Digital Down-Low for 01/29/2022: I Want to Be The Very First, Because No One Ever Was

[Octopus Prime]

Ask your doctor if video games are right for you

Reverie Knights is the first thing I saw for this weeks thread so GUESS WHAT, that's what I'm yabberin' on about first! It's an SRPG that, if I'm inferring properly, is inspired at least somewhat by Banner Saga, except more of a fantasy novel and less of a Thor comic. Or... I guess... an Edda, if you want to get fancy-talking about it. Anyway, you've got some elves what dislike gerblins, and a bunch of fantasy names like Lennorian and Fren and one guy appears to be Mysterio and its got some pretty nice visuals.

So that's all I can say about Reverie Knights; the game where Knights... enjoy reverie.

If you're still in the mood for ADVENTURE, but... in the video game genre more in terms of "pointing an icon at a thing to talk to someone or try to steal a cats wallet" or something, we have MULTIPLE CHOICES this week, like Angelo & Deemon, which is about an unpopular youtuber who winds up in H-*-Double-Hockey-Sticks and has to get enough likes on his terrible vlog to get out. The eShop description keeps bragging about not having pixel art graphics so... that's where it's mind is at. But if you DO want pixel art graphics, there's The Longest Road on Earth (also featuring; varmints), but here the only adventure you're pointing at and clicking is "which of these sad varmints will make me cry?". The answer MAY surprise you! Unforseen Incidents is one that's about a guy who discovers a secret evil conspiracy about a mysterious epidemic plaguing the world (errr...) and finally we've got Magi Trials, which is a visual novel and, heck, I'm on a role! This one is about a witch in a MAGIC SCHOOL tasked with attaining great thaumaturgic power and/or smooches. It's rated T for Violence and sexual scenes, like Castlevania: Erotic Violence.

Elasto Mania is a... not necessaily long awaited remake (as it came as a complete surprise to everyone), but certainly much appreciated remake of the second best bike-crash simulator of the late 90s/early 2000s. The wait for an HD remake of Nanaca Crash continues, sadly. The best simple description I can manage for this l'il slugger is Excitebike, except with much more bewildering physics, where adhering to gravity is gently discouraged.

Pedal through mobius strips until you can ram your head into a flower; just like all the pro BMX bikers.

We've got two distinct games for everyone who wants something LIKE Mega Man, but not actually Mega Man this week; first and FAR more prominent of which is Luminous Avenger iX 2, the sequel to the spin-off to Gunvolt, starring the guy who really should be the main villain of that series, Copen; who is basically an X-Men villain and not one of the cool ones; he'd be Grayden Creed or Stryker, if he's anyone. Just a guy with a gun who hates people with super powers (in his defense; there's, like, one person with superpowers in this whole franchise who is not a murderous sociopath. And we also have Cogen: Sword of Rewind, which I was honestly pretty surprised not to see Inti-creates name in there anywhere; in this one you have a sword instead of a gun and you can rewind time when you screw up because... you know... it's a rewind sword; it's right there in the title.

Concordia is a digital adaptation of the board game of the same name, which is apparently pretty well regarded.

Look... sometimes there's not a lot of room to get creative with descriptions.

Next up is one of the Big Two this week; Pokemon Legends: Arceus, which is one of the few times in recent memory that a non-mainline Pokemon game made me stop and go "Well heck... WELL HECK! Gimme this fresh nonsense". It's an action RPG for one thing, and it takes place in the Olden Days before anyone thought that catching and training Pokemon was a thing you could do. Wander Old Timey Sinnoh, meet a big crab or two, dodge-roll away from lightning bolts.

It's Pokemon, where they're all trying to end your life!

