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Last Topic's Ratings:
Break Point Tennis - BB - 0% (2)
Deron Dero Dero - BGA - 50% {3} (1 SR)
Mizubaku Daibouken - GGAA - 75% (4)
Rise 2: Resurrection - BBB - 0% (3)
Sega Touring Car Championship - GGABB - 50% {5}
Space Invaders - ABB - 17% (3)
Probably one of the lowest-rated topics we've had. Even Mizubaku Daibouken only barely made the high range.
Games for this topic:
Darklight Conflict
Farland Story: Habou no Mai
Tempest 2000
Touryuu Densetsu Elan Doree
Tunnel B1
Wonder 3
This is probably kind of an obscure set, but I think it looks interesting. I've wanted to try out Wonder 3 for a while.
Darklight Conflict - A
ReplyDeleteFarland Story: Habou no Mai - G
Tempest 2000 - G
Touryuu Densetsu Elan Doree - G
Tunnel B1 - B
Wonder 3 - G
Darklight Conflict does some things well but also has some issues. At its core, the game is a space dogfighter where you'll take on a variety of different missions. It has most of the standard features you'd expect, you can raise and lower your speed, you have a variety of subweapons to use, like homing missiles and bombs, and there are plenty of enemy craft to shoot down. One of the main differences between this game and most other games of its type (which took me a while to figure out) is the way it handles health. You do not have a "standard" health bar in this game, instead you have a picture of the ship in the top left corner. If you take a hit, a red circle will appear in the middle, and if it fills the whole ship, you die. However, the circle rapidly shrinks while not being hit, so basically, as long as you don't take several shots in a row, being hit doesn't matter, but it only takes like 3 good shots to take you out. To mitigate this, you can activate your shields, which severely reduce damage to the point that you almost cannot die, but this drains energy, which you also need to refill your weapons, so in a sense energy functions more like your health. Something that's annoying is that the shield button has to be held down, whereas it would make far more sense for it to be a toggle, so I basically had to "claw" to play the game (luckily the shoulder buttons on the right side aren't needed). Some of the subweapons also feel lousy to use, particularly the bombs, and the training missions involving these are hell. There are also just too many training missions in general, but even once you finish the training the game doesn't really pick up that much, many of the things you end up doing afterwards almost feel like training. The game definitely has its moments where it feels good and the HUD is quite solid (I like that there's an arrow that always points where you have to go) but it never really feels exceptional.
Farland Story: Habou no Mai is a relatively simple SRPG that plays like a more simplified Fire Emblem. This particular entry is a remake of a SNES game (Farland Story 2), which is fairly obvious from its visuals, with the only enhancements being the addition of some voice clips in battle and very minor graphical upgrades. The core game is not too bad, it plays a fair bit like Fire Emblem, but much more simplistic, with most of Fire Emblem's more complex systems like the weapon triangle and item durability being axed. The main thing to be aware of here is the game's weapon system, as weapons determine many things, like attack range and access to special moves. The dancer character who you start the game with, for example, starts with two weapons, a ring and a life ring. The former is used to attack, and the second is used to heal, so it's important to equip the correct one. With the ring equipped, you can charge a spell as the first action you take on a turn, then fire it off on the next turn, which is how the game handles special moves. That's about it as far as complexity goes, though. There are villages you can rest at (ending your turn in a village heals you) and shops you can use (pick the bottom option to shop, while on top of one), but for the most part this is a very simple game and it's also not very hard, particularly because unlike most Fire Emblem games, the main character here is a god who will one-shot almost everything he comes across. I have a bit of a hard time deciding between A and G on this one. While it is quite basic, it's also decently fast-paced and the removal of some of the more cumbersome systems from Fire Emblem helps it avoid becoming tedious. I guess it's probably worth a look for those who find Fire Emblem too daunting.
I didn't intend it, but Tempest 2000 makes a very interesting contrast with Activision Classics. Tempest is a game of similar vintage to most of the games in Activision Classics, and even though you only have one game here vs 30 in the Activision package, this game is clearly just way better. Gameplay-wise, very little has changed from the original Tempest, especially if not playing the Tempest 2000 mode, it's just been given a fresh coat of paint and some cool music, but combined with the solid gameplay of the original this is enough to make for a very fun experience that stays fresh vastly longer than the games from the Atari set. Though the menu gives you the choice of what seem like 4 different games, this is really all the same game just with different options. The most different one is the Tempest 2000 mode, which adds powerups to the game. These can be powerful, but you have to stay in the same lane as a defeated enemy to collect them, which you don't have time for, and it creates a lot of extra visual noise that can be distracting, so it doesn't necessarily make the game easier compared to the classic mode, though it definitely does make it more hectic. Whichever mode you prefer, this is a very solid arcade-style title and a great way to modernize a classic, but I think it helps that Tempest was one of the best games from this era so they didn't have to do as much with it.
