Rax/Maz/Jimbo 2021 Games Thread

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Rax/Maz/Jimbo 2021 Games Thread

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Honestly I meant to get this started even before the recent GoDaddy silliness, but for whatever reason life got in the way.

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Higurashi When They Cry (AKA Higurashi no Naku Koro ni, 2002-2004)

(I'm using the PS2 cover here but really I'm going through the Steam releases.)

I've mentioned before that I was a fan of the anime adaptation of Higurashi before, but I've never been able to make it through the original visual novels it was adapted from before when I tried playing them before 10+ years ago. Well with a sequel anime currently airing ("Higurashi When They Cry Gou", which I will talk about eventually in my 2021 movie thread after its done airing), nostalgia hit me hard enough to want to go back to the source material for something I was big into as a teenager.

There are eight primary "Chapters" to the main story of Higurashi, with these first four typically being grouped together with a label such as the "Question Arcs" (With Chapters 5 through 8 forming the "Answer Arcs". These are also called Higurashi Kai). As that title implies, these arcs are about setting up the story and the various mysterious goings on that populate it.

The first three stories also follow a similar formula (With the fourth deviating quite a bit): It is June 1983. Keiichi Maebara is the new kid in the village of Hinamizawa. He befriends several girls in his school and joins their Club, which involves board games, general competitions etc. The members include the leader Mion (A tomboyish girl), Rena (A girl who loves everything "kyute".), Satoko (A younger girl who loves traps like she's the kid from Home Alone or something), and Rika (A local shrine maiden girl that is beloved by the village).

One way or another, Keiichi usually learns about a series of unsolved murders that have taken place in Hinamizawa over the last several years. These crimes all have a number of similarities- they take place on the night of the local Watanagashi Festival (Which is dedicated to a local deity called "Oyashiso-sama"), involve one person being murdered, involve a second person completely disappearing, and the crimes end up being attributed to the Curse of Oyashiro-sama in some fashion. As the Chapters themselves go on, some kind of murder and disappearance happens (And the murders are usually brutal too. People are burned alive, have their heads violently bashed in, their stomachs cut open while their organs violently ripped out, etc.), and there's a question of whether this means the Curse is real or if some kind of human culprit is afoot. Also generally more batshit seemingly Lost-style shenanigans start happening.

As you go through the Chapters you also unlock TIPS (Which usually feature either some kind of side-scene featuring characters outside of the main action, or like relevant newspaper articles or journal entries or whatever), and at the end of each Chapter there's an "All Star Cast Review Session" (Which are non-canon bits where the cast of the game talk about the Chapter you just, as if they were just actors playing parts). That's really the extent of the gameplay here, just clicking, reading, and thinking about the mystery on your own, as there are no real choices to make like in typical visual novels (Save for a single choice during a TIP for Himatsubushi, and the joke behind that is that choices in games are meaningless anyways which perhaps puts Higurashi into conversation with games like Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty and BioShock more than I really expected).

To get into more specifics about individual Chapters...

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Ch.1: Onikakushi (2002) - This mostly matches the general explanation given above (And man the Club game segments here are super tedious), though here Ooishi rolls into town and tries to convince Keiichi that his new friends may in fact be involved with committing the murders behind "the curse of Oyashiro-sama" in some fashion. The general story here then focuses on whether Keiichi trusts in his new friends or if his paranoia is in fact justified and his new "friends" may in fact be trying to take his life.

I think once the actual story gets going this is pretty decent still, but I knowing the answers from having seen the anime over a hundred years ago I do have some questions about some character motivations (Namely What Mion and Rena think they're actually doing at any given time).

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Ch. 2: Watanagashi (2002) - This is honestly covers a lot of the same ground that the first Chapter/arc covers, though the wrinkle this introduces is Mion having a twin sister named Shion. Shion seems to disappear at once point, and it seems Mion might be the one behind it.

This chapter is kind of blah, as the Club scenes are still a bit much, and it still feels like it retreads a lot of territory from Onikakushi. I do like how this chapter delves more into the politics and history of Hinamizawa though, since that's actually relevant to what's going on at any given time.

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Ch. 3: Tatarigoroshi (2003) - It is June 1983. We once again see Keiichi bonding with his friends, seemingly for the first time, though here he bonds the most with Satoko, becoming a sort of older brother figure to her. While this is going on, Satoko's abusive uncle moves back into town, taking custody of Satoko and then generally abusing the shit out of her. Keiichi and his friends try to get Child Protective Services to help with the situation, and fail. Keiichi then decides to take measures into his own hands...through plotting out and executing the murder of the uncle.

This was probably the best of these four chapters, though I feel like its also the most conflicted (For reasons I get into below). I will say it is nice to get a story where Keiichi takes a very proactive stance instead of a reactive one as in Onikakushi and Watanagashi. Honestly it feels kind of Hitchockian in a way to me to (Like Keiichi throwing the Uncle's motorbike into the Onigafuchi swamp gives me vibes of Norman Bates dumping Marion's car into the swamp in Psycho), though it ultimately transitions back into that vaguely Lost-esque storytelling I mentioned about the previous chapters. The slice of life and club stuff I mentioned before works a little better here too since it believably enough sells Keiichi growing attached to Satoko, but man that baseball scene was painful even if it introduces a relatively important character in Dr. Irie.

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Ch. 4: Himatsubushi (2004) - It is June 1978. It is the height of the protest against the development of the Hinamizawa Dam, and the protesters are suspected by the national government of having kidnapped the grandson of a prominent politician. A young police officer from Tokyo named Mamoru Akasaka is sent in to investigate if the protesters were really involved with the kidnapping or not, but ends up finding some that affects him personally more than he anticipated.

This arc was a change of pace from the others. Akasaka is very different protagonist than Keiichi, and its nice to have a complete outsider to Hinamizawa instead of only a partial one. This is also easily the shortest chapter of the entire game, which allows it to be the most focused as well. they still do find a a way to insert a kind of pointless mahjong scene though- I already haven't had much patience for these kinds of things to begin with, but mahjong especially is incredibly difficult for me to make any kind of sense of.

Supposedly this arc wasn't even meant to exist at first too- the "All Star Cast Review Session" for Ch. 3 originally has the characters talking about Meakashi, which in the final release of the games is Ch. 5 instead of Ch. 4., and how we start the Answer Arcs. The thing, Himatsubushi ends up being fairly significant in the long run of the story, which makes me wonder just what the hell the ongoing plan for Higurashi was to begin with if Himatsubushi wasn't even supposed to exist originally.

General thoughts on Question Arcs as a Whole: Generally I dislike the Club scenes a lot (And have a lot to say about them below), but once you FINALLY get passed those in any given Chapter I tend to enjoy these Question Arcs a lot still for the most part. Really I think that's where writer Ryukishi07's talents really lie, in doing creepy mystery/thriller/suspense/horror material and not trying to do "plot-less" slice of life stuff or character building or focusing on theme (Where his weaknesses become more apparent. In a way its kind of similar to issues I have with Damon Lindelof's writing).

Beyond whatever feelings about the writing one has though, we have to talk about the actual presentation of the visual novel. The sprite work in the original version of the game is uh...

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^I'm sorry but this is just terrible. Like, look at their hands. Like I get that its just a doujin game, but other games at the time like Tsukihime even didn't look THIS bad.

Luckily the Steam release allows you to switch to a newer set of sprites which uh...

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^I can't quite put my finger on what it is about these that I don't like, but they still bother me. Not as much as Ryukishi07's original sprites, but they're not great.

Luckily there is 07th Mod, which allows you to not only mod newest sprite from PS2/PS3/Switch versions of Higurashi, they even patch in the option for voice acting, fix some issues with the music and sound effects, and even add in CG's (Which the original game had none of the during the Question Arcs if what I read online is correct.

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^I generally find this set of sprites preferable to the default options.

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^07th Mod allows a shocking amount of customization as well, which is nice.

The background music though still isn't great in the Question Arcs, but Ryukishi07 is generally decent about using making what trifling music and sound effects he does have from public domain sources here work. In particular he mines a lot out of just have humming cicadas spookily going off at times.


^Even if you murder all of your friends, the cicadas will know what you've done.

Club Scenes - Fun and Games: Yeah I've harped on these before but I really can't stress enough how much I didn't enjoy these bits. They just drag on and on and on and on...

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^What could possibly go wrong with hanging out with these girls? They just want to play games with you.

Honestly these club scenes are a bigger turn-off to this franchise than I think fans of the VN give them credit for, to the point I think the anime adaptation was wise to cut down on them and that the criticisms against it for doing so are unfair. Like if you look at the Steam achievements for Ch 1.: Onikakushi for exmaple (Which I admit are a limited sample size since the Steam release is not the only way to acquire this game, but still), you'll notice a huge drop in how many people are actually bothering to progress through the game:

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There's a huge drop off between the very first achievement and the second, and then another between the second and the third. The first achievement ("Farewell...") is through getting through shocking opening prologue that's a brutal murder scene, but then after that you get the slice of life bits and club scenes all the way through the achievement "A Fate Worse Than Death". After that the plot really picks up, and you can see that there's a much lower drop of percentage points as each achievement goes on (The After Party achievement for reading the "All Star Cast Review" session having the drop off it does is likely because its not even immediately obvious that once you unlock it that its additional hints and commentary about the main story and not just credits or something. Same with the TIPs achievement having a drop off, since to get it you have to read every single TIP and I'm sure some players missed reading one without realizing it or didn't realize they also contain story information). To me that suggests the club scenes and slice of life bits are legitimately a huge barrier to entry for a lot of people. Like I spent about 9 hours playing Onikakushi, but like four of those were just trying to get through the slice of life/club game scenes. That's a lot for the opening Chapter of a series.

Its also worth noting that Onikakushi is currently free on Steam because of the COVID-19 pandemic, so maybe more people are picking up the game than usually would like a visual novel because of that. Still, if it was more engaging in the beginning I don't think you would see dropoffs THAT huge.

Watanagashi, Tatarigoroshi*, and Himatsubushi don't seem to suffer quite as much from drop off, though by this point if you're in on Ryukishi07's writing style you're in on it I guess.

*There TIPS achievement for this one is noticeably glitched if you used the 07th Mod on this Chapter, which likely explains why there's such a huge dropoff for that particular achievement here.

Arguments in favor of the Club scenes seem to be that they develop the characters or something, but I'm not really convinced this is true. None of the Higurashi characters are particularly complicated (Even though I do have affection for them myself from having seen the anime), but if anything Club bits seems more like they function through engendering player to the characters simply through drawing out the runtime of the game. I'm not even against using Club scenes to explore or develop characters in theory, but that never seems to be what actually happens during them. They just...play games and cheat to win, and you get hours upon hours upon hours of this even in just the Question Arcs. Occasionally you get humorous "Punishment Game" for the loser but they're never super funny and don't really justify time needed for them. Really you could get gist of each character from like a single 20 minute scene of this, but there are way too many as it is.

I dunno, maybe they appeal more to the kind of people that enjoy stuff like Dungeons & Dragons. I don't understand those people either.

Mahjong: Seriously though, WTF are the rules to mahjong? That's the ultimate mystery of Higurashi.

Tatarigoroshi: Ryukishi07's Cognitive Dissonance?: A tension that really exists in the original visual novel (Moreso than what I remember of the anime adaptation) is the fact Ryukishi07 can't seem to reconcile the dude is into, uh, fethishized loli characters while also wanting to write a serious story about child abuse in Tatarigoroshi. Even if you take out sexual aspect out of it, that Satoko is unrealistically competent with Dennis the Menace/Home Alone/etc. trap shenanigans also makes it harder to buy this specific character being an abuse victim.

