(Played on SFC)

From the first moment of stepping out into a hostile new world and hearing the timid opening melody of the overworld music, this game instills a sense of mystery and wonder that carried throughout my entire experience with it. I was genuinely stunned by how well this holds up even after playing more recent entries in the series. What I thought would be a quaint but ultimately inscrutable trip into JRPG history turned out to be a thoroughly enjoyable experience that was on par with everything else I've played of the series so far. It makes perfect sense that this game near-single-handedly spawned an entire genre, and so many of the foundations of said genre are executed here flawlessly. This game has no map, no quest log, almost none of the conveniences of modern JRPGs and yet communicated its information, narrative, and tone to me effortlessly. The only time I truly got stuck was while looking for the Token of Erdrick late into the game, and that was apparently due to a translation mistake.

While exploring the sparse (and frankly rather small) landscape of Alefgard, I felt more immersed than I have in any AAA open-world power-fantasy playground. This is in part to do with the sense of mystery I opened with: this game gives you very little up front. In the absence of a map, a quest marker, or really much of any guidance at all, you are thrust into a world that does not care about you and will probably kill you if you're not careful. And it's just so... empty. This is, in my estimation, a good thing. I have a big thesis about game worlds that make you feel like a person inside of a world instead of the biggest, most sapient kid in the sandbox, and I will have to elaborate on it elsewhere, but one of the main contributors to this feeling, at least for me, is precisely this emptiness. There isn't that much in this world. A few towns, some caves, and a whole lot of empty, green space. In comparison to increasingly expansive modern open-world JRPGs, or even later Dragon Quest games within the same console generation, this world is tiny. But it FEELS huge. When you're standing in the middle of an empty field that fills the screen, reeling from an encounter with a monster you weren't prepared to fight, unsure of where exactly you are, praying to see a town slide into view from the periphery ahead, it's hard not to feel dwarfed by the scale of it, humble as it may be in retrospect. A game doesn't need record-breaking square-footage to feel big. It just needs to make YOU feel small.

The real shock of this experience is that I think I somehow like this game more than XI. I kept expecting the illusion to break, for my modern goopy gamer brain to kick in and cringe at Gross Old Thing and look up a guide or just give up entirely and write it off as an antiquated product of its time, but that never happened. I was so damn in it I drew a fucking map. I took physical notes. With a PENCIL. Depending on who you ask, "talk to every NPC" may or may not have originated here, and it remains one of the best examples of it. In the same spirit as the sparse world, the thin threads of connection that spread across the map as you explore towns and meet new people add up to far more than the sum of their parts. The simple, low-tech excitement of receiving information that sparks a mental connection with information received elsewhere and elsewhen represents the narrative meat of the game, and it's deployed with a surprising sense of pacing for a game so absent of any visible railroads.

All of this adds up to a thoughtful, immaculately constructed game that impressed me with its charm and ingenuity at every turn. Dragon Quest owns.

(Also, play the SFC version of 1+2. Fuck that weird mobile-game-lookin switch version.)

The way this game turns the act of looking at its world into a mechanical interaction, and then turns the act of bearing witness into its central narrative theme is just really great. Also a masterclass on level design, the way it tells a story almost entirely through its levels is incredible. Definitely wasn't my first experience with either of these, but it executes it all in such a special way that it made me think deeper.
A lot of talk about "good narrative design" in games, specifically stuff that "only games can do", is focused on player agency, on the ways in which the player can inflict their will upon the world, but I think there's more to it. I think one of the things games excel at is making you feel like a part of a world that is in fact bigger than you, and part of that might have to do with limiting player agency, creating a world that doesn't bend to the player's will.

Gonna go back to 100% but god damn. This is a good month for me re: incredible games.

When I first saw this game, it came across as a slapdash composite of indie buzzwords (souls-like, zelda-like, hollow knight-like). That blend seemed good enough to me, but what makes the game special is how much heart oozes from every inch of its world. It is lovely and stylish and idiosyncratic in all the right places. Though they come pretty easily, this game elegantly transcends any and all comparisons. You may have tasted the ingredients before, but a stew made with this much love is so much more than the sum of its parts.

Coming to terms with the fact that I just don't like 2D Metroid all that much :(

I liked the vibes and exploration in Super enough to 100% it, but Zero Mission was decent-to-mediocre, and though at times I could see why this game is so revered it just did not click with me. The story was great but by the time I got to the little morsels of exposition the game deems fit to dose out every two hours or so I was so frustrated with actually playing the game that it barely made an impact. Movement and combat felt stiff at all the worst times, ESPECIALLY during boss fights. Super had this problem too, but the ratio of exploration to fighting was such that it was only ever a short roadblock during an otherwise chill and vibey experience. Fusion just fucking throws bosses at you nonstop and the difficulty ramps up so quickly. Screen space wasn't as much of an issue as it was in Zero Mission, though there were a few times (especially in the bigger boss arenas) where I was just getting sniped from off-screen constantly with no time to perceive the threat, much less to dodge. Also found the soundtrack incredibly grating which just added to my frustration most of the time--and this is coming from someone who LOVES the GBA soundchip skung!!!--though I'm sure that was more a result of already being frustrated.

I still wanna give Dread a shot because I keep hearing great things about it and it looks significantly less stiff than the older ones but for now I think I just have to accept that these games aren't for me. :(