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Gamefaqs Link
Last Topic's Ratings:
Digital Pinball: Last Gladiators - GGAGG - 90% (5)
Magical Drop 3 - GGG - 100% (3)
Mobile Suit Gundam Gaiden Vol. 3 - BA - 25% (2)
Samurai Spirits: Amakusa Kourin - GGBGG - 80% (5) (1 SR)
Shining Force 3 - GGGGGGGG - 100% (9) (1 SR)
Soviet Strike - GGGAA - 80% (5)
I just wanted to note that I appreciate how active these topics remain even after all this time. It has to be said that the Saturn community has really kept this system going after all these years.
Games for this topic:
Keio Flying Squadron 2
Master of Monsters: Neo Generations
Saturn Bomberman Fight
Tilk
Virtual Kyoutei 2
Zen-Nippon Bishoujou Grand Prix: Find Love
Zen-Nippon Bishoujou Grand Prix has secretly been one of the games I've been looking forward to trying since the very beginning, which probably means it will be terrible. Tilk also looks fairly interesting.
Keio Flying Squadron 2 - G
ReplyDeleteMaster of Monsters: Neo Generations - B
Saturn Bomberman Fight - G
Tilk - A
Virtual Kyoutei 2 - B
Zen-Nippon Bishoujou Grand Prix: Find Love - A
Keio Flying Squadron 2 is a wacky 2D platformer that reminds me a lot of Castle of Illusion. Like Castle of Illusion, it's a very colourful and whimsical platformer with a lot of level variety, and the controls and artstyle feel generally similar too. Much of the gameplay consists of hop and bop, but you can periodically find weapons that you can use and things you can pick up and toss, which in either case gives you an extra hitpoint as long as you're carrying it. The game has something of an unusual scoring system where defeating some enemies gains points, but some other enemies instead lose points (being hit also loses points), which gives a little nuance to getting a high score (which is used to unlock stuff). There are also occasional shmup stages, though IMO these are the low point of the package as they're very basic and go on for quite a long time. On a fundamental level, I feel like the game is just all right. I kind of feel the same way about Castle of Illusion, I "like it" but I don't "love it". However, we haven't yet talked about the humour of the game, which is the thing that helps save it from potential mediocrity. This game is extremely weird, with a fair number of voiced scenes that I can't even really describe, you kinda just have to see it for yourself. The boss battle in the Sumo Stadium is a particular highlight, but pretty much all of these scenes are funny. I still probably wouldn't put this anywhere near my top platformers of the era, but it's probably still worth a playthrough if you enjoy the kind of insane Japanese humour found in the Parodius games and similar works.
I was initially hopeful that Master of Monsters: Neo Generations was a sequel to Disciples of Gaia, but it turns out that it's just the same crappy game with a different title. Actually, there are some differences here compared to the PS1 version, it's missing a fair number of added visual scenes and the tutorial, plus there are some small interface changes, but by far the most important change is that the game runs more smoothly, the delay on button presses from the PS1 version is absent here so controlling your army no longer feels totally atrocious, but unfortunately the game still generally sucks. Units you can summon still do basically no damage and usually miss, meaning it takes many attacks to kill even a single unit and both sides can summon like 40 of them. The master feels somewhat less OP in this version, so you probably do actually need to use summons here, but the game is so slow that it gets boring well before you could finish even a single battle. I feel like this series does have potential, but they really need to reign in the number of monsters summonable by each side and tidy up the interface a bit more (summoning in particular takes much too long even with animations off).
Saturn Bomberman Fight is a huge departure from previous games in the series, but I actually still kinda like it. For starters, this is not just another iteration of Bomberman 2 (NES) like pretty much every other Bomberman game, it is instead a completely new take on the formula that instead features isometric 3D stages. Something I like is that despite huge changes to the formula, like the abilty to jump and the fact that characters now have health bars, it still feels a lot like Bomberman, probably due to the presence of soft blocks containing powerups and the retention of the cross shaped explosions. It's definitely a fair bit less strategic than the previous games and I don't think anyone would say it's as good as Saturn Bomberman, but it's still pretty fun in a chaotic sort of way, especially with 4 players (and you probably want the multitap for Saturn Bomberman anyway). I also appreciate all the effort that went into the story mode, with each pair of characters having voiced dialogue before each battle, even if the characters themselves are all identical as far as I can tell. A pretty solid game in any case, definitely one of the better Bomberman spinoffs.
