using this bingo card to maybe facilitate finishing games lol. just for fun it's no stress (:
the rules are pretty simple and flexible:
| B | I | N | G | O |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| quester | gurumin | disgaea | ufo50 | super junkoid thoughts |
| super mario bros | utawarerumono | quake | quake ii | morrowind |
| dread delusion | frogun | mario bros (nes) FREE SPACE |
九日 nine sols | biohazard 4 |
| saga scarlet grace | in fair spirits | binary syndrome | two worlds ii castle defense thoughts |
misericorde volume one |
| puyopuyo tetris 2 | bokura / 違う冬のぼくら | ys: the oath in felghana thoughts |
ys x nordics thoughts |
muv-luv |
| nayuta no kiseki kai | powerwash simulator | white cat adventure team thoughts |
really liked this game. my ys history if i didn't mention it (and i see now that i have but it's like lower on the page so. i save you trouble anyways.) is limited to ys I and II, a little of og ys III on pc engine, and ys x nordics. so i know of classic ys and i know of most recent ys. this one was interesting to get into bc it's a remake of ys III made in like 2004 idk i don't do research to write these. so in my mind it's bridging a gap between old school pc game ys and modern console game ys. old ys adol runs around top down style and he swings his sword at any enemy he runs into, but not good people because he has a magic sword that is smart and he just talks to people if they're good. new ys you character action adol a bit. he's got skills and moves and party members with skills and moves. i didn't really get far enough in ys III original to use more of the abilities, but they were present. probably. i'm pretty sure i got the fire ring in the mines in that one, so i assume the other ones are there too. again. i don't do research. but in any case. in this one you control adol's running and jumping, as well as sword swinging and spell using manually. the melee combat does feel pretty close to ys I and II with the bump system. I do kinda wish this game had the bump system still because the melee combat is basically just mashing the sword and sometimes doing jumping attacks. and you can boost mode to the sword faster turning adol into a meat shredder almost to the extent of old games. the spells are fun and you can use them to access new places or solve puzzles. also useful in combat in different ways which is nice. got an area-of-effect, a magic missile, and an invincible move. so different enemies you'll wanna use different ones. so combat is pretty fun, though it gets a bit repetitious whenever you have to go through an area multiple times. there is a fast travel, but only between save points of which there are like. i think less than 20 in the whole game across multiple levels.
i liked the story and the characters. i got invested in stories like the old lady who yells you out of her house the first time you meet. then later you find out her son died in a mining accident and goes from there. stuff like that you just sort of stumble into by chatting around, since this game doesn't have side quest markers or anything like that. it feels more genuine because you are talking to the people and then they ask you for help with something. which is normal if you're being nice and talking to them. doesn't make much sense if you're only talking to shopkeepers and then idk chapter 4 jimmy has a quest so you talk to him for the first time and he tells you about his grandpa or something. it feels like you're part of the story, and the story is your own that follows your choices. i do think i missed something with the well, but like. oh well lol (lol).
oh something else to mention is the difficulty. i played through this game on the normal difficulty setting. which i think might have been the lowest if not the second lowest. the game is very challenging. definitely as difficult as ys I and II. going through the motions of visiting a new area, but your level or your gear doesn't match the area -> enemies are harder to kill and harder to survive ecounters with -> get a new sword/armor/shield/level up -> you feel stronger and can manage things much better. it's also normal to go into a boss fight and find it too hard, so you leave for a while to explore looking for maybe hidden items or paths you missed while of course grinding a level or two. it's good that in these games, at least up to this point, one level up is a pretty substantial increase. particularly at the beginning. one point of strength doesn't sound like a lot but it is a ton in older rpgs. i remember thinking "oh the blacksmith only adds like 1 strength or 1 defense. what a waste" but i learned and so all the equipment i was using at the end of the game was fully upgraded. i finished the last boss with a single digit number of health points, so it was worth it! overall having finished the game i think the bosses were challenging the right amount. more skilled players can probably get through with worse equipment or stats, and less skilled players can grind levels or find better gear. so you never really get stuck for too long on something impossible.
