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Last Topic's Ratings:
Assault Rigs - AGGG - 88% (4)
Bottom of the 9th - ABA - 33% (3)
Iblard: Laputa no Kaeru Machi - AGG - 83% (3)
Legend of Heroes 1 and 2 - GB - 50% (2)
Tom and Jerry in House Trap - AGA - 67% (3)
Tsumu Light - ABB - 17% (3)
Definitely did not think Assault Rigs would take the topic, it goes to show that differences between ports can really change a game.
Games for this topic:
Boundary Gate: Daughter of Kingdom
Disruptor
Gekioh: Shooting King
Primal Rage
Votoms Gaiden: Blue Knight Berserga
XS Junior League Dodgeball
A heads-up, Votoms Gaiden seems to have a ton of issues on emulator, the only setup I found that made it work was Beetle Saturn with Dualshock turned off.
Boundary Gate: Daughter of Kingdom - G
ReplyDeleteDisruptor - G
Gekioh: Shooting King - A
Primal Rage - B
Votoms Gaiden: Blue Knight Berserga - A
XS Junior League Dodgeball - A
Boundary Gate: Daughter of Kingdom is an old-school dungeon crawler similar to games like Might and Magic and Wizardry, but it's generally pretty decent. It's no secret that I generally am not a huge fan of games of this type, but I actually enjoyed this one a fair bit, which comes down not to any major innovation but rather just a bunch of small optimizations and QOL improvements scattered throughout the entire experience. For starters, one thing the game does really well is pacing. In games like Might and Magic the starting town is usually enormous and just figuring out where anything is is a huge hassle. Not so here, the town is fairly small, and it's very easy to figure out where to go because the game is very reliable about updating NPC chatter. What the NPCs say generally updates after you complete any objective, so if you go to the bar and talk to people they'll pretty much always tell you where to go next and I never got stuck even momentarily. The game's plot is also fairly interesting, there's a decent amount of intrigue right off the bat, but it also doesn't overload you on exposition, it's just enough to make it clear that there's some shady stuff going on which it sort of gradually expands upon over time rather than dumping it on you all at once. The game's visuals are also decent for their time, I like the battle scenes where you can see the characters and monsters attacking each other, these feel fairly immersive, and the dungeon visuals, while understandably somewhat repetitive, at least make good use of atmosphere to feel kind of spooky (the game is has a fairly dark aesthetic and somewhat reminds me of Shin Megami Tensei). Gameplay-wise, it's fairly basic. Combat is standard "attack / magic / item" and the encounter rate is fairly high, but at least the dungeons are not inordinately huge so they're still not too much of a slog. Probably the game's biggest issue is that the automap doesn't indicate your current facing direction, so you can get turned around if you're not careful, this is annoying, but not enough to seriously hamper the game. Overall, I suppose there's nothing too remarkable here, but it's fairly well-polished and I had fun with it. I think this is just another example of how important pacing is to RPGs.
Disruptor is a pretty solid FPS. In many ways, the game is basically just sci-fi flavoured Doom, but Doom is a good game so a game that accurately captures the general feel of it is going to be pretty decent, and this game totally nails the general feel of doom in terms of speed, movement, and gunplay, while also running very well on PS1. Besides having strong fundamentals, the game does have a couple interesting mechanics as well. The most obvious one is that besides conventional weaponry, you also have access to Psionic abilities, but we should probably talk about the guns before we get into that. As with any Doom-like game you have a lot of different guns to use, but a key difference from Doom is that they have drastically varying levels of effectiveness against different enemies. For example, robots are generally fairly vulnerable to conventional ballistic weapons, whereas energy weapons usually work better against humanoids, and of course some weapons also have better range than others. Ammo is also fairly limited so this forces you to use multiple weapons much moreso than in most games of this type. A nice touch is that many enemies make a distinctive noise if they're nearby, so you can use that to equip the appropriate weapon before engaging them, though it's quite common not to have enough ammo for all of your weapons, which is where some of the Psionics come in. Psionics come in a few different flavours, the standard Shock is basically just a nuke that can delete most high threat enemies quickly, but uses a lot of energy. You can replenish your energy with Drain, but Drain is really weak and leaves you open to attack while using it, so it can really only be used on lone stragglers who aren't too threatening. There's also utility abilities like Heal, but they also run off the same energy meter so you have to be careful with it. In general the setup works pretty well and the focus on using different weapons helps keep things interesting. This is also another one of those games that has live action sequences between the levels, and while I feel like the plot is not the most interesting this time these still help to break up the action. Overall, this is just a pretty solid title. I feel like these types of games have somewhat come back into the mainstream recently, so if you were a fan of Doom and Duke 3D this might be worth checking out.
