Drag-On Dragoon（ドラッグオンドラグーン）

I remember first trying Drag-On Dragoon (what non-Jhipsters call Drakengard) many years ago. Alas, I must have been too immature as a gamer because I thought it sucked hard donkey balls and promptly turned it off, back to collecting dust on my gaming shelf. That is, if I was allowed to have a gaming shelf instead of putting all my "unsightly" shit in my closet, safe from the eyes of would-be disgusted visitors by all the anime "porn". (Cero D, I assure you, but try telling that to the house guests!)

My game "room" except I'm not a cute imouto, just a regular ugly nerd with beard and fedora.

Ahem, anyways, as I was saying, I was one of those typical young gamers who cared about stupid shit like graphics, responsive controls, and a camera you could control to see what the hell you were doing. Obviously, today as a distinguished gamer connoisseur, with experience going back all the way to PC88, I have a much bigger tolerance for such trivial things. After all, such annoyances are nothing compared to playing an adventure game ALL IN KATAKANA.

So when I booted up Drag-On Dragoon again, the shitty graphics, a useless camera that snaps back, and repetitive gameplay did not bother me one bit. In fact, the repetition was almost kind of therapeutic in a way. Just press square until you see the yellow flash then press triangle. Repeat this exactly 56,195 times and you're good to go! If you're wondering where I came up with that number, the game helpfully tracks the number of times you attack just so you can see exactly how many times you've repeated this action like the brain-dead, zombie gamer that you are. Thanks for making me reflect on my useless life and destroying what little self-esteem I had, game!

Bad guys have the courtesy to stand around and wait just like your favorite kungfu movie

The game also felt extra tedious in the beginning because you're so weak. It takes forever to kill anything. But if you know to ignore the random people when you first start, you'll find it much easier to get started. Your weapons level up by the number of people you kill so you can replay the earlier missions and wipe up much faster when you're stronger later on.

And speaking of the weapons, I can kinda start to understand why people like pokemon so much because even though the gameplay is SUPER repetitive, I just HAD to collect all dem damn weapons. Of course, once you collect a weapon, then you have to kill several hundred people with it to level it up. You also unlock the weapon's story in pieces as you level it up to level 4. So yeah, it's like dynasty warrior pokemon except for the part where you're basically massacring thousands of people. Otherwise, it's totally the same.

The flying missions are a nice break, because they are pretty simple except for a few damn tough bosses. You can hold square to auto-target and the rest is just moving around and using L1/R1 to dodge projectiles. As for those boss fights, yeah, you need to learn their patterns and get good. There's nothing like that feeling of beating a tough boss with barely any health left after about 6 or 9 tries.

It's like Lair (PS3) except Lair has fucking amazing graphics compared to this and is also $2 at Gamestop.

Honestly, the two screenshots above cover pretty much everything you'll see in the game but in different environments. The story is pretty short, told in a mixture of short dialogues and even shorter movies. It's definitely not a long-winded visual novel style affair. The mature themes are very subtle so you won't be seeing anything too explicit but you will definitely see some umm... interesting ideas to say the least. It won't rub anything in your face though so you'll have to pay attention, especially no pafu-pafu that's for sure.

You won't be seeing any panchira or oppai in this one... well... at least not the kind you would want

As for the music, well you know how there was supposedly a riot at the performance of Igor Stravinsky's Rite of Spring in Paris? Ok gamers, you know umm... music and culture and stuff? Yeaaaaah, anyway google it if you're a philistine. But basically, the entire soundtrack is pretty much Rite of Spring, a constant assault on your ears. Not bad by any means but definitely veeeery uncomfortable.

There's more than 30 tracks to torture yourself for your inner masochist!

As a Jhipster, I'm not too familiar with whatever censorship that may have been put on this game for the English version since I always play the OG dope shit. Googling around, I was confused about the whole "Watchers" thing until I realized that was something they made up to remove any references to God. Oh you silly American Christians, lighten up will ya??

You may want to skip to the end if you want to avoid even the slightest hint of spoilers, but this is the first game I've played where every ending gets worse than the previous one. To give you an idea of how fucked things get, I was pulling my hair out because I could not for the life of me find a spear, even though the game said the chest containing said spear appeared. Turns out the game was lying to me and I had to kill ALL the giant babies to the north to make it appear. However, I had to go to work before I could try that so basically, I spent all day thinking about killing babies. Does that kind of give you an idea of the fuckedupedness? By the way, the English version calls them something else and not babies even though that's plainly what they are.

