Turquoisephoenix
2018
I had to meditate on this game for a couple months after playing it to see what my opinion would be, and I have to say that this game's storytelling, visuals, and general vibe have been sticking with me long after I finished it, even if I think its sequel The Testimony of Trixie Glimmer Smith is the better game overall. It helps that this game leans more into dark comedy and the disgustingly annoying unpleasantness of the main character rather than "oh the cutesy cartoon world is secretly fucked up", even if, yes, it turns out the cutesy cartoon world is secretly fucked up.
It's a game that's set in a cute cartoon world starring a cute bunny character that has a secret fucked up layer to it, but at least there's a substance to it and a rather good attempt at lore-building rather than introducing the darker elements purely for shock value.
It's a game that's set in a cute cartoon world starring a cute bunny character that has a secret fucked up layer to it, but at least there's a substance to it and a rather good attempt at lore-building rather than introducing the darker elements purely for shock value.
2002
This is one of those games where a lot of people are going to judge it more harshly depending on whether you just played to beat the game or if you tried to 100% the game - which means getting every blue coin - and that's pretty bullshit even with a guide. Take it from me, someone who has gotten all 120 shine sprites. Just play it to beat it. You just get a special photograph if you get 100% and you can look that up on the Mario Wiki. Don't force yourself to do the red coin acid river leaf challenge. Don't torture yourself, the bragging rights aren't worth it.
However, while I do think getting all 120 Shines is not worth it, I appreciate this game for what it does and nowadays, in a world where Nintendo has since codified the look and style of the Mario games in order to fit with the giant corporate "brand" (which isn't completely a bad thing but I will admit I miss the days where they didn't figure out which same five voice clips Bowser would cycle through in each game), playing this game and its more oddball character designs and color palettes feels like a breath of fresh air. I love that this entire game is built around a tropical island theme and so they had to get more creative with designing the levels rather than going "here's the ice level, we drew a snowman and some penguins".
The one actual downside to the game besides "bullshit challenges"? Corona Mountain. Having the final level be a single hallway with a completely underused mechanic show up in the middle of it is just bad (the boat sucks) and really shows the signs of a last-minute game crunch before the game's release.
Still a good Mario though. I'm still salty about quite a few of the Blue Coins but eh, I won't hold the game against them much like how I won't hold the Green Stars of Super Mario Galaxy 2 against it.
However, while I do think getting all 120 Shines is not worth it, I appreciate this game for what it does and nowadays, in a world where Nintendo has since codified the look and style of the Mario games in order to fit with the giant corporate "brand" (which isn't completely a bad thing but I will admit I miss the days where they didn't figure out which same five voice clips Bowser would cycle through in each game), playing this game and its more oddball character designs and color palettes feels like a breath of fresh air. I love that this entire game is built around a tropical island theme and so they had to get more creative with designing the levels rather than going "here's the ice level, we drew a snowman and some penguins".
The one actual downside to the game besides "bullshit challenges"? Corona Mountain. Having the final level be a single hallway with a completely underused mechanic show up in the middle of it is just bad (the boat sucks) and really shows the signs of a last-minute game crunch before the game's release.
Still a good Mario though. I'm still salty about quite a few of the Blue Coins but eh, I won't hold the game against them much like how I won't hold the Green Stars of Super Mario Galaxy 2 against it.
You can really tell that Sony both wanted their own version of Smash Bros but also didn't want to spend the time and money necessary to make a game like Smash Bros. Sony really needed to just open their wallet a bit more and give this game an actual budget for the roster and the story mode and we would've had something here.
A lot of early 3D platformer games have bad cameras, but this might be the only game where the camera is not only bad but actively mocks you when you try to wrestle control from it. The sound designer for this game chose the most obnoxious noise possible for the camera error SFX and as a result, the camera has an aggressive "fuck you" aura to it as you struggle to make certain jumps.
I still love this game though, probably because nostalgia is one hell of a drug.
I still love this game though, probably because nostalgia is one hell of a drug.
I bought this game for only twenty dollars thanks to a Black Friday sale and I still feel like I spent too much on it.
I mean the core gameplay is alright but...would it kill them to not recycle visuals and music from the Wii era for this game? The Mario series has had plenty of games with decent art style choices so I have no idea why the graphic and sound design for this game feels like recycled clip art from the company portfolio.
I mean the core gameplay is alright but...would it kill them to not recycle visuals and music from the Wii era for this game? The Mario series has had plenty of games with decent art style choices so I have no idea why the graphic and sound design for this game feels like recycled clip art from the company portfolio.
WARNING! The title of this game spoils the ending!
This review contains spoilers
Professor Layton and Luke board a train, take it to a town with a massive gas leak, and then proceed to have a giant drug trip where they hallucinate a bunch of puzzles and fight an elderly old man who is also tripping on gas.
And it's one of the best puzzle games on the DS with some of the best songs in the entire Professor Layton series.
And it's one of the best puzzle games on the DS with some of the best songs in the entire Professor Layton series.
In Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker, there's a monster that's only obtainable if you catch all the monsters in the game and fill up your Monster List. Unfortunately, the game includes this special monster in the criteria, meaning it's literally impossible to get this monster - and, in turn, 100% - without hacking.
...although you're going to have to hack the game anyways to get 100% because some of the monsters are also tied to the online multiplayer and well. You're SOL there too since the DS online servers are down.
As for the actual game, it's pretty lackluster as far as a Dragon Quest Monsters game goes because the monster list is essentially Square-Enix looking at Dragon Quest VIII and going "well this game is popular, so most of the monsters you befriend are monsters from this game!" and it honestly feels like major cost-cutting in a game that's already cutting corners by having a good chunk of the monster list being recolors of other monster models. Not the worst monster collecting game but there are far better out there.
...although you're going to have to hack the game anyways to get 100% because some of the monsters are also tied to the online multiplayer and well. You're SOL there too since the DS online servers are down.
As for the actual game, it's pretty lackluster as far as a Dragon Quest Monsters game goes because the monster list is essentially Square-Enix looking at Dragon Quest VIII and going "well this game is popular, so most of the monsters you befriend are monsters from this game!" and it honestly feels like major cost-cutting in a game that's already cutting corners by having a good chunk of the monster list being recolors of other monster models. Not the worst monster collecting game but there are far better out there.
One time I really fucked up the tendons in my left palm because I played several hours of this game with the sideways Wii Remote. And I would gladly do it all again.
1995
I'm trying to articulate my thoughts on this game, mere hours after beating it, and the best I can manage is "well, it exists, I guess".
Prehistorik Man - it's a video game. It's got great sprite work, but that's really all it has going for it.
Prehistorik Man - it's a video game. It's got great sprite work, but that's really all it has going for it.
Sure, it may be a clunky Game Boy Castlevania where you walk and jump as fast as a dying snail, and sure, the Soleiyu Belmont and Dracula boss battles both suck ass and require pixel perfect precision and memorization in a game where each step your character takes feels agonizingly slow, but this game - in 1991 - also happened to create one of the best-sounding Game Boy soundtracks ever and this game has box art that would look great spray-painted on some dude's van, so it honestly evens out.
The best time to play this game is during the year 1989, where at least it would've had a "Cool! This Castlevania looks and plays great on this brand new portable electronic device!" wow factor to it.
Any time after that, and it's just going to feel like a clunky dinosaur of a game, played only for a retro curiosity and not much else.
Any time after that, and it's just going to feel like a clunky dinosaur of a game, played only for a retro curiosity and not much else.
The sensible, good taste part of my brain: This is painfully average and nowhere near as good as the PS3 games that come before it.
The part of my brain that loves Dr. Nefarious: Holy shit, I can play as Dr. Nefarious!
The part of my brain that loves Dr. Nefarious: Holy shit, I can play as Dr. Nefarious!
2001
I understand that they had to work with the limitations of the handheld system and it is pretty impressive that they managed to do a nearly 1:1 conversion of this game on this platform, but "Rayman 1, only the field of vision is even smaller and the soundtrack is shrill and crunchy" is not exactly my idea of a great time.
I have a complicated history with this game. This game was the first time I ever installed an emulator and a translation patch, because the very existence of this game was kinda mythical to me as a younger kid and I finally had the means to actually try it out. I would look at screenshots of this game on RPG websites and think to myself "oh man, there's a special GBA Dragon Quest Monsters game I can't play because they never released it outside of Japan!", and I love so many of the Dragon Quest games! Dragon Quest Monsters is one of my favorite Game Boy titles!
Then I actually played it.
Honestly, I gotta say...this is probably the worst Dragon Quest Monsters game I have ever played, and possibly one of the worst RPGs I've ever played. And I've played a lot.
I had to force myself to play this game all the way to the end and I don't think I would've been able to finish this game without save states and the ability to speed up the ROM. I can't imagine what this game is like on its original hardware without any game guides but it sounds like a miserable, drawn-out experience.
This game is the epitome of "great ideas, poor execution" because a lot of the ideas do sound kinda cool before you play the game. You have caravan management! Monsters treated more like characters than like disposable weapons you swap out as soon as you befriend a stronger one! A customizable party of caravan friends to help you! A game that's a prequel to Dragon Quest 7 but takes place in the world of Dragon Quest 2! You can really tell that they wanted to make a game that shook up the formula of the previous two games.
Then the actual gameplay happens and perhaps changing up the formula was a bad thing.
- The caravan system means that you are constantly depleting rations that have to be refilled with items and gold, which means the early portion of this game is absolutely grueling and it feels like the player is being actively punished for trying to explore.
- Since your monsters are just set characters that you constantly change into different forms using monster hearts and a process called Reformation, this game is a monster collection game without any monster collecting. Sure, you collect hearts, but something about that felt more hollow than just befriending the monster like in the other games.
It really doesn't help that your caravan monsters don't really have much of a personality to speak of. Most of your monsters' dialogue is like "I wanna help the caravan!". The most basic "Yay helping!" personalities. The third one, Carol, is basically a baby monster that roars at you whenever you talk to her, and it honestly feels kinda weird to be physically altering this baby monster into different creatures all the time.
