Expa0

I could get two or three skins which are years old in Overwatch 2 or I could instead use just about the same amount of money for a brand new full length game of my choice.

I've been playing this Fire Emblem clone called Lost Eidolon on steam, it's mostly taking its notes from the switch fire emblem, 3 Houses, which structurally and otherwise I don't really care for but I guess this game's been alright just because I still do enjoy the FE gameplay at its base. Probably not something I'd likely recommend though, it lacks a lot of the clarity and polish that FE has and I do find the UI terrible.

Have also been playing a few session of Vampire Survivor, which while fun in short bursts I don't think I've gotten addicted to it in the same way some have. Good value for what it is though.

But for the weekend itself I'll be visiting my friends in the capital, probably going to be enjoying some party & board games and watching some bad horror movies for halloween.

I played it and it was fine, but I definitely wouldn't say that I "enjoyed every moment of it". As I understand this is supposed to be a professional site so I'd appreciate if there's gonna be a dumb poll that it wouldn't be loaded like this one.

Lovely old school art. This game has probably my favorite video game story and setting of all time and it's a solid action RPG to boot.

I quite enjoyed 999, I played quite a bit of this but eventually just grew bored, didn't help that the european version had forced japanese voice acting for some reason.

Still continuing with Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines, just made it through a godawful sewer dungeon that just went on and on and on and finally gained access to the 4th, and if the menus are to be believed, last main area of the game.

Even with the sewer being a bit of a downer and the game being kind of jank at points, it's nonetheless been a pretty great experience overall.

Yeah, I liked the badass greedy tough guy Wario, the version of him in Warioland 4 is one of my favorite Nintendo characters ever.

I definitely don't like how his defining traits became that he's fat and gross and he has the power of farts.

I can still feel the blisters on my hand...

Probably some of the most worthwhile additions on this dumb service, I think these still hold up great as party games.

Haha, that is kind of funny. Hell I'd love a Silent Hill-like psychological horror thing featuring Luigi as the main character.

3 > 2 > 1 > 5=6=7 > Superstars > SMP > 4 >>> 10

Those are the ones I've played, Nintendo 64 is where the series was at its strongest, 1 has the best soundtrack but the awful stick spinning minigames kind of hurt it, 3 just oozes with content and mechanics, and the boards are so intrigate and fun. Most of the Gamecube Mario Partys kind of blend in together for me and I couldn't tell you which one I preferred of the top of my head, but 4 I never cared for, it was slow, the minigames were kind of lame and compared to the N64 Mario Parties the boards just lacked in personality.

Superstars and SMP are both decently fun but sorely lacking in boards, especially with the latter just having kind of uninteresting boards altogether, both do have a great selection of minigames. 10 was just plain bad, it was like the weird board game mode in Smash 4 Wii U, nothing you did mattered.

Not into Bayonetta whatsoever so none of this really has any effect on me.

Though honestly I don't really get what the big deal is, voice actors don't own the characters they're voicing, if the voice actor doesn't think she's paid enough then she's free to walk away, and platinum is free to hire anyone they wish for the role. I'm sure someone else would be thrilled to have the bayonetta VA in their project so I'd suggest she just move on and stop being petty.

Played through the first and second game after one of my friends bought it for me for christmas, really fun high quality visual novels with some nice music.

Asked for something thematically accurate to play on halloween, got a bunch of nice recommendations but the game I ended up with was Vampire the Masquerade Bloodlines, a western RPG set on modern times with sort of an undercover vampire society going around with a bunch of different clans of vampire, one which you become part of. It's got character stat sheets going on, a small overworld area from which you pick up missions to do from which you continue the main story and gain exp from which you get to power up your character. A particular highlight so far a mission where you went to stop a haunting in haunted hotel, quite cool stuff. Game has tons of character and atmosphere, mechanically it's apparently super broken by default but the recommendation came with a fan-made unofficial patch that fixes the game in a big way.

Still into Overwatch 2 also, bunch of fun with friends. Been trying to get into Doomfist lately but I donno if that's been working out so great for me.

Out of these I'm gonna go with Kraid's Lair, I prefer the Zero Mission version of it, it is a top tier track.

