Playing Old Games For the First Time - Give a Short Review of Some 10+ Year Old Game You Played For the First Time

[Croco]

Maybe Mario Grianni could teach you some.

In the Japanese dub specifically.

Neat. Shenmue seems like a particularly good series for language learning since it's open world like a simulated immersion experience.

 

[Chuck 'n Geck]

Neat. Shenmue seems like a particularly good series for language learning since it's open world like a simulated immersion experience.

That was actually referring to how, in the Japanese dub, Mario mixed Italian "amico" and "signora" up with the Spanish "amiga" and "signorita". Not a huge difference, but still wrong - and if you're a bilingual in Burgerstan, you definitely will notice it's wrong.

 

[Xarpho's Return]

I've been playing Super Punch-Out!! on the SNES and it's easy to see why it's overshadowed by its NES counterpart. In addition to no Doc or anything like that, it's hard as balls. Jabby Gay, er, Gabby Jay, is no Glass Joe, while Glass Joe can endlessly pummel you and only chip away at your health, if Jay connects his right hook, that's a third of your health gone. While he isn't a challenge the difficulty is much higher than in the NES game.

There's no rounds, only three minutes, but you can't win by split decision so it seems kind of pointless. There are no mid-game hints whatsoever, the only text you're getting is an opening blurb about the fighter and that's it. Save-scumming won't make things much easier, but you can eventually get to the top that way.

 

[Hellwalker]

I just finished GTA 3 for the first time a couple of minutes ago. I've played it before but never actually completed the game. Even 24 years later, I still think there's a lot of substance to it, even if it's pretty primitive and feature-lacking compared to GTA's after it. The story was pretty good too. Overall, I had a good time with it, even though there were a lot of missions that were utter bullshit and enraging (I would've completed the game a lot quicker if I didn't get stuck a couple of missions).

 

[Friendly Primarina]

I just finished GTA 3 for the first time a couple of minutes ago. I've played it before but never actually completed the game. Even 24 years later, I still think there's a lot of substance to it, even if it's pretty primitive and feature-lacking compared to GTA's after it. The story was pretty good too. Overall, I had a good time with it, even though there were a lot of missions that were utter bullshit and enraging (I would've completed the game a lot quicker if I didn't get stuck a couple of missions).

Still an absolute banger almost a quarter of a century later:

Direct link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6U6tgGqW58&t=163

 

[Jerri's Kid]

I've been playing Super Punch-Out!! on the SNES and it's easy to see why it's overshadowed by its NES counterpart. In addition to no Doc or anything like that, it's hard as balls.

I liked the added challenge and improved graphics, but yes it didn't really have the charm of the NES one. I still played the hell out of both of them. Supposedly this game is influenced by the Punch-Out!! series, so it's on my radar:

Punch-Out!! but with puppets

 

[Toji Suzuhara]

So I just finished playing Chrono Trigger a couple weeks ago (emulated, of course) and man, what a work of art. The quality of the sprites, the music, the designs made by Toriyama himself, the story that is actually interesting and well-paced, and many things more. Peak after peak after peak, no wonder that people always say that it's one of the greatest RPGs ever.

My only criticism is that 2300 A.D feels a little barren when compared to the other dates. It makes sense, but I just love post-apocalyptic settings and would've liked to see a little more of it

 

[SSj_Ness (Yiffed)]

So I just finished playing Chrono Trigger a couple weeks ago (emulated, of course) and man, what a work of art. The quality of the sprites, the music, the designs made by Toriyama himself, the story that is actually interesting and well-paced, and many things more. Peak after peak after peak, no wonder that people always say that it's one of the greatest RPGs ever.

My only criticism is that 2300 A.D feels a little barren when compared to the other dates. It makes sense, but I just live post-apocalyptic settings and would've liked to see a little more of it

I agree. I think it was originally conceived as a Nintendo Playstation title, and they had to scale down the scope of the project. There were plans for more playable characters and stuff so I think it was supposed to be a bigger game in general, it's kinda short and the world is small. I'd love to see it remade using the original design documents, if they were preserved.

 

[StacticShock]

one thing that irks me with old games is the inability to rebind keys.

 

[Xarpho's Return]

I agree. I think it was originally conceived as a Nintendo Playstation title, and they had to scale down the scope of the project. There were plans for more playable characters and stuff so I think it was supposed to be a bigger game in general, it's kinda short and the world is small. I'd love to see it remade using the original design documents, if they were preserved.

