I messed with the Wii version of Broken Sword a few years ago. I got about three or four hours into it, and was so bored I felt like quitting. Looked at a walkthrough and saw I was barely halfway through, so I just hung it up. BS's lauded as one of the greatest adventure games of all time, but I just didn't see it. When I quit, I was at the part where you have to climb up some hay bales over a wall or some such nonsense.prfsnl_gmr wrote:It is also quite long, clocking in at nearly 11(!) hours. The game has a great ending, but I am not sure I will continue with the series.
Games Beaten 2016
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Exhuminator
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Re: Games Beaten 2016
PLAY KING'S FIELD.
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ElkinFencer10
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Re: Games Beaten 2016
Games Beaten in 2016 So Far - 62
January (20 Games Beaten)
February (8 Games Beaten)
March (8 Games Beaten)
April (13 Games Beaten)
May (6 Games Beaten)
June (7 Games Beaten)
62. Fire Emblem: Mystery of the Emblem - SNES - June 13
Firing up my Retron 5's translation patch feature for the first time, I popped in my very first Super Famicom game and dove into the older releases of my favorite Nintendo franchise. I then proceeded to get my ass handed to me by a mix of tactical errors, bullshit critical hits, and good old fashioned hard-as-balls game difficulty. And hot damn, was it fun. Mystery of the Emblem is exactly what you'd expect from a Fire Emblem game - turn based tactical combat on a grid based field.
The story was good, but it should be; it's one of three remakes of the original Fire Emblem. Well, Book One is a remake of the original Fire Emblem; Book Two is a continuation that picks up a couple years after the events of Book One. Without spoiling any of the plot, it revolves around Marth, prince of the kingdom of Aritia, and his quest to defeat the dark mage Gharnef and the Shadow Dragon Medeus. Along the way, Marth must gain alliances with the other kingdoms of the continent of Akaneia and build his army to stand against the fearsome dragon.
As I was playing a fan translation, some of the names were a little bit off from the official name translations (the Kingdom of Grunia, for example, is called Grust in the official translations), and some of the grammar felt stilted and awkward, but with the exception of one or two minor menu things, everything was fully translated and perfectly understandable.
There were couple of gameplay differences that tripped me up a bit. The Horseman unit - a mounted archer - does not counted as cavalry for the Knight Killer (officially localized as Horseslayer), inflicting regular damage rather than bonus damage. Likewise, the Knight Killer lance doesn't do any extra damage to Armor units (officially localized as Knight) even though both melee cavalry unites and Armor units use the Knight Crest to promote. Those aren't negatives, by any means, but just gameplay differences that threw me off at first having gotten used to the later released and officially localized games. Oh, and the regular non-boss Earth Dragon that pops up in Book Two isn't considered a dragon for the Dragon Killer's special effect. Got Marth fucked up in a heartbeat making that mistake...
Overall, while the difficulty is in a different ballpark entirely from the more recent games (except maybe for Conquest), it's an extremely rewarding game. There are two endings - the "true" ending if you collect all 12 shards of the Star Orb in the first half of Book Two, and the "normal" ending (I guess it could be considered the "bad" ending) if you miss any Star Orb fragments. I ended up finding 11 of the 12, so I got the "normal" ending and did NOT feel like replaying through Book Two just to get the extra three or four levels. That's why it's listed as Beaten and not Completed in my Backloggery. But yeah, for fans of Fire Emblem or SRPGs in general, I'd definitely suggest playing this (preferably through a legit cartridge, but emulators are okay, too, I guess).
January (20 Games Beaten)
Firing up my Retron 5's translation patch feature for the first time, I popped in my very first Super Famicom game and dove into the older releases of my favorite Nintendo franchise. I then proceeded to get my ass handed to me by a mix of tactical errors, bullshit critical hits, and good old fashioned hard-as-balls game difficulty. And hot damn, was it fun. Mystery of the Emblem is exactly what you'd expect from a Fire Emblem game - turn based tactical combat on a grid based field.
The story was good, but it should be; it's one of three remakes of the original Fire Emblem. Well, Book One is a remake of the original Fire Emblem; Book Two is a continuation that picks up a couple years after the events of Book One. Without spoiling any of the plot, it revolves around Marth, prince of the kingdom of Aritia, and his quest to defeat the dark mage Gharnef and the Shadow Dragon Medeus. Along the way, Marth must gain alliances with the other kingdoms of the continent of Akaneia and build his army to stand against the fearsome dragon.
