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Last Topic's Ratings:
Contender 2 - BB - 0% (2)
Detective Barbie - AG - 75% (2)
Future Cop: LAPD - GGGGGGGG - 100% (8) (2 SR)
Kyoutei Wars Mark 6 - BB - 0% (2)
V-Ball: Beach Volley Heroes - GG - 100% (2)
Virus: The Battle Field - GG - 100% (2)
Wow, this was a super-highly rated topic. I don't know the last time we had 3 100 games in a topic. Even Detective Barbie made the high range.
Games for this topic:
ISS Pro Evolution
Kamen Rider V3
Legend of Mana
Phix: The Adventure
Time Bokan Series: Bokan to Ippatsu! Doronbo
XS Moto
Legend of Mana is something I've wanted to play for a long time, but I never had anyone to play it in co-op with. I guess I'm finally going to be checking it out solo. Also, we have another game in the Kamen Rider series, which I hope is as good as the previous one.
ISS Pro Evolution - G
ReplyDeleteKamen Rider V3 - G (SR)
Legend of Mana - A
Phix: The Adventure - B
Time Bokan Series: Bokan to Ippatsu! Doronbo - G
XS Moto - A
The ISS games are some of the best soccer games of the generation and ISS Pro Evolution is no exception. Something I noticed immediately about ISS Pro Evolution is how smooth and fluid it is. The game has excellent physics when it comes to movement and ball control, for example player stumble over each other realistically if they collide while running in a way that few other games can match. Control is also really good, in the same nuanced but accessible way we've come to expect from the series. For example, this game makes hitting headers relatively easy due to the way it shows a little X where the ball is going to land. Nothing about this is really revolutionary, and it's easy to take this kind of excellent technical execution for granted, but given the huge amount of mediocre soccer games we've played this gen it bares mentioning when a game nails all the fundamentals. Presentation is also decent, though you could probably argue the commentary has a little less energy compared to some of its competitors, but it's still fine in any case. Definitely another very competent effort from Konami, who are rapidly proving themselves to be the masters of the genre.
Kamen Rider V3 rocks. It's a lot like the original Kamen Rider, but even bigger and better in both ways. Like the original, this is an extreme love letter to the TV series, filled with incredibly well-animated cutscenes, lots of characters, and a boatload of bonuses and extras. The first thing I have to talk about is the story mode, which is incredible. It was already good in the previous game, but it's been improved even further here. It's now less formulaic in terms of structure, and the cutscenes are even better. These are actually some of the best cutscenes I've ever seen in any game, I love how they perfectly replicate the cheesy overacting of the actual show. It's hard to explain without simply watching it yourself, but the way the characters move is a dead ringer for the kind of exaggerated movements that are the cornerstone of tokusatsu productions, even though with this being a video game it would have been easy to use more "traditional" animation. These scenes are just a delight to watch, and there's also an absolute ton of them as the game's story mode is surprisingly long. In terms of the core gameplay, it's actually seen a fair number of changes from the original game. For starters, the game is now fully 3D. You can no longer jump, but you have free sidestepping, which helps when fighting multiple opponents at once in story mode. Move lists have also been simplified, there are no longer motions, all moves are performed with a direction plus a button (special moves have their own button, like in Flying Dragon), which also means that blocking is now mapped to a button, but given how simple the gameplay is this is fine. There's also been a big change to the way transforming is done. In the first game, transforming is automatic, you fight certain battles untransformed and you transform during cutscenes, but it's now part of gameplay! Almost every character now has an untransformed state, during which they are weaker and slower and have no special moves. During this time, you can press the special button to transform, which you want to do because besides making you a better character and giving you all your moves it also restores a little health, but the transformation is slow and vulnerable and you can be hit out of it, so you generally need to score a knockdown first to get time to pull it off. There's also been changes to throws, they now use a sort of rock-paper-scissors system which sort of resembles a wrestling game, and you now have a parry move with back + throw. Overall, it's a pretty solid setup. It probably doesn't have a ton of depth, but character movesets are decently extensive and it fits the game well. There's a ton of other cool stuff about this game that I don't have enough time to talk about, like how you can win fights without transforming in story mode for a different cutscene, how the arcade mode has a dedicated final boss with a scene for every character, and how everything you do unlocks medals that you can use to unlock trading cards and other cool stuff, but I'm running out of space. Suffice it to say that this is easily one of the coolest franchises that we've come across through Playstation GAB and it's great that they kept the same developer for this franchise rather than farming it out to someone cheap.
DeleteLegend of Mana is a mixed bag. While it is an interesting title in some ways, this is also clearly where the Mana series began to go downhill, and most of this owes to issues with the game's design. The producer of the Mana series is notorious for saying that he didn't want to make the same game twice, which is bad because Secret of Mana and Seiken Densetsu 3 were both pretty good. As such, Legend of Mana makes an absolute boatload of changes to the formula, and in many ways the game feels like it has too much crammed into it, while simultaneously lacking in key areas. One of the biggest issues is that this is an extremely complex game in all the wrong ways. If you know anything about the game, you probably know about the map system. As you play the game, you unlock artifacts which represent the areas you can travel to in the game. You can place these on a grid, and which areas you place next to each other results in numerous and complex interactions, from which enemies are available to what items you can buy and even which missions you can take. However, none of this is explained to you in any coherent way and you'll almost certainly have to use a guide unless you want to miss out on a ton of stuff. Even with a guide, you have to be very careful about which missions you do in which order and such or you can mess things up, which turns what might have been an interesting system into a fairly tedious one. On the flip side, we have the game's combat system, which is easily the worst part of the game. Here, the problem is that there's no complexity to it at all. Compared to Seiken Densetsu 3, you have gained access to a strong attack, meaning you now have two types of attacks, but items are gone, there's only two characters max, and attacking feels extremely stiff, so if anything I'd say the combat is actually a big downgrade compared to SD3. Attack chains have a ton of recovery to them, and you can't really cancel into artes properly, you have to wait for your animation to completely end first. Artes also involve a huge chargeup time, but this charge time is invincible so why have it at all? It just makes combat feel slower. There's an absolute ton of combat in the game, as unlike previous games you can now not run from encounters, and within the first 5 minutes you'll have seen all the battle system has to offer. Secret of Mana and Seiken Densetsu 3 were very simple games, but they were also very early action RPGs. Legend of Mana now has to compete with the likes of Tales and Star Ocean and it pales horribly to both of them, even something like Dragon Valor plays much better. It's not all bad though. The game is absolutely gorgeous, with beautiful hand drawn artwork that looks fantastic for all of the game's settings, the music is great, and the plot is fairly interesting as well. There's also fairly substantial crafting and monster raising systems which give you a decent amount to do, despite being fairly reliant on the convoluted map system. Overall, it's not unplayable by any means, but it is a significantly flawed game and probably one of Square's weaker efforts of the generation.