33,100 people killed, totally like Pokemon

Score: 3 still have no clue how this relates to Nier but don't fucking tell me goddamn internet spoiler nation out of 5 (34 hours to beat)

Overall, despite the crappy gameplay, or maybe even because of it, I really enjoyed my time with Drag-On Dragoon. The story, while not too detailed, was interesting and I couldn't wait to unlock the next ending. However, collecting all the weapons is pretty much impossible without a guide and the last stage was an absolute pain in the ass to beat (don't be ashamed of the pause button).

A very unique and interesting title but one I would still give an average score of 3. Definitely worth checking out but not what I would call a great game. I have NO IDEA why they would decide to change the name to Drakengard outside Japan. Drag-on is such a fucking accurate description AND when put together, it spells "Dragon". GENIUS!

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

MOTHER2 ギーグの逆襲

Oh boy, just what the internet needs. Yet ANOTHER wannabe hipster gushing about probably one of the most overrated and talked to death "hidden gem" - MOTHER2 ギーグの逆襲 aka Earthbound to the unenlightened non-Jhipsters.

Bet you guys never heard of THIS "hidden" gem

But wait, am I going to gush about what I just called an overrated game? Read on to find out! Wait, no for real, I have a unique Jhipster perspective on this! Plz Internet tell me I matter!

Ahem, ANYHOOS, as my die-hard readers probably remember, I didn't really think too highly of Mother (to put it mildly), but playing the games in order really puts things in perspective. Because Mother was such a shitty game, the initial impression playing Mother 2 is like going from PS2 to PS4. It reminded me just how much difference a new console generation used to mean. In the good ol' days, we used to be blown away by the graphical differences in a new console by using something called our "eyes" without needing special tools to measure stupid shit like framerate and resolution and bitching like little crybabies on neogaf.

I wasn't joking when I said this was gonna be a recurring theme

Playing Mother 2 was like a breath of fresh air after the stank of Mother. Not only were the graphics "next-gen", every single shitty gameplay mechanic from Mother was fixed or at least vastly improved. The most notable being no more FUCKING SPLITTING XP BETWEEN PARTY MEMBERS!!

Another HUGE improvement is no more cheap one shot kills. Or to be more accurate, your HP slowly drains after getting hit so if you're quick enough, you can heal in the next turn before the HP reaches zero adding a bit of "real-time" aspect to battles. This makes the Franklin badge, a vital item in Mother 1 pretty much useless in Mother 2. The last dungeon has a difficulty spike but even so, the strongest heal PSI ability can recover your party members without having to trudge all the way back like fucking Mother.

The map is also no longer a huge, sprawling wasteland littered with random encounters galore. The dungeons and areas between towns are small enough that you don't really need a map at all (the town maps are still a nice addition though). Even the desert, which was one of the worst offenders in Mother, can be crossed relatively quickly (though getting heatstroke constantly was still annoying).

OH MY GOD!! LOOK AT DEM GRAPHICS!!

Really, I could go on and on about every single annoying thing in Mother that was fixed in Mother 2 (except running out of space in your inventory, that shit was still annoying as hell). I can discuss fixes such as a teleport spell that is actually usable and not completely worthless, etc., etc. But that's doesn't mean Mother 2 is a great game, it just shows how crappy Mother is. In the end, the improvements make this game much easier to play and elevates it to a standard multitasker instead of a frustrating mess only bearable with the miracle of save-states.

I barely had to use any strategy besides spamming attack and healing once in a while. Sure, I used attack spells on bosses and one boss required using fly honey. The whole fly honey thing was annoying by the way because it looked like you were doing damage but really not getting anywhere without it. The closest thing to a strategy I used was the chuwa machine (neutralizer) to break a boss's shield.

HINT: The combat system is so rich, you can spam A OR L. SO MANY OPTIONS!!

As for the story, I really liked the premise and start of the game but the middle was a long, boring journey of fetch quests and recruiting party members that get almost no character development. The amount of conversation you have with your party members is next to nil. However, the boring stretch is at least rewarded with a very interesting ending.

Without getting into any details, the ending and one very disturbing meditation part of the game makes all the petty localization changes to shield kids from religion and alcohol seem so stupid and pointless. (Cero A, seriously?!! Damn, those Japanese kids are hardcore.) Due to the almost maniac non-jhipster fanbase for this game, you can learn about the changes in far more detail than I would ever bother to look into given that I don't play these games in English.

I'm sure Starbucks would have pressured to keep "alcohol" in today's enlightened age of corporate overlords

I liked the music well enough, nothing special but the music for the first part of the final boss was great as well as the ending credits song. I played the GBA version and I thought the whole vinyl sound added character but others may prefer the crispier SFC version.

I thought the "vinyl" sound was on purpose. Turns out it's just GBA hardware limitation. I prefer it nevertheless.

