RotW // 13th -- 19th September // EmP is NOT mean!

If I was a petty man, someone would have been docked A LOT of theoretical points by now!

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NOT VACANT Double Dragon [SMS] -- Pickhut

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It’s that time of the year again where Pickhut reviews a version of Double Dragon. I’m really looking forward to next year’s review on the Lynx version. I’ve never spent any time with the MS port of this game so, as someone who’s only seen it running, I just assumed this was a very good port in direct comparison to the dodgy NES version that, as you point out, seems custom built to draw comparisons to. I think it was the right call to start with all the ways this port outperforms the other port, so you can then lean in hard to all the complaining you have to do.

If I were one to complain, I might suggest that all your efforts are directed at its worth as a port rather than a game, which may be a confusing read to readers not familiar with Double Dragon. But, then, people unfamiliar with Double Dragon probably aren’t worth catering for.

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THIRD - Dariusburst: Another Chronicle EX+ [SWH] Jason

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The Cotton review never really hooked me; you seemed to spend more time talking around the game rather than at it. It was written well enough, which is a surprise to exactly no one, but I suspect Pick would have finished in the top three had this been your only scrolling shooter adventure of last week. Alas, even with your awful food metaphor included, I found myself really liking your Dariusburst effort.

I liked the intro and how you tied your personal experiences in. I don’t think it worked as well with Cotton, maybe because it was more about your lack of personal experience. It works for several reasons, the most relevant perhaps being that you establish some authority on the subject and then use that to your advantage, talking about the ways Burst doesn’t stack up and the ways it’s been brave enough to move away from the norm and how that works. The description of feeling like a small part in a large conflict was the highlight to me, because while this doesn't happen often, the few times I’ve seen it in shooters have been stand-out awesome.

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OVERDRIVE PLACE - Judgement [PS4] Overdrive

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Turns out, all Rob has to do to collect a series of high finishes from my weeks is stop writing about copy-and-paste mobile JRPGS declare an interest in winning a record amount of silvers and watch me move the stars to award him anything but play the games I’ve been opening recommending for years. To be fair, he’s then turned in a very polished and, dare I say, focused, review on the game which I won’t play until I’ve beaten all the outstanding Yakuza games (four to go!). There’s always so much going on in these games, it’s easy to go a little tangent-mad, but Rob consistently pulls out a great collection of examples as to why someone might enjoy the game. Then tempers it with some fair criticism of the detective setting that’s used to differentiate this game from the Kiryu chronicles. This is an excellent review that takes advantage of its source material; it’s a surefire gold for most RotWs. Adding to Rob’s massive pile of silvers genuinely feels like I’m shortchanging this review. Better find some petty justification...

Minus points for suggesting anyone can ever tire of Fantasy Zone. Yes, that will do.

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FIRST - Octopath Traveler [SWH] dagoss

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I have some thoughts on this review. Quite a few, actually, but I’ll condense them down as best I can. This review is excellent; one of the most interesting things I’ve read on this site all year. It's an excellent piece that doesn’t settle on the Whats of Octopath, but the Whys. It ties not only aspects of the game, but the makers themselves into the inspirations the game wears on its sleeves. Then it uses them to suggest that this game only comes close to matching their impossible standards.

Genuinely, I couldn’t write this review. I’m not sure anyone other than dagoss could; it’s got his fingermarks of retrospective probing all over it. It’s long, it’s going to struggle to hold the interest of a lot of people, but it’s not rambling. Everything is driving towards a solid point and, despite the sectioned nature of the review (scoff! How 2004 gamefaqs of you!). They might look separate, but they’re all building towards the same conclusion, just from different angles.

But it’s still long and, in the endless stream of words, there’s awkward phrases and little typos like a few it’s/its errors and the occasional overlong, overloaded sentence. One weird sentence to fix: ”While I don’t lament the days where progression was locked behind talking to everyone until you talked to talk one guy that let you initiate a different dialog”. It’s definitely worth going back through the review when it’s colder in your mind and weeding out some of these issues because, honestly, what you’ve produced here is, I think, a little bit special.

Thanks for the topic, and for the comments on my reviews. It was a tough week to place, another one where there wasn't a bad review in the lot. I thought my food metaphor would be enough to place me over the top, but dagoss and overdrive both wrote excellent reviews so I guess I can live with third.

