fe17
1990
Loom is a point & click adventure game initially released in January 1990 for MS-DOS by LucasArts using the SCUMM engine, with Brian Moriarty as its Designer. There are multiple versions for this game, but the initial release was on a floppy disk and had 16-color EGA graphics with no voice acting, while the version that I played, the "Talkie" version, released in 1992 on CD with 256-color VGA graphics. This version includes voice acting, but some scenes are censored and there are some cuts as far as conversation close-ups and puzzles with multiple solutions go.
There is also a version that came out for the Japanese FM-Towns in 1991 which many fans consider to be the "definitive version", while Brian Moriarty himself considers the initial EGA version to be the "real" edition. If you want to play the game for yourself, I can say the 1992 version compared to the 1990 version will not drastically alter your opinion of the game, so if you value VGA graphics and voice acting, I would go with that.
Anyway, what's this game about?: In Loom, you play Bobbin Threadbare, a 17-year-old who is part of the "Weaver's Guild", a group of people who became masters of woven fabric and over time gained the ability to weave "patterns of influence into the very fabric of reality", meaning they could actually change the color of something, turn invisible and heal, among other things. In this world, many other Guilds that focus on a singular craft exist and the Weavers Guild was persecuted for using "witchcraft", resulting in their escape to an island that became their new home, Loom, called after their guild symbol, a loom (an apparatus for making fabric).
Events unfold and Bobbin Threadbare is born, however in unforeseen circumstances, and the loom's pattern is thrown into chaos as a result. This means that throughout his life, Bobbin is not allowed to learn the Guild's ability to weave, since he is seen as the one who has cursed the guild. He is raised by "Dame Hetchel", an old serving woman, who in secret teaches Bobbin the basics of weaving and when Bobbin turns 17 and the story starts, it is her who gives him his mission.
At the start of the game, the Elders summon Bobbin to the Sanctuary to determine his fate. As he arrives, he sees how the Elders punish Dame Hetchel. They turn her into an egg, only for a swan to crash into the room from a window and turn all the Elders into swans as well. The Elders shout that this is all Bobbin's fault as they fly off to who knows where.
This is where the actual gameplay begins. One of the elders dropped his "distaff" (a stick to which wool is wound for spinning), and Dame Hetchel is still in the room as an egg. You pick up the distaff, point it to the egg, and four notes start playing. You repeat this four-note pattern (called a "draft), and the egg starts to hatch ("open"). Out comes Dame Hetchel as a cygnet (young swan) and tells Bobbin about his mission, about how the "Third Shadow" will cover the world and why he has to find the swans.
So to summarize, you play Bobbing Threadbane, something is wrong with the "loom" and the Elders of your guild blame you. You are left on your own when all Elders are turned into swans and leave the island that you live in, so you pick up the distaff and have to use the "Weaving ability/magic" to try and find the flock and try to stop the world to be covered by the Third Shadow.
This is where Loom is very different to pretty much all other graphical adventures of its time. Instead of an interface with a bunch of verbs and an inventory to store items, you are solely equipped with the distaff. The distaff shows up horizontally on the interface and every few inches of it make up one sound, each being higher than the next. For each "draft" (magical ability), you need to figure out the corresponding four-note sound. For opening something, this sound turns out to be "E-C-E-D". Later on for example, you find for trees with holes in them, and each tree you click presents you with one note. Once you get all four, you have a draft. You don't know what the draft is for until you actually successfully tried it on something. This particular one for example was used to "twist sth". As you progress further and further, you unlock more and more notes on your distaff, which you need to do to be able to play some of the more advanced drafts which may use letters (like "A") that you are not skilled enough to play.
But with that, let's move over to my rating system to discuss all aspects of this game individually.
STORYTELLING: Throughout the story in this game, which only takes about 3-4 hours depending on the difficulty you pick (more on that in a bit), you visit many different areas and meet different Guilds like the Blacksmiths Guild or the Shepherds Guild. You visit the Forge, the home of the Blacksmiths, Crystalgard, the headquarters of the Guild of Glassmakers and a cathedral, home of the Guild of Clerics, among many other locations. The world created for this game overall is very unique and to know that this is not just a playground for your main character but rather a world that is actually alive definitely aids the telling of stories concerning both the main quest and of simple side stories. For each Guild you stumble upon, you meet one or multiple characters who tell you what their kind is like, what kind of problems ail them and what goals they pursue. The Glassmakers for example are building a massive Sythe atop the Crystalgard. For what purpose?
The main story that ties all this together is an interesting, yet convoluted one that falls victim to the use of a lot of "this happens so that this can happen" methods of storytelling and especially scenes that should call for urgency just don't and the pacing of it all can fall a bit flat as a result. For example, in the final showdown with Chaos, instead of taking your distaff, with which you are pretty much incompetent, and forcing you to teach him the ways, he just stands there until you do something. Worst of all, the game has been made with a trilogy in mind, and according to Brian Moriarty himself, both himself and others just wanted to do something else after Loom was finished, and they just never got back to it. So expect a cliffhanger ending and change your plans of playing this game if that bothers you. It probably should, but the game is worth experiencing nevertheless I think.
The voice acting in the versions that include it is actually much much better than I would have expected and while the main character's voice actor made him sound a bit whiny throughout, the cast overall did a great job. I played the first chapter without voice first and definitely am glad that I played the voiced version afterwards.
Unlike many other LucasArts adventure games of its time, Loom is more serious and has few humorous elements included (though they are certainly there). As someone who has tried some Monkey Island but didn't finish any of their games prior to Loom, I can say that I prefer the more humorous games and graphical adventures with often odd solutions to puzzles definitely fit the "Comedy" category more.
GAMEPLAY: There is a "Book of Patterns" that comes with your copy of the game, if you indeed do want to buy a copy for $100+ these days. For everyone else, there is the manual online which includes it, and while it's not necessary to be used in my version of the game, the initial release does have a puzzle right at the start that is unsolvable without the manual in hand. Otherwise, the "book" lists a bunch of drafts (spells) and you can use it to write down the notes that the game gives you. Otherwise, it's recommended to write down the notes elsewhere, because the first draft you learn (open) will be needed to solve puzzles in the final third of the game, and writing down is the only option to access it. Almost all drafts are randomized for each playthrough, so you can't look up the notes online either.
Apart from using drafts, there isn't really much gameplay in this game. You walk around, you find items to click on and you either are rewarded with a new draft or you can try to use known drafts on it. Some drafts I didn't really find any use for, so I wonder if they were a) a distraction or b) used for optional puzzles, but the devs found a creative use for most drafts at least twice and sometimes, the game also requires you to think outside the box. How? You learn the draft "twist". But what about when you have to untwist something? In that case, try the draft backwards.
Spelling out a draft can take quite a while, so if you try multiple ones at something to guess the puzzle solution, it can take you a few minutes to go through all of them. This is nothing unusual for games of its time but with no skip animation button it did get boring after a while to wait and see what happens. Being more skilled at these games than me might mean you figure these puzzles out quicker than me though and limit your amount of unsuccessful attempts.
Finally, when you start the game, there are 3 difficulty levels. PRACTICE, which shows you the letters for each note, which note you hear and it also spells out all four letters at the end. STANDARD, which also shows letters and marks the note you hear, but it doesn't spell it out in the end. It's pretty much the same difficulty level though. EXPERT, which neither shows letters nor which part of the distaff the note comes from, meaning you have to figure out which part of the distaff makes which noise at first and then make out those notes from hearing. It's definitely much harder than the other two difficulties but also more than doable.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE: The voice acting is very good. I didn't quite warm up to the voice of the main character, but the rest did a fine job. Especially later on in the game, you could hear the end of the previous dialogue line cutting into the next dialogue line, which got more and more notable right into the finale.
The game's sound design is overall good but has similar issues. When the four notes of a draft play for example, one or more of the note sounds are cut off for a split second almost every time.
The soundtrack has a mystical and classical theme and from what I've read online, it's highly regarded and a big part of the experience for many. It definitely is a big part in enhancing the experience, I agree, but I wasn't quite enamored with it. Sound cutting issues were present here as well and while I understand music was limited to the most important moments due to technical limitations, it didn't help my experience when 90% of the game was played without any music in the background. Overall, it's a solid and fitting soundtrack but the times have raised expectations on what to expect there for sure.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN: Loom received top or near-top grades for its graphics at the time and even today its sophisticated art design and its colorful, varied landscapes stand out over many other games coming out in and around 1990.
ATMOSPHERE: Music, sound and graphics work well in tandem with the game's lore and world building to create an atmospheric adventure, however the rarely used music due to the technical limitations at the time does take away from the atmosphere, especially whenever you are stuck on a particular puzzle and spend minutes without any sound, whether its from the soundtrack or from the musical notes coming out of the distaff.
CONTENT: There isn't that much here outside of the main story, which takes 3-4 hours to beat, but considering the premise of this game, it works in its favor that the game is shorter than comparable graphical adventures.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN: Overall the structure in this game works well, but at times the places you find the necessary drafts from to progress seem pretty random. In addition, the final chapter seems rushed and at least to me, the puzzle solutions seemed unintuitive.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION: The distaff being the key component is certainly unique. I think it's fair to say that it's unlikely that you've played any game quite like Loom. It didn't really stick as a concept, ostensibly, but it shows developers desire to innovate at the time where a more traditional adventure would have been a safer bet. Plus, at worst it makes Loom stand out, since the unique gameplay feature is not something that I would call "bad" at all. The game sold over half a million copies all told from what I've read, so it wasn't a commercial failure either.
REPLAYABILITY: You can replay it once to get a better grasp of the plot and especially to try the game on expert if you played your first playthrough on PRACTICE/STANDARD, but there isn't much replayability beyond that.
PLAYABILITY: The game works fine overall and is completely playable.
OVERALL: You should have probably already played this game if you're a fan of point & click adventures, especially of this day and age. Unlike many other games from this time period, this one does not require you to go through magazine or internet tips on how to solve puzzles in order to complete it. Even the manual says that the devs created this game in a way that they wanted you to complete and fully experience it, so you won't be stuck for too long at any particular puzzle. And that's good, because even if the story is not as mesmerizing today as it might have been in the early 90s, it's still one worth telling and one that a faster pace, by nature of the player being stuck at puzzles far less, does a lot of good.
_____
WHAT THEY SAID AT THE TIME:
- "Unknown Gamer" from the GamePro Issue 41 (Dec 92): "Loom's magic comes mainly from its highly creative and original use of music"
- "Leslie Mizell" from the Game Player's Issue 12 Vol. 2 Nr. 6 (June 90): "[...] sit back and watch the spellbinding graphics as the story unfolds."
There is also a version that came out for the Japanese FM-Towns in 1991 which many fans consider to be the "definitive version", while Brian Moriarty himself considers the initial EGA version to be the "real" edition. If you want to play the game for yourself, I can say the 1992 version compared to the 1990 version will not drastically alter your opinion of the game, so if you value VGA graphics and voice acting, I would go with that.
Anyway, what's this game about?: In Loom, you play Bobbin Threadbare, a 17-year-old who is part of the "Weaver's Guild", a group of people who became masters of woven fabric and over time gained the ability to weave "patterns of influence into the very fabric of reality", meaning they could actually change the color of something, turn invisible and heal, among other things. In this world, many other Guilds that focus on a singular craft exist and the Weavers Guild was persecuted for using "witchcraft", resulting in their escape to an island that became their new home, Loom, called after their guild symbol, a loom (an apparatus for making fabric).
Events unfold and Bobbin Threadbare is born, however in unforeseen circumstances, and the loom's pattern is thrown into chaos as a result. This means that throughout his life, Bobbin is not allowed to learn the Guild's ability to weave, since he is seen as the one who has cursed the guild. He is raised by "Dame Hetchel", an old serving woman, who in secret teaches Bobbin the basics of weaving and when Bobbin turns 17 and the story starts, it is her who gives him his mission.
At the start of the game, the Elders summon Bobbin to the Sanctuary to determine his fate. As he arrives, he sees how the Elders punish Dame Hetchel. They turn her into an egg, only for a swan to crash into the room from a window and turn all the Elders into swans as well. The Elders shout that this is all Bobbin's fault as they fly off to who knows where.
This is where the actual gameplay begins. One of the elders dropped his "distaff" (a stick to which wool is wound for spinning), and Dame Hetchel is still in the room as an egg. You pick up the distaff, point it to the egg, and four notes start playing. You repeat this four-note pattern (called a "draft), and the egg starts to hatch ("open"). Out comes Dame Hetchel as a cygnet (young swan) and tells Bobbin about his mission, about how the "Third Shadow" will cover the world and why he has to find the swans.
So to summarize, you play Bobbing Threadbane, something is wrong with the "loom" and the Elders of your guild blame you. You are left on your own when all Elders are turned into swans and leave the island that you live in, so you pick up the distaff and have to use the "Weaving ability/magic" to try and find the flock and try to stop the world to be covered by the Third Shadow.
This is where Loom is very different to pretty much all other graphical adventures of its time. Instead of an interface with a bunch of verbs and an inventory to store items, you are solely equipped with the distaff. The distaff shows up horizontally on the interface and every few inches of it make up one sound, each being higher than the next. For each "draft" (magical ability), you need to figure out the corresponding four-note sound. For opening something, this sound turns out to be "E-C-E-D". Later on for example, you find for trees with holes in them, and each tree you click presents you with one note. Once you get all four, you have a draft. You don't know what the draft is for until you actually successfully tried it on something. This particular one for example was used to "twist sth". As you progress further and further, you unlock more and more notes on your distaff, which you need to do to be able to play some of the more advanced drafts which may use letters (like "A") that you are not skilled enough to play.
But with that, let's move over to my rating system to discuss all aspects of this game individually.
STORYTELLING: Throughout the story in this game, which only takes about 3-4 hours depending on the difficulty you pick (more on that in a bit), you visit many different areas and meet different Guilds like the Blacksmiths Guild or the Shepherds Guild. You visit the Forge, the home of the Blacksmiths, Crystalgard, the headquarters of the Guild of Glassmakers and a cathedral, home of the Guild of Clerics, among many other locations. The world created for this game overall is very unique and to know that this is not just a playground for your main character but rather a world that is actually alive definitely aids the telling of stories concerning both the main quest and of simple side stories. For each Guild you stumble upon, you meet one or multiple characters who tell you what their kind is like, what kind of problems ail them and what goals they pursue. The Glassmakers for example are building a massive Sythe atop the Crystalgard. For what purpose?
The main story that ties all this together is an interesting, yet convoluted one that falls victim to the use of a lot of "this happens so that this can happen" methods of storytelling and especially scenes that should call for urgency just don't and the pacing of it all can fall a bit flat as a result. For example, in the final showdown with Chaos, instead of taking your distaff, with which you are pretty much incompetent, and forcing you to teach him the ways, he just stands there until you do something. Worst of all, the game has been made with a trilogy in mind, and according to Brian Moriarty himself, both himself and others just wanted to do something else after Loom was finished, and they just never got back to it. So expect a cliffhanger ending and change your plans of playing this game if that bothers you. It probably should, but the game is worth experiencing nevertheless I think.
The voice acting in the versions that include it is actually much much better than I would have expected and while the main character's voice actor made him sound a bit whiny throughout, the cast overall did a great job. I played the first chapter without voice first and definitely am glad that I played the voiced version afterwards.
Unlike many other LucasArts adventure games of its time, Loom is more serious and has few humorous elements included (though they are certainly there). As someone who has tried some Monkey Island but didn't finish any of their games prior to Loom, I can say that I prefer the more humorous games and graphical adventures with often odd solutions to puzzles definitely fit the "Comedy" category more.
GAMEPLAY: There is a "Book of Patterns" that comes with your copy of the game, if you indeed do want to buy a copy for $100+ these days. For everyone else, there is the manual online which includes it, and while it's not necessary to be used in my version of the game, the initial release does have a puzzle right at the start that is unsolvable without the manual in hand. Otherwise, the "book" lists a bunch of drafts (spells) and you can use it to write down the notes that the game gives you. Otherwise, it's recommended to write down the notes elsewhere, because the first draft you learn (open) will be needed to solve puzzles in the final third of the game, and writing down is the only option to access it. Almost all drafts are randomized for each playthrough, so you can't look up the notes online either.
Apart from using drafts, there isn't really much gameplay in this game. You walk around, you find items to click on and you either are rewarded with a new draft or you can try to use known drafts on it. Some drafts I didn't really find any use for, so I wonder if they were a) a distraction or b) used for optional puzzles, but the devs found a creative use for most drafts at least twice and sometimes, the game also requires you to think outside the box. How? You learn the draft "twist". But what about when you have to untwist something? In that case, try the draft backwards.
Spelling out a draft can take quite a while, so if you try multiple ones at something to guess the puzzle solution, it can take you a few minutes to go through all of them. This is nothing unusual for games of its time but with no skip animation button it did get boring after a while to wait and see what happens. Being more skilled at these games than me might mean you figure these puzzles out quicker than me though and limit your amount of unsuccessful attempts.
Finally, when you start the game, there are 3 difficulty levels. PRACTICE, which shows you the letters for each note, which note you hear and it also spells out all four letters at the end. STANDARD, which also shows letters and marks the note you hear, but it doesn't spell it out in the end. It's pretty much the same difficulty level though. EXPERT, which neither shows letters nor which part of the distaff the note comes from, meaning you have to figure out which part of the distaff makes which noise at first and then make out those notes from hearing. It's definitely much harder than the other two difficulties but also more than doable.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE: The voice acting is very good. I didn't quite warm up to the voice of the main character, but the rest did a fine job. Especially later on in the game, you could hear the end of the previous dialogue line cutting into the next dialogue line, which got more and more notable right into the finale.
The game's sound design is overall good but has similar issues. When the four notes of a draft play for example, one or more of the note sounds are cut off for a split second almost every time.
The soundtrack has a mystical and classical theme and from what I've read online, it's highly regarded and a big part of the experience for many. It definitely is a big part in enhancing the experience, I agree, but I wasn't quite enamored with it. Sound cutting issues were present here as well and while I understand music was limited to the most important moments due to technical limitations, it didn't help my experience when 90% of the game was played without any music in the background. Overall, it's a solid and fitting soundtrack but the times have raised expectations on what to expect there for sure.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN: Loom received top or near-top grades for its graphics at the time and even today its sophisticated art design and its colorful, varied landscapes stand out over many other games coming out in and around 1990.
ATMOSPHERE: Music, sound and graphics work well in tandem with the game's lore and world building to create an atmospheric adventure, however the rarely used music due to the technical limitations at the time does take away from the atmosphere, especially whenever you are stuck on a particular puzzle and spend minutes without any sound, whether its from the soundtrack or from the musical notes coming out of the distaff.
CONTENT: There isn't that much here outside of the main story, which takes 3-4 hours to beat, but considering the premise of this game, it works in its favor that the game is shorter than comparable graphical adventures.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN: Overall the structure in this game works well, but at times the places you find the necessary drafts from to progress seem pretty random. In addition, the final chapter seems rushed and at least to me, the puzzle solutions seemed unintuitive.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION: The distaff being the key component is certainly unique. I think it's fair to say that it's unlikely that you've played any game quite like Loom. It didn't really stick as a concept, ostensibly, but it shows developers desire to innovate at the time where a more traditional adventure would have been a safer bet. Plus, at worst it makes Loom stand out, since the unique gameplay feature is not something that I would call "bad" at all. The game sold over half a million copies all told from what I've read, so it wasn't a commercial failure either.
REPLAYABILITY: You can replay it once to get a better grasp of the plot and especially to try the game on expert if you played your first playthrough on PRACTICE/STANDARD, but there isn't much replayability beyond that.
PLAYABILITY: The game works fine overall and is completely playable.
OVERALL: You should have probably already played this game if you're a fan of point & click adventures, especially of this day and age. Unlike many other games from this time period, this one does not require you to go through magazine or internet tips on how to solve puzzles in order to complete it. Even the manual says that the devs created this game in a way that they wanted you to complete and fully experience it, so you won't be stuck for too long at any particular puzzle. And that's good, because even if the story is not as mesmerizing today as it might have been in the early 90s, it's still one worth telling and one that a faster pace, by nature of the player being stuck at puzzles far less, does a lot of good.
_____
WHAT THEY SAID AT THE TIME:
- "Unknown Gamer" from the GamePro Issue 41 (Dec 92): "Loom's magic comes mainly from its highly creative and original use of music"
- "Leslie Mizell" from the Game Player's Issue 12 Vol. 2 Nr. 6 (June 90): "[...] sit back and watch the spellbinding graphics as the story unfolds."
Shin Megami Tensei if... (...it were Seinfeld. I mean seriously, listen to the songs) is the third and final SMT game on the SNES and considered to be the third mainline title in the series.
Unlike SMT 1 and SMT 2, the game features a smaller-scale story that takes place in a school setting and a place called The Expanse, where you go through several dungeons named after the seven deadly sins, like the World of Pride, Gluttony and Sloth, which is where I eventually abandoned this game. (There are additional areas you unlock through a NG+ route). Still, I have some thoughts here as someone who did manage to finish SMT 1 and SMT 2 (and enjoyed both), so here goes.
SMT if... is a game that I'm glad exists. It features a school setting for the first time, and it introduces the Guardian system, which are special demons given to aid you. You get your first when you die the first time and they change each additional time you perish. Both of these points are what became common in the now much more popular Persona series, a series that includes some of my favorite games of all time. That said, nothing else you will be familiar with is included in this game, apart from the combat and demon-fusing gameplay of course, meaning no in-depth character interactions, social bonds etc.
And that's OK. This is an SMT game after all. What I wanted from this game, just like the previous two, was an addictive gameplay loop, a depressing atmosphere in hostile environments, an interesting plot filled to the brim with symbolism and metaphors and overall, enjoyable enough dungeon crawling. If you really liked SMT 1 and/or 2, SMT if... has a lot of the same features that will appeal to you. That said, for the 8 or so hours I played this, it features less plot and, as mentioned, less high-stake plot, to pull you along. Worst yet, it features some horrific dungeons, namely the World of Sloth, which I quickly learned was something the community unanimously agreed on. The dungeon is a test of endurance in the worst way, a test I did not pass, and I'd imagine the majority of you will feel similarly. If you, however, are someone who loves to suffer, I invite you to take a shot at it yourself.
SMT if... is the precursor to the Persona series as I mentioned, so it did more than even the developers would have probably thought at the time, because other than that, it doesn't really bring the series forward in a meaningful way. It plays like a worse SMT 2 for the most part, and it even has a lot of the same tracks and of course the same mechanics and visuals. There is a route you can choose for a NG+ playthrough which actually introduces completely new dungeons and songs, which after reading up on it, sounds pretty interesting, but I'm not going to force myself through one normal run to experience it.
Finally, to those of you who still want to check it out, I recommend the Reiko route, which based on the story synopsis for the routes available at the start, seems to offer the most content.
(This is the 102nd game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet/blog is in my bio.)
Unlike SMT 1 and SMT 2, the game features a smaller-scale story that takes place in a school setting and a place called The Expanse, where you go through several dungeons named after the seven deadly sins, like the World of Pride, Gluttony and Sloth, which is where I eventually abandoned this game. (There are additional areas you unlock through a NG+ route). Still, I have some thoughts here as someone who did manage to finish SMT 1 and SMT 2 (and enjoyed both), so here goes.
SMT if... is a game that I'm glad exists. It features a school setting for the first time, and it introduces the Guardian system, which are special demons given to aid you. You get your first when you die the first time and they change each additional time you perish. Both of these points are what became common in the now much more popular Persona series, a series that includes some of my favorite games of all time. That said, nothing else you will be familiar with is included in this game, apart from the combat and demon-fusing gameplay of course, meaning no in-depth character interactions, social bonds etc.
And that's OK. This is an SMT game after all. What I wanted from this game, just like the previous two, was an addictive gameplay loop, a depressing atmosphere in hostile environments, an interesting plot filled to the brim with symbolism and metaphors and overall, enjoyable enough dungeon crawling. If you really liked SMT 1 and/or 2, SMT if... has a lot of the same features that will appeal to you. That said, for the 8 or so hours I played this, it features less plot and, as mentioned, less high-stake plot, to pull you along. Worst yet, it features some horrific dungeons, namely the World of Sloth, which I quickly learned was something the community unanimously agreed on. The dungeon is a test of endurance in the worst way, a test I did not pass, and I'd imagine the majority of you will feel similarly. If you, however, are someone who loves to suffer, I invite you to take a shot at it yourself.
SMT if... is the precursor to the Persona series as I mentioned, so it did more than even the developers would have probably thought at the time, because other than that, it doesn't really bring the series forward in a meaningful way. It plays like a worse SMT 2 for the most part, and it even has a lot of the same tracks and of course the same mechanics and visuals. There is a route you can choose for a NG+ playthrough which actually introduces completely new dungeons and songs, which after reading up on it, sounds pretty interesting, but I'm not going to force myself through one normal run to experience it.
Finally, to those of you who still want to check it out, I recommend the Reiko route, which based on the story synopsis for the routes available at the start, seems to offer the most content.
(This is the 102nd game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet/blog is in my bio.)
1992
Back in 1992, many games led to controversy in the US regarding their violent and sexual content. Because see, "film like rating systems" did not exist in the games industry until that point, and societal pressure was not there to create something like that until this fateful year and the year after it, where we saw the release of games like Mortal Kombat, Doom, Wolfenstein 3D and, yes, Night Trap.
Night Trap released on October 15, 1992, was developed by Digital Pictures and is an FMV (full-motion video) game. Teenagers are having a sleepover at a mansion that is infested with vampires, and you, the player, watch surveillance footage of eight rooms in the house and partake in a hundred QTEs to activate traps around the house whenever these bad guys trigger them. You can fail a few times, but fail too often or fail at critical moments and certain characters will die.
