Together Retro: Eighties' Ladies' Night

[alienjesus]

I’m glad you’re enjoying trucking through still. Personally I was happy to look up some help myself. If you need any tips and don’t want to look stuff up yourself, feel free to ask and I’ll do my best to remember what I did!

Cool, thanks! I feel like I'm basically ready to beat the game, just having the descriptions of the items, though. Once I get Lilulu's crown, anyway. I am kind of annoyed by being forced into carrying certain items all the time, with certain characters. There are a lot of options I would like to put into Lilulu's inventory for the boss fight, but the game wants to force me to hold onto the pickaxe and high-jump shoes just to get over the wall between the inn and the crown chest. I managed to find a way to get rid of the high jump shoes, by jumping off the lion statue, when it becomes animated, but now that I'll have to have the shield on me, I'll have to leave behind either the boxing gloves, or a revival potion. Maybe it doesn't really matter, since I don't imagine there will be any real time for me to switch off of the shield during the fight, anyway.

I rarely found enough time to use potions etc in boss fights. Take the sheild and the glove - the sheild is all you need for the third boss, but the 4th I found it easier to get to a safe spot with the sheild and then switch to the glove

[Xeogred]

Made some big progress tonight!

Definitely liking it the more powerful I get, haha. I started off tonight by exploring the whole initial labrynth again and then finished up areas 2 and 3. Still a little confused about some of the things I can buy from the blue guy, there's a weird ^ icon that looks like tire marks that I've seen around a few times now and it's not some secondary power up from what I'm seeing though. It's also weird seeing other items I can purchase but already have, so I don't know if grabbing them from him powers them up further or what. Getting chips refueled is pretty easy regardless.

The shmup sections are getting more fun too as they get more manageable with the power ups, I also liked the grassy graphics of area 3. It seems like some usual NES tactics work really well in this game... I annihilated some bosses by using the sword blade power ups and just got right in their face for some massive constant damage. The red lobster guy was really hard, but I used the side sword blades for him and I think doing so kind of gave me some invincible frames here and there. Gotta be tricky with the NES mechanics and abuse them sometimes haha.


Jackpot!

[Nemoide]

Made more progress in Metroid.
I have some mixed feelings; on one hand, this is definitely a top-class NES game. On the other hand, I'm not wild about a lot of design choices. Playing using online maps and guides makes the game a total breeze. But playing without them would *definitely* be too frustrating for adult-me with limited free time. I feel like there should be SOME sort of in-game indication as to if a dead end is or is not actually a dead end. And while I would have liked to continue playing a bit more this evening, I fell into a lava-pit I couldn't escape from and had to let my life slooooooowly leach away before I could get a password. And of course when I start it up next time, I'll have a measly 30-life out of my current maximum of 400 or so. It's easy to kill infinitely-spawning enemies for health, but it feels like a waste of time. Is the game simply wasting my time to prevent me from getting the best ending? I don't really care that much, but SURELY there was a better way.

Oh well, the game is still a lot of fun!

[Xeogred]

Made more progress in Metroid.
I have some mixed feelings; on one hand, this is definitely a top-class NES game. On the other hand, I'm not wild about a lot of design choices. Playing using online maps and guides makes the game a total breeze. But playing without them would *definitely* be too frustrating for adult-me with limited free time. I feel like there should be SOME sort of in-game indication as to if a dead end is or is not actually a dead end. And while I would have liked to continue playing a bit more this evening, I fell into a lava-pit I couldn't escape from and had to let my life slooooooowly leach away before I could get a password. And of course when I start it up next time, I'll have a measly 30-life out of my current maximum of 400 or so. It's easy to kill infinitely-spawning enemies for health, but it feels like a waste of time. Is the game simply wasting my time to prevent me from getting the best ending? I don't really care that much, but SURELY there was a better way.

Oh well, the game is still a lot of fun!

I really think a map is maybe only necessary for Norfair (purple bubbles), otherwise the rest of the game isn't too hard to navigate after awhile.