Like, I get that they're going for the idea that even people that seem to have it all together in public can be suffering terrible consequences in private. But Satoko the trap master and Satoko the abuse don't feel like two sides of the same person to me, they feel two completely different characters from two completely different stories. Like they throw in the excuse of Satoko tricking herself into believing that if she withstands the abuse that Satoshi will return to her, but why would she have needed Saotoshi needed to protect her to begin with just a year before if she was this unrealistically competent? Like it really does feel like Higurashi is trying to imply that Satoko brought on the abuse herself for no reason, which I'm not sure is the message that you should want to send with this kind of storyline. Maybe I'm misunderstanding something though.

Some guy on Steam raises a compelling but very spoiler-filled point that the Child Protect Services plotline might not actually make much sense at all either, beyond Ryukishi07's attempt to paint them in a bad light.

I dunno, even for an arc I think deals with the most compelling material there's a lot here that I also find very strange and at odds with itself.


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Donkey Kong Country (1994) - Replayed this on a bit of a whim, and it mostly holds up. Still looks pretty decent, still has a solid soundtrack, but I do find the gameplay to not be quite as tight as like Mario games that were coming out at the same time.


^I still do really love this song though.

It also seems to hold better than the N64 games Rareware was putting out a few years later (GoldenEye, Banjo-Tooie, Donkey Kong 64 etc.), though I suspect most 2D platformers that were praised when they came out generally hold up better than early forays into 3D.
Last edited by Raxivace on Wed Feb 03, 2021 3:35 am, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Rax/Maz/Jimbo 2021 Games Thread

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I was recently told that Donkey Kong Country 2 is even better than the first. Both are on Switch Online. I've played a little DKC but never the full game. I really should.
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Gendo wrote:I was recently told that Donkey Kong Country 2 is even better than the first. Both are on Switch Online. I've played a little DKC but never the full game. I really should.
Yeah DKC2 is generally held up as the best of that trilogy. I'll be play through the Switch Online version on the side here myself since I never got through the proper SNES version before.
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Re: Rax/Maz/Jimbo 2021 Games Thread

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Just want to say I do read these posts, I just never have anything to add to them.

DKC2 is the only game from that trilogy I haven't played; I really like the third one. Played it over and over again when I was a kid. I loved the music and the world designs. Also I don't play video games much at all, but I am of the opinion that Banjo-Kazooie is one of the best games of all time. I don't know what happened with Banjo-Tooie.
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I agree that Kazooie is actually really good and its the only Rareware game on the N64 that I think holds up. I think the problem with Tooie (And DK64 had this problem also) is that they just filled it with too much stuff and like everything in that game is drawn out way more than it really needed to be. Like it takes so long to actually get any given Jiggy in that game, whereas in comparison Kazooie is really tightly designed and breezy. Like most Jiggies in Kazooie you can get as soon as you enter a level (With maybe like, two exceptions that whole game); in Tooie you often are having to go through tunnels from level to get to some weird spot in another, or come back to a level after unlocking some random move, or something weird along those lines just for a single Jiggy.

Like Tooie could have been as good as Kazooie if they just scaled it back instead of creating something that feels like a slog at times.

DKC3 I don't remember too well so I'm kind of curious to see what that one is like again.
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Re: Rax/Maz/Jimbo 2021 Games Thread

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Yeah, I was only a kid when I played it last but I remember I hated Banjo-Tooie and quit at like the second or third level. Everything was too fucking big and slow and it took too fucking long to do anything. I felt like one regular world from Banjo-Tooie could have housed at least five or six of the worlds from Banjo-Kazooie, space-wise. And you had to keep going back and forth to do shit. It was extremely boring. Also the shitty frame rate kept distracting me.

Kazooie, by contrast, was tight, fun, and dense. It was also beautiful for an N64 game. Banjo-Kazooie > Super Mario 64.
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Apparently DKC3 is also on Switch now. Anyway, I started DKC 1 tonight. Got through the first 2 worlds. Not sure I'm all that into it. The physics don't feel as nice as something like Mario or Celeste. It's hard, but in an unforgiving kind of way. It's cool that there are secrets everywhere, but it makes it a little annoying when sometimes exploring to find those secrets means death. In fact the only time I died in world 1 was when trying to make the jump in Barrel Barrel Canyon to get a Winky token; and I lost over 12 lives and got a game over trying to do it.. I finally got it, just feels like you have to jump at the last possible pixel to make it.

I appreciate the difficulty curve; the game is really hard by the third world. But it's also annoying in that when I died near the start of the third world, I lost all my progress back to the last save area, which was a couple levels away from the end of the second world. Why would it not let you save after completing a world? As far as I know, I just had to survive long enough into the third world to get to either a save area or a travel area so I could go back to the save area in world 2.
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Re: Rax/Maz/Jimbo 2021 Games Thread

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Yeah I remember thinking DK1 is really hard and punishing. I guess I like that in video games, though. Cuphead was insane but that made it much more fun.

Another of my favorite games is Jak II, which is famously hard. I don't consider it that hard, probably because I'm always so into it that it doesn't register as punishing or a chore even when I die dozens of times.
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Yeah Celeste and Cuphead, and a few parts of Undertale, are all super difficult, and I loved them all. I enjoy grinding out a level that takes hours of practice to beat. But it feels like those games are really built around their difficulty; especially Celeste. I'm not sure I can fully understand the difference; but DKC1 feels like a different type of difficulty to me.
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Derived Absurdity wrote:Yeah, I was only a kid when I played it last but I remember I hated Banjo-Tooie and quit at like the second or third level. Everything was too fucking big and slow and it took too fucking long to do anything. I felt like one regular world from Banjo-Tooie could have housed at least five or six of the worlds from Banjo-Kazooie, space-wise. And you had to keep going back and forth to do shit. It was extremely boring. Also the shitty frame rate kept distracting me.
Yeah the frame rate on the N64 version was really noticeable.

I remember playing the Xbox 360 rerelease of Tooie, and being like 8 hours in and only having like 15 Jiggies. 8 hours into Kazooie and I was nearly 100% done with that game lol.

The length of Tooie also feels worse when you realize it only has 90 Jiggies compared to Kazooie's 100.
Banjo-Kazooie > Super Mario 64.
This I'm not sure about without replaying both back to back. I think Mario 64 probably mines more out of its gameplay with crazy walljumps and speedrunning techs and such Mario can pull off in that game, though I think Banjo aesthetically holds up better across the board and has its own unique charm.

I dunno, I was pretty big fan of both games at the end of the day.
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Gendo wrote:Apparently DKC3 is also on Switch now. Anyway, I started DKC 1 tonight. Got through the first 2 worlds. Not sure I'm all that into it. The physics don't feel as nice as something like Mario or Celeste. It's hard, but in an unforgiving kind of way. It's cool that there are secrets everywhere, but it makes it a little annoying when sometimes exploring to find those secrets means death. In fact the only time I died in world 1 was when trying to make the jump in Barrel Barrel Canyon to get a Winky token; and I lost over 12 lives and got a game over trying to do it.. I finally got it, just feels like you have to jump at the last possible pixel to make it.

I appreciate the difficulty curve; the game is really hard by the third world. But it's also annoying in that when I died near the start of the third world, I lost all my progress back to the last save area, which was a couple levels away from the end of the second world. Why would it not let you save after completing a world? As far as I know, I just had to survive long enough into the third world to get to either a save area or a travel area so I could go back to the save area in world 2.
FWIW I didn't really bother with bonuses and such this time around. But yeah a lot of the gameplay isn't quite as tight as Mario and such.

You can always use Switch Online rewind features if you wanted.
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Derived Absurdity wrote:Another of my favorite games is Jak II, which is famously hard. I don't consider it that hard, probably because I'm always so into it that it doesn't register as punishing or a chore even when I die dozens of times.
The only part about Jak II I remember being particularly hard is some long battle sequence in the overworld toward the end of the game. The rest I remember finding fairly reasonable.

Jak II kind of makes for an interesting comparison to Banjo-Tooie now that I think about it, since they're both kind of edgy sequels to fairly lighthearted platformers, though Jak II changes a lot more than Tooie did.
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I started playing Dark Souls 3. This definitely starts out harder than some of the other games, but so far I'm having fun.

Not really huge on these normal enemies and boss types that turn into chaotic goo monsters though. Like they're clearly inspired by the Las Plagas enemies from Resident Evil 4 to some extent, but they're such a pain in the ass to actually fight.
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Jak II has the most jarring change in tone of any sequel I've ever seen to anything, video game or otherwise, yet somehow they made it work.

I don't remember Bajo-Tooie being edgy, but if so, that's just another screw up. Nothing connected to Banjo-Kazooie has any business being edgy.
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Tooie has characters dying, the gloomier tone, Grunty losing her rhyming etc. It isn't as blatant as Jak II, but its there.
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Oh and who can forget about this classic bit of Banjo-Tooie stage design.

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Higurashi's premise reminds me vaguely of Boogiepop Phantom and Paranoia Agent.

Besides the myriad of Mario games, Donkey Kong Country is probably the game my cousin and I spent the most time playing together. We played the first one enough to find almost all of the hidden areas/secrets. We played 2 a lot as well, but never got into 3 as much. TBH at this point I don't remember much of the differences between them, though 1 definitely has the most nostalgia. I don't remember it being all that difficult, but coming from stuff like Ninja Gaiden may have biased my perception of difficulty.

Speaking of Ninja Gaiden, apparently the world's first no-damage run was just recently accomplished. There was a pretty cool video about why a no-damage run was thought impossible and how one guy finally managed to achieve it:


I also have fond memories of Banjo Kazooie but it was only a game I rented so I didn't spend as much time with it as many of the other classics. For some reason, I never got into many of these classic games when they made 3D transitions except Mario. I remember trying to play DK64 and just couldn't get into it.
Raxivace wrote:I started playing Dark Souls 3. This definitely starts out harder than some of the other games, but so far I'm having fun.
Coincidentally I was thinking of starting DS2 after I finish Cuphead and RE3. DS1 is really the one game that hasn't left my mind much since playing it, maybe even more than Witcher 3.
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Derived Absurdity wrote:Yeah I remember thinking DK1 is really hard and punishing. I guess I like that in video games, though. Cuphead was insane but that made it much more fun.
Gendo wrote:I appreciate the difficulty curve; the game is really hard by the third world.
Either of you played Dark Souls? I didn't have too much difficult with that game, but it's kinda legendary for being hard. I think like Rax said, most of its difficulty comes from how obscure it is about various things. Like, after you finish the tutorial there are three main directions you can go in and two will result in getting the shit beat out of you. I think I cheated myself a bit by having a guide handy on my first playthrough. I tried not to consult it too much, but even just knowing what path to take helped tremendously... that and my willingness to grind for hours to level up.
Gendo wrote:But it's also annoying in that when I died near the start of the third world, I lost all my progress back to the last save area, which was a couple levels away from the end of the second world. Why would it not let you save after completing a world? As far as I know, I just had to survive long enough into the third world to get to either a save area or a travel area so I could go back to the save area in world 2.
That's how games used to be on NES and SNES. Modern games and modern versions of old games have been made much easier thanks to save states.
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Nope, no Dark Souls.

That's one reason why Jak II was supposed to be so hard, the relative lack of save points. That's a rather uncreative way to make a video game hard, but whatever.
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Eva Yojimbo wrote:Higurashi's premise reminds me vaguely of Boogiepop Phantom and Paranoia Agent.
I dunno about Boogiepop Phantom since I haven't seen that yet, but I could see some similarities to Paranoia Agent (I think PA is ultimately more cynical series though). I always thought The White Ribbon was kind of similar, but with caveat that Higurashi is using way more anime-y story beats and character archetypes and not European arthouse/Haneke ones.

