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Gamefaqs Link
Last Topic's Ratings:
Command and Conquer - AGGG - 88% (4)
Final Fight Revenge - ABBBB - 10% (5)
Haunted Casino - G - 100% (1)
Macross: Do You Remember Love - GAA - 67% (3)
Mobile Suit Gundam - GG - 100% (2)
Shinsetsu Samurai Spirits: Bushidou Retsuden - ABB - 17% (3)
This topic was full of surprises. I didn't expect a lot from the Gundam game, and I thought Samurai Spirits would get high ratings. I guess it goes to show that you can never judge a book by its cover, especially if it's in Japanese.
Games for this topic:
Cyberia
Real Bout Fatal Fury Special
Shiroki Majo: Mouhitotsu no Eiyuu Densetsu
Sonic R
Tennis Arena
Waku Waku Monster
Is Shiroki Majo the first game in the Legend of Heroes series we've covered here? It seems unbelievable that we haven't come across it until now. The first two games are on SNES and Genesis, but they were probably not covered since they lack translations. We also have Sonic R, which I expect people to have a lot of interesting opinions about.
Cyberia - B
ReplyDeleteReal Bout Fatal Fury Special - G
Shiroki Majo: Mouhitotsu no Eiyuu Densetsu - A
Sonic R - A
Tennis Arena - B
Waku Waku Monster - A
Cyberia is a really weird product but it's clearly not very good. It's a very strange mishmash between a simplistic prerendered adventure game and a rail shooter, and the combination of both elements is probably its biggest failing, as they simply don't work together well at all and the pacing of the game is just abysmal. When you start the game, you're quickly tossed into a shooter segment. This section controls okay, but it goes on WAY too long, to the point I wondered if I had to die to advance it. You don't, it does eventually end, but it takes like 5 minutes. You then have to solve a simple puzzle before getting on a plane, and the game changes into a rail shooter for about three quarters of its total length. You have to do 7 shooting stages in a row here for some reason, they have nothing whatsoever to do with the plot, it basically feels like this was a separate game that they just tossed in here because they didn't know what to do with it. These rail shooting stages are actually not completely terrible, certainly this is way better than something like Chaos Control, but the way it just grinds the plot to a screeching halt for like 40 minutes is enormously detrimental to the game. If you do stick it out through the whole thing you go back to the adventure-style gameplay for the rest of the game, which, while a bit more meaty this time, is still pretty bad (the controls for these sections are terrible and it's very hard to figure out how to interact with what you want to interact with). I actually feel like they probably should have just tried to flesh out the shooter mode a bit more and made that into a full game because it feels the most competent, but the way the game is set up it just feels like it gets in the way. What a strange, broken experiment.
Real Bout Fatal Fury Special is a huge upgrade over the original, and although they still haven't gotten rid of the dumb plane switching mechanic, it's now a fairly decent game. First of all, it must be noted that this is a gorgeous game that has a ton of characters, it's quite impressive to see this on a console from this era running as well as it does. Compared to the previous version, the differences seem small on the surface, but the game features a ton more polish in virtually every area that makes it play substantially better. For starters, there's the plane switching mechanic. There are now only 2 planes and virtually any attack button will put you both on the same plane. This mechanic is still dumb and unnecessary but at least its impact on the game is now minimized. This is not quite as good as the PS1 version removing it entirely, but it no longer gets in the way as much. Frame data and hitboxes generally feel greatly improved. A lot of combos that felt inconsistent in Real Bout Fatal Fury feel better here, you won't get into situations where you land a jump in and then your ground attack just whiffs through the opponent because you were just a hair too far away or something, combos feel quite good to perform now. I still think the PS1 version is a bit better overall due to the plane switching mechanic being outright gone, which allows for more neutral and actual zoning, but it's somewhat debatable, the chain combos definitely work a little bit better here and it gives many characters more offensive routes. Either way, if you've been waiting for a good SNK fighter on Saturn your patience has finally been rewarded.
So this time Saturn gets a vastly better version of an RPG that it shares with PS1. This game is essentially a full remake of The Legend of Heroes 3, and it's certainly vastly improved from the presentation standpoint. I don't want to derail this review by talking too much about the PS1 version, which is one of the ugliest and most amateurish games ever made (it's so bad even the PSP version looks like a huge improvement), but this game features completely redrawn visuals that show the game from an isometric perspective, along with some new cutscenes and voice acting that bring it up to the standards of what you'd expect from a fifth-generation RPG. Visually it's actually a pretty nice game and it has some charm, though there are still issues. The biggest one is that this game makes the strange choice to have absolutely all of the battles in the game be scripted, if there are any random or repeatable battles I certainly never found them. While you might think this would help the game's pacing, its area maps are extremely huge and feel empty due to the lack of battles, and having all the battles be scripted means that you'll always have the exact same level of power for each one, so they really play out more like puzzles than RPG battles (you are also healed to full after every fight). It's a very strange design choice that makes it feel like they didn't really understand RPGs (which is weird considering the Legend of Heroes 1 and 2 do feature standard random battles) and it's too bad because it's basically the only issue with an otherwise fairly charming game. If you do want to play this game this is certainly the way to do it, I just wish its gameplay was a little better.
