[Exophase]

crazyal02, on 12 July 2016 - 06:17 PM, said:

Hyper Light Drifter had a great combat system and atmosphere, though sliding along walls and ledges to find secret passages is weird.

I loved this game but I wish so much that it had a good or at least competent map system. I left all sorts of extras on the table after beating it that I probably would have gone back for if I had any reasonable way of tracking what I did and didn't already find and where I had and hadn't already visited.

I know the game was all about being cryptic and making people figure out everything themselves but the existing map system just felt like it was mocking me for wanting maps. My personal viewpoint is that if I can do something myself in a way that's painstaking but completely devoid of skill - like drawing my own maps - the game may as well do it for me.

... not that I'm about to start drawing my own maps.

[Goshi]

Dr Lancer-X, on 10 July 2016 - 09:04 AM, said:

oh awesome. i'll be sure to keep that in mind when i play it again..

still playing 7th dragon. i'm surprised at how much i'm liking it. might have to play the etrian odyssey games if these developers have managed to do standard jrpg mechanics so well

Obviously, I'm going to say that you should.

Lachesis, on 16 July 2016 - 12:40 AM, said:

I di sa gr ee

that really applies to a lot of (masaharu) iwata's other FFT battle tracks though, they're all fantastic and none of them have the game's leitmotifs

Funny you listed Neo Exdeath's theme. IIRC a couple of MZX games used that too.

This post has been edited by Goshi: 16 July 2016 - 08:55 PM

[allison]

Exophase, on 15 July 2016 - 06:00 PM, said:

I loved this game but I wish so much that it had a good or at least competent map system. I left all sorts of extras on the table after beating it that I probably would have gone back for if I had any reasonable way of tracking what I did and didn't already find and where I had and hadn't already visited.

I know the game was all about being cryptic and making people figure out everything themselves but the existing map system just felt like it was mocking me for wanting maps. My personal viewpoint is that if I can do something myself in a way that's painstaking but completely devoid of skill - like drawing my own maps - the game may as well do it for me.

... not that I'm about to start drawing my own maps.

Yeah, I get what you mean. I don't usually go for 100% in games, and when I tried in this game trying to figure out what I had done got old pretty quick.

This post has been edited by crazyal02: 17 July 2016 - 12:24 AM

[djtiesto]

Downloaded Furi but didn't play very much, love the soundtrack so far. Also played a bit of the 3rd Mickey Mouse game for SFC (Japan only), and nearing the end of Star Ocean 5, which is a major disappointment.

[Dr Lancer-X]

Have you tried TMS#FE, djtiesto? I've heard largely very positive things about it.

[djtiesto]

Lancer - nope, though I own it. Beat the main game of SO5 but I'll tackle the bonus dungeon, tri-Ace's bonus dungeons are usually pretty great so maybe this'll redeem the game somewhat. Also I started Setsuna and Virtue's Last Reward but haven't made enough progress in either to say anything aside from "pretty cool so far".

[Baby Bonnie Hood]

After getting basically plot summaries of the FF games in Record Keeper and now that I have a laptop again, I decided that I should experience the stories in full. So I started with a playthrough of FFIV, which I just finished some 20ish hours later.

It was okay.

The entire story seems to have been made up as it went along. omg the empire is stealing world crystals we gotta stop them except they keep beating us to the punch but wait there are more crystals underground but they beat us there too and then all the crystals gathered together open a path to the moon so this spaceship flies you to the moon where you meet this old moon guy who says that you and the evil guy behind the empire are the descendants of moon people and this evil moon guy is actually controlling the evil guy who's apparently your brother btw and then this giant mecha gets activated but the entire world as in everyone you've ever met in your adventure fights it while you disable its cpu from within and then the old guy snaps the evil guy out of it then you all go back to the moon to fight the evil moon guy who's a chump but his evil spirit lives on and the evil guy tries to use a crystal on him but it doesn't work because the evil guy is too evil and the evil spirit stomps on the old guy and the evil guy and the evil guy gives you the crystal and then you use it on the evil spirit and it works because you're good and the evil spirit turns into an evil alien with that music that I've heard in MZX games a bazillion times and after a hard battle you beat the evil alien and the old guy and your brother say goodbye and the moon flies away while you live happily ever after back on the planet no there were no after years fuck you

I can see where many MZX RPGs got their inspiration, and playing FFIV was more or less exactly like playing them (well, the good ones anyway).

