What have you beaten lately?

[Rosie]

What games have you beaten recently? Myself, I've been plowing through my backlog ever since I got a Steam Deck. Here's a quick rundown with some brief thoughts:

Phantasy Star
I played the Sega Ages version on Switch, and I highly recommend that if you're interested in playing this game because it lets you double EXP and money. This doesn't really reduce the difficulty, it just makes you spend less time grinding. It's also got an automap for the first-person dungeons, which is incredibly useful for someone like me who just cannot remember spatial things at all, and easy access to item lists. This really boosts the game from an archaic but respectable RPG to something you should definitely check out. It's not incredibly deep, but it's a good time.

The Bugs Bunny Crazy Castle
If you need some bite-sized challenge that you don't need to think about too hard, try one of these games. You really need to memorize which enemies have what movement patterns though, because some are hilariously rock-stupid while others love standing in the exact right spot to screw you over.

Metroid: Samus Returns
I like Metroid well enough (it's not my favourite search action series) but this one makes some mistakes. The game is somewhat padded to say the least, and every enemy is built like a brick shithouse and hits like a truck, which is meant to force you to use the new melee-parry mechanic but ends up just being tedious and punishing. Also, your mileage may vary but I got crazy handcramps from its control scheme combined with the 3DS XL's form factor. You should really just play Dread, it's like this but a million times better.

Sonic the Hedgehog 2 (8-bit)
One of the worst Sonic games.

Sonic Chaos
One of the easiest Sonic games, except for the last two bosses being a weird difficulty spike. Might just be because I was playing the Game Gear version. Also, I don't really care for the special stages' trial-and-error design.

Mega Man 7
I love this game, but I somehow had never beaten it before now. It becomes apparent why soon enough: Turbo Man's stage fucking blows! Other than that, I love the art direction and music, and I have no goddamn clue why everyone crashes out over "big sprites". It's classic Mega Man, you're not going to be fast enough for that to matter.

Rolling Thunder
Played the Arcade Archives version on Switch. This game basically invented its own sub-genre and it's pretty rad, but being an arcade game it gets WAY too unfair later on. I really wish there was some kind of massive project to tone down the quarter-munching shit in classic arcade games, because in this day and age it just impedes fun.

Persona 3: Dancing in Moonlight
This rhythm game sub-series is pretty cool, but the rate at which you unlock things kinda messes up the flow. You'll get so many social link scenes early on, and apart from being fun character moments they also unlock things you'll need to unlock more things, so sometimes it ends up feeling like you're just watching a ton of cutscenes instead of playing the game. But then later on, the criteria for unlocking the last social links will just result in you kinda grinding the same songs, unless you're enough of a badass to tackle hard mode (I'm not)

Evolution Worlds
One of the games I got with my Gamecube all the way back in 2003, and I finally came back to face it. This is an odd duck because they took the two Evolution games on Dreamcast and put them together, but the first is incredibly abbreviated in a way that makes a terrible first impression--most of the dungeons look the same (probably due to space constraints on those tiny discs) and there's an absolute onslaught of cutscenes after each one. Then, the final dungeon is built up to be a big challenging gauntlet but is just a few rooms. I feel like they could have just ported the second game and included a little prologue explaining the story so far, since it's not like it's very complex.

It's your bog-standard plot about a kid searching ancient ruins after his dad mysteriously disappeared, and he's also got a mysterious girl without much of a personality with him who holds some magic power everyone wants. Oh, and the ancient civilization is a present-day skyscraper one that got destroyed, even though the ruins you're going through all look like South American temples. I'm really being mean here, but to be fair the character writing is pretty cute and main character Mag is just the sweetest kid.

The dungeon crawling is fun once you're allowed to dig into it, with that good old "should I keep going or go back to town to unload and heal" loop, and the battle system has a really cool feature where you build up "TP" to learn new moves, which can be done in battle, and if you do so, that first casting doesn't cost any MP, which can be quite useful considering the high costs of some skills.

