, as a Jhipster, there is absolutely no reason to import this one as everything is in English. Unless for some weird reason, you wanna see the translated Japanese lyrics.
I'm not a weeb! I just thought there would be a Japanese song version!!
Score: 1 I hope I get my money back selling on ebay out of 5
While I don't condone piracy, I really should've checked out an ISO or something before wasting my money on buying this sucker. Thanks to it's totally unfounded name recognition, at least I hope I can sell it for as much as I paid for it.
Just trying to point out the title for my ebay listing
Scale
0 - Awful
1 - Bad and not worth your time
2 - Has some flaws but still enjoyable
3 - An average enjoyable experience
4 - A great game
5 - Masterpiece of a caliber only found very rarely
Twilight Syndrome as fellow Jhipsters know is a series that had a decent media franchise with 5 games, a drama cd, TWO live action movies and god knows what else. While self-proclaimed hardcore gamers may rave about "niche" games such as Lollipop Chainsaw or even Killer7, every true Jhipster knows that the first Twilight Syndrome is Suda51's best work during his golden years at Human (just kidding LOL, don't hurt me).
Human Corporation, maker of various sports (eg pro-wrestling) and horror games such as Clock Tower (because those two genres go SO WELL together) is sadly no longer with us but its spirit lives on as Twilight Syndrome's (so far) last game was released on DS by Spike in 2008. Still, it's been 7 years so I guess we can consider this series dead for the moment but it had a good run; albeit completely unknown in the West.
Of course, all you mainstreamers probably know about it from Super Danganronpa 2's 2nd chapter. (Yes, in Jhipster's super niche hipsterness world, even Danganronpa is considered mainstream). However, despite what you mainstreamers may think based on what Danganronpa and the movies might suggest, the first Twilight Syndrome game is not a murder or escape game but is rather about ghosts, spirits, and urban myths.
I said the "first" game but really it's the first TWO games cause it was split into two separate releases a mere 4 months apart: 探索編 (explore part) and 究明編 (reveal part). This is really kinda lame as the first game is really short, has like total of 5 minutes of voice acting and ends on a cliff hanger. Scored individually, I would give the first part a rating of 2/5. It also sucks because buying both games used will add up to a decent chunk of change. Nothing super expensive but $20 x 2 adds up. I feel bad for the poor sod who bought the first part on release for probably like 7000 yen or something. They were obviously aware of this as they later re-released both parts in a 2-cd budget release as "Twilight Syndrome Special" but only after a full 2 years later. This is the copy I own but it will still set you back a few Andrew Jacksons.
However, putting both games together (putting the obvious lame sales tactics aside), you end up with a nice side-scrolling urban myth adventure game (I know, I know, this genre is TOTALLY oversaturated). The graphics have not aged well (especially that yucky PS1-style CG) so it's not really scary but it has that 90's Japanese charm with pocket bells (pagers) and public phones. (For you kids, these are phones in the street that you put MONEY in to use.)
Sorry, it's 2015, a girl in dark lighting isn't gonna scare me no more.
...Ok, maybe scared JUST a little bit.
The second game is when you really feel like they put some effort into it. It has tons of high quality voice acting of the 90s variety that'll instantly bring back nostalgia for you Jhipster nerds. And while the OST has only a few songs, there are some really nice atmospheric moments such as the one below. (SPOILERS... unless you're not fluent in Japanese.)
It also has my favorite chapter out of both games dealing with phones. Phones are always a great medium for some horror. (WHY OH WHY IS CALLING ON WII SO EXPENSIVE??) And the last hidden chapter which you have to unlock is totally psychedelic and plays like a bad nightmare. (I realize now that it was just a lead in to the TOTALLY LSD-induced sequel: Moonlight Syndrome.)
Score: 3.5 man I can't WAIT to replace my pocket bell with a PHS score out of 5
In the end, the draw of Twilight Syndrome is not just about ghosts and getting scared (cause you won't). For me, it's more about the charm of 90s Japan and getting to know the 3 main characters. They each have their own unique personality, charm, and quirks not to mention real-life issues that are very much part of that era in Japan despite all the supernatural stuff that's going on.
The main problem with this game is ONCE AGAIN the lack of ability to fast forward ANYTHING. It really sucks to get the bad, medium, and good endings for each chapter when you have to play the WHOLE chapter again. Personally, I played it blind once and then went with a guide the second time. Or I guess you filthy pirates can emulate and use save states (says the guy who played it on PSP).
It didn't blow my socks off but it was definitely a nice, nostalgia inducing experience (in my fantasy that I grew up in 90s Japan).
Scale
0 - Awful
1 - Bad and not worth your time
2 - Has some flaws but still enjoyable
3 - An average enjoyable experience
4 - A great game
5 - Masterpiece of a caliber only found very rarely