- Your caravan members all act in battle along with your monsters, which means random battles are an absolute chore of scrolling through a bunch of different actions from your caravan members. Every time you hit that "Fight" command on each turn, you have to wait for like ten people to finish attacking so a lot of the gameplay is just sitting there and waiting for the text to stop scrolling.
- This being a game that takes place several hundred years after the end of Dragon Quest 2 is a bit of a fun oddity but ultimately the story itself is "you are transported into another world and help some kid find four glowing orbs to heal his sick parents". I literally forgot the first half of the game because none of the story-related dialogue is that interesting or exciting. This game does a whole "here's all the exciting places you visited in sepia tone!" thing during the credits and I was just sitting there, unable to remember who any of these people were.
And if you think the whole "taking place in the world of Dragon Quest 2" thing would make it interesting....it doesn't. I think they did it mostly to reuse maps.
Add random events on the world map that hinder process into the pile (boy I sure love a grind-heavy game that sometimes gives me a random event that turns random events off!), a boring, meandering story that often leaves you without any clue of where to go (at one point you have to go to a specific boat port to reach a new continent, but of course the game doesn't tell you this), poor level scaling which means that the late-game section of the game requires hours of grinding, and an honestly kinda boring overworld that's just bumbling into places and hoping it has the next glowing item or event flag you need to collect, and you have yourself a really mediocre game that I think was never translated because everyone just kinda collectively looked at it and went "yeah okay, we don't need to inflict this on other countries".
On the bright side, at least the sprites are cute and I think the people who made the English translation patch did a very good job. It's just that sadly, what was translated is quite the turd.
For completionist's only. Spare yourselves the fate that I subjected myself to.
Then I actually played it.
Honestly, I gotta say...this is probably the worst Dragon Quest Monsters game I have ever played, and possibly one of the worst RPGs I've ever played. And I've played a lot.
I had to force myself to play this game all the way to the end and I don't think I would've been able to finish this game without save states and the ability to speed up the ROM. I can't imagine what this game is like on its original hardware without any game guides but it sounds like a miserable, drawn-out experience.
This game is the epitome of "great ideas, poor execution" because a lot of the ideas do sound kinda cool before you play the game. You have caravan management! Monsters treated more like characters than like disposable weapons you swap out as soon as you befriend a stronger one! A customizable party of caravan friends to help you! A game that's a prequel to Dragon Quest 7 but takes place in the world of Dragon Quest 2! You can really tell that they wanted to make a game that shook up the formula of the previous two games.
Then the actual gameplay happens and perhaps changing up the formula was a bad thing.
- The caravan system means that you are constantly depleting rations that have to be refilled with items and gold, which means the early portion of this game is absolutely grueling and it feels like the player is being actively punished for trying to explore.
- Since your monsters are just set characters that you constantly change into different forms using monster hearts and a process called Reformation, this game is a monster collection game without any monster collecting. Sure, you collect hearts, but something about that felt more hollow than just befriending the monster like in the other games.
It really doesn't help that your caravan monsters don't really have much of a personality to speak of. Most of your monsters' dialogue is like "I wanna help the caravan!". The most basic "Yay helping!" personalities. The third one, Carol, is basically a baby monster that roars at you whenever you talk to her, and it honestly feels kinda weird to be physically altering this baby monster into different creatures all the time.
- Your caravan members all act in battle along with your monsters, which means random battles are an absolute chore of scrolling through a bunch of different actions from your caravan members. Every time you hit that "Fight" command on each turn, you have to wait for like ten people to finish attacking so a lot of the gameplay is just sitting there and waiting for the text to stop scrolling.
- This being a game that takes place several hundred years after the end of Dragon Quest 2 is a bit of a fun oddity but ultimately the story itself is "you are transported into another world and help some kid find four glowing orbs to heal his sick parents". I literally forgot the first half of the game because none of the story-related dialogue is that interesting or exciting. This game does a whole "here's all the exciting places you visited in sepia tone!" thing during the credits and I was just sitting there, unable to remember who any of these people were.
And if you think the whole "taking place in the world of Dragon Quest 2" thing would make it interesting....it doesn't. I think they did it mostly to reuse maps.
Add random events on the world map that hinder process into the pile (boy I sure love a grind-heavy game that sometimes gives me a random event that turns random events off!), a boring, meandering story that often leaves you without any clue of where to go (at one point you have to go to a specific boat port to reach a new continent, but of course the game doesn't tell you this), poor level scaling which means that the late-game section of the game requires hours of grinding, and an honestly kinda boring overworld that's just bumbling into places and hoping it has the next glowing item or event flag you need to collect, and you have yourself a really mediocre game that I think was never translated because everyone just kinda collectively looked at it and went "yeah okay, we don't need to inflict this on other countries".
On the bright side, at least the sprites are cute and I think the people who made the English translation patch did a very good job. It's just that sadly, what was translated is quite the turd.
For completionist's only. Spare yourselves the fate that I subjected myself to.