I've never heard that, I know Mother 3 had a bunch of stuff that got cut since it was planned for a different system. On that note, it really saddens me what TCRF has become, the faggified logo has become permanent. Oh well; I never liked all-encompassing wikis anyway.

 

[SSj_Ness (Yiffed)]

I've never heard that, I know Mother 3 had a bunch of stuff that got cut since it was planned for a different system. On that note, it really saddens me what TCRF has become, the faggified logo has become permanent. Oh well; I never liked all-encompassing wikis anyway.

I'm pretty sure I'm right, hopefully I'm not talking out my ass lol. Yeah, Mother 3 is almost a different game from Earthbound 64. As for TCRF, RIP. I hate faggots, they ruin everything.

 

[TrainWreckWatcher]

one thing that irks me with old games is the inability to rebind keys.

Joy to Key is your best bet.

 

[StacticShock]

Joy to Key is your best bet.

there is a thread in the discussions saying it doesn't work...

 

[regalterry]

there is a thread in the discussions saying it doesn't work...

Did you try using AutoHotKey? It's a tad more complicated to set up than Joy to Key, but you can use an LLM to write you a script with the keybindings you wish to change. You can do some pretty neat stuff in it.

I regularly use it to move camera controls in old strategy games from the arrow keys to WASD, and to assign all controls, if on a grid, to be the same for every faction, relative to the position of the button on the grid.

You can even have it remember what keys you pressed before, which I used for Anno 1701 to bind the zoom controls to the mouse wheel.

Basically, anything you can think of doing with the keyboard or mouse, you can script it.

Alternatively, if you're using a joystick, try Joystick Gremlin.

 

[Lord of the Large Pants]

So I played Legend of Mana for the first time recently. I really loved Secret of Mana as a kid, and I've played through Trials of Mana once every couple years since it was called Seiken Densetsu 3 and was only available through an emulated fan translation. Never got around to Legend because I didn't have a Playstation and I could never get emulation to work quite right, but there was a remake a few years ago. I've been wanting to play the new Visions of Mana game (surprisingly not bad BTW, if a little padded for time), so I thought I'd take a detour through Legend first.

Hoo boy.

Spoiler: Extremely long spergpost (because it's ass o'clock and I can't sleep)

Okay, let's start here. This game is fucking GORGEOUS. Some of the best 2D graphics work ever. They hand redrew all the backgrounds for the remake so they'd be widescreen compatible. Respect.




The music is very good. Not as good as OG Secret of Mana, but that's an extremely high bar. I'd say it's about on par with Trials. Doesn't have quite as many absolute bangers, but is generally more consistent.

One of the most common complaints is that the game doesn't really have a main plot, just a bunch of sidequests. Which is true, but I didn't really find it to be a problem. There are tons of sidequests, and 3 larger story arcs. After finishing any of the big 3 you can fight the final boss for a weird and incomprehensible ending. But the big 3 arcs are definitely the best part of the game. The quest design blows from a gameplay standpoint (more on that shortly), but they take you through some kickass environments with solid stories and a surprising amount of depth to the characters.

Quick side note. One of the big 3 arcs (the Jumi arc) actually got a 13 episode anime. For being an adaptation of an obscure, mediocre game, it manages to be both surprisingly high quality and mostly faithful to the story.

Anyway, back to the game. Even a good chunk of minor characters with one shot quests are rather colorful with a good amount of characterization. In terms of writing, they're generally well done. There's a lore encyclopedia in the game that includes characters, world history, mythology, even exhaustive descriptions of common items. Well, everything except the mechanics of them...

Right. Now for the bad.

Combat is... okay. The biggest problem is the sheer volume of fake depth. There's a combo system that sounds theoretically cool. By chaining certain attacks, you can keep going without interruption. In practice, it's clunky and impractical. There are dozens of active combat abilities like blocks and dashes, but you can only use 2 at once. There are hundreds of weapon skills, but you can only equip up to 4, and the slots are shared with spells. Why yes, this game did come out the same year as Chrono Cross, why do you ask? The magic system is just single button spells based on equipment. No ring system. They're basically useless. And in the same vein, there's something like a dozen different weapon types, and none of them really matter. Just hit stuff until it dies.

The level design is AWFUL. Every dungeon is a twisting labyrinth of pain and misery. When I first started playing, I thought the remake option to turn off random encounters was just cheese, but I honestly don't know if I could've made it through the game without it. Even with detailed maps and step by step directions, I often found myself getting hopelessly lost and having to resort to video guides. That said, I have a history of being navigationally retarded, so this one might be just me.