DeleteSonic R is wack. Part Racing game, part Platformer, and part crazy fever dream, there's certainly never been anything like it before or since. The game is ostensibly a racing game featuring 5 tracks, but they are all full 3D environments and you race them on foot, allowing you to take pretty much any path you want by jumping, gliding, or flying to the goal. Each of the characters in the game has different abilities, allowing them to take different routes. Sonic is the fastest, but Amy's car can drive over water, allowing her to take some shortcuts that he can't. Regardless of who you're playing as, the controls are definitely somewhat stiff, but once you get used to the power turn it is manageable, and you'll be able to beat the AI reasonably easily. This paves the way for the game's more intense challenges, to unlock the special characters, which require you to collect something on the stage and also place reasonably well, similar to the Silver Coin Challenge from Diddy Kong Racing. Each stage has a couple of the Chaos Emeralds you can collect hidden along secret paths that require rings to open (as well as finding the doors in the first place), and there's also 5 hidden Sonic coins on each stage that let you challenge a secret character. While it is definitely kind of satisfying to plot a route that lets you collect all the items and pull it off, it's also very frustrating to make a small mistake or lose the boss challenge and have to do it again. We also have to talk about the soundtrack, which is great, but also very weird, it's a set of vocal love songs which in no way fit the game but are also possibly the best part of it. Really, you can never escape from the feeling of strangeness with this game, it essentially kind of feels like a tech demo or experiment, and while it is sometimes fun it doesn't really feel like it quite comes together. It's fairly short, and while the different characters do give it some replay value I don't know if it's really fun enough to keep you playing without the appeal of unlocking stuff. It's still definitely kind of an interesting novelty and it's too bad Traveller's Tales didn't go on to make an actual 3D Sonic game for the platform as the engine might have been able to handle it, but I don't think I'd call it a classic.
Tennis Arena is still pretty much the same as it was back on PS1. Visually it's actually not bad, but not much else stands out about it, it's very bland and it doesn't control very well, featuring the same stiff gameplay that plagues almost every Tennis game prior to the release of Mario Tennis. It makes the transition to Saturn intact and it's clearly the best Tennis game on Saturn, but I don't really think this is enough to save it from the B range. I know I've said this a million times, but it's crazy how far ahead of everyone else Camelot was this gen, it's like comparing Pitfall to Super Mario Bros.
DeleteWaku Waku Monster is a somewhat interesting Puyo clone held back by a lack of clarity to its mechanics. The basic gist of the game is that it's a Puyo-like game where you drop the pieces from the top one at a time, and you only need to match 3 to clear. Since the pieces are dropped in ones (rather than the pairs like in Puyo) setting up builds is absurdly easy, though there's a number of extra mechanics layered on top of this. For starters, each of the players is some kind of monster tamer, and you attack each other by making matches to power up your monster so it can attack. Making matches adds power to your power meter, which you can fire off at any time with B, and you can also use this to offset the opponent's attack. It will also fire off when it gets full, which will happen numerous times if you make a big combo, though the ability to attack at any time could be interesting for trying to snipe an opponent's trigger point or something, I wish the meter could hold a bit more so you could save up your attacks longer as this could be an interesting mechanic. Speaking of your monster, the big appeal of the game is that it evolves as you do matches, starting as an egg, turning into a little blob, and gradually growing into a big monster. The way it grows is determined by how you play the matches, particularly how you use the droplet pieces, but it's not clear if how you evolve it actually affects the game in any way. You'd think it might affect your drop pattern, but your drop pattern is primarily decided by the character you choose at the start, perhaps it might affect the colours in the drop pattern but if it does the effect is very minor. This is quite lame, as trying to build your monster in a specific way might add an extra layer of strategy to the game, but as it is it just feels like fluff. Speaking of the drop patterns, they're very unbalanced as you'd expect, in particular some drop patterns need bigger chains to outright kill you than others, and since the character doesn't affect how the monster grows you might as well just always pick the one with the best pattern (which, for my money, is the default character). It's an interesting concept, but it doesn't quite feel like it was polished quite enough.