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VC3 has the best overall cast. They spend time fleshing out all your squad members and they're awesome characters.

I think the Lost Odyssey is the only recent JRPG I've played in recent years where I cared to do the post game stuff, or all the extras and whatnot. I used to be an insane completionist with JRPG's but not so much anymore. Like with all the new re-releases of most of the classic FF games, the amount of extra content they tend to have is staggering, but I don't really bother with it much. lol

It's cool though, I'll never complain about newly added post game content. Bang for your buck for sure.

1/16: Diablo III (PC)
1/19: Picross E (3DS DL)
1/23: Baroque (Wii)
2/5: LocoRoco (PSP)
3/31: Picross e2 (3DS DL)
4/7: Stardew Valley (Steam)
4/8: Voices From the Sea (Steam)
4/10: X-Note (Steam)
4/11: To the Moon (Steam)
4/19: Atelier Totori: The Adventurer of Arland (PS3)
4/19: Aquapazza: Aquaplus Dream Match (PS3)
6/19: Steins;Gate (PS3)
7/11: Yoshi’s Woolly World (Wii U)
7/13: Muramasa Rebirth (Vita)
7/13: Strider 2 (PS1 Classics)
7/16: Planetarian ~The Reverie of a Little Planet~ (Steam)
7/16: Narcissu (Steam)
7/26: Crimzon Clover: World Ignition (GOG)
7/28: LocoRoco 2 (PSP)
7/30: Criminal Girls: Invite Only (Vita)
8/1: Pokemon Art Academy (3DS)
8/5: Gal*Gun: Double Peace (PS4)

Total: 22 games

I'm not really going to go into much detail, since Elkin beat this recently (and I think Exhuminator is also getting it if I recall correctly), plus I'm tired so I'll keep this short.

Basically all the girls at school (minus the love interests) are super attracted to you, so shoot them with your pheromone gun to keep them away, House of the Dead style. Every so often you can go into this mode (Doki Doki Mode I think?), which basically makes a few girls have orgasms, which for some reason acts like a bomb and all other girls in the area leave. There are also many hidden items to collect, different paths to choose, and different girls to pursue which gives you a reason to replay the game. The levels are quick, and it's really silly which pretty much always sits well in my book.

Not many bad things to say, other than sometimes the models were a little odd with hair or bows clipping through other body parts. I guess also I didn't like how I got a Bad Ending on my first try, but I guess that just adds another reason for me to replay it. It's definitely not for everyone of course, as there are panties and bras everywhere, but for me it was a great time.

What percentage attraction did you end with? And who did you pick? I picked the older sister and ended with 93%. I was SO close. It pissed me off.

ElkinFencer10 wrote:What percentage attraction did you end with? And who did you pick? I picked the older sister and ended with 93%. I was SO close. It pissed me off.

I was also going for the older sister, but I think I only ended up with around ~40%. Obviously I did something wrong

My Vita copy of Gal*Gun should be in tomorrow. I need a happy fluffy game before I fall into the trench of madness known as Shadow Tower Abyss.

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Games Ex has beaten in 2016:



87. Malaya's Treasure|MSX2|1988|action adventure|2h 25m|7/10

In 1988, Pony Canyon released Malaya No Hihou, or rather "Malaya's Treasure", for the Japanese PC known as the MSX2. Malaya's Treasure saw limited release in its home country, and was never ported to any other platform, nor localized outside of Japan. Due to its obscurity, many gamers have never heard of Malaya's Treasure, understandably. But then in 2010, the fan trans group "MSX Translations" released an English patch for Malaya's Treasure. Hooray for belated unofficial localizations!



The premise of Malaya's Treasure is simple. You play the role of a treasure hunter, who's traveled to the Philippines, in search of Yamashita's gold (or The Tiger of Malaya as he was nicknamed). To find this legendary loot, the player must explore a deadly landscape. Deadly jungles, murky swamps, dangerous mountains, creepy caves, and trap laden temples await. And if that's not tricky enough, there are magical puzzles to solve as well. Thankfully the local village folk are friendly, and will happily aid the player in their quest. For a price, of course.