Now, next up is FFV.

[Lachesis]

don't play FF II, III, or V for their "stories". you'll be seriously disappointed.

[Dr Lancer-X]

Funnily enough FF1's story isn't bad. This could be attributed to the extreme minimalism (less room to screw up), but the central concept is pretty solid. Admittedly I may be biased because I love time loops.

[Baby Bonnie Hood]

Lachesis, on 24 July 2016 - 11:33 PM, said:

don't play FF II, III, or V for their "stories". you'll be seriously disappointed.

Eh. As long as the gameplay's good, the world is interesting, and the characters are memorable, I don't mind if the story isn't a masterpiece as long as it doesn't get too stupid.

So now that I've started playing FFV, I don't think FF Edventure spoofed it enough. Gilgamush should've been a Gilgamesh parody instead of an Exdeath parody.

...say, would Luke be interested in a remake of FF Edventure? We could have an actual Gilgamush, the ultimate bad guy could be Ydeath, and his evil generals could be dragons called the Elemental Yburns.

[Goshi]

Baby Bonnie Hood, on 24 July 2016 - 08:18 PM, said:

no there were no after years fuck you

I actually liked After Years =/

[Dr Lancer-X]

After Years is fine - there's no problems with it, story-wise or anything else, but it's basically like Persona 3's The Answer. It's a continuation nobody wanted to a story that was wrapped up quite nicely in the original game, thank you very much.

[djtiesto]

After Years was ridiculous with the amount of reused content and backtracking. Going through the watery pass no less than 3 times in one of the chapters is what finally did me in.

[Goshi]

djtiesto, on 27 July 2016 - 11:57 AM, said:

After Years was ridiculous with the amount of reused content and backtracking. Going through the watery pass no less than 3 times in one of the chapters is what finally did me in.

I won't argue that. That part really did suck hard. To be honest, until the final chapters the game was pretty much hit or miss for most part. Ceodore and Kain's Tale being pretty much the best part of the game until the final chapters.

Dr Lancer-X, on 26 July 2016 - 03:24 PM, said:

After Years is fine - there's no problems with it, story-wise or anything else, but it's basically like Persona 3's The Answer. It's a continuation nobody wanted to a story that was wrapped up quite nicely in the original game, thank you very much.

Funny you mentioned that, since I just finished my playthrough of Persona Q. Aigis broke everything. Heat Riser + Orgia Mode + Power Charge > Myriad Arrows pretty much could one-shot everything, including the Reaper and the final boss.

Easiest "EO" game ever.

This was on Hard though. Not sure if I want to try Risky since Mudoon is common and the P3 protag is weak to it X_X

[Dr Lancer-X]

Finished 7th Dragon. I know I said before that I was impressed with the difficulty, but it's one of those games with an inverted difficulty curve. It was quite challenging at the start (especially after the first dragons appeared), but got easier and easier as I progressed. The final boss in particular was a total joke (the Haze Shields were tougher). The dragons went from being foes that called for EX moves to defeat to being trivially beatable with regular attacks.

Good game for the most part, although the quest system was particularly irritating. Talk to someone to find out that they want you to do something, but instead of just doing it, instead you have to go to the Guild, accept the quest, then do it, then go back to the person and talk to them again, then go back to the Guild and report it. On top of that, you can only have three quests at a time and it's not even necessarily clear whether you are able to complete a certain quest at the time it is offered. Because of that I skipped most of the quests.

Tempted to look into Etrian Odyssey now though.

[Dr Lancer-X]

I gave Etrian Odyssey a quick look and didn't really like it. I'll be honest, I'm okay with a 1st person dungeon crawler making me keep track of my own progress rather than giving me a map. I even think Etrian Odyssey's approach of letting the player draw in the map themselves is fine. But I'm not okay with the first mission in the game forcing me to painstakingly map out the first map. I think I was about halfway through it when I decided that I could be playing a fun game instead so I stopped playing and deleted it. No thanks.