Score: 3 OH MY GOD THIS IS THE BEST GAME OF ALL TIME! TAKE MY MONEY!! TAKE ALL IT IT!!! out of 5

I'm not quite sure why non-jhipsters are willing to pay hundreds of dollars to play what is essentially a standard multitasker SFC RPG. Yes, it has a unique charm but puns are not that funny to me. The story has some interesting parts and I enjoyed the game overall but honestly, I think I overpaid for my GBA copy of Mother 1+2 and I definitely didn't pay one Benjamin must less several. If it wasn't for the awful Nintendo DRM, I would have been happy to just settle for the eShop digital version.

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

MOTHER

Mother is probably the best game I've ever played. I was such a fool to think games like Final Fantasy were grindy because this game makes other game's grindyness feel like a walk in the park. Playing this amazing game makes all other games seem so much better. It really does wonders to get you into the mindset of how amazing those other games are... by comparison.


To be fair, going into this game, I had fairly high expectations. I was hoping to walk around, meet some charming characters, experience a nice but simple story, and gain a sense of satisfaction from grinding some levels and beating a boss.

Instead, what I discovered was an amazing, huge open world, maybe something like Grand Theft Auto (kids, I'm talking GTA 1 and 2). The only tiny difference would be to remove all the buildings and anything remotely interesting and turn it into a sprawling expanse of nothing but mountains, trees, and rivers. Then sprinkle in some remote locations that are impossible to find and complement it with the most useless map EVAR. My dog took a piss on the dirt once and it was a better map than this crap.

You can't find your way around? What are you, stupid??
The green arrow CLEARLY shows where you are.

Now finish off the masterpiece with an encounter rate that is apparently suffering from bipolar and refusing to take the meds. You trying to go somewhere? BAM, encounter. Ok, try to take a half step. BAM, encounter. You trying to grind? Ok, cool, you can wander around the sprawling wasteland for miles with absolutely no encounters.

This poor kid has no idea that he lives in the middle of nowhere

Now the version I played was the improved GBA version based on the English version that was only now just released for the Wii U as Earthbound Beginnings. It has some nice extras not in the original Famicon version such as the various censorship for the delicate US audience. Putting sarcasm aside, the L button was a life saver for one-handed playing, which is always a nice bonus for multiasking. And if there was any game that required multitasking, boy, is this it!

I didn't even know about the dash button until well into the second half of the game. (I really need to get into the habit of reading the manual.) But still, I'd rather stick to the left hand and forego the dash to multitask another game.

Kids nowadays be like, "What's a manual?"

To be honest, this game wasn't really all that bad once you give up on trying to play it blind, getting hopelessly lost in the massive map, and random encountering up the wazoo. Load up a faq, find a REAL map, and just follow the instructions.

Actually, GTA is probably too small to be a good comparison. You're gonna have to zoom in to see the red dot.

But the grindiness near the end is just ridiculous. Just when you get totally fed up with constantly running out of space in your tiny inventory, you finally get double, then triple the inventory space as you add members to your party. Unfortunately, it also means your experience now gets halved and then cut into 1/3. Not to mention, the enemies actually start to get REALLY hard and to add insult to injury, hardly give out more experience than the weaker enemies.

Finally, when you get the Katana for Teddy, who actually has some cojones instead of the other party members that seem to love getting killed, you're ready to KICK SOME ASS!!!!!!


10 minutes later...


Teddy leaves your party for the rest of the game. WTF.

The last area seemed pretty much a grind nightmare without Teddy but fortunately, you get some help temporarily. I was able to stock up on heal items and just grinded that short section of the game for hours. Thank god for emulation save states. However, even at level 39, once your help leaves, I could barely handle 4 starmen. As a tip, make sure to get both Franklin badges cause then your cheap death ratio goes down from 100% to just 33%. (Did I already say thank god for save states?)

Fortunately, right around the point when you're totally fed up with this game, it ends. It's even kind enough to dump you right at the end without having to go through the last area with no help.

Look, maybe I'm not hardcore or retro enough to be able to appreciate this frustrating mess. Fine, I'll go load up Minecraft, Dota 2, or whatever the kids are playing nowadays. But man, I seriously doubt I would have had the grit to finish this game without the blessed miracles of save states. On the positive side, the GBA emulator on the PSP is fucking amazing.

Score: 1 rose-tinted nostalgia glasses out of 5 (plus a half-bottle of whiskey needed).

Oh yeah, and I guess there was some kind of story. I wouldn't expect too much in that department though. At this point, I'm really hoping Mother 2 lives up to the hype because buying Mother 1&2 CIB was NOT cheap.

Optional +.5 bonus for making Mother 2's graphics look practically next gen in comparison after you get used to Mother.

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