The crafting system. FUCK me, the crafting system. It's the most opaque, counterintuitive thing I've ever seen. You WILL NOT be able to do anything useful without a guide, period. And even after spending hours on it, I still barely understand what's going on. The game explains NOTHING, and the mechanics aren't even slightly discoverable through trial and error. It's a mess. However, you can break it harder than Skyrim if you know how.

So basically, you can spend 10 hours crafting the ultimate weapon to kill the final boss in one hit, or you can spend 10 hours fighting the final boss. Either way, it takes you 10 hours.

The pet system isn't terrible. You can hatch eggs to get monster companions. There are also a handful of secret ones that are especially powerful. Some are definitely better than others. This system isn't as convoluted as crafting, basically only requiring you to feed your monsters certain foods to induce certain stats and behavior. But there are parts of the in game documentation that just flat out lie to you, and it wasn't fixed in the remake.

As an alternative to pets, you can take golems. Conceptually this is actually pretty cool. Different items give them different abilities, and you arrange them on a Tetris style grid to program their behavior. But honestly, it's just way more trouble than it's worth, because so little actually matters in this game.

But all those problems would be forgivable if it wasn't for the FUCKING quest design. NOTHING in Legend of Mana gets explained. It's like your first time in an Elder Scrolls game but a thousand times worse. It's not just "go everywhere, talk to everyone". It's "go everywhere, talk to everyone, and do this after every single step in every single quest because sometimes the trigger is a single unmarked room in a dungeon that you cleared 20 hours ago and never had a reason to think about again".

Yeah, you have to backtrack dungeons too, because sometimes they just suddenly spawn quests for no reason. And sometimes you need a specific NPC with you, and sometimes you need no NPC with you, and the game will never give ANY indication that something was supposed to happen unless you just know ahead of time what you were supposed to do. I've had times where I was following a video guide and it still took me a sold hour to find some obscure side condition to trigger the next step in a quest.

Here's an example. One of my favorites is the time the game gives you a "hint" to go talk to Amalette. Amalette? Who the FUCK is Amalette? They're not in the character encyclopedia. Oh, it's the Pelican. Did anyone EVER refer to her as Amalette? That name doesn't even show up under the encyclopedia entry. What, you weren't keep meticulous hand written notes of every single conversation in a 60 hour game? Fuck if I remember whether there was a single line like 20 hours ago that used her real name rather than one that everybody actually uses.

The game feels like it's constantly making up new rules and not telling you about them. The Dudbear treasure dig is one of the most obtuse things I have EVER seen in a game, requiring you to trade finite to certain characters, then to trade those items for other items, and those items for other items again. All these characters wander around, look exactly alike, and speak a foreign language. And you CAN permanently fail it.

I cannot IMAGINE trying to do the FUCKING crab stomping quest in the original that didn't allow you to save scum. You have to touch a bunch of jittery, fast moving crabs in a specific order that's hard to pull off even with a video guide. And again, you can permanently fail it.

There are DOZENS of things that are permanently missable, in all sorts of weird and subtle ways. Even working along with a step by step guide, I STILL missed a quest that I can't go back for. I known which one, but not how or when.

Now you might say, get off my lawn, you damn kids. Can't get anywhere without a compass and magic map marker GPS like us real old school gamers.

Well... no. I grew up on the classic JRPGs. FF6, Chrono Trigger, Mario RPG, and the older Mana games. And sure, they had some weird, obscure secrets. Things that would be difficult to figure out without a guide, like the Cursed Shield or the Lazy Shell. But none of them felt like they were CONSTANTLY trying to trick you, to force you to tread and retread EVERY LAST INCH of the game over and over to try to figure out what you were supposed to do next. The World of Ruin in FF6 was an open-ish world that came several years earlier and wasn't nearly this much of a clusterfuck.

If your entire game is going to be sidequests, maybe make sure that doing them doesn't feel like prison labor. Seriously, if you play this game, PLEASE just use a guide.

I honestly don't know why they didn't change more in this remake. The Mana game that needed the most work, this one, got almost nothing. The Mana game that only needed some light touch tweaking, Trials, got a comple overhaul, not always to its benefit. The ironing.

Rant over.