I then went and played The Dark Spire. Now, this was an interesting game - they definitely aimed for (and nailed) that sort of D&D flavour in the form of a first person JRPG and I had a lot of fun with it. It's not especially polished as far as NDS games go, although I do appreciate the aesthetic they've got going, the battles and things like that were way too menu-heavy, there's a serious amount of RNG in the game and there's a bunch of moments where you don't really get enough documentation telling you what you're supposed to be doing - things like the minimum Charisma requirement to get the proper ending., a stat that does virtually nothing else in the game.

After finishing The Dark Spire I went back to Strange Journey and I'm enjoying it a lot more now that I've gotten a little way in. Still think the music is inferior to every other MegaTen game though.

[Graham]

Exophase, on 26 January 2016 - 01:59 PM, said:

I've been playing and am nearly finished with a game called Stories of Bethem: Full Moon: http://store.steampo...com/app/412270/

Cool! added to my wishlist, maybe I'll check it out when I have some time. The music in the intro video is great, hopefully that is what the game music is like? It really sells it.

[CJA]

Dr Lancer-X, on 12 September 2016 - 06:17 AM, said:

I gave Etrian Odyssey a quick look and didn't really like it. I'll be honest, I'm okay with a 1st person dungeon crawler making me keep track of my own progress rather than giving me a map. I even think Etrian Odyssey's approach of letting the player draw in the map themselves is fine. But I'm not okay with the first mission in the game forcing me to painstakingly map out the first map. I think I was about halfway through it when I decided that I could be playing a fun game instead so I stopped playing and deleted it. No thanks.

Aw shucks. I thought it was well paced, but then again, Etrian Odyssey was for me something like Babby's Second JRPG Franchise (first being Final Fantasy). The actual difficulty and need to grind extended beyond any sort of frustration I had with drawing the map, and I'd actually have a bit of a challenge just translating the 3D map into 2D when drawing the floors without actually stepping on each one. (Psst, the 3DS remake draws walls as well as floors for you.)

I can understand how it could be pretty boring for someone that's had some experience with dungeon crawling RPGs though.

[Graham]

BeamNG.drive. It's a driving simulator, open world, physics sandbox. I think it's still in beta or alpha. My son, Brennan, found it and he loves it. It's pretty fun to take the cars over jumps and crash them and stuff.

http://store.steampo...com/app/284160/

[djtiesto]

I'm up to the final battle of Final Fantasy Legend III, Nash is gonna come over on Friday and watch me finish it up. It was a strange game that felt like SaGa x Mystic Quest, with a pretty steep encounter rate and confusing dungeons. And a terrible 'equip' system where you don't even have any clue wtf you're equipping most of the time. I didn't mind it but I enjoy my grind heavy oldskool RPGs from time to time.

And speaking of Nash, I also finished the 2 Suikogaiden games (which are visual novel spinoffs of Suikoden II starring a guy named Nash ). Some nice fan service cameos but I'd only recommend them to hardcore Suikoden fans who don't mind VNs. Each game is about 3 and a half hours long (each also having an optional 1-hour long chapter that you can unlock if you make certain decisions through the game).

Beat Zero Time Dilemma and Mickey's Magical Adventure 3 (the 3rd SNES Mickey Mouse game that was only released in Japan). ZTD wasn't as interesting as the other 2 games in the series, and kinda had a weak ending. But the puzzle rooms were good! Mickey 3 has some sweet graphics and SFX that are -extremely- SNES, but the controls are a bit stiff and the difficulty curve is odd. One particular boss is really difficult but most of the rest of the game is cake easy.

Making some progress in Adventures of Mana, a Vita/mobile (I'm playing on Vita of course) remake of Final Fantasy Adventure. Suddenly started liking it a lot more when I found out you can revert to the original chiptune soundtrack. Don't particularly care for the graphics, they have that 'cheap' mobile 3D look, would have preferred the hand drawn gorgeousness the Mana series is known for. But hey, it's much more true to the original FF Adventure than the shitty Sword of Mana.

Playing some Project Diva X as well, have completed most of the different "clouds", it's weird that they gave this one a story. Normal mode is much easier than Project Diva F2, which was HARD!!! I don't like how there are no more 'videos' to go along with the songs but simply stages, but the game is still really enjoyable. Lots of great costumes to dress up your characters as.