I cited Link to the Past Dark World theme as my favorite Nintendo track in the last article but as I had more time to think there's definitely some strong contenders in Mining Melancholy from Donkey Kong Country 2 and Lower Brinstar from Super Metroid.

I'm quite glad that demos have become so much more common than they used to be. I'm not really into playing demos of games which I know for sure I would like, but sometimes there's stuff like the recent Diofield Chronicles or Harvestella demos which I never would have even tried if not for the demo, and for the latter I actually enjoyed it to the point where I do want to get it.

Good riddance I say, almost without exception I personally only like video game music, at least when it sounds like video game music.

Not really interested in new entries after BD2 and I suppose just in general I'm not really into these types of JRPGs where practically the only gameplay comes from the boss battles.

Can't wait, easily my most hyped game at the moment. And speaking of Mystic Quest it's been confirmed that that one's getting a few new tracks too in addition of the two battle tracks in the 3DS entry, The awesome Doom Castle theme is in as well as the Final Battle theme.

I kind of hate to go for something so "obvious" but I'm gonna have to go with the Dark World overworld theme in the Link to the Past, it's such a catchy and memorable track. Only the original version that is, I still haven't heard an arrangement, official or otherwise, that does it proper justice.

I'm hoping I can finish up Shining in the Darkness on the weekend, I've had an absolute pain of a week and I've barely had any time or energy to do anything, I've beaten the 4 trials and I've made it through the 2nd floor of the 5 floor main labyrinth.

Also have been playing the new Overwatch 2 which I did get shockingly into the old Overwatch just a few months back, I've never been one for FPSs before, especially the online kind, but this series just works for me. It is quite a lot of fun to play, especially when teaming up with a friend.

Yeah, I played it on the PS3 through the PS Classics gatalogue, it's a really good and insanely detailed game.

I'd be up to it for it being available to more people, though if it doesn't have the cheesy OG voice acting then I personally don't care.

E: I'd love a version with all the Saturn version bonus areas and the Maria mode from that version.

All I can say about this game is that I hated it so much that it made me sell my entire 3DS library at that point (which to be fair was only 3 games), one of the worst games I've ever played and an insult to the classic Resident Evil 4 merc mode.

@Royalblues
I'm kicking myself for forgetting Phantasy Star 3 from my list, that's definitely a game I feel gets hated on way too much, I personally prefer it to Phantasy Star 2 at the very least.

Simon's Quest is another good one someone mentioned, game has some questionable design choices but I think it's fun to play and I'd argue it has the best soundtrack of all the NES Castlevania, including the mansion theme which might just be my favorite Castlevania track of all time.

I guess I could also drop Suikoden 4 in here, most seem to consider the weakest of the main series Suikoden games and I can see why, game's awkwardly barren to the point where it feels unfinished, the ship sailing world map is slow, annoying to control and boring and its the only main series game that drops the party size to 4 instead of 6, a big flop for a game with like 60+ playable units.. But in spite of all that I l quite like this game, and if it wasn't for the 4 unit limit I'd argue it as the 2nd best game in the series.

7th Saga also is another I can think of, I think a lot of people are turned off by the difficulty but I think its a solid old school JRPG with some interesting ideas and an awesome soundtrack.

Breath of Fire Dragon Quarter seems to have a very mixed reception, some people absolutely hate it, others love it, there doesn't seem to be much in between, I first played it this year and I can safely say that I think it's a fantastic and a very unique game, it's also a rare case where I actually got invested into a game's story.

@BoilerBroJoe
Heck yes, N64 Goemon is a dear game to me as well, game has a ton of personality and has one of my all time favorite soundtracks.

I guess to name a few I can think of I will never admit to it being trash personally, but I've seen plenty of people hating on Parasite Eve 2 meanwhile for me it is an all time favorite. Mystic Quest I love for the soundtrack, not that, that's a particularly hot take or anything... Fire Emblem Shadow Dragon both the original and especially the DS remake of it I find to be the finest game in the whole series, I donno if too many people love them quite to that degree.

