What Game/s are You Playing? Daily / Whenever Check :) (GAMEPLAY)

[Tron 2.0]

PS4
TMNT Shredders Revenge
Pinball Arcade

Retrofreak
Bucky'o'Hare (famicom)

[Aussie2B]

All the Vita stuff stuff I was playing lately I was going through while staying with family for around a month (first time seeing most of my family in three years and first time most got to meet my daughter), and like usual, my motivation to play whatever I'm messing around with while "on vacation" (not really, because I was still taking work here and there) peters out when I return home and get back to the normal grind. So I'm just wrapping stuff up to eventually start up something new. I mentioned in the Beaten in 2022 topic that I returned to Tokyo Tattoo Girls after years. Actually, the last time I had been playing that was the previous time I visited family. This time, I finished clearing all four difficulties with all six girls. The Extreme/Expert difficulty (the game can't decide which to call it) actually wasn't as challenging for me as Hard. I guess I had solidified my strategies by then, and all the items I unlocked for the HQ probably made a big difference. Anyway, that's completed enough for me. The platinum trophy is impossible to get because another trophy is glitched and unobtainable. The only thing left I could do is go for the trophies where you gotta play through the game eight times with each girl. But that's just mindless grinding busywork. I'm not gonna run through the game 24 more times. So that's been shelved and so has Proteus. I did quickly get to the end of my third file in Proteus to get the trophy for that, but I just can't be bothered to do the ones with the stones and plants. Another "maybe someday but probably not." Pix the Cat I haven't touched in over a month, and I'm torn on if I want to get back to it. It is a fun game, and my in-game percentage was 91%. I was also pretty close to getting the flower bonus in every Nostalgia stage. But there's not much left for me to do in the game, and what's left is so tough that I don't know if I'm in the mood for it.

I did return to BoxBoy on 3DS, which I dropped when I left home because I didn't want to pack the 3DS. I was pleasantly surprised with how easy it was to jump back in, even though I left off on the post-game bonus stages. I pretty quickly blew through those, and I've collected all the crowns in the game (never beat a stage without doing so, actually), so I've unlocked Marathon mode. I also still haven't tried out the challenges unlockable in the shop. So I'll check out that stuff, but I don't foresee myself playing this much longer either.

[YoshiM]

Any game time has been consumed with Zelda: BOTW on Switch. I took the plunge again and finally overcame my mental hurdle with this game: I'm not used to having a buffet of abilities early on coupled with having free range to try almost anything. This became apparent when I was freeing the divine beast Ruto (? the elephant with the Zoras). I was looking for a switch to open a gate to get at the map terminal and one of my step sons said "just you the cryo glyph to lift it". Duh....water...ice blocks....I felt stupid but it was the "aha!" moment that caused me to cast off the years of Zelda-instilled expectations. Shrines and such have gone a LOT easier since this obvious revelation to me. I've got two divine beasts down, the Master Sword and now I'm hunting shrines. It's getting a little tedious as some require "UPS" services (go do this, come back to NPC or location to gain access). I like some of the stuff, like being able to go anywhere provided you have the stamina and what not. However it's starting to get long in the tooth for me. So once I get some more shrines and the rest of the beasts, I'm gunning for Ganon to put this to bed. Then I can pass the game on to the younger of my twins as she never gets a chance to hop on the Wii U version as her twin plays to "kill horses".

Not much else in the digital realm. I think I might gravitate back to PC for a while as I have been looking at my Steam list with more interest.

[Aussie2B]

Still playing BoxBoy on 3DS. I've been dabbling in Marathon mode, and I cleared all the challenges. Overall, I'd say this stuff isn't as fun as the regular levels. I don't particularly like racing the clock, not when I was enjoying the main game being so chill in its pace. I liked the score challenges more than the time attack challenges and had an easier time with them too. I've only cleared the first couple worlds in Marathon mode with a perfect all-S ranking. But I do kinda like improving my rankings, without stressing about being perfect. So that's what I'm working on at the moment. One thing that's funny is that Nintendo, despite being being so strict about not allowing people to name their characters curse words in many games, didn't even consider the combinations you can get when you get three categories ranked on each world that can be D, C, B, A, or S (from worst to best). To get to the point, I've got one world where my ranking is "A S S", haha.