As I was playing a fan translation, some of the names were a little bit off from the official name translations (the Kingdom of Grunia, for example, is called Grust in the official translations), and some of the grammar felt stilted and awkward, but with the exception of one or two minor menu things, everything was fully translated and perfectly understandable.
There were couple of gameplay differences that tripped me up a bit. The Horseman unit - a mounted archer - does not counted as cavalry for the Knight Killer (officially localized as Horseslayer), inflicting regular damage rather than bonus damage. Likewise, the Knight Killer lance doesn't do any extra damage to Armor units (officially localized as Knight) even though both melee cavalry unites and Armor units use the Knight Crest to promote. Those aren't negatives, by any means, but just gameplay differences that threw me off at first having gotten used to the later released and officially localized games. Oh, and the regular non-boss Earth Dragon that pops up in Book Two isn't considered a dragon for the Dragon Killer's special effect. Got Marth fucked up in a heartbeat making that mistake...
Overall, while the difficulty is in a different ballpark entirely from the more recent games (except maybe for Conquest), it's an extremely rewarding game. There are two endings - the "true" ending if you collect all 12 shards of the Star Orb in the first half of Book Two, and the "normal" ending (I guess it could be considered the "bad" ending) if you miss any Star Orb fragments. I ended up finding 11 of the 12, so I got the "normal" ending and did NOT feel like replaying through Book Two just to get the extra three or four levels. That's why it's listed as Beaten and not Completed in my Backloggery. But yeah, for fans of Fire Emblem or SRPGs in general, I'd definitely suggest playing this (preferably through a legit cartridge, but emulators are okay, too, I guess).
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Re: Games Beaten 2016
Assuming the last few levels are anything like what they were on the DS remake, you're better off not playing them. They are nasty as shit.
Blizzard Entertainment Software Developer - All comments and views are my own and not representative of the company.
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prfsnl_gmr
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Re: Games Beaten 2016
That sounds about right. It really picks up at the end, but I had to push myself through it at times. It is about twice as long as other games in the genre - the average LucasArts classic can be completed in 5-6 hours - and, really, about twice as long as it needs to be. It is also full of dialogue, and I suspect that most of the game is spent talking to NPCs. In sum, its a fine adventure game; there's just too much of it.Exhuminator wrote:I messed with the Wii version of Broken Sword a few years ago. I got about three or four hours into it, and was so bored I felt like quitting. Looked at a walkthrough and saw I was barely halfway through, so I just hung it up. BS's lauded as one of the greatest adventure games of all time, but I just didn't see it. When I quit, I was at the part where you have to climb up some hay bales over a wall or some such nonsense.prfsnl_gmr wrote:It is also quite long, clocking in at nearly 11(!) hours. The game has a great ending, but I am not sure I will continue with the series.
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PartridgeSenpai
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Re: Games Beaten 2016
So Mystery of the Emblem is the same game as Shadow Dragon, yes? Every time I try to get into Shadow Dragon, I just get bored really fast. I'm not sure if it's just because it hasn't aged well, or because I always try to start it during the end of an SRPG obsession period (also I think that game has a really ugly art style, which doesn't help), but I just always get fed up in like the first or second stage.
I identify everyone via avatar, so if you change your avatar, I genuinely might completely forget who you are. -- Me
Re: Games Beaten 2016
Mystery of the Emblem consists of two books. The first book is a remake of FE1, so that's the same as Shadow Dragon. The second book is a new game set after FE1, which got remade in a JP exclusive DS game (that has a rom translation).PartridgeSenpai wrote:So Mystery of the Emblem is the same game as Shadow Dragon, yes? Every time I try to get into Shadow Dragon, I just get bored really fast. I'm not sure if it's just because it hasn't aged well, or because I always try to start it during the end of an SRPG obsession period (also I think that game has a really ugly art style, which doesn't help), but I just always get fed up in like the first or second stage.
Shadow Dragon was very much just a graphical overhaul of the original with the addition of a weapon triangle, so it started off dated. The remake of the second book introduced the My Unit feature we'd see in Awakening and Fates, as well as a not-broken weapon forging system. So it holds up a bit better, though it's still quite nasty. The game tosses so many units at you that they must have expected you to go through them like candy to enemy crits.
