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Last Topic's Ratings:
Keio Flying Squadron 2 - GGAGGG - 92% (6) (1 SR)
Master of Monsters: Neo Generations - ABB - 17% (3)
Saturn Bomberman Fight - BGA - 50% {3}
Tilk - AAG - 67% (3)
Virtual Kyoutei 2 - AB - 25% (2)
Zen-Nippon Bishoujou Grand Prix: Find Love - A - 50% (1)
I was slightly surprised more people hadn't played Saturn Bomberman Fight, given the obvious popularity of Saturn Bomberman.
Games for this topic:
Angel Paradise Vol 1
Initial D: Koudou Saisoku Densetsu
Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam (Kouhen)
Langrisser 4
Terra Phantastica
Tetris-S
We finally get to Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam Kouhen, after I talked about it a bunch of times. We are also starting to run out of games for Saturn, so start thinking about how you want to use your remaining SRs.
Angel Paradise Vol 1 - A
ReplyDeleteInitial D: Koudou Saisoku Densetsu - G
Langrisser 4 - A
Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam (Kouhen) - G
Terra Phantastica - A
Tetris-S - B
Angel Paradise Volume 1 is, in many ways, essentially a significantly lesser version of Girls in Motion Puzzle. The technology that powers the games and their general presentation is very similar, so much so I was surprised to find they didn't have the same developer, but many things are just a bit weaker in this game. For starters, it also has video puzzles, like in Girls in Motion Puzzle. These remain fun, though they're easier here since the pieces have clearly distinct shapes. Unfortunately, these are only half the game. The other half are movie slide puzzles, which are honestly kind of horrid. See, with jigsaw puzzles, the movie element adds an interesting twist to figuring out where pieces should go. However, slide puzzles are already hard and tedious and not being able to tell the exact location of each piece just makes it so much worse. Thankfully, you can get powerups that will literally just number the pieces for you, which is vital to winning these, and in the early levels you only have to solve a portion of the puzzle and not the full thing, but slide puzzles are pretty much always tedious and not fun. The other thing is that beyond this, there simply isn't much else to the game, unlike with Girls in Motion Puzzle you don't get the picture puzzles or the VS mode, which significantly extend that game's lifetime. Also, purely in terms of concept, I also feel that for a game like this it's better to have multiple girls, since everyone will have their own favourite, so I feel like the concept of focusing on only one girl per installment is inherently weaker. In any case though, it's playable but not nearly as good as Girls in Motion Puzzle.
Unlike the atrocious PS1 Initial D, Initial D on Saturn is actually pretty decent. Like the PS1 game, this is another game that attempts to retell the story of the anime, and you could argue that the presentation of the story is less good here (it lacks the funny 3D cutscenes of the PS1 version at least), but the racing is far more competent so this is a much better package overall. It's not totally perfect, but at least the cars handle reasonably well and the game runs well, about the only problem is that drifting kinda sucks, it's far too sensitive and you will frequently oversteer (especially if you trigger it by accident), but this is not gamebreaking as cars have good grip and brakes are good so you can just race like a sane person without doing too many drifts and it works just fine. You might argue that this goes against the spirit of the franchise, and even the game seems to want to encourage you to drift as they give you gallery points for doing it, but at least it gives you a fallback for when the drifting proves unreliable. Beyond this, you might also complain that there's not a ton of content, it's not a very long game and there's only 3 tracks, but at least what's here is solid. This probably wouldn't be G on PS1, but the competition for racing games on Saturn is low enough that this is probably just barely good enough for the high range.