Haneke would also probably hate Higurashi lmao.
Besides the myriad of Mario games, Donkey Kong Country is probably the game my cousin and I spent the most time playing together. We played the first one enough to find almost all of the hidden areas/secrets. We played 2 a lot as well, but never got into 3 as much. TBH at this point I don't remember much of the differences between them, though 1 definitely has the most nostalgia. I don't remember it being all that difficult, but coming from stuff like Ninja Gaiden may have biased my perception of difficulty.
I'd probably put Castlevania games above DKC in difficulty as well.
Speaking of Ninja Gaiden, apparently the world's first no-damage run was just recently accomplished. There was a pretty cool video about why a no-damage run was thought impossible and how one guy finally managed to achieve it:
This I need to play still too.

That video makes me wonder if that boss's head was ever actually meant to be killed or not. Like I'm guessing it was if they programmed it in, but it makes you wonder about the specific intent of the designers here.
I also have fond memories of Banjo Kazooie but it was only a game I rented so I didn't spend as much time with it as many of the other classics. For some reason, I never got into many of these classic games when they made 3D transitions except Mario. I remember trying to play DK64 and just couldn't get into it.
Like I was saying, DK64 is just such a weird slog of a game, and it does ultimately play very different than any of the DKC's.
Coincidentally I was thinking of starting DS2 after I finish Cuphead and RE3. DS1 is really the one game that hasn't left my mind much since playing it, maybe even more than Witcher 3.
I'd love to know your take on DS2. Its kind of the black sheep of the franchise, but I dunno I enjoyed it well enough. Its got flaws and changes a lot about how DS1 worked to point it might be worth looking up an article about differences compared to DS1 (Like Pyromancy in DS2 is based on character stats IIRC, which I don't like. Soul Memory is pretty nonsense system too), but I didn't like hate the game or anything myself. It might be the longest Soulsborne game as well all things considered.

The other thing is that the PS3 and PS4 versions of DS2 have some weird little differences. Like in PS3 version the items you need to access the DLC areas are just given to you upfront, but in the PS4 version I think you have to go find it or something kind of like in DS1. I only ever played PS3 version myself though so I don't quite know all of what's up here.
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Re: Rax/Maz/Jimbo 2021 Games Thread

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Derived Absurdity wrote:That's one reason why Jak II was supposed to be so hard, the relative lack of save points. That's a rather uncreative way to make a video game hard, but whatever.
I've gone back and forth on this. I think there's something to be said for a challenge to involve endurance or intelligent usage of resources over a period of time, but OTOH sometimes it just fuckin' sucks to have to kill the same 15 goblins or whatever over and over and over and over and over again to get to a boss or some other part that's actually giving you trouble. I'm not really sure there's a clean answer here to when it becomes a problem or not.

Dark Souls II actually had an interesting answer to this problem where if you killed any random enemy something like 15 times, it would just flatout stop respawning unless you used an item to reset the entire area you were in (But each enemy would come back stronger too). Of course being an RPG that has its own drawbacks, as you might be grinding an enemy for item drops or something and suddenly be screwed out of the opportunity unless you wanted to bring them back but stronger.
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Re: Rax/Maz/Jimbo 2021 Games Thread

Post by Eva Yojimbo »

Derived Absurdity wrote:Nope, no Dark Souls.

That's one reason why Jak II was supposed to be so hard, the relative lack of save points. That's a rather uncreative way to make a video game hard, but whatever.
You should try Dark Souls. I love it to death and have been itching to play the sequels ever since playing the first game. It's an extremely cryptic, atmospheric game too, which makes it even more engrossing beyond the challenging difficulties.

Lack of saves was just the default back in the day. I remember thinking how novel it was when I encountered my first games with password-saves, which might've been on the SNES (hard to remember that far back). Most of the early hard-as-fuck NES were direct ports from their arcade counterparts, which were designed to eat the quarters of naive kids (and their parents). Kinda silly they didn't make them a bit easier for consoles, but nobody knew what they were doing back then beyond making money off what at the time was mostly seen as a novelty.
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Re: Rax/Maz/Jimbo 2021 Games Thread

Post by Eva Yojimbo »

This is kinda OT, but I hate--nay, LOATHE--the PS Store redesign with a fiery passion normally reserved for child molesters and people who talk in the theater. For one, they eliminated Wish Lists, and they happened to do this while we were having our 11-day ice storm power outage, so I lost all 80-something games I had on there. I have learned about the site PSPrices since then, which has a similar feature and will send email alerts when games on your list go on sale, but it's still impossible for me to get all of those games back because I don't remember what they were. Navigation of the site is also a joke now. Like, there's no way to go to sales and sort games by anything, or to avoid seeing all the junk crap you have no interest in purchasing. Half the time the "add to cart" feature doesn't even come up on my browsers (especially on Chrome for PC). Like, I don't believe in violence but I seriously want to get whoever did this redesign in a room so I can repeatedly punch them in the face.

Makes me really wish I'd just spent the past few years buying everything on PC and only purchasing exclusives on PS.
Raxivace wrote:
Eva Yojimbo wrote:Higurashi's premise reminds me vaguely of Boogiepop Phantom and Paranoia Agent.
I dunno about Boogiepop Phantom since I haven't seen that yet, but I could see some similarities to Paranoia Agent (I think PA is ultimately more cynical series though). I always thought The White Ribbon was kind of similar, but with caveat that Higurashi is using way more anime-y story beats and character archetypes and not European arthouse/Haneke ones.

Haneke would also probably hate Higurashi lmao.
White Ribbon is an interesting comparison too, though I don't remember a ton about that film.
Raxivace wrote:
Speaking of Ninja Gaiden, apparently the world's first no-damage run was just recently accomplished. There was a pretty cool video about why a no-damage run was thought impossible and how one guy finally managed to achieve it:
This I need to play still too.

That video makes me wonder if that boss's head was ever actually meant to be killed or not. Like I'm guessing it was if they programmed it in, but it makes you wonder about the specific intent of the designers here.
Yeah, it's a curious thing because I can't imagine the designers ever intended anyone to ever actually destroy the head given that it requires world-record-level button-mashing speed while essentially using a kind of "cheat" to get more hits in than you should be able to do to begin with. I know he says at one part of the video that the head has the same HP as the tail/heart, so maybe they just did that for symmetry and laziness? Maybe it needed SOME HP to trigger it coming off? I don't know.
Raxivace wrote:
I also have fond memories of Banjo Kazooie but it was only a game I rented so I didn't spend as much time with it as many of the other classics. For some reason, I never got into many of these classic games when they made 3D transitions except Mario. I remember trying to play DK64 and just couldn't get into it.
Like I was saying, DK64 is just such a weird slog of a game, and it does ultimately play very different than any of the DKC's.
I rented and played DK64 for about a week and I literally don't remember having fun with the game once. I don't know if it ever gets fun at any point, but I couldn't be bothered to rent it another week to find out.
Raxivace wrote:
Coincidentally I was thinking of starting DS2 after I finish Cuphead and RE3. DS1 is really the one game that hasn't left my mind much since playing it, maybe even more than Witcher 3.
I'd love to know your take on DS2. Its kind of the black sheep of the franchise, but I dunno I enjoyed it well enough. Its got flaws and changes a lot about how DS1 worked to point it might be worth looking up an article about differences compared to DS1 (Like Pyromancy in DS2 is based on character stats IIRC, which I don't like. Soul Memory is pretty nonsense system too), but I didn't like hate the game or anything myself. It might be the longest Soulsborne game as well all things considered.

The other thing is that the PS3 and PS4 versions of DS2 have some weird little differences. Like in PS3 version the items you need to access the DLC areas are just given to you upfront, but in the PS4 version I think you have to go find it or something kind of like in DS1. I only ever played PS3 version myself though so I don't quite know all of what's up here.
The fact that it has a reputation as the black sheep also has me interested to see what I'd think. I know Miyazaki wasn't the head director/designer/whatever for that game, so that probably accounts for many of the differences. It seems to be one of those games that most people don't like (at least not as much as the other games in the series) but which has a minority of very vocal fans as well.
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Re: Rax/Maz/Jimbo 2021 Games Thread

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Eva Yojimbo wrote:This is kinda OT, but I hate--nay, LOATHE--the PS Store redesign with a fiery passion normally reserved for child molesters and people who talk in the theater.
Lol I still remember that line from Firefly.

Tbh I didn't realize PS Store changed quite so much. I think its certainly on-topic though, since how you buy games is certainly relevant to, well, games. Like I've definitely bitched before that Fallout 3 is even available for purchase on Steam in its current state.
Makes me really wish I'd just spent the past few years buying everything on PC and only purchasing exclusives on PS.
It really depends on the game for me, such as with technical limitations of my PC etc. Like honestly only reason I buy PC games if I can run them is for mods (And mainly nude mods at that), though otherwise I generally prefer console gaming for most things.
Eva Yojimbo wrote:White Ribbon is an interesting comparison too, though I don't remember a ton about that film.
Basically I'm thinking of "mysterious village where kids are maybe killing people in mysterious ways" aspect here, though execution couldn't be more different between the two.
eah, it's a curious thing because I can't imagine the designers ever intended anyone to ever actually destroy the head given that it requires world-record-level button-mashing speed while essentially using a kind of "cheat" to get more hits in than you should be able to do to begin with. I know he says at one part of the video that the head has the same HP as the tail/heart, so maybe they just did that for symmetry and laziness? Maybe it needed SOME HP to trigger it coming off? I don't know.
I wonder if it actually even is a cheat. Like there are definitely times where gamers have assumed something in unintended glitch that ended up being totally intended feature. A fair amount of "glitches" in the Smash Bros. games ended up being that way IIRC.
I rented and played DK64 for about a week and I literally don't remember having fun with the game once. I don't know if it ever gets fun at any point, but I couldn't be bothered to rent it another week to find out.
I think you have to really like collectathons to get into DK64. I did back then, though even I eventually felt it to be too much.
The fact that it has a reputation as the black sheep also has me interested to see what I'd think. I know Miyazaki wasn't the head director/designer/whatever for that game, so that probably accounts for many of the differences. It seems to be one of those games that most people don't like (at least not as much as the other games in the series) but which has a minority of very vocal fans as well.
I wonder if reputation has changed at all for DS2 since one of the big criticisms directed at the game- the world design being fairly linear and not Metroidvania-esque- is a flaw that was continued in Bloodborne and I'm sad to report Dark Souls 3 as well, and Miyazaki WAS head of those games.

Of course it wouldn't be the first time "fans" had a double standard.
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Re: Rax/Maz/Jimbo 2021 Games Thread

Post by Eva Yojimbo »

Raxivace wrote:
Eva Yojimbo wrote:This is kinda OT, but I hate--nay, LOATHE--the PS Store redesign with a fiery passion normally reserved for child molesters and people who talk in the theater.
Lol I still remember that line from Firefly.