The 30 HP respawn thing is definitely kind of a stinker though.

[noiseredux]

I'm like 8 or 9 hours into Phantasy Star II now and the game has gotten no less grindy. I mean maybe I'm overpreparing so I spend more time than I might need to upgrading weapons and everything. But damn. I got that hovercraft and then I've basically just been grinding one small section of the map for like two hours after that. At least now Amy can do some damage instead of just defending, which is helpful.

Looking at a walkthrough to see where I am progress-wise, it doesn't even look like I'm 50% through the game yet. Yikes. Hopefully I can get through this before the month is up.

[prfsnl_gmr]

Xeo: I’m glad you’re warming up to The Guardian Legend. It took me a while too, but I now consider it one of the best NES games. (I had the same experience last year with The Clash at Demonhead.)

Noise: PSII is pretty much the grindiest game ever. I didn’t like it very much but still stuck through to the end. When you get to Dezolis, don’t be ashamed to break out a map. (I was lucky to find an old strategy guide at a thrift store, and I found it really helpful for getting through the game’s last third.)

Well...I still can’t get Bug Honey to work right; so, I am giving up on that game for now. Accordingly, I started up:



If you had a fever dream about playing a Dragon Quest clone, you would have a pretty good feels for this game. I’m not very far yet, and I have some grinding to do tonight. Once I do some initial grinding, however, I should be off to the races since, according to HLTB, the game is only about 10 hours long.

[noiseredux]

Noise: PSII is pretty much the grindiest game ever. I didn’t like it very much but still stuck through to the end. When you get to Dezolis, don’t be ashamed to break out a map. (I was lucky to find an old strategy guide at a thrift store, and I found it really helpful for getting through the game’s last third.)

I actually own this:



...found it at a retro shop years ago for a couple bucks, so I've been using the maps in this sucker for dungeons. Being a "hint" book rather than full on strategy guide, a lot of the info in it is rather vague haha.

[Exhuminator]

I guess I had crazy amounts of free time as a kid, because I beat Phantasy Star II when I was only eleven years old. Massive amounts of grinding didn't bother me when I had nothing else to do. There are a lot of old RPGs where a hack that would simply reduce the encounter rate, while increasing the amount of experience gained, would improve the QOL for the player. I suppose PS2 is one for that list. But hey, it's worth it for Nei!

[noiseredux]

I guess I had crazy amounts of free time as a kid, because I beat Phantasy Star II when I was only eleven years old. Massive amounts of grinding didn't bother me when I had nothing else to do. There are a lot of old RPGs where a hack that would simply reduce the encounter rate, while increasing the amount of experience gained, would improve the QOL for the player. I suppose PS2 is one for that list. But hey, it's worth it for Nei!

Agreed on all points. I was fine with this level of grinding back when I had a lot less games to play, and a lot more free time.

I'm not really complaining though, either. I totally adore the Phantasy Star franchise so I'm really happy playing this right now. It's just, yeah, if there was like an XP boost hack or something that cut down on exactly how long grinding took, I'd be okay with that.

[BogusMeatFactory]

I guess I had crazy amounts of free time as a kid, because I beat Phantasy Star II when I was only eleven years old. Massive amounts of grinding didn't bother me when I had nothing else to do. There are a lot of old RPGs where a hack that would simply reduce the encounter rate, while increasing the amount of experience gained, would improve the QOL for the player. I suppose PS2 is one for that list. But hey, it's worth it for Nei!

Agreed on all points. I was fine with this level of grinding back when I had a lot less games to play, and a lot more free time.

I'm not really complaining though, either. I totally adore the Phantasy Star franchise so I'm really happy playing this right now. It's just, yeah, if there was like an XP boost hack or something that cut down on exactly how long grinding took, I'd be okay with that.

Are you playing on original hardware? I found that having an emulator speed up the gameplay makes the grinding a lot less problematic. The combat can be so slow at times.