To date, I still haven't finished Second Son, but for some reason I stuck through this one and finished it. I guess the fact that it's short helps. That, and that Fetch seems much more fun to use than Delsin ever was. It feels like they streamlined some stuff, which may have made this more fun than Second Son
Story was bland and predictable though, but I had fun. Graphics were pretty sweet and I dug the rock flavored soundtrack
RyaNtheSlayA wrote:
Seriously. Screw you Shao Kahn I'm gonna play Animal Crossing.
Ack wrote:
It requires a lot of abusing the timing of your various super buddies, and a few bosses can be beaten through cheap tactics, like the Fantastic Four security robot, though it takes a while. Inching along to only fight a couple of enemies at the time to conserve health, knowing the secret locations of items, and picking the right character for your playstyle between Spider-Man and Venom is key.
Carion and Demogoblin give me the most guff. Carnage requires timing, and that's all. I can breeze through most of the levels, but the boss battles screw me up. Shriek isn't all that difficult, but I have no set pattern for doppelganger.
The fantastic 4 robot also took a life away from me.
Guide me Ack, and I can beat this super fun game without cheating.
Carrion is actually pretty easy in theory, you just have to jump kick over and over and over again, keeping in mind that he rarely registers hits. In larger group fights, you can run away and worry about the others while he slowly comes after you, though he is susceptible to superheroes that can hit aerial targets. Just keep moving and don't ever let him get directly over you. If he does get on you, jump around a lot and do back flips.
Demogoblin you can jump kick while he's flying high to bring him down, and he has slightly less range than Spider-Man and Venom. If you hit him from the right distance, he won't fight back, though it's barely on the edge of your reach. If he starts trading blows with you, do a special move and get away. And if he flies low, get out of his way. Also, you can rush into him for a few hits, though try to follow it up with a combo.
Doppleganger is generally susceptible to charge attacks, but truth be told I've never really figured him out.
The Security Robot can't hit you when you cling to the wall, so you can drop down, get a hit or two in, and then hop back onto the wall if you're fast. You can also jump kick in and back flip out of his range.
If all else fails, check out how this guy plays the game and note where he finds secret rooms and hidden items:
Keep at it man, Maximum Carnage is hard, but it will bend to your will with practice. I've beaten it many times since I was a kid (Genesis version, but the music is the only real difference), but to this day if I have a bad run it can sometimes beat me in to the ground.
At which point I start right over!
I adore that game. So fun.
Anyway...
1. Mortal Kombat II - 32X
2. Cosmic Carnage - 32X
3. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Arcade - XBLA
4. X-men Arcade - XBLA
5. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: The Hyperstone Heist - Genesis
6. Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles in Time - SNES
7. Metroid: Other M - Wii
8. Donkey Kong Country Returns - Wii
9. Metroid Fusion - GBA
10.Star Trek - Xbox 360
11.Fable Anniversary - Xbox 360
12.Ranma 1/2: Chougi Ranbuhen - SFC
13.Sailor Moon R - SFC
14.Super Tempo - Saturn
15.Crash Bandicoot - PS1
16.X-men Vs. Street Fighter - Saturn
17.Wave Race 64 - N64
18.Mario and Sonic at the Sochi 2014 Olympic Winter Games - Wii U
19.Mario Kart 8 - Wii U
20.Super Mario World 2: Yoshi's Island - SNES
21.Advanced Dungeons & Dragons: Eye of the Beholder - Sega CD
22.Ico (HD) - PS3
23.Castlevania: Symphony of the Night - PS1
24.Resident Evil 2 - PS1
25.Wonder Boy in Monster World - Genesis
26.Resident Evil: Code Veronica - Dreamcast
27.Ninja: Shadow of Darkness - PS1
28.Freedom Planet - PC
29.Resident Evil: Revelations - Xbox 360
30.Lost Planet: Extreme Condition - Xbox 360
31.Need for Speed: The Run - Xbox 360
32.Donald Duck Goin' Qu@ckers - Dreamcast 33.Binary Domain - Xbox 360
I really loved this one. The party and trust system is great fun, and I really enjoyed being able to pick and choose my group.