Tbh I didn't realize PS Store changed quite so much. I think its certainly on-topic though, since how you buy games is certainly relevant to, well, games. Like I've definitely bitched before that Fallout 3 is even available for purchase on Steam in its current state.
I just meant OT in relation to what we were discussing. "Tangential" would've been a better term, but I digress. Yeah, PS Store changed a lot, at least on my PC/browser version, which is what I use most of the time. Maybe it's not so bad through the PS or on an app.
Raxivace wrote:
Makes me really wish I'd just spent the past few years buying everything on PC and only purchasing exclusives on PS.
It really depends on the game for me, such as with technical limitations of my PC etc. Like honestly only reason I buy PC games if I can run them is for mods (And mainly nude mods at that), though otherwise I generally prefer console gaming for most things.
I was probably in the same boat before I bought my new PC, which should be able to run modern games smooth as butter (though it still isn't here yet... 2 months and counting!).
Raxivace wrote:
eah, it's a curious thing because I can't imagine the designers ever intended anyone to ever actually destroy the head given that it requires world-record-level button-mashing speed while essentially using a kind of "cheat" to get more hits in than you should be able to do to begin with. I know he says at one part of the video that the head has the same HP as the tail/heart, so maybe they just did that for symmetry and laziness? Maybe it needed SOME HP to trigger it coming off? I don't know.
I wonder if it actually even is a cheat. Like there are definitely times where gamers have assumed something in unintended glitch that ended up being totally intended feature. A fair amount of "glitches" in the Smash Bros. games ended up being that way IIRC.
Almost certainly unintended given most old NES games were just direct ports of their arcade versions and arcade games were designed with one purpose in mind: eat the quarters of children('s parents). Game designers weren't thinking about putting in little hidden features that "gamers" would love to discover.
Raxivace wrote:
The fact that it has a reputation as the black sheep also has me interested to see what I'd think. I know Miyazaki wasn't the head director/designer/whatever for that game, so that probably accounts for many of the differences. It seems to be one of those games that most people don't like (at least not as much as the other games in the series) but which has a minority of very vocal fans as well.
I wonder if reputation has changed at all for DS2 since one of the big criticisms directed at the game- the world design being fairly linear and not Metroidvania-esque- is a flaw that was continued in Bloodborne and I'm sad to report Dark Souls 3 as well, and Miyazaki WAS head of those games.

Of course it wouldn't be the first time "fans" had a double standard.
I know at least of one pretty lengthy defense of the game on YouTube. Haven't watched it myself:
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Re: Rax/Maz/Jimbo 2021 Games Thread

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Ah I didn't realize Ninja Gaiden was arcade port. Yeah it seems very unlikely that thing was intended then.

Is that a video even a defense? I only watched a bit before skipping around and the title seems like a bait and switch. Like I went to the conclusion where they seem to argue its a poorly made game, which I don't agree with at all. Like they even say something to the effect of "If Dark Souls II isn't a poorly made game, then most games aren't poorly made" which is just ridiculous hyperbole. DS2 is by no means flawless game, but no Souls game isn't heavily flawed in my view and this video just seems like one of the ones where people think being able to complain and whine for a 100 minutes while asking "Why does this aspect of the game exist?" with the same energy of a child pestering their parent while stuck in a traffic jam means you've created a compelling argument.

EDIT: Some sleuthing has turned up that this "Mauler" fella had a bone to pick with hbomberguy, who actually did make a video defending DS2 from some third idiot's critique.

Now I get not liking hbomberguy and I remember reading his posts on Something Awful forums before he got internet famous where he would argue things like "Pacific Rim is a fascist film" and would often be really irritating while doing so, but this Mauler guy doesn't seem much better TBH.
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Re: Rax/Maz/Jimbo 2021 Games Thread

Post by Eva Yojimbo »

Sucks if it's a bait-and-switch. I really had no idea since it's just a video I just came across while watching other DS content and threw it on my "watch later" list to watch after I played the game. So it's just in response to another video that's actually a defense? Guess I need to put the original video on my "watch later" list too.
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Re: Rax/Maz/Jimbo 2021 Games Thread

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OMG, it seems like that Mauler video is actually the final part of an entire series he did about how much he hates Dark Souls II. JFC.
Mauler's Part 1 Video description wrote:Hey guys!

I have returned and I am bringing you another installment to my response series.

This time around we are delving into a defense video for Dark Souls 2. This video was created by HBomberGuy and a link to it is right here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SRTfcMe ... hbomberguy" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;" onclick="window.open(this.href);return false;
The entire series is a response to the hbomberguy video. Hbomb's video was only 80 minutes long. This response series is hours upon hours.
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Re: Rax/Maz/Jimbo 2021 Games Thread

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"Geez, how would anyone have time for that?" I say, completely forgetting that I used to do sentence-by-sentence rebuttals back in the day on places like EGF. Still, producing that much content as a YT video that's just in response to another video seems a tad excessive!

Also, just to make sure I wasn't mistaken, I checked and it turns out that the NES and arcade Ninja Gaiden games--which were released almost simultaneously--were different games, so the NES version wasn't an arcade port after all.
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Re: Rax/Maz/Jimbo 2021 Games Thread

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Those EGF conversations probably could have been trimmed, but at the same time its not like it takes a third party reader 7 literal hours or whatever (I didn't count, these Mauler videos could be a little shorter or longer) to get through reading those kinds of posts.

In general I suspect a lot of these lengthy YouTubers are more about using bloated runtimes to bedazzle and to an extent perhaps even intimidate people into accepting their premises rather than because they actually have a case that merits the amount of time to just watch such a series (To say nothing about actually engaging in whatever the specifics of this DSII argument is). "Dark Souls II must be the worst game ever if this guy made 7 hours of video about it, and you can't say otherwise if you don't put in the monumental effort it would take to debunk it".
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Re: Rax/Maz/Jimbo 2021 Games Thread

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The Youtube version of the Gish Gallop.
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Re: Rax/Maz/Jimbo 2021 Games Thread

Post by Eva Yojimbo »

Raxivace wrote:Those EGF conversations probably could have been trimmed, but at the same time its not like it takes a third party reader 7 literal hours or whatever (I didn't count, these Mauler videos could be a little shorter or longer) to get through reading those kinds of posts.

In general I suspect a lot of these lengthy YouTubers are more about using bloated runtimes to bedazzle and to an extent perhaps even intimidate people into accepting their premises rather than because they actually have a case that merits the amount of time to just watch such a series (To say nothing about actually engaging in whatever the specifics of this DSII argument is). "Dark Souls II must be the worst game ever if this guy made 7 hours of video about it, and you can't say otherwise if you don't put in the monumental effort it would take to debunk it".
I don't know if the motivation behind making such YT is the same, but I know back when I used to post on EGF the long, sentence-by-sentence debates was mostly a product of two things: one was wanting to make sure I addressed all the points someone made so they didn't feel like I was ignoring them or missing something important, and two was just being really bad at editing them down into something more concise. Over the years I've gotten better at trying to cut out the heart of whatever a disagreement is about and just address a few key points at a time, but it's taken time and practice. Obviously haven't listened to that video series, but it's almost certainly heavy on repetition and "getting lost in the weeds" as the saying goes.
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Re: Rax/Maz/Jimbo 2021 Games Thread

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Derived Absurdity wrote:The Youtube version of the Gish Gallop.
I like the term we used to use on EGF called omnislashing.
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Re: Rax/Maz/Jimbo 2021 Games Thread

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Yeah it does seem a lot like that gish galloping thing.
Eva Yojimbo wrote:
Derived Absurdity wrote:The Youtube version of the Gish Gallop.
I like the term we used to use on EGF called omnislashing.
Huh I always thought it was just a regular Final Fantasy 7 reference, since Cloud's final Limit Break involved, well, slashing a dude a million times and was called Omnislash. I didn't know that in the context of that forums practice the term was a reference to a specific guy (Though maybe they themselves were referencing FF7).

I think other difference is that its not like you were making money off of those EGF posts. There were no 30 second ads or Patreon links or whatever interrupting your Wall of Text, and apparently for popular YouTube channels a lot of these longer videos help generate some decent income (This was part of BobVids' critique of CinemaSins' channel anyways, though even BobVids himself made several videos about the channel he was criticizing). This always just raises doubt in me about the sincerity of the people involved.
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Re: Rax/Maz/Jimbo 2021 Games Thread

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^ Yeah, I was surprised when I found out the term originated from a dude that had that username, and that was back in late-90s/early-00s, not long after FFVII was released so he almost certainly named himself after the Cloud move.

Good point about monetization, though I know income from YouTube is a pretty tricky and highly variable thing. Like some people make a good, comfortable living from it while for others, often doing the same or very similar things, it's mostly just a hobby. I imagine it's why most of them promote their Patreon so much. I do know that shorter videos tend to do better statistically as they tend to get more clicks, likes, and comments, which all factor into getting more/better ad revenue. Not saying nobody makes a living with long-form content, but it seems to be rarer.

And while we're on the subject of Dark Souls, just got another rec of apparently some streamer dude playing the game using a guitar as a controller. Seems absolutely insane. I only watched a bit and he seems to be struggling to get it properly set up to start with, but I'd love to see how it goes when he gets it figured out:
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Re: Rax/Maz/Jimbo 2021 Games Thread

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Oh I've seen that LobosJr guy before, he often does insane challenge runs for these games, like fists only the entire time and such.

I think he even streamed while wearing a full suit of armor once...
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Re: Rax/Maz/Jimbo 2021 Games Thread

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BTW I'm almost done with my first Dark Souls 3 run. The thing is that against my better judgement I decided to aim for the Platinum Trophy, and well that involves heavily grinding for Covenant items since the online seems kind of dead already for this game. The thing is that I kind of wanted to do the level grinding anyways, since I'm not done with the last DLC and frankly the difficulty level is unreasonable compared to when you can access it.

Once I actually finish the DLC I'll do a preliminary review of some kind of DS3 as a whole, and then probably some kind of follow up once I finish NG+1 and NG+2 (And there are rings on those runs you need for Platinum anyways). There's at least one major character subplot I fucked up in NG anyways that I'll need to do in NG+1, but as a whole I also wonder just how much DS3 stands up to revisits anyways.

After DS3 madness I imagine I'll go back to Higurashi answer arcs or something for a while.
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Whatever flaws Dark Souls 3 has, it gave me this beautiful moment.
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Re: Rax/Maz/Jimbo 2021 Games Thread

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Image

Dark Souls III (2016)
Dark Souls III: Ashes of Ariandel (2016)
Dark Souls III: The Ringed City (2017) – I'm really torn on DS3. On the one hand, if you want more Dark Souls this is more Dark Souls. On the other hand, man this unfortunately goes for the "greatest hits of the rest of the series" approach that's kind of unfortunate for a "franchise" with only four other games and all within only a seven year period at that.

I guess that's my first big complaint here, in that Dark Souls 3 doesn't really feel like its bringing very much new at all to the table here. Countless areas and NPC's recall past games extremely heavily to the point entire characters and areas from Dark Souls 1 return. Anor Londo in particular has become ravaged by time. Thing is that prior games we're already reiterating on each other to a pretty heavy extent that it just makes DS3 doubling down on it feel egregious.

And if that wasn't bad enough, Dark Souls 3 repeats itself at times too on top of that. The "Soulsborne" series was already infamous for each game having some BS poison swamp area. Dark Souls 3 has like, five with the twist being that the final one in the DLC isn't actually poison or toxic.

Firelink Shrine is another one. Your main hub area of this game is called Firelink Shrine, even though it doesn't really resemble the one from Dark Souls 1 and is closer to the Nexus from Demon's Souls. Except you eventually discover a second Firelink Shrine, and then you discover a third. And then in the DLC you discover the ruins of the original Firelink Shrine from Dark Souls 1, but like why? I mean I get the meta theme in Ringed City, since you're descending from Dark Souls 3, through Dark Souls 2 (Earthen Peak), and then end up in Dark Souls 1 (Firelink Shrine), and then go...somewhere else (The past? The future? Who the heck knows), but at the same time why did this game show me four variations on Firelink Shrine?