[Aussie2B]

Seems like, in recent years, I don't as often make a conscious choice to stop playing a game like "Okay, I'm finished with this now. Time to put it away." Instead, things just sort of fizzle out, and before I know it, I've realized I've stopped playing and don't have the desire to get back to it. That's what happened with BoxBoy on 3DS. I kept toying around with Marathon mode, but once it got harder to improve my rankings, I just didn't have the motivation to keep repeating the same stages to basically do perfect speedruns of them. So after not touching it for a while, I decided to move on to something else, which I had also once dropped, but for an entirely different reason.

I resumed my file in Illusion of Gaia on Super Nintendo that I started in 2020. I say "resumed", but I was at the beginning of the first dungeon, so I could've just as well started from scratch. I originally started the game very shortly before I found out I was pregnant, which was about the same time the "morning" (aka all day) sickness kicked in. I felt too nauseated to play anything for a couple months, and by the time I did feel well enough to look at a game screen, I just didn't bother to return to Illusion of Gaia. So my file sat for over two years, and now that particular file has been dropped again, even though I'm still playing. Before I started playing the first time even, I made up my mind that I definitely wanted to collect all the Red Jewels. This is basically Missables: The Game, so I knew I had to be careful about it. I downloaded a PDF of the manual (wish I had a real copy but whatever) which has a nice little walkthrough that includes every Red Jewel location. Yet one night, I got careless and missed one at a place you're at for all of maybe two minutes before never seeing again and then saved in the town after. That really took the wind out of my sails and I almost dropped the game then and there, but my husband was kind enough to start the game from scratch and get me nearly to where I left off, with all the Red Jewels (thankfully, it wasn't especially far into the game), so now I'm playing that file. It's aggravating that you can't just save to any slot and leave yourself backup files you could return to, but honestly, the game is kinda trolling with the Red Jewels and expects you to miss some. There's other annoying quirks about the game, like how sometimes text boxes appear instantaneously and disappear with seemingly any input, causing me to unintentionally miss text sometimes, and how it often forces you forward with no warning (talk to a certain character and *boom* you're off to the next place, whether you were ready to leave or not). The difficulty level is also questionable because they increased it in some ways. The first boss, made more difficult than in the Japanese original, was easily the hardest boss I've faced thus far, but other changes probably were for the better and keep the game from being pathetically easy. Anyway, I'm currently in the city of Euro, with every Red Jewel thus far, and quibbles aside, I'm having a fun time with it, and even the story, as poorly localized as it is, is kind of interesting. They got a famous author who normally writes novels and never worked on a game outside of this to do the story, and it does have a weird way about its narration and pacing that feels more like the storytelling of a novel than a game. Most of the game feels very polished, and I think, if I had played it back when it was new, it probably would've become a childhood favorite of mine.

[Tron 2.0]

PS4
Castlevania Anniversary Collection
TMNT Cowabunga Collection

[YoshiM]

Last weekend my youngest stepson asked me about "this game where you play two aliens" which translated to "Toe Jam and Earl" for the Genesis. He proceeded to ask me if I wanted to play it and I agreed. Any time a child asks to play an old video game....you grab that opportunity! Anyway, I fired up my Genesis Mini and we got into the game. It took us a bit to get the brains wrapped around the game (him it's first time playing a game like this, me I haven't played this in forever) but we dove into our quest for the funky ship pieces. He did really well, making due with the presents and avoiding the Earthlings. I was hoping to get the rocket skates early so I could get us to the little island on the first level but got them late and coudn't fall off the levels fast enough. We stopped at Level 5 and I saved the game (thank goodness for the save feature!). He wants to play this weekend but I have a queue of folks that want my time (D&D of different campaigns, my daughter wants to play "Rainbow Friends" on Roblox as I type this).

I got some solo time in and it was split between playing "Shadow Warrior 2" on PC and continuing "The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild". I got to the second stage in "Shadow Warrior 2" and it's been pretty slick. The melee combat is a little disorientating but it pays off in the sheer visceral graphics. In Zelda I've taken care of the Bird divine beast and I'm working on the camel. The Yiga Clan hideout I thought was going to be a tough stealth session but it was really short, thank goodness.

I find it interesting how my kids approach this game compared to me. One of my step sons said I "really was into finding shrines" as I had a bunch of hearts AND almost three wheels of stamina. I told him my goal was to beat the game and I wanted high enough stats. He just goes into the game with the thought to "go hunt guardians" or go climb some mountains to find stuff to max out his outfits' stats. The elder of my twins like to play to "kill horses" (she finds a better horse but her slots are full at the stable) and putzes around here and there. My second eldest step son is trying to see how far he can get without getting hearts. He's been focusing on maxing out his stamina and tackling various challenges.