Really interesting sci fi story, and charming characters in what felt like a living world.
Also completely over the top in kind of an old school way, especially some of the boss battles, including a highway battle on a moving truck facing off against a giant transforming motorcycle robot. Cool stuff.
I wish this game had received more attention. It certainly deserves it. I'll be revisiting it for another run at some point.
GameSack wrote:That's right, only Sega had the skill to make a proper Nintendo game.
1. Blood II: The Nightmare Levels (PC)(FPS)
2. Metal Slug (MVS)(Run and Gun)
3. Clive Barker's Undying (PC)(FPS)
4. Judge Dredd: Dredd Vs. Death (PC)(FPS)
5. Lagoon (SNES)(RPG)
6. Tin Star (SNES)(Light Gun)
7. Cacoma Knight in Bizyland (SNES)(Puzzle)
8. World Heroes (MVS)(Fighting)
9. Mario's Early Years: Preschool Fun (SNES)(Edutainment)
10. Rival Turf! (SNES)(Beat 'Em Up)
11. Mighty Morphin Power Rangers (Genesis)(Fighting)
12. SNK vs. Capcom: The Match of the Millennium (NGPC)(Fighting)
13. Ogre Battle: March of the Black Queen (SNES)(RPG)
14. Super Turrican 2 (SNES)(Run and Gun)
15. Brain Lord (SNES)(RPG)
16. Live A Live (SNES)(RPG)
17. Treasure Adventure Game (PC)(Platformer)
18. Realms of the Haunting (PC)(FPS)
19. Pocket Tennis Color (NGPC)(Sports)
20. Unreal Gold (PC)(FPS)
21. Puzzle Bobble Mini (NGPC)(Puzzle)
22. John Romero's Daikatana (PC)(FPS)
23. Scratches: Director's Cut (PC)(Point and Click)
24. Evoland (PC)(RPG)
25. Dead Pixels (PC)(Run and Gun)
26. Dungeon Defenders (PC)(RPG)
27. Borderlands: The Zombie Island of Dr. Ned (PC)(FPS/RPG)
28. Borderlands: The Secret Armory of General Knoxx (PC)(FPS/RPG)
29. Borderlands: Claptrap’s New Robot Revolution (PC)(FPS/RPG)
30. The Simpsons (Arcade)(Beat 'Em Up)
31. Borderlands (PC)(FPS/RPG)
32. Portal (PC)(FPS)
33. Math Blaster (SNES)(Edutainment)
34. The Walking Dead (PC)(Point and Click)
35. The Walking Dead: 400 Days (PC)(Point and Click)
36. Borderlands: Mad Moxxi's Underdome Riot (PC)(FPS/RPG)
37. Cubetractor (PC)(Puzzle) 38. Tecmo Secret of the Stars (SNES)(RPG)
And with that, I have beaten what is considered one of the worst SNES RPGs, if not the worst. Tecmo Secret of the Stars(SotS) is a JRPG that looks and plays like it came out around the time of Final Fantasy IV, in 1991. Unfortunately for it, it came out in Japan in 1993, and 1995 in the US, just a few months before titles like Breath of Fire 2 and Chrono Trigger would see release. This just helped cement the gap between SotS and the heavyweights of the era. Further exacerbating its problems were a bad translation, strange spikes in difficulty, a problematic UI, and a host of mishandled or underutilized ideas.
So here I will outline the criticisms:
Translation - "Ray does 43 damages to bandit." This one is all over the place. The listing of damages in the battle menu is a small and humorous issue, but the game feels disjointed, poorly explained, and simplistic in its dialogue. Items have unusual names and basic concepts are never fully explained. Everything sounds clipped, like the exposition was simply left out, and what we do get are enemies named Badbad.