And finally playing Mega Man Legends 2, up to the 4th dungeon.

Once I'm done with MML2 I'll probably start either Suikoden V or Trails of Cold Steel, leaning towards Suikoden V.

This post has been edited by djtiesto: 15 September 2016 - 04:10 AM

[Ando]

I'm playing Drakengard 3; it was wrapped for about two years and I finally decided to play it a few weeks ago. It is really fun; I haven't been this passionate about a video game in a long time.

[Goshi]

Dr Lancer-X, on 12 September 2016 - 09:17 PM, said:

I gave Etrian Odyssey a quick look and didn't really like it. I'll be honest, I'm okay with a 1st person dungeon crawler making me keep track of my own progress rather than giving me a map. I even think Etrian Odyssey's approach of letting the player draw in the map themselves is fine. But I'm not okay with the first mission in the game forcing me to painstakingly map out the first map. I think I was about halfway through it when I decided that I could be playing a fun game instead so I stopped playing and deleted it. No thanks.

Which one? If its the first game in the series, there's an even worse mission where you have to map out the first 2 floors of the 3rd strata. Its annoying since the walls have to count too, wouldn't be so bad if you just needed only the tiles. The 3DS remake (Which is terrible btw. Don't play it) does help a little since walls and well... everything, are automatically drawn on the map.

Every game in the series has that as the first mission though, and its the only time mapping out is compulsory (With the exception of EO1). I'd at least give it a shot once you get that out of the way.


I love Dark Spire; which shouldn't be surprise, IIRC one of my DoZ games used the soundtrack. The only thing I don't really like about it is the lack of information given with equipment. You can never tell what does what in-game which is a pain.

djtiesto, on 15 September 2016 - 03:04 PM, said:

I'm up to the final battle of Final Fantasy Legend III, Nash is gonna come over on Friday and watch me finish it up. It was a strange game that felt like SaGa x Mystic Quest, with a pretty steep encounter rate and confusing dungeons. And a terrible 'equip' system where you don't even have any clue wtf you're equipping most of the time. I didn't mind it but I enjoy my grind heavy oldskool RPGs from time to time.

Final Fantasy Legend III is actually the 3rd game in the SaGa series. It is a bit of an oddball actually, and I much prefer Final Fantasy Legend II over it. There's a DS remake which completely overhauls the game but I never really got around to playing it.

Also dat final battle theme. How many MZX games use it anyway?

This post has been edited by Goshi: 20 September 2016 - 06:49 AM

[Exophase]

Goshi, on 20 September 2016 - 02:46 AM, said:

Final Fantasy Legend III is actually the 3rd game in the SaGa series. It is a bit of an oddball actually, and I much prefer Final Fantasy Legend II over it. There's a DS remake which completely overhauls the game but I never really got around to playing it.

I must be the only person who really liked FFL3. FFL2 was my first real RPG at age 11 and I slogged through it despite not really understanding most of the mechanics. Like having no idea how equipment worked (other than weapons), or that robots could replenish charges, or that you could utilize MAGI. I knew the third game existed from magazines, and one day I got my mom to take me to every used game store I could find until I finally tracked it down.

I can see how most people weren't really that happy with the more traditional RPG gameplay, but given that I was still new to them and there weren't very many out for Gameboy to begin with I was pretty satisfied. It was nice not having to deal with all the SaGaisms like limited use weapons and random skill sparking. The game was way too easy to abuse though, you could turn your whole party into cyborgs and pretty easily max out a bunch of their stats with purchased upgrades. There was even a robot with a healing skill that you could use for free whenever you wanted.

[Dr Lancer-X]

I loved FFL1, but never got into FFL2 for some reason.

Currently playing Infinity. I'm a sucker for time loop stories so I'm quite enjoying this.

[djtiesto]

I'd say the scenario in FFL2 was a lot more interesting than 3, as well as the variety of worlds you went to. Venus and her hometown where only the beautiful are allowed to live in ; a town filled with giants ; a banana (opium in the JP version) smuggling gang in a feudal-Japan setting. Never a dull moment with that game, but it was INSANELY challenging. I never beat it, though I did beat 1 (and now 3!). Maybe I should go back to it some time?

