5 reviews liked by OneSlyGuy


I’ve known about this game for a minute and just avoided it because of the cover art. It didn't really look like my kind of game. What reminded me of this game's existence was seeing a tweet around a week ago that Wild Woody was added to an NSFW kart racing game. I had to do a double take, but it was actually real. I shouldn’t be surprised considering the name of the game, but, like, wow. I consider myself to be a fan of the Sega CD, so I did want to give this game a try.

The controls are some of the worst I’ve seen in the medium. When jumping, Woody stutters when rising and falling, so it ends up feeling like you’re rubber banding in an online game. Woody’s main form of attacking is jumping on enemies, which will play out an animation where he sinks into the enemy while erasing them from the level. There’s been times where I would try jumping on enemies upwards of 5 times in a row and it would still not register! He’s also got this sketch ability where you’ll have to press the pause button, flip through the sketch book to find the ability you want to use, and activate it, which plays out an animation. Admittedly, a cool idea, but badly integrated since you can only use 2 of these before having to get a powerup later in the level. For the most part, these are useless in the sense that they obstruct the flow of the game and are never good enough to where you’d even think of using them instead of just damage boosting through whatever enemy is in front of you. Abilities are mostly some awkward projectile or something that transforms you into something for more jump height and movement speed, all controlling as bad if not worse than your standard form. For example, there’s ones that turn you into a kangaroo and hobby horse.

This game is not good in the level design department either. Wild Woody has the design philosophies of Sonic CD with these large, incoherent mazes I’ve gotten lost in for some embarrassingly long times. Also cluttered with enemy placements that, at times, make taking damage feel unavoidable. It’s so bad you’re better off just damage boosting through everything since you’ll probably take more damage trying to avoid them. The enemies also really like throwing unfair projectiles, which you can’t even avoid at times. It’s evident this game was a rush job, and the stage design really makes that show. I get the vibe that they made the levels and didn’t even try playing through the game because a ton of stages have platforming segments that are way too awkward to perform consistently. In the Mount Olympus stage, there is a part where you literally have to take a leap of faith and hope you land on a small platform instead of falling below the area and having to climb back up again. I haven’t mentioned yet that Woody has an ability where he can erase areas of the map to find secrets and progress through the stage. That’s fine; at the start of the game, they highlight these areas to let you know you can erase them, but past level 1, they never mark them again. So, there are areas I’ve gotten trapped in where you just have to waste time guessing where the erasable floor or wall is. Funnily enough, they also increase the time to do so in later stages if it wasn’t already cryptic enough, because then you’ll have to wait longer to erase things with no prior indication.

First impressions of the music from stage 1 sound bad initially, but make more sense since Ron Thal who did the music, said that he made the soundtrack start off silly and progressively get more intense throughout. So even though the first song sounds like a prog rock cover of a nursery rhyme, it does start to pick up the pace with the later stages. My favorite songs are the space stage theme and this song that went unused due to a presumed programming bug. It's a bit goofy, but the high-tempo drums and the piano make for a pretty kickass boss theme, so it’s sad this song didn’t make it in.

How was this released?! Ristar literally came out earlier in the year, and this was supposed to be the swan-song for the Sega CD? How unfortunate… It’s a shame because I think this game had the potential to be pretty cool. I also think it's hilarious that the platforming mascot shit got so out of hand that they made one for a fucking pencil… At least the soundtrack is good.

Revelations: Persona was the first Shin Megami Tensei game released in the West. No, Jack Bros. does not count. Sorry guys. I had thought this was the only game with the weird “Revelations” surname, but I recently found out a GBC port of the first Last Bible game was released in the west as “Revelations: The Demon Slayer." It's kind of weird to think that there’s an alternate timeline where SMT3 would’ve been called “Revelations: Nocturne” or something like that.

This game has a notoriously bad localization job, and I’m sure most have at least seen some things about it. The game's script was altered to take place in America instead of Japan, and Atlus tried to make it seem that way, but it's pretty easy to see through since the characters are clearly wearing Japanese school uniforms and the song playing in the pharmacy has Japanese lyrics. Character names were also changed to sound more standard. Nanjo’s name was changed to Nate, and Maki’s name was changed to Mary, to name a few. Character designs were also changed, most notably Mark being changed into a racist stereotype. It also seems that anyone who had black hair had their hair color altered to blonde or something. Why is this? No idea. And I thought Working Designs was shit at localizing.

Well, firstly, about the gameplay, Persona 1 struggles with its balancing. Most enemies will barely do any damage to you, let alone even hit you. Paired with how slow this game is, it tends to get pretty dull at times. Most of the boss fights are also complete pushovers that never challenge your wits. The only time I was really strategizing and switching personas was the final boss, which can be RNG-reliant, is held at the end of the final dungeon, and can take 2-4 hours to get through with no save in between! Nonetheless, it still serves to make you use everything you can at the end.