DeletePhix sucks. The basic gist behind it is that it's a 3D platformer with a unique polarity mechanic. Phix can swap between north and south polarity, like a magnet, which affects many things. There are various little magnetic spots in the game, and if you have the same polarity, they repel you, and if you have opposite polarity, they attract you. Enemies too are polarized, and you can only hurt enemies of the opposite polarity from you (they can hurt you just fine regardless of your polarity, unfortunately). It's a setup that has the potential to be interesting, but thanks to bad execution it doesn't work out that well. Let's start with the basics. Compared to many other 3D platformers, your jumps are very non-floaty in this game. Phix has barely any hangtime to his jump, which gives you absolutely no leeway to correct mistakes. Did you try to go for a jump and notice at the last second that a magnet is pushing you the other way at the end? You could hold square to become neutral and pass by it if you could react in time, but with how fast you fall you're almost certainly just dead. Making any small mistake in terms of polarity switching near magnets will similarly almost always fling you off a cliff to your doom before you can react. Worse yet are the enemies. Enemies must be hit by the opposite polarity to be killed, which is fine when you can see them coming. However, rather than having the enemies all be spawned on the stage from the start, they instead spawn constantly, and often only a few inches away from you, which gives you no time to react to them. You might be able to just mash the attack button in time, but of course if they're the wrong element you'll just power them up instead, and you can take very few hits, so the correct option is clearly to simply run from everything. In fact, generally the best way to play the game is to refuse to interact with its mechanics as much as possible. Use neutral polarity to avoid magnets as often as possible, and run past all the enemies you can. There are gems you can pick up, but they are worthless, as it takes far too many to get an extra life and the game has no checkpoints and infinite continues anyway, so lives are worthless. The camera is really lousy too, generally being much too zoomed in for you to anticipate obstacles properly ahead of time. Then there's the bosses, which take like a million hits, have attacks that aren't properly telegraphed, and just generally feel extremely janky. I tried to give this one a chance, but it's just too unpolished to be fun.
DeleteBokan to Ippatsu! Doronbo makes an interesting contrast with Kamen Rider V3 because this is also a pretty fanservice-heavy game. The gist of this game is that you play as fan-favourite villain Doronjo in a shmup style game and have to go up against all of the various Yattermans from throughout the Time Bokan series. It's an interesting concept, I particularly find it enjoyable to see this kind of game from the perspective of the villains, but it kind of makes sense with how much bullcrap the Yatterman characters have access to, Doronjo and her gang definitely feel like the underdogs here. In terms of the gameplay, it's fairly basic shmup stuff. About the only thing that sets the game apart from every other shmup is that you have a choice of 6 mecha to use, which you can choose before each stage, but you cannot use the same one for two stages in a row because it has to be repaired. Each mecha basically just has a different weapon, as well as different speed and shield stats (you're allowed to take a couple hits). All of them have access to infinite bombs, because of course the Doronbo gang would never run out of bombs, you just have to load them first, which takes a moment, but they make a satisfyingly huge explosion. I also love how if your mecha is destroyed, you get a last chance hitpoint of the Doronbo gang on their stupid tandem bicycle that they use for their "Team Rocket's blasting off again!" moments from the original show, though of course it's very weak. One of the game's only major downsides is the music, which loops too often, and not gracefully either, but at least the sounds and voice acting are great. Overall, it might not be the most technically sophisticated shmup ever, but it's wacky and fun, and is pretty solid for an early title on the system.
DeleteXS Moto is just okay. It starts off quite poorly, by locking your ability to select your steering assist options behind a license test mode. I think this is kind of inherently absurd, control settings should never be an unlockable feature, but luckily the license test is short and competent so it's not that big of a deal. It's very reminiscent of Gran Turismo, though, and this game really doesn't want to invite that comparison because GT is way better. In terms of control, the game is all right. One thing I've noted about many previous bike racing games is that they feel like they might as well just be car racing games with a different vehicle model, but that is thankfully not the case here. Controlling the lean of your bike during turns works well and it feels appreciably different from controlling a car and this is probably the best thing about the game. Unfortunately, the game doesn't really have a ton going for it besides this. I mentioned earlier that the comparison to Gran Turismo is unfavourable, and a lot of this is due to how lackluster the game's main single player mode is. There's a number of tournaments you can compete in, but there's absolutely no progression, there's only a single bike and you can't even tune its settings. The game's presentation is also extremely dry, visuals are decent and there's some lighting effects, but there's no in-race music, no announcer, and generally no flair of any kind. Overall, it's a functional game, and not the worst bike racer we've played, but it's clearly quite far away from the top games in the genre.