Shin Megami Tensei II（真・女神転生II）

I can't believe I wrote about the first Shin Megami Tensei game in 2018. In fact, I can't believe I started this blog in 2015! Jesus, I'm old! Well, it's now 2022 and I finally finished the sequel Shin Megami Tensei II. I've said this before but at this point, I just have to live with the fact that I'll die of old age before I finish every game in my closet. I no longer try to force myself to finish awful games (fuck you Avalon Code) so the fact that I was able to complete this one already means it was enjoyable enough to reach the end.

I'll enjoy SMTV in like 10 years, in the meantime...

Probably my favorite part of the first game was the beginning, talking to your mom and going to the mall. The events in normal Tokyo leading to the apocalypse was fun and pretty much all I remember from the first game.

Remember when everything didn't suck? Oh man, the good ol' days

In this sequel, it's not clear what happened to the first game's characters but apparently they did end up building Tokyo Millenium, which was maybe the Law ending? In any case, you start out as a gladiator with memory loss, which doesn't seem to be the most original start to a story. But no worries, without any spoilers, the story did not disappoint. 

Is it amnesia or... something else? No spoilers on this blog!

Even though 95% of the game consists of filling maps, grinding, and going here and there, you'll read some brief dialogue that drop some bombshell revelations. It is a good reminder that you don't need hours and hours of dialogue to tell a good story though I won't complain if it's voiced by Kana or Ayachi.

Fully voiced remake when? Ahh, it'll probably suck cause it won't be the same (huh?)

As for the gameplay, it's a pretty mixed bag, nothing surprising if you've played the previous games. First of all, the Mag consumption really discourages walking around with demons in your party. I almost always played with just two characters. The only time I felt the need to recruit and fuse demons was when you had to go rescue Hiroko all by your lonesome and to beat Abbadon. You really, really need to fuse a demon with Tarukaja because trust me, I tried to beat him whittling away at his HP on auto mode and gave up after a couple HOURS.

Near the end, you run into enemies where neither swords nor guns work but I just ran away from them. Maybe because I pumped all my points into speed, I had no trouble running away from any enemies that were annoying to kill.

Apparently this is Cero A... fine with me?

All in all, it was pretty much auto battle all the way. The enemies in this game are so generous in dropping full health items, I hardly used any magic. Now, you could conceivably go to town, recruiting and fusing, and devising all kinds of clever strategies but I just slashed and shot everything and ran away if that didn't work. Near the end, Hiroko learns a spell that allows you to summon your demon as undead and that seemed almost a cheat because they're pretty much invincible. I just spammed Tarukaja and whittled away at the final boss to reach the neutral route ending where you basically kill everybody... again. 

A quick couple things to note if you are interested in playing this game. There are two points in the game where you have to raise both your INT and MAGIC to 10, really annoying for a character that doesn't use magic. Though I suppose INT is supposed to help you recruit demons. Also, the direction your avatar spins no longer shows your alignment. You can check with law/chaos exclusive gear or by trying to heal at either.

It's a classic, you gotta use your imagination, damn kids these days...

Fortunately, I was able to switch my alignment back to neutral even after the game asks you a bunch of questions near the end that swings it pretty hard one way or the other. The final point to decide is when Zain asks you to join him, about 10 hours from the end of the game so you may want to keep a couple saves at that point. For me, I doubt I'll ever come back to replay the other routes.

Score:  "Oh, you like Nocturne? Kids these days..." 3 dismissive snorts out of 5 (45 hours to beat)

All in all, this game is tied for my favorite Megaten game so far with Kyuuyaku Megami Tensei 2. I liked that your character has an actual backstory to reveal instead of just some generic kid from the first game. I also really like Beth's character and would totally play a remake with her voiced by some cute voice actress.

Hot springs event / bikini DLC, c'mon Atlus it's free money!!!

The difficulty balance was weird and quirky but at least it wasn't super frustrating and frankly fairly easy to play through even on so called EXPERT mode. Yeah Abbadon was a pain but at least his body wasn't too annoying to navigate again if you didn't have the proper skills to beat him. All in all, not a bad way to spend my ever dwindling life span...  I guess?

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

Dragon Quest IV（ドラゴンクエストIV 導かれし者たち）

Ahh Dragon Quest IV, the fourth entry in one of the most mainstream RPG series you can think of. Does the internet really need yet another review of this game? I only played the DS version, which I would imagine is very different from the original 1990 Famicom release. But yeah, it's good and if you like traditional RPGs, you should play it. What more is there to say that hasn't already been said? Let's find out, shall we? Heh, heh, heh.