Production values here are really poor, and there is never any actual blood seen in the game, though a drill-like device pouring red liquid out of a victim through a tube is the most controversial moment you will find here. The victim doesn't die, it continues on screaming and struggling to get out while she is getting carried out of the room, but it was a moment like this that had Night Trap added to a congressional hearing in 1993 alongside Mortal Kombat and Doom.
The result of this hearing? The creation of the ESRB, a self-regulatory organization that assigns ratings to video games in North America to this day.
Night Trap received a 25th anniversary edition in 2017 and can be played on PS4, PS Vita, PC and the Switch these days. Its ESRB rating? T for Teens...
GAMEPLAY | 14/20
Usually with my reviews, I talk about the story first, but I think this game should be discussed the other way round for clarity. As explained, this game is mainly a QTE game. Robbers (vampires) sneak around one of the eight rooms, sometimes on their own, sometimes in pairs. As soon as they reach a platform with a trap, a bar will turn from green to red, which is your cue to click on the screen. This activates the trap and a short clip of them being dropped into the floor, engulfed by a bookshelf or thrown out of the window is played, among others. During all of this, the main characters walk around the house and play out the story, at first oblivious to the dozens of robbers walking around the house.
What makes this game difficult are three things. First, at times, robbers show up on two of the eight screens. The traps don't activate after a set amount of time that they are on the screen. One trap might take 10 seconds to trigger for one robber, the other might just take 3 seconds to trigger it, meaning you might find yourself waiting to activate a trap on the wrong screen, therefore missing the trigger on the other. The game keeps a counter running of "Possible captures" and how many you actually captured. Capture too few and the game is over, requiring you to restart from the beginning unless you reach a checkpoint halfway through.
Second, the story is cheesy as hell but you of course don't know that at first, and when big moments happen, you find yourself suspensefully watching and missing out on the robbers sneaking through other screens in the meantime. Not letting this happen is one part of the challenge.
Finally, you don't just have to wait for a red light for your cue. That would be too simple. There is an additional colored code that you need to have selected for the triggers to work. There is orange, red, green, blue, yellow and purple to choose from. I believe there are 4 or 5 times during the game where the color changes. The only way to know which color you need to be on next is by listening to the characters. At very specific times in the story, they will talk to each other and say things they "I will change the code to green". If you miss this, all you can do at this point is just guess, which usually means you will miss a few traps.
I've heard plenty of things about this game since the release of its anniversary edition in 2017. A lot of it was and is negative. Having played this game myself, unbothered by the controversy and humored by its cheesy story and low production values, I don't really understand the hate. Is it a great game? Objectively, no. Is it bereft of fun? Absolutely not. I played this solo, but I can only imagine how hilarious this would have been had I played it with friends, which I plan on doing some time in the near future for sure.
The gameplay is extremely simple, but challenging and quite simply fun. Perception, quickness and a good memory will be the only skills you need in this game, and I really enjoyed how that translated. My only critique here would be that having to constantly check for robbers means you will not catch a lot of the story. Though I will go over that in the next part of this review.
STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 5/10
The story in this game is cheesy, cringeworthy, trashy and plain bad. Let's get that out of the way first. As someone who can enjoy low production values from time to time though, I had my fun with it. You are part of the SCAT (Sega Control Attack Team for the Sega CD version, Special Control Attack Team for the others), which was alerted to the disappearance of teenagers at the Martin winery estate. As the game starts, a new group of teenagers are invited over to this place.
The SCAT team gives you the overseer role and tasks you with using the traps around the house on any suspicious people roaming about, whilst the overall goal is to keep track of the three teenagers and their two parents as they have a party with a suspected group of victims.
The game takes place in one continouus loop of roughly 25 to 30 minutes on 8 screens, each depicting a different area of the house. As you take care of the robbers/burglars/vampires, you also can simply switch to the screens with the main characters and listen in on their conversations. The problem is that most of the time, robbers are walking around, which means you can rarely listen to them for more than a few seconds uninterrupted. This has one good and one pretty bad point to it.
First, the good. If you fail to trap enough robbers, the game is over and you restart. This happened to me a few times, and with each run, I caught different conversations and learned more about the game's story, which mainly included hints given at the true nature of the hosts.
The bad is that the game's design pretty much doesn't allow you to catch all of the story unless you do dozens of playthroughs. Being stubborn and saying "I'll just listen for this next playthrough" doesn't work, because if you don't spend the time catching robbers, you get the Game Over screen after just a couple minutes. Personally, this wasn't a big deal to me because you don't end up missing much, the story isn't good and the gameplay was the fun part to me here either way, but how you feel about all this will depend on how OK you are with admittedly trashy games like this, which I personally think have their own charm, especially if the gameplay itself is, to this day, pretty unique.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 7/10
This is an FMV game. An interactive movie. So while the acting wasn't great, voice acting WAS present here, which in itself is unique for this time. There isn't much of a soundtrack here. Most of what you will hear comes from a specific part of the game where the group of teenagers start singing. There are some horror themes that play whenever you are in a room with robbers though, which added something I'll call "funny tension" because they just walk in the weirdest way possible.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 6/10
Hard to rate this part considering that this is an interactive movie. I'm giving it a 7 for the following reasons. First, I'm rating the setting of the game and the style of it all. It certainly has that 90s feel to it and is charmfully trashy. Second, the costume design and the walk/crawl mix that the robbers do is hilarious. Finally, the UI, which looks different depending on the version you play but succeeds in giving you a clear overview. Here I can only recommend going for the 25th anniversary edition at this point though, since that one actually has the screens at the bottom show what's going on in each room, while older versions only had a stock image displayed and made you memorize the exact timing and locations of when and where you would find the robbers.
ATMOSPHERE/IMMERSION | 7/10
If the atmosphere this game was going for was of the "comedy horror" genre, this works. You are part of the SCAT team, and you have sent a teenage girl in to aid you, so sometimes you will find her talking into the cameras and addressing you that way, which is a nice touch.
As for the suspects, they have an ominous presence to them in the way they walk and talk, they drink suspicious red liquid and there are some teases of their true nature every couple minutes which was pretty neat.
The SCAT team pulling the plug on you when you would let too many robbers pass by was also a nice touch, instead of getting a simple GAME OVER screen.
CONTENT | 7/10
There are 100 captures to be done in this game. If you want to try and get all of them, you can play this game for hours. In terms of your first full playthrough, you can expect 1 to 2 hours of gameplay. It's not much, but it's definitely the perfect amount for a game like this. That said, there isn't anything else to it besides the mouse clicking during appropriate times, so this game is what it is.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 8/10
You have eight rooms to observe and need to do so with constant focus. Sometimes, the game cleverly takes your focus from you without you noticing, and half a dozen robbers scroll by before you notice. I found this to be a well designed game on that front on most levels, apart from the fact that the story cannot really be properly observed due to the constant interruptions.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 8/10
This game was partly responsible for the creation of the ESRB, it is one of the most well-known FMV games of all time and it has the type of gameplay that (almost?) no other game has ever done. I can't say that a series of games like this would work, but for a one-time thing, this was a great concept.
REPLAYABILITY | 3/5
Replay value comes from all those extra story bits you'll get to see that you probably missed in earlier runs and from trying to capture all robbers.
PLAYABILITY | 5/5
Works well at all times.
OVERALL | 67/100
If you are OK with the low production values, the cheesiness and the one-dimensional gameplay, there is a good chance that you will have a fun 1 or 2 hours with this game. Personally, I had a blast, and I didn't expect that based on all the negative things I had heard about it.
(This is the 73rd game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet is in my bio.)
Night Trap released on October 15, 1992, was developed by Digital Pictures and is an FMV (full-motion video) game. Teenagers are having a sleepover at a mansion that is infested with vampires, and you, the player, watch surveillance footage of eight rooms in the house and partake in a hundred QTEs to activate traps around the house whenever these bad guys trigger them. You can fail a few times, but fail too often or fail at critical moments and certain characters will die.
Production values here are really poor, and there is never any actual blood seen in the game, though a drill-like device pouring red liquid out of a victim through a tube is the most controversial moment you will find here. The victim doesn't die, it continues on screaming and struggling to get out while she is getting carried out of the room, but it was a moment like this that had Night Trap added to a congressional hearing in 1993 alongside Mortal Kombat and Doom.
The result of this hearing? The creation of the ESRB, a self-regulatory organization that assigns ratings to video games in North America to this day.
Night Trap received a 25th anniversary edition in 2017 and can be played on PS4, PS Vita, PC and the Switch these days. Its ESRB rating? T for Teens...
GAMEPLAY | 14/20
Usually with my reviews, I talk about the story first, but I think this game should be discussed the other way round for clarity. As explained, this game is mainly a QTE game. Robbers (vampires) sneak around one of the eight rooms, sometimes on their own, sometimes in pairs. As soon as they reach a platform with a trap, a bar will turn from green to red, which is your cue to click on the screen. This activates the trap and a short clip of them being dropped into the floor, engulfed by a bookshelf or thrown out of the window is played, among others. During all of this, the main characters walk around the house and play out the story, at first oblivious to the dozens of robbers walking around the house.
What makes this game difficult are three things. First, at times, robbers show up on two of the eight screens. The traps don't activate after a set amount of time that they are on the screen. One trap might take 10 seconds to trigger for one robber, the other might just take 3 seconds to trigger it, meaning you might find yourself waiting to activate a trap on the wrong screen, therefore missing the trigger on the other. The game keeps a counter running of "Possible captures" and how many you actually captured. Capture too few and the game is over, requiring you to restart from the beginning unless you reach a checkpoint halfway through.
Second, the story is cheesy as hell but you of course don't know that at first, and when big moments happen, you find yourself suspensefully watching and missing out on the robbers sneaking through other screens in the meantime. Not letting this happen is one part of the challenge.
Finally, you don't just have to wait for a red light for your cue. That would be too simple. There is an additional colored code that you need to have selected for the triggers to work. There is orange, red, green, blue, yellow and purple to choose from. I believe there are 4 or 5 times during the game where the color changes. The only way to know which color you need to be on next is by listening to the characters. At very specific times in the story, they will talk to each other and say things they "I will change the code to green". If you miss this, all you can do at this point is just guess, which usually means you will miss a few traps.
I've heard plenty of things about this game since the release of its anniversary edition in 2017. A lot of it was and is negative. Having played this game myself, unbothered by the controversy and humored by its cheesy story and low production values, I don't really understand the hate. Is it a great game? Objectively, no. Is it bereft of fun? Absolutely not. I played this solo, but I can only imagine how hilarious this would have been had I played it with friends, which I plan on doing some time in the near future for sure.
The gameplay is extremely simple, but challenging and quite simply fun. Perception, quickness and a good memory will be the only skills you need in this game, and I really enjoyed how that translated. My only critique here would be that having to constantly check for robbers means you will not catch a lot of the story. Though I will go over that in the next part of this review.
STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 5/10
The story in this game is cheesy, cringeworthy, trashy and plain bad. Let's get that out of the way first. As someone who can enjoy low production values from time to time though, I had my fun with it. You are part of the SCAT (Sega Control Attack Team for the Sega CD version, Special Control Attack Team for the others), which was alerted to the disappearance of teenagers at the Martin winery estate. As the game starts, a new group of teenagers are invited over to this place.
The SCAT team gives you the overseer role and tasks you with using the traps around the house on any suspicious people roaming about, whilst the overall goal is to keep track of the three teenagers and their two parents as they have a party with a suspected group of victims.
The game takes place in one continouus loop of roughly 25 to 30 minutes on 8 screens, each depicting a different area of the house. As you take care of the robbers/burglars/vampires, you also can simply switch to the screens with the main characters and listen in on their conversations. The problem is that most of the time, robbers are walking around, which means you can rarely listen to them for more than a few seconds uninterrupted. This has one good and one pretty bad point to it.
First, the good. If you fail to trap enough robbers, the game is over and you restart. This happened to me a few times, and with each run, I caught different conversations and learned more about the game's story, which mainly included hints given at the true nature of the hosts.
The bad is that the game's design pretty much doesn't allow you to catch all of the story unless you do dozens of playthroughs. Being stubborn and saying "I'll just listen for this next playthrough" doesn't work, because if you don't spend the time catching robbers, you get the Game Over screen after just a couple minutes. Personally, this wasn't a big deal to me because you don't end up missing much, the story isn't good and the gameplay was the fun part to me here either way, but how you feel about all this will depend on how OK you are with admittedly trashy games like this, which I personally think have their own charm, especially if the gameplay itself is, to this day, pretty unique.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 7/10
This is an FMV game. An interactive movie. So while the acting wasn't great, voice acting WAS present here, which in itself is unique for this time. There isn't much of a soundtrack here. Most of what you will hear comes from a specific part of the game where the group of teenagers start singing. There are some horror themes that play whenever you are in a room with robbers though, which added something I'll call "funny tension" because they just walk in the weirdest way possible.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 6/10
Hard to rate this part considering that this is an interactive movie. I'm giving it a 7 for the following reasons. First, I'm rating the setting of the game and the style of it all. It certainly has that 90s feel to it and is charmfully trashy. Second, the costume design and the walk/crawl mix that the robbers do is hilarious. Finally, the UI, which looks different depending on the version you play but succeeds in giving you a clear overview. Here I can only recommend going for the 25th anniversary edition at this point though, since that one actually has the screens at the bottom show what's going on in each room, while older versions only had a stock image displayed and made you memorize the exact timing and locations of when and where you would find the robbers.
ATMOSPHERE/IMMERSION | 7/10
If the atmosphere this game was going for was of the "comedy horror" genre, this works. You are part of the SCAT team, and you have sent a teenage girl in to aid you, so sometimes you will find her talking into the cameras and addressing you that way, which is a nice touch.
As for the suspects, they have an ominous presence to them in the way they walk and talk, they drink suspicious red liquid and there are some teases of their true nature every couple minutes which was pretty neat.
The SCAT team pulling the plug on you when you would let too many robbers pass by was also a nice touch, instead of getting a simple GAME OVER screen.
CONTENT | 7/10
There are 100 captures to be done in this game. If you want to try and get all of them, you can play this game for hours. In terms of your first full playthrough, you can expect 1 to 2 hours of gameplay. It's not much, but it's definitely the perfect amount for a game like this. That said, there isn't anything else to it besides the mouse clicking during appropriate times, so this game is what it is.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 8/10
You have eight rooms to observe and need to do so with constant focus. Sometimes, the game cleverly takes your focus from you without you noticing, and half a dozen robbers scroll by before you notice. I found this to be a well designed game on that front on most levels, apart from the fact that the story cannot really be properly observed due to the constant interruptions.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 8/10
This game was partly responsible for the creation of the ESRB, it is one of the most well-known FMV games of all time and it has the type of gameplay that (almost?) no other game has ever done. I can't say that a series of games like this would work, but for a one-time thing, this was a great concept.
REPLAYABILITY | 3/5
Replay value comes from all those extra story bits you'll get to see that you probably missed in earlier runs and from trying to capture all robbers.
PLAYABILITY | 5/5
Works well at all times.
OVERALL | 67/100
If you are OK with the low production values, the cheesiness and the one-dimensional gameplay, there is a good chance that you will have a fun 1 or 2 hours with this game. Personally, I had a blast, and I didn't expect that based on all the negative things I had heard about it.
(This is the 73rd game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet is in my bio.)
1995
(This is the 111th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet/blog is in my bio.)
I didn't think Chrono Trigger, a 1995 JRPG by Square for the SNES, would live up to the incredibly high expectations I had that came from years and years of reading about how Chrono Trigger is still one of the best JRPGs today, if not one of the best games period. I would stumble upon quite a few of these types of highly praised games, only to have their impact lessened by the expectations going in.
With Chrono Trigger, there were two differences for me. First, I have done this challenge of mine for over a year now, starting all the way back in 1990 and arriving in 1995, having played 110 different games in the process, including over a dozen RPGs. So my expectations for what a great game in the 90s looks like were set rather accurately I'd say.
Second, unlike some of the other older games I would hear about and be slightly disappointed by, Chrono Trigger actually aged incredibly well. It won't make you a fan of the JRPG genre if you've tried many other games and don't enjoy the gameplay loop, but for fans of the genre, I'm gonna go ahead and say that there are few JRPGs out there who are as complete a package as Chrono Trigger. From 1990 to 1995, it's absolutely the best one, and possibly my favorite game as part of this challenge I've played so far. If you call yourself a JRPG fan, do yourself a favor and check this game out.
STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 9/10
Chrono Trigger uses a time travel theme for its main story. You play as Crono (or however non-canon name you would like to give him), who looks like a DBZ character in the game's cover, which makes sense since the art designer worked on DBZ as well. The game starts in 1000 A.D. You wake up and go to the fair that is in town, where a local girl named Lucca has a transportation device to showcase, which teleports you from one box to the other right next to it.
An accident happens and a girl you were hanging out with, Marle, is sent into a portal that opened up by the power of her pendant. You choose to be the hero and go after her. Soon after, you realize you are now in 600 A.D. That's all fascinating and stuff, but all you want to do is grab Marle and get out of there. Events transpire, and not much later, you find yourself in the future and uncovering something very dark: The planet is dying. With the power of time travel at your hands, it's up to you and your friends to go back and forward in time to do what's necessary and prevent this horrible death.
What impresses the most about Chrono Trigger's storytelling is that it incorporates time travel and does not end up in a jumbled mess by the end. Quite the opposite actually. The time travel theme gives the story lots of options to explore different settings, events and permutations of said events, which lends itself perfectly to the fact that this game has not one, not two but 13 (!) different endings that differ quite notably from each other based on when and where you take certain actions.
Additionally, Chrono Trigger reaches the impressive feat of having a time travel story make sense overall, while also avoiding being as formulaic as JRPG stories tend to be at this time period. The main villain in this game is really interesting and actually scary as shit the more I think about it, and as someone who loves a good villain, that's awesome, though I won't say much more than that. There are also many other villains of which many were well-explored, and the game has a diverse and charming cast of characters. I found some to be one-dimensional, like Robo or Ayla, but the others have some stand-out moments as part of the main story or their own side stories. I wish there would have been more moments where the entire casts interacts like in one singular scene that I found throughout the whole game, but the game is more focused on its plot, which is well-paced almost throughout, and that makes for a great experience as well.
One final note I want to make is that the game does a really great job at foreshadowing certain events, locations and characters, and when you get to the points where they become relevant, it makes for some of the best moments in the game.
As someone who likes well-developed characters as much as a good plot, I would personally have liked a little bit more in that aspect, but the plot is great, characters are easy to root for and there are at least a couple that do have great backstories and development, so if you're looking for a JRPG who ticks these boxes, Chrono Trigger probably comes up at the top of most lists for a good reason.
GAMEPLAY | 15/20
JRPGs have a pretty well-established gameplay loop, and Chrono Trigger does not distance itself from that either, which is understandable considering it was made by the same company that is reponsible for Final Fantasy, the SaGa series, the Mana series and more. That said, what Chrono Trigger achieves is three-fold.
First, Chrono Trigger makes the loop less grindy and cryptic. I never felt the need to farm XP mindlessly for hours to have a chance at a random mid-game boss. There was one boss fight that was unusually tough, sure, but I beat it by adjusting my strategy and was able to continue through the rest of the game. The game also never forced me to use a guide, which, believe me, means something. There is always that one time in these RPGs where I'm stumped as to where to go or what to do, but with Chrono Trigger, I always figured it out eventually, without fail. Talk to all NPCs and you will definitely find your way forward.
Second, Chrono Trigger introduces quality of life changes and general improvements to the genre. Talk to an NPC accidentally? Just walk away mid dialogue without having to click each line away. Don't want to be thrown into random encounters? You don't have to, enemies almost always appear on the screen and you can often just walk past them. Feel like you're usually missing out on the good skills/weapons in JRPGs because you can't find them? The game has "Techs", which the characters unlock naturally as you use them, which are more than enough to overcome any challenge as long as you use them correctly.
Third, Chrono Trigger avoids filler, at least the SNES version does. It adds a lot to the pacing of the story that you're rarely out there searching for item X to supply to NPC Y to unlock Dungeon Z to find item A to supply NPC B to finally meaningfully progress the story. Yes, there of course is still some of that here, but I can't say it was a chore to go through any dungeon this game had to offer because it was well-balanced with progression of the story and your character, and dungeons usually have unique puzzles for you. Both in actual puzzles and in terms of the battles, where you need to figure out how to "solve" a fight before you actually beat the enemy. Certain enemies for example can block almost all of your physical or magical attacks. That's simple enough. Then there are some who first have to be shocked with a lightning attack before they lower their guard and take damage. These "puzzles" get more and more tricky as the game goes on, up until the final boss fight, where the game throws one final curveball at you, though I'll let you discover that on your own.
At the end of the day though, Chrono Trigger is still a turn-based Square JRPG. If you didn't enjoy these before or especially after Chrono Trigger, the "Tech" skills won't be enough to change your mind. Even to me, watching the same attack animations play out slowly over thousands of times in encounters against much weaker enemies is not very fun but rather something you have to do to get to the next big fight, or something you do as part of solving a dungeon. Square still use their Active Battle System, which I dislike as much as ever because it has 0 to do with strategy and one billion to do with being quick on the buttons like a 12 year old Fortnite player building a castle in four seconds. Losing battles can throw you up to an hour back if you die shortly before getting to your next save point (unless you use save states).
So, to put it short: If you enjoy gameplay in JRPGs, you'll enjoy this. If you don't, you won't here either, but it's the most fun non-Shin Megami Tensei (J)RPG I've played that came out in the 90s so far.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 10/10
Did you hear that Chrono Trigger has a great soundtrack? Well you heard correctly. I loved this soundtrack from beginning to end. The fair theme and Gato's theme at the start already had me getting earworms for the rest of my first day playing this. The battle theme is great and just doesn't get old. Then there are numerous character and location themes that range from great to perfection. I could name you a dozen songs that I loved and would gladly listen to outside of the game, and others would probably name you another dozen that they remember very fondly. It's a terrific soundtrack and if you want a taste, I recommend you to check out Gato's / Gonzalez's Theme, Secret of the Forest, Guardia Castle, Battle with Magus and probably my favorite, Corridors of Time.
They call me Gato ♪
I have metal joints ♪
Beat me up ♪
And earn 15 silver points ♪
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 9/10
Thanks to the time travel theme and the many different ages you visit, this game has a ton of visual variety, which helps the game to visually never get stale. Enemy design is great, the world design helps give each age its distinctive properties and while I thought the characters had some weird looks sometimes (Marle doing the squilly face for example), I did like their design as well, though the characters to me stand out a lot more in their avatars than their in-game sprites.
ATMOSPHERE/IMMERSION | 10/10
This game packs so much detail for a game of its time and for any game period. I have one party scene in particular in mind where a unique song just for that scene plays and you got a bunch of characters just dancing as you walk around. I then interacted with Marle, who said something along the lines of "let's party", after which she went over to someone else and started mingling. Talking to her again prompted her to say "let's dance" and she started busting out the moves, and apart from the fact that I interacted with her to prompt these lines and actions, it all felt so natural. Or going to Lucca's home and talking to her mom, only for her dad to show up and then give us an item shortly after. Or the entirety of the millennial fair and how seemingly tiny interactions there are brought up later.
There are tons of small details like that and if you ask me what every great video game has, it is those small details. If you put that much care into those, it's almost a safe bet that the main portion of your game will be quality as well, and that's certainly the case here.
Outside of the details, the game is very atmospheric thanks to its varied locations and use of its songs. Funny thing is, even now a small detail comes to mind, like healing up in the future and getting the "you're still hungry" notification, which is such a small thing but only is added in this era. It helps paint the picture of the life the people who are there are living, and it makes a later moment stand out even more.
CONTENT | 10/10
The game is PACKED with content. It has a lot more content than you will see in one playthrough, that's for sure. It got all the endings, all the different ages, all the different side quests, lots of techs, double techs, triple techs, secret items, optional dungeons, New Game+ (which is a term coined in THIS game) and all those permutations to events you can have depending on your actions, not to mention plenty of bosses, high enemy variety and a ton of interaction that you can have between the ages, which is often optional but rewards you for your time pretty well. If you could only bring one JRPG with you on an island, and you had never played Chrono Trigger, this would keep you busy without you finding all the content in it for quiiite a while.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 9/10
The pacing in this game is great and the way the game rewards optional exploration is one of the better examples I've ever seen. The fact that grinding is not required even a single bit is a great achievement in itself. If there is one negative I'd have, it's the final dungeon (I played the SNES version, I hear other versions have bad optional dungeons). This dungeon takes a bit too long for my taste and keeps throwing the same enemy at you that disables your tech/items, which turns these battles into boring "Press A and wait for the battle to end" slogs. The final boss form then has a BS attack that insta-kills your party unless they are at full health (2 of my 3 party members died even then), so I didn't enjoy that either, plus the GolemTwins fight was BS, but those would be my only negatives in a game I played for 25+ hours. The least frustrating retro JRPG I've played overall by a mile.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 8/10
In many core ways it doesn't differ from contemporary JRPGs, but the time travel mechanic and great pacing help the story stand out, the Tech system is one of the most fun satisfying systems I've experienced in retro JRPGs and the game helped popularize having a lot of different endings and NG+. Even if you are one to play through a game once and that's it, the way you can choose how and when to do things is a terrificly executed in Chrono Trigger.
REPLAYABILITY | 5/5
Don't think I stumbled upon a more replayable game up to this point, Chrono Trigger can be played many times over and present you with vastly different events.
PLAYABILITY | 5/5
Works well at all times.