Ultimately, I don't think this is essential gaming in the slightest, but if you really wanna dig deep into RPGs, you can do worse.

Phantasy Star II
A very ambitious Genesis launch title with immaculate vibes, but it falls on its face because of crazy time and space constraints (fortunately Sega never made this mistake again!!!) and nobody reining in the dungeon designer. Use maps, for the love of god.

Magic Knight Rayearth (GB)
This game is about an hour long and you basically can't lose, so if you want your "RPGs beaten" count to go up by 1 check it out

Super Robot Wars 30
On the other end of the spectrum, this entry in the massive super robot crossover strategy RPG series (say that five times fast) is huuuuge. I guess some of this is to do with it being an anniversary title, but it's very easy to get suckered into a million side missions to get new units and upgrades and then you end up playing this game for about a century before beating it. And that's not getting into the post-game! Geez...

Lufia and the Fortress of Doom
First entry in this short but beloved RPG series, and if you're only gonna play one, play the sequel instead. This one is mostly a Dragon Quest clone, and it doesn't do a very good job of making you feel like you're progressing or being rewarded for what you do, so the further you get, the more you feel like you're going on a fetch quest that never ends. The character writing is fun, if a bit stymied by the crummy translation, and the endgame finally lives up to the promise by making you feel like a badass for learning all the mechanics. I might suggest one of the ROM hacks that adds some QoL and cleans up the translation, so you don't end up in 50 encounters in a row while wondering why the fuck "Fright" makes people fall asleep, "Trick" makes you hit harder and "Dead" revives you.

 

[DBomb]

I'm PRETTY sure MKR GB has an achievement set... so guess who will likely soon be playing it? Also the SNES version, which I played and beat in my earlier internet days (ALSO basically an easy mode RPG, but hot damn, was it fun).

Anyway, nice list! I might be biased because LUFIA, but yeah...

Here's mine.

Paper Mario (N64)

Potentially one of the most in-depth games on the entire console. This marked my first 100% playthrough for... REASONS. And so I managed to nab EVERY badge, EVERY powerup, every unique recipe, every... YOU GET THE IDEA. Anyway, even before the 100% playthrough, I genuinely enjoy this game even more than Super Mario RPG (I've HEARD this is punishable by death in some areas of the internet, but that's a risk I'm willing to take). Beating it 100% actually reaffirmed my feelings on this.

Pokemon: Ultra Violet Version (hack of FIre Red) (Game Boy Advance)

An interesting hack of Fire Red that has access to all 386 Pokemon from Gens 1-3, thanks to some new areas added. It can be a bit grating if you're going for all 386 Pokemon because evolution methods for Trade-volutions (run with it) were changed to fit the nature of this being a hack one plays online, mostly to leveling up... really high. Kingdra is the worst of these new evolutions, not evolving until level 52, and while that's still lower level than Dragonair to Dragonite or Pupitar to Tyranitar, it's not very enjoyable. The overall game is fine though. Interestingly, a new feature is being allowed to catch your OWN starter (If you're unsatisfied with the Kanto starters. I went with Spheal this playthrough and have zero regrets because he is the goodest boi, but there are other options such as Houndour, Larvitar, Ralts, etc. I do recommend a playthrough, but don't expect too much changed from Fire Red storywise.

Final Fantasy Legend II (Game Boy)

This is... possibly the most complex RPG on the entire Game Boy? At least of the ones I've played so far. It's also, no joke, the BEST RPG on the handheld. Again, of what I've played so far. There's a lot of depth, customization, and strategy for building the perfect MAGI-hunting party. This most recent time I beat it, I finished with an all-monster party, and not only was I surprised at how much less nightmarish it was than i'd built up in my head, but WHO WOULD HAVE THOUGHT I COULD SOLO THE FINAL BOSS WITH THE ULTIMATE TIER FLOWER MONSTER??? ABSOLUTELY play this game if you haven't already (But also, play the other games! You can even play them in color now! I myself plan to do this in short order.)

