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Last Topic's Ratings:
Doraemon 2: SOS! Otogi no Kuni - GG - 100% (2)
Kickboxing - AA - 50% (2)
Love Game's: Wai Wai Tennis Plus - BB - 0% (2)
Motor Mash - BB - 0% (2)
Stahlfeder: Tekkou Hikuudan - GA - 75% (2)
Syphon Filter 2 - GGGGGGGG - 100% (8) (2 SR)
I was a bit worried by the total post count that we were starting to drop to lower vote counts even on popular games like Syphon Filter 2, but actually the vote count was fine, since pretty much everyone who posted rated it.
Games for this topic:
Chessmaster 3D, The
Initial D
Lake Masters
Note, The
Spectral Tower
Super Dropzone: Intergalactic Rescue Mission
When I originally created the PS1 list many years ago, I was more strict with what I would allow in terms of Japanese RPGs. However, since phone translation programs have gotten better, it's become more possible to play them, so I recently went back and added some more to the list, to bring it a bit more in line with what we have for Saturn. Spectral Tower is one of the first of the newly added RPGs to show up, though I checked it ahead of time to make sure it wasn't overly difficult to play.
Chessmaster 3D, The - A
ReplyDeleteInitial D - B
Lake Masters - B
Note, The - A
Spectral Tower - G
Super Dropzone: Intergalactic Rescue Mission - A
The Chessmaster 3D is okay, but it's just nowhere near as good as its sequel. Gameplay-wise, this version is very similar to the original Chessmaster on SNES and earlier systems, save for having very primitive 3D visuals. The 3D visuals are actually not great, not only does the game not look particularly good (the models are very low poly), but the angle also makes it hard to select your pieces and you can't change it. You can play with an extremely primitive 2D view, but this actively looks worse than The Chessmaster 1. About the only thing that has significantly improved since the first Chessmaster is sound, which is indeed a big improvement but that's probably not why you're buying a game like this. Most of the basics are still solid, it's still Chess, the AI still good (and there's a lot of different AI levels to choose from), but the elephant in the room is Chessmaster 2. Without going into too much detail, that version of the game is massively superior in every way. The biggest addition to the game is the advice system, where the game can give you quite detailed advice on what kind of move you can make in each situation. Something I particularly appreciate it that it not only tells you what move it thinks you should make, but why you should make that move, which is enormously helpful to learning the game, transforming it from merely being a game into an extremely useful teaching tool. It also has drastically better presentation and more options and is generally far superior in every possible way. Knowing that that game exists simply makes it hard to recommend any other Chess game, particularly when this one didn't really innovate much on its predecessor.
Initial D kinda sucks. About the best thing you can say about it's not completely unplayable, but no part of the game is good or even decent. First, we'll talk about the presentation, which is bad. The game attempts to retell the story of Initial D, but it's an extremely low-budget affair. It's almost entirely done through still images with text at the bottom. There's no speech bubbles and no voice acting, and the still images are done in prerendered 3D, which looks awful, rather than taking scenes from the manga or anime. The handful of fully animated cutscenes are done in the same style and look even worse. Occasionally some art from the anime is used for the menus and this looks WAY better, so it really makes you wonder why they didn't use more of it. When it comes to the in-game graphics, they're similarly poor. Actually, the cars look okay and the lighting is not bad, but the courses are extremely bland and the gameplay lacks any kind of flair to it. Initial D is known for its dramatic racing scenes, but you certainly wouldn't get that impression here, even the racing announcer sounds like he's bored out of his mind, about the only thing that stands out is the engine noise, which is way too loud and you can't adjust it. The gameplay itself isn't really any better. The controls are generally pretty poor, and while it is at least a powersliding-heavy game, the powerslides are also pretty touchy and the game generally doesn't feel particularly good to play. There's also only 3 main tracks and they all feel quite similar, probably in part due to the aforementioned bland visuals. Some of the things in this game might have been excusable if this game came out in 96, but this was actually released in 99, by which time it seemed hopelessly dated.
Lake Masters is almost certainly the worst fishing game of all time. It's actually almost impossible even describe how bad this game is, but even on SNES this would have been bottom of the barrel. For starters, it's not 3D. It effectively uses mode-7 visuals where the lake is a flat plane and the only objects are billboarded reeds and such. Despite this, there is a ton of popup and the draw distance is nonexistent. You can control the boat, but it barely works and constantly get stuck on invisible walls and such. There is a fish finder, but it does not actually display fish, the only purpose is seemingly to let you know if the boat is actually moving, which is often unclear since if there are no objects nearby the screen will literally be empty with no apparent motion. There is obviously no underwater cam when you cast, nor any indication if fish are nearby, you simply cast and reel a bit and hope you find something, which you virtually never will, and even if you do find a fish the fishing gameplay is trivial, you basically just pull them in and let go momentarily if the tension gets high. Of course, there's also no music, because we wouldn't want anything to get in the way of the monotony. You can see everything this game has to offer in 2 minutes, or you would be able to if you could actually find a fish. This is one of those games that would score below B if such a grade existed, Initial D is like a hundred times better than this game despite still being B.