This game once again drops the Metroidvania world design as well for something much more linear, which is disappointing. That being said, despite the world design kind of sucking and the theming of the levels being unoriginal, the level design itself is honestly pretty solid for the most part (Until the DLC). Like the levels may not be particularly inspired or original even just within the context of the Soulsborne games, but they are fun enough to just fight stuff in and run around for the most part. There aren't too many egregious Bonfire to boss runs etc. (In fact there's argument to be made this game has too many Bonfires), the areas have decent secrets and enemy placement etc. For the most part it is actually pretty engaging from moment to moment.

Still, there are some issues with level design. While this game does have more shortcuts and reusing of Bonfires than other entries with their equivalents...it also has the most seemingly pointless shortcuts you can unlock, to the point there's a reasonable question of what could have possibly been intended. Like why would you ever take the Archdragon Peak elevator near the second Bonfire down to the first floor area? The elevator is near a bonfire and you can just warp anyways...and the area you go down to has a Bonfire right there!!!! Almost every boss gives you a Bonfire after you kill them, but oftentimes there will be another Bonfire like 30 seconds away.

Its just unfortunate compared to how elegant everything about Bonfires was in Dark Souls 1. Like reusing Bonfires in Dark Souls 1 was important I think because of Kindling. You Kindle a Bonfire, you get more Estus charges, which means more heals. That matters. Dark Souls 3 has no Kindling equivalent for individual Bonfires, and I wonder if that's a result of the level design or a result of the level design abandoning Kindling as a concept. Its the same with leveling- in Dark Souls 1 you could level up from any Bonfire, but in Dark Souls 3 you always have to warp back to Firelink Shrine to level. Demon's Souls did this (Perhaps forgivable as the first game in the "series"), but Dark Souls II, Bloodborne, AND Dark Souls 3 continue this and I have no idea why. Like even if its just to make you "attached" to Firelink Shrine in DS3, all of your basic shops and upgrading and stuff are done there anyways so its not like you still wouldn't have a reason to visit often.

Oh yeah, there's the DLC to talk about too. I kind of like Ashes of Ariandel actually- the first half is a big open area that is kind of unusual for Dark Souls and probably the most "original" part of the game, since it almost feels like a Witcher 3 or Zelda: Breath of the Wild type of area popped up in Dark Souls, though a village area you can go to around the middle of the DLC is straight up just a repurposed Undead Settlement from earlier on in the game, which just makes it feel like this is reusing a trick that the Artorias of the Abyss DLC for Dark Souls 1 already did. The cliffside and church basement area after this are kind of neat too, but feel more typical. The main boss of this DLC is pretty ridiculous though with like THREE (!!!!) health bars/phases that makes me think this DLC is pretty ridiculous for when you first can access it in the main game.

The Ringed City DLC is honestly kind of bad, especially as the final bit of Dark Souls content. The big gimmick here is running- so many enemies just bombard you with ridiculous amounts of projectiles that I can only imagine you are meant to run straight through these levels, its just obnoxious how it discourages exploration. Its also a bit weird because some of these enemies (The Angel guys) permanently die once you finally manage to kill, but those Judicator guys don't seem to from what I can tell.

When you do actually have regular enemies to fight, their damage is just ridiculous and honestly just too high and their own HP is probably too much. I really don't know when they expected you to do this DLC because everything here is so much stronger and beefier than the rest of the game by like a lot. Did they expect you to level grind first? I actually did a bunch of level grinding and even my Ultragreatsword wielding character still often had trouble cleaving through dudes.

The worst though is this area where these big fat enemy guys just infinitely respawn and walk up and down a city road. The thing is, there's an NPC at the top of the road, behind a door, that you have to talk to in order to receive a quest to fight a superboss later on, but as you're talking to them you can easily get attacked by these big enemies. And because they infinitely respawn, its not like you can clear the area out first. So you end up not being able to even pay attention to this NPC's dialogue if you just get caught at the wrong time. Its just a baffling bit of game design from a series that is mostly pretty decent about this sort of thing.

The bosses are probably too strong in general too (Especially the Dragon boss fight who just has way too much HP), but are at least easier to read than regular mooks (Exception being the boss fight in the Church which is just a glorified PVP battle, which again reuses a gimmick from Demon's Souls).

I'm complaining a lot about a game I actually really enjoyed a lot. Like the basic combat is really quite fun (And starts out pretty challenging), and I think the faster, more Bloodborne-esque speed actually works for the most part (Bloodborne also probably why I felt pretty comfortable never using a shield in Dark Souls 3), though I should mention I really only started to feel this way once I played a pure melee character with a focus on STR/DEX "quality" build. I tried switch between STR and INT for a physical and magic at first and man I felt so weak throughout most of the early game. Apparently you don't get the most gains from INT until way down the line, which is pretty different from DS1/2 where magic was OP from the beginning.

On top of that, the changes to Estus here also kinds of makes magic feel nerfed. In DS3 you have an MP bar similar to Demon's Souls. You also have two Estus Flasks- one for HP and one for MP (Or FP or whatever its called in this game), but a set number of charged you allocate between them with a total of 15. It just makes magic users feel even more squishy in the early game since they also get less healing since you're going to want to allocate charges to your magic Estus.

Dark Souls 3 is still a fun game to just play, but I still can't help but feel like this is just missing that special quality that made older games in the series stand out so much.
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Re: Rax/Maz/Jimbo 2021 Games Thread

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So I got a PS5 and played some PS5 games.

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Astro's Playroom (2020) - This comes with the PS5 (I can't remembered if it was pre-installed or a download though). Basically its one of those games that's ostensibly supposed to teach you how your controller works, and in this game its in the form of a 3D 90's-style platformer. Reminded me a lot of Super Mario 64, Super Mario Sunshine, Sonic Adventure etc.

Honestly its not bad. It does actually teach basic functions of controller and such, and while its mostly pretty easy the boss fight against of all things, the dinosaur from the PSX tech demo back in the day was decently challenging. Getting low times on the time trial races at the end for a Trophy had me actually look up a guide even (Especially for the climbing one with the monkey robot).

Probably my favorite aspect of the game was how it was themed around PlayStation history. Instead of collecting "Stars" you collect like, a PSX controller or the Vita or this or that PlayStation accessory, which is cute. Across the game you will find various little robot guys just hanging about that are themed around characters that are associated with PlayStation (Even if they are technically third party):

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Castlevania: Symphony of the Night

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Resident Evil

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Silent Hill 2

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Final Fantasy VII

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Ico

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Shadow of the Colossus

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Journey

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Demon's Souls

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Bloodborne

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Metal Gear Solid

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Death Stranding

It's a nice little freebie platformer in its own right but the theming here was a fun nostalgia rush for a few hours. Honestly if they expanded this into a full game I'd probably check it out.

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Resident Evil Village "Maiden Demo" (2021) - The first demo for RE8 and uh its a thing I guess. It reminds me a lot of the initial RE7 "Beginning Hour" demo (The first shot of this demo even is lifted straight out of it for this) where it involves playing as some unnamed character (Presumably here we're the "Maiden" referenced in the sub-title of the demo), involving some light puzzle solving, and escaping a hostile enemy at the end (In the RE7 demo you could at least find some weapons. Not so here- you just have to run).

Hard to get much of a feel for RE8 based on this, but at least the environments look nice. There's another RE8 demo that seems to have more regular gameplay, and I'll probably try that here soon.

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Hitman (2016) - Honestly I found this to be pleasant surprise. From what I understand basically you're playing more of a James Bond-esque assassin rather than like, an actual hitman that might work for the mob or something which honestly I feel is what the title of the series implies. Honestly I couldn't quite make sense of whatever the overarching story here is supposed to be (Something about a shadow client hiring you to kill people for uh, some nefarious reason? And they have some kind of connection to Agent 47?), but perhaps the sequels will make more sense of this. The actual missions you're on are basic "find and kill this military target, or this rich asshole, or this murderous rock star" and so on, but that's honestly enough of a premise for the gameplay.

The basic gameplay here is honestly really solid. While there are only like, six real missions in the main campaign they give you a pretty huge freedom of how to approach your targets. You can run in guns blazing (Good luck with that), or you can gather intel on where the targets are going to be and then kill them when they're alone, or gather some disguise to impersonate a VIP and get close to the target that way, or you can set some elaborate trap or poison or whatever for them. It sounds simple but honestly its a lot of fun, and these missions are clearly designed with replayability in mind- clearing any of them just once gave me some neat sounding unlockables and I'm sure if I continued to get better rankings and such. Really the whole thing reminds me of a modern take on the original Assassin's Creed but with guns instead of swords and such. Hiding bodies and even hiding in locker rooms brought Metal Gear Solid games to mind as well.

Its not perfect though. There are times where background elements would glitch on me, and other points where NPC's would do things like walking through closed doors. There are also moments where guards would swarm in on me and for the life of me I could not figure out how they got alerted and figured out I was an assassin and not just some shmuck or hotel employee or whatever. I also kind of wish you had more options for where you start missions upfront (Though I suppose this factors into replayability). Not deal breakers by any means but its worth mentioning.

Lastly I need to explain that I didn't actually play the PS4 version or anything through the PS5. What came with my PS5 was Hitman 3, but you're allowed to purchase a version of Hitman as DLC for Hitman 3, which is what I did. I'm not sure what mechanical changes come as a result of this version of the game, but apparently there are some. Also its kind of bullshit that if you purchase the Hitman 2 GOTY Edition or whatever its called through Hitman 3, it costs one hundred freakin' dollars...while at the same time, the PS4 version is on sale RIGHT NOW ON PSN for a mere $20, and if you buy the PS4 version you can also get the same DLC version in Hitman 3 for free. So basically, by going through indirect means you can save an entire $80 on the complete PS5 version of Hitman 2.

I definitely do want to play Hitman 2 (And 3 later on) after how good this first Hitman was.

Also its worth mentioning that Hitman 1 was initially published by, of all companies, Square-Enix. They've since given up the rights to Hitman to developers IO Interactive who then went on to continue with Hitman 2 and 3. Very, very different from the games I associate with Square typically.
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Re: Rax/Maz/Jimbo 2021 Games Thread

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Mega Man (1987) - Okay that boxart is still hilariously bad.

Anyways Mega Man 1 I find to be a very frustrating game still. I actually played through most of it back when it released on the GameCube through the Anniversary Collection, but I just could not get through the Wily sections. Well thanks to rewind feature of the Steam version I was finally able to beat it. Frankly I don't even understand how you were meant to get past the Yellow Devil fight without at least abusing the "Pause Glitch" because sheesh that thing is just ridiculous.

Really this game in general just has a lot kind of BS parts in it, even by standards of other NES platformers (Particular that got me was the disappearing platform sections which are worse here than in maybe any other game). Like god help anyone that doesn't realize you NEED to find the Magnet Beam to actually finish the game.

Still, the core idea of being able to do the levels in different orders and getting powers from the different bosses and rock/paper/scissors-ing your way through the game is cool. Perhaps in reality most people just look up in a guide what the easiest way through the game is but the freedom is nice. I also hear people say Mega Man 2 is a lot more refined than this game, and well I'm certainly interested in a better version of the good ideas here that suffer from meh execution.

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Resident Evil Village (2021) - A hugely disappointing facsimile of Resident Evil games. This is plotwise a sequel to RE7, and mechanically it references RE4 a lot but man it does little as well as either of those games, since it takes RE7's gunplay (Which wasn't super great. At least Ethan has a shitty push now, but even that you can only use after blocking an enemy and there tanking a bit of damage) and plops it into RE4's linear level design. That worked in RE4 since you had had a variety of different types of enemies and enemy encounters, but Village actual combat is just kind of bland generic FPS really.