Malaya's Treasure's core gameplay is one of exploratory platforming. However this is no metroidvania, but rather a collection of five very large stages. Each stage branches and is at times recursive, with various obstacles that must be overcome in the correct order to proceed. The player must kill enemies for gold, and use the gold to buy keys, bombs, and life restoratives. Keys open locked doors of course, but bombs are even more important. The player throws bombs to discover secret passages and hidden powerups. You'll never know which rocks can be destroyed until you try, luckily you can carry up to 99 bombs. But again, they cost cold hard cash, so just tossing them about randomly can get to be expensive fast.



Jumping over spikes, bombing rocks, and solving strange puzzles is capped off by lots of fighting. The player is given a sword to combat monsters with, and this sword can be leveled up with hidden items. The sword also has the ability to shoot fire balls out of itself, when the player finds the magical bonuses that allow for it (but they expire over time). Besides regular wild animals, the player must also fight monsters and ghosts. And of course bosses, from time to time. The bosses can be fairly challenging and are immune to sword magic unfortunately.



Although Malaya's treasure is graphically primitive, its consistent simple graphics have a lot of charm. The controls are easy and highly precise. The fan translation is excellent, and allowed me to finish the game without a walkthrough. The sense of exploration is palpable, you really do feel like an Indiana Jones-esque treasure hunter seeking fame and fortune amongst the wilds of the Philippines. If I have one complaint though, it's that the OST isn't so hot. Actually for the most part, it's pretty bad. There are a few decent tunes, but the MSX2 can do far more than what this game asks of it.



If I were to sum up Malaya's Treasure in a short description, it'd be; Super Pitfall meets Castlevania 2. If that sounds like a good time, then by all means track this one down. Malaya's Treasure is not a very difficult game, but it's quite fulfilling in its own simple ways. Sometimes it's nice to go back and play something that at once feels nostalgic, yet also exotic, and Malaya's Treasure is exactly that. So despite this game languishing in obscurity for nearly three decades, I still enjoyed this unprententious little expedition no worse for the wear. Whether or not you find the legendary titular golden hoard, know that the real treasure here lies in the hunt.

Bonus, check out some nice art from the instruction manual:

Samba De Amigo (Wii)

This is a game that I loved, that is very hard to talk about, because I know that is so fundamentally bad.

Samba De Amigo is a rhythm game by Sega, with a very heavy Latin-rhythm theme. Originally for the Dremacast, and then remade again for the Dreamcast (only in Japan), (almost) all the content in those two versions were bundled together and coupled with about 20 more songs to be remade for the Wii back in 2008.

The original game used special maraca controllers and a sensor bar to detect the actual height of each maraca, one in each hand. The Wiimotes have no such relative height detecting feature, so instead their "height" is determined by the way they're pointing, up, horizontal, or down. There in is where the game's biggest problem lies: It has the Kinect problem in that it just fundamentally doesn't work well enough to play the entire game. The Wii remotes can't detect their positions being changed quickly enough to actually play the harder modes. However, you NEED to play the single player modes on all difficulties to unlock not only all of the extra weird things, but also about a third of the songs in the game. There is NEEEEVER any reason that music should be locked out of a rhythm game, limited by skill level (broken or not). It's the exact same problem that fighting games had with their obsession with unlockable characters in the past decade: Not everyone has the time to grind for a million hours to unlock all of that shit, when they just wanna play their favorite fighter NOW. The Easy and Normal career modes are fun and well balanced, and I got through them just fine. I could barely even beat one stage on hard mode though, let alone even unlock super hard mode, so there were like 10 songs I can just never actually play.