That's been about that for me.

[Aussie2B]

Still plugging away at Illusion of Gaia on Super Nintendo with the roughly half hour to an hour of gaming time I tend to get before bed each night these days. I'm now up to Dao, so I guess the Pyramid is the only dungeon I have left before the final stuff. Not too many Red Jewels left to hunt down either. My husband was watching during the infamous scene with Hamlet and was devastated, haha. I knew the scene was coming at some point, since, to this day, I remember Nintendo Power describing the scene in the 100th issue of the magazine for the Illusion of Gaia entry in their top 100 games ever list (on Nintendo systems only, of course), so it wasn't nearly as shocking to me. Still, though, what a noble pig, as Kara says.

[Tron 2.0]

Beat the u.s version of Castlevania III Dracula Curse recently and most of the time i just play the japanese version instead.Hmmm,maybe i'll try to complete dracula kid next.

[YoshiM]

I finally beat Zelda: Breath of the Wild. Since my last post I took care of the Divine Beasts, found every memory and maybe about half of the shrines. I had Rivoli(?) Bow, a bunch of guardian arrows, a full suit of guardian armor and away I went to the Castle. I swam up the waterfalls at the back and made my way into the Sanctum without much fuss from guardians. Then came the showdown. After a very cool cinematic of Calamity Ganon getting whupped by the power of the Beasts, we squared off. This was it-the first form before he goes to his big beast mode (that I read about) not unlike Twilight Princess.

So we fight. Well, that's an understatement. For all his size and arms and combative pomp....he didn't last long. Not that I'm the greatest BotW player out there-my third eldest step son hunts all forms of lionels for FUN and has few problems, so I think I pale compare to him. But going into the second phase of the first form-if you are good at reflecting guardian beams and you have all the divine beast powers, Ganon will fall very quickly without much effort. The second form was visually impressive but he was easy to take down. The only opponent I really had was the camera. Roll credits. It was bittersweet that it wasn't this grand battle that you'd think it'd be. The aforementioned centaur-race of Hyrule packs more challenge than the Hyrulian Master of Disaster. Truly, it was about experiencing the journey than it was defeating Ganon and saving the world. How the hell Link lost a hundred years ago blows my mind.

With that out of the way, I got to experience my first Halloween in Animal Crossing: New Horizons. I had a lot of fun with it, got pranked but got some cool virtual swag in the process. The music and atmosphere were great! Got some more Toe Jam and Earl in. Made it to Level 14 with my step son before he wanted more Roblox. I played around with the Genesis Mini 2 and it's pretty dang sweet. If there's lag....I don't see it. I can get as far as I used to get in After Burner 2 so that was a good sign things were on the up and up.

Right now Atari's new "Atari 50" cart is keeping my attention. You can't go into it just going for the games as some folks crap on the list of games, the age of them and the price. If you go into this like it's a museum, you get more out of it. At least I did-I'm going through all the pictures and videos like exhibits. Some games I play, some I don't as I know it won't play well with a stick (Breakout for one). I'm currently in the Computer part of the saga, which has a bunch of commercials thus far.

Thanksgiving Day, after cooking a feast for my family (which will probably be devoured in 15 minutes) I'll sit back with more Animal Crossing. Time to experience that holiday.

[Tron 2.0]

SWITCH
Mega Man legacy collection

Bought it years ago on the cheap digitally figure i sit down play them through finally.Once i'm done with that series it's off to playing elden ring,since i got a copy recently for ps4 since it was on sale this past black friday.

[Aussie2B]