I created an all female party in Dragon Quest III thereby missing some pafu pafu dialog with an NPC. On the flip side, I was able to equip them all with extremely strong bikinis and garter belts. There's no visible difference in the game but I'm sure the fictional game characters felt objectified nonetheless. This time, as a more "mature" gamer, I went with the male protagonist. This had absolutely nothing to do with any concern that a female protagonist would not be pafu pafu eligible. In the end, as far as I could tell, your gender made zero difference to the story.

Not sure if original author but source is here

There is no "official" explanation of what pafu pafu actually IS so thanks to random internet artist for very clearly illustrating an event that takes place in the first chapter where an NPC regains his memory with help from Fureya's umm assets. Speaking of the chapter structure, I really enjoyed playing through each of the character's backstory in each chapter and then recruiting them into your party in what was originally the last chapter (more on that later). I'm frankly shocked that Squeenix didn't make the game into separate episodic purchase$$$ for their mobile ports (barf).

DS version looks mostly the same so fuck this app shit

Overall, I liked the diverse cast such as the twins and Arina, the strong tomboy female character. She doesn't use any magic or any of that weak nonsense, just physical attacks with knives, whip, claws, etc. Oh wait, I forgot that strong female characters didn't exist before Aloy in Horizon Zero Dawn. 

Hey, Aloy doesn't wear a weird hat!

I also liked the fact that you can talk to your party members every time you talk to an NPC. I'm not sure if this was part of the original Famicom release but I found that for the most part, your party members say something unique for every NPC conversation, which adds a ton of additional dialogue to the game. It gave a bit more personality and flavor to the adventure since they weren't silent for the majority of the game. You do miss the comments of people you don't really use so who knows what the old guy or Toruneko had to say about shit. While I prefer something like the skits in the Tales series, it's better than nothing for sure.

As usual, since I can't take screenshots from my game file on the actual hardware, here's a quick screenshot I took of the game status screen.

Definitely better than the male version with the weird fish hat

The final boss animations really stood out for me and were pretty cool. While writing this, I actually found out there was an additional chapter not in the original version even though the game clearly said "Fin". The post credit chapter was pretty grindy and features what looks like the same final boss but with different color palette and a tiny change to the original ending. Meh.

Score: 3 missed opportunity to translate final boss name as "DEATH PISS ARROW" out of 5 (38 hours to beat)

Overall, this was a solid fun and traditional RPG, which of course is what the DQ series is known for. I would definitely recommend setting battle speed to the fastest setting. In additional, having the dual screen real estate made it really easy to look around the map by rotating your view where that was allowed. The dungeon maps are pretty small and easy to navigate as well. As long as you have the hang of basic buffs and debuffs (Sukuruto and Rukana), it's a pretty simple and frictionless playthrough.

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

Avalon Code（アヴァロンコード）

Cute girl smiling sadly while boy disappear into dust, so deep

Yes, this blog has kind of been in a slump these days as my posts seemed to get kind of stale. However, I should remember one of the original reasons why I even started the blog, which was to catalog what I've played.

I'll still continue to make little swipes at the absurdity of the so called "gaming community", for example how people think games are the way to go to disseminate social agendas instead of, oh I dunno, politics? Oh golly gee, why are Republicans trying to pass a record number of anti-trans bills when we "fixed" Deadly Premonition 2?? It's almost like boomer politicians don't play games?? Naw, that can't be it!

To be clear, I really don't care how Nintendo labels gender in Animal Crossing either way. Putting aside the fact that Animal Crossing is a chore game I don't care about, it's all the "articles" and griping on social media by privileged westerners or Chinese that would be so comical if it wasn't so ridiculous.

Where's the petition to remove these toxic words from the English vocabulary?

All of which has nothing to do with Avalon Code, ha. So yeah, I hated this game and every minute of it was so painful. And no, it has nothing to do with the fact that I chose the girl and failed to woo that bad boy from the desert. IGNorant has a 8.3 GREAT score because of course they loved it.

The "deep and engrossing story" is about you putting shit in a book before the end of the world. And the "innovative game play mechanics" is hunting through page after page for the right size pieces to make shit. It's not so bad at first if you haven't played through the end, but I'm sure the professional IGN reviewer MUST have played to the bitter end. Later on, you really do want to tear your hair out trying to find 3 pieces of fire, 4 pieces of spiders, or whatever through pages and pages of characters, monsters, weapon, etc. again and again and fucking again.