And biggest problem I guess is that if it's not going to be RE4 style combat, it really doesn't work as more traditional survival horror either since there's basically nothing in way of actual survival. You have RE4 style "inventory tetris" but you have so much space and upgrades to it come so easily that you never have to make much in the way of decisions about what items you're carrying. Crafting material doesn't take up space either so you can easily just craft dozens of healing items whenever you want, or craft bullets or anything else. And you get A LOT of crafting items in this game.

I guess not having item boxes is meant to balance this out, but unlike say RE0 where the lack of item boxes actually makes a different you're basically a walking storehouse as it is in Village.

The actual level design is pretty ass in this game too, since its mostly pretty linear. Like classic RE games are linear when you break them down too, but they do a really good job making the area itself a giant puzzle of interconnecting parks that you're basically unwinding as you play the game. Village at least appears to try and do that once you finally get to Lady Dimitrescu's Castle, but its not nearly as complicated as it appears at first. Key items are often right near where you need them etc., there's really not much to actually explore etc. And this is one of the more open areas of the game too- everything after is even more linear. This area also has the piano puzzle too, which is maybe the single dumbest puzzle in a Resident Evil game.



You can literally just spam your way through piano keys to solve this "puzzle".

And honestly I don't like any of the areas after the Castle. The area where you lose your weapons is just a lame area where you hide a few times (At least puzzles here are a little better than piano stupidity), the fishman area is just...bad, and the Factory is a little better but still hardly one of my favorites in a RE game.

All of these areas connect back to the central "Village" of the title. The thing is though after you finish one of these areas, you're not allowed to go back inside them so if you missed any treasure of items you're basically screwed. And I don't get it. Its a Resident Evil game for christ's sake, why discourage backtracking and exploration? Like its bad enough you can't go back to these areas, but even with just random rooms sometimes I'd miss a missable item for what felt like arbitrary reasons. Like oh no god forbid a push a one-off button too soon in a room at a bottom of a well.

Missables are especially a problem with cooking system where there's limited number of animals to hunt in the game, and you can often not even a realize there are any to miss. I also don't like how you can get access to food, and get access to cook, but because Duke doesn't let you use the cooking function until a while in the game that you can end up selling food items without realizing there's an actual use for them later. Why not just give you access to cooking when you meet with Duke the first time? The cooking system is useful too since that's how you "upgrade" Ethan.

I can't say I actually like the core design of the titular Village either. So many random roads and pathways are just blocked off and yet aren't marked on your map, and becomes honestly a pain in the ass to navigate such as the times you have to find the "red chimney" house and such. I do like the basic idea of it being a hub world of sorts (Really whole area has something of a Disney World-esque design), but execution seemed off to me and I'm honestly surprised this is what they named the entire game after.

Oh yeah this game has a story too. It sucks even by Resident Evil standards- I think I said that before about RE7 but man Village is a new low. The four Lords are significantly less charismatic villains than the Baker family, Ethan is still a nothing protagonist, and the plot is just nonsense. "Lulz Ethan is mold zombie man the whole time" How does that follow from what actually happened in RE7? And why even introduce that twist when you actually kill off Ethan 20 minutes later anyways?

Also all the trailers that and the intro of the game and such that tried to pain Chris Redfield as the villain of the game ended up being totally misleading. He's just being a lying dick to Ethan for no reason at all. There's literally no reason not to explain what's going on to Ethan up front. And what happened to Chris working for Umbrella in RE7's DLC? Where did that plotline go?


I think Village is the most fun on its first playthrough where its whole "carnival" aspect is freshest and the lack of any real decision making is least noticeable, but man I really did not enjoy my second playthrough of the game when all of the strings are very easy to see for such a simple game.



^I'm usually not big on video essays, but this one honestly hits a lot of my feelings about the game. Video spoils the whole game btw.
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Re: Rax/Maz/Jimbo 2021 Games Thread

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Higurashi When They Cry Kai (AKA Higurashi no Naku Koro ni Kai, 2004-2006)

This one is a bit hard for me to come to a conclusion on, because while solves some problems I had with the original Question Arcs (Club game scenes are severely reduced here and that's for the better), the very nature of these Answer Arcs means the elements of the Question Arcs that I liked to begin gradually lessen until they're basically gone by Ch. 7. Mystery and tension is replaced with more focused, straightforward storytelling that frankly I think is for the worse. It's kind of a bummer to because between this and the Umineko VN's I think Ryukishi07 is really much better at atmospheric mystery/horror than directly focusing on his thematic concerns or, straightforward character drama, or his action scenes (Action scenes in general he really needs to stop with, at least the variety of the ones featuring Akasaka in Ch.8).

The other big thing to mention to mention here is that the music in the Answer Arcs is just plain better across the board. I didn't think it was so bad in the original chapters- those used public domain tracks which while basic I think were used fairly effectively. Supposedly some musician that liked the original four chapters complained to Ryukishi07 that his music sucked and that he should do the soundtrack instead. I'm not sure how true that story is, but difference in quality IS noticeable.

Just to compare two examples of light-hearted "Lolz we're just walking around town having a good time" music tracks.



vs.



I think the second track easily wins here. Answer arcs in general just have a lot of nice music across the board that I often now have on when I'm reading a real book.

Moving on to more specific thoughts...

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Ch.5: Meakashi (2004) - This is the Answer to Ch.2: Watanagashi. If you basically imagine any mystery novel being rewritten from the culprit's perspective, that's basically what happens here. The plot is mostly identical to the one shown in Watanagashi, but its retold from Shion's perspective. The first half of the chapter is their basic backstory, and then we see what drives them to want to go on insane murder spree and how they actually execute it (Pun intended). It's kind of similar to Tatarigoroshi in a way I suppose, with the focus on how they've actually planned and executed their crimes.

Honestly it was probably overall my second favorite Chapter of Higurashi. It keeps a decent amount of the atmosphere of the earlier chapters while still providing answers to some mysteries (Mainly about Watanagashi but some larger picture stuff too), and actual character exploration on display here is pretty decent.

One moment that really stands out to me as good is the triumphant "return" of Keiichi, who we last saw traumatized at the end of Ch. 3, was entirely gone from Ch. 4 and the first half of this chapter. Him coming back with confidence here really sets the tone for where the Answer arcs will ultimately go.

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Ch.6: Tsumihoroboshi (2005) - This is the Answer to Ch.1: Onikakushi. While that chapter focused on Keiichi believing his friends were trying to betray him, this chapter has Rena instead be the one to believe everyone is coming after her, creating a sort of perspective flip. This isn't terrible chapter really, but I do think this is where Higurashi really begins to switch from horror story to something more saccharine. The final duel with Keiichi and Rena in particular has never really landed for me well, and frankly I always felt like it was a bit too easy of a way to beat Rena's Hinamizawa Syndrome. At least this chapter still has the Disaster happen I guess.

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Ch.7: Minagoroshi (2005) - This is the Answer to Ch3: Tatarigoroshi. Whereas that arc had Keiichi deal with Satoko being abused by her shitty uncle through murder, this one has him rally the town to pressure Child Protective Services into investigating. Similar to Tsumihoroboshi I think this is alright chapter on its own, but we've strayed pretty far from atmospheric horror or whatever at this point. And the scenes of Keiichi trying to recruit and convince people just drag on and on and on...

I also don't think I buy "lol Oryou Sonozaki was well-meaning grandma after all" as a plot development. People are scared of her, not the other way around, she could have ended feud with Houjou family any time she wanted. She's hardly innocent old woman, she's still a freakin' gangster too.

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Ch.8: Matsuribayashi (2006) - Yeah this one's a doozy, since it mainly has three parts.

1) Firstly, there's the backstory of the overarching antagonist of the whole series. This stuff I think is actually okay for the most part, even if I do think it falls a bit into the trap of "Lolz don't you feel bad for this clearly psychotic child murderer for having a sad backstory"? Like I guess, but she shot a ten year old at the end of the last episode and gouged open another.

2) After all that, we've got the "Sea of Fragments" section, which I'm less hot on for two reasons. The biggest one is the general nonlinear and slowed down pacing here.

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^Honestly they even lay it on you thick to guilt trip you into doing this section. They even break the fourth wall!

Basically, you're reconstructing the backstory to the overall series by clicking through different little segments in order, getting answers to overarching mysteries along the way.

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There are about 50 of these in total (And each takes a few minutes to actually read through, but while you are given a few starting "freebies" of sorts you can't just read through them straight through, as each little segment as some prerequisite and you have to sort of puzzle out which you have to click on next based on what you just read. For example the segment I have highlighted here requires that you have at least read enough to have seen the victims from the third year of the Curse of Oyashiro-sama been killed.

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As you go through a section, its covered with blue plane of sorts to indicate you've finished it. If you start a segment too early you get cracked glass, but there's no real drawback to this (Though only after you've beaten Matsuribayashi, if you redo this entire part of the game without any mistakes you can get a special secret ending).

This takes a long while to get through and honestly I'm not super thrilled about this whole concept. It's very drawn out, and most of the information it gives you isn't all that interesting. Some of the backstory stuff could have easily been added to the prologue bit (Mainly thinking of some of the stuff with Takano's work as the Irie Institute here), but most of it is kind of whatever. Like we just got an entire Chapter about resolving the conflict between the Sonozaki and Houjou family, why are we hearing about it AGAIN? Who actually cares about Irie's motivations for becoming a doctor that wasn't exactly foreshadowed before now?

Really the only three bits of relevant information you get here are that A) Takano had Rika's parents killed (I'm not sure i even like this as story development). B) Satoko seems to have killed her parents, whether on purpose or accident (Bizarre time for this bit of information to come up when it probably should have in Tatarigoroshi or Minagoroshi instead), and C) Where the hell exactly Satoshi disappeared off to (This one I'm okay with).

Other than those things, its a lot of spelling out of details that were already implied or mentioned before, and that I don't think needed to be semi-dramatized like this, or would have been better off in a different part of the story.

3) After all of that, you can finally go through the main story. And honestly I'm not thrilled by the main story here- like I remember being weak point of the original anime but it feels even worse across the 10 hours or so that this segment takes up here. It very much doubles down on the "Friendship and understanding overcomes all" thing which gets more than a bit saccharine. That the entire gang suffers no casualties whatsoever against the Mountain Dogs is honestly ludicrous.

I know the story tries to emphasize that the Mountain Dogs are NOT a combat unit, but they're still a trained group of dudes struggling against Dennis the Menace traps and goofy voice impressions over the radio. It's a bit much.

Akasaka being the second coming of Bruce Lee is also more than over the top (I guess violence really is bad unless he does it too), but whole point of his character intentionally seems to be a deus ex machina anyways. I'm not sure if that makes it better or worse, but it might also be part of why "friendship" theme falls flat for me here since ending relies on a guy that's been a part of less than half of the series and not as much the main characters.


It Seems Unlikely That Ryukishi07 Was At All Satisfied With This Ending: That's the strangest thing here to me. For such a happy and resolved ending, it sure gets undermined by later works.

A) The spiritual followup to Higurashi in Umineko pretty much takes darker tone and more ambiguous take on its own mystery plot. On top of that, an alternate, much darker version of Rika is a character in the story and a villain at that, which at very least seems to be a response of sorts to happy ending they got there. Yes I know Higurashi Rei is a thing that exists and the stuff about Rika splitting with Bernkastel is brought up there, but well that's just having cake and eating it too in my eyes.

B) Miotsukushi is a thing that exists. I have not read this arc myself, but it apparently it is a completely alternate ending by some other writer that's meant to replace Matsuribayashi and well it has quite a few fans it seems if Reddit threads and the like are any indication. It’s telling that this even exists as an official product too, and not as merely a popular entry on like a fanfiction site or something.

