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Last Topic's Ratings:
Alien Trilogy - GAGAG - 80% (5) (1 SR)
Bouken Katsugeki Monomono - BB - 0% (2)
J.League Go Go Goal - BB - 0% (2)
Pappara Paoon - BB - 0% (2)
Rayman - BAGBGGG - 64% (7)
Ultimate Mortal Kombat 3 - AAABAB - 33% (6)
Wow, this one didn't turn out too great. I was particularly surprised by the reception to Rayman, which I thought would be an easy crowd-pleaser. In general, platformers haven't rated too well on Saturn so far.
Games for this topic:
Mr Bones
Panzer Dragoon
Sega Ages: Columns Arcade Collection
Street Racer
Sword and Sorcery
Waku Waku 7
I think this'll be an interesting one. Mr Bones looks like a super odd title, and we also have Panzer Dragoon, which has a somewhat recent remake. Also, I was originally going to have Astra Superstars here, but I found out that Waku Waku 7 is apparently kind of a predecessor to it, so we'll do that one first.
Mr Bones - A
ReplyDeletePanzer Dragoon - A
Sega Ages: Columns Arcade Collection - G
Street Racer - B
Sword and Sorcery - A
Waku Waku 7 - B
Mr Bones is an incredibly weird game. I suppose you could call it a platformer, but it changes up its gameplay constantly from level to level. For the first four levels, for example, you first start by running away from some skeletons in an auto-scroller, then you have to dodge a sequence of attacks sort of in time to the rhythm, then there's a standard platforming stage, and then there's a stage where you play the guitar. As the game goes on, you have more platforming, drumming, pinball, saving helpless little people, and even telling jokes. Interspersed with it all is a ton of cutscenes that tell the story of Mr Bones, an affable skeleton who was probably a musician in his previous life. It definitely has some good points, the guitar stage is cool and I like the personality of Mr Bones, but many of the stages are pretty bad, particularly the platforming ones. When Mr Bones is attacked, he has a chance to lose some of his bones, which alters the way he controls. He doesn't control great even when fully put together, but the control gets worse and worse as you lose more bones, which is super frustrating. You can mash a button to get bones back if they're nearby, but doing this usually causes you to get hit again, and Mr Bones' main form of attack, a lightning tether kind of move, is also unreliable and often gets you hit. There's also a godawful sequence of levels after the guitar stage where bats steal your bones and you have to get them back, which is not so bad except for the fact that finishing each stage requires a very specific configuration of bones and you have to drop bones if you have too many, which is infuritating. Still, it does start to pick up a bit after this, I like the bizarrely trippy glass shards level and the pinball stage is kind of fun, and there's a lot more video clips from this point onwards, so your patience is rewarded somewhat. I can see what this game has somewhat of a cult following, but it has too many problems for me to give it a G in good conscience. I still might recommend giving it a playthrough anyway, though, but I'd probably recommend using save states to maintain your sanity.
Panzer Dragoon is in many ways the consummate Saturn title - it's cool and ambitious, but also flawed on a number of levels. Pretty much everyone probably knows the basics. It's a simple rail shooter, somewhat like Star Fox, with a standard shot and lock on laser. Its standout feature is that the levels allow for a fully 3D view, and enemies can approach from all sides, so the player sometimes has to shift their perspective to the sides or back of the dragon in order to attack. The core idea is solid, but there's one significant omission here, which is that the dragon can only move when facing forward. When facing sideways or backwards, you cannot evade attacks, and while some incoming attacks can be shot down, not all of them can be, often forcing you to just try to blindly dodge enemies at the side or back rather than actually firing at them (the end of Episode 2 is a prime example of this). However, the game looks and sounds fantastic and the gameplay is still pretty fun so it's possible to overlook this. The more pressing issue with the game is just that there's so little content here. Panzer Dragoon has only 6 stages, which run about 5 minutes apiece, for a total length of about 30 minutes. There are no alternate paths, there are no secrets to unlock, heck, there's not even a scoring system to the game, the only form of replay value is a handful of cheat codes that don't change the game all that much. While those 30 minutes are undeniably pretty cool, it's simply not enough content for a console game in this generation. I feel like Sega struggled with this quite a bit, a lot of their first-party Saturn titles are fairly barebones arcade ports (Panzer Dragoon wasn't an arcade title, but it was certainly designed like one). Progression and replay value matter vastly more for home consoles than they do in the arcade, so it helps tremendously to add some sources of easy replay value like unlockables or ranking systems (see something like Cruis'n USA on N64 for an example of this being done well). Adding in a medal system like in Starfox 64, as well as maybe a couple alternate Dragons to use and a couple extra levels would have helped extend the game tremendously. As it stands, it's a cool little tech demo for Saturn but not one that will occupy you for a long time, and it pales tremendously to both later games in its series and Starfox 64.