OVERALL | 90/100
Chrono Trigger aged tremendously. If you're a fan of JRPGs and haven't checked this out, I don't even know what to tell you. Is it the best JRPG today? Probably not, but I agree that it's the best JRPG up until the time of its release. And even if it's not #1 today, it still isn't too far from that spot in my opinion. Few games offer such a complete package, and I'm glad I finally got to experience this game.
I didn't think Chrono Trigger, a 1995 JRPG by Square for the SNES, would live up to the incredibly high expectations I had that came from years and years of reading about how Chrono Trigger is still one of the best JRPGs today, if not one of the best games period. I would stumble upon quite a few of these types of highly praised games, only to have their impact lessened by the expectations going in.
With Chrono Trigger, there were two differences for me. First, I have done this challenge of mine for over a year now, starting all the way back in 1990 and arriving in 1995, having played 110 different games in the process, including over a dozen RPGs. So my expectations for what a great game in the 90s looks like were set rather accurately I'd say.
Second, unlike some of the other older games I would hear about and be slightly disappointed by, Chrono Trigger actually aged incredibly well. It won't make you a fan of the JRPG genre if you've tried many other games and don't enjoy the gameplay loop, but for fans of the genre, I'm gonna go ahead and say that there are few JRPGs out there who are as complete a package as Chrono Trigger. From 1990 to 1995, it's absolutely the best one, and possibly my favorite game as part of this challenge I've played so far. If you call yourself a JRPG fan, do yourself a favor and check this game out.
STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 9/10
Chrono Trigger uses a time travel theme for its main story. You play as Crono (or however non-canon name you would like to give him), who looks like a DBZ character in the game's cover, which makes sense since the art designer worked on DBZ as well. The game starts in 1000 A.D. You wake up and go to the fair that is in town, where a local girl named Lucca has a transportation device to showcase, which teleports you from one box to the other right next to it.
An accident happens and a girl you were hanging out with, Marle, is sent into a portal that opened up by the power of her pendant. You choose to be the hero and go after her. Soon after, you realize you are now in 600 A.D. That's all fascinating and stuff, but all you want to do is grab Marle and get out of there. Events transpire, and not much later, you find yourself in the future and uncovering something very dark: The planet is dying. With the power of time travel at your hands, it's up to you and your friends to go back and forward in time to do what's necessary and prevent this horrible death.
What impresses the most about Chrono Trigger's storytelling is that it incorporates time travel and does not end up in a jumbled mess by the end. Quite the opposite actually. The time travel theme gives the story lots of options to explore different settings, events and permutations of said events, which lends itself perfectly to the fact that this game has not one, not two but 13 (!) different endings that differ quite notably from each other based on when and where you take certain actions.
Additionally, Chrono Trigger reaches the impressive feat of having a time travel story make sense overall, while also avoiding being as formulaic as JRPG stories tend to be at this time period. The main villain in this game is really interesting and actually scary as shit the more I think about it, and as someone who loves a good villain, that's awesome, though I won't say much more than that. There are also many other villains of which many were well-explored, and the game has a diverse and charming cast of characters. I found some to be one-dimensional, like Robo or Ayla, but the others have some stand-out moments as part of the main story or their own side stories. I wish there would have been more moments where the entire casts interacts like in one singular scene that I found throughout the whole game, but the game is more focused on its plot, which is well-paced almost throughout, and that makes for a great experience as well.
One final note I want to make is that the game does a really great job at foreshadowing certain events, locations and characters, and when you get to the points where they become relevant, it makes for some of the best moments in the game.
As someone who likes well-developed characters as much as a good plot, I would personally have liked a little bit more in that aspect, but the plot is great, characters are easy to root for and there are at least a couple that do have great backstories and development, so if you're looking for a JRPG who ticks these boxes, Chrono Trigger probably comes up at the top of most lists for a good reason.
GAMEPLAY | 15/20
JRPGs have a pretty well-established gameplay loop, and Chrono Trigger does not distance itself from that either, which is understandable considering it was made by the same company that is reponsible for Final Fantasy, the SaGa series, the Mana series and more. That said, what Chrono Trigger achieves is three-fold.
First, Chrono Trigger makes the loop less grindy and cryptic. I never felt the need to farm XP mindlessly for hours to have a chance at a random mid-game boss. There was one boss fight that was unusually tough, sure, but I beat it by adjusting my strategy and was able to continue through the rest of the game. The game also never forced me to use a guide, which, believe me, means something. There is always that one time in these RPGs where I'm stumped as to where to go or what to do, but with Chrono Trigger, I always figured it out eventually, without fail. Talk to all NPCs and you will definitely find your way forward.
Second, Chrono Trigger introduces quality of life changes and general improvements to the genre. Talk to an NPC accidentally? Just walk away mid dialogue without having to click each line away. Don't want to be thrown into random encounters? You don't have to, enemies almost always appear on the screen and you can often just walk past them. Feel like you're usually missing out on the good skills/weapons in JRPGs because you can't find them? The game has "Techs", which the characters unlock naturally as you use them, which are more than enough to overcome any challenge as long as you use them correctly.
Third, Chrono Trigger avoids filler, at least the SNES version does. It adds a lot to the pacing of the story that you're rarely out there searching for item X to supply to NPC Y to unlock Dungeon Z to find item A to supply NPC B to finally meaningfully progress the story. Yes, there of course is still some of that here, but I can't say it was a chore to go through any dungeon this game had to offer because it was well-balanced with progression of the story and your character, and dungeons usually have unique puzzles for you. Both in actual puzzles and in terms of the battles, where you need to figure out how to "solve" a fight before you actually beat the enemy. Certain enemies for example can block almost all of your physical or magical attacks. That's simple enough. Then there are some who first have to be shocked with a lightning attack before they lower their guard and take damage. These "puzzles" get more and more tricky as the game goes on, up until the final boss fight, where the game throws one final curveball at you, though I'll let you discover that on your own.
At the end of the day though, Chrono Trigger is still a turn-based Square JRPG. If you didn't enjoy these before or especially after Chrono Trigger, the "Tech" skills won't be enough to change your mind. Even to me, watching the same attack animations play out slowly over thousands of times in encounters against much weaker enemies is not very fun but rather something you have to do to get to the next big fight, or something you do as part of solving a dungeon. Square still use their Active Battle System, which I dislike as much as ever because it has 0 to do with strategy and one billion to do with being quick on the buttons like a 12 year old Fortnite player building a castle in four seconds. Losing battles can throw you up to an hour back if you die shortly before getting to your next save point (unless you use save states).
So, to put it short: If you enjoy gameplay in JRPGs, you'll enjoy this. If you don't, you won't here either, but it's the most fun non-Shin Megami Tensei (J)RPG I've played that came out in the 90s so far.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 10/10
Did you hear that Chrono Trigger has a great soundtrack? Well you heard correctly. I loved this soundtrack from beginning to end. The fair theme and Gato's theme at the start already had me getting earworms for the rest of my first day playing this. The battle theme is great and just doesn't get old. Then there are numerous character and location themes that range from great to perfection. I could name you a dozen songs that I loved and would gladly listen to outside of the game, and others would probably name you another dozen that they remember very fondly. It's a terrific soundtrack and if you want a taste, I recommend you to check out Gato's / Gonzalez's Theme, Secret of the Forest, Guardia Castle, Battle with Magus and probably my favorite, Corridors of Time.
They call me Gato ♪
I have metal joints ♪
Beat me up ♪
And earn 15 silver points ♪
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 9/10
Thanks to the time travel theme and the many different ages you visit, this game has a ton of visual variety, which helps the game to visually never get stale. Enemy design is great, the world design helps give each age its distinctive properties and while I thought the characters had some weird looks sometimes (Marle doing the squilly face for example), I did like their design as well, though the characters to me stand out a lot more in their avatars than their in-game sprites.
ATMOSPHERE/IMMERSION | 10/10
This game packs so much detail for a game of its time and for any game period. I have one party scene in particular in mind where a unique song just for that scene plays and you got a bunch of characters just dancing as you walk around. I then interacted with Marle, who said something along the lines of "let's party", after which she went over to someone else and started mingling. Talking to her again prompted her to say "let's dance" and she started busting out the moves, and apart from the fact that I interacted with her to prompt these lines and actions, it all felt so natural. Or going to Lucca's home and talking to her mom, only for her dad to show up and then give us an item shortly after. Or the entirety of the millennial fair and how seemingly tiny interactions there are brought up later.
There are tons of small details like that and if you ask me what every great video game has, it is those small details. If you put that much care into those, it's almost a safe bet that the main portion of your game will be quality as well, and that's certainly the case here.
Outside of the details, the game is very atmospheric thanks to its varied locations and use of its songs. Funny thing is, even now a small detail comes to mind, like healing up in the future and getting the "you're still hungry" notification, which is such a small thing but only is added in this era. It helps paint the picture of the life the people who are there are living, and it makes a later moment stand out even more.
CONTENT | 10/10
The game is PACKED with content. It has a lot more content than you will see in one playthrough, that's for sure. It got all the endings, all the different ages, all the different side quests, lots of techs, double techs, triple techs, secret items, optional dungeons, New Game+ (which is a term coined in THIS game) and all those permutations to events you can have depending on your actions, not to mention plenty of bosses, high enemy variety and a ton of interaction that you can have between the ages, which is often optional but rewards you for your time pretty well. If you could only bring one JRPG with you on an island, and you had never played Chrono Trigger, this would keep you busy without you finding all the content in it for quiiite a while.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 9/10
The pacing in this game is great and the way the game rewards optional exploration is one of the better examples I've ever seen. The fact that grinding is not required even a single bit is a great achievement in itself. If there is one negative I'd have, it's the final dungeon (I played the SNES version, I hear other versions have bad optional dungeons). This dungeon takes a bit too long for my taste and keeps throwing the same enemy at you that disables your tech/items, which turns these battles into boring "Press A and wait for the battle to end" slogs. The final boss form then has a BS attack that insta-kills your party unless they are at full health (2 of my 3 party members died even then), so I didn't enjoy that either, plus the GolemTwins fight was BS, but those would be my only negatives in a game I played for 25+ hours. The least frustrating retro JRPG I've played overall by a mile.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 8/10
In many core ways it doesn't differ from contemporary JRPGs, but the time travel mechanic and great pacing help the story stand out, the Tech system is one of the most fun satisfying systems I've experienced in retro JRPGs and the game helped popularize having a lot of different endings and NG+. Even if you are one to play through a game once and that's it, the way you can choose how and when to do things is a terrificly executed in Chrono Trigger.
REPLAYABILITY | 5/5
Don't think I stumbled upon a more replayable game up to this point, Chrono Trigger can be played many times over and present you with vastly different events.
PLAYABILITY | 5/5
Works well at all times.
OVERALL | 90/100
Chrono Trigger aged tremendously. If you're a fan of JRPGs and haven't checked this out, I don't even know what to tell you. Is it the best JRPG today? Probably not, but I agree that it's the best JRPG up until the time of its release. And even if it's not #1 today, it still isn't too far from that spot in my opinion. Few games offer such a complete package, and I'm glad I finally got to experience this game.
(This is the 57th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet is in my bio.)
The Game of the Year, ladies and gentlemen. The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, initially released on November 21, 1991 in Japan for the SNES, developed and published by Nintendo, is a fantastic action-adventure and is the Zelda game that has set the framework for the series in so many ways from here on out, and that it has done such a great job with that concept here already deserves a lot of praise (of which it got a lot I hear).
I can talk on and on about the positives, but I'll go over everything in detail in my review. Though I do want to add that I am surprised that Nintendo, after releasing a Game Boy Zelda game in 1993, didn't release another home console game in the series all the way until 1998. That's seven years from now. Of course, releases were almost an annual thing from then on for about a decade, but I am still surprised about this little fact. At release, this game received a 39/40 Famitsu score, the first game to ever get a score so high according to Wikipedia's article on the game, and was the best-selling game in 1991, so it's not like Nintendo wasn't aware of its popularity. Though the gap between BOTW and TOTK was even larger, so it's not any different today. Anyway, here is the review.
STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 7/10
The Legend of Zelda: A Link To The Past takes a massive leap in narrative in comparison to Zelda I and II. Unlike all the other improvements the game presented with the jump to the SNES, the narrative jump did not have to be this grand. In hindsight, it's what this gaves this game that little something that many games lack in atmosphere and in what players would be able to draw back on years after finishing the game.
While Zelda II simply had a scrolling text to explain the set-up and then have you go side to side until you get the "you won" text, ALTTP goes to great detail (for its time) explaining the mythology of its world.
The setting is Hyrule, which, according to Hylian scrolls, many moons ago was created by mythical gods of Power, Wisdom and Courage. It is said that after finishing their work, they left a symbol of their strength hidden somewhere in Hyrule, a golden triangle known as the Triforce. The Triforce myth, an ancient epic, tells that this Triforce, an inanimate object, may grant the wish of the person who finds it. Its hiding place is the Golden Land, and over time, more and more people, fueled by greed, looked to find it, killing each other in the progress.
One day, by accident more than anything, a gang of thieves led by Ganondorf Dragmire, or Ganon, found the gate to the Golden Land. Ganon quickly vanquished his followers to have the Triforce's powers for himself. It is explained that the Triforce can not judge between evil and good and grants every wish, so while Ganon's exact wish is not known, it did not take long for evil power to flow from the Golden Land and for disasters to beset Hyrule.
This led the lord of Hyrule to sent out the Seven Wise Men and the Knights of Hyrule to seal the entrance to the Golden Land. A war raged between them and Ganon's evil army. As the Knights struggled to find off the army, they did give the Seven Wise Men the required time to magically seal Ganon in the Golden Land. In the midst of this, the people of Hyrule, suspecting that Ganon's power stemmed from the Triforce, created a mighty weapon resistant to magic which could repulse powers granted by even the Triforce. This weapon is called the Master Sword. It is so powerful that only one of pure heart can wield it.
A long time later, you, Link, are woken up by a person who calls herself Zelda. She needs your help. The reason for her pleas? Ganon, while still sealed in the 'Dark World' (the current name for the Golden Land), wants to take over the 'Light World' (Hyrule) as well. To break the seal, he needs the life force of the seven wise men. He uses a wizard, Agahnim, as his pawn to do this, who captures the seven wise men one by one. You need to save them and kill Ganon once and for all.
And that's the back-story. Quite a detailed one, huh? This information can mostly be found in the manual for the game, but each of the seven wise men you are supposed to capture, and Zelda herself especially, tell you these stories in-game as you interact with them, leaving you with no blanks even if you didn't touch the manual.
With how limited the storytelling used to be during this time, I didn't find any of the main plot points for this game to be terribly sophisticated. But what this game did really well was to go in-depth regarding these plot points. To create plot points for all these important parts of the story at all. This is an action-adventure game with lots of puzzles of all varieties, and getting stuck and exploring to find a way forward is what you are meant to do all the time. So having an in-depth narrative like this compared to the majority of games from this time is actually pretty damn useful in motivating the player to keep going.
Out of these plot points, there is a lot to like, but I want to point out the description of the Master Sword in particular, as personally I am a big fan of weapons that can only be wielded by good-hearted people, I think that's a great sort-of requirement to set for all those young people who played this back in the day. For that reason I think when you eventually get the Master Sword, there could have been a bigger deal made of it, but maybe that's something for a later game in the series.
All in all, in terms of the big picture, the plot here is nothing special. It's a much more sophisticated telling of more or less the same story most games of the time used, but with slightly more depth to it and 'gamified' so the devs could use it as a framework for the game they were about to built. The seven wise men for example aren't this mysterious ancient group, they act as seven dungeons that you are meant to explore and beat in the game. It could have just easily been three or four, but the game would have not been as long this way. The Light and Dark worlds are simply two overworlds that you can explore, and instead of having to design two very distinct ones in shape, the same overworld style was used and just made darker and with a few changes to the traversal were made. So if you want to be cynical, yes, the game design shaped the narrative, but I don't think that's a bad thing for a game, especially of its time, and I appreciate the devs for putting in the effort to have the story not just be an afterthought to the gameplay but have it be integrated in everything you do like this.
GAMEPLAY | 16/20
This game is an action-adventure and introduces more or less the core design that the majority of the follow-ups would stick to in the Zelda series. It plays from top-down 2D perspective. You control Link and traverse an overworld filled with many secrets, enemies and dungeons. The main gameplay consists of the following loop: You need to enter a specific dungeon. The dungeons take pretty long, have multiple floors and consist of many different puzzles the player needs to solve in order to progress to the boss. During each dungeon, you find a special item, like a Fire-Rod, an Ice-Rod, a boomerang, a staff of invincibility, a hook shot, a magic hammer and more. These not only help you beat the dungeon, but once you do, you return to the overworld and a ton of optional (and mandatory, you just don't know it yet) sections of the overworld now open for you to be explored. The magic hammer for example allows you to pound stakes and obstacles into the ground which had blocked off certain areas before.
During exploration, through which there is a LOT to find, you can open up holes to secret rooms, you can find NPCs who give you side quests, you can find environmental puzzles and hints (a shield says that you should not throw something into a circle of stones, I wonder what happens if you do it anyway), you can stumble upon pieces of a heart (4 of which give you one additional hitpoint) and you find required items to potentially open up other dungeons, like a certain medaillon for example.
There are also many different caves and buildings to go to, as these often offer you optional, but incredibly useful upgrades to your gear. Help a gnome find his way to his partner and you are rewarded with an upgrade to your sword. Find a fountain, throw rupees in and you can increase the amount of bombs/arrows you can carry. You can give certain items you find to certain NPCs, who reward you with different items. "I wonder who would have any use for this mushroom?".
There is quite a lot to do here, and I'd be lying to you if I said I wasn't stuck multiple times. Taking a break of more than a week in this game means you're almost guaranteed to start over or use a guide, because a lot of information that you absolutely are required to have comes from one-time dialogue with NPCs often enough. If you don't pay attention or take a break and forget this information, you're going to be looking around for that one elusive item for a while. The game doesn't hold your hand one bit, and that's something each of you will have your own opinion about. Personally, I appreciated this because for the majority of this game, the game design matched this need for exploration by giving you multiple bread crumbs for almost everything you need to figure out. I personally missed some, for sure, and therefore had to make use of a guide a couple times, but if you enjoy the exploration part of this game a lot (and don't want to save some off those minutes to be able to progress through a challenge quicker), I'm sure you can manage to beat it without a guide.
That said, I had two issues here, which I explain more closely in the Level Design part of this review. First, is that the overworld traversal is not perfect and is too reliant on Save & Exit's to not slow the pace down considerably, and the second is that some solutions are not very intuitive. Here is a room which a bunch of tiles. You have to move one tile in a specific direction to make a chest appear. Here are 20 statues with their tongues showing. None do anything after you hit them, pull them and dash into them. Here another dozen. They don't do anything. Here are another 4. One of these opens the door you need to progress. When these are all in the same dungeon and you're stuck, and pretty much anything can trigger anything at times, it can definitely become a frustrating excercise of trial and error.
But these issues don't overshadow the excellent gameplay experience that is on offer here.
The combat is pretty straightforward. You point in one of four directions and can slash forward with your sword. Holding the attack button also produces a 360° attack. You gain a dashing ability pretty early on, which damages the majority of enemies if you dash into them. Many items you find later on also can be used for attacking purposes, so it's rare that you only rely on your sword for too long. Apart from bombs and arrows which you can constantly re-fill, you get a boomerang, fire- and ice rods, three medaillons that produce special attacks and more, some of which drain your 'magic meter', as they'd otherwise be too overpowered. Different enemies have different susceptibilities. Some can only be killed with fire, some need to take an arrow to their eye and late-game skeletons don't fully die unless you kill them with a bomb.
My main gripe is that since you can only slash forward, hitting the target can sometimes be an issue, though not too often to make it annoying. For example, some enemies have a shield or other forms of frontal protection. The shield may be on the right hand of the enemy, which means you need to place yourself further down to hit their left side, which exposes you to a hit for half a second. Then there are enemies that start producing shock waves at random times, and there is no warning for it, so way too often, you'd swing and in those couple frames between swing and hit, the shockwaves can activate and cause rather significant damage to you. Also, there are many enemies that cause knock-back. Since dungeons often have holes that you can fall into, hitting enemies and falling into them can be annoying, but avoiding the fight usually solves that issue. Finally, this is another one of those games where you need to regularly open up your inventory to change weapons, which is a common issue with games that use multiple items like this. It's not too bad but noticeable when you fight particular bosses, especially Ganon at the end.
In terms of controls, this game plays and controls pretty fluently. You want to do something, and Link does it. The only instance where I felt that the controls were truly unfair were on tight platforms where you could fall off to the sides. For some reason, walking and turning had this slippery feel to it, and instead of making a sharp right or left, Link would need a few steps to gain momentum to that side, which often leads to him falling down. On ice-y platforms I understand, but on regular platforms this was odd.
Overall though, this game offers great gameplay and exploration. It proves why it's so popular, as it is several times more polished than other action-adventures of this time.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 9/10
No voice acting. And I'm glad, at least for the SNES version, because the constant screaming of Link in the GBA version I definitely couldn't have survived for 15+ hours.
The sound design and soundtrack are both excellent here. There are some sound effects, like the discovery of a secret door, that is so iconic that even I, someone who didn't really play any Zelda games before, instantly was able to notice it. In general, there are sound effects for pretty much every action and they all sound clean, which is not something that was to be expected from games on this level at the time. The soundtrack is great for the epic journey that this is supposed to be, with many epic tracks fitting the scneario. I would have wished for more tracks to use during dungeons to make them more distinct on an auditory level, but I also would understand those who say that listening to fewer tracks increases the 'bond' with them on a nostalgic level. Many games today opt for fewer tracks as well, so I wouldn't call it a negative.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 10/10
The graphical jump here from Zelda II to ALTTP is obviously absurd, but apart from simple image quality and resolution, the art design here also stands out. Bright colors, beautiful 16-bit graphics, excellent sprite work, diverse environments and very solid special effects. Apart from just the eye-candy perspective, the game incorporates a lot of environmental puzzles to its exploration, and the tells from the environmental design are excellent as well. Here is tiny half-circle that indicates a platform, here is a small crack in the wall that is not noticeable until closer inspection, but very noticeable thereafter, indicating a secret area.
You explore all types of different areas in the game, from distinct dungeons and, to be overworld specific, forests, deserts, mountains, swamps, castles and more, and you have few, if any games that look quite like this on such a scale at the time.
ATMOSPHERE/IMMERSION | 9/10
You truly feel like a hero embarking on an epic journey in this one. The graphics and soundtrack set a great stage for your travels, and there is a lot of attention to detail in the world-building that one can only appreciate. A cute thing for example was when I passed the controller to my six year old brother for a while. He started swinging his sword at a bird in the Dark World that just would not die, and to our amazement, after a few dozen hits, dozens of the same bird started flooding the screen and attacking us. Small details that most players won't experieence are always fun to find. One additional thing I enjoyed is that there is actual in-game meaning to the items you find. You don't find a generic book, you find the Book of Mudora, which can translate inscriptions. You find Staffs of Somaria and Byrna, you find three magic medaillons like the Bombos, which only the hero bearing the master sword can retrieve. It's really basic at this point of course, but it does add to the immersion.
CONTENT | 10/10
Few games are so chock-full of stuff to find while exploring. The great part is that the majority of the overworld does have stuff to find. The overworld is seperated through screens, and I wouldn't be surprised if there is something useful or interesting on each screen.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 8/10
You have specific dungeons to go to, which are marked on your map. That's all that is marked though. You need to find your way there on your own and sometimes, you need to find specific items that unlock your entry to the dungeons themselves. This is all paced really well.
The overworld is differentiated in two versions, the Light World and the Dark World. These are basically the same overworld, but with different looking environments, different obstacles and more enemies on the Dark World part. For example, in the Light World, there is a Kakariko Village to the west, and in the Dark World, the same area is called Village of Outcasts. You can switch between these worlds in two different ways. You can either use a 'Magic Mirror' to switch from Dark to Light, or, since you can't switch back this way, you need to find a warp portal to switch from Light to Dark.
All in all, the game is really well designed. My only issue here is how annoying traversal can be at times. Unless you want to run across the map for the umpteenth time, you have to rely on 'Save & Quit', which allows you to select a location to spawn in (when in the Light World) once you enter back into the game, or which places you at a specific spot near the middle of the overworld (when in the Dark World). Later, the flute item allows you to fast travel to specific locations in the Light World. But this is a minor issue overall and a subjective thing for sure, though more interconnectivity that opens up shortcuts later on would have been amazing.
One additional point I want to make is that some items are very hard to find or making progress can be tough to figure out at times. And while my complaint is not that part, it's that crucial information is often given once and as an aside, so not paying attention once or simply forgetting about something hours after getting the information means you can be stuck for a while. I don't think a journal that notes the most important stuff would have been the worst thing in the world.
Overall, the game balances it game quite well though. You'll get a great dose of exploring, of making your way through large dungeons, of battling and do so in a very good pace for the majority of it.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 10/10
Inner-series, the jump from Zelda II to ALTTP is incredible, but even generally, there was no game quite like this at the time, or at least none that managed to put it together quite as well in an action-adventure setting. There is greated attention given to storytelling and world-building, the soundtrack is great, the graphics are cream of the crop, the dungeons are uniquely designed and offer a fun challenge and exploration is incredibly rewarding.
REPLAYABILITY | 3/5
There are more than a few side quests you can still find on subsequent playthroughs, as well as heart pieces. Even improving your sword or upgrading your bomb and arrow space are completely optional parts that are easy to miss, so there will be plenty to discover. The story is linear however and most special items you can find are mandatory.
PLAYABILITY | 5/5
The game worked well at all times.