After the slightly flawed but still very ambitious and interesting Langrisser 3, Langrisser 4 unfortunately throws all of that out the window to be basically a retread of Langrisser 2. Pretty much everything has been reverted back to the previous game, except for the addition of a new speed system that makes the game significantly worse. Rather than having each faction move all of their units in one go, each unit now has its own speed stat that determines when they act. This both reduces the amount of strategy in the game since you can no longer choose which of your units should attack first (softening up a target with your troops has long been a cornerstone of this franchise, but now the troops usually attack after the commander), and it also makes the game play slower because control constantly switches sides. Don't get me wrong, it's still definitely playable, after all Der Langrisser is still a good game, even if this game does feel derivative of it (even the plot is initially very similar) and the presentation is still pretty good (it looks similar to the Der Langrisser Remake), but I do think this is the weakest title in the series thus far. It's also worth noting that this game has a port to PS1 and the PS1 version is quite different, because the game is remade with Langrisser 5's engine. This includes quite a number of QOL improvements, but notably the speed system is improved so now at least commanders and their troops act simultaneously, so you can now move your troops before your commander again, which helps a lot. I'd definitely recommend sticking to the PS1 version if you're going to play it, but I really wish they had just tried to refine the Langrisser 3 formula instead.
DeleteI kind of gave away a bit of Kouhen's rating when we covered Mobile Suit Zeta Gundam Zenpen, but the second game is generally a fair bit better. By far the biggest improvement is that the cycling weapon system from the first game is eliminated, with every weapon now simply being mapped to a different button. This fixes almost all of the game's issues and using both the beam and saber in combat feels great. It's a good thing too, because this is a pretty intense game, in particular just like in the first game the boss battles remain a highlight. I like how a lot of them have some unique mechanics, for example the first boss has a ship that attacks you from the background that you can use your background targeting attack to damage and limit the support fire, while the second battle is a 2 on 1 where the enemy units can grab you so the others can get free hits in. These battles feel intense and brutal, which is perfect given the nature of the series, you'll definitely want to blow Jerid to smithereens after all the trouble he gives you throughout the game. There's not too much else to say other than that this game does quite a good job of recapping and capturing the feeling of the show.
While I try to avoid topics with two games from the same genre, at least Terra Phantastica is very different from Langrisser. For starters, as a game Terra Phantastica is quite complex. This is not a simple "move -> attack" SRPG, this game uses an AP-based battle system and has a lot of additional mechanics on top of it. For starters, you can use AP to take pretty much any command, from moving, attacking, using spells, resting, interacting with stuff on the map, and numerous other options. Pretty much anything you do slightly decreases your army's morale, making you less effective in combat, which only recovers if you rest, similar to Advanced World War, though thankfully it is not so broken here. Units also have formations, which drastically alters their stats. There's a movement formation, which lets you move far but is awful in combat, an attack formation, which has high combat stats in general, and a defense formation, which doesn't attack well but has very high defense. When combat occurs, you get 3 rounds each to beat each other up. You can cast spells or change formations here, though it's preferable to set your formation before entering battle so you don't lose a turn doing it (especially if the opponent attacks first). There's still quite a bit more to it than this, for example there's vision ranges and commanders also have a certain radius around them and if your troops go outside this they get less AP each turn, but suffice it to say the battle system is fairly complex. Clearly not nearly as much work went into the game's presentation, which is quite dry. It's pretty much just mountains and mountains of plain text boxes with static character portraits. Voice acting is extremely limited and the game's plot generally strikes me as pretty dull, it's a fairly standard "you're the chosen one" kind of story and the characters seem to have very little personality, but despite this there's gobs and gobs of dialogue and after a while I just started skipping it all. It's certainly playable and it's nice that it does some interesting things with the battle system, but it still doesn't really grab me even to the same degree that Langrisser 4 does and I don't even think that game is that great.
DeleteTetris-S sucks, being easily one of the worst versions of Tetris ever released. For starters, it's super light on content, having only 2 real modes, the standard endless mode and a versus mode. As you obviously already know how Endless works, let's talk about VS. This is basically the same as Endless, except that 2 people play at once. When you make a clear of more than a single line, it causes the opponent's next few pieces to drop super fast so you can't really control them, like on the very high levels of NES Tetris. Obviously, this is dumb, especially because the AI isn't really affected by it. Nevertheless, if you're fairly competent you can usually dig yourself back out, which means that battles in this mode take FOREVER, especially as they are best of 5! That's basically all there is to the game, there's no hold feature, nor any additional modes or rulesets. This game is totally invalidated by many earlier Tetris games like Super Tetris 3, and Tetris Plus is also drastically better. Probably one of the worst puzzle games of the era.