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Last Topic's Ratings:
Alone in the Dark: One-Eyed Jack's Revenge - BBBBB - 0% (5)
Cleopatra Fortune - AAAAA - 50% (5)
Fantastic Pinball Kyutenkai - AAA - 50% (3)
Soukuu no Tsubasa: Gotha World - AA - 50% (2)
Thunder Force 5 - GGGAAG - 83% (6)
Wipeout 2097 - BBAA - 25% (6)
I was surprised to see quite so many votes for Cleopatra Fortune, I thought that game was more obscure.
Games for this topic:
Duke Nukem 3D
Logic Puzzle Rainbow Town
Riglord Saga 2
Street Fighter 2 Movie
Strikers 1945 2
Voice Idol Maniacs: Pool Bar Story
Riglord Saga 2 is the sequel to Mystaria / Blazing Heroes. I'm also curious to see what they did with the Street Fighter 2 movie game.
Duke Nukem 3D - G
ReplyDeleteLogic Puzzle Rainbow Town - G
Riglord Saga 2 - G
Street Fighter 2 Movie - B
Strikers 1945 2 - G
Voice Idol Maniacs: Pool Bar Story - G
Saturn has seen its share of slapdash ports over the years, but thankfully Duke Nukem 3D isn't one of them. The game makes the jump to Saturn pretty much completely intact, and it runs quite impressively well too. There's not a ton to say about the game that hasn't been said before, it was a pretty big step forward for the genre by adding significantly more verticality that wasn't present in Doom, the level design is great, Duke is hilarious, and it's just an all-around good time. Compared to the other ports, the biggest issue with this version is that aim up and aim down are constrained to a single button, and you don't have the option to have auto vertical aiming like on the PS1 version, which arguably makes this the worst-controlling version, though it's still mostly fine. It's actually pretty impressive that this game was ported to all 3 platforms and none of the ports are bad. Oh, and this version also includes Death Tank Zwei, though it's obnoxious to unlock and doesn't improve too much from the far more easily accessible version in Powerslave.
Logic Puzzle Rainbow Town is pretty decent. It's a Colour Picross game, so the rules are a little different from standard Picross. If you're doing a 10x10 puzzle, and you see a clue like 6 1 1, you would normally know that means that the answer is 6 boxes, 1 space, 1 box, 1 space, 1 more box (this is a row you can always fill in instantly since the total is 10). In Color Picross, though, if the colours are different they don't have to have a space between them. For example, if the numbers in this 611 were red blue green, you could have something like 6 red boxes, 1 blue box, 1 space, 1 green box, 1 space, since colour changes sort of act like spaces. It might not sound like much, but it requires a fair bit of adaptation to things which might otherwise be automatic if you've played a lot of standard Picross. As for the game itself, the basic idea is that you have to construct Rainbow Town by completing Picross puzzles. Each part of town you can build consists of around 30 puzzles themed around objects you might find in that area, which helps make the game feel a bit more purposeful than many other such games, and there's quite a lot of puzzles in total. The game also includes an edit mode where you can make your own puzzles, though it's a bit cumbersome to use. About the only criticisms I might have about the game is that Colour Picross is generally a bit easier than regular Picross, largely due to the way the puzzles are designed, they typically tend to have little whitespace and this makes the clues easier to solve, though I can't really fault the game for this. A slightly bigger issue is the music, which is quite limited, there's only 4 tracks you can listen to. I think it would have helped the game quite a bit if there was a unique track for every set of puzzles. Oh, and it still has that same issue where if I'm holding B to mark squares as whitespace, I don't want this to unmark and squares I've already marked (every Picross game this gen seems to do this, I wonder which will be the first one where it works properly), but the interface otherwise controls quite well. It's a pretty solid game overall.