anyways tldr; it's a good game i enjoyed it. i do hope the better quality port coming out soon on consoles (with features like fast forward and the ability to select voice language, something i did not have and wish i did. i wish i got to hear dogi's voice. but i refused to play in english and when i tried to copy the jp voices over it just completely froze lol) will be available on pc in some form. the steam version didn't have jp text by default and i didn't Want english voices so i played the jp version purchased on dlsite. it's got old game pc port problems like controller prompts not appearing ingame, only using dpad -or- analog stick, a lot of menu and ui stuff is low res etc etc. if i ever wanna play this again - and i might - it'll definitely be on a more recent port. but despite its issues i enjoyed it lots and cried a little at the ending. great game highly recommend
this game blew me away. for some back story i've played all the legend of heroes trails games up through kuro 1, but ys i only finished 1 and 2. i also played a tiny bit of the turbografx version of ys iii, which i did enjoy but never got around to finishing. so i haven't played lots of ys just yet. but when this game was announced and i saw the visual style and cool moves i knew i had to play it as soon as it was available on pc. which was just over a year after the initial japanese console release. all this to say i had very high expectations going in. and these expectations were met and exceeded. wow! i forgot that can happen lol. and maybe i can talk about why i liked it so much. a little! i could go on all day and just do the whole game but i do not want to do that. anyways! more or less what i like boils down to the story, characters, music, art style, and the gameplay. and if i didn't list it, probably that too. i think i just liked everything in this game.
THE STORY i really like the main story for this game. start to finish i was just like yeah. yeah! especially the ending i really liked. at the end of the game i cried a little that it was over. i didn't get this from ys 1 and 2 but i imagine a thing that happens in some of the others is adol and dogi make a bunch of friends in a new place and go on an adventure but then they need to leave and go on to the next one. it's sad to leave after becoming attached to some of these characters. though i am choosing to believe that adol and dogi come back and visit sometimes. a lot of the side quests you can do are fun too. shout outs to the island with the trees. if you know you know! and if you don't know, look forward to it (: it's really good.
segue THE CHARACTERS the characters in ys x are cool and fun and i love all of them. there's a variety of different types so there's surely someone any player can latch onto. to list a few, i really liked gren(? glen?) he's a good funny guy. i liked rosa. her design is really nice and she's got a touching story. all the characters do, really. but her's is one that sticks out. and of course KARJA fucking BALTA she is just the best i love her so much forever. adol and karja's bond over the course of the game going from "who is this red haired fuck don't touch me" to. having a level of mutual trust and care for each other. shown in their dialogue but also in the cool team up moves that they learn throughout the game.
THE MUSIC the music is very good. iunno i'll list some tracks i like. young swordsman in the eyes, to be free. all the songs are nice though. it's a falcom game.
ART STYLE it's good art style. characters, environments, etc. all looks really nice. it's a good looking game.
GAMEPLAY it's very fun to play. the combat system with the dodging and guarding and perfect guarding: it's fun. it's a bit annoying whenever you try to do a high level fight early and they've got tons of health, and maybe even an armor bar you have to empty before you can do any damage. but hey it's ys lol. i remembered ys 1 and 2 and you try to fight a boss with the wrong equipment or level too low it's like technically possible but really really tough. but only one or two fights in the game were like that. the final boss was insanely good. there were attacks i saw and pointed at like "is this the elden ring dlc final boss but like good (i haven't played that dlc because i bounced off the main game like a bouncy thing that bounces really hard)." all the different combat skills you get are really fun. you get separate ones for adol and karja, and duo skills they do together. i spent most of my time controlling adol and unlocked all of his skills. he had some really cool ones, so i wanna play more as karja on my next playthrough to see what her's are like. the skills you get outside of combat are really cool too. they put a devil bringer in ys (it's different but i don't care). also the different weapons you can use on your ship - the ship i have not mentioned a single time in this review - especially the end game ones are really fun to use and just cool. but to talk about the boat more it's a good feeling going from a ship that's basically just salvage that still floats to something quick and powerful.