I’m not sure I've even heard of anything quite like this happening before either- like the closest I can even think of is the movie Superman Returns “replacing” Superman III & IV, though even that doesn’t quite carry same weight to me. Its almost like some writer other than Damon Lindelof came in and rewrote the entire final season of Lost and it actually got filmed by ABC and Bad Robot Productions.

C) The anime-only sequel that started last year, Higurashi Gou, is a thing that exists. Honestly I'm even more torn on that now, because now I'm pretty certain it exists to address story issues with the original series (Things I even bring up here!) but it does so in a way that feels very unnatural. My Gou review goes into a lot of that, but I still don't know how to feel about that show as a whole. At least Gou's own sequel will be starting here in a few weeks, and maybe I can come to a less ambivalent conclusion about that.

Final Thoughts: While it's been fun to revisit the original Higurashi in visual novel form over the last several months for me, its also been a bit disappointing to not only find that the core story doesn't hold up quite as well as I remember, but that the visual novel is hardly some significantly better version than the old Studio Deen anime (And I would say is still worse in some ways).

Steam is actually releasing additional arcs at some point (Mostly side story stuff from what I understand, and a sort of epilogue in Higurashi Rei), but well they're not officially available as of the writing of this post. There are fan translations available but I think I'll wait it out for now, and go through some other things.

It seems there's a whole world of additional and extra story arcs out there too, totaling something like 16 (Which is twice as much as I've reviewed in this thread, which means there's something like 24 in total!). I might go through those too at some point since I think most of those are fantranslated, but for time being I'm Higurashi'd out, and stopping where the original series did as good a point as any to take a good long break.

Goodbye for now, Hinamizawa.

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^This is apropos of nothing but I just find this gif from the old Studio Deen anime to be funny.
Last edited by Raxivace on Sat Oct 15, 2022 2:27 pm, edited 2 times in total.
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Re: Rax/Maz/Jimbo 2021 Games Thread

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The Song of Saya (AKA Saya no Uta, 2003) - This is a visual novel about some jackass named Fuminori who at some point in the past was in a car accident. His parents were killed and he was left with some horrifying neurological condition that causes him to see the world as uh...

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^this. Literally everything is like "Silent Hill, but meat carcasses" to him. And food tastes like shit to him, people are seen as horrible monsters with distorted speaking. Its pretty bad... except for fact he meets random girl called Saya (Hence the title of the game) that looks like normal person in world of chaos. Fuminori falls in love with her and this causes him to go insane murdering and raping others and this where game starts to lose me.

This is pretty short and I have to say while I didn't hate Song of Saya, I don't quite understand why it is/was held up as a pillar of the visual novels by the VN community (Especially 10ish years ago). This was written by Gen Urobuchi and it has the problem I think a lot of his worst stuff does where to me it seems like he tries to coast by on shock value more than anything. The murder of Fuminori's neighbor was particularly egregious development here.

I guess I'm glad to knock this off of the list, and I did sort of enjoy the plotline about Fuminori's friend trying to stop him from murdering everybody, but it wasn't one of my favorite things in the world. It was only a few hours long though I guess.

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Ace Attorney Investigations: Miles Edgeworth - Prosecutor's Path (AKA Gyakuten Kenji 2, 2011) - This is the second entry of a spinoff series of the Ace Attorney franchise, and the only game in the whole franchise that did not receive an official translation. Luckily fans came together to create a fan translation, so now every game as of the writing of this post is available in English in some form or another.

That being this is probably one of my least favorite Ace Attorney entries, mainly because of how it is paced. Normal Ace Attorney games are broken up into two types of gameplay- investigations, and trials. You always start investigating a crime scene, you meet characters, pacing is intentionally a little slower, but you always know you're building up a case. Then you have a day in court which is much more high octane, involves finding contradictions in testimonies and arguments and evidence that you gathered during investigation blah blah blah, and then after that day of the trial is finished you have another day of investigation where things slow down again, you talk to witnesses about new things and so on. And in most cases, you usually finish the case in the second day of court.

Its good formula for a visual novel/adventure game type of thing IMO. The problem with the Ace Attorney Investigations series is that they ONLY have investigation segments. This kills any sense of pacing. You'll have arguments with random characters at the crime scene (Like a rival prosecutor or something that has a competing theory on how a murder was committed), but these all feel randomly placed to me, and in execution you already know most of these arguments are wrong going into them. You end up just proving things Edgeworth has already speculated about in his internal monologue which is pretty different from how mainline Ace Attorney works. As a result, without proper trial to build up to it kills any sense of anticipation and climax the game could have.

The thing is these are already problems I had with the first Ace Attorney Investigations spinoff, so its a bummer to see the sequel didn't really learn from the mistakes of the first game. I also don't really like how this one makes every case part of one interconnected story, I like when murder cases themselves are kind of independent, but that's just my preference more than anything I think.

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Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night (2019) - Replayed this on a whim recently and its probably my favorite Metroidvania. It just hits the right combination of challenge and exploration for me, and I was even able to beat the game on the hardest difficulty at Level 1 (Though this was using mods to cut down on some grinding that guides recommended). With that in mind the challenge wasn't TOO bad, though the first two bosses are insanely ridiculous. The first boss in particular is just absolutely ludicrous with expecting you to use the special attack from Miriam's Kung Fu Shoes to DODGE certain boss moves. Still it was pretty fun challenge for what it was.

I also have to say I'm impressed that the RotN devs have continued to update this game with new content. There was a whole new bonus boss added since I had last played, two whole new game modes (One where you play Zangetsu (Though that might have been there before), and another where you play as Bloodless), and a whole new game mode that is basically spiritual remake of Castlevania 1. Apparently there's more to come too, in addition to RotN2 being announced in some interview as well.

RotN1 may not reinvent the wheel, but its just solid fun.

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Fallout: New Vegas (2010) - So I had heard good things about New Vegas over the years, but after Fallout 3 I wasn't exactly, uh, enthusiastic about revisiting the franchise. This was also made shortly after Fallout 3 was (Development time on this game was only something like 18 months), so this always sounded like a recipe for disaster to me.

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^The writing in particular is something of a weak point in Fallout 3 I think, and I was totally prepared for New Vegas to be these Fallout 3 screens again.

Well I decided to checkout New Vegas on something of a whim anyways, especially because various positive comments for New Vegas come from people that don't actually like Fallout 3 either. And well, its from a different developer too (New Vegas was made by Obsidian, unlike FO3 which was done by Bethesda) so there was a chance NV could be at least different even if it still wasn't very good.

Well I'm glad I decided to take a chance anyways because New Vegas is a great game. I could not have had any lower expectations (Which maybe contributes to the positive feelings I have now), but I was legitimately impressed. This is pretty easily my favorite Western RPG, is probably one of the best game games ever made, and it specifically feels like it was designed to address issues I had with Fallout 3. The story has sensible stakes! The Karma system is minimized in favor of a much better "Factions" system! Not every area looks quite the same! There's actually some amount of moral ambiguity to the choices! Villains have sensible motivations!!!!!

So what happens in this game?



^The opening cutscene honestly sets the stage pretty well, but the basic premise here is that three major factions are vying over control over the Mojave Desert region of the U.S. From the west you have the New California Republic (NCR) who are more or less trying to revert America to what it was back before the nukes fell. On the other end you have Caesar's Legion, a group styling themselves after ancient Rome (They literally dress up and run around in mock Roman armor!) who use brutal and fascistic violence in order to bring control to the wasteland. And in between both of these you have Mr. House, a sort of Andrew Ryan-esque figure that has revived Las Vegas as "New Vegas" (Basically his Rapture) and seeks to bring control through his libertarian ways and his army of robots, among other things. In addition there are many, many smaller gangs and factions running around as well (Such as dudes that just fuckin' love dynamite, or a gang/cult dedicated to Elvis Presley), but these three are the main players.

And then there's you, you play as a Create a Character known as "the Courier". Because that's your job, you're basically a mailman a la Death Stranding. In the game's backstory you're tasked with delivering a package to House, but a strange man in a checkered suit voiced by Matthew Perry (Seriously I'm not making this up) gets the jump on you somehow, steals some strange "Platinum Chip" you were going to deliver to House, shoots you in the head, and leaves you for dead. You survive through a miracle however, and then...

Well, this is where the actual roleplaying comes in because after the setup you do basically whatever you want. Most players I think are going to want to track down the guy that shot you in the head, but how and why you're doing is something you more or less decide as you play the game. Maybe you just want answers, maybe you want revenge. Maybe you're a crazed cannibal and you want to eat him. Maybe you think he's hot and just want to track him down so you can fuck him, and you can do that too (Though this is limited to female characters in the base game, but mods open this option up to male characters thankfully)!

And really that's what's so good here, is that this really the first of these WRPG's I've seen that allow a wide variety of not only expression dialogue options and such, but the world responds (For the most part) reasonably accordingly. Like there's one quest where I had option to basically obtain launch code to orbital satellite laser that can do untold destruction. I had a companion NPC, Arcade, with me who is a doctor generally trying to bring peace to the world. Had this been like Fallout 3, this companion would probably have no reaction unless this was specific area important to him or something I was robbing (And even then this isn't sure thing). In New Vegas, Arcade has no special attachment to area I was gonna death laser but the sheer moral outrage that just makes sense for who he is causes him to betray me right then and there in a desperate attempt to save people from whatever mad Death Star bullshit I was about to try and pull. Of course I just killed him there for such his transgression against me, but this is one of many endings available in the game for Arcade.

This isn't to say that New Vegas ALWAYS has NPC's react that sensibly to what you, but it is such a step in the right direction compared to Fallout 3 where you can nuke an entire town and yet you can still somehow have "Good Karma" in the eyes of some people.

Another good way character expression works is through how you can get dialogue options. Like if I have a character that's put points into healing items, this not only has obvious mechanical advantage (In combat healing items are more effective) but the game translates this into my character having medical knowledge which you can use to negotiate with some NPC's if they have some kind of medical problem. Other stats (Like explosives for example) work the same way, and this is just generally GOOD way to allow "roleplaying" options in sensible manner for this kind of RPG. Again, compared to Fallout 3 you would just have generic "Speech" stat that allows you non-violent way to get past some encounters, but New Vegas creates variety which keeps multiple playthroughs unique as "character builds" allow not only combat options but encounter how you are able to express characterization for your version of the Courier too.

In addition to this, while "Karma" system is still technically here its honestly kind of vestigial in New Vegas. Instead your reputation with individual Factions is MUUUCCCCCHHHHHH more important in New Vegas, which again is just sensible. And it matters too because Factions have competing interests. Helping one Faction might piss others off. I generally haven't been much of a friend to the NCR for example, which gives me favor with the NCR's enemies but is why characters sympathetic to the NCR take more issue with me. Like there's a sniper companion who won't travel with me because of his NCR sympathies. There's no real way to please absolutely everyone, which just makes New Vegas a much more interesting game than Fallout 3's binary "You're either hero who saves puppies or a villain who kicks puppies" system.

And part of reason the Factions work are because characters are all given believable reasons to buy into their ideologies (Even if on thematic level, I think the game thinks all of them have flaws if only because they're trying to return to systems that have all failed in the past and lead to nuclear war that devastated the world. Fallout at its best understands the appeal of nostalgia and the fun of it, of taking the best from what came before, but also how accepting the bad elements of the past leads to repeating the same mistakes. I think there's debate to be had about what the least bad option to take in New Vegas is and the practical concerns of life in the Mojave I think even tempers simplistic political and social theory critique, but its worth bringing up). Even Casesar's Legion, the closest thing to obvious bad guys in the game, are written as buying into arguments that actual people that like fascism buy into.