So yeah, when Nash was over last weekend, I also beat World of Illusion for Genesis. A fun platformer but extremely easy (I beat it with using one continue, first time playing, in ~40 min). I prefer the prequel, Castle of Illusion. That game has some pretty interesting and challenging level design.

Goshi, on 20 September 2016 - 07:46 AM, said:

Final Fantasy Legend III is actually the 3rd game in the SaGa series. It is a bit of an oddball actually, and I much prefer Final Fantasy Legend II over it. There's a DS remake which completely overhauls the game but I never really got around to playing it.

Also dat final battle theme. How many MZX games use it anyway?

Well yeah, of course I know FFLIII is part of the SaGa series

I did read a bit about the DS remake (I knew SaGa 2 got a DS remake but wasn't aware of the 3rd game's remake until recently), and it doesn't sound too exciting. It uses the chibi character models and grainy polygonal environments so common to SE's DS games, and has tacked-on 'quests' that seem like your typical grindy mmo bullshit that's in too many games now. At least they didn't tack on a crafting system

That Xagor theme threw me for a loop when I heard it, it sounds like nothing else in the game and is really good! The final battle was quite challenging, even with my large assortment of attack and healing spells and high level. Don't know of any MZX games to my knowledge that use the theme song, and I say this as the person who probably kicked off the trend of using FF mods in MZX games

This post has been edited by djtiesto: 21 September 2016 - 02:25 AM

[Exophase]

djtiesto, on 20 September 2016 - 10:20 PM, said:

I'd say the scenario in FFL2 was a lot more interesting than 3, as well as the variety of worlds you went to. Venus and her hometown where only the beautiful are allowed to live in ; a town filled with giants ; a banana (opium in the JP version) smuggling gang in a feudal-Japan setting. Never a dull moment with that game, but it was INSANELY challenging. I never beat it, though I did beat 1 (and now 3!). Maybe I should go back to it some time?

Yeah I think the story and scenarios in FFL2 were pretty enjoyable. I've heard people say it was thin compared to NES RPGs but IMO it's the opposite. I don't think I've ever even played all the way through a pure RPG on the NES because I find them so bland. Maybe I've got nostalgia goggles on with the few GB RPGs I've played, but I have a much easier time going through them. I even found Great Greed pretty accessible long after I played FFL2 and 3.

On the other hand, I never could get into FFL1...

I must have played through FFL2 several times, the last time in highschool on my GBC. The game actually had an issue where one of the audio channels would disappear sometimes in the overworld. I always thought my old cartridge had problems until I read later that it was a compatibility issue with GBC.

I don't think it's really that challenging if you know the basic mechanics. Going through that bonus dungeon with the glass sword helps get your party in shape in the later stages of the game. If you really want an extra boost there's the rare Haniwa enemy at the very end, who drops the seven sword. It's possible to cheese the RNG with resets to get the encounter reliably if you really want.

Hard to say which of the two (FFL2 vs 3) was more interesting. I liked the time travel stuff in 3, and all the different realms you could wander around in, like that extra stuff under the sea and the Pure Land underworld. I would say FFL2 had more interesting characters, though.

[Dr Lancer-X]

Exophase, on 21 September 2016 - 04:11 PM, said:

Yeah I think the story and scenarios in FFL2 were pretty enjoyable. I've heard people say it was thin compared to NES RPGs but IMO it's the opposite. I don't think I've ever even played all the way through a pure RPG on the NES because I find them so bland.

Megami Tensei II is probably the best NES RPG - but it's better on the SNES anyway so there's not much point in playing it on that platform.

[Baby Bonnie Hood]

djtiesto, on 21 September 2016 - 02:20 AM, said:

Don't know of any MZX games to my knowledge that use the (Xagor) theme song, and I say this as the person who probably kicked off the trend of using FF mods in MZX games

Time Trial by mallo.

[djtiesto]

Have you guys played Lagrange Point? I absolutely LOVE the music in the game, and it looks like a full translation was completed within the past year or so. I own the original Famicom cart but I do want to play through the game at some point.

