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Gamefaqs Link
Last Topic's Ratings:
Bases Loaded 96 - BB - 0% (2)
Card Games - AA - 50% (2)
Epidemic - BGG - 67% (3)
Ganbare Goemon: Kurunara Koi! - AA - 50% (2)
Road Rash - AAAAAAA - 50% (7)
Xevious 3D / G+ - AGGGG - 90% (5) (1 SR)
There's something kind of hilarious about Xevious getting such a high score, and even an SR, it's like it predicted the existence of GAB all of those years ago.
Games for this topic:
American Pool
Mega Man 8
Ninku
Persona
Racing Lagoon
Robo Pit
A pretty strong list of games this time I think, though I hope the imports are adequately playable as neither of them seem to have translations available.
American Pool - B
ReplyDeleteMegaman 8 - G
Ninku - A
Persona - G
Racing Lagoon - G
Robo Pit - A
American Pool is one of those games that's hard to rate because it's technically functional but so unremarkable that I can't see why you'd ever play it. It is a pool game, albeit one that doesn't stand out in any way. The graphics are nothing special at all, the gameplay is as basic as it gets, and there are very few modes. I guess by now, I'd expect games to try to offer a bit more than this. There's nothing that this game does that Side Pocket didn't do better last generation.
Megaman 8 has always kind of been seen as the black sheep of the Megaman Classic series, but despite the changes it still feels very much like classic Mega Man. The control is still great, the gameplay loop is still the same as it always is, and something I don't think gets quite enough praise in this game is that the soundtrack is also very good. I know for a while people sort of felt that Megaman was played out or that it had strayed too far from its roots, but if this is as bad as it gets, it's clearly one hell of a series. Still easily better than most 2D Platformers you'll find anywhere.
Ninku is extremely similar to that first Yu Yu Hakusho game on SNES where you kind of choose options from a menu and then cinematic sequences play out to show who gets damaged. Compared to Yu Yu Hakusho, this game is far simpler to understand, you do every move with a combination of a direction plus a button, right does attacks, left defends, down is a kind of charge move, and up is for specials. There's a kind of a momentum bar which fills up or depletes as you land or miss attacks, which gives a bit of strategy to the game, it's generally best to use your best attacks when you have a lot of momentum, though the enemy can turn the tide a fair bit by reversing them if they see it coming. There's also a lot of anime scenes inbetween the battles in story mode (I assume they recap the plot of the anime but I've never seen it). It's a pretty decent looking game overall and it's fun for a while, though I don't think it's one that you'd tend to come back to very much.
I feel like it's kind of obvious that Persona is a classic of sorts, obviously it was the first game in a much beloved series, and many people consider it to be the first good Shin Megami Tensei game, but the series really reached significant popularity with 3, so there's probably a fair question of how the original holds up. For the most part, the answer is not that badly. Many parts of the game still feel like the old SMT games, we've still got the first person dungeons and random encounters, though the Persona system mostly resembles what it will become (except for the fact that in this game every character can change their Persona, which I like and wish had stayed in). The biggest issue modern audiences would likely have with this game is that parts of it can feel a bit slow. Dungeons are fairly large, encounters are common, walking from place to place in town takes ages, and walking around through rooms to talk to people can feel a bit slow considering you can't run. If you'd prefer a faster experience, there is the PSP version, which is much the same but streamlines almost everything, making navigating the game a snap, and also includes the much welcomed addition to speed up battles, as animations can be fairly long in the original. The soundtrack in the PSP version is also completely different, and IMO, is much better. Overall, I'd probably recommend playing this on PSP if you can, but it's clear enough that this was still pretty good for its time.
DeleteRacing Lagoon is basically Need For Speed Underground, but made in Japan and one generation earlier. Like that game, it's street racing with some free roam and a story, as well as a lot of car customization for its time. The basic gist of the game is that you can roam around town, looking for people to race, and stealing some of their parts if you win, with the eventual goal of becoming fast enough to beat the storyline races and make it to the end of the game. It also has a pretty great sense of style to it, much like Underground. The actual racing gameplay itself is decent, though probably not up to NFS's caliber it still gets the job done. The only unfortunate thing is that this game has no translation and involves quite a lot of dialogue, so figuring out which parts to take from rivals and use and where to go to advance the storyline can take quite a lot of trial and error if you can't read any Japanese. I feel like this game should be a prime target for a fan translation in the coming years.
In a lot of ways, Robo Pit is kind of similar to Gangway Monsters, though I feel that Gangway Monsters is better in almost every regard. The basic gist of the game is that you'll create a robot, outfit it with some weapons, and then try to beat enemy robots, making your own weapons stronger and acquiring new weapons in the process. Actual combat with your weapons, however, is largely inconsequential, the main purpose of fighting is to build up your energy guage, which allows you to unleash a powerful attack with L2 or R2 (hence the similarity to Gangway Monsters). The big difference here though is that there's no way to prevent the enemy from charging up their attack, in fact you build more meter from being hit than you do from hitting, the game instead revolves around how successfully you can land these attacks, which makes it feel a bit repetitive as they are based on your body type, not your equipped weapons. Battles also tend to go on a little long as robots have quite a lot of health (you'll need to fill and land your power attack around 6 times to win in most cases), which also adds to the feeling of repetition. It's playable, but I feel it could have been a lot better with some more tuning.