 

[Lord of the Large Pants]

I agree. I think it was originally conceived as a Nintendo Playstation title, and they had to scale down the scope of the project. There were plans for more playable characters and stuff so I think it was supposed to be a bigger game in general, it's kinda short and the world is small. I'd love to see it remade using the original design documents, if they were preserved.

Double posting, but it's relevant. Chrono Trigger started life as part of Secret of Mana. See, Secret of Mana was supposed to be a much larger game on the SNES CD. However, Nintendo completely screwed the pooch and left Square hanging. This is one of the big reasons that the story in Secret of Mana feels weird and disjointed, because it's basically half a story. The remainder got recycled into Chrono Trigger, which they had more time to finish.

This is also why Square and Nintendo got divorced, and why FF7 ended up on Playstation.

 

[m1ddl3m4rch]

I loved the Mana series and bought Legend of Mana right when it released. Little did I know then.

One of the most common complaints is that the game doesn't really have a main plot, just a bunch of sidequests.

It's like a crazy quilt of stories which feel disjointed, which isn't helped by the build-a-map system which is almost literally crazy quilt. Places are referenced in-story for which you haven't found their artifact and haven't placed on the map yet. There's no guarantee you'll be able to place every artifact on the map, or that some placements won't negate questlines.

Quick side note. One of the big 3 arcs (the Jumi arc) actually got a 13 episode anime. For being an adaptation of an obscure, mediocre game, it manages to be both surprisingly high quality and mostly faithful to the story.

I'll have to give it a watch!

Combat is... okay. The biggest problem is the sheer volume of fake depth. There's a combo system that sounds theoretically cool. By chaining certain attacks, you can keep going without interruption. In practice, it's clunky and impractical. There are dozens of active combat abilities like blocks and dashes, but you can only use 2 at once. There are hundreds of weapon skills, but you can only equip up to 4, and the slots are shared with spells. Why yes, this game did come out the same year as Chrono Cross, why do you ask? The magic system is just single button spells based on equipment. No ring system. They're basically useless. And in the same vein, there's something like a dozen different weapon types, and none of them really matter. Just hit stuff until it dies.

Yeah I loved playing the sprite from Secret of Mana because of all the spells he'd get. Magic musical instruments with only one spell each was pretty disappointing, and they were weak spells which didn't do much. Pretty though. The weapons were similarly disappointing, just bash and go.

The level design is AWFUL. Every dungeon is a twisting labyrinth of pain and misery. When I first started playing, I thought the remake option to turn off random encounters was just cheese, but I honestly don't know if I could've made it through the game without it. Even with detailed maps and step by step directions, I often found myself getting hopelessly lost and having to resort to video guides. That said, I have a history of being navigationally retarded, so this one might be just me.

Whenever I see this game anywhere, I have flashbacks to wandering the toyland junkyard trying to find the next scene or boss fight. It's not just you, all the levels are labyrinthine. The game is gorgeous but it's also difficult to remember landmarks. Hell was pretty bad for this too.

The crafting system. FUCK me, the crafting system. It's the most opaque, counterintuitive thing I've ever seen. You WILL NOT be able to do anything useful without a guide, period. And even after spending hours on it, I still barely understand what's going on. The game explains NOTHING, and the mechanics aren't even slightly discoverable through trial and error. It's a mess. However, you can break it harder than Skyrim if you know how.

The tarot cards with their cryptic meanings is a great symbol for this mess.

But honestly, it's just way more trouble than it's worth, because so little actually matters in this game.

Perfect summary for pets, golems and crafting.

Here's an example. One of my favorites is the time the game gives you a "hint" to go talk to Amalette. Amalette? Who the FUCK is Amalette? They're not in the character encyclopedia. Oh, it's the Pelican. Did anyone EVER refer to her as Amalette? That name doesn't even show up under the encyclopedia entry. What, you weren't keep meticulous hand written notes of every single conversation in a 60 hour game? Fuck if I remember whether there was a single line like 20 hours ago that used her real name rather than one that everybody actually uses.

The hit or miss localization really doesn't help, either.

The game feels like it's constantly making up new rules and not telling you about them. The Dudbear treasure dig is one of the most obtuse things I have EVER seen in a game, requiring you to trade finite to certain characters, then to trade those items for other items, and those items for other items again. All these characters wander around, look exactly alike, and speak a foreign language. And you CAN permanently fail it.

I cannot IMAGINE trying to do the FUCKING crab stomping quest in the original that didn't allow you to save scum. You have to touch a bunch of jittery, fast moving crabs in a specific order that's hard to pull off even with a video guide. And again, you can permanently fail it.