Shuffling shit around might seem dandy now but wait till you're flipping through all the characters, enemies, weapons, and items in the game

I even resorted to looking up a guide because surely, this couldn't be how you're supposed to actually play the game but nope, there was no secret menu of categories or sorting or anything at all really. I threw all the deaths into a piece of bread to keep it handy to weaken bosses. Hmm, maybe I should've organized the shit on random characters so I don't have to dig through page after page. No, fuck that shit! Why do I have to WORK to make up for what the game purposely made a chore? Even Atelier Marie, made over a decade earlier, had fucking menus and blue/green/etc. categories. To add insult to injury, to make the better weapons, you have to solve fucking sliding puzzles. The difficulty near the end was just fucking ridiculous having to match just the goddamn background patterns. And no, just looking up the recipe online doesn't work. You HAVE to solve the puzzle for the item to appear, which logically makes no sense.

I have a life so I'm proud to say I didn't touch this shit

Fortunately, the last boss wasn't too hard to beat with a weak weapon that didn't require torturing oneself with this shit. Putting aside the "innovative game play mechanics", all the dungeons are boring stupid time trials, which I quickly stopped giving a shit about and the story so unremarkable, I don't even feel like writing about it. Oh yeah, except of course for that part where you lose all your spirits so you have to collect them AGAIN but in reverse order.

To sum up, the best part of this game was when I was finally able to trade it in to get some store credit. It felt so good to get rid of this piece of shit that honestly, I would have been happy to get Gamestop level pennies as long as I wouldn't have to see it sitting on my shelf of DS games.

Score: 0.5 well at least I can retire on my GME stock out of 5 (just kidding, I tried to cash in at the peak and eventually had to sell my cousin's truck to pay off my payday loan)

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

Phantasy Star（ファンタシースター）

So I got a comment (holy smokes, what are those??)  about Phantasy Star that prompted me to pick this game up again. This just goes to show that yes, comments matter here and goddamn I love them little jolts of serotonin. Alistel (thanks for the comments!) prompted me to finally finish the game and I have to say, I had fun with it on the Switch with automap and "Ages Mode" baby difficulty edition.

I played with the scanlines and mapless for all of like 5 minutes

Sure, you could play it without the map OG style but c'mon, the temptation is too hard to resist. If I was in the mood to draw maps, I have a pile of Sekaiju no Meikyuu games somewhere in my hoarder pile (oh god, the never ending backlog...)

For a game that came out in 1987, it looks really, really good. If the Mark III was this capable, it makes you wonder why there weren't more good games on the system (poor Sega). With all the weak arcade ports, and the small library, it's fair to say that this is the best game for the console. 

Granted, I was playing with additional helpful features on the Switch, I still got a good fill of that old-school Japanese RPG fun. Like many early RPGs, you start out really, really weak and need to cautiously save, heal, and slowly bring your level up. Once you get over the initial hurdle, you're off doing the usual exploring, dungeon crawling, and recruiting party members. It's all good, filling that weird need I have once in a while for a repetitively simple and somewhat therapeutic RPG.

Aww, so cute. Ok, time to get to work. KILL BOY KILL!

In addition to the automap, the pause menu has a handy explanation of all the equipment, items, and magic that you would have had to look up back in the day. What? Did you expect an explanation of what shit is IN the game? What next? Maybe you should watch some Youtuber play the game for you? Jesus, kids these days!

Do-heal. LOL, hope the person that came up with that got a nice bonus for creativity (not)

The manual even tells you the various spots where you could get permanently stuck. Ouch, that would suck if you saved and had to start over! As these things often go, I eventually put the game down when I got stuck looking for some shit in a pile of garbage. And of course, how could you not have an early RPG without the section where you have to wade through shit that hurts you on every step. Yes, I will admit I eventually resorted to looking up some help from a handy guide.

I guess it's better than the usual lava which in real life would kill you instantly

In particular, finding the Flow Mover is kind of a dick move requiring you to talk to a random NPC twice, replying both yes and no. Speaking of Flow Mover, the naming in this game is so unoriginal (eg light saber), it's actually kind of funny. Flow Mover - 24 hour dry protection for the active woman. 😂

I can't expect too much from a console RPG in the late 80s but the story was pretty much finding your party members and then just fetch quests. It's too bad because the opening intro was great. The last boss especially seems to come out of nowhere without any explanation and was kinda anti-climatic. Fortunately, I was barely able to win on my first try with all the best equipment. Tyron had 1 HP left and the cat... well, sorry but poor Snuggles didn't make it.

See what happens when you hire APRIL FOOL to write the story? Geesh!

Score: 3 WHY IS MY CHARACTER MOVING BY ITSELF? THIS GAME FUCKING SUCKS!!! out of 5 (Over 10 hours to beat, fuck Switch's ambiguous time tracking)

I had an average amount of fun with this one. It was pretty easy to play with the various quality of life improvements. I can only imagine how awesome it would have seemed back in 1987 but also probably way more frustrating.

