Well I guess we better talk about some video games.
Starting off with something I didn't mention last week. Not out of ignorance or because it snuck up on me, just misread the release date; Tales of Graces f Remastered is up, the latest of what we've been assured are a great many incoming Tales games remasters. So good news on behalf of all the series fans. I, largely, am not a fan of the series, but I've been told that it's one of the entries of the series with Actually Fun combat, instead of awkward clunky combat, so that is enough to make me perk up my ears and slap 'er into the ol' wishlist. I'm also told that the f stands for "Future" even though it's a rerelease of a video game form the 360/PS3 era. In this house we call that *False Advertising* and it's a Crime.
It's a Tales game, so expect Generalized RPG Nonsense as well as everyone being shocked to learnt that racism is both extant and also bad, and then solve that problem by stabbing a bad guy in the face.
Speaking of encountering intolerance and then stabbing it in the face, I'll go ahead and presume that crops up in Ender Magnolia, the sequel to Ender Lilies, the Troid-em-up where you were a gal with a whole whack of ghosts living in your head that could smack around monsters on your behalf. This one also has that, but you're a somewhat older gal and the problem is "Poison Gas made all the frankensteins go weird", but luckily that's exactly the kind of problem a bunch of ghosts with swords can solve.
So head on down to the Land of Fumes and get that mess all straightened out, why don't ya. I bet you can do a double jump while you're there!
Next up is the latest of Aspyrs remasters of Star Wars games of the 90s/early aughts. And it *still* isn't one of the flight sims. Nope, it's... uh... Star Wars: Episode 1: Jedi Power Battles. You may remember Jedi Power Battles as... umm...
Well, you probably don't remember this one whatsoever. Like... it wasn't bad or nothing. Just a pretty middle of the road PS1-era beat-em-up/platformer, based on Phantom Menace. I'm sure it's fine but I'm starting to take the fact that they haven't re-released Rogue Leader personally.
Next up is one of the absolute hoo-nelly darlin's of the fighting game genre; Guilty Gear: Strive has finally arrived on the Switch, alongside most (if not all) of the DLC. I don't know how solid of a port it is, Strive is a heck of a fancy looking game, but either way it's the video game where the most heavy metal animes punch each other so hard that lightning bolts fly all over the place and the announcer gets weirdly poetic instead of saying "Round 1: Fight!"
And all your favorite Guilty Gears are here; Brisket, Karate Dracula, Enby Grim Reaper, I-No...
But not Kliff, dammit, so to hell with everything.
Speaking of whacking enemies so hard that lightning flies all over the place using legally acceptable stand-ins, we have the latest game to say "Well... why don't we just do a Hades?", and to that end we have Ravenswatch, a game in which Hades'd up fairy tale guys are all plopped into a randomized monster dungeon and told to murd the holy bajeezus out of everything they see until they die, then do it again. It's from the same peeps as what made Curse of the Dead Gods, which was... umm... also that, and it was pretty decent! So logically, this would also be pretty decent!
Traipse around the collective imagination of mankind and beat seven kinds of crap out of it, over and over again, shy don't you?
And speaking of semi-randomized dungeon crawling and the corresponding demolition of everything that draws breath inside that dungeon, we have Sword of the Necromancer: Resurrection. A remake of Sword of the Necromancer which, I wanted to like but it was kind of... plain. This time it's in amazing Early PS2-era visuals, and it looks like there's a bit more going on in terms of gameplay.
You're a gal who would much prefer her girlfriend not be *quite* as deceased as she is presently and figures "I bet doing a Shadow of the Colossus, but with a lot of tiny monsters instead of a few gigantic ones would fix that right up".
I didn't finish SotC, but certainly no downsides to this plan.
And speaking of writing your own story, we have Worlds of Aria, which appears to be much in the vein of Wildermyth or For the King, but with the extra level of ambiguity where you're playing as people playing Dungeons and Dragons (GM'd by Laura Bailey) instead of... like... Dungeo-draggling yourself. It also has online cross-platform play so that's a nice benefit.
Speaking of adding metagame elements to long established popular games we have Dance of Cards, a Poker RPG where you're a player stranded at sea in a murder casino where the only way to survive is to win. Fortunately, being "lucky" or "good at cards" doesn't really enter into the equation on that front since cheating, weedling and coercion is completely permissible, and indeed... necessary for your continued survival.
And finally, what week would be complete without an old Japanese PC game getting ported; and luckily it's one of the ones that doesn't really require any kind of localization since it's a shmup-em-up; Egg Console: Zanac, but specifically the MSX port of Zanac, and I know just enough about the MSX hardware to assume that it was *probably* not well suited for the game. Zanac itself is one of the first big hits from Compile, who know a thing or two about making good shmups and is pretty much Xevious if the game adjusted every aspect of itself to accomdate how well you were playing.
Also, I am to this day not quite sure whether or not the cover art is meant to depict a robot skeletor.
