This topic is now closed
Gamefaqs Link
Last Topic's Ratings:
Blue Breaker: Ken Yorimo Hohoemi o - AA - 50% (2)
Gekirindan - AAB - 33% (3)
Shutsudou Miniskirt Police - B - 0% (1)
Steep Slope Sliders - AAA - 50% (3)
Vampire Savior: The Lord of Vampire - GGAGGGG - 93% (7)
Virtua Cop 2 - AGGGAGA - 79% (7)
Miniskirt Police is another one of those games where I'm the only one that rated it and I'm fine with that. You'll get another chance when the PS1 version comes around, unfortunately.
Games for this topic:
Arthur to Astaroth no Nazo-Makai-Mura: Incredible Toons
Brain Dead 13
Magic Knight Rayearth
Policenauts
Sugoventure: Dragon Master Silk Gaiden
Tenchi Wo Kurau 2
Of all the games here, I'm the most intrigued by Arthur and Astaroth's Incredible Toons, which is a weird reskinning of The Incredible Machine, though Sugoventure also looks fun.
Arthur to Astaroth no Nazo-Makai-Mura: Incredible Toons - A
ReplyDeleteBrain Dead 13 - A
Magic Knight Rayearth - G
Policenauts - G
Sugoventure: Dragon Master Silk Gaiden - G
Tenchi Wo Kurau 2 - A
Arthur and Astaroth Incredible Toons is a really weird product. As its name implies, it's a port of Sid and Al's Incredible Toons / The Incredible Toon Machine, with the characters swapped out for the ones from Ghouls n' Ghosts. The first thing to note about this game is that this is indeed a port, all of the levels are identical to those in Sid and Al. There are a couple new cutscenes, but otherwise this is just a reskin of the previous game. It's also not a great reskin. While the game does have good music (it's pulled from various games in the franchise), the animation is far more muted compared to Sid and Al, particularly compared to The Incredible Toon Machine, which features pre-level cutscenes that look fantastic. It also obviously doesn't control as well using a controller as the mouse, though at least it's not a real-time game so the impact of this is limited to just making it play a little slower. The game is mostly intact and the game it's based on is quite good, but I can't really see why anyone would particularly want this version, other than perhaps as a novelty.
Brain Dead 13 is very similar to Dragon's Lair and Space Ace, being a very lavishly animated game with minimal, QTE-centric gameplay. Just like in Dragon's Lair, there's no prompts to know which button to press (except in the Japanese Saturn version, more on that below), so you kind of just have to guess based on what's happening and it's almost never obvious when or what button you need to press, so there's a lot of trial and error. The biggest difference is that this game was never an arcade game, and thus is somewhat more fair with how it handles deaths, in particular if you die you always just respawn at the beginning of that segment and thus lose minimal progress. Something else I like is that as you wander through the castle, there are frequently multiple choices for places you can go, but unlike in games like Dragon's Lair there isn't just one correct path and the rest kill you, you can actually go into almost all of the rooms and see different events. This does have the effect of making the game very short, though, as you aren't required to visit every room. Compared to the PS1 version, the Saturn version is only one disc, and thus the video is much more compressed. This does generally make the PS1 version the preferred one, though it has a hilariously short time to reach the second disc (if you know what you're doing you can get there in 5 minutes). The Saturn version does feature slightly better video quality for Vivi's segment, which is good because she's by far the most memorable part of the game, though the PS1 version is still superior. The other thing of note is that the Japanese Saturn version has an option to display prompts for viable buttons to press, which makes the game feel somewhat less random, though it does have the effect of making an already short game even shorter. Speaking of, that's easily the game's biggest flaw, though it has some slight replayability due to the branching paths, it's an extremely short game, your first playthrough is likely to be an hour tops and once you know what to do you can get through it in a third that time. It's kind of an entertaining hour and the animation is great, but it's hard for me to recommend it that heavily.
So I thought I had played Magic Knight Rayearth before and I wasn't expecting a ton from it, but it turns out I was actually remembering the SNES game and the Saturn one was actually quite substantially better. For starters, the first thing I didn't expect is that this is an action RPG that plays quite similarly to Secret of Mana. Mechanically it's definitely not as deep as SoM, but it also doesn't really need to be, as it has far more focus on storytelling and less on combat. This is actually an extremely story-heavy game, with tons of voice dialogue and anime scenes to move the plot along. Thankfully, the story is pretty interesting and the game has a boatload of charm, so this works out pretty well. I was pretty impressed by how well fleshed-out this game was for being such an early title on the system, I feel like if this had released in the US in 1996 or so it would have been a huge deal, but even as the last title on the system it's still quite impressive. For example, something I like is when you check objects, the dialogue is different depending on which girl you're currently controlling. There's also a plot summary you can read, styled like a diary, and similarly this is also different for every character, and it's even voiced. Speaking of which, the voice acting is not the greatest, some of the characters are good (like Zagat for example) but others are a bit more hit and miss, but the effort to dub the entire game is appreciated. When it comes to the gameplay, it's all right. It's fairly basic, but it keeps the dungeons interesting enough, and once you get access to the charged attacks the balance between the three characters is not bad. Overall, this is clearly quite a good game and it's a nice little swan song for the Saturn.