OVERALL | 86/100
You want to know what the best game of 1991 is? You've probably just read the review for it. Few games during this time allowed for this much exploration and managed to for the majority of the game to balance the joy of discovery with the potential frustrations of being stuck this well by offering breadcrumbs of info in its NPC dialogue and environments that attentive players take to their advantage to continuously make progress. The dungeons are distinct, large and filled with environmental puzzles and combat challenges to overcome. The soundtrack is very good, the graphics great in comparison to its contemporaries and while the overworld design does get somewhat tedious from time to time, you're going to get a very good and prototypical Zelda experience here. If you like Zelda games and you didn't play this, I don't know what you're doing. If you're unsure, future releases will likely offer plenty of QoL improvements that will make them more newcomer friendly, but even if you start your Zelda journey somewhere else, don't forget about A Link To The Past.
The Game of the Year, ladies and gentlemen. The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, initially released on November 21, 1991 in Japan for the SNES, developed and published by Nintendo, is a fantastic action-adventure and is the Zelda game that has set the framework for the series in so many ways from here on out, and that it has done such a great job with that concept here already deserves a lot of praise (of which it got a lot I hear).
I can talk on and on about the positives, but I'll go over everything in detail in my review. Though I do want to add that I am surprised that Nintendo, after releasing a Game Boy Zelda game in 1993, didn't release another home console game in the series all the way until 1998. That's seven years from now. Of course, releases were almost an annual thing from then on for about a decade, but I am still surprised about this little fact. At release, this game received a 39/40 Famitsu score, the first game to ever get a score so high according to Wikipedia's article on the game, and was the best-selling game in 1991, so it's not like Nintendo wasn't aware of its popularity. Though the gap between BOTW and TOTK was even larger, so it's not any different today. Anyway, here is the review.
STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 7/10
The Legend of Zelda: A Link To The Past takes a massive leap in narrative in comparison to Zelda I and II. Unlike all the other improvements the game presented with the jump to the SNES, the narrative jump did not have to be this grand. In hindsight, it's what this gaves this game that little something that many games lack in atmosphere and in what players would be able to draw back on years after finishing the game.
While Zelda II simply had a scrolling text to explain the set-up and then have you go side to side until you get the "you won" text, ALTTP goes to great detail (for its time) explaining the mythology of its world.
The setting is Hyrule, which, according to Hylian scrolls, many moons ago was created by mythical gods of Power, Wisdom and Courage. It is said that after finishing their work, they left a symbol of their strength hidden somewhere in Hyrule, a golden triangle known as the Triforce. The Triforce myth, an ancient epic, tells that this Triforce, an inanimate object, may grant the wish of the person who finds it. Its hiding place is the Golden Land, and over time, more and more people, fueled by greed, looked to find it, killing each other in the progress.
One day, by accident more than anything, a gang of thieves led by Ganondorf Dragmire, or Ganon, found the gate to the Golden Land. Ganon quickly vanquished his followers to have the Triforce's powers for himself. It is explained that the Triforce can not judge between evil and good and grants every wish, so while Ganon's exact wish is not known, it did not take long for evil power to flow from the Golden Land and for disasters to beset Hyrule.
This led the lord of Hyrule to sent out the Seven Wise Men and the Knights of Hyrule to seal the entrance to the Golden Land. A war raged between them and Ganon's evil army. As the Knights struggled to find off the army, they did give the Seven Wise Men the required time to magically seal Ganon in the Golden Land. In the midst of this, the people of Hyrule, suspecting that Ganon's power stemmed from the Triforce, created a mighty weapon resistant to magic which could repulse powers granted by even the Triforce. This weapon is called the Master Sword. It is so powerful that only one of pure heart can wield it.
A long time later, you, Link, are woken up by a person who calls herself Zelda. She needs your help. The reason for her pleas? Ganon, while still sealed in the 'Dark World' (the current name for the Golden Land), wants to take over the 'Light World' (Hyrule) as well. To break the seal, he needs the life force of the seven wise men. He uses a wizard, Agahnim, as his pawn to do this, who captures the seven wise men one by one. You need to save them and kill Ganon once and for all.
And that's the back-story. Quite a detailed one, huh? This information can mostly be found in the manual for the game, but each of the seven wise men you are supposed to capture, and Zelda herself especially, tell you these stories in-game as you interact with them, leaving you with no blanks even if you didn't touch the manual.
With how limited the storytelling used to be during this time, I didn't find any of the main plot points for this game to be terribly sophisticated. But what this game did really well was to go in-depth regarding these plot points. To create plot points for all these important parts of the story at all. This is an action-adventure game with lots of puzzles of all varieties, and getting stuck and exploring to find a way forward is what you are meant to do all the time. So having an in-depth narrative like this compared to the majority of games from this time is actually pretty damn useful in motivating the player to keep going.
Out of these plot points, there is a lot to like, but I want to point out the description of the Master Sword in particular, as personally I am a big fan of weapons that can only be wielded by good-hearted people, I think that's a great sort-of requirement to set for all those young people who played this back in the day. For that reason I think when you eventually get the Master Sword, there could have been a bigger deal made of it, but maybe that's something for a later game in the series.
All in all, in terms of the big picture, the plot here is nothing special. It's a much more sophisticated telling of more or less the same story most games of the time used, but with slightly more depth to it and 'gamified' so the devs could use it as a framework for the game they were about to built. The seven wise men for example aren't this mysterious ancient group, they act as seven dungeons that you are meant to explore and beat in the game. It could have just easily been three or four, but the game would have not been as long this way. The Light and Dark worlds are simply two overworlds that you can explore, and instead of having to design two very distinct ones in shape, the same overworld style was used and just made darker and with a few changes to the traversal were made. So if you want to be cynical, yes, the game design shaped the narrative, but I don't think that's a bad thing for a game, especially of its time, and I appreciate the devs for putting in the effort to have the story not just be an afterthought to the gameplay but have it be integrated in everything you do like this.
GAMEPLAY | 16/20
This game is an action-adventure and introduces more or less the core design that the majority of the follow-ups would stick to in the Zelda series. It plays from top-down 2D perspective. You control Link and traverse an overworld filled with many secrets, enemies and dungeons. The main gameplay consists of the following loop: You need to enter a specific dungeon. The dungeons take pretty long, have multiple floors and consist of many different puzzles the player needs to solve in order to progress to the boss. During each dungeon, you find a special item, like a Fire-Rod, an Ice-Rod, a boomerang, a staff of invincibility, a hook shot, a magic hammer and more. These not only help you beat the dungeon, but once you do, you return to the overworld and a ton of optional (and mandatory, you just don't know it yet) sections of the overworld now open for you to be explored. The magic hammer for example allows you to pound stakes and obstacles into the ground which had blocked off certain areas before.
During exploration, through which there is a LOT to find, you can open up holes to secret rooms, you can find NPCs who give you side quests, you can find environmental puzzles and hints (a shield says that you should not throw something into a circle of stones, I wonder what happens if you do it anyway), you can stumble upon pieces of a heart (4 of which give you one additional hitpoint) and you find required items to potentially open up other dungeons, like a certain medaillon for example.
There are also many different caves and buildings to go to, as these often offer you optional, but incredibly useful upgrades to your gear. Help a gnome find his way to his partner and you are rewarded with an upgrade to your sword. Find a fountain, throw rupees in and you can increase the amount of bombs/arrows you can carry. You can give certain items you find to certain NPCs, who reward you with different items. "I wonder who would have any use for this mushroom?".
There is quite a lot to do here, and I'd be lying to you if I said I wasn't stuck multiple times. Taking a break of more than a week in this game means you're almost guaranteed to start over or use a guide, because a lot of information that you absolutely are required to have comes from one-time dialogue with NPCs often enough. If you don't pay attention or take a break and forget this information, you're going to be looking around for that one elusive item for a while. The game doesn't hold your hand one bit, and that's something each of you will have your own opinion about. Personally, I appreciated this because for the majority of this game, the game design matched this need for exploration by giving you multiple bread crumbs for almost everything you need to figure out. I personally missed some, for sure, and therefore had to make use of a guide a couple times, but if you enjoy the exploration part of this game a lot (and don't want to save some off those minutes to be able to progress through a challenge quicker), I'm sure you can manage to beat it without a guide.
That said, I had two issues here, which I explain more closely in the Level Design part of this review. First, is that the overworld traversal is not perfect and is too reliant on Save & Exit's to not slow the pace down considerably, and the second is that some solutions are not very intuitive. Here is a room which a bunch of tiles. You have to move one tile in a specific direction to make a chest appear. Here are 20 statues with their tongues showing. None do anything after you hit them, pull them and dash into them. Here another dozen. They don't do anything. Here are another 4. One of these opens the door you need to progress. When these are all in the same dungeon and you're stuck, and pretty much anything can trigger anything at times, it can definitely become a frustrating excercise of trial and error.
But these issues don't overshadow the excellent gameplay experience that is on offer here.
The combat is pretty straightforward. You point in one of four directions and can slash forward with your sword. Holding the attack button also produces a 360° attack. You gain a dashing ability pretty early on, which damages the majority of enemies if you dash into them. Many items you find later on also can be used for attacking purposes, so it's rare that you only rely on your sword for too long. Apart from bombs and arrows which you can constantly re-fill, you get a boomerang, fire- and ice rods, three medaillons that produce special attacks and more, some of which drain your 'magic meter', as they'd otherwise be too overpowered. Different enemies have different susceptibilities. Some can only be killed with fire, some need to take an arrow to their eye and late-game skeletons don't fully die unless you kill them with a bomb.
My main gripe is that since you can only slash forward, hitting the target can sometimes be an issue, though not too often to make it annoying. For example, some enemies have a shield or other forms of frontal protection. The shield may be on the right hand of the enemy, which means you need to place yourself further down to hit their left side, which exposes you to a hit for half a second. Then there are enemies that start producing shock waves at random times, and there is no warning for it, so way too often, you'd swing and in those couple frames between swing and hit, the shockwaves can activate and cause rather significant damage to you. Also, there are many enemies that cause knock-back. Since dungeons often have holes that you can fall into, hitting enemies and falling into them can be annoying, but avoiding the fight usually solves that issue. Finally, this is another one of those games where you need to regularly open up your inventory to change weapons, which is a common issue with games that use multiple items like this. It's not too bad but noticeable when you fight particular bosses, especially Ganon at the end.
In terms of controls, this game plays and controls pretty fluently. You want to do something, and Link does it. The only instance where I felt that the controls were truly unfair were on tight platforms where you could fall off to the sides. For some reason, walking and turning had this slippery feel to it, and instead of making a sharp right or left, Link would need a few steps to gain momentum to that side, which often leads to him falling down. On ice-y platforms I understand, but on regular platforms this was odd.
Overall though, this game offers great gameplay and exploration. It proves why it's so popular, as it is several times more polished than other action-adventures of this time.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 9/10
No voice acting. And I'm glad, at least for the SNES version, because the constant screaming of Link in the GBA version I definitely couldn't have survived for 15+ hours.
The sound design and soundtrack are both excellent here. There are some sound effects, like the discovery of a secret door, that is so iconic that even I, someone who didn't really play any Zelda games before, instantly was able to notice it. In general, there are sound effects for pretty much every action and they all sound clean, which is not something that was to be expected from games on this level at the time. The soundtrack is great for the epic journey that this is supposed to be, with many epic tracks fitting the scneario. I would have wished for more tracks to use during dungeons to make them more distinct on an auditory level, but I also would understand those who say that listening to fewer tracks increases the 'bond' with them on a nostalgic level. Many games today opt for fewer tracks as well, so I wouldn't call it a negative.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 10/10
The graphical jump here from Zelda II to ALTTP is obviously absurd, but apart from simple image quality and resolution, the art design here also stands out. Bright colors, beautiful 16-bit graphics, excellent sprite work, diverse environments and very solid special effects. Apart from just the eye-candy perspective, the game incorporates a lot of environmental puzzles to its exploration, and the tells from the environmental design are excellent as well. Here is tiny half-circle that indicates a platform, here is a small crack in the wall that is not noticeable until closer inspection, but very noticeable thereafter, indicating a secret area.
You explore all types of different areas in the game, from distinct dungeons and, to be overworld specific, forests, deserts, mountains, swamps, castles and more, and you have few, if any games that look quite like this on such a scale at the time.
ATMOSPHERE/IMMERSION | 9/10
You truly feel like a hero embarking on an epic journey in this one. The graphics and soundtrack set a great stage for your travels, and there is a lot of attention to detail in the world-building that one can only appreciate. A cute thing for example was when I passed the controller to my six year old brother for a while. He started swinging his sword at a bird in the Dark World that just would not die, and to our amazement, after a few dozen hits, dozens of the same bird started flooding the screen and attacking us. Small details that most players won't experieence are always fun to find. One additional thing I enjoyed is that there is actual in-game meaning to the items you find. You don't find a generic book, you find the Book of Mudora, which can translate inscriptions. You find Staffs of Somaria and Byrna, you find three magic medaillons like the Bombos, which only the hero bearing the master sword can retrieve. It's really basic at this point of course, but it does add to the immersion.
CONTENT | 10/10
Few games are so chock-full of stuff to find while exploring. The great part is that the majority of the overworld does have stuff to find. The overworld is seperated through screens, and I wouldn't be surprised if there is something useful or interesting on each screen.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 8/10
You have specific dungeons to go to, which are marked on your map. That's all that is marked though. You need to find your way there on your own and sometimes, you need to find specific items that unlock your entry to the dungeons themselves. This is all paced really well.
The overworld is differentiated in two versions, the Light World and the Dark World. These are basically the same overworld, but with different looking environments, different obstacles and more enemies on the Dark World part. For example, in the Light World, there is a Kakariko Village to the west, and in the Dark World, the same area is called Village of Outcasts. You can switch between these worlds in two different ways. You can either use a 'Magic Mirror' to switch from Dark to Light, or, since you can't switch back this way, you need to find a warp portal to switch from Light to Dark.
All in all, the game is really well designed. My only issue here is how annoying traversal can be at times. Unless you want to run across the map for the umpteenth time, you have to rely on 'Save & Quit', which allows you to select a location to spawn in (when in the Light World) once you enter back into the game, or which places you at a specific spot near the middle of the overworld (when in the Dark World). Later, the flute item allows you to fast travel to specific locations in the Light World. But this is a minor issue overall and a subjective thing for sure, though more interconnectivity that opens up shortcuts later on would have been amazing.
One additional point I want to make is that some items are very hard to find or making progress can be tough to figure out at times. And while my complaint is not that part, it's that crucial information is often given once and as an aside, so not paying attention once or simply forgetting about something hours after getting the information means you can be stuck for a while. I don't think a journal that notes the most important stuff would have been the worst thing in the world.
Overall, the game balances it game quite well though. You'll get a great dose of exploring, of making your way through large dungeons, of battling and do so in a very good pace for the majority of it.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 10/10
Inner-series, the jump from Zelda II to ALTTP is incredible, but even generally, there was no game quite like this at the time, or at least none that managed to put it together quite as well in an action-adventure setting. There is greated attention given to storytelling and world-building, the soundtrack is great, the graphics are cream of the crop, the dungeons are uniquely designed and offer a fun challenge and exploration is incredibly rewarding.
REPLAYABILITY | 3/5
There are more than a few side quests you can still find on subsequent playthroughs, as well as heart pieces. Even improving your sword or upgrading your bomb and arrow space are completely optional parts that are easy to miss, so there will be plenty to discover. The story is linear however and most special items you can find are mandatory.
PLAYABILITY | 5/5
The game worked well at all times.
OVERALL | 86/100
You want to know what the best game of 1991 is? You've probably just read the review for it. Few games during this time allowed for this much exploration and managed to for the majority of the game to balance the joy of discovery with the potential frustrations of being stuck this well by offering breadcrumbs of info in its NPC dialogue and environments that attentive players take to their advantage to continuously make progress. The dungeons are distinct, large and filled with environmental puzzles and combat challenges to overcome. The soundtrack is very good, the graphics great in comparison to its contemporaries and while the overworld design does get somewhat tedious from time to time, you're going to get a very good and prototypical Zelda experience here. If you like Zelda games and you didn't play this, I don't know what you're doing. If you're unsure, future releases will likely offer plenty of QoL improvements that will make them more newcomer friendly, but even if you start your Zelda journey somewhere else, don't forget about A Link To The Past.
1992
The way I first got into the Megami Tensei series is actually not too dissimilar to how many did over the past decade I would imagine. First, I got into the Persona series, which is a lot more approachable due to its social sim aspects and its bigger focus on story and characters. Persona 3 became one of my favorite games of all time, and I wanted more like it. Persona 4 was only available for the Vita at the time, Persona 5 didn't release yet and so, all I had was this series called Shin Megami Tensei. Apparently, it had the same combat system and I should probably start with Nocturne, which also was the only SMT game I was able to play on platforms I had available. I ended up playing Nocturne for about 25 hours before giving up. On the one hand, I was initially put off by the fact that gameplay played a much bigger role than story (though I wasn't promised otherwise) because I sucked at the battle system and finding the right demons to get past those incredibly challenging early bosses (Matador still gives me nightmares). That didn't change throughout my playthrough, but I got better and as combat was becoming less of a worry, I started to take the atmosphere in more and to this day, I get an itch from time to time to dive into a game with a hopeless, oppressive atmosphere because the type that SMT games manage to create remain unique in video games. Though I'd be lying, if I said I wasn't drawn to the Persona series more, and have only played SMT 3, 4 and a tiny bit of 5 so far, even though I know the franchise has lots of spinoffs as well.
So know I am doing this challenge where I go through all types of games chronologically, and I am in this great position where I am looking forward to appreciate the Megami Tensei series from its (near) beginnings, playing almost all the games fully blindly, from Soul Hackers to Digital Devil Saga to Strange Journey and everything in between, and I am happy to say I took a big step in that regard by beating Shin Megami Tensei.
Shin Megami Tensei is the third game in the Megami Tensei series, the first to be released on the Super Famicom and a remake of the second Megami Tensei game to indicate a new beginning for the franchise. It released on October 30, 1992 and unfortunately, did not release in the West until it got an iOS release in 2014, which doesn't even work anymore unless you have a phone using IOS 10 or a previous version. Luckily, there is a fan translation for this game, so you can still play it in English using an emulator. The game apparently didn't release in the West due to its heavy use of religious themes, which led Nintendo to reject a western release. The game released on a lot of other platforms as well (PC Engine, Mega-CD, GBA, iOS/Android), including the PlayStation, which also didn't get a Western release due to a similar veto by Sony.
Shin Megami Tensei is an RPG with first-person dungeon-crawling gameplay and demon-fusing as its core forms of gameplay. You play the Hero that you give a name of your choosing. You are also to give names to a 'Law Hero' and a 'Chaos Hero', as well as a 'Heroine'. The game plays in Tokyo, another factor that makes this game stand out amongst the sea of medieval fantasy JRPGs of the time. It starts in the year 199X. A scientist opened a portal to another world that leads to demons invading Tokyo. You get an email by a guy called Steven, who gives you access to a "demon summoning program", which allows you to recruit and summon them.
You discover that there are multiple factions fighting for control over Tokyo, and that you and your companions have a big role to play in the fate of humanity. First, you have the US military led by ambassador "Thorman", who decide to bring their forces to Tokyo when they hear the news about the demon invasion. They are opposed by Gotou and the "Japan Seld-Defense Forces", who are more keen on using demons. Then there is the resistance led by the 'Heroine', who are there to to prevent conflict between the other two factions. Gotou starts looking for any woman in Tokyo with the same name as this otherwise, to him, unknown 'Heroine', which leads to all women with her name captured. These actions lead to Gotou's faction being "Chaos" aligned. Thorman and the US military look to purge Tokyo from demons, which makes them "Law" aligned, however they do not fear using any methods to accomplish this, as they have atomic bombs aimed at Tokyo as the conflict waits to be escalated.
I don't want to take away much more than this, but understand that you can decide to side with either faction or no faction at all, which is one of multiple decisions in this game that will put you on the "Law", "Chaos" or "Neutral" route. This decision manifests itself in multiple ways. If you are either Law or Chaos, you 1) have to defeat all bosses with the other alignment, but not the one's that have the same as you (Neutral fights both), 2) can only summon demons, if they align with your alignment, 3) have to pay extra to use healing services of the opposing alignment and 4) get a different ending. This is pretty nice and adds plenty of replayability.
There is plenty of story to uncover in this game and it is well told, with the level of maturity present pretty much throughout that is unheard of for games of its time. It is downright depressing to see what happens to the main character and humanity as a whole in this game, and I love it.
Throughout the game, you travel the overworld of Tokyo and go from dungeon to dungeon. There are some optional dungeons you can take on and some dungeons are open to visits before you are supposed to go there, which is neat, but usually there is no point in doing so, and it feels like the only reason for why you can go there is because the devs wanted you to get lost.
Dungeons mostly are designed the same. They differ in size, but almost all have simple wall tiles with plain colors and no textures that you traverse in first-person. The same-y look can lead you to getting lost quite a few times, which means opening up the map a whole lot, which can only be done by going to the menu, entering another menu and selecting map, looking at the map, exiting the map, exiting the sub-menu and exiting the main menu. There is a patch to make the map accessible through one button press, but I didn't know this until beating the game, so I was left frustrated by this from time to time.
In dungeons, there are a lot of optional areas you can go to and optional enemies you can fight, which often drop items that you could have skipped otherwise. Your human party members all have levels and stats (Strength, Magic, Vitality, Speed etc.) that can level up as you gain XP. You can also gain 'Incense' items that let you increase stats by one as well, which are often hidden in dungeons at random points. Likewise, other items are hidden as well, like Memory Boards, which you need to give to a character called Steven (who looks like the late Stephen Hawking) to be able to hold more demons in your computer, something that is easily missable.
Your main task though is to find specific characters / items / bosses in dungeons to progress the story. As you navigate the dungeons, you are thrown into random encounters every few steps and engage in battle. First, a quick rant on the encounters. Forget what you know about random encounters in other retro JRPGs. This game is the KING of them. It is ridiculous. Every couple steps you take, a random encounter pops up. Escape, and you are thrown back a couple steps, only to take those steps forward again and get into another random encounter. Some dungeons have a lot of encounters, and some dungeons have even more. It is the #1 thing that keeps me from giving this an otherwise easy "Recommended" seal, because it is that ridiculous.
It helps though that the battle system is relatively fun. You can use physical attacks (sword, gun) with your main character, magic attacks with the other Hero characters and demons that you summon and the assortment of elemental, buff, debuff and ailment attacks that are common in the Megami Tensei series. This game doesn't have the Press-Turn system yet (that gets introduced with SMT III), which is a shame, but it was enjoyable regardless. That said, the high encounter rate and the low XP you get relative to the length of normal fights made me escape a lot of them. Especially around the halfway mark, you get so much XP from frequent boss fights that it didn't make much sense to me to put myself through all of these. Boss fights didn't turn out to be so bad either.
Demon negotiations and fusing is present in this game as well. Obviously, it is much more basic here then in future iterations, but it is just as fun to fuse demons here. Negotiations weren't quite as fun, as most would fail. There are few answers you can give and they appeared to be random, as the same demon would react differently to the same answer at times. Failing didn't always have any negative consequences, but often enough it would allow the demon to get the first hit in.
Overall, the game's loop is fun enough to push you through the game, at least in my opinion, and what will make you want to stick around is its incredible atmosphere and unique story presentation for its time. The Shin Megami Tensei feel is very much present in this game.
Apart from the atmosphere, the other highlight of this game to me was the soundtrack. The soundtrack is the best on the Super Famicom I've heard so far (by far) and likely among the best to ever be released for the console. What Tsukasa Masuko achieved on the Super Famicom is incredible. Pretty much all tracks did a great job of capturing the mood, the battle theme is kick-ass, the Ginza track is an instant classic and the boss theme always had me alert that serious shit was going down.
If you like the Shin Megami Tensei series and are OK with the lack of QoL features present (or not present) in retro RPGs, and if you think you can live with the high encounter rate (emulating allows you to fast-forward, which helps move things along quicker), then this is definitely a game I can recommend to you. Otherwise, probably not, though I myself am very glad to have played this and am looking very much forward to the sequel that released in 1994.
STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 9/10
Engaging apocalyptic story with multiple memorable moments
Three different route options which impact the ending and your allegiance with characters
Fittingly depressing scenario that adds to the overall atmosphere
GAMEPLAY | 14/20
Addicting gameplay loop of exploring, battling and demon negotiation & fusing
Lots of strategic choice in battle
Navigating dungeons can become confusing
Encounter rate is RIDICULOUSLY high. Think of high it could be for the entire game, double that number, and that's how many encounters a dungeon has
Demon negotiations can become frustrating, as you fail most of the time
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 10/10
No voice acting
Easily one of the best soundtracks on the Super Famicom, simply amazing
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 7/10
Dark and atmospheric visual style
Lots of unique demons with varied designs
You spend most of the game staring at texture-less wall tiles
Dungeons graphically only distinguish themselves through color of the tiles
Easy to get lost / be forced to open the map due to sometimes confusing, similarly designed areas
Few animations, majority of battles and cut scenes play out with quasi-still sprites on-screen
ATMOSPHERE | 9/10
Incredibly atmospheric in terms of visual style, soundtrack and overall theme
Staring at pretty much the same wall tiles for most of the game does take its toll on immersion
CONTENT | 7/10
30-40 hours to beat
Many mandatory and more than a couple optional dungeons and bosses
Plenty of demons to fuse and battle
Most dungeons have no texture and look very similar
Encounter rate should have been lowered, even if that would have shaved off 5-10 hours off the game's overall length
The game makes up for that with three routes you can take, which adds replayability
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 5/10
Leveling up to get stronger, face bigger challenges and be able to fuse better demons is a fun loop
Around the half-way mark, most enemy encounters can be skipped, as the time spent for the XP gain is not worth it due to the high number of bosses that give you a lot of XP
Encounter rate didn't have to be so high as a result
Some dungeons are hard to navigate and some have an annoying "fog" gimmick that makes this even worse
CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 8/10
Atlus imprinted their DNA into this game so well that it sticks out all these years later
The first SMT game I'd deem approachable for non-hardcore RPG fans
Very unique in terms of theme (religious themes, use of Norse mythology etc.) and demon fusion system compared to pretty much every RPG out there at the time, especially on the Super Famicom
REPLAYABILITY | 4/5
A ton of replayability thanks to three routes you can take
Your alignment impacts gameplay in a lot of ways as well
High encounter rate is the one problem that makes replaying the game less appealing
PLAYABILITY | 5/5
Worked well at all times
OVERALL | 78/100
(This is the 77th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet is in my bio.)