Playing Shining in the Darkness through the Sega Megadrive Collection, an old school dungeon crawler RPG. I've previously been rather intimidated by these types of RPGs when they do not feature a proper automap, basically forcing you to draw one of your own (or look up a readily made one on the web if you're lame), but I finally decided to take up the challenge and honestly it's been surprisingly fun in its own weird way, definitely does add a degree of immersion to it all. The game itself is fine, kind of barebones and sorely lacking in music variety but it's got the fundamentals and I think it does have a charming look to it at least.

Here's a map I drew of the Cave of Courage dungeon: https://imgur.com/a/LnLoEBK

Bleh, not really a fan of them bringing back the old characters in this way, just make each game be their own thing and keep all the dumb fanservice stuff to the mobile game.

As for the ring system the best feature about it seems to be that its optional as far as I can tell.

Played this on the DS and I also played the PS2 version just a few months ago (Which, my recommendation is to just stick with the DS version).

It's a great game for sure but personally I do prefer 4 and 3 when it comes to this series.

Just waiting for the Nintendo C&D

Played through the demo now and shockingy enough I actually quite liked it, way moreso than I though, it plays like an action dungeon crawler, reminds me a lot of Dark Cloud on PS2 (though unlike that there's no randomly generated layouts) with some small vibes of Etrian Odyssey to it too. You run through maze like levels, fight enemies, find treasure, gather materials, unlock short cuts, and open hidden paths, some of which require you to bring additional consumable tools to unlock. There's a bunch of resource management going on and even though it does have a very basic action combat system, success is definitely more geared on strategy and preparation than actual action games skills which I personally quite like,

So far it seems like the farming stuff is merely a means to an end to help with the dungeon rather than the main attraction, you plow the land, plant some seeds on the ground and then reaps the rewards a few ingame days later, there's a simple box in which you can then dump your crop and you'll automatically gain some moolah the next day or alternatively you can eat them to regain some of your hunger meter (there does also seem to be some form of animal farming as well which I think was available in the demo but I didn't go for the animal expansion in the town).

In addition of HP the game does have a hunger meter and a stamina meter, latter of which empties out whenever you do basically anything, it does slowly recover if you have anything on your hunger meter, there's also an ingame time limit, which does constantly tick down, there's a limited amount of time in each day which you can spend on farming or dungeon crawling or visiting the town, once the clock hits 12PM or you get knocked out by an enemy you lose conciousness and end up in your home bed, you do not lose any of your items but you do have to pay a small doctors fee and you start out the next day at 12am as opposed to 6am if you went to bed manually. in the demo you had to play the game up to the end of Chapter 2 or alternatively it would end if you made it up to Day 15 (I was a day 10 when I finished the demo). I'm not entirely sure how the bigger picture of the game is going to play out, if there's gonna be a hard time limit to that but If there is then I figure it's probably gonna be fairly lenient,

And while the game does look quite nice and has a fairly strong art direction I'd say, there's definitely some jank to it, in particular main character run animation is hilariously bad, why the hell is whole upper body so static and only the legs move, even Mario 64 had if better, this is also probably something exclusive to the Switch but there was some pretty noticeable slow down at times, it wasn't terrible or anything but still noticeably enough and reason enough for me to go for some other version since I do have the option, looked a bit muddy too as these 3rd party games tend to on the system. Finally the soundtrack is quite nice so I definitely enjoyed this one a lot and I'll be getting it for sure. Thanks a lot for this feature because I probably would not have tried this otherwise.

Pre-ordered, always love extensive retro game collections, this one in particular seems like a lot of love is being put into it.

@Sebos
I can confirm that you most definitely do not need to grind in Triangle Strategy, at least on the normal difficulty.

I mean I guess out of the myriad farm sims in the direct this was the one that at least caught my eye the most since it looked kind of nice, if there's a demo then I guess I might as well check it out. Thanks for the heads up.

I tried the demo of it on steam, was not impressed. Limiting your party to 4 units max undermines the entire combat system in my opinion and even the strategic aspects of picking your units aren't there when you're not even given the option to preview the map. Music and story didn't do anything for me either. I do enjoy the art and general vibe though, wish Fire Emblem was a bit more akin to this.

Squeenix has been shockingly on point for the entire Switch lifespan and they've been hard carrying many of the Nintendo Directs with their stuff. They're far from perfect of course but they've definitely stepped up their game from the PS3 era when they just couldn't do anything right.