I posted in the other topic about beating Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow, which I did on my DS Lite (for whatever reason, I gravitate toward this model over the DSi XL we have, which my husband prefers), but I wanted to write a little more about the experience. For one, it felt very different from Harmony of Dissonance and Aria or Sorrow. I blew through those extremely quickly, to the point that I barely feel like I ever played Aria of Sorrow. I guess that doesn't say much for it, but seriously, when I look at screen shots of it, it's like I'm seeing the game for the first time. I remember liking Aria of Sorrow more than Harmony of Dissonance (though neither extremely impressed me, and same goes for Dawn of Sorrow), but I guess Harmony of Dissonance was the more memorable game long-term. I feel like Dawn of Sorrow was a little more challenging than those two and definitely lasted me way longer, but it's hard to say if the game is genuinely different to any significant degree or if it's just because I'm in a very different place in my life now, which is impacting how much time I can devote to games and how much mental energy I have available to give them when I do play (in other words, I'm playing right before bed and exhausted after a long day, typically). I did approach Dawn of Sorrow in a similar manner as back with those GBA games, though. It didn't want to just blow through the castle and be done. So I put in all the time to collect at least one of every soul, got every item drop, completed the map 100%, got my level up to the max, synthesized all the best weapons, and acquired at least one of every item I could (but had to sacrifice a couple weapons to make better weapons). To complete all the weapon synthesis chains, I had to give up a few boss souls, reducing my soul collection from the 100% it had been at (but I did make sure to grab the Chaos Ring before doing so). For the most part, I was cool with the grinding, since it's relaxing and enjoyable in a mindless kind of way. But I do feel bad for people who feel compelled to do more than I did. The game seems like a real nightmare for those obsessive-compulsive enough to want even one of everything, let along the maximum of nine (and there is value in doing the latter, since some souls change as you acquire more of the same type). Replaying the game over and over via New Game+ to grind for the boss souls, which you'd have to do not only to max them out but to get the souls needed for weapon synthesis, is too much for me. I heard it would take literally dozens of replays to max out everything. I wouldn't mind replaying the game on Hard someday and earning the soul exclusive to beating that, and the Julius Mode that's reminiscent of Castlevania 3 sounds cool, but I'm fine with leaving those and Boss Rush Mode for the future, which is my usual MO with these SotN clones and their unlockable bonus content.

[Aussie2B]

I'm gonna do like I did with Dawn of Sorrow and use this topic to write more about my experience with a game I just posted about beating. You see, Labyrinth on DS is something of a cursed game for me, haha, but I guess I've now set things right. I've been a big fan of the SNES game On the Ball (aka Cameltry) since back when the Super Nintendo was still alive, so many years ago, when I learned it got a follow-up on DS, I naturally wanted to pick it up and give it a shot. But for some stupid reason, I got it in my head that it only came out in Japan. I believe there was a gap between the original Japanese release, Mawashite Koron, and the US localization, Labyrinth, but by the time I heard about the game, I'm pretty sure the American version was already available. But I didn't do my proper research and bought a Japanese copy on eBay, when normally I prefer to pick up US versions of games whenever available and obtainable at a sane price. Thankfully, I only dropped like 10-15 bucks on it, if memory serves. Gameplay-wise, having the Japanese version doesn't make a big difference. There's very little text. But nonetheless, I still managed to get stuck in the Japanese version. The furthest I could get was a stage where you're trapped in a box of metal bricks. I could never figure out how to break through them, and I figured the language barrier was screwing me. Fast forward to just recently, and I got on a real DS kick when I started playing Dawn of Sorrow. I ended up adding like 10+ more games to my collection and have several more I'd like to grab. I think I already had a pretty good collection, but there's just so much interesting stuff on DS, and a lot can still be had for fair prices. Anyway, I figured it was time to correct my mistake with Labyrinth by getting a US copy and figuring out how to clear everything in the game. But after I paid for a copy, a few days later, the purchase was strangely canceled, and I was issued a refund. So I bought a second copy, sealed no less, and finally got a copy in my hands. Go figure that the in-game text and English manual say almost nothing about how to clear what I had been stuck on, but I figured it out and, once and for all, completed all the stages. It's got nothing on On the Ball, especially in terms of aesthetics, but it's still fun. I love the surreal otherworldly graphics and music of On the Ball and bizarre motivational poster-like things you get at the end of courses. In Labyrinth, you get anime girls shoehorned in for seemingly no reason but eye candy and generic, peppy music. It's weird how it feels like Labyrinth tries to offer more depth and complexity, with custom balls and the Gyro technique, yet it still comes off as more shallow and barebones than On the Ball. And the lack of info on what little Labyrinth does have drives me nuts. The manual really should've covered things better and the in-game tutorial too, and there's practically nothing about the game online. No FAQs or anything I can find. I'd love a definitive answer on how new ball designs are unlocked, but all I can do is guess. I suspect it has to do with the "Entire Distance" total listed in the main menu, but I can't say for sure, let alone what numbers have to be hit to unlock each design. I also have no idea how "distance" is calculated. Some things are obvious, like score and time, but there's no distance being measured while actually playing. Like, can you waste time spinning in circles and increase the distance you earn? Or is each stage worth a set value? Seriously, the manual explains none of this. And this unlockable stuff is poorly implemented to begin with. Who wants to replay the same stages endlessly to just unlock new ball colors and such? I guess it's a weak attempt to increase the longevity because, if you only play through all the stages once, you're done in the blink of an eye. And I guess it's working on me, to some degree. I have been replaying the stages some, but I don't know how long I'll bother before coming up with something else to play. Judging by the menus, it seems like there are still quite a few I'm missing.

