hey. so this game is pretty cool. its like a satire of trendy start-up culture or whatever and ngl its sometimes a lil cringe and wont age well but thats okay. i know roguelikes are poppin but thats a big ask upfront sometimes. i gotta put in alot of work before i even know if the game sucks or not lol. im a renaissance man, you gotta court the yalp. anyway i kinda like this “series of mini runs” approach cuz the investment to payoff ratio is a bit more consistent and thats just like….. better

speaking of better, going under is set up in a very non-egghead way. instead of crunching numbers, combat focuses on a more “chaos baller” style of engagement. things are exploding, youre grabbing chairs and keyboards, victory is determined by how much you can go wit the flow, think on your feet. most of the skills make more things explode, or give you command of the explosions, or make people date you. i thrive in chaos, i love to go hyatt (she makes that noise cuz its like zelda) and i too hate capitalism and love spongebob

anyway games pr sick
see you later gamer dweebz xoxo

Ah, takes me back... this is where my RPG marathon began, back in the forgotten age of 2022. The year where I set out to beat as many RPG's in a chronological order as possible, starting with the first two NES Dragon Quests. Since then, my plans have admittedly changed a bit, because at the rate I'm going, I'm probably going to die before I get to something like FF7 Rebirth. So nowadays, I go a little out of order just to make sure I'm consistently playing the RPG's I really want to play, while still occasionally squeezing in the riskier, obscure titles.

Oddly enough, this series of SNES remakes counted as one of the RPG's I really wanted to play. It's odd, because recalling my experiences with the NES versions, didn't I think these games were average at best, really basic and depthless at worst? In the case of Dragon Quest II, I must've suppressed something traumatic about it, and yet, the thought of jumping back into a remake version sounded pretty appealing.

There is something cozy about these older titles, something akin to a blend of point 'n click adventure and collect-a-thon design mentality. Where every area is something you can mark off the map, as you procure important items to solve little fetch quests, gain access to further areas, and collect important McGuffins across the whole world map in order to unlock the final standoff. I figured that coming back to that was probably what I was looking forward to the most. On top of potential QoL, and a couple lessons learned from the days of NES difficulty, I was hoping to get a better version of Dragon Quest 1 & 2. And that's exactly what this provided.

But bear in mind, I make the distinction of saying it's better, instead of "the best." Because though I had some expectations for the remake, I also kept in mind that we're still in the year 1993, and RPG's weren't at the cutting edge of modern convenience yet. There were some that started thinking forward, but most did not get the memo. As for this? It kinda got it. Half of it. In the very least, I could say for sure that I'd choose playing this over the NES originals any day. But, well... am I being greedy for wanting just a little more out of this?

So in the case of the DQ1 remake, I had a pretty alright time. Length left me a little surprised though, did it always take only 5 hours to beat this game??? Anyway, it seems like the game was subtly rebalanced to be more in your favor. Grinding for money and experience was still a thing, but considering the short length, it wasn't a big deal. Another notable improvement are the extended music tracks. Loops that used to be short, now have more parts and variety to them, like they crammed down an orchestral score into a SNES cartridge. It would help tremendously in alleviating repetition, although they didn't fix the encounter rates, so hearing these songs constantly restart is gonna be a problem in itself.

More importantly, the remakes appear to run on the same engine as SNES DQ5, meaning that all the improvements from that game, are now over here! Auto-targeting's a thing, seeing equipment stats in a shop is a thing, a dedicated talk button is there, how cool! I think it would've been cooler though, if they didn't also bring back every single problem from DQ5. If you're looking for a run button, you're still shit outta luck. Shops remain as chatty and sluggish to purchase things through as ever, I will continue to complain about the limited inventory for as long as they don't fix it, and by JOVE, you gotta love the NPC's that literally block your way for what could be a whole minute of your time because that's just how their RNG works.

Again, in DQ1 none of this is necessarily a huge issue just because of how quick and to the point that game is. DQ2 is a whole other story, that's a 15-hour adventure right there, and every DQ5-related problem only makes it drag more as it goes on.

If they tried rebalancing DQ2, kudos. It really needed it. But I don't think they went as far as they should have, there is still an obnoxious amount of grind in this game. Equipment tends to cost more than my house, and as you head over to the field, you realize that the poultry amount of gold the enemies drop is not gonna get you close to buying that stuff anytime soon.

Now, considering the more open nature of DQ2, I understand that you're meant to be exploring the world in order to naturally procure enough gold to buy the better equipment later. But that's if you're not getting your ass constantly handed to you by how much pain the enemies dish out, losing your gold in the process. Of the three characters you control, only one of them is decently equipped until the endgame. The rest, are surviving by the skin of their teeth at all times, unless you're willing to spend hours of your life on that grind. And even then, an enemy can just say fuck it and instantly kill your entire party if they feel like it. Look, I'm fine with high difficulty in RPG's. But I think it's important to give the player the occasional break from these kinds of moments, to give them that breathing room to relax. But DQ2 being the same DQ2 it's always been, says "no."