Yet in spite of that they just cannot seem to get Final Fantasy right anymore.. Except Theatrhythm, holy smokes I'm so increribly hyped for that one!

Yeah! Still very much into it, it looks so very nice, like the Suikoden 3 of another universe where they decided to stick with 2D.

Can't wait to see and recruit all the weirdos and has beens that are there to fill out the 100+ man roster.

I do have my share of problems with Octopath at its base which likely'll make their way into this game as well, but If nothing else it's a pretty nice showcase on how far the HD2D look has come since the first Octopath, this one looks so much more vibrant and the set pieces looks a whole lot less generic in comparison.

Suikoden 2 is probably my favorite game of all time and while the remake looks nice at a glance I'm already seeing some choppiness just on the trailer, I don't have that much faith in konami to do the classic proper justice, but I guess we'll see.

Everything except Dragon Quest X ofline it seems.. lesigh..

Donno where IS keeps finding these has beens to do their character designs, Fire Emblem used to have such nice, clean anime art, ever since Awakening it's just been all so over the top and ugly. (with exception of Shadows of Valentia, that one had a really nice style).

New FF Theatrhytm with DLC is expensive as all hell, but it WAS one of my most played games on the 3DS, I'm super hyped to return to this with all the new tracks and whatnot.

Octopath 2 was fine, the first one was "good" I'm hoping they manage to overcome some of the shortcomings of the first one, it definitely looks a whole lot more nicer and colorful at least. The 2DHD looks has come a long way.

Fire Emblem is incredibly suspect, I'm still very uncertain about whether or not I should care after Three Houses brought the series to a direction that's so far removed from what I want from the series, but I'll see what it's like before I judge, for now all I can really say is that the premise is dumb, overtly anime super power fantasy thing isn't really my thing, yet the map design seemed decently indepth judging from the glimpse at the trailer. And there seems to be a Jeigan unit in the fray once again so at least it doesn't seem to fall into the pitfall where all the units are so samey at the early game like 3houses did.

Some other smaller things. Radiant Silvergun seems cool enough, not really into the farm sims which there were overabundance of.

Once again Squeenix hard carries these things, I really dunno how they've managed to do that for basically the entire Switch lifespan.

Bleh... Tough to say much of anything, the premise I find dumb and the character designs are really ugly and it goes for the overtly anime super power thing which I really would prefer if it was a bit more down to earth, but more than anything I just hope there's no freaking monastery and teaching mechanics slowing down the pacing to snails pace, for what's its worth, the map design looks solid enough from the glimpse shown at the trailer.

This made the direct for me, Squeenix with the hard carry once again.

Advance Wars remaster release date
F-Zero (as always)...
Fire Emblem with 100% less monastery
Metroid Prime 4

Something cool from Squeenix because for whatever reason they've been ridiculously good at carrying these directs.

Played both of these at some point, bought the first one, probably will not get this one though, I just preferred the more brisque pace of the first one.

I'll wait for Sephiroth, I have kind of an inside joke name I want to give to him within the game, other than that I have no real interest in any foreseeable amiibos.

Not much of a Megaman guy, I've played the NES titles 1 through 5, and 7 & 8 and I think it was X4 that had the funny voice acting, that's about it, all of it was alright but not amazing, I'll take many other action-platform-shooters before these. Sole expection is the PSP megaman game, The remake of Megaman 1, Megaman Powered Up, That game is awesome with its extensive level creator and playable boss characters, it's too bad it's probably gonna be forever stuck on the system.

Been playing Monark for the past week, a SRPG that somewhat recently released that did have some former Shin Megami Tensei guys working on it apparently. Having made my way well into the game by now I can see some of that I think.

Game's been pretty decent, I generally prefer my SRPGs mechanically a bit more simple and there's some issues with balancing but it's not too bad. The art is nice, the music isn't bad and barring a few things I've enjoyed the story well enough.

Splatoon theme looks nice even if I don't particularly care for the style the series has, Pokemon is a bit too busy and I don't think red & purple make for a nice color combination either.

I already had seen enough of this skin peeling stuff when my class mates introduced me to happy tree friends back in elementary school... Even as a joke.. no thanks.