[Aussie2B]

I called it quits with Labyrinth on DS. I'm not positive that there aren't more ball designs to unlock, but frankly, I've already replayed all the courses a stupid amount, haha, and I don't care to do so any longer. The more I played, the more I feel confident that the "Entire Distance" total is what's tied to unlocking designs. It seemed like I'd get a new one every time I passed some round number. I didn't bother to track anything, so I couldn't say what those numbers are, and it seemed the more distance I racked up, the larger the amounts had to be between designs. I stopped when I passed 56000. (To put things into perspective, you wouldn't normally even hit 10000 going through all the courses once. I don't know if the distance I'd earn decreased as I learned the stages more and got quicker times, but I noticed I was usually getting around 6000-some going through all six courses. I didn't bother doing the math to see if any course was more efficient for racking up distance than the others, but I think I would've gone bonkers replaying the same course ad nauseam anyway, so I was fine with running through all of them.) The last design I unlocked appeared when I just passed 50000. It's a pencil shape, and the only design that isn't at least somewhat spherical. Based on how the menus look, I think I have every shape, but there might be more colors for each shape, which are basically just palette swaps. There's room in the menu for four colors for each shape, but I only have four colors for three of the eight shapes. I've got three colors for the cogs, two each for the sports balls and apples, and only one for Chack'n and the pencil. If there are more colors, oh well. I ran through every course with the pencil and got nothing. Prior to the pencil, it seemed like each unlocked design for a while was 5000 apart, so one run through all the stages was enough to get something new. If there is more, then the gap has obviously grown to 7000+, and I'm not about to invest more and more grinding into getting palette swaps. Maybe my assumptions are wrong and there's actually cooler stuff still left to unlock (like if, say, instead of palette-swapped Chack'ns, you'd get other Taito cameos), but nobody but me has seemingly put this kind of effort into this game, haha, and I'm not going to keep spending my time on efforts that may amount to nothing. For all I know, the pencil may be the very last thing to unlock.

So moving on, I was thinking of playing through something on PSP. But my PSP has an issue that I had to check on first, so I played some TwinBee Da!! on the TwinBee Portable compilation. The remake of the Game Boy game is basically the reason I bought the compilation (as I already had the others on other platforms), and it's always fun to blow through. I got near the end but the aforementioned issue screwed up my run. You see, for years now, the metal prongs in the UMD slot compress, whether I leave a UMD in there or not, and then it doesn't apply enough pressue for the system to detect that the flap is closed. It's an easy fix, though. I just use tweezers to pull them back outward. But it's something I have to repeatedly do. It'll usually last for several months before the issue arises again, but with how infrequently I use my PSP these days, that means I have to fix the slot basically every time before I start something up. So once I saw the issue popping up while playing TwinBee, I did the fix, and now it's ready to go.

Other than that stuff, I played a tiny bit of Spider-Man / X-Men: Arcade's Revenge for the first time on our SNES flash cart at my husband's insistence, haha.

[YoshiM]

Haven't touched this thread for a while. I got my Animal Crossing time in and it was pretty fun in New Horizons. The spread was a lot bigger in this game than in New Leaf, which I played right after. There was a lot of trading to get the ingredients for Franklin's meal and I loved how all the animals that stayed in doors were busy whipping something up on their stoves. I got the whole meal complete.

I jumped onto Animal Crossing New Leaf probably a day or so later and set the clock back (which is something Nintendo should have kept in NH but I get that, having online being pushed and their seemingly "no spoilers" agenda, the game goes by the system clock). It was a similar affair: get ingredients for Franklin but it didn't have the same grandiose vibe. I then went back to Wild World and it was pretty much....nothing.

After that I got into the Switch eShop sales and got Portal, Castle Crashers, Quake and later on Boomerang Fu. Portal plays awesome and I love the portability. Castle Crashers is a hit with my kids but for some dumb reason anyone who uses their profile for the other players can't save their progress. A little searching found that they had to hit a button to select a profile but what I didn't know is they actually TRIED that. Discovered the stupidity of Nintendo's online account stuff with certain titles-my regular Switch needs to be the primary console in order for the other profiles to save their progress in that game! My eldest twin, who has a Nintendo account and is a part of my "Family plan" also tried to play Fortnite on my Lite while we had a game of Castle Crashers going on the main system. She was blocked because my account was in use, even though I wasn't in the same game. That makes the whole family plan and sharing a bit moot.