DeleteIn case you didn't remember from when we covered it on Saturn, Gekioh: Shooting King is Shienryu under a different name and with some changes. For starters, on a technical level this port is not as competent as the Saturn version. Some effects have been simplified and there is also occasional slowdown, though it's certainly still playable and the game's good visual design remains a highlight. Somewhat more of a big deal is that the "second loop" is completely cut out of the PS1 version, which will almost certainly upset shmup enthusiasts, though it's clear that's not what they were going for with the PS1 version. The "highlight" of the PS1 port is that they've added a bunch of very strange bonus modes, such as the Pocketstation mode, which is an entirely new game that uses like a 20x40 pixel grid, or the comical mode which replaces the OST and sound effects with a bizarre laugh track. It's really not obvious what they were going for with these add-ons, but whatever it is they generally don't really work. By far the highlight is the "Slow mode", a horror-themed mode where bullets travel way slower but there's also way more of them and enemies have different bullet patterns, which turns it into something of a bullet hell game and does legitimately play really differently from the original mode, though its OST and sound effects are definitely a big downgrade from the main game. Speaking of, this game also completely redoes the sound from the Saturn version as well. For the music, it's generally worse and lower quality, but the sound has seen some improvements, with explosion and hit sounds generally sounding a bit better here, though it's not a huge upgrade. Overall, I sort of appreciate that they tried to add more content to the game (at least, I assume that was the idea behind the bonus modes), but their efforts could have been far better spent, say, adding 2 more ships with different weapon loadouts or something. The Saturn version is definitely preferred overall, but this version is tolerable if Saturn isn't an option and the core game is still pretty solid.
DeletePrimal Rage is even worse on PS1 than on Saturn, in addition to all of its existing problems it also has degraded visuals and loading between rounds. Even then, the biggest issue is still how unpolished it is and how many janky mechanics it had. I actually feel like with more polished frame data and proper special move inputs this game could have had enough potential for A, but it feels extremely janky for a fighter this gen when they were generally getting much better in terms of design.
Votoms Gaiden: Blue Knight Berserga is a pretty basic mech fighter. Like Virtual On, it's comprised entirely of one-on-one mech fights where you try to deplete the opponent's HP using various weapons, though compared to that game it's significantly slower-paced as your attacking and movement options are more limited. Basically the entire game revolves around baiting out the opponent's burst movement options (dashes and quicksteps) and then attacking them during the downtime afterwards, which is not a bad concept (after all, this is also critical to how Custom Robo works), the biggest issue is that your attacking options are fairly limited so your ability to really trap the opponent is limited if they play smart. You can equip your mech with multiple weapons, but you have to cycle between them even though each one has a dedicated fire button (this will just punch if that weapon is not currently selected), which severely limits how fast you can fire them in succession. It's also a bit harder than you'd expect to maintain a lock on the opponent, though perhaps you could say that this does prioritize targeting skill and adds some nuance to simply gunning down your opponents with a machine gun. The game features two modes, one of which is more RPG-focused where you can gradually build up your own machine by winning fights, and one where you can just use prebuilt machines like a more traditional fighting game. For the RPG mode, there is some potential here, but it also has some issues, the biggest of which is with its progression. There's a decent number of parts in the game, but very few of them are initially available for purchase, so simply grinding money through fights has little value, you have to advance the storyline, and this is done by just hoping the relevant people show up in the bar after a battle for you to talk to, which feels kind of awkward. Having to go to the office to set up fights rather than just taking them from the arena also feels like an unnecessary step, and in general this mode could just stand to be more streamlined. I do have to give credit to the game's visual customization, though, which is almost assuredly its standout feature. You can colourize every single piece of your mech, of which there are like 40, using any colour you want, which is incredibly robust for its time and does let you create some mechs that look pretty cool. Overall, it's not terrible but it's simply not as well-polished as most of its competitors. I'll be curious to see what they do with the future games in the series, as with more refinement this could probably be pretty solid.
DeleteXS Junior League Dodgeball is very similar to Battle Dodgeball on SNES (and also Super Dodge Ball and similar games), though it's generally a bit more barebones than most other games of this type. The basics of the game are identical to Battle Dodgeball, complete with each character having a super that's activated by catching the ball a bunch of times, but it lacks the RPG or build-up modes that helped give that game more replay value, and with the characters lacking any meaningful stat differentiation it gets repetitive quickly. There are a couple of new ideas here, like having powerups float over the stage occasionally, and comboing people by hitting them when they're recovering from being hit is always a good time, but there's not much reason to play this particular entry over the many similar games that offer more content.