DeleteI wasn't sure what to expect from Columns Arcade Collection. Honestly, this seems like kind of a dumb idea. Why would you want a compilation of puzzle games from the same series when they typically play almost the same? It would make a lot more sense to just make a new Columns game and put in all the modes you'd want and such. However, my concern turned out to be unfounded, largely because the games in the collection are actually fairly different from each other. Columns and Columns 97 are almost the same, and offer what would typically be considered an "endless" mode. Columns 2 instead offers Flash Columns, where the board starts partially populated and you have to eliminate specific flashing tiles, similar to a "line clear" mode in other games. Stack Columns offers the versus mode, where clearing matches and making combos allows you to raise your opponent's stack, so collectively, the games have all the bases covered. In terms of gameplay, Columns is pretty Zen. It's not a very fast-paced game, but you have to think quite far ahead, as you have to learn to work with the limited degree of piece rotation. It always takes me a few games to get my brain into Columns mode, but once you do it's a good time, in particular I feel like Stack Columns is quite well made. I quite enjoy the mechanic where you can make combos to earn coins which you can stockpile to attack or defend, I think this gives it a nice back and forth that not all puzzle games manage to capture in their VS modes. The presentation of this one is great too.
It's time for Street Racer again, and it's still bad. I realized that when I rated the PS1 version I missed something, the PS1 and Saturn versions of the game have a new mode added to the game, besides the normal mode you can also play the game as a top down racer, similar to something like Super Off-Road. This is an improvement, though it's still worse than pretty much any other game that plays this way. Most of these games have an upgrading system which is totally absent here, and the control also sucks. The Saturn version also doesn't run as smoothly as the PS1 version, not that there's any real reason to play that version either. Why they ported this game to so many systems is beyond me.
DeleteSword and Sorcery is a very basic RPG with some big problems but one significant redeeming feature. For starters, this is maybe the worst-looking RPG of the era. This owes almost entirely to its absolutely godawful 3D engine. This game is so jittery in terms of animation that it actually hurts me to look at it for any length of time, it basically stutters constantly on both the field map and in battle. On an emulator, you can kinda fix this by using speedups constantly, but on a real Saturn this would feel like absolute garbage to play. This would be the easiest of easy Bs, but the game does have one significant redeeming feature, which is its battle system. Sword and Sorcery's battle system is actually pretty unique and well-made. Battles take place on a grid, with your team and the enemy on opposite sides. Various obstacles, like trees and rocks, can be scattered throughout the field. To do a normal attack, you need to have a straight line between yourself and the opponent, otherwise you'll instead attack the obstacle, which can remove it but obviously won't hurt the enemies. You can move along the two rows closest to the edge when attacking, which can allow you to get a clean line to an enemy and avoid an obstacle, but you have to be careful, because if you move your frontline attackers out of the way, this can leave your backline characters exposed to being hit and they're quite squishy. You can get different types of weapons that have different hit zones (for example, the scythe hits the spaces adjacent to your target as well) and magic has certain areas of effect as well. It does a good job of giving the game a bit of strategy flavour without slowing battles down too much, which many other games with strategy-esque battle systems suffer from. If only the game performed better!
Waku Waku 7 is not great. It's a fairly basic Darkstalkers style fighting game, but with a number of problems. For starters, the core of the game is fairly similar to Darkstalkers. Characters have Darkstalkers-esque chain combos, and you can also spend meter to perform EX versions of your specials, as well as each character having one super that is distinct from their special moves. Each character has access to a second super, called a Harahara, but these are really strange. They typically have about 40-60 frame startup, but are unblockable. However, even a knockdown doesn't give you anywhere near enough time to perform it, unless done at full screen, which will usually cause them to miss, making these moves almost completely valueless. A vastly better way to spend your meter is on Power Mode, which is done by pressing any 3 attack buttons. Power mode makes you do more damage for a while, but the more important aspect of it is that the activation is invincible and actually does damage, and you can do it while blocking. This is extremely bad for the game, as it significantly discourages offense when the opponent has a bar, as they can take off a decent amount of your health and also get a knockdown in retaliation for you performing any attack whatsoever, as the activation is so fast it can even punish light attacks. The problems don't end there, though, as the game also has significant technical problems. This is actually a fairly shoddy port by Saturn standards, the game has a lot of load time, having to load before the match, after the character talks, and then again after the first round, and also having a surprising amount of slowdown. If you use a flashy move, say, Arina's charged projectile vs the final boss, the game basically becomes a slideshow. The game's input detection is also definitely not great, it would not only fail to register more complex motions like F, HCF + 2K, it would often sometimes even eat my QCB + 2K, which shouldn't realistically be happening on fighting games from this era. Despite all this, it is still playable, there's just not much reason to bother with it when Saturn has so many better fighting options.
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