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Markies
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Re: Games Beaten 2016
1. Star Wars Rogue Squadron II: Rogue Leader (GCN)
2. Max Payne (XBOX)
3. Eternal Poison (PS2)
4. Dragon Warrior III (NES)
5. Arkanoid: Doh It Again(SNES)
6. Super Mario Brothers 2 (NES)
7. Phantasy Star Online (DC)
8. Power Stone (DC)
9. Bare Knuckle 3 (GEN)
10. Thousand Arms (PS1)
11. Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door (GCN)
12. Mega Man 5 (NES)
13. Ninja Gaiden (NES)
I beat Ninja Gaiden on the NES this evening!
Yeah, I'm in as much shock as you are. This is one of those games that I thought was nearly impossible. Yet, I just watched the ending with sore thumbs.
The game has some amazing visuals and an excellent soundtrack. The music is very memorable and quite infectious. The cutscenes are fantastic as well with great graphics and a surprisingly deep storyline. I was getting into the story and I really like all of the twists and turns. The gameplay is utterly fantastic when it works well. The first few levels, I was blazing through them without a problem.
But, man, that difficulty curve really smacks you in the face. The infinite continues really help as there are some evil programming out there. The knock back is annoying, but not too rare though knocking back into a pit is just a fact of life in the game. The annoying part is the small amount of time you get for invincibility. It is just so minuscule and pointless as you are bouncing around too much. The controls can be very iffy as Ryu grabs onto walls way too easily and his attacks can be very spotty.
The final boss isn't too bad, though being sent all the way back to 6-1 is evil! However, the boss stays dead and most of them have pretty easy patterns. It's a cruel game with somewhat forgiving elements. It's really good and very addicting, but you will be dying...a ton!
2. Max Payne (XBOX)
3. Eternal Poison (PS2)
4. Dragon Warrior III (NES)
5. Arkanoid: Doh It Again(SNES)
6. Super Mario Brothers 2 (NES)
7. Phantasy Star Online (DC)
8. Power Stone (DC)
9. Bare Knuckle 3 (GEN)
10. Thousand Arms (PS1)
11. Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door (GCN)
12. Mega Man 5 (NES)
13. Ninja Gaiden (NES)
I beat Ninja Gaiden on the NES this evening!
Yeah, I'm in as much shock as you are. This is one of those games that I thought was nearly impossible. Yet, I just watched the ending with sore thumbs.
The game has some amazing visuals and an excellent soundtrack. The music is very memorable and quite infectious. The cutscenes are fantastic as well with great graphics and a surprisingly deep storyline. I was getting into the story and I really like all of the twists and turns. The gameplay is utterly fantastic when it works well. The first few levels, I was blazing through them without a problem.
But, man, that difficulty curve really smacks you in the face. The infinite continues really help as there are some evil programming out there. The knock back is annoying, but not too rare though knocking back into a pit is just a fact of life in the game. The annoying part is the small amount of time you get for invincibility. It is just so minuscule and pointless as you are bouncing around too much. The controls can be very iffy as Ryu grabs onto walls way too easily and his attacks can be very spotty.
The final boss isn't too bad, though being sent all the way back to 6-1 is evil! However, the boss stays dead and most of them have pretty easy patterns. It's a cruel game with somewhat forgiving elements. It's really good and very addicting, but you will be dying...a ton!
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alienjesus
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Re: Games Beaten 2016
The first book is a partial remake of the first game. Some of the units classes are different, and 5 of the 25 stages are missing (20% of the stages gone isn't insignificant).MrPopo wrote: Mystery of the Emblem consists of two books. The first book is a remake of FE1, so that's the same as Shadow Dragon. The second book is a new game set after FE1, which got remade in a JP exclusive DS game (that has a rom translation).
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Having played Shadow Dragon last year and playing through the original now, I can't say I'm super excited to push through those same 20 stages again when I get to Mystery of the Emblem next year.
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ElkinFencer10
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Re: Games Beaten 2016
And I did, but I'm a perfectionist with Fire Emblem when it comes to recruiting units and keeping them alive. Thank God for save states on the Retron 5.MrPopo wrote:The game tosses so many units at you that they must have expected you to go through them like candy to enemy crits.
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BoneSnapDeez
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Re: Games Beaten 2016
Don't think I'll ever be a hardcore Fire Emblem fan. The games seem to be filled with "unfair" and "gotcha" moments that make me wanna reload a save. And permadeath = uugggggghhhhh.
I'm just not particularly good at 'em. I vastly prefer stuff like Shining Force, Langrisser, Front Mission, and Ogre Battle.
I'm just not particularly good at 'em. I vastly prefer stuff like Shining Force, Langrisser, Front Mission, and Ogre Battle.