Oh, a real gamer girl? Are you selling your dirty bath water, perchance?

I have no major complaints except of course for the fact that MY FUCKING JOYCON DRIFTS!!! You know, this is where I would go on my usual rant about how Nintendo sucks except now Sony decided to become a Twinkie. If you haven't heard the term before, it means they're fucking white on the inside man! They even have a Karen (Catherine but close enough) to explain why they need to spy on you to protect all the millennial snowflakes. If you really believe they won't store your recording past the last 5 minutes, well, ask Alexa to Google that shit for you.

As much as I would've loved a Vita 2 and the old Sony Japan, looks like I'm going to have to abandon Soyney California and settle for Nintendo, the last Japanese console maker.

I made the switch to PS1 for FF7 and it was a good run before things started going downhill with the PS4. Parasite Eve, Metal Gear, Xenogears, the list of fun goes on and on. Let's pour one out for Playstation Japan. Sigh, why does everything suck now? #2020

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

Ni no Kuni: Shiroki Seihai no Joou（二ノ国 白き聖灰の女王）

The whole idea behind Ni no Kuni was like a dream come true when it came out like 10 years ago. An RPG by Level-5 and Studio Ghibli with music from Joe Hisashi? Finally, the technology had advanced to where you can play a game that looks and sounds just like a Ghibli movie!!

In 2011, this was some god damn amazing shit

Yes, of course, I'm skipping the first DS game with the not so high definition graphics far from cinematic quality. At the time, I was just starting my journey as a Jhipster gamer. In fact, one of my first import buys for my collection (aka bad financial spending habits) was for the Japanese Magic Master that came with the limited edition of the DS game. Fortunately, you can still pick this up for a reasonable price unlike the false scarcity shit they pulled with the non-Jhipster Wizard Edition.

Way better than getting a stupid plushie imo

It's hard to believe that almost a decade has gone by since this game was released. Gaming has sure come a long ways since then. There's like WAY more frames per second and look at all dem pixels and shit. Oh and don't forget all that lazer ray tracing shiznits!! You can stare for hours at the reflection in the water as you go from one mission to the next, exactly like very other mind numbingly bland and unoriginal AAA game. Hell yeah!!!

Yet another grumpy old man rant but all I see these days is racist censorship, pay to play online, shit gacha games that last maybe a year at best, and everybody trying to move suckers into some sort of subscription service. And now PS5 is going X for confirm and O for cancel with no option to switch?? Jesus fucking Christ (not the brown one)!

So glad 'Merica is pushing superior moral values onto depraved Japanese gamers

The fact is, Ni no Kuni looks exactly as good as it needs to be for a Ghibli style video game. I mean honestly, it probably would have even worked on a PS2, like Rogue Galaxy (also Level-5). The game looks gorgeous and I really enjoyed the intro and the whole premise for your adventure. I especially loved watching you eat your mom's delicious looking eggs and bacon in fine Ghibli style.

There's nothing that says Ghibli like some eggs and bacon

Unfortunately, perhaps my hype for this game was a little too high as the gameplay definitely has that Level-5 feel to it. Though I've only played a few of Level-5 games so far, there's just something about them that seems super mainstream. While I don't dislike Level-5 games, the gameplay never seems very original and feels super safe. It's almost like marketing research comes up with what's supposed to be fun and you end up with a game that's well... supposed to be fun. You know what I mean? All I'm saying is, I was all into the game until they introduced Imagens and oh hey look, it's a fucking Pokemon clone. Bleh.

I just used the pink punch guy for like 95% of the time

I never played a Pokemon game for more than a couple hours and I don't know if I ever will but I'm not into this collect 'em all shit. I got the All-in-one edition so I used the special DLC or whatever that was included for the bulk of the game. Sure, you can recruit enemies, level up the little buggers, and feed them shit to evolve but yeah, not my thing.

I did spend a good 40 hours to beat the game and then some for trophies and I'm still probably far from getting the platinum. Out of all that time, I feel like most of it was spent doing those side quests primarily getting those heart pieces from here to there. Oh, and playing fetch for that fucker who kept losing his damn notebook everywhere.

Now, it may sound like I didn't like the game but overall, I have to say it's a solid title. While the battle system wasn't my favorite, it was good enough to keep my interest even though I probably spent most of the time just punching the shit out of everybody with the pink guy.

I really, really wanted to love this game. I mean, just look at it!