^Like to be absolutely clear, Caesar is still a very, very, very bad dude but in terms of characterization and general coherence he stands in strong contrast to the meme image posted above.

I guess the last major thing to mention is the general map of the Mojave and the game's general design. I really like the general aesthetic of the game being based on classic American westerns (Which is contributed to by music on the in-game radio station, featuring songs like the theme to Johnny Guitar). What also helps is that New Vegas itself, when you finally get there, ISN'T in ruins (Part of the story involves, for various reasons, the fact that Vegas DIDN'T get nuked), and adds almost a kind of gangster film setting to the story. While you do have typical Fallout nuclear wasteland ruins and the like, it isn't all there is here which is how Fallout 3 felt to me despite solid hook of "Washington D.C. in ruins".

I also like that the map is large enough to have plenty of stuff to find and explore, but that it isn't too big to feel overwhelming, which is something that I felt about a game like Witcher 3. It feels very manageable, which again helps for repeat playthroughs. Even Fallout 3 I feel like had a bit too much in the way of filler combat dungeons and stuff (Especially fuckin' metro tunnels), while New Vegas cuts down on a lot of that kind of chaff.

I just really liked this game, and for me it does for these open world story-driven WRPG's what Dark Souls did for action JRPG's. Not that it doesn't have weaknesses (In New Vegas the combat is basically Fallout 3's again, though from what I remember its slightly tighter), but for the most part it just works well enough.

There's also a load of DLC.

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Dead Money (2010) - This DLC has you get kidnapped and forced to work with others to infiltrate an abandoned casino resort called the Sierra Madre...which is said to still have bars of gold hidden in its vaults. Unfortunately there is a lot in between you and said vaults.

I was kind of mixed on this DLC overall. I think the basic premise here is fun and I like the various characters you're forced to team up with, all of whom have intriguing enough backstories for a one and done deal like this. I also like how in this DLC, you're actually forced to finish it once you start which is sort of similar to "The Pitt" DLC for Fallout 3, which is one of the better bits of content for that game anyways.

Unfortunately the execution for this particular DLC seems to be divisive, and the actual gameplay here didn't quite land for me. Basically part of the gimmick of being trapped here is that all of your stuff is taken away from you, and it seems like this DLC really favors builds that rely on physical weapons over guns (Something I wasn't really specced for).

The other big issue I have is with the radio gimmick. In this DLC, you have a bomb collar attached to your neck that you cannot take off, and anytime you get to near any radio that's turned on, it starts beeping. Basically you have to either find and destroy whatever radio is emitting radio waves or just move away from it ASAP. This is a huge pain in the ass IMO, since it interrupts exploration constantly for a game of hide and seek, and as your progress into the DLC you cannot even destroy some of these radios. It just got to be a bit much toward the end of the DLC especially.

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Honest Hearts (2011) - This DLC revolves around some drama with post-apoclayptic Native American tribes in Utah, I guess? The story here didn't do much for me, but the Zion Canyon area itself I actually quite liked since it was pretty open compared to Dead Money and campgrounds were a new kind of area for the game. The gameplay was pretty basic too, which honestly is fine to me.

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Old World Blues (2011) - Mechanically this is pretty similar to Honest Hearts in that its just another map to explore, but tonally "the Big Empty" is wildly different. This one has a group of scientists, who have put their brains in giant floating robots, having you fight some other, eviler scientist (Who is also a brain in a giant floating robot) and his army of robo-scorpions, robo-dogs, and weird skeleton-head enemies and the like. Its super goofy and over-the-top (Reminds me of one of the pulpy sci-fi radio dramas that you might have heard on the in-game radio stations really), but honestly it was a ton of fun with all the weird different "mad science" themed areas to explore and stuff. A great little DLC.

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Lonesome Road (2011) - It wasn't until I played this DLC that I realized New Vegas, from the broadest of bird's eye views, is structured kind of similarly to The Witcher 3. Early on in the main campaign, when the you make back to the actual post office or whatever you work for, you learn that some other Courier was originally going to take the job for the Platinum Chip, but upon seeing your name next on the list for potential deliverer he decides not to take the job, leading you to getting caught by Benny and so on. If you're like me, you forgot this conversation even happens toward the beginning of the game, similar how its easy to forget about meeting O'Dimm at the beginning of Witcher 3.

Across the first three DLC's, if you go out of your way you can hear about references to some other Courier have passed through. Well here in Lonesome Road, that seemingly dropped plot thread from the main game comes back to haunt you with a vengeance. After tracking a radio signal down to a mysterious area, you find a copy of your robot companion ED-E, who then gets hijacked by this mysterious fella calling himself Ulysses.

Ulysses is an odd duck who was that other Courier from the base game you forgot about and has been slowly built up through the DLC's. Basically, he blames you for making a delivery to his hometown of "The Divide" that set off nuclear weapons of some sort in the past, though you can play this off as a legitimate part of your backstory, or by basically insinuating Ulysses is crazy and has the wrong guy. He doesn't just want to kill you though, he wants to defeat you on like, an ideological level which makes the character kind of fun to go up against.

The "Road" he has you travel on is pretty straighforward, its literally a remnant of a highway, but this is easily the most difficult combat encounters of the game. I used mods to raise my level cap past 50 and still found myself nearly getting one shot by some enemies here. Most of New Vegas isn't this combat heavy AND difficult though which makes it kind of a nice change of pace.

Interesting little DLC overall, really reminded me of Hearts of Stone in a way.


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Anyways on top of all of this, the game has huge modding scene for PC version as well, similar to Fallout 3. Unfortunately the game still needs some stability patches to run well, though not as many and even with such stuff Fallout 3 crashed super often for me. I didn't have nearly as many issues on that front but they still do happen from time to time. There's also plenty of goofy companions, 18+ content, extra quests, gameplay changes etc. to download that honestly it isn't much of a surprise that New Vegas' cult following has kept coming to it over the years.

One particular mod I liked allow you to operate an entire Casino- it was clearly an unfinished mod and rough in spots, but it was fun to pour money into operating and expanding the Lucky 38 into your own personal business and fit really nicely into the general Vegas theme of the game.

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Last edited by Raxivace on Mon Jan 02, 2023 1:28 am, edited 3 times in total.
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Re: Rax/Maz/Jimbo 2021 Games Thread

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That’s quite the post. I haven’t played any of those.

Just finished Scribblenauts Unlimited for the Switch. A very interesting idea with a lot of fun and neat mechanics; with a not so great game behind it. By the end it was just tedious to do all the missions for 100%. But still every once in a while we would accidentally do something surprising and it would be hilarious and great.
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Re: Rax/Maz/Jimbo 2021 Games Thread

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I'm almost done with yet another RPG and also have FF7 Remake DLC which should be pretty quick, so there's more where that came from lol.

I never played Scribblenauts, but I remember seeing YouTube videos years ago where people tried very hard to "beat" the original DS game's system by imagining the most obscure things possible. Seemed like a fun gimmick, but Idk what the actual game built around that system is like.
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Re: Rax/Maz/Jimbo 2021 Games Thread

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Don’t remember if I mentioned I finished FFVII. It’s fine; I still prefer VIII though that’s largely nostalgia.

Yeah the game around Scrubblenauts is just a series of levels where each level has a lot of different missions with usually-obvious descriptions of a thing you need to do. And it’s has platformer style controls where you can run and jump and such. It’s good but gets repetitive quickly.
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Re: Rax/Maz/Jimbo 2021 Games Thread

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I played FF8 about a decade ago and didn't like much of it past the first disc. Wasn't really into how leveling worked either (Since it does the "enemies level alongside you" thing), or Junction in general.

Triple Triad is pretty excellent minigame though, and frankly I'd buy a standalone Triple Triad game.
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Re: Rax/Maz/Jimbo 2021 Games Thread

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Re: Rax/Maz/Jimbo 2021 Games Thread

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NieR Replicant Ver.1.22474487139... (2010/2021) - So this is updated rerelease of action JRPG NieR. I mentioned the basic differences between the two versions of the original NieR Gestalt and NieR Replicant before, and yeah the general differences between the brother and father versions of the story were kind of interesting.

Still, on top of that were also differences exclusive to this particular Remaster. Most of involve things you might expect like graphical updates, a newly recorded OST (This version's sounds nice but I kind of prefer the original), some minor gameplay adjustments etc. Probably the three biggest changes were story additions.

1) The new subplot about the crashed slave ship at the town of Seafront. This is generally okay though I feel like its kind of overkill on the whole "Shades are sympathetic victims in their own right" thing that was already slightly overdone in the original game. The story of the girl in love with the postman itself was fine, but it feels like a bit of overkill, especially with how much it slows down replays with having to run to Seafront, having to leave and go back to Nier's village to talk to a single NPC, run back to Seafront to go to the post office, and then explore the actual ship itself which has crashed on the beach. The actual ship exploration is fun enough the first time, but feels a bit drawn out with the amount of mandatory dialogue, key and lantern finding etc. that only gets worse after B playthrough when the additional dialogue scenes no longer contain new information and you just have to mash through. The actual new boss here is a bit obnoxious too IMO and reminds me more of the bosses in NieR: Automata which generally sucked.

Also I understand why this plotline is placed in the story where it is, but I wonder if it wouldn't have been better placed somewhere else, like inbetween recruiting Emil and the attack on Nier's village. There's such a sudden shift in the gang's friendship that frankly never felt quite earned to me (Why is Emil talking about things Kaine said like 10 minutes ago like they happened weeks or months in the past?), and an adventure like the crashed ship could have been used to fill that time in somewhat and make it feel more earned on emotional level. Obviously you lose some of the B route Shade dialogue shenanigans this way, but its not like a contrived reason couldn't have been given to bring her back post-timeskip.

2) There are general additional cutscenes to pre-existing story beats that are nice for the most part. I like the C Route stuff that adds more stuff with Poppola and Devola though there could have been more here.

3) There's a new ending to the game, Ending E. It really sucks.

3A) Ending E does nothing to address story flaws of the game that actually existed in the ending of the original. Tyrann's deal to Nier in Endings C and D always felt like something of a Deus ex Machina to me because frankly it comes out of nowhere. I was willing to role with it because mechanically the choice is still really really really cool, but on a narrative level it does feel like a bit of a cheat still.

3B) What Ending E does undermines themes of the game. "Lulz let's take a game who's most infamous, notable aspect was the permanency of deleting your save files and take away any permanent consequence by giving you those save files back". A sacrifice that can be completely undone is a sacrifice that means absolutely nothing, and it makes me believe that Taro work on the original NieR was good at least partly by accident.

3C) I'm not sure the NieR: Automata connections make sense in Ending E. Why are the Adminstrators voiced by and looking like 2B and 9S? Why is Kaine in a computer? Why is Grimoire Weiss in a computer for that matter when he should be dead? We last saw Emil as just a rolling head, which he also was in Automata, so why is head suddenly back not only with a body but with four arms? Why is the Copied City here? How is there data of Nier at all for him to come back from when Tyrann said absolutely nothing would be left of him? Like none of this makes sense to me, and really whole thing gives me Deadwood: The Movie vibes.
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Re: Rax/Maz/Jimbo 2021 Games Thread

Post by Raxivace »

Gendo wrote: Wed Aug 18, 2021 8:29 pm Oh it exists, both as a physical card game and as a video game:

https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/159 ... iple-triad
https://www.square-enix.com/ffportal/na/index.html
Oh cool, I might download that digital version.
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