About the personas, though, unlike later entries in the series, this game actually lets you equip 3 personas for each character. It requires a lot more planning than just fusing for the main character, as you’ll need to have personas that are better suited to the whole party’s traits. Mark should get personas with high strength, Mary/Maki should get dexterity/agility, stuff like that. You’ll also have to level up the personas by using their moves in battles in order to unlock their full moveset. So, I was switching them around and getting all their moves, which at times can prove very useful. At the start of the game, I had gotten a persona with a Heal All move that only cost 7 MP, and that carried my ass through the entire game and helped tremendously on the final boss. It’s super fun fusing in this game and getting oddball broken shit when it feels like you’re not even supposed to a lot of the time. It never really breaks the game, though, since traditionally with Megaten games, a lot of enemies are going to repel certain attacks, so you’ll not be able to really use the same move the whole time.

There’s also this kind of cool SRPG formation mechanic in the game too. You’ll have to move your party of 5 around on this formation grid to best suit their strengths. If they’re in areas in the back, they’ll take less physical damage but will also not be able to reach enemies with their physical attacks. One of my characters, Brad/Brown, had good reach with his spear, so he was able to be placed in the middle and still attack most of the enemies with his physical attacks. You also don’t want them all to be placed too close to each other, since there’s area magic in this game that extends to other party members when hitting someone. Truthfully, it’s not super important, and you can kind of use one formation the whole game and it’ll work fine. I only found myself really using this mechanic on the final boss for the most part.

My favorite aspect of Persona 1 is how it absolutely nails its atmosphere, mostly due to how outstanding this game's soundtrack is. There are these really creepy songs that fit super well when dungeon crawling, and then some of my favorites in this game are these ethereal and relaxing tracks that play during cutscenes or downtime. There’s barely any misses, and it definitely became one of my new favorite OSTs.

Also adding to this game's atmosphere is its first-person dungeon crawling. Many would call it dated; I would call it a different perspective. Honestly, design-wise, it's kind of boring. Most RPGs would have treasure at the end of dead ends, but Persona 1 doesn’t. Instead, you’ll rarely find these rooms with a few treasure chests in them, which, for the most part, have nothing useful in them. I would have really liked to see more of these rooms, as they really would have given me more of a reason to fill out the map. Thankfully, this game has a map that fills out as you progress in dungeons, so you’ll not need graph paper or anything like that! Accompanying this map is a mini map at the top right of the screen that will show you pieces of the map that you haven’t been to yet from the radius of your character. I didn’t realize until my friend pointed it out, but I was literally just staring at the mini map because it just shows you the dead ends so you can completely avoid getting lost. It’s a huge quality of life thing, but a little bit too much in my opinion, and it made the dungeons effortless since combat is also very easy.

Besides the gameplay aspect, I think the dungeons are really cool. They all have their own designs and music, and strangely enough, they have different walking sound effects to accompany the different terrain. I really like when you’re walking around the school and it plays these recorded sounds of someone walking on the tile. It's kind of a weird thing to point out, but it really just added a level of immersion for me. There’s also surprisingly great sound design in this game, too. In combat, there’s so much reverb and punch to attacks, and that makes them feel effective.

When going into different areas in the overworld, the characters in your party will all be present, and you will be able to speak to all of them. When different story events are taking place, they will all have unique dialogue for all the areas in the game, that being stuff like the clinic or shops. This was a level of care that I was surprised to see, and it helped me get attached to the cast of characters. I really wish more games would do stuff like this.

Lastly, I love the UI in this game. In the menu, there’s this blue and orange grid, and on top of that, your options are all allocated to an orb on what looks like a solar system. Then, in combat, your options are these metallic-looking boxes that, when highlighted, glow orange. It looks a lot cooler than I made it sound though, I promise. I didn’t really know where to throw this in either, but in battle, there’s multiple of these psychedelic moving backgrounds that look like they're straight out of Earthbound and look really sick.

Persona 1 does a great job at using all the PS1’s new bells and whistles. It excels in so many departments and looks great in both its 2D and 3D sections. There’s so much effort in areas that didn’t even need them, and it works great as a horror RPG of sorts. It’s tough to recommend this game though, since it’s honestly pretty inaccessible. But, if you can look past how dated and slow the game is, it is one that will not be forgotten.

i wanted to hate this cuz its popular and i ahte popular shit and yea its mildy overrated but fuck its goode its actually really goode

Demon's Crest, being the third game in the Gargoyles Quest series, which are platformers with RPG progression, decides to open up the formula and let you tackle levels in your own order, Mega Man style. The difference being, in the Gargoyle's Quest games, they had linear structure. So, what's the issue here?

This game was not designed around the upgrades it gives you. Even from the very start the game gives you the ability to infinitely hover which allows you to bypass a lot of the level design. This, and other abilities give many sections no challenge. The only instances of this game I remember being a fun challenge was when I did not have a lot of health at the beginning and was forced to learn boss patterns. The bosses are well designed and fun but you can just tank through a lot of them later on. The soundtrack is also pretty boring and repetitive. It's a shame because Gargoyle's Quest 1 and 2 each are designed well and have you utilize your abilities equally throughout the games, instead of this games lack of thought out upgrade distribution.

This game's worth trying if you like permanent character upgrades. Not an awful game, but it still has glaring issues.

The game's story is amazing and the best in the entire series. My big complaints is that the story did take quite a while to pick up and the gameplay is some donkey ass. Obviously since it's one of the older Persona's it has some errors but man the gameplay was just really bad for me. Made it really hard to bear through it all. But the story is amazing and if you are willing to look past the horrible gameplay you will love this games story. Or just wait for the potential remake because they'll more than likely fix it's flaws