Score: 3.5 git off my lawn with your Cross Worlds mobile MMO crap!! out of 5 (38 hours to beat)

I was really on the fence on whether to score this as an above-average or a great game. While the graphics, cutscenes, and music were undoubtedly great, I went with a 3.5 above-average. I liked the story but I feel like it didn't quite have the impact of a good Ghibli film. Certainly, the characters development could have been better. I mean, geesh, the 3 characters from Koudelka had better chemistry than Oliver, Jairo, and Maru. As for the gameplay, it was I dunno... polished I suppose. Your party's AI isn't great but good enough. You gotta level up your Pokemon err Imagens and switch them out during battles etc. Plus, you got all them fetch side quests, alchemy, etc., etc. It's a good game but just not quite a great game for me. But I'm sure we can all agree, Joe Hisashi is da bomb yo!

I mean it's a bit heavy for gaming BGM but still.

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

Atelier Elie: The Alchemist of Salburg 2（エリーのアトリエ 〜ザールブルグの錬金術士2〜）

This is gonna be a short post because I really don't have much to say about Atelier Elie. It's pretty much the same game as the previous entry except you are Elie (duh).

The little drama CD included with the game gives a bit of background on her story but Japanese only (sorry non-Jhipsters). This game, like the rest of the Salburg series has never been localized so this game gets the obligatory +0.5 Jhipster smug points.

Wow, this is SO interesting. Too bad it's Japanese only... Aww...

So Elie is a direct sequel on the same console with the same graphics, locations, and recurring characters. Yes, you get to give the weapon shop owner some hair growth tonic again. The only noteworthy addition to the gameplay are the new "blend" and "original" crafting methods. Finally, you can mix and match as you like for infinite possibilities! You want to use 2 nyuzu? How about 2.1 nyuzu? Or even 2.2? You might improve the quality from B to B+ and get a better reputation! Ugh, fuck that, google time.

You used 2.8 green neutralizers instead of 2.9?? You fool!!!

I will admit that I may have graded the first game a bit harshly as we "pro" reviewers tend to do with a game that doesn't hand-hold you with baby gamer tutorials. Now that I have a better understanding of how these games work, I do admit that it gets addictive trying to scrounge up the ingredients without getting killed, scraping up some cash to buy the rest of your equipment and reference books, and managing your fairy slaves ahem "helpers". But saying this game is fun is akin to saying, "Wow, I feel so much better after I tidied up my room!" I mean, who the fuck wants to "play" a game that basically consists of real work and trying to eke out a living to pay off your expenses? Oh...

Look at that tanuki's smug face as he exploits the working class...

Score: 2.5 At least Elie's character design matches today's social standards of ambiguous gender traits! out of 5

I mean the game is fun and all but only in small doses and in my case, several months of breaks in between. I also foolishly agreed to become Meister Rank which extends the game for another 2 years. Elie went back to her village in my ending and I have no desire to play again even though I missed out on recruiting Marie from the first game. I also made gold but the game didn't seem to care.

One of the many events I missed, oh well

In general, without following a guide, I feel like I probably missed out on a whole bunch of events just like the first game. I even almost missed the fact that you could take a carriage to another city because I didn't keep speaking to random people in the town at random times. Oh well, whatever, I'm over it. Ok, time to play Atelier Lilie!

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

Tantei Kibukawa Ryousuke Jiken Tan - Kamen Genei Satsujin Jiken（探偵・癸生川凌介事件譚 仮面幻影殺人事件）

It's been getting more difficult to make these posts more interesting as gaming news seems slow these days. Then I figured since Tantei Kibukawa is a game written by a game scenario writer about the same game scenario writer playing an online MMO to find a murderer in the game in the game so that he can make a game based on the murder that happened in the game in the game, why don't I make this blog post about how I'm writing this blog post to be meta. Unfortunately, I couldn't really tie my meta blog post into talking about the game so I gave up on it.

"passwords" is not a typo here, you need more than one to log onto the PC in the PC... in the PC

Of course,  I'm sure you realized by now that the previous paragraph is about how I failed to write a meta blog post about a meta game with a meta intro. Yes, I just pulled a "if god can do anything, he can make a rock to heavy for him to lift" paradox. Mic drop!

Reminds me of the good ol' days when the gov did shit... (CDC? Who needs that?)

Anyways, I know I've been going on and on about getting rid of my more mediocre games in order to make more room in my (sister's) basement. Of course, you never know if a game is good or bad until you play it. That's just common sense unless of course, you're a paid game "journalist".

I assumed that Tantei Kibukawa on the DS would just be another mediocre mystery ADV game with horrible visuals. I mean, if you go by just the game cover, it looks... unique. However, I can agree with many of the reviews on Amazon Japan that the graphics grow on you to the point where characters such as Izuna and Rio actually look cute over time.