DeleteSugoventure is a very unique game, so as is often the case I'm probably going to have to spend most of this review simply describing it. The basic gist of the game is that it's a cross between an RPG, a board game, and a dating sim. At the start of the game, every player picks a girl, then they take turns rolling dice to move around the game board. The board is populated with all kinds of things, like monsters, treasure chests, date squares, warps, and traps, and you can freely choose which direction to move at any fork, so there's a lot to do. Speaking of, we first need to discuss the actual goal of the game, which is something the game itself doesn't cover well (I assume the manual does, but I didn't have access to it). The game is ultimately scored based on four categories, battles won, chests collected, strongest bond, and who defeated the boss. The first is fairly self-explanatory, when running into a monster on the board, or landing on another player and choosing to battle them, you'll encounter a battle. Battles are determined by dice rolls and battle cards. Before battle, you can choose to use battle cards if you have any (they're used up after one use), which will increase your total battle score, though the attacker always has to pick first, so the defender can respond to what the attacker chooses. You will then roll dice, depending on your battle level (ie, if you have battle level 3 you roll 3 dice), and the total of your roll and cards becomes your attack power, and whoever has more points win the battle. Should you lose a battle, you go back to the start and lose a turn. Your character can gradually become stronger by winning battles, going on dates, and landing on blue squares, but red squares reduce your power (and gold squares can give you extra cards). The chests are very relevant to the first phase of the game. Initially, the board has many chests on it, which contain gold cards. The goal is to collect as many of these as possible, then take them to the altar to get rewards. They could contain a powerful battle card or give you a level up, or they could spawn a trap or an enemy, but the most important card is the one containing the boss, which triggers the second phase of the game. After the boss has been found, they basically act as a 6th player. They will immediately challenge the person who found them to a battle, then they will warp somewhere on the map and start interfering with the game by summoning monsters or traps. Every time someone defeats them, they will teleport away again and repeat the process. However, after being beaten either 4 or 5 times (chosen randomly, and there's no way to know how many fights it will take ahead of time), they will be defeated for good and the stage ends, with whomever dealt the last hit winning the "defeat the boss" category. This leaves only the strongest bond mechanic to explain, which is tied to the dating sim element. Before each turn, your girl may ask you a question, which sometimes has gameplay impact. For example, some of the girls are lazy and will sometimes want to just rest for a turn, if you choose yes, they'll (usually) be happy, but obviously you won't get to do anything that turn, forcing them to act makes them somewhat mad. Sometimes they'll just ask you questions about yourself instead, and if you answer in a way they like they'll be happy. There are also dating spaces you can reach, where you can have a little date with the girl, and if you choose the correct choices here you can gain a lot of bond points. Ultimately, whomever's girl likes them the most will win the last category.
Delete(Sugoventure cont'd)
DeleteSpeaking of the girls, they're also all mechanically different. They start with different battle stats, like their initial cards, card capacity, and dice, and they also have unique quirks, like how some girls are lazy, and some girls will override your movement choices in some cases. For example, if there's a battle close by, Aka will often force you to fight the monster, even if this is opposite from the direction you wanted to go. They're definitely not all balanced, but it's an interesting system that gives the game a lot of personality. Anyway, we've now pretty much gone over the mechanics of the game, so we can finally talk about rating it. Obviously, it's very unique, and it also has a fair bit of charm. One issue with the game though is that it involves a ton of RNG. In particular, it's a huge advantage to go first and a huge disadvantage to go last, which is totally random, and battles are also almost complete luck. Still, I could see this being a fun party game with a bunch of players where you may not care about the luck aspect so much, and it's also appreciated that multiple players can use the same controller. However, there's also an issue when it come's to the game's multiplayer. At the beginning of the game, the game asks you if you want to play 1, 2, or 3 stages. These correspond to the game's 3 different boards. Though each of the boards features some randomization, (the placement of the monsters and the color of the squares is chosen randomly), they still feel pretty similar each time. As such, it's very appreciated that there's 3 different boards that are quite different from each other, but to play board 2 or 3, you have to play a 2 or 3 stage game, which is very time consuming, it would be greatly appreciated if you could just pick the board you want to play. I also think it would be nice to have more than 5 girls, even though it is kinda funny that if you play with 5 players the last person is stuck with whomever no one else wanted, there are quite a few more girls in the series (it's very weird that Silk isn't an option, and Lady would be a fun option too) and with each girl being unique from a gameplay standpoint this would add significantly more replay value. That said, it's still fun and unique, it would just be cool to see a more modern take on this idea with some more QOL features.
In retrospect, I feel like I was maybe a little too harsh on Tenchi wo Kurau 2 on PS1. I still kind of agree with many of the things I said about it, but it's not really that atrocious. One of the biggest issues with the game is that it has a significant focus on zoning, for example riding on the horse and picking up most of the weapons gives you greatly extended range at the expense of your ability to do combos. The thing is, zoning in a beat-em-up is not fun, you play these games to get in there and mess people up, so the best way to play this game is to dismount the horse as soon as the game begins and never bother with any of the pickup weapons and you'll have a much better time. This version of the game seems to be slightly superior to the PS1 version, as the PS1 version has some occasional slowdown while the Saturn version has none that I saw. It is still true that this game basically plays very similarly to Final Fight 1 and it's a super barebones port, and it also has many of the same problems that plagued Final Fight and similar games, most particularly the fact that it's really repetitive. Your offensive options are fairly limited even when you get off the horse (though I did find out that you have a couple motion-activated special moves), and like most old beat-em-ups you face that same handful of enemies WAY too many times, you certainly won't find any innovtion towards solving any of those issues here, this is definitely a very "by the numbers" kind of game. It's certainly not great, but it's still somewhat playable and on Saturn where your beat-em-up choices are more limited you could probably do worse.
Delete