Riglord Saga 2 is pretty similar to the first game, which isn't too surprising as they released only a year apart. As before, this is a fairly simplistic SRPG with a unique skill learning system. Compared to the first game, this system has been slightly simplified (at least in terms of visibility) as the game now displays the amount of exp needed in a given category to learn new skills, taking most of the guesswork out of it. The big change here is increased terrain variety. Elevation is now a factor, and there are skills that can alter the terrain to take advantage of it. The main character is also a Dragon Knight and can transform into a Dragon, gaining the ability to fly over terrain and even carry allies, which is vital on some maps. The game does a good job of introducing its new mechanics via short tutorials that precede most battles so getting to grips with these new mechanics is not difficult, at least as long as you have google lens. The game's connection to Shining Force is now even more obvious, with more focus on town and world map exploration, though the first game was already somewhat nonlinear. There's also now voice acting in some scenes. Beyond that, it's pretty much the same as the first game, and I feel like it still feels kinda borderline between A and G. The pacing is brisk and the skill system is interesting, but it's quite basic and easy and the presentation is nothing special. Had this released a few years later it probably would have fallen to A, but it feels like it improved enough within the span of a year to hold its rating.
DeleteAfter how good Street Fighter the Movie was, I was hoping Street Fighter 2 Movie would be similar, but unfortunately it bares pretty much no resemblance to it. For the uninitiated, the Street Fighter 2 movie was an anime-style movie set around the time of Street Fighter 2. It's generally regarded as a pretty good film, in particular the characters are quite on model for its age, and as such apparently Capcom figured the best way to do this game would just be to have you watch the film. Well, just watch isn't quite accurate. See, the plot of the movie involves Bison trying to track down Ryu using some tracking cyborgs that kind of look like an early version of Seth. Rather than playing as Ryu, you instead play as one of the cyborgs, watching the footage of the movie to learn about Ryu. This consists of watching various scenes from the movie and pressing a scanning button when characters are doing attacks to increase your fighting knowledge. If it goes "pa-shing" you pressed it at the right time and your cyborg gets a little stronger. And that's pretty much it. After reaching the end of the game, you get to have a 1 on 1 match with Ryu that determines the ending. This match uses Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo's engine and is obviously the highlight of the game, but the Cyborg is just a clone of Ken that is slower and does less damage if you didn't scan well, so it's very limited. You can also pit your Cyborg against a friend, if you know another sucker unfortunate enough to have bought this game. I actually feel like this concept could have had some potential, for example, many characters from Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo appear in the movie, a much better way to do the game would be to watch a scene from the movie, then fight that character. Maybe they could even let you customize the moves your cyborg knows depending on how well you scan so you can create the most broken SSF2T character ever, then play through arcade mode as that character or something. It certainly would have been way better than this, which is just dull and isn't even a fun way to watch the movie.
DeleteStrikers 1945 2 is identical to the PS1 version, which is to say, excellent. Something I particularly want to call attention to (which is present in both versions) is that the game provides both a fullscreen mode which is adapted to the 4:3 resolution, and another mode where the screen can scroll up and down vertically that matches that arcade resolution. If only some other games (cough Dodonpachi) would have offered such options! Of course Tate mode is also available. Beyond this, the game is so good that there's not really too much else to say about it. Great gameplay, tons of difficulty options, great presentation, 2P-S, runs flawlessly on both systems, lots of ships to choose from, etc. Definitely get this on your system of choice.
DeleteVoice Idol Maniacs: Pool Bar Story is basically a pool-themed version of The Star Bowling, though it's definitely not as good. Gameplay-wise, this is another reskin of Side Pocket 2 with added video clips, very similar to Minnesota Fats Pool Legend, so you know the gameplay is pretty good. There's a decent number of rule variations and they all feel pretty distinct from each other. The way the game works is that you choose a girl and a ruleset and challenge her to a best 2 out of 3 game, with the prize being that you get to take her on a date if you win. Compared to The Star Bowling, this is definitely not as clever, for example I really liked how in Star Bowling you would first play with your girl of choice, then again with her friends, where you could gossip with them to learn more about her, but nothing like that exists here. Once you win your date, your girl will ask you 3 questions, and how you answer them determines whether you get her ending or not (clues to these questions can be found in their bio). Annoyingly, the endings are all on disc 2, so you have to swap discs to see them, then swap back to play again. Each girl also has a second ending, but I'm not sure how to get it, it might be related to the tournament mode. Overall, it's good enough, I do think the idea of adding this kind of story content to games of this type helps them a lot, you can basically just choose between this and Minnesota Fats depending on if you want fanservice or comedy.