I would date her, but then again who wouldn't I date? Real girls, that's who. (Self proclaimed voluntary incel aka vincel #yaRight)

Not only are the graphics actually endearing, the story is also surprisingly pretty darn good. You know, I play obscure games with the faint hope that some of them would be a hidden gem but it's pretty rare unless you think hidden means "is not FF or Pokemon" like some YTers. And dare I say it, this game is kind of a hidden gem. Or at least good enough that I would be interested in playing more but oh, sorry, this is the only port among a whole series of games that are now completely unplayable without resorting to buying somebody's old Japanese flip phone with the game installed. So much for game preservation... You would think at least the series author would still have a copy around but well, here's a recent tweet from him.

永劫会の動くガラケーを手に入れたぞ！ pic.twitter.com/BHpJakndeq

— 生王正生 (@ikrmmso) January 5, 2020

In terms of gameplay, it's nothing more than your typical menu based detective ADV game. I did however get stuck just a couple times as you need to poke at some parts of the background to progress (that amazing DS innovation!) You also get a chance to exercise your deduction skills by answering Izuna's questions correctly. The only penalty for getting those questions wrong is you get a lower rating from her at the end. A better rating just unlocks some more memos to read about other cases, which are of course trapped on garake phones.

Whoa, a hand icon? DS is the only console that can handle this kind of gameplay!

I was hopeful that there was going to be some interesting gameplay when you're asked to select your character class in the MMO. It went into quite a lot of detail on the differences between choosing to be a policeman, reporter, etc. I don't know if that was too much to implement but you never really play the MMO as they describe it.

Score: 3 eh, I'm sure nobody will miss the other 18 or so games out of the series (shrug) out of 5 (12 hours to beat)

As usual, unlike the "pro" reviews, I feel no need to provide even a basic summary of the plot with my shitty writing and leave it as an exercise to the reader to check it out for him/her/etc self. I would say that if you like ADV games, this is definitely one worth giving a shot. (Sorry, Jhipsters only. I assume too obscure for fan translation.)

Now, my only issue is trying to decide whether to dump this game to make more room or keep it around as a "hidden" gem in my DS collection. Sigh, decisions, decisions. It may seem insignificant but I live in a modern, advanced society. It's not like I have to worry about life and death situations such as plagues from the old barbaric medieval times...

P.S. For future reference (if we're all still alive), I'm talking about fucking COVID-19.

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

Ripple Island（リップルアイランド）

Continuing on my late "OMG, my phone can emulate old consoles!" discovery thread, I also recently finished Ripple Island. This is a perfect contrast to Hoshi wo Sagashite... because it was released in the same year but on the Famicom. Unlike the doable game by Sega, this is yet another FUCKING IMPOSSIBLE to beat ADV game from SunSoft just like Dead Zone.

FamiCan, like NintenDon't for positive Jhipsters

There's no way I was going to spend hours getting stuck trying to beat this without the help of a guide. Let's all just agree that I don't have enough time in my life to waste and no I'm not talking about having trouble finding time between life's responsibilities any more. I'm literally talking about how much longer I have to live now that I'm old.

Thanks Jacob for putting it all into perspective. Time to play some 30+ year old games!

Ripple Island, in my opinion, is virtually impossible to beat without a guide though maybe slightly less impossible than Dead Zone thanks to the removal of those really specific menu options like "place", "open", "pull", and "pour self some whiskey and cry about squandered youth". The game is split into 5 areas and the first area is super doable. You just gotta walk around, talk to a few folks in the town, pick up your girl, and drug what looks like a gopher. (Whew, good thing PETA didn't have Jhipsters back then!)

Fuck you stout, weasel, whatever you are

As soon as you get past the gopher asshole blocking your way, the King tells you about some lost treasures blah blah defeat evil emperor etc., etc. Then onto Area 2 where the shit hits the fan. To start, you have to knock on one certain tree to get some acorns even though it looks identical to every other tree. You know, there's an unwritten rule in ADV games that necessary items should be distinguishable even if it's just a few pixels. But nope, no respect for the genre here. Hey, why don't you try just knocking on this random tree, identical to every other tree in the fucking FOREST. What, you didn't try every possible action on every possible background item?

Welp, you're fucked. Hope you got a password handy!

Once you know what to do, the game is pretty short so I guess that means it's ok to get completely stuck? There are several points where if you screw up, there is no way to progress, for example, trying to hit on the female fox (you sicko). Another example is not dyeing that fucking white flower red, which by the way is completely hidden in some random bush. I loved (sarcasm) how they bait you with the red flower you can never reach on the cliff. Can you imagine, buying this game at full price on release, and getting forever stuck in Area 2, after playing for like a couple hours? Well, I guess if you were rich enough to be buying Famicon ADV games on release, you could probably afford the strategy guide.