So know I am doing this challenge where I go through all types of games chronologically, and I am in this great position where I am looking forward to appreciate the Megami Tensei series from its (near) beginnings, playing almost all the games fully blindly, from Soul Hackers to Digital Devil Saga to Strange Journey and everything in between, and I am happy to say I took a big step in that regard by beating Shin Megami Tensei.
Shin Megami Tensei is the third game in the Megami Tensei series, the first to be released on the Super Famicom and a remake of the second Megami Tensei game to indicate a new beginning for the franchise. It released on October 30, 1992 and unfortunately, did not release in the West until it got an iOS release in 2014, which doesn't even work anymore unless you have a phone using IOS 10 or a previous version. Luckily, there is a fan translation for this game, so you can still play it in English using an emulator. The game apparently didn't release in the West due to its heavy use of religious themes, which led Nintendo to reject a western release. The game released on a lot of other platforms as well (PC Engine, Mega-CD, GBA, iOS/Android), including the PlayStation, which also didn't get a Western release due to a similar veto by Sony.
Shin Megami Tensei is an RPG with first-person dungeon-crawling gameplay and demon-fusing as its core forms of gameplay. You play the Hero that you give a name of your choosing. You are also to give names to a 'Law Hero' and a 'Chaos Hero', as well as a 'Heroine'. The game plays in Tokyo, another factor that makes this game stand out amongst the sea of medieval fantasy JRPGs of the time. It starts in the year 199X. A scientist opened a portal to another world that leads to demons invading Tokyo. You get an email by a guy called Steven, who gives you access to a "demon summoning program", which allows you to recruit and summon them.
You discover that there are multiple factions fighting for control over Tokyo, and that you and your companions have a big role to play in the fate of humanity. First, you have the US military led by ambassador "Thorman", who decide to bring their forces to Tokyo when they hear the news about the demon invasion. They are opposed by Gotou and the "Japan Seld-Defense Forces", who are more keen on using demons. Then there is the resistance led by the 'Heroine', who are there to to prevent conflict between the other two factions. Gotou starts looking for any woman in Tokyo with the same name as this otherwise, to him, unknown 'Heroine', which leads to all women with her name captured. These actions lead to Gotou's faction being "Chaos" aligned. Thorman and the US military look to purge Tokyo from demons, which makes them "Law" aligned, however they do not fear using any methods to accomplish this, as they have atomic bombs aimed at Tokyo as the conflict waits to be escalated.
I don't want to take away much more than this, but understand that you can decide to side with either faction or no faction at all, which is one of multiple decisions in this game that will put you on the "Law", "Chaos" or "Neutral" route. This decision manifests itself in multiple ways. If you are either Law or Chaos, you 1) have to defeat all bosses with the other alignment, but not the one's that have the same as you (Neutral fights both), 2) can only summon demons, if they align with your alignment, 3) have to pay extra to use healing services of the opposing alignment and 4) get a different ending. This is pretty nice and adds plenty of replayability.
There is plenty of story to uncover in this game and it is well told, with the level of maturity present pretty much throughout that is unheard of for games of its time. It is downright depressing to see what happens to the main character and humanity as a whole in this game, and I love it.
Throughout the game, you travel the overworld of Tokyo and go from dungeon to dungeon. There are some optional dungeons you can take on and some dungeons are open to visits before you are supposed to go there, which is neat, but usually there is no point in doing so, and it feels like the only reason for why you can go there is because the devs wanted you to get lost.
Dungeons mostly are designed the same. They differ in size, but almost all have simple wall tiles with plain colors and no textures that you traverse in first-person. The same-y look can lead you to getting lost quite a few times, which means opening up the map a whole lot, which can only be done by going to the menu, entering another menu and selecting map, looking at the map, exiting the map, exiting the sub-menu and exiting the main menu. There is a patch to make the map accessible through one button press, but I didn't know this until beating the game, so I was left frustrated by this from time to time.
In dungeons, there are a lot of optional areas you can go to and optional enemies you can fight, which often drop items that you could have skipped otherwise. Your human party members all have levels and stats (Strength, Magic, Vitality, Speed etc.) that can level up as you gain XP. You can also gain 'Incense' items that let you increase stats by one as well, which are often hidden in dungeons at random points. Likewise, other items are hidden as well, like Memory Boards, which you need to give to a character called Steven (who looks like the late Stephen Hawking) to be able to hold more demons in your computer, something that is easily missable.
Your main task though is to find specific characters / items / bosses in dungeons to progress the story. As you navigate the dungeons, you are thrown into random encounters every few steps and engage in battle. First, a quick rant on the encounters. Forget what you know about random encounters in other retro JRPGs. This game is the KING of them. It is ridiculous. Every couple steps you take, a random encounter pops up. Escape, and you are thrown back a couple steps, only to take those steps forward again and get into another random encounter. Some dungeons have a lot of encounters, and some dungeons have even more. It is the #1 thing that keeps me from giving this an otherwise easy "Recommended" seal, because it is that ridiculous.
It helps though that the battle system is relatively fun. You can use physical attacks (sword, gun) with your main character, magic attacks with the other Hero characters and demons that you summon and the assortment of elemental, buff, debuff and ailment attacks that are common in the Megami Tensei series. This game doesn't have the Press-Turn system yet (that gets introduced with SMT III), which is a shame, but it was enjoyable regardless. That said, the high encounter rate and the low XP you get relative to the length of normal fights made me escape a lot of them. Especially around the halfway mark, you get so much XP from frequent boss fights that it didn't make much sense to me to put myself through all of these. Boss fights didn't turn out to be so bad either.
Demon negotiations and fusing is present in this game as well. Obviously, it is much more basic here then in future iterations, but it is just as fun to fuse demons here. Negotiations weren't quite as fun, as most would fail. There are few answers you can give and they appeared to be random, as the same demon would react differently to the same answer at times. Failing didn't always have any negative consequences, but often enough it would allow the demon to get the first hit in.
Overall, the game's loop is fun enough to push you through the game, at least in my opinion, and what will make you want to stick around is its incredible atmosphere and unique story presentation for its time. The Shin Megami Tensei feel is very much present in this game.
Apart from the atmosphere, the other highlight of this game to me was the soundtrack. The soundtrack is the best on the Super Famicom I've heard so far (by far) and likely among the best to ever be released for the console. What Tsukasa Masuko achieved on the Super Famicom is incredible. Pretty much all tracks did a great job of capturing the mood, the battle theme is kick-ass, the Ginza track is an instant classic and the boss theme always had me alert that serious shit was going down.
If you like the Shin Megami Tensei series and are OK with the lack of QoL features present (or not present) in retro RPGs, and if you think you can live with the high encounter rate (emulating allows you to fast-forward, which helps move things along quicker), then this is definitely a game I can recommend to you. Otherwise, probably not, though I myself am very glad to have played this and am looking very much forward to the sequel that released in 1994.
STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 9/10
Engaging apocalyptic story with multiple memorable moments
Three different route options which impact the ending and your allegiance with characters
Fittingly depressing scenario that adds to the overall atmosphere
GAMEPLAY | 14/20
Addicting gameplay loop of exploring, battling and demon negotiation & fusing
Lots of strategic choice in battle
Navigating dungeons can become confusing
Encounter rate is RIDICULOUSLY high. Think of high it could be for the entire game, double that number, and that's how many encounters a dungeon has
Demon negotiations can become frustrating, as you fail most of the time
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 10/10
No voice acting
Easily one of the best soundtracks on the Super Famicom, simply amazing
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 7/10
Dark and atmospheric visual style
Lots of unique demons with varied designs
You spend most of the game staring at texture-less wall tiles
Dungeons graphically only distinguish themselves through color of the tiles
Easy to get lost / be forced to open the map due to sometimes confusing, similarly designed areas
Few animations, majority of battles and cut scenes play out with quasi-still sprites on-screen
ATMOSPHERE | 9/10
Incredibly atmospheric in terms of visual style, soundtrack and overall theme
Staring at pretty much the same wall tiles for most of the game does take its toll on immersion
CONTENT | 7/10
30-40 hours to beat
Many mandatory and more than a couple optional dungeons and bosses
Plenty of demons to fuse and battle
Most dungeons have no texture and look very similar
Encounter rate should have been lowered, even if that would have shaved off 5-10 hours off the game's overall length
The game makes up for that with three routes you can take, which adds replayability
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 5/10
Leveling up to get stronger, face bigger challenges and be able to fuse better demons is a fun loop
Around the half-way mark, most enemy encounters can be skipped, as the time spent for the XP gain is not worth it due to the high number of bosses that give you a lot of XP
Encounter rate didn't have to be so high as a result
Some dungeons are hard to navigate and some have an annoying "fog" gimmick that makes this even worse
CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 8/10
Atlus imprinted their DNA into this game so well that it sticks out all these years later
The first SMT game I'd deem approachable for non-hardcore RPG fans
Very unique in terms of theme (religious themes, use of Norse mythology etc.) and demon fusion system compared to pretty much every RPG out there at the time, especially on the Super Famicom
REPLAYABILITY | 4/5
A ton of replayability thanks to three routes you can take
Your alignment impacts gameplay in a lot of ways as well
High encounter rate is the one problem that makes replaying the game less appealing
PLAYABILITY | 5/5
Worked well at all times
OVERALL | 78/100
(This is the 77th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet is in my bio.)
(This is the 113th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet/blog is in my bio.)
Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest came out pretty much exactly a year after the original set the SNES world on fire. Because of that, it's actually impressive how creatively designed the levels are, how beautifully composed the soundtrack is and how well the game flows at many times.
Even still, I caught myself not quite enjoying this as much as it felt like I should at every second. I truly found myself controlling Diddy Kong and wondering "Do I not like platformers that much?". I can't say I grew up with platformers, though I did play many hours playing Super Mario Bros. 3 and both World games as a child. So maybe there is some truth to that. But then again, replaying Super Mario World about a year ago was a lot of fun.
Then I thought about Mega Man. About Sonic. About Kirby. About Wario. I enjoyed their platformer games for what they were (besides Mega Man, me and that series just isn't going to work out unfortunately) but didn't fall in love with any of them despite the praise most of the games have gotten. And it's a similar story with Donkey Kong Country 1 and 2. I love their visual style and their soundtracks. I can appreciate the gameplay and level design for what they are. But the loop just isn't all that fun to me relative to how it probably should be.
So I'm leaving these thoughts here just to catalogue the game as part of the challenge I'm doing, and if you're someone like me who is on the fence about the platforming genre, maybe you just find someone who shares your gaming tastes.
If I had to guess what the issue is, it's probably the fact that platformers are based on quick reaction times and the patience to learn patterns and repeat them for success. As a 26 year old, I feel like that's not the kind of stuff I can let myself be lured into anymore. With that comes the lack of patience for failure that I perceive comes cheaply, which is kind of what I felt in this game, more so than in the original Donkey Kong Country, though only by a little bit. Your character is pretty large compared to the overall screen, and your field of view is small as a result. Which means a lot of the time, I'd get hit by a character just appearing at the edge of the screen, leaving me with a small window to react. Another example are the jumps, which you have to execute within a small window because your characters can't jump all that far, even while running, leading me to fall to my death all too often by an inch.
Overall, it's a game I probably would love, similar to early Super Mario platformers, if I had played it as a kid and learned a lot of the patterns and secrets over dozens of hours of dying easy deaths, but Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest did not have that same appeal to today's me unfortunately.
I'll leave the review with this. If you're looking for retro platformers, Donkey Kong Country 1 and 2 are undoubtedly among the best gaming had to offer at the time. The way I play games these days just doesn't seem to work with these platformers all that well.
Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest came out pretty much exactly a year after the original set the SNES world on fire. Because of that, it's actually impressive how creatively designed the levels are, how beautifully composed the soundtrack is and how well the game flows at many times.
Even still, I caught myself not quite enjoying this as much as it felt like I should at every second. I truly found myself controlling Diddy Kong and wondering "Do I not like platformers that much?". I can't say I grew up with platformers, though I did play many hours playing Super Mario Bros. 3 and both World games as a child. So maybe there is some truth to that. But then again, replaying Super Mario World about a year ago was a lot of fun.
Then I thought about Mega Man. About Sonic. About Kirby. About Wario. I enjoyed their platformer games for what they were (besides Mega Man, me and that series just isn't going to work out unfortunately) but didn't fall in love with any of them despite the praise most of the games have gotten. And it's a similar story with Donkey Kong Country 1 and 2. I love their visual style and their soundtracks. I can appreciate the gameplay and level design for what they are. But the loop just isn't all that fun to me relative to how it probably should be.
So I'm leaving these thoughts here just to catalogue the game as part of the challenge I'm doing, and if you're someone like me who is on the fence about the platforming genre, maybe you just find someone who shares your gaming tastes.
If I had to guess what the issue is, it's probably the fact that platformers are based on quick reaction times and the patience to learn patterns and repeat them for success. As a 26 year old, I feel like that's not the kind of stuff I can let myself be lured into anymore. With that comes the lack of patience for failure that I perceive comes cheaply, which is kind of what I felt in this game, more so than in the original Donkey Kong Country, though only by a little bit. Your character is pretty large compared to the overall screen, and your field of view is small as a result. Which means a lot of the time, I'd get hit by a character just appearing at the edge of the screen, leaving me with a small window to react. Another example are the jumps, which you have to execute within a small window because your characters can't jump all that far, even while running, leading me to fall to my death all too often by an inch.
Overall, it's a game I probably would love, similar to early Super Mario platformers, if I had played it as a kid and learned a lot of the patterns and secrets over dozens of hours of dying easy deaths, but Donkey Kong Country 2: Diddy's Kong Quest did not have that same appeal to today's me unfortunately.
I'll leave the review with this. If you're looking for retro platformers, Donkey Kong Country 1 and 2 are undoubtedly among the best gaming had to offer at the time. The way I play games these days just doesn't seem to work with these platformers all that well.
2019
I jumped into Yakuza 4 straight after Yakuza 3 but that might have been a mistake since I'm going abroad for 6 months and didn't have much time left to finish Yakuza 4 before I leave. This means I bypassed most of the content outside of the main story and the review will mainly be focused on that. Though even if you just focus on the story here, you will constantly be shown the type of side content that is available, such as the hostess makeover minigame that was introduced in Yakuza 3, a similar make-a-fighter minigame, and a bunch of stuff that the series introduced in previous entries.
As far as the main story goes, Yakuza 4 has 4 main characters who each have 4 chapters focused on their part in the overall plot before it all culminates in a final chapter. The 4 main characters all have distinct personalities that succeed in making them all stand out. You got the charismatic Shun Akiyama who stole the show for me, but you also got his polar opposite in the stoic Taiga Saejima. I thought I'd go over each of the characters before I give my thoughts on the rest of the game overall.
I do want to say that I had mixed feelings about 4 main characters throughout. Yakuza 0 had 2 and remains my favorite Yakuza game, so I have nothing against multiple protagonists, but 4 felt like it took away from the connection you get to the character and the satisfying feeling of upgrading your character and seeing how he continues to get stronger. Here, by the time a character gains enough skills to make fights more interesting, you switch to the next protagonist. That said, side content and their own parts in the main story do offer plenty of time with each character to allow them to leave an impact, I'd just prefer a game with 2 protagonists who you switch between a la Yakuza 0, or just one character. (And yes, I do realize that Yakuza 5 has 5 protagonists. Let's see how that goes.)
Shun Akiyama: The game starts with him and his personality takes center stage pretty much off the bat. His mannerisms, voice acting and overall character made his chapters go by really quick, and I find both his backstory and the whole Sky Finance business fascinating. His fighting style is also probably my favorite in the game. Don't know the name of it but he's mainly using kicks during combat and it was a fun way to mix it up.
Taiga Saejima: Very dark character with some very memorable moments (some positively, some really negatively (you'll know when you see it). Hated his fighting style and his fights because the balancing is pretty messed up (Saito battle I'm looking at you), and he doesn't really ever become satisfying to play with. Even outside of combat, exploration with him was a horrible time because of all the police everywhere.
Masayoshi Tanimura: An overly confident police officer who doesn't shy away from breaking the rules at times. Definitely ended up being a lot more interesting character wise than I expected going in, and his parry-heavy combat style lets you pull off some of the coolest combos for sure, though his final boss fight was the biggest AIDS-inducing fight of my life, especially since I went in with just one healing item like a stupid person.
Kazuma Kiryu: His part was pretty short overall but solid as expected. I understand why they decided to add more protagonists to be able to tell stories differently, and I think that was a good call but I love Kiryu, so playing as him longer would have been what I'd have preferred.
The story in the game overall has some strong and some weak parts. For one, there is a saying called "too many cooks in a kitchen", and I think too many antagonists in a story applies here. I laughed out loud at the number of plot twists the story through at me, which I think indicates that there were too many. It's not very well written overall but rather felt like a guilty pleasure type story, and reminded me even more of a soap opera than Yakuza stories can tend to feel like. Not a terrible thing, because the protagonists are great overall and many of the antagonists and their parts in the story were well explained, but then you got guys like Daigo who feels like he was added in last second and some other names who have some odd moments that are questionable in terms of their logic. Then there are the countless "what are the odds?" moments where events occur way too perfectly for the story to progress in a certain direction, especially involving Kiryu. I can live with a few of these but I thought the game overdid it. But overall, the story had many badass moments involving badass characters and even if it wasn't well written at all times, that alone was satisfying to watch unfold. A final negative note for me was, clearly due to budgetary issues, the fact that so many key cinematic moments were interrupted and conversations ended up happening unvoiced outside of cutscenes. It does take something away from them and I wish we could have gotten half an hour's worth of additional cutscenes at least.
The combat felt improved from Yakuza 3 but also worse in some ways. Probably the most frustrating I got at a Yakuza game ever, and continuously so. Boss fights were frustrating, sure, but there were also too many mini-bosses who pissed me off. One big issue for me was that combos never worked with some of these guys because they'd just hit you with an unblockable attack to end the combo. Or that they just wouldn't get knocked down. Another big issue was that you could so easily be stunlocked. Often it took one hit and you were unable to move for 3-5 seconds. Why?? Or even worse, every group you fight has that one cunt who grabs you. Sometimes, there were even 2 or 3 of those, so you'd escape one grapple to walk right into the next with no way to avoid it. It all culminated in the final boss fight, which, until you figure out to do it in one very specific way, I'm calling it now, is just the worst thing to happen to the Yakuza series. You got the antagonist and 10 of his henchman in the way. The antagonist shoots you with his pistol and the only way to avoid them is to grab enemies and attack them that way. Going straight at the antagonist doesn't work because there are 3 guys with knives who will just stab at you incessantly and you'll actually not even see your character in the sea of enemies sometimes. Trying to input commands and being unable to do anything is so frustrating, holy moly. But there is less guarding 99% of hits (now it's 50% guarding, 49% dodging) compared to Yakuza 3 at least.
Overall, Yakuza 4 has its unique strengths and weaknesses. I liked the story and its bad parts made me laugh more than annoyed, plus the protagonists are great additions to the overall story of the series. The combat has some great parts but also some of the worst in the series (from 0 to 4), at least in my opinion. The soundtrack is great and includes some absolute bangers (Receive and Bite You, For Faith, Material Delights etc.). If you're a fan of Yakuza, the game is great and I enjoyed it, but I'd say it's the weakest of the bunch for me when you combine everything.
As far as the main story goes, Yakuza 4 has 4 main characters who each have 4 chapters focused on their part in the overall plot before it all culminates in a final chapter. The 4 main characters all have distinct personalities that succeed in making them all stand out. You got the charismatic Shun Akiyama who stole the show for me, but you also got his polar opposite in the stoic Taiga Saejima. I thought I'd go over each of the characters before I give my thoughts on the rest of the game overall.
I do want to say that I had mixed feelings about 4 main characters throughout. Yakuza 0 had 2 and remains my favorite Yakuza game, so I have nothing against multiple protagonists, but 4 felt like it took away from the connection you get to the character and the satisfying feeling of upgrading your character and seeing how he continues to get stronger. Here, by the time a character gains enough skills to make fights more interesting, you switch to the next protagonist. That said, side content and their own parts in the main story do offer plenty of time with each character to allow them to leave an impact, I'd just prefer a game with 2 protagonists who you switch between a la Yakuza 0, or just one character. (And yes, I do realize that Yakuza 5 has 5 protagonists. Let's see how that goes.)
Shun Akiyama: The game starts with him and his personality takes center stage pretty much off the bat. His mannerisms, voice acting and overall character made his chapters go by really quick, and I find both his backstory and the whole Sky Finance business fascinating. His fighting style is also probably my favorite in the game. Don't know the name of it but he's mainly using kicks during combat and it was a fun way to mix it up.
Taiga Saejima: Very dark character with some very memorable moments (some positively, some really negatively (you'll know when you see it). Hated his fighting style and his fights because the balancing is pretty messed up (Saito battle I'm looking at you), and he doesn't really ever become satisfying to play with. Even outside of combat, exploration with him was a horrible time because of all the police everywhere.
Masayoshi Tanimura: An overly confident police officer who doesn't shy away from breaking the rules at times. Definitely ended up being a lot more interesting character wise than I expected going in, and his parry-heavy combat style lets you pull off some of the coolest combos for sure, though his final boss fight was the biggest AIDS-inducing fight of my life, especially since I went in with just one healing item like a stupid person.
Kazuma Kiryu: His part was pretty short overall but solid as expected. I understand why they decided to add more protagonists to be able to tell stories differently, and I think that was a good call but I love Kiryu, so playing as him longer would have been what I'd have preferred.
The story in the game overall has some strong and some weak parts. For one, there is a saying called "too many cooks in a kitchen", and I think too many antagonists in a story applies here. I laughed out loud at the number of plot twists the story through at me, which I think indicates that there were too many. It's not very well written overall but rather felt like a guilty pleasure type story, and reminded me even more of a soap opera than Yakuza stories can tend to feel like. Not a terrible thing, because the protagonists are great overall and many of the antagonists and their parts in the story were well explained, but then you got guys like Daigo who feels like he was added in last second and some other names who have some odd moments that are questionable in terms of their logic. Then there are the countless "what are the odds?" moments where events occur way too perfectly for the story to progress in a certain direction, especially involving Kiryu. I can live with a few of these but I thought the game overdid it. But overall, the story had many badass moments involving badass characters and even if it wasn't well written at all times, that alone was satisfying to watch unfold. A final negative note for me was, clearly due to budgetary issues, the fact that so many key cinematic moments were interrupted and conversations ended up happening unvoiced outside of cutscenes. It does take something away from them and I wish we could have gotten half an hour's worth of additional cutscenes at least.
The combat felt improved from Yakuza 3 but also worse in some ways. Probably the most frustrating I got at a Yakuza game ever, and continuously so. Boss fights were frustrating, sure, but there were also too many mini-bosses who pissed me off. One big issue for me was that combos never worked with some of these guys because they'd just hit you with an unblockable attack to end the combo. Or that they just wouldn't get knocked down. Another big issue was that you could so easily be stunlocked. Often it took one hit and you were unable to move for 3-5 seconds. Why?? Or even worse, every group you fight has that one cunt who grabs you. Sometimes, there were even 2 or 3 of those, so you'd escape one grapple to walk right into the next with no way to avoid it. It all culminated in the final boss fight, which, until you figure out to do it in one very specific way, I'm calling it now, is just the worst thing to happen to the Yakuza series. You got the antagonist and 10 of his henchman in the way. The antagonist shoots you with his pistol and the only way to avoid them is to grab enemies and attack them that way. Going straight at the antagonist doesn't work because there are 3 guys with knives who will just stab at you incessantly and you'll actually not even see your character in the sea of enemies sometimes. Trying to input commands and being unable to do anything is so frustrating, holy moly. But there is less guarding 99% of hits (now it's 50% guarding, 49% dodging) compared to Yakuza 3 at least.
Overall, Yakuza 4 has its unique strengths and weaknesses. I liked the story and its bad parts made me laugh more than annoyed, plus the protagonists are great additions to the overall story of the series. The combat has some great parts but also some of the worst in the series (from 0 to 4), at least in my opinion. The soundtrack is great and includes some absolute bangers (Receive and Bite You, For Faith, Material Delights etc.). If you're a fan of Yakuza, the game is great and I enjoyed it, but I'd say it's the weakest of the bunch for me when you combine everything.
1993
(This is the 87th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet is in my bio.)
I wasn't really all too familiar with or interested in the run and gun / shoot 'em up genre of video games until I played Contra III: The Alien Wars just a month ago. Based on its score, I have it rated as the 2nd best game I've played out of my 1992 playlist, and that score sounds about right, as it is one of the games I most fondly look back on from that year, and will do so in the future as well I'm sure. When I shared my thoughts about that game at the time, I was recommended to make sure that I check out Gunstar Heroes as well, which I had never heard of before but had already been on my 1993 playlist beforehand, interestingly enough.