DeleteTilk is one of those titles that has a lot going for it but a single enormous flaw that will completely define your enjoyment of the game. At its core, the game is a gorgeously-animated and extremely story-heavy SRPG. The game has such extensive story scenes at first I actually thought it might be a Visual Novel, but there are indeed battle sequences eventually. The SRPG side of the game is fairly basic, playing quite similarly to Shining Force. The game's 2D animation is incredible for its time, with everything having a hand-drawn quality and battle and event animations being extremely lavishly done, and the Saturn version also includes full voice acting, which greatly enhances the story side of the game. However, as I alluded to, there is an extreme flaw with the Saturn version, which is the technical performance, namely the load times. Every time you attack in battle, the game loads for 10-15 seconds before the battle animation appears. No, this is not a joke or an exaggeration, I timed it. As this is an SRPG with dozens of enemies in each battle, you will be attacking A LOT, which means you will probably spend at least 5-10 minutes per battle simply staring at a black screen waiting for the battle animations to load (no, you cannot turn battle animations off). I feel like you could easily make the case that this makes the game completely unplayable and rate it as B, particularly as the PS1 version doesn't have this problem (battle animations still load a little slow, they take about 3-5 seconds there, but it's way better). That said, obviously the saving grace is that if you play this on an emulator you can use speedups, which makes it playable, but I certainly couldn't recommend playing this on console in good conscience. It's a shame, because everything else about the game is actually pretty decent, and the production values really are quite incredible for their time. I actually think if you are going to play it, this is still the version you want to play, as the voice acting adds a lot to the experience, just make sure you've got your speedup hotkey ready.
Virtual Kyoutei 2 is a pretty clear step down from the original game, which I already didn't think was that great. It's still pretty much the same in terms of structure, but now the actual racing mechanics suck. In particular, the boats are now extremely slidey and the power turn mechanic, which was the highlight of the first game, feels awful to use. The setup where you go through a kind of training school to be a Kyoutei driver and they teach you about the rules of the sport is easily the most interesting part of the game, but this is also in the first game so you're not really getting anything new by playing this version to compensate the inferior controls.
DeleteZen-Nippon Bishoujou Grand Prix: Find Love is another fanservice game which is very similar to Rapyulus Panic, but a fair bit better. The gist of the game is fairly similar, you first select a girl, then you alternate between playing simple minigames and having chatting sequences with her, while being rewarded with various fanservicey pictures of her with each step you complete. Compared to Rapyulus Panic, pretty much everything is better, the minigames are superior (more on that in a moment) and the art is of much higher quality, though there's no nudity unlike Haunted Casino there are a fair number of panty shots, bikinis, girls undressing, and the like, so it's definitely not as tame as Rapyulus was. As for the minigames, as far as I can tell, there's four of them, jigsaw puzzles, spot the differences, concentration, and the worst game ever made, slide puzzle. The chat sequences are kind of annoying, you basically just have to guess the right responses (what you would think are the nicest ones are not always correct), but at least you can instantly redo them if you make a mistake. The real torture is the slide puzzles, especially if a girl has a 5x5 slide puzzle as one of her last games, those are just evil. In any case, one of the most impressive things about this game is that there's a ton of it. There's an absolute boatload of girls, the box claims there's 35, I only had access to about 20, I don't know if you have to unlock the others by finishing some of the existing girls, but in any case there's still a ton and each one has multiple stages to it. The biggest drawback is that I wouldn't say the gameplay is particularly fun, it's not atrocious (slide puzzle excepted) but you're putting up with it solely for the sexy content (there's definitely a sexist joke to be made here), but to me that puts it clearly below something like Girls in Motion Puzzle which is actually a fun game that also happens to have fanservice, but it's still way better than Rapyulus Panic and other awful games like that. This is totally playable and maybe you'd even enjoy it if you're a masochist or the one person in the world who actually likes slide puzzles (I'm sure there must be one out there somewhere).