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Beating Games

Started catching up on my Switch backlog with Bowser's Fury. I had fun with the Odyssey-esque parts where you're running around collecting Cat Shines (and the Everything Is Cat aesthetic is very cute), but I found the parts where you have to fight Bowser to be kinda tedious. Cat Saiyan Mario feels excessively heavy to control and the camera is way too slow for how quickly Bowser can move. But overall it was a chill Mario time.

I'd already played 3D World back in the Wii U days, but I didn't enjoy it as much on the replay this time around. I really appreciated the designers' commitment to making each level unique, but I feel like they went way overboard with the collectathon aspect. Is anyone really going to beat every level with every character? I feel like one playthrough is enough, although thinking about it a little harder, I bet if I was still 8-12 years old I probably would've done it. I replayed the shit out of everything back then.
 
Mole Mania - Charming, good puzzles. I got stuck a decent number of times, and had that moment of realizing I had to do something unexpected to solve the puzzle, but then sometimes there would be a string of really easy ones. Overall it was moderately challenging. I got 100%, but the bonus levels were a real drag. In retrospect I should have just skipped those. A lot of the later stages made good use of the above/below ground spaces. Surprising that no one else has iterated on the digging and throwing mechanics.

Ninja Gaiden Shadow - A neat, very short action game. I really liked the bosses, and the stages had just enough going on to stay interesting. There's not that much to it, but what's there is all good.

Black Castle 2 - It's basically a remake of the first game, but with a lot of new enemies and more varied architecture. Super simple, but a fun little platformer. it's free online, too.
 
Zelda II: The Adventure of Mario is ridiculous. And awesome. If you're a Zelda II fan and want to experience that game in a completely different way, give this hack a go.

setsideb.com

Romhack Thursday: Zelda II: The Adventure of Mario

We've not done a Romhack Thursday* for a while. Found by way of a Bluesky post by bro3256, of the website Famibro, this is a brilliant romhack by jroweboy (SMBA
setsideb.com setsideb.com
 
I finished Lufia & The Fortress of Doom tonight.

I have a clear memory of my brother renting Lufia when it was released and devouring it in a weekend. Despite both of us being RPG-starved in '93, I remember bouncing off the game very early on. I had cut my teeth on Final Fantasy 4 and held it to the gold standard. Lufia was not that. And so I fucked off that weekend and played the NES while my brother huddled around the SNES for hours on end.

A few nights ago I found myself bored and decided to play my Super NES Mini. I had forgotten I hacked it, so I have a ton of games on there and, for whatever reason, I decided it was time. And, so, I've finished Lufia. A little over 23 hours on the play clock; the shortness might be the best thing I can say about it. Okay, one more thing: I enjoy that they gave Lufia so much MP, allowing a liberal use of spells, unlike DQ and FF, which I tend to play more conservatively. Oh, and the music is pretty good.

There's a kind of early SNES charm here that I adore, no question, but the game can be quite tedious to play. The RNG on attacks seemed very inconsistent. No item descriptions, so I just had to use them to figure out what they did. Weight as a stat, which irritates me on a conceptual level, although I'm not sure it had any real factor in battle. The slowness of AoE spell animations. Status ailments I had no items or magic to cure, as if the game just expected me to load up on every item in the shop so I could be prepared like a Boy Scout. Jerin being a bit useless, about half the time. Fetch quests that made me want to throw the controller, like the 'questline' where you have to get some NPCs to make a bridge in a cave.

The final boss was a bit of pain until in a last ditch effort I used the Mirror spell and found, much to my delight, that it blocks all of his attacks, including his special attack which seems to just confuse the character. Imagine my additional delight when I found the Mirror does not function like Reflect in FF; your own spells still land, only enemy spells are blocked. That would have been handy to know before the final battle. To be fair, I saved every Miracle (read: Elixir + Phoenix Down) the game dished out and I had umpteen Ex Potions and Ex Magics, so I likely would have been fine. But blocking the special attacks was a godsend, seeing as how I only had 7 Shrieks (confuse cure) when I entered combat.

I also have Lufia 2 on there and since I have nothing better to play at the moment, I guess I'll start in on that one. I hope it's better than Lufia, if only in the sense that I hope it has more "modern" conventions. The Internet tells me that game came out in 1995 so...maybe?
 
Oh, yeah, Lufia 2 is way better. Couldn't tell you in detail why, it's too long since I played it, but while I bounced off the first game, even with 15 years, I devoured the second one.
 
Oh, dude, you are in for a ride. Lufia II is right up there with the best JRPGs on the system. Better combat system (with random battles only on the overworld), solid battling, great Zelda-style puzzling, and a whole dang rogue-like snuck in there with the Ancient Cave. I liked Lufia in the way I still like 8-bit-ish RPGs, but Lufia II completely overshadows it (and anything else in the series, too).
 
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