Gunstar Heroes released on September 10, 1993 for the Sega Genesis and on Game Gear in 1995. It was produced by Mastao Maegawa, and it is the result of him and some of his colleagues at Konami rejecting an idea of a game (presumably similar to this one) that they had, which led to them quitting at Konami and starting up their own development studio, Treasure. Gunstar Heroes is a run and gun video game that players of, say, Metal Slug and of course Contra games will instantly be familiar with. You run forward on a side-scrolling screen and just shoot up dozens of enemies as explosion fill up the screen, until you reach a boss, learn its patterns and defeat it too, which lets you advance to the next stage.
In its basic form, it's the same style of game. If you enjoy a game such as Contra III, you are sure to enjoy this one as well. If you didn't enjoy Contra III or similar games at all, you won't enjoy Gunstar Heroes either.
What makes Gunstar Heroes stand out in this genre in my opinion is its presentation and the variety of weapons you can use. Contra III had about a handful of attacks that you could use and gave you two slots to put attacks onto. Get hit, and you lose an attack but can switch to the other slot. In Gunstar Heroes, you also have two slots, though you don't lose the attack in a slot if you get hit. Plus, these attacks don't just work individually, but you can also choose to use the combined effect of these, which gives you even more powerful attacks, which differ in damage output, range and firing directions. There are over a dozen combination to use this way, all with their own strengths and weaknesses, which adds a lot of replayability to how you want to challenge the tougher fights in this game.
The presentation is also worth highlighting as I mentioned. Some of the bosses look really interesting, like the Bravoo Man, Melon Bread or "Seven Force", which can take upon a variety of forms out of which a couple are randomly chosen whenever you face it. There are also some very cleverly designed levels, such as the final boss rush where the screen is presented as a "TV" on which the bad guys collectively watch you fight their guys. Whenever you defeat one of them, they get mad and you can see the main antagonist sending out the next boss out to face you. Another really well designed level is the "Dice Palace", which reminded me of Cuphead's King Dice boss fight. You roll a dice to see how many platforms you can advance, and each platform has either a boss fight or an item room for you. The bosses vary in difficulty, but most are pretty easy on "normal" difficulty. The second to last platform has you start over (just like in Cuphead) and I had the pleasure to step on it once, losing about 10 minutes of progress. Each major boss you defeat gives you one of four gems, and there is a funny scene that plays with the Dice Palace boss, who, once defeated, throws out what looks like the "red gem" but is actually a bomb. So I had the boss beat, but didn't know it was a bomb, so it hit me and I died, which means I had to start over the Dice Palace. Made me mad at the time, but was hilarious in hindsight.
Graphically, the game looks more than serviceable for the Sega Genesis and makes up for lack of high-tier production values with great enemy design. The game's soundtrack overall is pretty good. It has a few pretty average tracks and is mostly overshadowed by the constant sound of explosions. The highlight for me here though was the "theme of Seven Force", which, as I would like to eloquently say, "slaps".
OVERALL: 72/100
I wasn't really all too familiar with or interested in the run and gun / shoot 'em up genre of video games until I played Contra III: The Alien Wars just a month ago. Based on its score, I have it rated as the 2nd best game I've played out of my 1992 playlist, and that score sounds about right, as it is one of the games I most fondly look back on from that year, and will do so in the future as well I'm sure. When I shared my thoughts about that game at the time, I was recommended to make sure that I check out Gunstar Heroes as well, which I had never heard of before but had already been on my 1993 playlist beforehand, interestingly enough.
Gunstar Heroes released on September 10, 1993 for the Sega Genesis and on Game Gear in 1995. It was produced by Mastao Maegawa, and it is the result of him and some of his colleagues at Konami rejecting an idea of a game (presumably similar to this one) that they had, which led to them quitting at Konami and starting up their own development studio, Treasure. Gunstar Heroes is a run and gun video game that players of, say, Metal Slug and of course Contra games will instantly be familiar with. You run forward on a side-scrolling screen and just shoot up dozens of enemies as explosion fill up the screen, until you reach a boss, learn its patterns and defeat it too, which lets you advance to the next stage.
In its basic form, it's the same style of game. If you enjoy a game such as Contra III, you are sure to enjoy this one as well. If you didn't enjoy Contra III or similar games at all, you won't enjoy Gunstar Heroes either.
What makes Gunstar Heroes stand out in this genre in my opinion is its presentation and the variety of weapons you can use. Contra III had about a handful of attacks that you could use and gave you two slots to put attacks onto. Get hit, and you lose an attack but can switch to the other slot. In Gunstar Heroes, you also have two slots, though you don't lose the attack in a slot if you get hit. Plus, these attacks don't just work individually, but you can also choose to use the combined effect of these, which gives you even more powerful attacks, which differ in damage output, range and firing directions. There are over a dozen combination to use this way, all with their own strengths and weaknesses, which adds a lot of replayability to how you want to challenge the tougher fights in this game.
The presentation is also worth highlighting as I mentioned. Some of the bosses look really interesting, like the Bravoo Man, Melon Bread or "Seven Force", which can take upon a variety of forms out of which a couple are randomly chosen whenever you face it. There are also some very cleverly designed levels, such as the final boss rush where the screen is presented as a "TV" on which the bad guys collectively watch you fight their guys. Whenever you defeat one of them, they get mad and you can see the main antagonist sending out the next boss out to face you. Another really well designed level is the "Dice Palace", which reminded me of Cuphead's King Dice boss fight. You roll a dice to see how many platforms you can advance, and each platform has either a boss fight or an item room for you. The bosses vary in difficulty, but most are pretty easy on "normal" difficulty. The second to last platform has you start over (just like in Cuphead) and I had the pleasure to step on it once, losing about 10 minutes of progress. Each major boss you defeat gives you one of four gems, and there is a funny scene that plays with the Dice Palace boss, who, once defeated, throws out what looks like the "red gem" but is actually a bomb. So I had the boss beat, but didn't know it was a bomb, so it hit me and I died, which means I had to start over the Dice Palace. Made me mad at the time, but was hilarious in hindsight.
Graphically, the game looks more than serviceable for the Sega Genesis and makes up for lack of high-tier production values with great enemy design. The game's soundtrack overall is pretty good. It has a few pretty average tracks and is mostly overshadowed by the constant sound of explosions. The highlight for me here though was the "theme of Seven Force", which, as I would like to eloquently say, "slaps".
OVERALL: 72/100
1991
(This is the 37th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet is in my bio.)
I'm going to guess and say that the majority of you have played this game or, more likely, a game that is pretty similar to the idea that Lemmings puts forward, a puzzle(-strategy) game by DMA Design, initially released on February 14th, 1991 and ported to dozens of systems after its success as an Amiga game. I played the SNES version for this review.
FUN FACT: DMA Design, the developer, today goes by the somewhat known name Rockstar North and are creators of the GTA series.
____________
STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS
You control Lemmings, which do exist in real life (small rodents). In this game, they are anthropomorphized, meaning they walk upright and can do human tasks like digging, climbing, jumping down whilst holding an umbrella etc.
There is a misconception in pop culture that Lemmings commit "mass suicide", something the devs seem to have chosen as inspiration for creating this game.
In this game, all lemmings are identical copies of each other, you simply can change their behavior by equipping them with a certain task/skill like the ones mentioned in the previous paragraph.
The goal of every level is to rescue at least a certain percentage of all Lemmings that are present in a given level. Once you do that, you can try to rescue the rest or have them blow themselves up and end the level.
Every time the puzzles go up in difficulty level, a little cutscene plays showing the Lemmings move across the screen.
I feel like there was some potential here for these little guys to have a bigger name across gaming than they ended up having because they do offer a certain charm.
But as far as storytelling goes, the game doesn't offer anything beyond the basic goal of each level.
GAMEPLAY
There are up to 120 levels depending on the port you play that are spread between four difficulty levels. In each level, a door opens that releases a set number of Lemmings. The game tells you how many of them you need to save to beat the level.
The lemmings move forward at all times, no matter what, and if there is something that blocks their path, they simply turn around and go the other way. You are equipped with a bunch of "tasks" that you can give to the lemmings and your job is to choose the correct ones, at the correct times and in the proper order to successfully send enough Lemmings to the exit.
For example, in the first level, you have to give your Lemmings the "digging" task, which makes them start digging up the ground beneath them. This opens up a path to the exit once they're done.
With each level, it starts getting more and more complicated of course. You need to mix multiple tasks up at once, figure out how to make a lemming cancel his task to help him escape as well, and well, ultimately decide how much you value your time.
Because as creative as the game design is, and as much fun it is to figure out the solution, it often is not the path to the solution that is hard to figure out. It is the wait.
Once you have the solution, like for example digging open the ground beneath your lemmings, you now have to wait. and wait. and wait until they all slowly make their way to the finish line. I am not joking if I say that it takes minutes a lot of times for things to play out like you already know it will.
I've played for a few hours and a too significant amount of that was spent waiting instead of solving puzzles or applying the correct strategy. That made the game significantly less enjoyable that it probably would be in a more modern release where your characters would probably start moving much faster once the game knows that you opened up the winning path.
It doesn't help that later on, levels often became repetitive and, when checking a YT playthrough, I realized it just ended up being more or less the same over and over again, so I decided that I saw enough after a few hours.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE
Voice acting is limited to some high-pitched noises and a few words. "Yippie", "Let's go", "Oh no" are things you will hear quite often, but generally the Lemmings remain pretty silent in this one. The soundtrack features some nice music, including a remix of Jacques Offenbach's "Infernal Galop".
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN
The graphics aren't anything special in this one, but the animations are really good for its time. The way the Lemmings hair flies from side to side as they keep digging for example is really detailed.
ATMOSPHERE
Nothing special that I want to mention in this regard. The artistic design of the levels, the kinda cutesy Lemmings, the noises they make, the music, it all combines to make a game with a cozy enough atmosphere but one that can stress you out pretty fast if you ever are stuck with any particular level, especially since it means you will have to blow everyone up to restart.
CONTENT
120 levels, gets repetitive. Too much time is spent waiting on the Lemmings to walk around, too little on actually doing puzzles. It's an effective brainteaser but doesn't translate to a whole lot of fun at too many times.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN
You have all those skills I mentioned at your disposal and try to figure out which ones to use and at which point. Some levels only allow you to use specific skills and all require you to get a certain number of Lemmings to safety on each level. It's fun, but the design does get a bit repetitive over time. More skills obviously would mean more variety. The amount available here doesn't really seem to support 120 levels whilst keeping it fresh.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION
Obviously very innovative in its design, even if it doesn't always translate to a lot of fun. Especially once you figure out how to do a puzzle and are stuck waiting for minutes for your Lemmings to get a move on, the design shows its cracks. But the design could have been taken a number of different directions from here on out, and I'll be honest, as of now I don't know what happened to the series and if there are any spiritual successors.
REPLAYABILITY
Pretty high. You can keep replaying to try and get more Lemmings out of a level, and you can even try your hand at figuring out how to get 100% of them out each time. It involves some advanced techniques that I didn't figure out myself, and one that adds a lot more waiting time to your playthrough, but it may be a worthwhile reward for people with plenty of patience and resilience.
PLAYABILITY
It works well from start to finish.
OVERALL
I can appreciate the game for its innovation. Unfortunately the way this is designed makes for a slow affair because a lot of the time playing this game is spent waiting for the Lemmings to go from A to B. More QoL improvements in later versions maybe have resulted in cleaner and faster experiences, but as it stands, this game was definitely way more enjoyable in the past than it is today, at least if you're a newcomer to this type of puzzle game.
I'm going to guess and say that the majority of you have played this game or, more likely, a game that is pretty similar to the idea that Lemmings puts forward, a puzzle(-strategy) game by DMA Design, initially released on February 14th, 1991 and ported to dozens of systems after its success as an Amiga game. I played the SNES version for this review.
FUN FACT: DMA Design, the developer, today goes by the somewhat known name Rockstar North and are creators of the GTA series.
____________
STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS
You control Lemmings, which do exist in real life (small rodents). In this game, they are anthropomorphized, meaning they walk upright and can do human tasks like digging, climbing, jumping down whilst holding an umbrella etc.
There is a misconception in pop culture that Lemmings commit "mass suicide", something the devs seem to have chosen as inspiration for creating this game.
In this game, all lemmings are identical copies of each other, you simply can change their behavior by equipping them with a certain task/skill like the ones mentioned in the previous paragraph.
The goal of every level is to rescue at least a certain percentage of all Lemmings that are present in a given level. Once you do that, you can try to rescue the rest or have them blow themselves up and end the level.
Every time the puzzles go up in difficulty level, a little cutscene plays showing the Lemmings move across the screen.
I feel like there was some potential here for these little guys to have a bigger name across gaming than they ended up having because they do offer a certain charm.
But as far as storytelling goes, the game doesn't offer anything beyond the basic goal of each level.
GAMEPLAY
There are up to 120 levels depending on the port you play that are spread between four difficulty levels. In each level, a door opens that releases a set number of Lemmings. The game tells you how many of them you need to save to beat the level.
The lemmings move forward at all times, no matter what, and if there is something that blocks their path, they simply turn around and go the other way. You are equipped with a bunch of "tasks" that you can give to the lemmings and your job is to choose the correct ones, at the correct times and in the proper order to successfully send enough Lemmings to the exit.
For example, in the first level, you have to give your Lemmings the "digging" task, which makes them start digging up the ground beneath them. This opens up a path to the exit once they're done.
With each level, it starts getting more and more complicated of course. You need to mix multiple tasks up at once, figure out how to make a lemming cancel his task to help him escape as well, and well, ultimately decide how much you value your time.
Because as creative as the game design is, and as much fun it is to figure out the solution, it often is not the path to the solution that is hard to figure out. It is the wait.
Once you have the solution, like for example digging open the ground beneath your lemmings, you now have to wait. and wait. and wait until they all slowly make their way to the finish line. I am not joking if I say that it takes minutes a lot of times for things to play out like you already know it will.
I've played for a few hours and a too significant amount of that was spent waiting instead of solving puzzles or applying the correct strategy. That made the game significantly less enjoyable that it probably would be in a more modern release where your characters would probably start moving much faster once the game knows that you opened up the winning path.
It doesn't help that later on, levels often became repetitive and, when checking a YT playthrough, I realized it just ended up being more or less the same over and over again, so I decided that I saw enough after a few hours.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE
Voice acting is limited to some high-pitched noises and a few words. "Yippie", "Let's go", "Oh no" are things you will hear quite often, but generally the Lemmings remain pretty silent in this one. The soundtrack features some nice music, including a remix of Jacques Offenbach's "Infernal Galop".
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN
The graphics aren't anything special in this one, but the animations are really good for its time. The way the Lemmings hair flies from side to side as they keep digging for example is really detailed.
ATMOSPHERE
Nothing special that I want to mention in this regard. The artistic design of the levels, the kinda cutesy Lemmings, the noises they make, the music, it all combines to make a game with a cozy enough atmosphere but one that can stress you out pretty fast if you ever are stuck with any particular level, especially since it means you will have to blow everyone up to restart.
CONTENT
120 levels, gets repetitive. Too much time is spent waiting on the Lemmings to walk around, too little on actually doing puzzles. It's an effective brainteaser but doesn't translate to a whole lot of fun at too many times.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN
You have all those skills I mentioned at your disposal and try to figure out which ones to use and at which point. Some levels only allow you to use specific skills and all require you to get a certain number of Lemmings to safety on each level. It's fun, but the design does get a bit repetitive over time. More skills obviously would mean more variety. The amount available here doesn't really seem to support 120 levels whilst keeping it fresh.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION
Obviously very innovative in its design, even if it doesn't always translate to a lot of fun. Especially once you figure out how to do a puzzle and are stuck waiting for minutes for your Lemmings to get a move on, the design shows its cracks. But the design could have been taken a number of different directions from here on out, and I'll be honest, as of now I don't know what happened to the series and if there are any spiritual successors.
REPLAYABILITY
Pretty high. You can keep replaying to try and get more Lemmings out of a level, and you can even try your hand at figuring out how to get 100% of them out each time. It involves some advanced techniques that I didn't figure out myself, and one that adds a lot more waiting time to your playthrough, but it may be a worthwhile reward for people with plenty of patience and resilience.
PLAYABILITY
It works well from start to finish.
OVERALL
I can appreciate the game for its innovation. Unfortunately the way this is designed makes for a slow affair because a lot of the time playing this game is spent waiting for the Lemmings to go from A to B. More QoL improvements in later versions maybe have resulted in cleaner and faster experiences, but as it stands, this game was definitely way more enjoyable in the past than it is today, at least if you're a newcomer to this type of puzzle game.
1993
Star Fox released on February 21, 1993 for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System and is a rail shooter that you play in both first-person and third-person perspectives. The special part about it is that this is a 3D game during a time where this was uncommon, and from the get-go you can tell that what Star Fox does is pretty unique, especially for the platform it released on.
It was developed by Nintendo and Argonaut Software and has turned into a pretty popular series, warranting multiple sequels from Star Fox 64 in 1997 all the way to Star Fox Zero and, I suppose it is worth counting, a sequel to this original Star Fox game called Star Fox 2 released alongside the SNES Classic Edition. Star Fox 2 never ended up releasing back in the day, but it did exist, so it got its debut all these years later, which is pretty fascinating stuff.
In this original Star Fox, you control the character 'Fox' and his spacecraft, the "Arwing" in scrolling 3D environments. You dodge obstacles in the environment, shoot enemy spaceships and take on boss battles in each stage. Before you begin, you can select one of three routes to take to the final boss on a planet called 'Venom'. I took the Level 1 route thinking it was just the first level. Turns out, no, the Level 1 route is simple one of three routes that all lead to the same ending. The difference is that each route has a distinct difficulty, which is a system that allowed the devs to forgo any difficulty options. Personally, I like this a lot because it adds a lot of replayability to the game. Each route takes you through different planets and missions and therefore not only plays more difficult, but simply different in terms of the design of the levels. In turn though, the routes individually are not very long. The main reason why you might take more than a few hours per route is the difficulty, which even on Level 1 is no cakewalk.
That's in large part to how the game plays. The game is undeniably impressive and ahead of its time, but one negative that comes with that is that you will have to compromise. Compromise in Star Fox rears its head through low FPS (10-15) and below-average controls. Low FPS for a flight sim was very common in 1993 and the years before it, and those games usually had even less, so it's not the worst thing here. But just like many of those flight sims, this makes the original Star Fox slightly harder to play today and means it didn't age quite as well as some other games of its time. That said, I didn't have a lot of trouble with the low FPS apart from the parts where many effects on the screen would lead to slowdown.
The poor controls on the other hand I didn't quite get used to until the end of my playthrough. I dislike inverse control schemes in general, so that wasn't great when I had to decide to move up or down within a second, but often I felt the controls not be very responsive, I felt that it was hard to judge whether I was far enough away to evade certain projectiles and figuring out where to aim to actually hit something always took me a second of shooting somewhere (and missing badly) and then adjusting from there, which wasn't quite intuitive.
Issues like these were exacerbated by the fact that sometimes so much action would be on the screen, that projectiles would not be visible until they were very close, leading to a hit that would take quite a lot of health, so expect to die quite a lot of times early on due to things like that. Otherwise though, the polygonal graphics looked good enough here and were generally quite a big deal at the time. Having played dozens of games from its time before this, I can attest to not playing many games that were graphically impressive like this from a technological standpoint.
You also do get used to the controls, so there is that, but it's never feeling great, so I'm not sure if that's something one would necessarily deem a lot of fun at this day and age. I think it's fair to say that it's easy to appreciate Star Fox even today, but don't be surprised if you turn it off after the novelty wears off. If you really get into the boss fights however, which for the most part are well done and fun to tackle, you might get hooked enough to want to see one route through like I did, for which I recommend the first one. Whichever route you take though, you start on the planet Corneria, which has a great soundtrack, so look forward to that, while I myself look forward to playing Star Fox 64 one day, which I hope brings a lot more to the table at a time when 3D graphics were much more common and for the fact that it is the best selling Star Fox game to date.
(This is the 83rd game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet is in my bio.)
It was developed by Nintendo and Argonaut Software and has turned into a pretty popular series, warranting multiple sequels from Star Fox 64 in 1997 all the way to Star Fox Zero and, I suppose it is worth counting, a sequel to this original Star Fox game called Star Fox 2 released alongside the SNES Classic Edition. Star Fox 2 never ended up releasing back in the day, but it did exist, so it got its debut all these years later, which is pretty fascinating stuff.
In this original Star Fox, you control the character 'Fox' and his spacecraft, the "Arwing" in scrolling 3D environments. You dodge obstacles in the environment, shoot enemy spaceships and take on boss battles in each stage. Before you begin, you can select one of three routes to take to the final boss on a planet called 'Venom'. I took the Level 1 route thinking it was just the first level. Turns out, no, the Level 1 route is simple one of three routes that all lead to the same ending. The difference is that each route has a distinct difficulty, which is a system that allowed the devs to forgo any difficulty options. Personally, I like this a lot because it adds a lot of replayability to the game. Each route takes you through different planets and missions and therefore not only plays more difficult, but simply different in terms of the design of the levels. In turn though, the routes individually are not very long. The main reason why you might take more than a few hours per route is the difficulty, which even on Level 1 is no cakewalk.
That's in large part to how the game plays. The game is undeniably impressive and ahead of its time, but one negative that comes with that is that you will have to compromise. Compromise in Star Fox rears its head through low FPS (10-15) and below-average controls. Low FPS for a flight sim was very common in 1993 and the years before it, and those games usually had even less, so it's not the worst thing here. But just like many of those flight sims, this makes the original Star Fox slightly harder to play today and means it didn't age quite as well as some other games of its time. That said, I didn't have a lot of trouble with the low FPS apart from the parts where many effects on the screen would lead to slowdown.
The poor controls on the other hand I didn't quite get used to until the end of my playthrough. I dislike inverse control schemes in general, so that wasn't great when I had to decide to move up or down within a second, but often I felt the controls not be very responsive, I felt that it was hard to judge whether I was far enough away to evade certain projectiles and figuring out where to aim to actually hit something always took me a second of shooting somewhere (and missing badly) and then adjusting from there, which wasn't quite intuitive.
Issues like these were exacerbated by the fact that sometimes so much action would be on the screen, that projectiles would not be visible until they were very close, leading to a hit that would take quite a lot of health, so expect to die quite a lot of times early on due to things like that. Otherwise though, the polygonal graphics looked good enough here and were generally quite a big deal at the time. Having played dozens of games from its time before this, I can attest to not playing many games that were graphically impressive like this from a technological standpoint.
You also do get used to the controls, so there is that, but it's never feeling great, so I'm not sure if that's something one would necessarily deem a lot of fun at this day and age. I think it's fair to say that it's easy to appreciate Star Fox even today, but don't be surprised if you turn it off after the novelty wears off. If you really get into the boss fights however, which for the most part are well done and fun to tackle, you might get hooked enough to want to see one route through like I did, for which I recommend the first one. Whichever route you take though, you start on the planet Corneria, which has a great soundtrack, so look forward to that, while I myself look forward to playing Star Fox 64 one day, which I hope brings a lot more to the table at a time when 3D graphics were much more common and for the fact that it is the best selling Star Fox game to date.
(This is the 83rd game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet is in my bio.)
2023
I wanted to like this a lot more than I did because I enjoy the immersive sim genre (though I'd say System Shock isn't the most accurate representation of the genre) and all of the well-known games that were inspired by the original System Shock to this day.
Unfortunately, System Shock has something that regularly makes me fall off of similar games, which is a big reliance on quick-saving and reloading. Enemies that kill you with a few shots, health items being very scarce compared to how easily and how much damage you take, multiple areas that you just aren't supposed to be at yet (keyword 'radiation') that will empty your health items before you eventually realize that you shouldn't have been here in the first place and more. It's something that makes me hesitant to say I'd recommend it to everyone, and I think that's more than acceptable among gamers. It's a niche game made for a certain audience who will love it, popularized and refined in games like Bioshock, Prey, Deus Ex, heck even Dead Space and more. And even beyond that, System Shock has done things that I have not previously seen in the 100 other games I had previously played as this retro challenge I'm doing (see bottom of the review), especially in terms of its storytelling, which has caught on in the years to come.
Yet, despite the fact that I can acknowledge and respect what this game has accomplished at its time, it unfortunately never managed to grab me. Both because of the first issue I mentioned, but also because of some other issues. For one thing, the progression in this game truly shows its age. That's a good thing for those who want the remake to be faithful to the original. But to start the game and have a general idea that you're meant to stop SHODAN, but other than that rather aimlessly walk through 9 or so separate areas to just progress further and further to the end, didn't feel all that engaging. It can't be helped that in each area, you look for keycards to unlock progression, a pretty common thing back in the day, and do the same few puzzles and shoot the same few enemies throughout. Enemies that either felt too weak or too overpowered to me. Another thing is the recycling system in the game. To get currency, you grab junk items and vaporize them in your inventory, which turns them into scrap to recycle for the currency. That becomes pretty tedious after a while, and it's not as optional as I anticipated it being because items will be very useful in this game (healing items in particular) and you get very little currency outside of recycling.
The storytelling is pretty good to this day, as it's told through voice recordings for the most part, which gives you an idea of how it was for the people working at the space station this game is set in while SHODAN went rogue. Some of the voice acting is less good than most of it, but I enjoy this style of storytelling and that's true for this game too. The atmosphere grabbed me as well, and the threat of SHODAN was portrayed really well throughout.
