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Last Topic's Ratings:
Crow: City of Angels - BBABB - 10% (5)
Langrisser 3 - GAGGA - 80% (5)
Segata Sanshiro Shinkenyugi - AABA - 38% (4)
Silhouette Mirage - GGGAB - 70% {5}
Texthoth Ludo: Arcanum Senki - AA - 50% (2)
Winter Heat - GGAA - 75% (4)
I was a bit surprised there wasn't a bit more said about Langrisser 3, as this seems to be a relatively contentious title in the fandom, but I guess the lack of a translation makes it inaccessible to many. This would be one of the games I would have on my translation wishlist, so perhaps some day it will get one.
Games for this topic:
Digital Pinball: Last Gladiators
Magical Drop 3
Mobile Suit Gundam Gaiden Vol. 3
Samurai Spirits: Amakusa Kourin
Shining Force 3
Soviet Strike
A lot of sequels this time around. I'm particularly interested to see the reception to Shining Force 3. It's also finally the end of Mobile Suit Gundam Gaiden, which feels like it began an eternity ago.
Digital Pinball: Last Gladiators - G
ReplyDeleteMagical Drop 3 - G
Mobile Suit Gundam Gaiden Vol. 3 - B
Samurai Spirits: Amakusa Kourin - B
Shining Force 3 - G
Soviet Strike - G
About the only bad thing you can say about Last Gladiators is that it isn't quite as good as Digital Pinball Necronomicon, but it's still a very good game. Unlike Necronomicon, there's no story mode to tie all the tables together, which is a shame, but instead this version features one more table for a total of four and they're still all very solid. These are the "modern" style of pinball machines with an LCD display and a ton of events, including multiball, so there's never any shortage of things going on and this also helps multiple playthroughs feel different from each other. Like Necronomicon, this game also has a distinctly 80s Heavy Metal vibe, and although I don't think the soundtrack is quite as good as the one from Necronomicon it's still quite solid. Overall, while it may only be a runner up these are still clearly two of the best pinball games of the era and it's still easily within the G range.
After the somewhat questionably-balanced Magical Drop 2, Magical Drop 3 is thankfully mostly a return to form for the series. Most of the crazy shenanigans from the second game have been severely dialed back, while some special pieces remain the "wipe out all of a certain colour" pieces are gone, so VS mode plays sensibly again. I do still feel like the overall damage output is a little bit too high (many matches end very fast if someone gets even a modestly large combo) but it still plays pretty well for the most part. There's also a new mode that's been added in the adventure mode, which is a board game like mode where you play a mixture of battles of different types, sometimes single player, sometimes versus, sometimes some gimmick rules, etc. I think you can still make the case that the first game is the best one (I miss the puzzle mode, which still hasn't come back, the mode called Puzzle in this game is actually endless), but this one is at least still fun.
Mobile Suit Gundam Gaiden continues to get worse with every game. The basic gist of the problem is that the game doesn't get any better, but the missions get longer and more annoying which exposes the game's flaws more and more. This time the luster of the game is already wearing off even by the first mission, which is a boring "destroy a ton of mobile suits" mission that we've already seen before, but the real problem is the second mission, which is another atrocious defense mission with a ton of very evasive and tanky mobile suits where victory is almost completely down to luck. The problem here is that you only really have 3 attacks and it's simply not enough to allow you to play efficiently in any real way, so these fights are always going to take forever and you just have to hope the enemy doesn't target the things you need them to not destroy because they can be taken out in maybe 20 seconds. Even if you get past this, there isn't really a lot to see, the third stage is maybe a little interesting in that it's indoors, but it really doesn't change the gameplay any, neither does the final battle which occurs in space. I feel like even if this had been a single game it would probably be A for the overall lack of variety, but it really struggles as three separate games. It was a good experiment at first but they really needed to do more with it than they did.