DeleteThe Note is an all right game, certainly better than the two preceding it. It's a fairly basic first-person survival horror game with a number of unique ideas but not the best execution. Probably the thing that stands out the most about the game is that it's somewhat clunky. The game follows most of the same concepts that you'd expect from a game like Resident Evil, you'll explore a creepy mansion and castle, solve puzzles, find a bunch of keys, shoot various nasties, and use items to heal up if you get hurt. However, for pretty much all of these things, it's not nearly as competent as the top games in the genre. For starters, there's the game's main interface. The main control setup is actually a dual-analog setup using the Dpad and face buttons, so all actions are mapped to the shoulders. In a somewhat innovative fashion, you can choose what you want to map to each button, with the choices being either a command (look, open, push, etc), or an inventory item. However, this doesn't work as well as you'd think. Rather obviously, the gun absolutely has to be mapped to one of the buttons, and the gun does not automatically reload, so ammo is a fairly essential choice for one of the others. This leaves you with 2 buttons remaining, which will probably be "Look" and "Open". This is nowhere near the full extent of things you can do, however. For example, one puzzle requires you to close a set of curtains, blow out a light, look at something, re-light the light using a match, then turn a clock 3 times in order to reveal a door which you then must open. You might think that Open and Close would be the same action, but they're not, and there's no all-purpose interact button, you must specifically select Turn to use the clock, and Empty to blow out the light. In a game like Rez Evil, all of these actions would be mapped to a single button, except probably for using a lighter from the inventory. To make matters even worse, the clock is really picky and if you're not looking at it dead on when you try to turn it it will just give some kind of "I can't do that" message and thus you may not realize you even have the right puzzle solution. Another example would be using a key to open a door. You cannot simply try to open the door, then have the game say "you unlocked it using the key", and the game never tells you which locked door the key might fit (compare how Rez Evil's doors will say something like "there's a heart insignia"), you simply have to try the key on every single door until it works. The jank extends to combat as well. The gun is extremely inaccurate and the game does not provide an aiming cursor, making it very hard to line up shots. Bats are virtually impossible to hit (apparently it is possible to do so, but I never hit one in like 30 shots, luckily you can just run past them), and your shots will even frequently miss slower enemies. Don't expect the same leniency for you though, they do constant damage just by being near you, even after you kill them but before their death animation completes. The survival aspect of the game is also pretty janky. You have limited ammo and heals, as well as matches and lamp oil, as you might expect from a survival game. However, you don't get more by finding them, to get more supplies you have to leave the mansion and go to a store. This might be fine if you simply found money instead, but no, you instead start with 50000 money, which is also all you'll ever get. Items are cheap, though, and this is more than enough to buy all the supplies you could ever need, allowing you to be topped up constantly and effectively removing the survival aspect of the game entirely. Despite all of these issues, though, it's still not awful. It is kind of creepy and the first-person perspective does work well for this type of game, and it's also not inordinately hard to figure out where to go despite its issues. It's just nowhere near on Resident Evil's level.
DeleteI was worried that Spectral Tower might be difficult to play in Japanese, but it's actually an incredibly simple game. It's basically a simple Mystery Dungeon type game, it uses the exact same perspective and the same randomized dungeons, though some of its mechanics are even more simple than you'd think. For starters, there's the combat. Unlike Mystery Dungeon, it doesn't take place in the same screen as the dungeon exploration, when you touch an enemy it shifts to a standard battle scene, like in more traditional RPGs (enemies also move in real time rather than when you move). These battles are very simple, but are nonetheless somewhat unique. On the player side, your actions are about what you'd expect. You can attack and use items and when the enemy attacks, your HP falls, and if it hits 0 you die, just like any other RPG. However, the enemies do not have HP, they instead have hearts, and every time you successfully hit, they lose one. The vast majority of enemies have only one heart, meaning it takes only one successful hit to take them out, but your hit rate is low, you have to roll dice to see if you hit, similar to dungeons and dragons. Rolling a 1 results in a critical, which instantly kills the enemy regardless of how many hearts they have, and also awards you some bonus statpoints, this is also the main way you get stronger. Since you don't actually do damage, the level ups instead affect your hit rate against various types of enemies. Beyond this, many enemies have a secondary action they can perform, which varies from simply wasting their turn to stealing your items or statusing you, but there's not a lot else to say about battles. The item system is pretty simple too. There's no armor, there's only weapons, and to equip weapons you need weapon levels, which you can only gain by using medals (medals are the second way to get more powerful, you'll just find them from time to time and they give you stats). Another unique thing about the game compared to most mystery dungeon games is that if you die, it's just game over. No coming back to life with none of your items or anything, if you die you have to reload from your last save (save statues appear in the dungeons at random points). There are 3 dungeons and you can re-do any of them for more items or stats before moving on, but generally this feels unnecessary, I felt like I had about enough power after each dungeon to go to the next one. Maybe it helped that one of the first items I found was a Unicorn Horn (I'm not sure if this is scripted, I found it during the tutorial), this is an awesome healing item that you can use repeatedly, though it has a chance to break each time you use it. Still, it's great to use every time you save, since if it breaks you can just load. Generally, the game is pretty simple and it can get a little repetitive, though the extremely brisk pacing thanks to the quick battle system helps a lot and generally it is pretty fun.
DeleteI couldn't remember what my thoughts were on Super Dropzone were when we played it on SNES, so I went back and compared that version when doing this review. The game is quite similar on PS1, it is basically the same game with no major enhancements, but it has been significantly refined from a mechanical perspective which makes it feel a lot better to play. The main change on the PS1 version is that movement is slower and smoother and the gun works better, and considering that the entire game involves flying and shooting your gun this makes a pretty big difference. On SNES, movement is clearly way too fast for the nature of the game, and this makes the precise movement that's needed to avoid attacks nearly impossible, but the game feels like it works properly here. The PS1 version is not totally without problems, it does take longer to pick up the little balls on the ground, and it's possible to softlock the game if the last enemy you kill on a wave is a spider (luckily there is a timelimit which will kill you after a certain amount of time passes, and after you respawn another enemy will appear that you can kill to finish the wave). The game still has issues with being somewhat overly simple and repetitive (it is based on an Atari 2600 game, after all), but at least now the gameplay is fairly solid. I feel like this could have made for a good component for a collection of a couple games, but it feels a little light on content for a solo release.
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