I played this on PS1. Probably why I never picked up this game again.

There are DOZENS of things that are permanently missable, in all sorts of weird and subtle ways. Even working along with a step by step guide, I STILL missed a quest that I can't go back for. I known which one, but not how or when.

This really doesn't encourage exploration, either.

Now you might say, get off my lawn, you damn kids. Can't get anywhere without a compass and magic map marker GPS like us real old school gamers.

Well... no. I grew up on the classic JRPGs. FF6, Chrono Trigger, Mario RPG, and the older Mana games. And sure, they had some weird, obscure secrets. Things that would be difficult to figure out without a guide, like the Cursed Shield or the Lazy Shell. But none of them felt like they were CONSTANTLY trying to trick you, to force you to tread and retread EVERY LAST INCH of the game over and over to try to figure out what you were supposed to do next. The World of Ruin in FF6 was an open-ish world that came several years earlier and wasn't nearly this much of a clusterfuck.

If your entire game is going to be sidequests, maybe make sure that doing them doesn't feel like prison labor. Seriously, if you play this game, PLEASE just use a guide.

This can't be understated. You'll feel like you're doing your taxes between quests.

I honestly don't know why they didn't change more in this remake. The Mana game that needed the most work, this one, got almost nothing. The Mana game that only needed some light touch tweaking, Trials, got a comple overhaul, not always to its benefit. The ironing.

Remasters are cash-ins. They generally slap some graphics upgrades on and call it a day. The writing is seldom edited for clarity, which this game could've sorely used.

Yeah, you have to backtrack dungeons too, because sometimes they just suddenly spawn quests for no reason. And sometimes you need a specific NPC with you, and sometimes you need no NPC with you, and the game will never give ANY indication that something was supposed to happen unless you just know ahead of time what you were supposed to do. I've had times where I was following a video guide and it still took me a sold hour to find some obscure side condition to trigger the next step in a quest.

Yeah, this is why I haven't picked this game up again.

 

[Lord of the Large Pants]

Whenever I see this game anywhere, I have flashbacks to wandering the toyland junkyard trying to find the next scene or boss fight. It's not just you, all the levels are labyrinthine. The game is gorgeous but it's also difficult to remember landmarks. Hell was pretty bad for this too.

The Junkyard is particularly egregious because there's a specific path you have to take or others get blocked off. Not just once and you're done, but EVERY. SINGLE. TIME.

Remasters are cash-ins. They generally slap some graphics upgrades on and call it a day. The writing is seldom edited for clarity, which this game could've sorely used.

Well the funny thing is, they actually DID do that with Secret and Trials. They add a ton of character interaction, and Secret restored some of the story. Trials was totally rebuilt as a 3D game with significant mechanical changes. The results were mixed, but they at least tried. I don't know why they gave up on this one.

 

[Whiskey]

The Junkyard is particularly egregious because there's a specific path you have to take or others get blocked off. Not just once and you're done, but EVERY. SINGLE. TIME.

Well the funny thing is, they actually DID do that with Secret and Trials. They add a ton of character interaction, and Secret restored some of the story. Trials was totally rebuilt as a 3D game with significant mechanical changes. The results were mixed, but they at least tried. I don't know why they gave up on this one.

Think it's a pretty niche market. It's one thing to make a remaster, another to go about designing new assets and story.

I'm not opposed to remastering especially given how dog shit modern gaming it but it does fall under a cheap cash grab.

For the thread topic, finally got around to playing the first pikmin. What a gem of a game. Don't care for the time limit even if it is generous though.

 

[Lord of the Large Pants]

Think it's a pretty niche market. It's one thing to make a remaster, another to go about designing new assets and story.

Right, but that's what I'm saying. Secret of Mana got a total graphical overhaul, music remaster, voice acting, and new character writing. Trials of Mana got all that plus a total conversion to 3D and a minor overhaul of the character classes. Legend of Mana got... uh... new backgrounds and a save anywhere feature? A few minor quality of life changes, but not much else. Which is even stranger because Trials, despite being hands down the best game, has always been the black sheep of the Mana series. It didn't get an official English release until 2019. (And there were a number of reasons for this, but never mind.) But they went full ham on the Trials remaster and left Legend hanging.

So while I know what you mean, I don't know why THIS specific game in the series got screwed over so hard compared to its siblings.