racketboy.com

Ex's 2016 beat list:

27. Mercenary Force|GB|1990|shmup|54m|5/10

In Mercenary Force you hire mercenaries and lead them across Japan killing warriors, monsters, ghosts, and demons.

The action is shmup style with a strategy twist. You can have a party of up to four mercs, each with their own respective powers and attack style. You pick out the mercs you want to use, buy as many health points as you can afford for them, and then march on killing and collecting yen. The yen is used to restock lost mercs or to simply heal the ones you already have. You can also at any time change the formation of your merc party for strategic advantage. Each merc has a suicide super move you can invoke whenever you wish. The suicide super moves are very powerful but the merc of course dies as soon as its over. There are shops along the way that offer healing aids and bonus games for your hard won yen.

This all sounds interesting sure, but in reality Mercenary Force is a boring game. With bland levels, unimpressive enemies, and simple bosses the action feels stale fast. Worse yet the actual pace of Mercenary Force is excruciatingly lethargic. Levels just drag on and on, at a speed that would embarrass a snail. For all the merc squad options you have, it just boils down to having as many hit points as you can, and keep on firing in a straight line as fast as you can. The most hectic part of the gameplay itself is actually trying to collect yen before it disappears.

I will say that Mercenary Force has a consistent theme in its well crafted yet utilitarian graphics. You certainly do "feel" like you're marching across Japan from an environmental aesthetics perspective. Many of the baddies are lifted straight from Japanese mythology and look the part despite such limited pixels. Unfortunately the music and sound effects are way below average, and you will be very tired of hearing that one main theme over and over. Overall Mercenary Force has some nice ideas, but in execution it's far too simplistic, repetitive, and slow, for how long it takes to finish.

This massive number of GB titles is like a revival of Noise's GB project.

MrPopo wrote:This massive number of GB titles is like a revival of Noise's GB project.

Yeah I'm about some Game Boy this year. There's plenty of GB/GBC/GBA games I've always meant to play, and many of them are quite short and indeed entertaining. Lotsa good games to play for a day or three and actually finish, without requiring a serious life investment just to reach the credits.* And some of these GB shmups have actually been a lot of fun!


*I know there are some RPGs on Game Boy that would take a long time to beat. I'm just talking about GB action games in general.

Now you know why I get on my NES kicks!

Actually, most Game Boy RPGs are also relatively short. Certainly not the monsters of today. My favorite traditional RPG is probably Final Fantasy Legend II, aka SaGa 2. It should also be noted that Final Fantasy Adventure is still better than its remake on GBA.

I'm hoping to finish two Game Boy RPGs this year:

Well, I don't think the first really counts, although it has RPG elements. The second is good stuff, although I've not played through the GB/GBC iteration. (I'm pretty sure this one could run on the plain GB as well.) It also reminds me that I've got a 2/3 finished DQ2 run on SNES...

January:

26) Killer Instinct (GB)

So just bringing up KI made me want to go play it, make sure I wasn't spouting untruth about the Game Boy version. And yep, it's pretty much exactly how I remember. There's a bit of challenge there in that I've never completely figured out the combo strings in the main versions, much less when it's reduced to two buttons. Although I believe the way things are set up, you hold away + a button for fierce, neutral for medium, and towards + a button for quick hits. It mostly works, but it also leaves you a little more open if you're going for anything other than strong attacks, and it also means that retaliating while blocking can be tricky because you're going to end up busting out moves with a long windup.

As for my run, it took me 13 continues to get through. Most of those were on Jago towards the end. He's got just the right moveset to counter what I was doing with B. Orchid, so it took some very defensive tactics. Jump-ins are the wrong idea since he's got his own Dragon Punch variant, and he's also got that kick move to close space.

I get all the way to Eyedol, and took him out on the third go. Not too bad. I found a pretty exploitable pattern where you do the tiger charge move, and if it doesn't hit, immediately jump away. Rinse and repeat. You'll get hit occasionally, but between chip damage and catching him in jumps, or better yet, when he tries to charge (yay, combo time!), it's pretty simple.

I actually think that if I could figure out the combo system, I might enjoy it even more, but as it is, it's a surprisingly faithful port of a game that originally ran on ridiculously more powerful hardware.

I plan on hitting up Dragon Warrior II later in the year, but on NES.

BoneSnapDeez wrote:I plan on hitting up Dragon Warrior II later in the year, but on NES.

Me too (but on GBC, like Exhuminator). Let me know when you start it up!

BoneSnapDeez wrote:I plan on hitting up Dragon Warrior II later in the year, but on NES.

I look forward to hearing the tales of your exploits. Beating it on the NES (with no save states) is one of my proudest NES achievements.