My favorite NES RPGs are Dragon Quest 3, 4, and Final Fantasy 3. If we're talking action RPGs too, Crystalis and Radia Senki get on the list as well.

[Exophase]

I often come here a while after I've played some game and think to myself that I'm not really playing it anymore so don't want to write about it. So in the spirit of not doing that, here's a short review of the last twenty games I've played on Steam, starting with the most recent. Almost all were played with a controller on a Linux desktop, sometimes with Wine (where a native version wasn't available)

Ghost 1.0: Metroidvania game (you're going to see a lot of those here). Really solid and enjoyable. It took a little getting used to the shoulder + stick heavy controls for a 2D platformer/shooter, but after getting the hang of it I got in the swing of it pretty well and burned through the ~20 play hours to completion pretty easily. It has nice high-ish fidelity 2D visuals, decent soundtrack, and an entertaining plot with likable characters and great voice acting.

Half Minute Hero: Super Mega Neo Ultimate Climax Boy: An unusual sort of RPG where you play a bunch of quick scenarios to fight, level, interact with people, shop, and defeat an end boss in just a few minutes at most. Has a lot of amusing meta-references and self-aware gags. But it felt pretty repetitive and too easy - I did however only play through the first game option ("Hero 30") so it might offer more varied and challenging content which I'll try to get back to. May try the sequel first though, it looks more interesting.

Downwell: Simple and fast paced arcade style game. This one is apparently pretty popular and well received. I couldn't get that much into it because I found the controls to be way too twitchy and sensitive. Which is clearly the point of the game's design, but I just found myself screwing up way too easily, and that the game really punished you for trying to play it quickly and fluidly (eg, in the way that's actually fun). Might revisit this one later, but I doubt I'll have much focus to play it long enough to really get good at it.

Momodora: Reverie Under the Moonlight: Another Metroidvania style game, with appealing 16-bit style graphics and above average music. Fairly short and not a huge amount of depth, but still pretty satisfying. Some of the bosses had a pretty good challenge, although it's not very bad if you don't try to attempt them in the "wrong" order.

Super Cyborg: Contra clone that I started coach multiplaying with a friend because she wanted us to game more. We only really tried it for one night. Contra was never very forgiving but something about this just seems less rewarding and more frustrating. But it may be that I need to play it by myself for while to get a feel for it.

Pac-Man 256: First game I played with the same friend. Was fun for a while but got really tedious, especially after we got all the powerups. But my friend really wanted to keep playing so maybe some people will find this engaging indefinitely.

Salt and Sanctuary: People say this Metroidvania game is actually literally 2D Dark Souls. I haven't played Dark Souls so I can't attest to that, but this game sure is brutal. Expect to die a lot to getting mobbed by enemies who caught an opening, or because you clumsily fell to your death. It's still a pretty doable challenge with a lot of meat to the gameplay and very highly detailed and atmospheric graphics. Just use a guide because there are some really important elements to the gameplay that can make a huge difference if you don't know them, and the game explains nothing whatsoever. Also, if you care about game music as much as I do prepare to be disappointed because there are only a few tracks and mostly you'll be listening to boring ambiance or silence. I read that Dark Souls had a good reason for doing this and also tried to make up for it by having lots of thumping boss tracks. Well this game doesn't have a good reason and only has two boss tracks, although they're at least still pretty thumping.

Paint it Back: It's plain old Picross, that's basically it. And it's only so recent in my play history because they added presidential election puzzles and I'm a sucker for this nonsense. Granted, some of the pictures are kind of funny. If you like Picross and for some reason don't feel like playing it in one of its many other incarnations pick this up I guess.

Vagante: Action side-scrolling rogue-like. I've played the hell out of this game, easily more than any other in my Steam library (over 100 hours, which might not sound like a lot but it is for me). It's an interesting case because I just about hated the game for the first 20 hours. But somehow I started getting better and it started growing on me. I felt like I got enough out of the content it had at the time, but I may check out where the updates have taken it (it's early access and has been forever). The single best part of the game is the online multiplayer co-op mode. I got a lot of good hours in with Quasar, at least after they finally synced the different platform releases and fixed all the crash bugs. It's worth trying for this alone even if you don't like action rogue-likes.