Difficulty spikes - This one isn't necessarily problematic for anyone who is good at RPGs, as things can always be mitigated and the game doesn't penalize death too heinously(there is no Game Over screen, you just lose half your money and are kicked back to town). And every RPG will throw a challenging boss at you from time to time. The real issue here is balance though. The game feels disjointed, as players transition from an area where enemies do 1 point of damage to where they can do 50 to everyone in the party in a single hit. Worse, the experience and money values don't adjust well, so you may find yourself fighting tougher enemies for half the experience of a previous area quite often. Perhaps the best place to level in the entire game is found midway through, as the enemies there will still provide roughly between a third and half of the experience of the most difficult random encounters in the final dungeon.
Bad UI - Explaining concepts like whether a weapon improves a stat or diminishes it were becoming commonplace in RPGs by 1993. This has always served as a barrier to enjoying the NES era for me, though it's a personal quibble. What's not is how some of these menus are arranged. Why do I have to look at character stats to see how much gold I have? Why are several important options, such as message speed, hidden in the battle menu? These decisions don't make sense to me. Even worse is the lack of explanation in the menus. What does a rat-tail do again? What do spells like Land 2 or Antspl 3 do, and what makes Cure-A 1/2/3 and Cure-B 1/2/3 different?
Mishandled ideas - This is perhaps the worst part of the bunch, as these ideas are really supposed to be the game's bread and butter. There are several cool ideas in SotS, which if properly dealt with would have made for a much better experience overall. There are two alternating parties of characters, a town to build and develop, and a system for combining magic and physical attacks of certain characters to create more powerful effects. Unfortunately SotS drops the ball on all three of these. The two party mechanic is underused, as the Kustera party only sees relevance for about 1/10 of the game, and they're the more interesting party! As for the town, very little of what you do with it matters, as most development will be handled off-screen anyway. There are two necessary NPCs to find however: a nurse and a blacksmith. Getting the two of them is critical, as they provide better equipment and better items in the final areas. And the combining magic and attacks are great...once you figure out what you can combine and how to do it, but even then some of the effects just aren't worth it. Devastate, the most powerful move in the game, has such a stupidly high cost for a pitiful amount of damage as to completely negate its usefulness. But the elemental breaks, which combine a spell and a physical attack with certain swords? Those are the bread and butter of boss battles and end up being your primary damage output. It's a shame the game never actually tells you this and just suggests you mess around with it on your own until you get lucky.
So, is there anything SotS gets right? Well yes. The music isn't up the par with Square or Enix's best, but I still found it enjoyable. Because of the difficulty of some boss fights, there's actually some interesting strategy that results too. One of the bosses wiped my party and then kept putting down anyone I raised, so I ended up beating him with one character who just reflected his magic back at him and only got in the occasional hit. There is a large variety of use for magic, attacks, and items in combat, along with the Unity abilities that you'll stick with, though this becomes less important as your characters get more powerful during random encounters. For late game boss battles, you'll have to use them though. Also, I like that the game eventually gives you a UFO as a mobile township. It might have been better handled in Breath of Fire 2, but it's still cool to see in a game that predates BoF2 by a year. And while the second party is underused, they can be switched to on the fly and parked next to a save point, giving the player a pseudo-save anywhere ability, which is always nice.
So yes, Tecmo Secret of the Stars is problematic. I don't think it's unplayable(obviously, since I beat it), and I don't think it is as terrible as claimed, just outdated.
Oh, and there were only about 15 names listed in the end credits, including the translator, which could be a big reason why this game just never worked out. Compare this to the 65 names that appear in Final Fantasy VI's end credits on the SNES...yeah. No wonder it ended up the way it did.
Ack wrote:Oh, and there were only about 15 names listed in the end credits, including the translator, which could be a big reason why this game just never worked out. Compare this to the 65 names that appear in Final Fantasy VI's end credits on the SNES...yeah. No wonder it ended up the way it did.
The more you talk about that the more it sounds rushed than anything and I can see why with that small of a list. Sure indies are able to make due with that amount to some extent now but with game design back then I can't imagine it would've been easy for 15 only...
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My systems: NES, SNES, N64, Gamecube, Wii, original gba, gba sp(001), ds lite, 3ds, vita, psp, PSone(101 model) ps2, ps3(320gb model), ps4, retron 5, and Dreamcast.
bogusmeatfactory wrote:Ever feel like a wild gazelle in the wilderness?