Unfortunately, as a package, the gameplay loop itself did not grab me as much as I would have hoped. There is a demo for the game on Steam, so I'd urge you to try it and decide based on that whether you want to buy the full game. It has its many fans, but it's worth mentioning that the game is definitely not for everyone. And I'd definitely say that has more to do with the taste of the player then with the quality of the game, though the game does have its flaws.
(This is the 101st game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet/blog is in my bio.)
Unfortunately, System Shock has something that regularly makes me fall off of similar games, which is a big reliance on quick-saving and reloading. Enemies that kill you with a few shots, health items being very scarce compared to how easily and how much damage you take, multiple areas that you just aren't supposed to be at yet (keyword 'radiation') that will empty your health items before you eventually realize that you shouldn't have been here in the first place and more. It's something that makes me hesitant to say I'd recommend it to everyone, and I think that's more than acceptable among gamers. It's a niche game made for a certain audience who will love it, popularized and refined in games like Bioshock, Prey, Deus Ex, heck even Dead Space and more. And even beyond that, System Shock has done things that I have not previously seen in the 100 other games I had previously played as this retro challenge I'm doing (see bottom of the review), especially in terms of its storytelling, which has caught on in the years to come.
Yet, despite the fact that I can acknowledge and respect what this game has accomplished at its time, it unfortunately never managed to grab me. Both because of the first issue I mentioned, but also because of some other issues. For one thing, the progression in this game truly shows its age. That's a good thing for those who want the remake to be faithful to the original. But to start the game and have a general idea that you're meant to stop SHODAN, but other than that rather aimlessly walk through 9 or so separate areas to just progress further and further to the end, didn't feel all that engaging. It can't be helped that in each area, you look for keycards to unlock progression, a pretty common thing back in the day, and do the same few puzzles and shoot the same few enemies throughout. Enemies that either felt too weak or too overpowered to me. Another thing is the recycling system in the game. To get currency, you grab junk items and vaporize them in your inventory, which turns them into scrap to recycle for the currency. That becomes pretty tedious after a while, and it's not as optional as I anticipated it being because items will be very useful in this game (healing items in particular) and you get very little currency outside of recycling.
The storytelling is pretty good to this day, as it's told through voice recordings for the most part, which gives you an idea of how it was for the people working at the space station this game is set in while SHODAN went rogue. Some of the voice acting is less good than most of it, but I enjoy this style of storytelling and that's true for this game too. The atmosphere grabbed me as well, and the threat of SHODAN was portrayed really well throughout.
Unfortunately, as a package, the gameplay loop itself did not grab me as much as I would have hoped. There is a demo for the game on Steam, so I'd urge you to try it and decide based on that whether you want to buy the full game. It has its many fans, but it's worth mentioning that the game is definitely not for everyone. And I'd definitely say that has more to do with the taste of the player then with the quality of the game, though the game does have its flaws.
(This is the 101st game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet/blog is in my bio.)
1994
I like to pride myself in the fact that I enjoy almost every type of video game genre. If you asked me what my Top 20 games were, you'd probably get games from 10+ genres. That said, one genre I didn't manage to gel with before for some reason ended up being Metroidvanias. I played quite a few, but the only one I enjoyed was Guacamelee. I do like the Metroidvania-defining progression though. "Finding things to interact with, not being able to do so until I get a specific skill, coming back hours later to use that skill and finally interact with the thing" is a pretty satisfying thing.
I suppose the part that becomes a issue for me would be the maze-like design of levels coupled with that system. Where do I go, what do I do, where even am I, why are save points so far apart? Hollow Knight is probably the most notable Metroidvania I tried and bounced off of multiple times for reasons like this. I did want to go back to that however, and I think playing and beating Super Metroid gave me a lot of extra motivation to check out Hollow Knight and many other Metroidvanias that came out up to this point.
Super Metroid released on March 19, 1994 for the SNES and is the third installment in the very popular Metroid franchise. It's the second game for a home console and the first for a fourth-gen system. I played Metroid II for the Game Boy a few months ago, but only gave it a 52 for multiple reasons, chief among them that the limitations set by the Game Boy meant that many things I enjoyed about Super Metroid simply couldn't translate. But yes, Super Metroid ended up being much, much more enjoyable and is another fantastic release for Nintendo's SNES.
STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 4/10
Super Metroid tells its story through its atmosphere. In terms of pure storytelling, the game doesn't do a whole lot, but it has one moment that the game pulls off pretty well near the end. It also generally continues the story of one of gaming's most recognizable characters, which is worth acknowledging, and it doesn't do anything wrong in that regard, it just doesn't do a whole lot.
To give you the short of it because, frankly, there ain't a long version, Samus Aran brings the Metroid that she left with in Metroid II to the Ceres Space colony to be studied. It is found ou that its energy-producing abilities could be used for good. Ridley, the game's antagonist, steals the Metroid and Samus follows Ridley to the planet Zebes. Here, Samus must once again move through extremely hostile territory.
The ending in this game is interesting in that it feels like a proper conclusion, with no cliffhanger or anything else pointing to the continuation of Samus' story. There also was no Metroid game for the next 8 years, the longest ever gap between releases for Metroid games. This feels weird for a game that is so popular these days, but Super Metroid never was a mega-seller, selling "only" 1.42 million copies by 2003, so maybe that's part of the reason why the 5th gen was skipped. [Reading through some posts online, it appears director Yoshio Sakamoto had other commitments during the gap of 8 years and didn't feel like the N64 would be a suitable system to make a Metroid game that would live up to expectations.]
GAMEPLAY | 17/20
One of the most fun games to play as far as the early 90s go. Controls are smooth, the gameplay loop is fluid and the constant acquisition of abilities as you play means you never really see everything the game has to offer until you're pretty much done with it.
The game is a side-scrolling action-adventure / platformer with a big focus on exploration and constant progression ('Metroidvania'). You start the game out with a basic weapon and the ability to jump. You quickly start gaining new abilities that not only make you more powerful, but also allow you to enter areas that you were previously locked out of. For example, rolling up into a ball lets you enter tiny passages. Gaining the ability to place bombs while in bomb-form lets you jump up to enter tiny passages that are placed higher. Missiles allow you to open stronger doors. It's a timeless system that can both fail and succeed depending on execution. In Super Metroid, it is executed very well.
The only issue I personally had with the gameplay was how it dealt with your health. If you have very low health for example, you can get it back up by either finding a rare location that fills it up for you or by killing enemies, who drop items whenever you need them. The idea is fine, but in practice, I found myself "grinding" by constantly entering and exiting rooms and killing the enemies that spawn to max out my health again. Die and you respawn on your last save point with the health you had at that time. So either that save point is "useless" in that regard, or, if you saved at full health, it literally is a better idea to let yourself get killed than to spend a couple minutes filling up your health manually.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 10/10
No voice acting apart from the intro. The soundtrack does a phenomenal job in setting the atmosphere. I'd say the majority of the tracks are very good, but Brinstar (Underground Depths) and the Ridley / Draygon Boss Theme, especially the former, are some of my favorites from the 95 games I've played for this challenge so far.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 9/10
The visual quality is pretty good for a game of its time. Locations have varied styles, there are lots of different enemy designs, special effects look nice and the whole vibe the game is going for is excellent.
ATMOSPHERE/IMMERSION | 10/10
One of the most atmospheric games I've played from this time period. The visuals, the soundtrack and the theme of this game just work extremely well together. I didn't play this game when I was young, but I can easily see myself being very scared playing this, because even in my mid 20s today I notice how daunting the atmosphere feels.
CONTENT | 9/10
The only complaints I have in regards to the game's content is that unlike more traditional platformers, where a lot of hours are spent trying to get past a hard challenge through trial and error, Super Metroid adds hours to its playtime by making it somewhat difficult at times to figure out where you should even go. I'll go over this more under "Level/Mission Design", but apart from these complaints, what you get will be 8-12 hours of a fun time that for the majority of it, flows really well and keeps giving you new upgrades and powers to play around with, no challenges to conquer, new areas to explore and new bosses you defeat. It's a fun time.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 8/10
Your opinions in regards to the game's level design will vary greatly depending on your frustration tolerance and your understanding of what makes a video game fun. Firstly, it's undeniable that a lot of thought went into the design of the levels and how their setup would work for progression as a whole. In addition, visually and environmentally the levels stand out in that there is a lot of variety in play here. I think there will be much less debate about these points. Where it gets more contentious is when it comes to the basic philosophy of this game and, by extent, the whole Metroidvania genre.
When at first you have 1 route to take, all of a sudden you have 4 more that open up when that first route gives you a new ability. From here, 4 routes may turn into 8 routes, and later, those 8 routes may turn back to just 3 routes, but you have already discovered so many parts of the game that you're not quite sure where those 3 routes were. Playing this game and then taking a break for a week for example will make it nigh impossible to beat because a lot of it is dependent on the player keeping in mind certain areas that they couldn't enter in the past, so that when they get a certain ability later, they know where it will be useful. If you don't do this, get ready to go everywhere trying to figure out what to do, which can sometimes feel more, and sometimes less intuitive.
Ultimately, I personally didn't find this to be a big issue, though I've had to look up a guide once or twice (the solution felt obvious in hindsight). I think it's a formula that won't be for everyone, but in my opinion Super Metroid succeeded in balancing the difficulty, where it may take you a little while to figure out where to go next, but it's rarely ever cryptic, and you will find your way to go, if you just concentrate on the game.
Once you beat it however, and once you understand what needs to be done without having to think about it too much, I could see this being a very fun "comfort game" to come back to, because the gameplay, when it flows and is not disrupted by you trying to find the next path, flows reeeally well and beating the game will probably take an expert 3-4 hours.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 10/10
Super Metroid is the first game to truly refine the Metroidvania formula, at least by popular belief. Not only is that a genre that pumps out great games to this day, but based on my own limited experience, I'd say Super Metroid still is among the genre's highlights, though I assume, and hope, that the rest of the Metroid series pulls me in even further. As far as this challenge I'm doing is concerned, I've played almost 5 year's worth of games and have not experienced anything quite like Super Metroid, which is not only a breath of fresh air but also genuinely one of the best games of the first half decade of the 90s.
REPLAYABILITY | 2/5
If you're into speedrunning, or if you want a quick comfort game to play, Super Metroid I feel like will be just that after you initially beat it. In terms of pure replayability though, Super Metroid doesn't offer a lot. There are some optional power ups you can find here and there, but it's basically one linear playthrough otherwise.
PLAYABILITY | 5/5
Works well at all times.
OVERALL | 84/100
If you want to go back to the roots of the Metroidvania genre without it feeling too aged, Super Metroid is a fantastic starting point. Not only is it the game that refined the formula, but it truly aged really well and will provide you with a few afternoon's worth of fun entertainment.
(This is the 95th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet/blog is in my bio.)
I suppose the part that becomes a issue for me would be the maze-like design of levels coupled with that system. Where do I go, what do I do, where even am I, why are save points so far apart? Hollow Knight is probably the most notable Metroidvania I tried and bounced off of multiple times for reasons like this. I did want to go back to that however, and I think playing and beating Super Metroid gave me a lot of extra motivation to check out Hollow Knight and many other Metroidvanias that came out up to this point.
Super Metroid released on March 19, 1994 for the SNES and is the third installment in the very popular Metroid franchise. It's the second game for a home console and the first for a fourth-gen system. I played Metroid II for the Game Boy a few months ago, but only gave it a 52 for multiple reasons, chief among them that the limitations set by the Game Boy meant that many things I enjoyed about Super Metroid simply couldn't translate. But yes, Super Metroid ended up being much, much more enjoyable and is another fantastic release for Nintendo's SNES.
STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 4/10
Super Metroid tells its story through its atmosphere. In terms of pure storytelling, the game doesn't do a whole lot, but it has one moment that the game pulls off pretty well near the end. It also generally continues the story of one of gaming's most recognizable characters, which is worth acknowledging, and it doesn't do anything wrong in that regard, it just doesn't do a whole lot.
To give you the short of it because, frankly, there ain't a long version, Samus Aran brings the Metroid that she left with in Metroid II to the Ceres Space colony to be studied. It is found ou that its energy-producing abilities could be used for good. Ridley, the game's antagonist, steals the Metroid and Samus follows Ridley to the planet Zebes. Here, Samus must once again move through extremely hostile territory.
The ending in this game is interesting in that it feels like a proper conclusion, with no cliffhanger or anything else pointing to the continuation of Samus' story. There also was no Metroid game for the next 8 years, the longest ever gap between releases for Metroid games. This feels weird for a game that is so popular these days, but Super Metroid never was a mega-seller, selling "only" 1.42 million copies by 2003, so maybe that's part of the reason why the 5th gen was skipped. [Reading through some posts online, it appears director Yoshio Sakamoto had other commitments during the gap of 8 years and didn't feel like the N64 would be a suitable system to make a Metroid game that would live up to expectations.]
GAMEPLAY | 17/20
One of the most fun games to play as far as the early 90s go. Controls are smooth, the gameplay loop is fluid and the constant acquisition of abilities as you play means you never really see everything the game has to offer until you're pretty much done with it.
The game is a side-scrolling action-adventure / platformer with a big focus on exploration and constant progression ('Metroidvania'). You start the game out with a basic weapon and the ability to jump. You quickly start gaining new abilities that not only make you more powerful, but also allow you to enter areas that you were previously locked out of. For example, rolling up into a ball lets you enter tiny passages. Gaining the ability to place bombs while in bomb-form lets you jump up to enter tiny passages that are placed higher. Missiles allow you to open stronger doors. It's a timeless system that can both fail and succeed depending on execution. In Super Metroid, it is executed very well.
The only issue I personally had with the gameplay was how it dealt with your health. If you have very low health for example, you can get it back up by either finding a rare location that fills it up for you or by killing enemies, who drop items whenever you need them. The idea is fine, but in practice, I found myself "grinding" by constantly entering and exiting rooms and killing the enemies that spawn to max out my health again. Die and you respawn on your last save point with the health you had at that time. So either that save point is "useless" in that regard, or, if you saved at full health, it literally is a better idea to let yourself get killed than to spend a couple minutes filling up your health manually.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 10/10
No voice acting apart from the intro. The soundtrack does a phenomenal job in setting the atmosphere. I'd say the majority of the tracks are very good, but Brinstar (Underground Depths) and the Ridley / Draygon Boss Theme, especially the former, are some of my favorites from the 95 games I've played for this challenge so far.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 9/10
The visual quality is pretty good for a game of its time. Locations have varied styles, there are lots of different enemy designs, special effects look nice and the whole vibe the game is going for is excellent.
ATMOSPHERE/IMMERSION | 10/10
One of the most atmospheric games I've played from this time period. The visuals, the soundtrack and the theme of this game just work extremely well together. I didn't play this game when I was young, but I can easily see myself being very scared playing this, because even in my mid 20s today I notice how daunting the atmosphere feels.
CONTENT | 9/10
The only complaints I have in regards to the game's content is that unlike more traditional platformers, where a lot of hours are spent trying to get past a hard challenge through trial and error, Super Metroid adds hours to its playtime by making it somewhat difficult at times to figure out where you should even go. I'll go over this more under "Level/Mission Design", but apart from these complaints, what you get will be 8-12 hours of a fun time that for the majority of it, flows really well and keeps giving you new upgrades and powers to play around with, no challenges to conquer, new areas to explore and new bosses you defeat. It's a fun time.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 8/10
Your opinions in regards to the game's level design will vary greatly depending on your frustration tolerance and your understanding of what makes a video game fun. Firstly, it's undeniable that a lot of thought went into the design of the levels and how their setup would work for progression as a whole. In addition, visually and environmentally the levels stand out in that there is a lot of variety in play here. I think there will be much less debate about these points. Where it gets more contentious is when it comes to the basic philosophy of this game and, by extent, the whole Metroidvania genre.
When at first you have 1 route to take, all of a sudden you have 4 more that open up when that first route gives you a new ability. From here, 4 routes may turn into 8 routes, and later, those 8 routes may turn back to just 3 routes, but you have already discovered so many parts of the game that you're not quite sure where those 3 routes were. Playing this game and then taking a break for a week for example will make it nigh impossible to beat because a lot of it is dependent on the player keeping in mind certain areas that they couldn't enter in the past, so that when they get a certain ability later, they know where it will be useful. If you don't do this, get ready to go everywhere trying to figure out what to do, which can sometimes feel more, and sometimes less intuitive.
Ultimately, I personally didn't find this to be a big issue, though I've had to look up a guide once or twice (the solution felt obvious in hindsight). I think it's a formula that won't be for everyone, but in my opinion Super Metroid succeeded in balancing the difficulty, where it may take you a little while to figure out where to go next, but it's rarely ever cryptic, and you will find your way to go, if you just concentrate on the game.
Once you beat it however, and once you understand what needs to be done without having to think about it too much, I could see this being a very fun "comfort game" to come back to, because the gameplay, when it flows and is not disrupted by you trying to find the next path, flows reeeally well and beating the game will probably take an expert 3-4 hours.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 10/10
Super Metroid is the first game to truly refine the Metroidvania formula, at least by popular belief. Not only is that a genre that pumps out great games to this day, but based on my own limited experience, I'd say Super Metroid still is among the genre's highlights, though I assume, and hope, that the rest of the Metroid series pulls me in even further. As far as this challenge I'm doing is concerned, I've played almost 5 year's worth of games and have not experienced anything quite like Super Metroid, which is not only a breath of fresh air but also genuinely one of the best games of the first half decade of the 90s.
REPLAYABILITY | 2/5
If you're into speedrunning, or if you want a quick comfort game to play, Super Metroid I feel like will be just that after you initially beat it. In terms of pure replayability though, Super Metroid doesn't offer a lot. There are some optional power ups you can find here and there, but it's basically one linear playthrough otherwise.
PLAYABILITY | 5/5
Works well at all times.
OVERALL | 84/100
If you want to go back to the roots of the Metroidvania genre without it feeling too aged, Super Metroid is a fantastic starting point. Not only is it the game that refined the formula, but it truly aged really well and will provide you with a few afternoon's worth of fun entertainment.
(This is the 95th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet/blog is in my bio.)
1992
As for a lot of gamers, I am a big fan of Hideo Kojima's work. Not just because I find it of high quality and a lot of fun to engage with, but because these days, he is among few AAA game directors who truly try to make unique video games. Not those "focus-grouped to death" copies of each other with a different coat of paint to appear as mainstream as possible, but once in a lifetime experiences where he doesn't care whether it is universally praised or not. See Death Stranding for example, a game literally about making deliveries from Point A to B. Go into it deeper and you will find a way more profound experience with a lot of commentary on modern society (scarily apt during the pandemic that started a year after its release as well), and personally I found the gameplay to be a lot of fun as well.
Just as Hideo Kojima's work over the past couple decades is unique to the AAA video game industry to this day, his work in 1988 with SNATCHER is unique to this day's Hideo Kojima. It's not an Action blockbuster like the Metal Gear Solid or Death Stranding games, but it's rather a game in a genre of games Hideo Kojima enjoyed during his own formative years, the visual novel / crime mystery genre that was somewhat popular in Japan at the time.
Snatcher released initially on November 26, 1988 for the PC-8801 and the MSX2, two Japanese personal computers. It then released in a "remade" version on October 23, 1992 for the PC-Engine (exclusively for the Japanese version of the TurboGrafx-16) before it finally got an English release in December 15, 1994 for the Sega CD, which is the excuse I used to add it to my playlist for the challenge I am currently doing. To be honest, I have no idea how it came about to release this game in the West after not having done so in the 6 years prior, especially since the spritual successor 'Policenauts', which also released in 1994, did not get a Western release. But, thankfully, it happened, and with voice acting to boot. These games have a cult following these days and after having finished Snatcher, you can count me in among those who would be happy to see Hideo Kojima do another game of this type as some sort of side project during these modern times.
STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 9/10
If you decide to play Snatcher, you will probably do so to mainly experience its story. If that is not your expectation going in, I'm sure it will quickly become what will hold your attention, as the gameplay is rather typical for a visual novel. It's mainly clicking at prompts and listening to dialogue.
So with that being the case, delivering an interesting story full of interesting characters, plot twists and tense moments is quite important for this game to be worth playing. Luckily, the game delivers on all fronts thanks to its cyberpunk setting filled with a lot of well thoughtout, interesting lore, its compelling premise and its cast of characters.
50 years ago, the explosion of a biological weapon in a research facility near Moscow called "Lucifer-Alpha" killed over half of the world's population in Eastern Europe and Eurasia. In the present, a new city on an artificial island in Eastern Asia was made and is called "Neo Kobe City", a melting pot of cultures due to large number of immigrants from China, the USA, Eastern and Western Europe and even more areas of the world. Mankind faces a new dilemma due to the appearance of humanoid robots that are called "Snatchers", because they 'snatch' a person (kill and dispose of them) and take up their spot. They can't be detected due to the fact that they breathe, bleed and sweat like any human and even wear artifical skin to look exactly like the person they are copying. They mainly snatch VIP types however, which presumably means that their appearance goes beyond "AI gone rogue".
You play Gillian Seed, who, along with your wife, is an amnesiac and just got assigned to the JUNKERs, a special anti-Snatcher task force (Japanese Undercover Neuro Kinetic Elimination Ranger). Your assignment is to be a runner, an in-field operative taking on the highest of risks by facing these Snatchers head on and eliminating them. To do this, you are assigned a Navigator, a robot that assists you on the field. Navigators get their personalities formed somewhat after the Junker they are assigned to, so yours. Your navigator is called "Metal Gear Mk. II", designed after the "Metal Gear menace from the 20th century", so yes, this seems to play in an alternate future of the Metal Gear universe.
This game is a visual novel, so gameplay looks like this. The first screen you see is that of the Junker HQ reception. A panel of prompts appears at the bottom half of the screen. You can "Look" at things, "Investigate" things, "Talk" and "Ask" if a person is in the room with you and also look at your "Possessions" to "look" and "investigate" them as well. Looking at things and investigating things is different in that investigating them is more analytical. You are often meant to look and investigate things multiple times, as each time reveals new information and thoughts. Some of these options are optionable if you want to get immersed more deeply with your surroundings, and some you are meant to use to trigger a moment that lets you progress, such as uncovering a new clue. As someone who likes to get immersed as much as possible, I have used every single option as many times as I could (at least I think), which not only does what I just told you, but also triggered a few "hidden" moments that I found quite entertaining. In one part of the city for example, Gillian attempts to "pick up women" and if you do so multiple times, one woman turns out to be a Snatcher, which triggers a "Game Over?" screen before it is revealed that Gillian was just daydreaming.
Gillian Seed in general is a pretty odd fellow, though he is more of a poster-boy for how Kojima seemingly wanted the game's atmosphere to be more humane to balance out the fact that Snatchers dominate everything else in this game. Gillian is an amnesiac as mentioned and has a wife called "Jamie", though they don't remember each other. He likes to use humor whenever possible to lower the tension that the entire case and his occupation represents, though balances that out with a get shit done attitude when the situation requires it. The non-serious part of his personality would have felt a bit too "in your face" however, if he wasn't assisted by Metal Gear Mk. 2, who steals the show in this game in my opinion. Both the voice acting and the personality of Metal Gear is perfection, as Metal Gear uses his analytical makeup to save Gillian's butt countless times on the field, but also roasts him every chance he gets when they get a break from the Snatcher-hunting they do. For a guy like Gillian who I can only describe as a "creep" for most parts of the game, I think it was a great idea to have him be accompanied by someone like Metal Gear who keeps him in line as much as possible. I say "creep" because there are 3 female side characters and several other female NPCs in this game, and I don't think there was a single one Gillian didn't make a pass at. For one, you can "look" at any character several times, and doing so once illicits a "she looks great" type response from Gilliant, while doing so more than once prompts the women to say that they feel uncomfortable, which doesn't stop Gillian from making way more straightforward remarks about their apperance. Now don't get me wrong, this type of behavior doesn't usually weird me out and I can see it for what it is, which is entertainment. But with Gillian, it's different. For one, he has a wife, which you can call in this game to tell her how much you want to get to know and to love her again. This creates a very weird situation where Gillian talks to Jamie on the phone, only to flirt with several women over the next hour alone. Second, one of the women includes the 18-year old daughter of a fallen co-worker, who is 14 in Japan's version of the game, so that Gillian doesn't know boundaries whatsoever is pretty off-putting. Otherwise though, his attempts at flirtation are mainly meant to be humorous, and it works since he gets shot down constantly (and gets ridiculed by Metal Gear for it), but on his own he doesn't make a great main character because his personality is mainly doing this shtick.
Apart from Metal Gear, who is the best character in the game for me, there are several individuals who have this mysterious aura around them, like there is more to them than you'd think. Harry the engineer is one of these types, but it extends to the Chief of the JUNKER operation, a bounty hunter named Random Hajile, your wife Jamie, an informer you talk to several times, and Gibson, the only other JUNKER who currently works as a runner alongside you.
With that, I want to get to the main story. I don't want to spoil anything, and in general I think the big story beats flow at a great pace and introduce a lot of twists and memorable moments. However, there is one flaw to the premise of the story that I found to be pretty odd. Actually, there were several over the first couple of hours, but it is worth noting that the plot cleared up plenty of questions I had and actually answered them in a quite satisfactory manner. This one issue that remains though is that this JUNKER operation seems pathetically tiny considering that the "Snatcher menace" presents a huge issue to all of mankind. ALL OF MANKIND. Meanwhile, here you are in the secret JUNKER operation tasked with stopping it and all you have is 5 (five) measly people working there, including just two actual runners. What? Even if Snatchers would snatch up everyday folk, this would be unrealistic, but when VIPs are exclusively involved, you'd think more monetary efforts would be made to make sure the menace was eradicated asap. The game does have an answer to this worry later on at least somewhat I suppose, but I still think that is too unrealistic to have two guys do all the work.