CONCLUSION i love ys x - nordics. literally the same day that i finished the game falcom at one of their shareholder meetings announced ys x - proud nordics: a heavily updated version of the game with new stories, new environments and new gameplay. from some of the screenshots they showed it looks like you can throw a cube? and i feel the same as when they first announced ys x. i have to play this as soon as i can. i really hope it's on steam when it launches. even though i already bought it full price this year, i feel like i had a good enough time to warrant buying a new remixed version. i just see more ys x and go yes, more ys x i can play. things i'm hoping for are: more scenes with adol and karja (i haven't written much about it in this review but i love them so much. they live inside my head together like as a couple.), new enemy types, fun new mana abilities - maybe a faster land movement option. but in any case i'm very excited to see what they cook up for this updated release. anyways i hope this makes sense because i am not looking back to edit any of it. play ys x nordics and let me know psychically what you think about karja.
really enjoyed playing this much more than i expected at first. when i played the demo i literally did not think it was fun. i thought it was clunky. i thought it was annoying that enemies throw tons of status effects on you that make you unable to act for multiple turns even if you clear it the next turn. also the loading times and frame rate at points really are not good. but after i closed it after the first session i thought: "oh. nothing else i've played lately is anything like this. i should finish this game." and so i bought it on release on oct 31 and i've spent a few hours here and there since then until i finished it! i ended up having a really good time with it despite any flaws and rough edges. i really like the original art used for the main characters. they're really cute and squishy looking. feels very from the heart. there's also conversation scenes between white cat and the other characters one on one. i found them a bit hard to understand some time due to the english translation but it was neat seeing these scrunkly looking oomfies chatting about real stuff. i also feel like the fact that you start relatively weak with very few skills or spells and basically no money for supplies - one time use keys to unlock doors, and potions and herbs to restore hp and mp - makes it feel good when you do get more skills more resources as the game progresses. finding stronger accessories or new abilities for your team until by the end you have made everyone decently powerful. lots of restrictions make it feel good when you can overcome them. i think the exploration in the areas is fun too. they let you place little glowing stones to mark where you've been. it just feels fun to explore and look for things. though the encounter rate is maybe a bit high for a game where you don't get xp and if you attempt to run and fail your team misses a turn. but once you get enough resources you can use potions to skip encounters for a limited time which was so nice. get to actually look around for more than 5 seconds at a time haha. but overall it was fun and i paid just a couple dollars for it so definitely worth it imo. check it out if you like funky little rpgs. it took me about 25 hours to complete but maybe others can finish it quicker. anyways that's all! game good!
i really liked this! my first super metroid rom hack and whenever i play others they will have a lot to live up to. the quality of life changes added to super metroid such as a map that shows item locations and door locations !!! along with making some of the more prickly movement techniques (wall jumping and especially the space jump) much more friendly. the story cutscene in the intro got me interested immediately. the writing is soo good. also i really like the twists they took on items from the original game. fun and refreshing! i have to mention that the hack features several horror elements. content warning for stuff like blood gore corpses hanging bodies and more. i don't think they were misused, i think they fit well. actual mature and good rom hack imo. definitely recommend! just be wary of those items. (return to bingo)
honestly wasn't expecting to enjoy this one as much as i did. like it wasn't amazing but it was a functional decently fun tower defense style game. it was only about 3.5 hours long so it didn't overstay its welcome imo. it's very strange that the bridge between the story of the first two worlds game and the second is a spin off game like this. not that it's like required playing really. they get you up to speed really quickly in two worlds ii. well i mean thinking about it with a bit more... i feel like even if i had played castle defense (i nearly called it cower defense lol) before two worlds ii, i still wouldn't really know what's going on. it tells you basically what gandohar is doing between the two games but i have no idea how mr. two worlds (the protagonist) ends up there. maybe that's my bad and i just missed something though. one other thing that stood out about castle defense was that it required an activation key provided by steam? two worlds ii used to do this as well but they stopped doing it before i got around to it. but apparently they never took it out of castle defense. probably not worth paying to do a patch or whatever. bottom line would i recommend it? iunno. if you buy two worlds ii i think it comes with it anyways. you might as well play it if you're planning to play two worlds ii. otherwise... you're allowed to skip it imo. i had fun though (: (return to bingo)
under constrction! construction!