Classic wise, I got in some Atari 2600 and got the non-gaming wife involved, which was short lived. Got some Space Invaders and some Combat in after a long hiatus. I also got back into the Tandy Color Computer community with a 64K CoCo 2 and a bunch of carts. I want to get back into doing YouTube videos (only did one before I got diverted into theater) just for the fun of it and I wanted to do a look at a tape my Dad gave me for a gift back in 1984. The system works great and I got to play some Dino Wars, Dungeons of Daggorath and Mega Bug. My young boys REALLY liked Dino Wars. I just got a CoCo SDC so I can use disk images. I just have to get around to setting it up.

While cleaning a NES controller I played some Mike Tyson's Punch Out on real hardware and got farther than I usually did. I beat Bald Bull in one go! For kicks I tried my NES Mini to finally test to see if the delays I found were emulation or TV based. I tried the same game and sucked at it. Yeah, it's emulation, which is sad as I like the form factor and the ease of saving.

That's about that. Happy New Year all!

[Aussie2B]

Happy New Year!

It turns out the issues with my PSP have gotten worse than they once were, which I guess isn't surprising, since, even though I've played through several digital-only PSP games on my Vita in recent years, I hadn't beaten anything on UMD in around a decade (not counting my recent go through TwinBee Da!). Back in the '00s, whether it was something old or new, it felt like as long as I took good care of a system, it would hold up just fine, but over the last 10+ years, I've had a number of systems develop issues while not in use. Time takes its toll no matter what, I guess. Now even if I tug on the prongs in the flap repeatedly, I still get the system popping up the Home menu on occasion, as if the flap has been opened, and sometimes it just plain doesn't see the UMD at all and doesn't start up the game to begin with. I don't know if it's all linked to that flimsy lever that determines if the flap is closed with a UMD inside or not, but one of these days, I should probably try to do something to permanently press it down. I'm just hesitant to put tape because I don't want adhesive to break down and cause other problems, especially because my PSP is one of those rare, Japan-only limited editions (the Star Ocean one).

Despite these annoying quirks, I've still been pushing forward with Gurumin: A Monstrous Adventure. I had been thinking for a while that I wanted to play a 3D game with fully 3D movement because I haven't played many 3D games lately period, and when I have, it's been 2.5D or otherwise featuring restricted movement. I didn't want to go with a full-on 3D platformer because I've completed a fair number of platformers recently, but I still wanted something that would be pretty simple and straightforward and not a massive time investment. So I think Gurumin was a decent choice to fit the bill (though, some of the dungeons I've recently completed surprised me with somewhat demanding platforming). I don't know how close I am to the end, but I've racked up 10 hours, and I've beaten 3 of the 4 minions of the main bad guy. I only have one more special move to buy, but I still only have one photo in the album, so I don't know what's up with that. I also have no alternate costumes to wear, but I did start the game at the perfect time in that I began shortly after Christmas and got to see the Santa outfit and then New Year's kimono without having to change the system clock. So far, it's been an enjoyable experience. My only real complaint is that I don't think the game was made to suit handheld gaming as much as it should've been. Being a Falcom game, it was on PC first, and I don't know if they changed anything about saving or not for the PSP version. You can save at almost any time, but if you save in a dungeon and quit, you restart at the dungeon's entrance, with only the money and such you collected saved. So there's not much point in saving besides in between dungeons, and when dungeons have taken me as long as 40 minutes, that's sometimes longer than I'd like between saving my progress. It's extra dumb when the game gives unlimited continues that restart you at the check points in dungeons. Why can't the saves restart you there too? But really, I'd be happy with just a temp save. I guess they figured that, since the system has a sleep mode, it doesn't matter, but I prefer to shut down fully and not waste battery life by keeping it in sleep mode for 24+ hours.

[Tron 2.0]

Sega Genesis Mini II
Shining Force-CD,i use to have a original copy of the game in the 90's.I got halfway through and i got stuck and i took a break and never finished the game.This game i guess you could say my pile of shame so i like to complete it finally.