The other big name release is... more important to Talking Time than society at large, I'm pretty sure, and that's too bad because it's a really solid example of its genre; Record of Lodoss War: Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth, which I think may be the first new entry in the Lodoss War franchise since that Dreamcast game. And Lodoss War is basically Slayers, except Very Dull so... not the choice I would have made for fantasy animes to adapt for a new generation. HOWEVER... this is a troid-em-up, and it's a good one too, from what I've played. Enjoyed it a bit more than Luna Nights, from the same developer. This time, you control Deedlit (one of the only Lodoss characters anyone remembers) as she finds herself in Castlevania and is tasked with tracking down and defeating all the classic Lodoss War characters like... umm...

Geez...

I guess there's that Bad Deedlit girl, she's around.

And... a wizard?

Anyway; it's real good Troid and if the secondary goal is to make me enthusiastic about Record of Lodoss War, that fight was over before it began.

 

[Peklo]

Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth is so good that it actually makes Parn compelling as a narrative presence for the first time in history.

I do resent the characterization of the franchise's dullness as somehow being a failure of intent when that's so much of the appeal and what makes it stand out next to everything it ever influenced (which is, everything after it). It's got an unmatched dour and grandiose sensibility for heroic epics where every seen-this-before wrinkle only reinforces the archetypal stylings because it's so committed to being a straightlaced distillation of everything it represents at such a high level of execution that it landed on being downright iconic despite never having aspirations of reinventing the wheel. Next to every other fantasy property trying to figure out some kind of manufactured hook to manage being evocative, Lodoss makes all of that feel effortless for anything it ever explores in its setting. Wonder Labyrinth does not disappoint in remembering and featuring the series cast holistically either; nearly everyone of note (and not all of them from the famous OVA) make some kind of appearance to denote the real affection and understanding of the series that the game was clearly made with.

 

[gogglebob]

I would just like to note that I was there when the ol' usenets and webrings were new, and I have always been fascinated by how Record of Lodoss War seemed to only ever make an impact in seeing Lum-ian levels of art of Deedlit... and nothing else. Not a judgment call on whether this is somehow good or bad, just fascinating that I've seen more "this is why this anime is the most important thing ever" posts/articles about, like, Excel Saga or Bastard! than Record of Lodoss War, which is usually simply referenced with a "I guess you should watch it" and no further elaboration. Again, not saying this makes any interpretation somehow wrong or something, just weird how it didn't seem to inspire as much passion as its contemporaries.

 

[Peklo]

That doesn't seem like it's reflective of how it exists in culture at large to me even if anecdotally I'm sure it was a common reality. Interacting with Lodoss to almost any extent functions as a veritable Rosetta Stone to a country's creative output in the fantasy genre across mediums past its introduction point; its iconography and interpretations of genre staples became definitive in a way nothing else since has come close to, and its reverberations exist in absolutely everything for that ubiquity and wide reverence through reference, tribute, allusion and parody--which also results in those echoes being less discernible to identify if they're just perceived as part of a generic frame of reference instead of drawing from something very specific. If this doesn't seem like it's the case I blame the cultural gap and barrier forbidding seeing those connections clearly and which limits understanding of how entrenched it became in pop media compared to other works that, if localized in cases where Lodoss was not, appear to possess a similar or greater degree of adoption and penetration of mass consciousness. A lot of its peers from the era are no longer active, though, whereas Lodoss remains, through adaptive works like this, comics, and Mizuno having begun writing novels again in recent years. It's as evergreen as you could ask for and I've always found its framing as a curious relic a little strange but explicable for the factors described.

 

[Patrick]

If you are interested in a dry Euro board game about trading in the Mediterranean during the Roman Empire, Concordia is about as good as you can get.

It's got a big map of the area where you can send out little wooden guys to build little wooden houses, then trade in little wooden bits of wine or brick or whatever. You play one card every turn from your hand, and one of your cards lets you add all of the discarded cards back into your hand. You can buy more cards for your hand, and at the end of the game the same cards each give you points based on where you built houses or how many types of goods you produced or whatever.

I know, the description sounds really boring and there are like a million other games that do the same thing, but this one is just really good. You end up with a weird little puzzle each time of trying to get the most out of your hand before reclaiming, and trying to get the best spots for your houses while everyone else is building on the map. If you want to try a board game with great mechanics and don't care about the theme at all, check it out.