Score: 2 Where is the "fuck" option? What, this isn't a PC88 hentai game? out of 5

Excuse me?? What about my panties?

Anyway, with the help of a guide, it's a cute game with nice visuals and several endings (thank god for save states). The story is simplistic but that applies to every console ADV game I played so far on this generation (PC88 Master Race for the win!). You travel with a cute girl, talk to animals, and ride a giant flying squirrel. What more could you want?

Not even deserving of a squirrel seat? See, this is why we have Incels today.

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

The Legend of Zelda（ゼルダの伝説）

Well it's the end of the decade and what better way to end it by playing a classic that is now over 33(!) years old: Zeruda no Densetsu. What a great way to make myself feel freakin' old that is! Yes, here at Jhipster blog, us humble gamers take pride in not playing all that fancy new shit. I didn't buy any new games this year and put them into a hoarder box still sealed and untouched. Nope, totally did NOT do that.

Anyways, I was working on my 1988 GOTY list, checking out Fire Bam on the FDS that vaguely resembled Zelda II and then remembered I never played the first one and so here we are a few days and 7 hours of gameplay later and I'm happy to report that this 33 year-old, out of shape beer belly, middle age crisis Tesla buying game still holds up really well! And no, that description has absolutely no bearing on my personal appearance whatsoever!

Getting off my fat arse to switch to Disk Side B not shown here

This Famicom Disk System launch title really does justify buying an FDS at the time in Japan. The poor Japanese kids wouldn't get the FC version until 1994, years after the Super Famicom was already out! Sure, you have to flip the disk and deal with loading, but it's an amazing game for its time and even more so considering it was one of the launch titles on the system. Now, I obviously haven't played every game before 1986 but I have to believe this is the first action adventure game of this type.

"1 star, don't speak fucking french" -review on Amazon Japan

The title screen has a quick summary of the setting and story in English, I guess because it looks cool? Amazingly, it is grammatically correct and gets the point across. At least they were nice enough to ask you to look at the "book" in their customers' native language. I'm assuming they're referring to the game's manual.

Which button do I press to see this book?

Fortunately, due to the re-release of this game on the Famicom mini console, you can read a beautiful scan by Nintendo themselves (how nice!). I took a look at the English version and they "erroneously" translated Zelda's wet nurse Impa as a "nursemaid". Talk about discriminating against a perfectly legitimate and reputable profession. Time to go wild on Twitter! #CENSORSHIP2019 #BOYCOTTNOW

Kanji for "breast" + "mother" = "wet nurse". See, Japanese is so EASY!

I've always been intimidated by this game as you have pretty much almost full reign of the overworld map with no clear direction on the next destination. There's no giant rock blocking most of the way here until you get the right item to progress, this is old-school. However, playing with a guide, this game is probably just as fun as any of the more modern Zelda games. I don't feel bad about using a guide (sparingly) because honestly some of the hidden shit screams "please subscribe to Nintendo Power" marketing to me. For example, I don't think there was any hint on how to find the Magic sword.

Sure this one was easy to find but try to find the Magic Sword (Google time!)

Once you know which trees to burn with the candle and get a better sword and tunic, I found the difficulty was pretty fair though most of the bosses are pretty easy. I mean of course it is, you play a character that can burn a fucking tree with a candle for god's sakes! The hardest dungeon is probably the 6th level. That weird jelly enemy that steals your magic shield was SO ANNOYING.

The fact that you can only save when you die also really made it hard for me to put the game down (literally). I played the GBA version so no sissy save states or "life of luxury" mode for the privileged kids. Nintendo nowadays is all kid family friendly with the, "oh maybe you should take a break" messages. However, in this game, after you beat a dungeon, you get back all your health as if to invite you to keep playing and that's what I did instead of going to work or being a responsible member of society. Great game, thanks Nintendo!

Score: 4 breast moms out of 5 (7 hours to beat)

Great innovation! Ok, time to make like 20 sequels now!

I have to hand it to Nintendo here. They managed to create an entire new genre on a system launch title, which is really impressive. The open world exploration, smooth and fun action gameplay, this is a game that really wouldn't work on the PC-88/98. Ys doesn't come on PCs until a year later and it's choppy as hell. I missed out as a Sega kid, and only vaguely remember the snake from Golvellius at some other kid's house but I'm pretty sure it's not as good as this game.

There's also great replay value with the second quest after you beat the game for the first time. I haven't played the second quest yet but I still think it's amazing that they included a remix of the whole game. They certainly don't do that anymore at least for free. (Hard mode DLC only 800 yen!)

