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Last Topic's Ratings:
Koudelka - GGGAG - 90% (5)
Perfect Performer: The Yellow Monkey - GG - 100% (2)
Powerslave - GGGGGGGG - 100% (8)
Project GaiaRay - AB - 25% (2)
Ronaldo V-Football - G - 100% (1)
Stock Car Racer - BB - 0% (2)
Ronaldo V-Football is a rare game that was released outside Japan but got only 1 rating. Apart from that though PS1 really crushed it this week.
Games for this topic:
Chronicles of the Sword
Goiken Muyou 2
Harukaze Sentai V-Force
Murakoshi Seikai no Bakuchou Nippon Rettou 2
Toy Story Racer
Tsun Tsun Kumi 2
In case you're curious, Murakoshi Seikai is the same game we previously referred to as Murakoshi Masami. I actually have no idea why GF calls it Murakoshi Masami, it's obvious from the furigana (as well as Murakoshi saying his own name ingame) that Seikai is correct. So if you can't find it in the GF database, that's why. Either way, I want to see if it's as good as the first game.
Chronicles of the Sword - B
ReplyDeleteGoiken Muyou 2 - G
Harukaze Sentai V-Force - G
Murakoshi Seikai no Bakuchou Nippon Rettou 2 - B
Toy Story Racer - G
Tsun Tsun Kumi 2 - A
I would say Chronicles of the Sword is a classic bad graphic adventure game, but it's actually much worse than most other games in the genre because not only is it slow and has a terrible interface, it also looks terrible and isn't at all funny. One thing that's especially annoying is sometimes to make something happen you have to interact with things twice, even though the interaction will change if you leave the room. And sometimes you try to use an item and it simply won't work the first time. It's a mess that gives you basically no incentive to put up with it.
The original Goiken Muyou was pretty solid, so it's not too surprising that the sequel is also a solid game. When we talked about the first game, two of my biggest complaints were that a lot of strings didn't combo properly and juggles didn't work all that well, both of which are fixed, and special moves also work a lot more reliably, so the game feels quite good to play now. Also, you can now block with back rather than the guard button (though this is an option you have to select), so that's a plus. Probably the most unusual thing about this game is that movement is kind of limited, you actually can't even walk backwards without backdashing, but I guess it's meant to create a kind of "in your face" style. The game also looks and sounds pretty good and I love how if you KO someone with a special it shows the replay like 10 times, it's hilariously excessive. A pretty solid 3D fighter overall.
Harukaze Sentai V-Force is seemingly identical to the Saturn version, no porting issues are apparent on either platform. As before, this is a fairly basic SRPG with a ludicrous amount of original FMV. In many ways it feels like watching an anime where you control the battles, which is probably the vibe they were going for. About the only thing you can say about the PS1 version is that the competition for SPRGs is stronger here, and mechanically this is still a very basic game, but the presentation definitely still stands out.
I've been very worried about trying Murakoshi Seikai 2 because the original was so good, and it turns out I was completely right to be worried because the sequel is trash. The problem is simple but all-encompassing, which is that they've completely ruined the fish fighting. The tension bar simply increases far too fast, meaning you can only gingerly touch the reel button for like half a second and then have to wait 5 seconds or so for the tension to go back down, during which time the fish will run far further than you can reel so fights take 4-5 minutes for a single fish. I don't know if the intention was to incorporate more rod action, but the fish thrash so constantly that you'd never be able to react in time and rod actions seem to have almost no effect on anything anyway. Beyond this, the game's interface is greatly simplified and Murakoshi's advice, which was key to the first game, is now totally unhelpful. Going back to the first game is night and day, it just feels drastically better to play. Digging a little deeper into it, it looks like they replaced the developer for the sequel, so they probably just didn't really know what they were doing. On the plus side, it looks like the developer of the first game also made the sea fishing spinoff, so that game might be good when we come to it.
On the other hand, Toy Story Racer is a very solid improvement over the enormously disappointing Muppets Racemania. Compared to Muppets, this game is somewhat less ambitious, with fewer characters and no cutscenes from the movie or anything, but it's also a vastly more competent game in virtually every way. The driving engine, while still kinda simple (there's no powerslides), is now totally serviceable, and the various event types like race, battle, and collect now all feel fine to play. A mechanic in the game that I think is pretty cool is that items come inside differently coloured boxes, each of which has two potential items it can give. This both kind of lets you prioritize the kind of item you want without allowing you to always get the best item, which is a problem in games like Diddy Kong Racing and Lego Racers. Another neat thing about the game is the game's progression system, each character has a set of unique challenges, and winning them unlocks soldiers which are used to unlock challenges for other characters. Some of these missions unlock characters who have their own challenges, and you'll need to finish their missions to unlock later missions for the earlier characters. It's a good system that gives the game a lot of play value and also helps encourage you to use every character even if they feel very similar statwise. It is too bad that there's no Toy Story 2 characters in this game (I definitely want Zurg) but what is here is solid. If only the Muppets game had been made like this.
DeleteTsun Tsun Kumi 2 is another edutainment game of sorts, this time it's a game about learning Japanese vocabulary. At the beginning of each stage you're given an object, like a moon or a fire truck, and you have to go around a stage in pac-man fashion collecting the Japanese characters that spell out that word. Should you grab a character you don't need, you can spit it out as a projectile to harm enemies, but you need to bring the correct one back to the start and repeat this process until you can make the whole word. Obviously, if your Japanese isn't great, this is kind of tough, for example I knew that Moon was Tsuki, but I had no idea that Phone was Denwa without looking it up. This is kind of the game's biggest issue, if you don't know the word already there's basically nothing you can do, I feel like it would be more effective if there was some way for the game to pronounce the word for you, then you had to learn to spell it, since you'd still learn the vocabulary this way. It's still not terrible, but it doesn't feel like nearly as good of a teaching tool as it could be.