 

[MetManMas]

It is game time.

Froggy Crossing is one o' dem mobiley endless Frogger-'em-ups where you keep moving forward fueling your greed for coins while trying not to die horribly. It's no Crossy Road, but I don't see Crossy Road on Switch so...

Summertime Madness is an artsy game where an artist in a World War II ravaged Prague made a deal with the devil to enter the world of his own paintings to escape from hellish reality...and now must escape from hellish fantasy.

Elasto Mania is a remake of an old PC motorcycling game where you get your Excitebike on driving through all kinds of crazy 2D courses.

PopSlinger is a game inspired by 80s/90s New Retro culture where a girl named Ria Carbon fights off crazy shadow monsters and the people corrupted by them with the help of soda guns and former PopSlinger heroine, Gin! Fight off waves of monsters by shooting sodey at them.

Gunvolt Chronicles: Luminous Avenger iX 2 is the game where Inti Creates decided to go one step further from making games that just look like Mega Man Zero to making games that almost literally are Mega Man Zero! Have Copen chop lots of robots in half with back-up from his muse Lola.

Speaking of Mega Man Zero-y things, we also have COGEN: Sword of Rewind this week! In this game not made by Inti (but almost certainly in part inspired by their output), a girl named Kohaku uses a sword that lets her rewind time by up to three seconds all Sands of Time-like to fight off all kinds of killer robots.

Hidden Paws is a 3D scavenger hunt game where you look for cats who are freezing in the cold of winter to bring them home.

Pokémon Legends Arceus is Game Freak's latest! Basically Pokémon and Monster Hunter had a baby and you are back in Sinnoh's olden days when it was known as the Hisui region, starting off the whole befriending and marrying Pokémon thing the region waxed nostalgic about in its history books.

Deedlit in Wonder Labyrinth - Record of Lodoss War is a Metroidvania starring that elf girl who's likely the only reason some western audiences even know what Record of Lodoss War even is! But hey, if getting their Castleroids on gets more people into this long running DnD-ish property, all the better.

Think this is the first game spinoff to be localized since like Dreamcast.

And Calturin is a game where you're a wizard who's been resurrected by a necromancer and now must kill for him in hopes that he'll set you free someday.

 

[Becksworth]

I haven't watched it in forever, but the I remember the first few episodes of Lodoss War being the perfect distillation of a D&D session, right down to one of the players having a completely Out of Character dumbass moment over something shiny resulting in massive grief for the whole party.

 

[Bongo]

I played the Lodoss War game on PC. It's not half as explorey as IGA made 'em, instead being more fighty, and the Ikaruga-esque element toggle mechanic is great. It ends with a boss rush that I didn't find fun enough to finish, however. All in all, I approve.

 

[MetManMas]

Here's some more games!

Reverie Knights Tactics is a game where you search for a lost city by way of slaughtering countless goblins and occasional visual novel stuff. 'Cuz games don't use a dedicated grid for mundane fantasy life.

Gomoku Let's Go is a Go simulator with pretty backgrounds.

Crush Crush is a mobile F2P idle dating sim that's now after the Switch bux! Take on lots and lots of different jobs to impress and go out with multiple pretty anime girls.

The Longest Road on Earth is an artsy pixelly dialogueless monochrome game with pretty music made up of four short stories looking into the everyday lives of a few anthropomorphic animal people.

Zodiac Tri Peaks Solitaire is a no-budget Tri Peaks Solitaire game with poorly drawn anime Zodiacs on the cards. And just to show how directly ported from phones the whole experience is, it only supports handheld mode 'cuz the touch screen is mandatory and nobody programmed in controller support.

And our weekly Arcade Archives game is Pistol Daimyo no Bōken! This is an old Namco SHMUP where a wacky shogun's vassal with a cannon mounted to his head and fans on his feet flaps around shooting giant frogs and Kappas and stuff.