Also, they brought the conveniences of DQ5 over, but NOT the fast travel spell? Like, you have the spell that brings you to the last save point, but what about the one where you can select any town you've previously visited? DQ2 is in such desperate need of this, what with all the back and forth backtracking and the long, elaborate paths you need to take to slooowly get back to the town you want, all the while enemies are raining down on you. Run button's one thing, but I think this was the most glaring omission from this remake, it's kinda crazy it's just not here.

Another problem pertains to the fan translation. It says it fixed all the bugs from an older English translation, but no it didn't. The reviews on romhacking.net that made note of this weren't just outdated, they are accurate to the day of me writing this. You've got basic typos that take you out of the experience, and potential softlocks and visual glitches that replace your entire dungeon with garbage data. And that's just what I ran into. It seems that DQ2 is the less stable of the two, since I didn't get anything like that while playing DQ1. And it definitely makes it a little harder to recommend, since you would have to basically be ready to constantly make save states, in the case that the game might or might not break soon.

So... in total, I think I can at least recommend this package as a good way to play DQ1, y'know, if you just wanna see where did it all begin. You're not gonna get any interesting story or depth out of it, but set your expectations accordingly to "one of the first RPG series in history", and it won't be the worst use of your time when considered historically like that.

But when it comes to DQ2, my verdict is about the same as it was for the NES. Just don't bother, it's not worth it. The game may not be as hair-pullingly brutal as it used to be, but its tedious grinding and balancing was not fixed. Of course, that's assuming that the tediousness is something TO fix, and not just an inherent element of what DQ2 is. And the bugginess of the fan translation does not help its case either. At that point, surely there's gotta be a safer way to play this game, right...? Y-You're not gonna make me play... the ph-phone ports, are you...?!

This was a servicable way to return to these games. And it'll be a servicable way to experience them for your first time too. But it's still not quite there yet, it hasn't quite eliminated all the old-ass NES quirks of this franchise, and it still requires that sort of patience to really want to get through them. This is still something I would only recommend to people truly dedicated to getting into this franchise, like myself. Wake me up when the boat reaches the other side of the map.

An underrated, 80s action inspired, side scroller, shoot 'em up.

-The visuals are beautiful. The heroes, the bosses, the enemies, all are beautifully designed; and have smooth animations. The backgrounds and the environments are very vibrant, and there is always something happening in the background (if you pay attention to it). Visually, my only problem is the in-game UI. The heroes icon and his life bar, etc, are so far at the corner of the monitor. It would be much better if it was a bit closer to the center.

-The story is a simple, corny, 80s action movie. You are a bounty hunter in a dystopian future and you have to help the cops and the government (obviously corrupt) to get rid of some gangs. And of course it has an unnecessarily negative ending. Nothing special to it; but I personally like these 80s action parodies, hopefully you're into it as well.

-The game is a side scrolling shoot 'em up, so the gameplay is the most important thing in it. You have your heroes main weapon and their melee weapon. But as you are playing you can pick up other stuff as your secondary gun or melee weapon. The gameplay is very good for the first half of the game, but it just gets progressively boring as you progress in the game.

-The level structure is very simple. You are to face 4 different gang, each stronger and armed with better weapons as the previous one. Each gang has a leader, and that leader has 4 right hands (this is the best way I can explain it, believe me). You will have to kill those 4, one by one and eventually finish the leader of that gang. For each of these bosses; there are some stages to clear first and then you reach the boss of that level. As I said the gangs and the bosses will get stronger and stronger; so don't be fooled by the first ones.


If you are into this genre, you should really give this game a shot. It might not be the best you will ever see; but it can give you a couple of hours of pure fun.

Moonlighter is a game that tries to do multiple popular genres at once, however, it ends up doing neither especially well. The two main sections you flip through are the shop management and the dungeon-crawling rogue-like. Each of these are fun enough to go through but a lot of the time, you can just ignore the shop management and shove anything you don’t want into the sell section. This leaves a lot of the rewards you find in the dungeon feeling unrewarding and meaningless. The dungeon exploring and combat also felt pretty sloppy and sluggish but still was enjoyable enough to keep me wanting to go further and beat the game. One good thing is just how the game looks. The pixel art is done very well and each object feels like it had effort put into it. While trying to reach for a higher bar is great, it's pretty obvious how Moonlighter was stretched too thin with too many different ideas.

The same beautiful game with just a few new gimmicks and ideas. The art style remains great and perfectly captures the feeling that the game is trying to give and the story is also pretty similar to the last. The biggest change is how you can now control two characters in some puzzles which could’ve made the game a lot harder. Sadly in those puzzles, they dumbed down the gameplay a lot to keep the difficulty relatively the same as the other puzzles. I wish Monument Valley 2 would take more risks and dive deeper into harder puzzle territory, but it just seems like their complacent staying in their lane.

A very beautiful game that tells a cute story but that’s about it. The overall game looks amazing, the art style feels very surreal with the minimalist textures which blend well with the reality-bending puzzles that are present throughout the game. The real disappointment with the game is just how easy the puzzles are. I rarely had to think while playing this game and it felt like most of the puzzles could be solved in a single glance. This makes the overall game feel boring, but it did allow me to focus on the art more. Make sure to buy the game on sale if you decide to play it.