OKAY GO TO BED
Starting off with something I didn't mention last week. Not out of ignorance or because it snuck up on me, just misread the release date; Tales of Graces f Remastered is up, the latest of what we've been assured are a great many incoming Tales games remasters. So good news on behalf of all the series fans. I, largely, am not a fan of the series, but I've been told that it's one of the entries of the series with Actually Fun combat, instead of awkward clunky combat, so that is enough to make me perk up my ears and slap 'er into the ol' wishlist. I'm also told that the f stands for "Future" even though it's a rerelease of a video game form the 360/PS3 era. In this house we call that *False Advertising* and it's a Crime.
It's a Tales game, so expect Generalized RPG Nonsense as well as everyone being shocked to learnt that racism is both extant and also bad, and then solve that problem by stabbing a bad guy in the face.
Speaking of encountering intolerance and then stabbing it in the face, I'll go ahead and presume that crops up in Ender Magnolia, the sequel to Ender Lilies, the Troid-em-up where you were a gal with a whole whack of ghosts living in your head that could smack around monsters on your behalf. This one also has that, but you're a somewhat older gal and the problem is "Poison Gas made all the frankensteins go weird", but luckily that's exactly the kind of problem a bunch of ghosts with swords can solve.
So head on down to the Land of Fumes and get that mess all straightened out, why don't ya. I bet you can do a double jump while you're there!
Next up is the latest of Aspyrs remasters of Star Wars games of the 90s/early aughts. And it *still* isn't one of the flight sims. Nope, it's... uh... Star Wars: Episode 1: Jedi Power Battles. You may remember Jedi Power Battles as... umm...
Well, you probably don't remember this one whatsoever. Like... it wasn't bad or nothing. Just a pretty middle of the road PS1-era beat-em-up/platformer, based on Phantom Menace. I'm sure it's fine but I'm starting to take the fact that they haven't re-released Rogue Leader personally.
Next up is one of the absolute hoo-nelly darlin's of the fighting game genre; Guilty Gear: Strive has finally arrived on the Switch, alongside most (if not all) of the DLC. I don't know how solid of a port it is, Strive is a heck of a fancy looking game, but either way it's the video game where the most heavy metal animes punch each other so hard that lightning bolts fly all over the place and the announcer gets weirdly poetic instead of saying "Round 1: Fight!"
And all your favorite Guilty Gears are here; Brisket, Karate Dracula, Enby Grim Reaper, I-No...
But not Kliff, dammit, so to hell with everything.
Speaking of whacking enemies so hard that lightning flies all over the place using legally acceptable stand-ins, we have the latest game to say "Well... why don't we just do a Hades?", and to that end we have Ravenswatch, a game in which Hades'd up fairy tale guys are all plopped into a randomized monster dungeon and told to murd the holy bajeezus out of everything they see until they die, then do it again. It's from the same peeps as what made Curse of the Dead Gods, which was... umm... also that, and it was pretty decent! So logically, this would also be pretty decent!
Traipse around the collective imagination of mankind and beat seven kinds of crap out of it, over and over again, shy don't you?
And speaking of semi-randomized dungeon crawling and the corresponding demolition of everything that draws breath inside that dungeon, we have Sword of the Necromancer: Resurrection. A remake of Sword of the Necromancer which, I wanted to like but it was kind of... plain. This time it's in amazing Early PS2-era visuals, and it looks like there's a bit more going on in terms of gameplay.
You're a gal who would much prefer her girlfriend not be *quite* as deceased as she is presently and figures "I bet doing a Shadow of the Colossus, but with a lot of tiny monsters instead of a few gigantic ones would fix that right up".
I didn't finish SotC, but certainly no downsides to this plan.
And speaking of writing your own story, we have Worlds of Aria, which appears to be much in the vein of Wildermyth or For the King, but with the extra level of ambiguity where you're playing as people playing Dungeons and Dragons (GM'd by Laura Bailey) instead of... like... Dungeo-draggling yourself. It also has online cross-platform play so that's a nice benefit.
Speaking of adding metagame elements to long established popular games we have Dance of Cards, a Poker RPG where you're a player stranded at sea in a murder casino where the only way to survive is to win. Fortunately, being "lucky" or "good at cards" doesn't really enter into the equation on that front since cheating, weedling and coercion is completely permissible, and indeed... necessary for your continued survival.
And finally, what week would be complete without an old Japanese PC game getting ported; and luckily it's one of the ones that doesn't really require any kind of localization since it's a shmup-em-up; Egg Console: Zanac, but specifically the MSX port of Zanac, and I know just enough about the MSX hardware to assume that it was *probably* not well suited for the game. Zanac itself is one of the first big hits from Compile, who know a thing or two about making good shmups and is pretty much Xevious if the game adjusted every aspect of itself to accomdate how well you were playing.
Also, I am to this day not quite sure whether or not the cover art is meant to depict a robot skeletor.
OKAY GO TO BED