[YoshiM]

I gotta bust out my minis more. I've been debating getting an HDMI to HDMI and Audio splitting device so I can take a mini to work, hook it up to a monitor and play while I wear headphones. At home can be a crap shoot for getting TV time. Speaking of TV time I cleaned my CoCo carts and got to play some "Downland". The game still kicks my butt after 40 years. It IS nice to play it with a Deluxe Joystick. I tried out my CoCo SDC, now loaded with ALL my backed up disks. I got in some "Shock Trooper", "Interbank Incident" and "Robot Odyssey" time to see how it all worked. I noticed the SDC throws off some RF noise so I have to see if there's a way to reduce that.

This weekend I got a little "Portal and "Portal 2" time in. My kids wanted me to play "Fortnite" with them but my daughter was over and wanted a go so I let her use my account. I do have another email account through Hotmail that I could set up for Epic and have her use. It's tied to my Xbox Live account which she still has on the Xbox 360 I left behind during the divorce but my daughter says that her mom never use the ol' box. I downloaded "Sky" for the Switch but haven't tried it yet as my oldest step son would probably have a hissy fit if someone played it before him. My oldest twin was teasing about playing it as the son was getting packed to go to Minnesota with his mom, my son and their eldest sister for a funeral. For a 20 year old he whined like a tween, oh boy. The game is by thatgamecompany, the same minds behind "Flower" and "Journey" on the PS Vita and PS 3 respectively.

For lunch breaks I decided to bring my 3DS to work and try my hand at beating "Super Mario 3D Land". I left off at level 4-2. I have to get used to the slidey pad controls again as I had Mario plummet to his death more than I care to admit. I also forgot that, when you hear Toad yelling from somewhere and you look at him through the binocular stand, you have to zoom in on him completely before he coughs up a star coin. I was scratching my head trying to figure out how to get up to him so I looked it up. "Oh, you have to zoom in all the way...ok....dur.....". I won't make that mistake again.

[kupomogli]

I'm at the end of chapter four on Tactics Ogre Reborn, I plan on finishing Hell's Gate / Palace of the Damned and all of the other content before completing the game, but I did go the law route and got almost all of the characters at this point. Anyways, here's a review and comparison of what the game does well over the PSP version and the PS1 version and what it does worse imo.

Sadly there's no perfect version of Tactics Ogre, as every single version has some major flaws, but I would say that the original PS1/Super Famicom versions get closer than any other despite just how good some of the features are from the PSP and Reborn versions of the game. So Tactics Ogre Reborn is based on the PSP version, a version of the game I never completed because after getting to chapter four, I quit playing due to required grinding to level up the White Knight class from level 1, the warrior from level 1, and this is already after I leveled the terror knight and dragoon from level 1 earlier. Every single class on the PSP version starts at level 1 among many other issues making the PSP version just a very bad game because of how much of a grind it all is.

Tactics Ogre Reborn cuts a lot of the grind from the PSP version and the skill and special attack system brought over from that game comes over to Reborn in a much better way. On Tactics Ogre Reborn, depending on what your characters level is, they will have all of the skills of their specific class based on that level. No skill grinding required. The only thing that Tactics Ogre Reborn does require on the skill front is based on weapon usage. If you have never used a hammer or sword for the entire game and you decide you want to use hammers, that weapon class will be at whatever level it started at for that character. The weapon class gains bonus damage as well as allowing you to use a new special attack every 10 levels.

On the original game the only class diversity is the passive abilities between each class and definitive upgrades are in the game. The same does still apply here as you'll never use a soldier or wizard over anything else, however every other class except for the archer is viable. The valkyrie and rune fencers have fairly high stats in all categories making them good for both the front lines as well as being able to cast both attack and healing spells effectively, but they can only cast low tier spells. The berserker who had no passive abilities on the original game now gets a skill that increases attack by 50% and a randomly activating skill that allows the clas to attack all spaces to his side and the three in front as well as a slight boost to attack when activated. The knight can cast healing spells, and has a chance of reducing all damage by a high amount and has a chance of absorbing half of the damage from anyone from a short range being an exceptional defensive unit. Terror knights work similar to the way they did in the past but the fear skill is now infinitely more potent, just that it does not activate all the time and if fear activates it lasts for several turns on the enemies that were effected regardless how close the terror knight is, additionally the terror knight has a skill that can cause fear 100% of the time. They can also use low tier dark magic. Dragoons allow characters to deal more damage against dragons and beasts while also having skills to deal more on their own and beastmasters or dragon tamers increase the power of beasts or dragons, they are also able to throw items a long range, however this removes the ability for these characters to target themselves with the items. Warlocks are still wizards with a higher tier of spells and can power up or allow characters to deal more damage against golems. The swordmaster can evade multiple melee attacks per turn or deal a premptive attack towards anyone that is attacking them and then still counter afterwards, the class also has aoe magic that can buff or heal allies or debuff enemies.