I definitely think for 1986 in terms of innovation, this deserves a 4 star great game score. The only minor downside is the fact that you need a guide and a lack of variety in the music. The overworld and dungeon themes are great, they didn't grate on my ears even after hours of gameplay. But those are the only two songs you hear the whole game except for the intro screen, the last dungeon, and the ending credits.

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

Final Fantasy IV: The After Years（ファイナルファンタジーIV THE AFTER 月の帰還）

Like I said in my FF4 post, I wasn't sure if The After Years was a full game that would be worth its own post. For some reason, I had the impression that "After Years" was just a quick side-story fan service game that could be finished in like 10 hours or something. After all, could one expect a "real" game originally released on Docomo, au, and Soft Bank pre-smartphone days? (Obligatory Jhipster comment: I was a die-hard au customer cause they had the best student package.) Well thank god Square ported this from those dead platforms because this ain't no quickie 10 hour game, it's freaking FF IV-2 in episodic format.

Whoa, how did au take a photo of me here? Creepy!

I played the PSP version including Interlude which took a little under 4 hours to finish just by itself. I was not a big fan of the episodic format because you end up playing through the early events of the story again and again but from different perspectives. Objectively however, I'm not sure of a better way the game could have shown you what all the characters have been up since the events of the first game. Initially, I was afraid this was going to be a game about just the new kids on the block while you watch an old decrepit Cecil milking some imps.

What more you want from me? I defeated Zeromusu for god's sake!

Fortunately, the old cast are not shat on like some other franchises. Well, it was kind of annoying that your bad-ass party is for some reason weak as fuck again but oh well, not every game can be Trails SC. As for the new kids, while Cecil's son was as boring as you could ever imagine, at least we get to see some qipao sprite art. (Gamers, get your box of tissues ready!)

Is she a blonde Chinese? Geesh, I hope she doesn't go to the prom like that cause white people will be PISSED.

Really, the first few episodes are kinda boring and super easy but at least they're fairly short. You can blast through them with auto-battle on pretty much the entire time. However, the free ride abruptly ends with Fusuya's episode. I almost thought it was a scripted boss battle, I died so hard and fast. To make matters worse, there's a level cap to prevent grinding your way through. I mean we're talking DS level difficulty here. I'm not sure how game "journalists" were able to beat this 45 hour game without a handy cheat. Oh right, they didn't.

MY mind is blown that you get paid to rant about a 40+ hour game 20 hours in but I guess I'm "weird" like that

Once you get over the baby intro portion, the plot really does start to get more interesting. It was really satisfying to see all plot points left hanging in the first game get resolved. Kain (I used to think it was pronounced "Cane" in my ignorant pre-Jhipster days) was one of my favorite characters back in the day. Will he ever come down from the mountain? Is Cecil going to resolve his relationship with Golbelza? Is Seodoa ever going to get laid? Play to find out!

The answer to the last question: "fuck no"

Seriously though, while yes the last some 30+ floors of dungeon exploring with boss after boss might scare away those who need to get paid for the next game review, I thoroughly enjoyed the challenge. I found out in the DS version due to the nature of the ATB system, slow and haste are super OP. Casting slow on the bosses that don't spam reflect and having two members that can cast haste is the easy way to win. The moon phase also really matters so make sure you sleep until white magic is strong. (What is this, a Megaten game??)

Yes, grinding under-leveled members you ignored is a pain (Seodoa, I mean you)

I also really liked the fact that I made some choices in the game that resulted in some people getting killed. Unlike the original Hollywood "everybody is ok!" story, these characters stay fucking dead. I probably would have replayed it in my younger days but as a more mature gamer, I played through with the consequences of my choices.

Score: 3.5 How dare Square create a sequel of a beloved classic reusing the same characters and places! #MINDBLOWN out of 5 (49 hours to beat)

If you liked FF4, you really can't go wrong with this sequel in my opinion, it's everything that's good about FF4, just more of it. That is of course unless you're a "pro" journalist who can't handle a game with some real challenge. If you didn't like the original game, well you can just go back to streaming Fortnite or whatever you kids do nowadays. (You'll be famous one day I'm sure, don't forget to keep up that instagram too!)

One of like 3 new songs in the game

Are the dungeons reused? Yeah duh, just like FFX-2, I mean it takes place in the same world. Could they have added some more original music besides the few songs near the end? Sure, I could've have gone for some good FF4 remixes. Was the game balance a bit grindy for under-leveled characters? I mean it's no Trails the 3rd for sure. But overall, The After Years was everything I could've expected from a sequel to an old nostalgia tears classic and really is just as good as the first one.

OH. MY. GOD. IS THAT CANE???

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