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

Murder Club（殺人倶楽部）

The legacy of the J.B. Harold series of detective ADV games goes back even further than the Tantei Jinguji Saburo series, though it doesn't seem to have the same miraculous tenacity. The series sadly got into the dead dumb-phone platform for the last 3 games and are basically unplayable as far was I'm aware. It's too bad because I'm kind of curious about the 5th game Seattle Purple Haze. The only thing I could find about the game was this tiny screenshot.

"Little did J.B. know that renting would lead to homelessness years later when he could no longer afford his Ballard rent due to soaring tech stocks."

Unlike the last 3 games which are lost in the heady days of flip phones and PHS (lol remember picchi?), the first game Murder Club has been ported to every platform imaginable. Its release history reads like some sort of abridged game console timeline from the original PC-88 1986 release to the MSX, Famicon, PC Engine CD, PC, DS, etc., the most recent release being a port of the iOS version on the Switch eShop. The later versions are all based on the DS remake which is the version I played.

God, Janet Robbins is so HAWT in the remake.

I believe the DS remake is mostly the same as the original but with a new coat of paint and some improvements to the UI. It also added an epilogue where you can check on what the cast is up to after the main game, as well as, a lead in to the sequel. Fortunately, my used copy had already unlocked the epilogue because supposedly you have to beat it with 100% completion to unlock and I only had 97% with zero desire to play all over again.

The official sites always feature Janet... Well, she IS hawt.

I also checked out the PC Engine CD version because it's the only version with all voiced dialogue. It's a rare fully bilingual game with both text and audio so no reason to pay $80 for the TurboGrafix CD version. But then again, what else would all the rich, privileged non-Jhipsters spend their money on?

Well, you have to spend your institutionalized socially advantageous money somewhere.

The unfortunate thing about the PCE version is that the BGM for the game is just awful. It's so weird because the title and setting screens have pretty darn good CD quality jazz music. A little too much soprano sax for my taste but still pleasant to listen to. What, did they think having a nice jazz BGM would be too relaxing or maybe it was some technical limitation? Even without a CD soundtrack, they could've done a better job with the sound chip IMO. At least in the DS version, while the BGM is super boring, I didn't even really notice nor care.

Yeah the OP sounds good but wait till the game starts...

Finally, onto the game itself, what's all the hubbub about? Is this game really so good that it needs to be ported to 13 different platforms over the span of 31 years? Well, for a 31 year old game, it's pretty good but that's not saying much. It's a standard old-school PC-88 ADV game which means you're trying menu option after menu option. I feel like some of the menu options are useless and should've been removed. For example, why the fuck would you want to ask everybody's blood type? Americans don't even know their blood type half the time. It's not like we're reading Japanese teen magazines to see what boy hunk is compatible with our blood type "personality". I actually had a tiny bit of fun seeing how many ways the VAs could say "I don't know" for all the various menu options but it gets old fast.

Today's blood type?? She's playing ya man! Get a DNA swab! You never watched CSI?

In addition, I understand that there weren't countless podcasts and murder channels to describe in depth how murder investigations were conducted in 1986 but the way you go about it is simply ridiculous. The game dumps a ton of characters on you at the very start which is a bit overwhelming, trying to remember who did what. After you spend a few hours asking everybody their blood type, you then get search warrants and start finding evidence I guess nobody bothered to dispose of. Then, you go to the DA to start arresting people for questioning. You press them with the evidence until they confess. Case closed. All in a good day's work, eh detective?

If you ignore the gameplay, this game does a pretty decent job of uncovering a web of human drama for you to untangle. The story pales in comparison to the deep human drama presented in Hokkaidou blah blah but it kept me interested enough once I got over the initial mental hurdle of memorizing all the characters.

Unfortunately, this is the extent of the fan service. No Yuji Horii panti here.

Score: 2 "Look at my amazing complete PC Engine collection, no it doesn't bother me that I can't read most of it, I'm a Youtuber not a gamer silly!" out of 5 (8 hours to complete)

Pretty cool but how much was a Sharp X68000? Probably like one of my kidneys.