DeleteTouryuu Densetsu Elan Doree is an interesting fighter with a bunch of unique systems. The gist of the game is that it's a battle between Dragoons, where every fighter rides on the back of a dragon. The fighter performs short range normal attacks (generally punches and slashes), while the dragon performs special attacks, like fireballs and the like. The Dragon has a certain amount of Dragon energy, which is needed to perform special moves, and if it is low, you can't use special moves until it recovers, which mainly occurs when you get hit or stand totally still (obviously the latter is generally impractical). Dragon Energy is also needed to block, similar to Twin Goddesses, and if you run out of Dragon Energy, you can't block at all, which is obviously really bad. Another interesting wrinkle is jump in attacks. You can press a button to make the rider jump off the Dragon for a mid-air attack, and these are totally unblockable and lead to combos, but come with massive risk, because if you get anti-aired, you fall off your dragon, causing you to take a ton of damage and the opponent can also shoot you while you're on the ground. This makes them a bit risky to use at neutral, but they're extremely strong options against fireballs and the like. It's an interesting setup and the game also looks and sounds quite good, though there's also a fair amount of cheese. I was playing the Fire Dragon rider, and they can shoot a slow moving Fireball that hits like 10 times. If you can force the opponent to block this, you can rush in and perform a jump in attack and do a free combo, which they literally can't do anything about. It doesn't do that much damage and does drain a fair amount of your dragon guage (while they get theirs back for being hit), but it definitely feels fairly oppressive. You can jump the fireball or sidestep, but neither of these are super reliable. At least you can't repeat it, because combos don't lead to "knockdowns" or advantage state in this game, and running out of Dragon Power is a serious concern. You can use a super bar to refill your Dragon Energy, but this is not instant and you can be hit out of it, so managing your Dragon Energy is important. Overall, it's definitely an interesting change of pace and probably a decent game for people who aren't masters of traditional fighters.
Tunnel B1 is pretty much the same game as on PS1, but with one very minor upgrade. The lone improvement is that opening the map no longer plays the animation it does on PS1, it's now instant. This is a decent upgrade to playability (even though, ironically, this change was probably made for technical reasons), but it still can't really address the core issues of the game. You still move way too fast most of the time and there's almost no depth to combat, and I feel like the draw distance might actually be a touch worse than on PS1 (though it's bad on both platforms). This is just not a great game in general.
DeleteWonder 3 is pretty solid. It's an arcade game where the gimmick is that it's actually three totally separate games, which you can choose between when you start the game. You would probably suspect that this means that the three games would be of significantly lesser quality than most games of their time, but this is 1990s Capcom that we're talking about, so they're actually all pretty solid. The first game is a platformer that resembles Super Ghouls and Ghosts, though it's not as difficult or stiff as that game. The visuals in this title are really quite good and it also plays pretty well, with the boss battles being particular highlights. I actually think this title is a fair bit better than Super Ghouls and Ghosts and even if you don't care about the other games it might be worth getting for this alone. The second is a horizontal shmup. There's not really too much to say about this one. It's competent, but there's are zillions of horizontal shmups and it's a bit hard for them to stand out. This game's most unique mechanic is that your "bomb" is really more of an alt fire, it fires a powerful blast that hits hard but doesn't have a huge hit area (IE, it's not a screen wipe as most bombs are), but it also recharges after a few seconds. There's a few different weapons to use but overall I feel like this is the most forgettable of the set. The third is a puzzle game that resembles Pengo, where you have to push blocks to squish enemies. This game is pretty tough, but it's cute and unique and it plays decently well once you get the mechanics down. The cherry on top of the whole package is that all three of the games support two players at the same time, which is cool. Of course, in the home conversion, the fact that these 3 games were originally bundled on one arcade board is kind of lost (it doesn't feel that different from any other multi-game compilation), and there's not a ton of extras either (there are new options menus for the games but that's about it), but the quality of the games on offer is easily high enough to carry the package and this is also a game that hasn't been released in a lot of places so you probably haven't played this one before.