Now as amazing as the new skill system is and the diversity of the characters, the issue is that every passive skill, most of the skills in general are automatic, random. The point of a dragoon with the dragon or beast killer skills are to force your party to deal additional damage to those enemies, but if you go three or four turns and the skills don't activate, there's no point in the class and it just becomes any other character. Now yes, you can change multiple characters to a dragoon or change multiple characters to a beast master, etc to increase the chances that these effects will activate on your party. However this brings two other issues, you need a class mark to change classes, and while you can purchase them in shops after a certain point, do you currently have them in the inventory to do so?

The other thing the game does is cards will appear on the field randomly at random locations. These can change the tides of battle but at the same time, they're just so random that the battles they're more of a necessity you can be required to go out of your way more than one turn which is never going to be effective. I'd have rather this new card system didn't exist and the game was balanced without it, the game would be much better due to that. The cards that will appear are auto cards, critical cards, magic cards, and attack cards.

A lot of leaders in the third and fourth chapters start with absurdly high stats, one such enemy starts with 190 intelligence, no cards, over 50 stats than your same class, dealing 600-800 damage per spell. If he picks up a card that's 800-1000 and without constitution it's an OHKO. There is a level cap in this game which is nice it does not allow you to get too powerful, but then you are capped at level 19 and the enemies are level 21 with a leader who's level 22, or enemies at level 33 and two leaders at level 36 while your cap is 32 and one of the leaders deals more damage than any of your characters have at full health with constitution. There are a lot of times the game pretty much forces you to get lucky with the RNG in how the battle progresses as you will not win without getting lucky. The very last battle on chapter three in law for instance has two leaders, one of them is in the back and is a spell caster, the other starts somewhat close but can cast highly damaging spells but deals melee damage as well. The only way you can win this battle is if you move to a position five spaces away from that leader to force him to melee you and then get lucky enough that every one of your characters can deal enough damage to defeat him before two of his allies recover him full health. Any attack this leader does deals 3/4 of your character's health, more than 1/2 with an aoe. If this enemy does not move in range and he casts a spell none of your characters can reach him, they can't move more than a few spaces because of a golem that you can't move past and once the other leader comes into range you're not going to survive two spell casters/attackers who deal 3/4 damage per hit. You can't defeat all these enemies, either as you can't cure enough damage sustained and you can't deal enough damage as all enemies are higher level and deal more damage.

Now despite the absurdly high difficulty at chapters 3 and 4, there is one more thing that the game does poorly. I would say that this is only around seven or eight battles, but still, seven or eight battles that you feel trial and error is a requirement is not fun. There is a way for you to actually increase your stats outside of leveling but the game does a poor job of explaining it. Your characters start with a movement of three and four, so getting around the battlefield is a slog compared to the minimum of five on the original game. That is another issue that this game does a poor job explaining, and that of course is the ability for you to craft items.

So when I first played the game, I did not realize you could buy crafting sheets in consumables. There is a tab that's a small piece of paper, but I did not know this was this, infact, I did not find out you purchased crafting sheets until chapter four because I scrolled down past this exeraggerated number of 100 consumables, but on the very bottom of this menu will you find the crafting sheets. Without the ability to do this in chapter three I really have no idea how the game is balanced in that instance, maybe with the ability to do this then balance would have been better at those few absurdly difficult battles, but for the very last one, no, not at all. Crafting these items is a necessity to making a better experience and this game hides it away, out of the way and easy to miss.

At its core, Tactics Ogre Reborn is a fantastic game and should a flawless gem, but Square Enix decided to throw that flawless gem in the mud and that's what we're left with. A near flawless game with some major issues, although one of these issues you can get around if you are already aware that they hide it away, so there's that. If you ever play the game go purchase the crafting sheets asap, you don't even need the items to craft. Almost all of them are found in the shop. This allows you to increase all character movement by 1 and to increase all weapon attack power by 20 and then another 20 attack with the +1 accessory.

[Tron 2.0]

I'm still playing shining force-cd on the sega genesis mini II.I finished book one recently shesh when you fight woldol final form it's a very cheap fight.It's so snk boss syndrome since woldol,demonbreath drains a good deal of hp.I had to use cray boost spell to up my party defense to win the fight.Now book one is finally cleared i started to play book two of shining force-cd.