DeleteSamurai Shodown 4 reminds me a lot of Magical Drop 2, where it deviates too much from the series formula and suffers a lot for it, and it's also a fairly lousy Saturn port to boot. Compared to Samurai Shodown 3, one thing that is immediately apparent is that the game looks and sounds way worse. Some of this is due to the Saturn port not being great, but the game also just generally seems to have fewer animation frames and is more zoomed out, in any case it's a very significant downgrade from the previous game. The sound on Saturn is also uniquely awful as the sound appears to have either been heavily compressed or somehow transferred wrong, this issue is unique to the Saturn port as all other versions of the game sound fine. When it comes to the game itself, the first thing you'll notice is that individual hits no longer matter nearly as much. The series trademark of Samurai Shodown is that getting hit by a single heavy button does like 30-40% damage (especially if it's a counterhit), which significantly emphasizes spacing and good use of pokes, but here the buttons do much less damage in favour of shifting the damage to the new CD combo mechanic and supers, which damages the game's identity. About the only good thing you can say for it is that at least it has a lot of characters, but if you want that you should play the PS1 version, which has an additional bonus character and also sounds much better, otherwise just stick to the much superior Samurai Shodown 3.
Shining Force 3 is a very ambitious game (or trilogy if you prefer, but they're so similar I feel like it makes sense to consider them a single product), but ultimately what carries the day is good writing and solid general mechanics. If you've played either of the two previous Shining Force games you already know the basics, Shining Force is essentially similar to Fire Emblem but structured more like a traditional JRPG with town exploration and standard RPG storytelling. Actually, on Saturn specifically, I feel like it feels very similar to Mystaria / Blazing Heroes, as besides having generally similar gameplay they also have a somewhat similar story, though Shining Force 3 is clearly a cut above in pretty much every way. The big new feature here is that the game is split into 3 parts, which essentially tell the same events from 3 different perspectives, similar to Suikoden 3 or Treasure of the Rudras. Well, perhaps it's more accurate to say it's really 2 different viewpoints and then a third that serves as a final scenario, but it's the same general idea in any case. Obviously then, whether or not this is interesting depends on whether or not the story is any good (which is exactly the reason Suikoden 3 kind of falls flat, but that's a story for another time), and indeed it is quite solid here. I've said this before, but it really helps to start your story off with a bit of intrigue to get people hooked, Blazing Heroes also did this, and it works well in Shining Force 3 as well, particularly as it is backed by strong writing and characters, with perhaps the only misstep being the choice to have the chosen protagonist of each chapter never speak (even though they do speak when you encounter them on other routes). When it comes to the gameplay, it's basic, but functional and fast-paced. We've seen this kind of basic grid-based SRPG format a thousand times by now and this game doesn't put many interesting twists on the formula, but it gets used so often because it works and you don't really need to add a lot to it to keep it interesting. I will say that you could probably make the case that Blazing Heroes has the edge in this regard, as particularly in the second game they do some slightly more interesting things with the battle system, but Shining Force 3 still manages to stay interesting for the most part and even if the battles might get a little dull at points the story helps keep things moving. That said, it is a legitimate question as to whether or not this battle system can carry the game for the around 100 hours it would take to beat all 3 chapters, and it is a relatively common opinion that the middle chapter drags since it mostly goes over the same events you already saw as the other protagonist and that character's party also has largely the same layout as the first (Suikoden 3 also definitely had this problem). Still, even if you only feel like playing the first chapter, it's still a relatively self-contained game and I would definitely recommend it to SRPG fans, and if you like it there's plenty more of it.
DeleteIt's been so long since we covered Soviet Strike on PS1 that I had kind of forgotten it, but in any case it's still a very solid game. As I mentioned when we covered it on PS1, it hasn't changed a lot from the Genesis games, but it didn't really need to as those games were decent, the biggest change is that the presentation has been improved quite a lot, with voice acting and better draw distance. Pretty much all of the things that the previous games did well are maintained, in particular the excellent map system remains, and I like the new system where rescuing people gives you extra armor (apparently I mentioned this on PS1 too). Compared to the PS1 version, this version seems to have more slowdown when a lot of things are blowing up, but this is fairly minor and the game still plays well overall. Probably one of Saturn's better action titles.