Ultima VI: The False Prophet (Super Nintendo)

Your enjoyment of this game might hinge on two factors: 1: that you haven't played the PC original, like I haven't. I don't know or particularly care about how much more natural it is with mouse and keyboard controls, as I like having an ENTIRE SCREEN worth of real estate so I can see where the holy fuck I'm going. 2: If you don't mind the game plodding along at first at a snail's pace. This is a fantastic game to be sure, but holy shit it feels like it takes FOREVER to get off the ground and actually get to the meat and potatoes, and if you're NOT suicidal when playing a video game... it does. There's a lot of prep work to make sure you can survive long enough to see the game's ending. Also, the narrative is fantastic. Unfortunately, I can't explain without spoiling, you know, everything about WHY gargoyles are suddenly attacking Britannia. If you can get past the above two stilpulations, you'll find a very fun and extremely rewarding quest waiting for you on the other side.

Lunar: Sanposuru Gakuen (Sega Game Gear)

I'd heard about this side story to the Lunar games for years, but I never actually sat down and tried it until doing so for... REASONS (achievements). I'm kinda sad i didn't. The combat is VERY different from what you might be used to if you played Lunar: the Silver Star and Lunar: Eternal Blue, but from my understanding, the remake of this game on Sega Saturn, Lunar Magic School, utilizes the familiar Lunar combat system, so maybe I should check that out in the near future. In the meantime, this combat, more reminiscent of Dragon Quest (KIND OF), isn't BAD, and the game itself not particularly hard or long (The only reason I didn't beat it the day i started it is cause I got busy). The only thing is, I got a TINY bit confused in the first few battles because rather than outright show stats, the picture of your protagonists are shown on the left, with the one on top being the one you're currently selecting commands for, and backing out will SKIP their turn until you get back around to their portrait. However, I'd say it's, at the very least, worth a playthrough. Also, I mentioned this elsewhere (Rosie's Discord, to be precise), and I'll mention it again: the shot of Lena in the end screen reminds me SO MUCH of Lemina from Eternal Blue. Maybe she was the ancestor of the Ausa clan?

 

[GavinMcWario]

Man, I still need to play the original Paper Mario someday - it's literally the only game in the series I haven't played.

Between stream games and personal-time games, I've been crossing some good stuff off the list the last couple months. Let's see, looking through my Steam library...

Strange Jigsaws
Super short but super fun puzzle game from the creator of 20 Small Mazes, another mini-game about solving a bunch of weird puzzles. You'd think a 3-hour game about solving a bunch of little jigsaw puzzles wouldn't have that much depth, but every new puzzle introduced screws with the interface and medium in a new and exciting way, complete with a surrealist meta-plot that gets you weirdly emotionally invested by the end.

Little Problems
You know that one infamous tweet where some lady who completely missed the point of Disco Elysium talks about how she loves the game's writing and mechanics but wishes it was about a young witch in the alps looking for her neighbor's lost cat instead of all that yucky political stuff? This is basically that but for Case of the Golden Idol. Admittedly, the fact that it's basically just More Golden Idol means it's still a really fun little puzzle/logic game, and I did give it a positive review after I initially played it, but looking back at it I can't help but notice how utterly forgettable the whole thing is. Like, I try extremely hard to judge media based on its own merits and not on what I wish it had been instead, but... I could probably go on talking for a solid hour about the motivations, character arc, and narrative impact of Edmund Cloudsley, Oberon Geller, Jack Nowak, Echo Secunda, or any of the other major players in the Golden Idol games, but if you asked me to remember the name of even one character in Little Problems just a little more than a month after playing it, I wouldn't be able to give you an answer. It's the cotton candy version of Golden Idol - the flavor's there and it's satisfying in the moment, but there's no substance.

(Also there's a level where you have to piece together a family tree with a suspiciously familiar format, so I guess the creators briefly got bored of cribbing off Golden Idol and decided to look over at The Roottrees Are Dead's homework for a bit instead.)

