The Arm Thrust move noise…. Hehe.

Not sure I love the Pokémon design of this region more than Hoenn. Although the 3d world elements native to the DS are still fun coming from 2d.

Delta, 2x speed, with share exp makes this a breeze… I can’t believe how much time we wasted as children. Were we just killing time to grow up to see the world? Or was Pokémon actually interesting of its own merit?? (Idea I will finish later)

quick summary of thoughts after 1 evening play session in PVE (mostly in context to Valheim), got to gear level. i apologize that i am not interested in PVP and base raiding. i don't have time for Ark Survival evolved i play games when i can, not have games play me 24/7

+ custom difficulty modifiers/sliders, reducing weapon deterioration and increasing resource gain (while not increasing resource spawn rates) feels like a nice change for someone who doesn't love the grind
+ borrows a lot from MMO combat (World of Warcraft), which while being unoriginal, is a nice inspiration. early bosses have some unique map design elements which is a very nice touch.
+ some improvements to UX over Valheim, item management, inventory, etc.

+/- spells feel very samey. this dodge heals, this dodge does damage, this dodge slows... overall they add some flavor.
+/- you don't lose your weapons/equipment when you die. i like this... but then you'll never have 1 hour sailing adventures to your body across the map. and that memory will stick way more than any death in this game.

- having your gear level track which monster you want to fight is silly. especially because if you unequip a powerful item it removes the ability to select a target? lmao.
- add mods plz
- no DLSS. AMD FSR 1.0

As a child, this game impacted me greatly for what an EA published game could do if given some creative inspiration and not taking itself too seriously (remember when EA was good kids?)

I remember finding it somewhat difficult, having a fun soundtrack, and compelling gameplay loop.

Now with almost 20 years of hindsight, does this hold up? Sorta?

What now sticks with me is the attempt… distracted by all kinds of blemishes that I can’t pretend to not see (excluding emulating this game on a steamdeck, which lead to some bugs either in z-axis fighting, textures not loading, or running sub 60 fps). Character collisions either with each other or with the map have all kinds of issues; sharp corners that kill your momentum out of nowhere, running over downed players will sometimes cause you to fall (even though logically in an arcade game you should target them to stay down longer). From the trick side, this feels less developed than Tony Hawk’s Underground or an equivalent, with the tricks very limited, differentiating themselves solely by adding Square/X mid trick to turn it from one of the base 10 moves into 20. Uber Tricks are obviously great. Fine fine fine.

There is also no real end game. In about 6-8 hours I was able to take Eddie from Garibaldi all the way to Untracked and Pipedream, and that’s it really. You can either grind out the bizarre trick book (which has no on-screen display to track causing you to either write down the trick or memorize) for better outfits but I didn’t feel compelled. Even THPS1 had all the secrets in each level that made me want to find them, here, the game just sorta ends. The only real reason to continue playing is because your friend killed you in a show off competition and now you know that getting a 400k+ score is possible (if your boarder has the proper stats). Seeing 3 mil on the global high score charts is absolutely insane btw.

Ok ok, what about artistry? It’s fine. No Okami (which I don’t love the gameplay of FWIW), or JSR here. It’s colors are fairly saturated, with some mix of 90s future here and there. The soundtrack, which I remember loving as a kid, just doesn’t hold a candle to JSR/JSRF. Aside from the excellently bombastic Run DMC title track. No one is dressing up in Bushwick as SSX Tricky characters or quoting the global vernacular of Rahzel saying “genkikai!!” (or maybe because Canada will never achieve the level of fandom as Japan).

So am I happy with my 3 hours of setup and 8 hours of play? Sorta. But more as a discussion piece with other people who copped an OLED Steamdeck as an emulation hub to relive their childhood memories.

my ONLY complaints are:

- no tooltips for items when selecting them or deciding if you should pick them up.

- when you die, it is hard to understand what killed you or if a certain combo of items backfired.

otherwise good rogue-lite, lots of good difficulty settings, scalable, decent music (although i like listening to my own library)

Marathoned the “New Hope” campaign in 48 hours and beat it first try.

It runs and looks great, and I like the premise. The gameplay loop is very anxiety driven fixer, which scratches an itch. Unfortunately it’s not very deep and lacks any sort of meaningful choices at least in the beginner campaign. I assume that the expansions will require more “hard choices” especially if you turn the difficulty up, but haven’t found it that gripping. Hard choices here mean sacrifice one for discontent when scripted. Game lays bare that you have to be amoral sometimes but doesn’t really feel like it penalizes you, you just have two abstract bars that go up and down. I think it needs a few more systems, more laws, or a longer tech tree. Or the expedition/outpost system needs more risk/reward. My favorite strategy games like Civ, Total War, Hearts of Iron allow you creativity in approach. Here, it’s all the same by the end.

Premise is good, just the writing is a bit hamfisted about climate change and social policy. Doesn’t really have an edge or something new to say.

Also late game meant destroying almost 50% of the buildings and just hunkering down / producing infinite coal. The UX could use some work as it was unclear a lot of times why stuff wouldn’t build (roads in the way) or I couldn’t find one building that does something easily, or I couldn’t find the buildings that had overtime enabled and turn it off. Needs more top down policy choices and less bottom up. Good for $10 but I don’t think this is amazing. Hoping Frostpunk 2 will be Anno 1800 in terms of length, but Hearts of Iron in depth.

Really it’s 2 cool levels, and a great art style that keep me hooked. Wish I played violent / non stealth as non-violent didn’t realllyyyy give me any fun. The stealth stuff isn’t that compelling compared to MGS:5 / Hitman, so it’s a lot of dumping bodies on shelves. The level design is on par with Deus Ex but lacks the freedom to do anything in a true Sim way.

By the end I was speed rushing with Cortano as the game no longer compelled me. Story is also eh with a reasonable villain but not one I felt strongly about by the end.

my favorite steamdeck game. i can't believe i abandoned this for months for failing on the final boss a few times. took me 41 tries to finally complete the loop once. now i love completing the loop.

i usually don't like rogue-likes/lites, but this one clicked for me. the flow state is incredibly satisfying. Once you figure out the meta (which even with written guides explaining i still didn't really figure out) the game becomes a lot more enjoyable. (hint: going full Athena / deflect is not the answer).

coupled with a perfect story for the gameplay loop (no ludo narrative dissonance), this is up there with Returnal for me.