That said, if you enjoy a good mystery story, if you enjoy visual novels and if you like the cyberpunk aesthetic, I think you will enjoy the story that this game tells. It's well executed, I never felt like the game dragged with filler moments and the plot twists were well executed. The pre-1992 version had only 2 acts, but while this version comes with an additional third, which turns this game from one with a cliffhanger ending to one with a complete story. Knowing this, the third act did feel slightly out of place, as the majority of it involves listening to dialogue instead of much player input when it comes to investigation or the like, but the act does end things on a satisfactory note, so I'm glad it's there to give the player a full story to enjoy, though it does leave some room for a sequel.
GAMEPLAY | 12/20
This is a visual novel, though not exactly like most modern ones. Instead of listening to a story and just clicking the A/X button to read the next lines, you select options to look at and investigate, so you are constantly involved with what the next set of lines of dialogue will focus on, keeping you more engaged. But of course, gameplay is a low priority in this game overall.
There is only one part about this game that has true gameplay, which is the game's light gun sections. In a 3x3 grid akin to a game of whack-a-mole, enemies appear in one of the 9 spots and you need to quickly react and aim and shoot at the part of the grid that they are on. This is a pretty small part of the game and I found it to be appear just the perfect number of times over the course of the game. I didn't fail once, but I've read that some found these parts to be kind of difficult. There is a rush of enemies in one late-game section of this, which might give you some trouble, if you are slower on the buttons, but I'm not nearly the fastest and got by with plenty of health remaining.
With visual novels, I find that the quality of the story makes the gameplay more or less tolerable, and since I found the story to be so good, I enjoyed taking my time with this one. This involved choosing every option to investigate multiple times, even to just trigger some optional dialogue from the characters.
You don't just choose options however. First, to find clues and progress, you often need to choose specific options multiple times. The order you would usually choose is to look at something and then to investigate. Sometimes though, you look, investigate and then have to look again to trigger an event, which was a weird way to do things, so be wary of this. That said, asking the player to be thorough is not a bad thing on its own, as reading through all the lines that are available adds to the overall context that the player gets.
One final part of the gameplay here are the puzzles. Often, you need to input answers, such as the password to talk to an informant, the name of a person, the really contrived "Oleen" puzzle and more. If a puzzle gives you any trouble, the game guides you to the answer pretty nicely, so don't worry about not figuring them out.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 9/10
This game has voice acting!!! An anomaly for games that I play as part of this retro challenge I'm doing. Of course, it's less unique for Sega CD titles, but still a very new thing for video games at the time. Due to this, I was expecting terrible performances, but the majority of characters are genuinely well voiced. These of course do not compare to today's quality, but for 1994, they don't take away from the experience. Some voices I thought didn't really have much emotion in them, such as the voice of Katrina, while the voice actress for Metal Gear did a fantastic job in my opinion. It's a good performance from the cast overall, with some high and low points.
The soundtrack of this game has a very unique sound to it in my opinion, and I mean that in a positive way. This is a cyberpunk / cyber noir themed game, and while I couldn't have told you what that sounded like beforehand, I think the game nails that atmosphere really well. The track that plays when shit hits the fan really gets you off your seat and ready to investigate the crap out of the place you're in, while I have no doubt that I will remember some tracks (like the Junker HQ one) years and years down the line. Liked it a lot overall.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 9/10
Snatcher has a great cyberpunk aesthetic. Whether its the neon-lit Neo Kobe City, the run-down slums in the otherwise high-tech environment or the presentation of the Snatchers, it has a great visual style, timeless you could even say. The game features some pretty gory sections (decapacitated humans, dead animals), so if you don't like that sort of stuff, stay away. For me, it added a lot to the legitimacy of the Snatcher threat and was not used too much as to be tactless. The presentation of the screens in this game looks pretty good in this remade version of the game, though they are simple-looking for the most part, as the majority of screens had little to no actual movement in them but rather remained still. This didn't take away from the cinematics however, which were well done despite the visual limitations the game had to work with.
ATMOSPHERE/IMMERSION | 10/10
Incredibly atmospheric. Cyber noir is presenting "technology as a destructive and dystopian force that threatens every aspect of our reality", and that fits the game's theme perfectly. It's a story about humanity's lack of trust in one another and how it is one of our biggest flaws, and it carries that from its beginning all the way to the end. Heck, due to suffering from amnesia, Gillian is partly defined by this, though he hardly is the only one here. The game portrays this theme well several times throughout the game. The cyberpunk part of the cyber noir theme is also well represented here, with the contrast of high tech and the rich parts of Neo Kobe City being compared to the slums ridden with poverty. There are even minor things here, like a group of women taking their artificially enhanced pets to the vet, like a parrot with instant memorization, a dog that barely makes any sound and ... a pigeon? The deep lore that you can read up on on the computer at Junker HQ also is worth going through to familiarize yourself with Neo Kobe City.
CONTENT | 8/10
The game took me about 10 hours to beat, though you can easily beat it a couple hours sooner, if you skip some of the optional stuff. For example, reading through all the lore on the computer at Junker HQ took me over half an hour and is completely optional. There is a lot of good stuff here, and little feels as filler.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 8/10
This is a pretty well-paced adventure throughout, with a good mix of investigating, action, comedy and romance, though the last part never really felt right to me due to what I talked about in the Story part of this review. My only issue was that progression was somehow hidden behind a combination of Look / Investigate / Look that felt unnecessary, and some of the puzzles felt really contrived. That said, this is a pretty focused game and does its job well in terms of the design of its structure.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 6/10
This is not a new concept, as Hideo Kojima used similar Japanese crime adventures as inspiration for this game. It is unique in that I haven't played it in the 4+ years worth of games I've played as part of this challenge, it is a visual novel, which is a rare breed for its time, especially in the West and it tells a good story that aged pretty well. And I guess it's also worth pointing out that the game does enough to keep the player engaged without making this game feel like a book and without making the limited light gun sequences to feel annoying.
REPLAYABILITY | 1/5
This is a very linear adventure. If you are going through all options like me, which doesn't take a lot of effort, you will see everything in one go, besides some minor dialogue results at times perhaps. But other than that, one playthrough will give you pretty much everything here.
PLAYABILITY | 5/5
Works well at all times.
OVERALL | 78/100
A visual novel that is worthy of being played. If you are a fan of Kojima's work, this is a must play, if you are a fan of visual novels or adventure games, this is well worth a playthrough and if you enjoy good stories in video games, this is in the upper tiers, especially for its time.
(This is the 94th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet/blog is in my bio.)
Just as Hideo Kojima's work over the past couple decades is unique to the AAA video game industry to this day, his work in 1988 with SNATCHER is unique to this day's Hideo Kojima. It's not an Action blockbuster like the Metal Gear Solid or Death Stranding games, but it's rather a game in a genre of games Hideo Kojima enjoyed during his own formative years, the visual novel / crime mystery genre that was somewhat popular in Japan at the time.
Snatcher released initially on November 26, 1988 for the PC-8801 and the MSX2, two Japanese personal computers. It then released in a "remade" version on October 23, 1992 for the PC-Engine (exclusively for the Japanese version of the TurboGrafx-16) before it finally got an English release in December 15, 1994 for the Sega CD, which is the excuse I used to add it to my playlist for the challenge I am currently doing. To be honest, I have no idea how it came about to release this game in the West after not having done so in the 6 years prior, especially since the spritual successor 'Policenauts', which also released in 1994, did not get a Western release. But, thankfully, it happened, and with voice acting to boot. These games have a cult following these days and after having finished Snatcher, you can count me in among those who would be happy to see Hideo Kojima do another game of this type as some sort of side project during these modern times.
STORYTELLING/CHARACTERS | 9/10
If you decide to play Snatcher, you will probably do so to mainly experience its story. If that is not your expectation going in, I'm sure it will quickly become what will hold your attention, as the gameplay is rather typical for a visual novel. It's mainly clicking at prompts and listening to dialogue.
So with that being the case, delivering an interesting story full of interesting characters, plot twists and tense moments is quite important for this game to be worth playing. Luckily, the game delivers on all fronts thanks to its cyberpunk setting filled with a lot of well thoughtout, interesting lore, its compelling premise and its cast of characters.
50 years ago, the explosion of a biological weapon in a research facility near Moscow called "Lucifer-Alpha" killed over half of the world's population in Eastern Europe and Eurasia. In the present, a new city on an artificial island in Eastern Asia was made and is called "Neo Kobe City", a melting pot of cultures due to large number of immigrants from China, the USA, Eastern and Western Europe and even more areas of the world. Mankind faces a new dilemma due to the appearance of humanoid robots that are called "Snatchers", because they 'snatch' a person (kill and dispose of them) and take up their spot. They can't be detected due to the fact that they breathe, bleed and sweat like any human and even wear artifical skin to look exactly like the person they are copying. They mainly snatch VIP types however, which presumably means that their appearance goes beyond "AI gone rogue".
You play Gillian Seed, who, along with your wife, is an amnesiac and just got assigned to the JUNKERs, a special anti-Snatcher task force (Japanese Undercover Neuro Kinetic Elimination Ranger). Your assignment is to be a runner, an in-field operative taking on the highest of risks by facing these Snatchers head on and eliminating them. To do this, you are assigned a Navigator, a robot that assists you on the field. Navigators get their personalities formed somewhat after the Junker they are assigned to, so yours. Your navigator is called "Metal Gear Mk. II", designed after the "Metal Gear menace from the 20th century", so yes, this seems to play in an alternate future of the Metal Gear universe.
This game is a visual novel, so gameplay looks like this. The first screen you see is that of the Junker HQ reception. A panel of prompts appears at the bottom half of the screen. You can "Look" at things, "Investigate" things, "Talk" and "Ask" if a person is in the room with you and also look at your "Possessions" to "look" and "investigate" them as well. Looking at things and investigating things is different in that investigating them is more analytical. You are often meant to look and investigate things multiple times, as each time reveals new information and thoughts. Some of these options are optionable if you want to get immersed more deeply with your surroundings, and some you are meant to use to trigger a moment that lets you progress, such as uncovering a new clue. As someone who likes to get immersed as much as possible, I have used every single option as many times as I could (at least I think), which not only does what I just told you, but also triggered a few "hidden" moments that I found quite entertaining. In one part of the city for example, Gillian attempts to "pick up women" and if you do so multiple times, one woman turns out to be a Snatcher, which triggers a "Game Over?" screen before it is revealed that Gillian was just daydreaming.
Gillian Seed in general is a pretty odd fellow, though he is more of a poster-boy for how Kojima seemingly wanted the game's atmosphere to be more humane to balance out the fact that Snatchers dominate everything else in this game. Gillian is an amnesiac as mentioned and has a wife called "Jamie", though they don't remember each other. He likes to use humor whenever possible to lower the tension that the entire case and his occupation represents, though balances that out with a get shit done attitude when the situation requires it. The non-serious part of his personality would have felt a bit too "in your face" however, if he wasn't assisted by Metal Gear Mk. 2, who steals the show in this game in my opinion. Both the voice acting and the personality of Metal Gear is perfection, as Metal Gear uses his analytical makeup to save Gillian's butt countless times on the field, but also roasts him every chance he gets when they get a break from the Snatcher-hunting they do. For a guy like Gillian who I can only describe as a "creep" for most parts of the game, I think it was a great idea to have him be accompanied by someone like Metal Gear who keeps him in line as much as possible. I say "creep" because there are 3 female side characters and several other female NPCs in this game, and I don't think there was a single one Gillian didn't make a pass at. For one, you can "look" at any character several times, and doing so once illicits a "she looks great" type response from Gilliant, while doing so more than once prompts the women to say that they feel uncomfortable, which doesn't stop Gillian from making way more straightforward remarks about their apperance. Now don't get me wrong, this type of behavior doesn't usually weird me out and I can see it for what it is, which is entertainment. But with Gillian, it's different. For one, he has a wife, which you can call in this game to tell her how much you want to get to know and to love her again. This creates a very weird situation where Gillian talks to Jamie on the phone, only to flirt with several women over the next hour alone. Second, one of the women includes the 18-year old daughter of a fallen co-worker, who is 14 in Japan's version of the game, so that Gillian doesn't know boundaries whatsoever is pretty off-putting. Otherwise though, his attempts at flirtation are mainly meant to be humorous, and it works since he gets shot down constantly (and gets ridiculed by Metal Gear for it), but on his own he doesn't make a great main character because his personality is mainly doing this shtick.
Apart from Metal Gear, who is the best character in the game for me, there are several individuals who have this mysterious aura around them, like there is more to them than you'd think. Harry the engineer is one of these types, but it extends to the Chief of the JUNKER operation, a bounty hunter named Random Hajile, your wife Jamie, an informer you talk to several times, and Gibson, the only other JUNKER who currently works as a runner alongside you.
With that, I want to get to the main story. I don't want to spoil anything, and in general I think the big story beats flow at a great pace and introduce a lot of twists and memorable moments. However, there is one flaw to the premise of the story that I found to be pretty odd. Actually, there were several over the first couple of hours, but it is worth noting that the plot cleared up plenty of questions I had and actually answered them in a quite satisfactory manner. This one issue that remains though is that this JUNKER operation seems pathetically tiny considering that the "Snatcher menace" presents a huge issue to all of mankind. ALL OF MANKIND. Meanwhile, here you are in the secret JUNKER operation tasked with stopping it and all you have is 5 (five) measly people working there, including just two actual runners. What? Even if Snatchers would snatch up everyday folk, this would be unrealistic, but when VIPs are exclusively involved, you'd think more monetary efforts would be made to make sure the menace was eradicated asap. The game does have an answer to this worry later on at least somewhat I suppose, but I still think that is too unrealistic to have two guys do all the work.
That said, if you enjoy a good mystery story, if you enjoy visual novels and if you like the cyberpunk aesthetic, I think you will enjoy the story that this game tells. It's well executed, I never felt like the game dragged with filler moments and the plot twists were well executed. The pre-1992 version had only 2 acts, but while this version comes with an additional third, which turns this game from one with a cliffhanger ending to one with a complete story. Knowing this, the third act did feel slightly out of place, as the majority of it involves listening to dialogue instead of much player input when it comes to investigation or the like, but the act does end things on a satisfactory note, so I'm glad it's there to give the player a full story to enjoy, though it does leave some room for a sequel.
GAMEPLAY | 12/20
This is a visual novel, though not exactly like most modern ones. Instead of listening to a story and just clicking the A/X button to read the next lines, you select options to look at and investigate, so you are constantly involved with what the next set of lines of dialogue will focus on, keeping you more engaged. But of course, gameplay is a low priority in this game overall.
There is only one part about this game that has true gameplay, which is the game's light gun sections. In a 3x3 grid akin to a game of whack-a-mole, enemies appear in one of the 9 spots and you need to quickly react and aim and shoot at the part of the grid that they are on. This is a pretty small part of the game and I found it to be appear just the perfect number of times over the course of the game. I didn't fail once, but I've read that some found these parts to be kind of difficult. There is a rush of enemies in one late-game section of this, which might give you some trouble, if you are slower on the buttons, but I'm not nearly the fastest and got by with plenty of health remaining.
With visual novels, I find that the quality of the story makes the gameplay more or less tolerable, and since I found the story to be so good, I enjoyed taking my time with this one. This involved choosing every option to investigate multiple times, even to just trigger some optional dialogue from the characters.
You don't just choose options however. First, to find clues and progress, you often need to choose specific options multiple times. The order you would usually choose is to look at something and then to investigate. Sometimes though, you look, investigate and then have to look again to trigger an event, which was a weird way to do things, so be wary of this. That said, asking the player to be thorough is not a bad thing on its own, as reading through all the lines that are available adds to the overall context that the player gets.
One final part of the gameplay here are the puzzles. Often, you need to input answers, such as the password to talk to an informant, the name of a person, the really contrived "Oleen" puzzle and more. If a puzzle gives you any trouble, the game guides you to the answer pretty nicely, so don't worry about not figuring them out.
MUSIC/SOUND/VOICE | 9/10
This game has voice acting!!! An anomaly for games that I play as part of this retro challenge I'm doing. Of course, it's less unique for Sega CD titles, but still a very new thing for video games at the time. Due to this, I was expecting terrible performances, but the majority of characters are genuinely well voiced. These of course do not compare to today's quality, but for 1994, they don't take away from the experience. Some voices I thought didn't really have much emotion in them, such as the voice of Katrina, while the voice actress for Metal Gear did a fantastic job in my opinion. It's a good performance from the cast overall, with some high and low points.
The soundtrack of this game has a very unique sound to it in my opinion, and I mean that in a positive way. This is a cyberpunk / cyber noir themed game, and while I couldn't have told you what that sounded like beforehand, I think the game nails that atmosphere really well. The track that plays when shit hits the fan really gets you off your seat and ready to investigate the crap out of the place you're in, while I have no doubt that I will remember some tracks (like the Junker HQ one) years and years down the line. Liked it a lot overall.
GRAPHICS/ART DESIGN | 9/10
Snatcher has a great cyberpunk aesthetic. Whether its the neon-lit Neo Kobe City, the run-down slums in the otherwise high-tech environment or the presentation of the Snatchers, it has a great visual style, timeless you could even say. The game features some pretty gory sections (decapacitated humans, dead animals), so if you don't like that sort of stuff, stay away. For me, it added a lot to the legitimacy of the Snatcher threat and was not used too much as to be tactless. The presentation of the screens in this game looks pretty good in this remade version of the game, though they are simple-looking for the most part, as the majority of screens had little to no actual movement in them but rather remained still. This didn't take away from the cinematics however, which were well done despite the visual limitations the game had to work with.
ATMOSPHERE/IMMERSION | 10/10
Incredibly atmospheric. Cyber noir is presenting "technology as a destructive and dystopian force that threatens every aspect of our reality", and that fits the game's theme perfectly. It's a story about humanity's lack of trust in one another and how it is one of our biggest flaws, and it carries that from its beginning all the way to the end. Heck, due to suffering from amnesia, Gillian is partly defined by this, though he hardly is the only one here. The game portrays this theme well several times throughout the game. The cyberpunk part of the cyber noir theme is also well represented here, with the contrast of high tech and the rich parts of Neo Kobe City being compared to the slums ridden with poverty. There are even minor things here, like a group of women taking their artificially enhanced pets to the vet, like a parrot with instant memorization, a dog that barely makes any sound and ... a pigeon? The deep lore that you can read up on on the computer at Junker HQ also is worth going through to familiarize yourself with Neo Kobe City.
CONTENT | 8/10
The game took me about 10 hours to beat, though you can easily beat it a couple hours sooner, if you skip some of the optional stuff. For example, reading through all the lore on the computer at Junker HQ took me over half an hour and is completely optional. There is a lot of good stuff here, and little feels as filler.
LEVEL/MISSION DESIGN | 8/10
This is a pretty well-paced adventure throughout, with a good mix of investigating, action, comedy and romance, though the last part never really felt right to me due to what I talked about in the Story part of this review. My only issue was that progression was somehow hidden behind a combination of Look / Investigate / Look that felt unnecessary, and some of the puzzles felt really contrived. That said, this is a pretty focused game and does its job well in terms of the design of its structure.
CONCEPT/INNOVATION | 6/10
This is not a new concept, as Hideo Kojima used similar Japanese crime adventures as inspiration for this game. It is unique in that I haven't played it in the 4+ years worth of games I've played as part of this challenge, it is a visual novel, which is a rare breed for its time, especially in the West and it tells a good story that aged pretty well. And I guess it's also worth pointing out that the game does enough to keep the player engaged without making this game feel like a book and without making the limited light gun sequences to feel annoying.
REPLAYABILITY | 1/5
This is a very linear adventure. If you are going through all options like me, which doesn't take a lot of effort, you will see everything in one go, besides some minor dialogue results at times perhaps. But other than that, one playthrough will give you pretty much everything here.
PLAYABILITY | 5/5
Works well at all times.
OVERALL | 78/100
A visual novel that is worthy of being played. If you are a fan of Kojima's work, this is a must play, if you are a fan of visual novels or adventure games, this is well worth a playthrough and if you enjoy good stories in video games, this is in the upper tiers, especially for its time.
(This is the 94th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet/blog is in my bio.)
(This is the 118th game in my challenge to go through many known games in chronological order starting in 1990. The spreadsheet/blog is in my bio.)
I've spent the past two months or so playing Super Mario RPG whenever I got the time since I'm currently spending a semester abroad. Finding the time to sit down and play this has always been a treat because Super Mario RPG is such an easy going, chill and funny video game. It should probably be in every Top 10, if not Top 5 SNES RPG list out there, and is definitely one of the best starting points to RPGs for newcomers, if the Mario setting sounds interesting to you.
The story is that there is something called the Star Road, where wishes are fulfilled. One day, when Mario once again goes to Bowsers Castle to rescue Princess Toadstool, a massive sword falls down from the sky and onto Bowser's Castle. The sword tears through the Star Road and scatters seven star pieces throughout the land, and it is Mario's job to collect them to repair the Star Road. You get the help of companions like Bowser and Princess Toadstool, but also two characters that I think are new to the Mario universe in Mallow and Geno.
The story is rather simple and character development, while there for Mallow and Geno, happens pretty quickly when they get their moments and isn't at all fleshed out, which makes sense considering the game is aimed primarily towards young gamers. Still, you got a wholesome party to support you on your journey, and that makes for a chill time almost throughout.
I say almost because like all RPGs of its time, Super Mario RPG requires you to grind for levels at certain points. At least that has to be the case, as I literally couldn't get past a certain fight against the Axem Rangers very far into the game. For a game like this where progression is otherwise very easy, this was a shame. Because the thing with Super Mario RPG is that it is not just a simple RPG in terms of knowing where to go, the low number of items and skills to keep track of or the battle difficulty for 90% of fights. It's also lacking in combat depth, so it would have just been tedious for me to go back and grind for an hour or two to get past the Axem Rangers, only to probably be in a similar position with even later bosses. Additionally, while the game has a parry-timing feature, in that you need to press the A button right when you are attacked to reduce or null damage, a lot of attacks by tougher bosses are unblockable, and I feel like focusing more on the timing would have resulted in a better flow. That said, whenever the parry-timing was usable, I had fun with it and as someone who loved that in the South Park RPGs, I was happy to see the feature appear here.
The soundtrack includes great tunes and remixes and the map design overall is solid. My favorite part about the game has to be the constant mini games and challenges the game throws at you to keep things varied. They added a lot to the humor often times too.
Overall, I'm definitely keen on playing the remake of this some day and I enjoyed my time with it. It's just a shame that I didn't see the necessity to grind coming. As someone who falls victim to this many times when playing (old-school) RPGs, I didn't expect the original Super Mario RPG to have any grinding included as well, but whether you see this as a bad thing will obviously be a subjective opinion. I'm thinking the remake is more lax in that regard, and considering that it seems very faithful to the original, I don't think there is much reason to track down the original anymore. Unless you'd like to emulate over paying for the full remake, in which case the original certainly holds up well.
I've spent the past two months or so playing Super Mario RPG whenever I got the time since I'm currently spending a semester abroad. Finding the time to sit down and play this has always been a treat because Super Mario RPG is such an easy going, chill and funny video game. It should probably be in every Top 10, if not Top 5 SNES RPG list out there, and is definitely one of the best starting points to RPGs for newcomers, if the Mario setting sounds interesting to you.
The story is that there is something called the Star Road, where wishes are fulfilled. One day, when Mario once again goes to Bowsers Castle to rescue Princess Toadstool, a massive sword falls down from the sky and onto Bowser's Castle. The sword tears through the Star Road and scatters seven star pieces throughout the land, and it is Mario's job to collect them to repair the Star Road. You get the help of companions like Bowser and Princess Toadstool, but also two characters that I think are new to the Mario universe in Mallow and Geno.
The story is rather simple and character development, while there for Mallow and Geno, happens pretty quickly when they get their moments and isn't at all fleshed out, which makes sense considering the game is aimed primarily towards young gamers. Still, you got a wholesome party to support you on your journey, and that makes for a chill time almost throughout.
I say almost because like all RPGs of its time, Super Mario RPG requires you to grind for levels at certain points. At least that has to be the case, as I literally couldn't get past a certain fight against the Axem Rangers very far into the game. For a game like this where progression is otherwise very easy, this was a shame. Because the thing with Super Mario RPG is that it is not just a simple RPG in terms of knowing where to go, the low number of items and skills to keep track of or the battle difficulty for 90% of fights. It's also lacking in combat depth, so it would have just been tedious for me to go back and grind for an hour or two to get past the Axem Rangers, only to probably be in a similar position with even later bosses. Additionally, while the game has a parry-timing feature, in that you need to press the A button right when you are attacked to reduce or null damage, a lot of attacks by tougher bosses are unblockable, and I feel like focusing more on the timing would have resulted in a better flow. That said, whenever the parry-timing was usable, I had fun with it and as someone who loved that in the South Park RPGs, I was happy to see the feature appear here.
The soundtrack includes great tunes and remixes and the map design overall is solid. My favorite part about the game has to be the constant mini games and challenges the game throws at you to keep things varied. They added a lot to the humor often times too.
Overall, I'm definitely keen on playing the remake of this some day and I enjoyed my time with it. It's just a shame that I didn't see the necessity to grind coming. As someone who falls victim to this many times when playing (old-school) RPGs, I didn't expect the original Super Mario RPG to have any grinding included as well, but whether you see this as a bad thing will obviously be a subjective opinion. I'm thinking the remake is more lax in that regard, and considering that it seems very faithful to the original, I don't think there is much reason to track down the original anymore. Unless you'd like to emulate over paying for the full remake, in which case the original certainly holds up well.