Mass Effect: Legendary Edition
I feel like with this one I'm probably gonna just play the same card as my Sinners review. It's one of the greatest western RPGs of all time and everyone knows it, how much more do I have to say? Only real issue I had was that the action side of the action-RPG genre is heavily shooter-based and I absolutely suck at shooters, but I was mostly able to power through via a mix of playing on mid-to-low difficulty, abusing the time-stop tactical menus to line up my shots, and playing as Engineer.

Actually, you know what, I do have something original to say about this game that everyone else has already talked about: Engineer is the best class and no one wants to admit it. Everyone talks about how great Soliders, Vanguards, and Infiltrators are, but those losers have to actually point their guns at things instead of just waving your hand at a dude and shutting off his guns and/or nervous system while your drones mow down his buddies for you. Need to actually directly shoot someone with a damage-dealing projectile? It's called Incinerate, and it homes in and curves around cover. Also it's the only class that gets its own unique interrupt at one point in ME3, just in case you needed any more evidence.

Cryptmaster
Okay, now we're getting into the ones I've played on stream. Cryptmaster is one of those weird games that can only be described as genre-busting - it's a first-person dungeon-crawler with real-time combat where all the mechanics are based on word puzzles, and also they threw in an entire TCG you can play with random NPCs just for the hell of it. You'd think it wouldn't work, but surprisingly it does - from scraping bugs off the walls, to playing guessing games with the contents of chests, to shouting geographic terms in the middle of a fight to power up your thief's special attack, every weird mechanic feeds perfectly into the others, creating an immensely satisfying and engrossing gameplay loop of collecting letters and deducing words. A wicked sense of humor and some stellar voice-acting brings the whole experience together - the titular Cryptmaster is obviously front and center, providing sardonic commentary on your party's actions as he guides you ever onward to the surface, but every other character is just as entertaining and expressive. Honestly, even after 14 hours of streaming this one, my only regret is that it wasn't even longer.

Dynasty Warriors: Origins
I've often drawn a comparison between Dynasty Warriors games and Lego games: the combat system might boil down to mashing a single attack button and smashing everything up, but it's still fun as hell and I'll keep buying them as long as they keep making them. With their last two main-series entries, Koei-Tecmo has tried to innovate on that formula: first with Dynasty Warriors 9, where they experimented with removing the "fun" part, and now with Origins, where they instead opted to make the combat system actually challenging. You will learn to consistently parry, perfect evade, and interrupt special attacks within the first few levels, or else Zhang Jiao will rip out your entire rectum and wear it like a scarf - and that's not even touching on what Lu Bu will do to you if you turn up to Xiapi with anything less than your A-game.

Aside from its gameplay innovations, Origins also breaks new ground story-wise by introducing the original character of Ziluan, aka the most fuckable bisexual twink in all of ancient China. Seriously, I'm not kidding, every single character in this game wants to fuck you and they barely try to hide it. I swear I'm not making this up, Lu Bu's maxed-out bond conversation sounds like it's one AO-rating away from turning into a dark romance fetish novel. This is not in any way shape or form a complaint.

The Tartarus Key
Another horror-puzzle game in the graphical style of an old PS1-era horror game, as seems to be the trend these days. While there's definitely plenty of horror to go around as far as the story and atmosphere go, gameplay-wise it's fully in the puzzle camp - you're not getting chased around by anything, just walking around a creepy haunted mansion solving escape rooms. That said, the puzzles are all solidly designed and plenty of fun, so if that's your thing (as it is mine), you're probably gonna have a great time with this one.