Thanks for the win and the kind words. Those are genuinely some of the nicest things anyone has said about anything I've written. I would like to go back and edit this one better (and several others) as they could be much better than they are.

I'm trying to write the kinds of reviews I want to read--which I guess aren't really reviews. When I want to know if I want to buy I game, I usually look for a let's play or something; but if I want to learn about what makes a game tick, there's not enough written (yet).

Thanks for the comments. Despite how much it gets talked up (nostalgia?), the SMS version of this game was perhaps the hardest thing to write about, since I actually had to pad it in order for it not to be a mere three paragraphs long. I ended up rewriting the first two paragraphs at least four times to make it.... somewhat connectable to the SMS version. It looks nicer than the NES game and it's more in tune to the arcade original, but other than that, there's.... not much of value to talk about other than its direct comparisons to the NES title. I'm glad I got it out of the way, honestly. Now I can concentrate my efforts on more important things like the other 50 bad versions of DD.

Also, congrats to dagoss!

Also, EmP is still a big meanie.

Thanks for the comments and don't tempt me! There are a lot of Kemco games I haven't played yet! I mean, the thought of doing anything with the Kemco Khallenge for anything other than a "maybe a game every year or two" basis kind of makes me violently ill, but I could!

Yeah, I pretty much had to be focused with this review. If Judgment is any indication, all of those games are essentially time-sinks where it's really easy to be distracted. So I figured if my review turned into one of my rambles, it would wind up some sort of unintentionally hilarious monstrosity. Good to see I avoided that.

I have a have finish Kemcom review (for Sword of Hope) that I've been meaning to finish, but I haven't been able to finish the game because I kind of hate it. I honestly can't believe just how many generic RPGs they turn out these days.

When I started the Kemco Khallenge, it all was really simple. I was getting tired of JRPGs because over the generations, they went from lean-n-mean 20-40 hour investments to requiring over 100 (at least if you are trying to do more than just go from beginning to end). Kemco's games were shorter, so I figured they'd be fun. Initially, the experiment was a success. I mean, the games usually weren't that great and palette-swapping was done to an obscene degree, but they were short and hit the so-called sweet spot.

And then, they just got so tedious. Back when I was doing the Khallenge, Kemco had four teams producing games for them. Exe-Create was the best from a technological standpoint, but the most bereft of creativity. Play 2-3 games from their line-up and you've seen just about everything they have to offer, which can be an issue when you consider they've been the most prolific publisher for quite some time. And the game scripts were unnecessarily verbose. Hit-Point was the best of making games that felt different from each other, but so many of their games were the Dollar General knock-off version of something else (Rusted Emeth = Metal Max; Band of Monsters = Pokemon for two examples). World Wide Software, I tended to like. They didn't really stand out, but they tended to be 10-15 hours long and were just interesting enough to be fun -- typically in a "jam 50 hours of story into 12 hours of action" sort of way where they felt like the Cliffs Notes version of an epic. Magitec tended to have the best/deepest story-telling, but also tended to have awkwardly translated dialogue (I mean, they all did, but Magitec was the worst) and were the worst from an aesthetic level with really generic sprites and really short and simple music arrangements.

So which were the best WWS titles?

The ones I played that I considered to be good (by Kemco standards, not by legit game standards, necessarily) were Symphony of Eternity and Tears Revolude. Symphony is one of their first games and is pretty ugly with a few annoyances like the game simply refusing to let you travel on the map in directions the plot isn't taking you yet, but it has a respectable job class system and a pretty good difficulty level (the sort where you have to work, but it's not super-tough). Tears was more experimental in appearance with dungeons being isometric instead of pure overhead. It looks good by Kemco standards and has a larger-than-average cast (a five-person villain team). Battle system is kind of fun. While characters don't get a ton of skills, those skills can be leveled up and get more powerful the more often you use them.

A couple others are at least worth mentioning. Symphony of the Origin would have been a lot more fun if I'd played it on hard. Had potential, but was just way too easy on the default setting (and you couldn't change after starting your game). Silver Nornir had a lot of cool stuff in its premise, but was way too busy plot-wise for a 10-15 hour game, with something like 10 total party members, many of which were villains for the first half of the game.