As I look back on the short list of games I completed so far from 1986, I would say that this game is a very middle of the road average 3 score for its time. The remake was fairly well done in that it was faithful to the original while adding some minor improvements. However, in today's standards, this would be a hard one to recommend unless you're striving to be a Jhipster gamer historian like yours truly or just really partial to old school ADV games.

The only reason to buy the U$ version is if this typo bother you. #1stWorldProblems

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

Undertale

I learned not to get swept up by internet hype especially since I STILL regret paying even a single cent for "oh look at me cover all the hipster selling points" indie title Gone Home. But as even my nephew recommended it, I guess I had to try Undertale at some point especially since I live in my sister's basement for free #MillennialMinimalistGamer.

What my room looks like minus piles of games, empty dew cans and hentai wall scrolls.

I decided to get this one on (my sister's) Switch during the recent #BLACKFRIDAYKILLERDEALSCLICKNOW!!!! even though I would have preferred to play this on the Vita. I skipped the Vita because digital games are region locked and I didn't want to waste the money and space on a physical copy. I'm not a weeb so I really didn't want to play this in Japanese and cringe at how they tried to translate all the stupid puns nor did I want to have to reset my Vita to NA region. The Switch version miraculously has no region restrictions and even comes with both languages. I'm sure glad I went the English route because the JP version doesn't look like it uses any Kanji. I guess what was an unfortunate technical restriction from the Famicon days is now some sort of weird hipster retro fashion statement. Fuck off.

Speaking of ぎじゅつ, have you heard of fucking Unicode?

Even in English, I noticed a weird usage of singular "they" to refer to the Player, which in our time was a sentence agreement grammar error. I thought it was an easy problem to fix by asking your gender but then I remembered nowadays that would be a PC nightmare with whatever popular genders youngers are identifying with this week. So yeah, I guess they don't have to worry about grammar no more and by "they", I was referring to me. So should I start talking about the game or finish off with another round of old man ramblings?

I feel like every indie game I played has at least one picturesque, scenic road. +1 hipster point?

Given how hyped this game is for reasons I cannot fathom except I guess not everybody has played 30 years of masterpieces that were never translated to English, the question is not if this game is overrated but by how much. After all, DDLC pretty much lived up to the hype for me so miracles do happen. Well, I'm happy to report that Undertale is only very mildly overrated. Unlike other shit hipster titles, this game actually has some substance and is even fun to play. The combat system is challenging and the music is really good all around.

The entire OST is good, which is quite a feat.

As for the story, it was pretty good and yes, I'd hate to say it but for the hipsters, it does have that Mother 3 vibe. I don't know if Toby played Mother but I wish he could have at least added a dash option like Mother 3.

I thought this was gonna be a place for some revelation but no, it's just where the boat takes you back.

To see the true ending, you do have to play the game twice but it's not that much of a chore since the game is pretty short. The characters were charming enough that I did feel bad about deleting the game but hey, what are their lives compared to the extra space so nephew can play the next trendy game?

Not everybody made it in my first playthrough (sorry lesser 🐕)

I think the story had potential to make this a 4 great game but I didn't quite get the narrative about the Player. I don't want to go into spoilers but yeah, I don't understand the reason for why you were still there.

Overall, it was a good game but I'm still glad I didn't waste my money on an overpriced physical copy. At least it's not published by Super Limited "you might need to suck some dick to get a copy" hipster publisher.


Score 3.5 out of 5 (played maybe around 5-15 hours even though the Switch knows the actual FUCKING number and no I'm not going to install stupid parental control app just for record of hours played)

I might have gone for a 3rd playthrough to complete the trophies but oh, Switch doesn't have trophies. How am I going to know I'm fully enjoying a game without trophies? And also, the Switch is fucking heavy to play in bed, portable my ass. Oh I guess I was supposed to stand it up and play with my (non-existent) friends IRL during a trendy party on my urban roof? Thanks Nintendo for making me feel inadequate. Ok, that's it for my mini Switch rant, sorry.


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