Stories of Betham: Full Moon: I talked about this game earlier. I'm actually not sure why it shows up in this position, maybe I accidentally started it. One of the few thoroughly Zelda-inspired games I could find on Steam, so if that means anything to you play it because it's very good at what it does.

1001 Spikes: Ridiculously hard platformer, but quite surmountable and rewarding, and comes with a lot of charm. For the most part - I actually haven't fully beaten it because I got burned out and frustrated by Quasar plowing through the game so much better than I was. I'd like to return to it and finish it up, but just knowing I'll have to play at least a couple levels hundreds of times is kind of hard to tackle. So.. yeah, if this interests you be ready for that. It's the type of game where you pretty much have to program muscle memory by playing the same short-ish levels over and over again with pseudo-unlimited lives (not exactly, you have several hundred and there are more relaxing things you can do to get more when you're running low). So in a way like Super Meat Boy, but less fast paced and with more fixed, deliberate controls, so at least you probably won't injure your hands playing it.

Catacomb Kids: The other action platformer rogue-like I started playing after Vagante. This game is just mean and really didn't give me a lot of encouragement to play it. I've found some people swear this game is an absolute breakthrough in emergent gameplay, so if that sort of thing is interesting to you give it a shot I guess. Personally I didn't appreciate that aspect of it because I hardly felt compelled to put all this effort and creativity into how I played when I was probably to lose everything to a cheap kill seconds later.

BattleBlock Theater: This game is very highly rated, but I wasn't that drawn to it and really just picked up because I was desperate for something new. And sure enough, it couldn't hold my attention for more than a couple of gameplay sessions. It's weird because it feels like I should be finding it funny and amusing but I just can't really care, and the levels themselves feel tedious and stale. I guess this is just one of those well loved things that I don't get.

BLACKHOLE: Another game I gave up on, although this time it was because I really felt like I couldn't manage it. Usually puzzle platformers will have some slack on the platformer or puzzle part to make the other more engaging but this one goes way too heavy on both. I just kept thinking to myself, here's this game where I have to keep replaying the levels to try to figure out how to get stuff - does it REALLY need to make me time and position the jumps so carefully? I guess if it was setting out to make me feel thoroughly inadequate at this type of game it did a pretty good job.

The Narrator is a DICK: Low effort troll game with a single occasionally funny gimmick. I actually got stuck at some point on passing frustrating platforming which doesn't feel like it's supposed to happen with a game like this. So maybe I missed out whatever the best parts were supposed to be. Still I dunno, kudos to the author for getting me to pay for this.

La-Mulana: UGH this is the most cryptic game I've ever played in my life and there's no way I'm ever going to be able to beat it. Or probably make it past one dungeon without a guide. I mean, okay I'm not really great at typical gaming puzzles but I do tend to be able to manage them eventually.. but this is nothing but badly written, extremely obfuscated riddles. And I suck at riddles so yeah, no chance. It's a shame because the music is wonderful.

Nuclear Throne: Twin-stick shooter randomly generated rogue-lite-ish thing. Another super highly rated game that I couldn't really commit myself to. I actually liked a lot of the premise, I think I just physically can't deal with twin stick shooters well. Constantly moving both sticks around is uncomfortable with my tiny little fingers. Probably not a real problem for everyone else so maybe actually pick this up.

20XX: Rogue-lite sort of version of MegaMan X. I got this one to netplay with Quasar, but I couldn't play it much because it crashed on me a lot (could be Wine's fault). Quasar went on to really love the game. But he admits that the randomly generated nature makes it feel not very MegaMan-like despite otherwise being a direct lift of it. And I'd tend to agree, I just don't think the concept works for me - there's something about this style of gameplay that I feel hardwired towards needing to be, well, fixed in design.

Angry Video Game Nerd II: ASSimilation: Sequel to AVGN's cash-in game (which I played on my Windows machine ages ago). Not as frustrating as the original, some tighter gameplay sections and quite good music. But I never actually beat it because the last area was pissing me off. I think I didn't have much to go either. Oh well. Probably won't come back to it.

Hyper Light Drifter: Talked about this earlier, but yeah, this game is really good. Highly recommend it.