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Last Topic's Ratings:
Jikkyou Powerful Pro Yakyuu S - BB - 0% (2)
Madou Monogatari - AA - 50% (2)
PTO 2 - AA - 50% (2)
Street Fighter: The Movie - BBABAG - 33% (6)
Tetris Plus - BAAG - 50% {4}
Yellow Brick Road - GA - 75% (2)
Compared to the chaos of the PS1 topic, this was pretty much business as usual. Perhaps some of this is because we already have a measuring stick for how some games will be received thanks to the PS1 topics, though there are enough instances where the ports differ significantly to prevent this from being too reliable.
Games for this topic:
Dragon Force
Earthworm Jim 2
Hi-Octane
Savaki
Sky Target
Ten Pin Alley
Dragon Force looks like an interesting game, I remember looking at the PS2 Sega Ages version of it but it's untranslated and seems too complex to play in Japanese. We also have Ten Pin Alley again, which I feel like I've played dozens of times by this point.
Dragon Force - A
ReplyDeleteEarthworm Jim 2 - G
Hi-Octane - B
Savaki - B
Sky Target - B
Ten Pin Alley - B
Dragon Force is an interesting title. For starters, it's very similar to Romance of the Three Kingdoms. The game has much more of an anime aesthetic, but most of the concepts are the same and ROTK veterans will feel at home instantly. Like ROTK, most of the game revolves around castles and generals. The map is presented as a series of castles linked by lines, and it is initially divided between many factions. You can attack castles by dispatching generals to conquer them, bolstering your own territory, with the eventual goal of uniting the whole map and then defeating the final evil in the endgame. Like in ROTK, an interesting mechanic is that you can choose which faction to start with, and they play quite differently, having significantly different starting generals and territories. Compared to ROTK, almost everything is much more simple. Navigating the menus in ROTK has always kind of been a nightmare, and it's greatly simplified here. Some of the management concepts remain, but you do these in a weekly strategy session, leaving the rest of the game to focus on troop movement and battles. This undeniably greatly increases the game's accessibility, ROTK is an extremely difficult game that few will have the patience to truly learn (not helped by the absense of any kind of tutorial or even a serviceable translation in most cases), while Dragon Force is easy to pick up and play. However, I actually find Dragon Force to be slightly too simplified for my tastes. For example, the entire economic side of ROTK has been axed. You can search and fortify castles, but this doesn't cost anything (and in fact, there's no concept of money or resources at all), it just requires a general with sufficient Int to spend a turn doing it. The issue here is that since you don't spend anything for this, the results of these actions are completely random and often fail. You can savescum, but it's annoying. The lack of any kind of economic system also makes taking new castles feel kind of underwhelming, as they don't really contribute anything to your kingdom in most cases, other than forcing you to find some general to occupy them. That being said, the core concept of gradually pushing your borders by attacking castles is still kind of fun and it's far faster-paced and accessible compared to ROTK. The biggest thing about the game I don't care for is the battle system. This is one area where Dragon Force completely differs from ROTK. Dragon Force uses an extremely simple battle system where your troops move and attack the enemy mostly on their own, with your only input being to give formation orders and occasionally use special moves. This tends to result in battles being fairly dull affairs where you mostly just wait for one side to run out of troops, which simply doesn't feel exciting, and you spend a LOT of time in this game battling. If this game had Ogre Battle 64 or even ROTK's battle system, I think it would be an easy G, but as it stands there's really just not enough meat here to keep me interested. It shows a lot of promise, and I'm interested to know what they changed in its sequel, but I feel it's not quite there yet. If anything, though, it kind of exposes just how lazy Koei is with the ROTK series, as this game clearly shows that there's a ton of potential there if they'd actually invest even a little bit of effort into the interface and presentation.
Earthworm Jim 2 is pretty much the same as the PS1 version. Like that version, this is a pretty solid upgrade to the 16-bit version, having better resolution and backgrounds, as well as a nicely-upgraded soundtrack. Compared to PS1, Saturn has very slightly better visual effects in some areas (the shadowed levels particularly) but they are otherwise identical. As Saturn doesn't have too many 2D platformers, this is probably one of your better options here.
DeleteHi-Octane, unfortunately, is also pretty much the same as the PS1 version. As noted previously, this game has a completely unsuitable graphics engine for a racing game, where it draws the track square by square as you race, resulting in atrociously low draw distance that makes reading the course almost impossible. Even beyond its awful graphics, it also controls terribly and has terrible music and sound as well. It's almost impossible to find enough bad things to say about this game, maybe the generation's worst racer.
Savaki is a super weird game, but I don't think it's very good. It's a 3D fighting game, but there are no specials and you can't jump, instead you just string together high and low punches and kicks, which have to be blocked high and low respectively. A weird mechanic in this game is that almost all attacks except the end of long strings are plus, so as long as you don't do those particular strings, you can maintain permanent frame advantage. Almost every string can lead to a knockdown, and you also can't attack when getting up, so the opponent gets to force you into another high-low mixup immediately. As such, the second you get hit by or are forced to block a move, you are put into an immense disadvantage state where you almost can't do anything. Your one defense is Savaki, which is a parry-like action. If you press Savaki at the right time and at the right direction, you will deflect the opponent's attack, giving you a moment to counterattack and thus start your own nigh-unstoppable offensive pressure. The biggest issue with this game is that I simply don't think it has any real nuance. When you're attacking, you just spam random strings, and when you're defending, you just mash random savakis. Pretty much every character plays mostly the same, they have different strings but it barely matters, they still all follow the exact same gameplan. I guess you could note that the game runs and controls all right, which probably puts it above other early 3D fighters like Tekken 1, but it's so repetitive that I can't see anyone wanting to play it for very long.
Sky Target reminds me a lot of Jet Ace on PS1, which obviously isn't a great comparison as that is one of the worst PS1 games. Like Jet Ace, it's an extremely simple After Burner type game, though Sky Target isn't quite as cheaply made. For starters, stages have ground and actually differ from one another, and there are actual bosses, but it still feels very much like a budget game. There's very little nuance to the gameplay, your missiles are unlimited, so you basically just lock on and smash the missile button constantly, and enemy shots are almost impossible to read, so you just move around a lot and hope you don't get hit. The boss battles are probably the highlight of the game, though even then they're very basic, enemies have a few target areas and you just mash missiles while trying not to get hit. There's not even an animation for the plane being shot down when you die, you just continue right where you were. Overall, it's slightly borderline but I think it's probably B. There's just too many better flight games this generation for this to be worth your time.
DeleteTen Pin Alley is also pretty much the same as on PS1. First, a refresher. To play this game, you need to put your bowler's dominant foot right behind the third pip from the side. IE, if you are right handed, you put your right foot right before the third pip from the left. This allows you to throw straight (most of the time) if you line up the meters in the middle. Even once you know the basics, though, random gutter balls are still common and I don't think it ever feels very fun to play. On PS1, I compared this game against the King of Bowling series and came to the conclusion that it is a lot worse, but on Saturn, it faces even stiffer competition from Star Bowling, which not only plays significantly better, but also includes the dating sim mechanic, which gives it vastly more entertainment and replay value. Even if you can't read Japanese and don't want to use Google Translate, I'd still stick to that game over this one for the improved bowling mechanics.