Shuten Order
The most recent visual novel from Danganronpa creator Kazutaka Kodaka, with all the shameless weirdness and genre-fuckery that implies. Starting out as a supernatural murder mystery wherein the founder of a doomsday cult is resurrected by angels and tasked with solving her own murder within four days, it's only after the prologue that the primary gameplay gimmick is introduced. Not only are there five separate routes that have to be completed to unlock the game's final act, but each route is effectively an entirely different game genre - an Ace Attorney-esque detective game, a first-person dungeon crawler with puzzle minigames, a multi-perspective VN in the style of 428 Shibuya Scramble, a dating sim that grows increasing dangerous with each new lover you're forced to juggle, and a third-person survival horror game where you have to solve puzzles while evading a masked maniac with a jackhammer. Because every route is basically its own unique experience, the quality of the gameplay and writing can vary wildly from one to another, especially depending on your personal tastes - the dating sim route was mechanically fun but felt like a ton of pointless busywork while I waited for Rei to figure out the extremely obvious plot twist I'd deduced two hours ago, whereas the multi-perspective VN route never felt like it fully took advantage of its mechanics but still had me actively sobbing by the end.

Overall, it's a weird and inconsistent experience, but ultimately one I enjoyed. The ending ties everything together nicely, even if the last-second choice between two endings is a bit of a let-down - it's definitely framed like a big, serious moral dilemma that expects the player to agonize over what the right choice really is, but to me it just came across like that "everyone gets a puppy vs. diarrhea forever" meme.

The Mr. Rabbit Magic Show
Honestly not sure I should even count this one, since it's not a "proper" game, just a quick little mini-point-and-click puzzle adventure by the Rusty Lake devs, released for free on Steam as a celebration of the Rusty Lake franchise's tenth anniversary. (And god, saying that makes me feel old, but unfortunately it tracks - Rusty Lake did start as a series of Flash games, after all.) Not really a lot to say about this one, just a bunch of surreal little puzzles put together by the all-time kings of surreal little puzzle games. It's free and you can easily beat the whole thing in around an hour, so if you're a Rusty Lake superfan like me, there's no reason not to check it out while you're waiting for Servant of the Lake.

(god dammit, ran out of space for the last one, putting it in the next post)

 

[GavinMcWario]

Strange Antiquities
I'd been kind of hoping to make this one a stream game, but unfortunately I gave in to temptation and binged through the whole thing the day it came out. Sue me.

For those who have no clue what I'm talking about, Strange Antiquities is the long-awaited (if you're me) sequel to Strange Horticulture, an excellent puzzle game from a few years back where you take the helm of a shop selling magical plants in a fantasy version of Victorian England. Customers come in requesting help with various problems, and you have to use your reference book and your analytical skills to identify the plants you have in stock so you can give your customer what they need, all while solving puzzles to collect new plants and reference pages. On top of all that, some manner of monstrous eldritch power is beginning to awaken, and the choices you make with certain key customers will ultimately determine their fate.

Got all that? Good, Strange Antiquities is just more of that but with a new coat of paint, and I mean that in the most positive way possible. This time, you're selling magical artifacts instead of plants, necessitating a much more in-depth inspection system where you can check the physical composition of different parts of your stock, how they feel to touch, what they smell and sound like, and even just whether the damn thing gives you bad vibes to look at. Add in five different books to cross-reference, three different maps to explore, and a few extra gizmos built into your shop, and the whole thing feels so much bigger and deeper than its predecessor despite technically only having about the same amount of content. 10/10 puzzle experience, right up there with Golden Idol on my list of my favorite deduction-puzzle franchises of all time. Even went back and replayed it a couple times to get different endings and all the achievements.

MiSide
Shoot, almost forgot I just finished this one on stream yesterday, had to edit it in here at the last second. Neat little horror game about being trapped in the world of a girlfriend-simulator mobile game, fleeing through various different versions of the game and meeting different iterations of the central character as you search for a way to shut down the crazy girl pursuing you and escape back to the real world. For the most part it's a pretty cool and inventive experience, but the sudden downer ending was a huge anticlimax for me, and none of the alternate endings are any better. I dunno, part of it might be that I had to break off right near the end because I was out of time in the stream and came back two weeks later to realize I had far less of the game to go than I'd been led to believe, so take that with a grain of salt.