It's such a shame too! The harder modes add a ton to the presentation, with not only the Samba De Amigo characters dancing around in the background, but you have backgrounds inspired by other Sega franchises with their characters dancing as well, from Sonic to Space Channel 5. Sadly, I only ever got to see the Sonic one

All that whining about gated content aside, the game is actually really good fun with what's there. I had hours of fun just playing songs on normal in the free-play mode. The presentation is fantastic: Bright and colorful characters and classic Latin rhythms coupled in with actually quality upbeat Western songs. Compared to something like Donkey Konga, this is a perfect example of how a Japanese rhythm game has songs that appeal to Western audiences properly.

Verdict: Unless you really like Latin music like I do, it's not easy to recommend this game in good faith with the knowledge that it's so broken. The music is great, and the normal modes are also great fun, but because of how it gates its content behind its broken harder difficulties, I have to give it a fairly middling review, no matter how fun the normal game might be. Granted, it's pretty easy to find for under a dollar, so if you're okay with that kind of stuff, it's a great way to spend an afternoon

Exhum, that looks like Zelda 2. Are you sure you didn't just play Zelda 2 and not realize it because of moon runes?

MrPopo wrote:Exhum, that looks like Zelda 2. Are you sure you didn't just play Zelda 2 and not realize it because of moon runes?

I can see how you can draw comparison just looking at screenshots, but the game design differences are stark when playing the two. The most similar aspect is when you're walking through town talking to NPCs, especially when you go inside their homes. There's a dude that looks just like he could be the "I AM ERROR." guy's brother.

First 50:

51. Ori and the Blind Forest - Xbox One

So my Metroidvania kick continues. Except this game isn't actually a Metroidvania; it's a challenge platformer that includes a Metroidvania style map and progression of movement abilities. But the exploration and backtracking aspect of Metroidvanias is quite light; the emphasis is on seeing how good at platforming you are.

The game has an art style that seems to take cues from Vanillaware and the whole thing looks gorgeous. It's a visual treat that varies up the terrain while still being within the confines of the large forest you're trying to save. The music is similarly nice. Aesthetically the game is great.

The enemy variety is pretty low and unfortunately the most common ones tend to be the most annoying to fight. Enemies take many shots to kill, and your only weapon is a sort range auto tracking weapon with a bit of a cooldown to it (specifically, you can fire X shots and then have a cooldown period). Meanwhile enemies are a mix of projectile users and hoppers that move fairly quickly and most encounters are in chokepoints. It makes for a frustrating experience, as the enemies seem to power up at about the same rate you gain health/damage resistance, so you're always just a few hits away from death. Many times you're better off skipping enemies when you can. The game has no traditional bosses in it; the closest it comes are a handful of "minibosses" which lock you in a room until you kill them. They don't really take many more shots than other enemies, they just have short periods of vulnerability (think the lanmolas from Zelda).

The core of the game is the platforming. It's definitely from the school of precision jumping and trick movement. Spikes litter the area, with many sections involving jumping between areas of safety to stand/climb on. One key movement ability you gain midway through the game is to dash through an enemy or projectile; this becomes core to many of the platforming segments. In several instances you run a gauntlet of projectile enemies that you have to dash through the shots of to maintain your momentum or else fall to your death.

These culminate in the escape sequences. Your primary goal is to unlock and traverse three dungeons to activate the MacGuffins, then afterwards you have an escape sequence. This will be some timed challenge with a lot of instant death traps that requires you to use your abilities to the fullest. I found a lot of the obstacles to be neigh-impossible to avoid on a blind run.

The whole thing is set in a large world of interconnected maps, like you might see in a Metroidvania. And there's collectables to power up, like health and spirit containers and experience points to give you abilities on the skill tree. But the whole thing is deemphasized. A large number of them can be gotten with no backtracking, and the backtracking the game does have you do is fairly minimal compared to what you'd see in a traditional Metroidvania. It's sort of like how Mega Man ZX had a Metroidvania style map and some things that required you to backtrack but it was just some window dressing over the core experience, rather than being the core experience.

It's certainly a fun game if you like challenge platformers. Just don't go in expecting indie Super Metroid; that's Axiom Verge.