INaNBillington
I started this not understanding the hate, but by the end I wanted to throw Kiddy Kong into a fucking woodchipper.
I feel like with II and III, Sega were trying to reinvent the wheel and add a lot of weird mechanics and plotpoints to set the Phantasy Star series apart from all the other JRPGs on the market. It's funny, then, that IV returns to the style of the first game to present a standard yet solid experience, and in doing so eclipses those two games with flying colors. Combat's fun and comprehensive, dungeons are well designed, the story and characters are all well written and memorable, and the graphics are outstanding, especially the character portraits and cutscenes. It's no Dragon Quest V or Chrono Trigger, but the fact that I can even compare it to such great games is a lot more than I can say about the prior two entries in the series.
Better than Phantasy Star II by a decent margin, though the gameplay itself still isn't great. Combat is painfully shallow, and exploring the world can get really irritating with all the backtracking you have to do. The fact that there are seven different scenarios is fucking awesome and probably the best part of the game, but at the same time, I can't see myself trudging through this utter mediocrity three more times to see them all.
1989
Quite possibly the most overrated JRPG of its era. It fails in almost every way the first succeeded; the combat is clunky, slow and completely unbalanced, the encounter rate is absurdly high, and worst of all, the dungeons are bar none the most confusing, over-designed pieces of shit I've ever witnessed in a video game. It's got good music and a respectable story that goes places few games did at the time, but it's not enough to mask how downright awful the rest of the game is.
Now I finally understand the "I hate Sonic because you always run into shit you can't see" thing.
A marked improvement over Jedi Outcast. The level design is way more coherent with much better conveyance as to what's expected of the player, and there's a lot more variety too. The progression system from the first game is back though still very streamlined, and the morality system is still missing until the very end of the game, but it's still nice that they're there in some capacity. Gunplay is far more satisfying and precise, but WHO FUCKING CARES YOU ACTUALLY START WITH A LIGHTSABER GOTYAY
I'd call it a guilty pleasure, but there's nothing to feel guilty about. It's a good ass game. Maybe being such an MJ mark makes me a bit biased, but I think it could easily be repurposed into a decent Shinobi game and no one would bat an eye.
One step forward, two steps back. The combat is the best it's ever been, with tons of variability with the items and weapons that aren't completely superfluous like in the preceding games, and graphically it's still stunning. The general design takes a big hit, however, by focusing even more on setpieces that often overstay their welcome and QTEs, and it's a lot more handheld than the other games. There are some mechanics that are introduced with simple tutorial popups rather than the organic, visual design found in the first two games (e.g. grappling to and flying with Harpies or making Sirens appear with Helios's head) and it feels really uninspired as a result. The UI is just fucking putrid too; Copperplate Gothic font, gaudy flames around all the button prompts, no thanks. Worth playing overall, but it definitely fits the "cinematic setpiece simulator" stereotype to a T.
A very existent game.
2005
I'm NEVER playing one of these piece of shit games on the harder difficulties again.
2019
Entertaining little game with some really fun movement tech, I liked it.
1996
Oh yeah, Tomb Raider, used to do it when I was a kid. Got me six months in juvie.
Thanks, I always wanted to replay the least fun dungeons from the base game.
1993
Kinda hard to rate this game any higher considering it's literally unfinished, plus the fact that that goddamn train level from Mega Turrican is here and sucks just as hard. Everything else is pretty solid, though you're still probably better off playing the director's cut.
2012
This game really, really sucks...but I'd be lying if I said there weren't a few times where I felt genuine joy at some of the levels that vaguely resemble Hitman. Luring both targets over a puddle of gasoline, shooting it from afar and watching their smoldering corpses get crushed by the nearby collapsing building will always stick in my mind as being extremely satisfying, but it's really disappointing that those moments are so sparse in this lobotomized excuse for a game. I don't even think the "it's a good game, just not a good Hitman game" argument works, because there are so many issues that counteract it. Spotty AI, context sensitive actions not appearing properly, selective regard for sound and things that should visually obscure you, the completely asinine disguise and instinct systems, I can just keep going. I knew I should have just skipped this to play the recent trilogy, but my curiosity got the best of me.