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

[Book Thief]

I'm very afraid now.

I've been doing the Arcade mode most of my playtime, and I'm too weak to actually get through the entire dam level without getting lost for two hours.

Playing through the campaign on Normal should provide you with a decent experience and give you plenty of unlocks along the way. Playing it on Hard, though? Like @The Ugly One said, the only reward is the Site map for Arcade, and I barely scraped through Atom Smasher using an unintended control method with far more speed and precision than the original analog controls. God help you if you're planning on going through that on original hardware.

Final note, I've seen games where the name of a status affliction covers up a character's max HP, but this game has Poison cover up a character's current HP. Which is certainly a choice. It's the only real problem caused by the status effect too since the damage from it is basically nothing. Just being mildly annoyed by not knowing how low someone's HP is.

The interesting thing about Poison in Phantasy Star III is that it doesn't actually hurt you. All it does is prevent you from healing, which is another strange design decision, but a welcome one when you get poisoned partway through a dungeon and you're limping back to town to buy an Antidote.

 

[The Ugly One]

I started Tomb Raider 2 after being genuinely surprised by how good Tomb Raider 1 was, and man...this game is just trying way too hard to be something it's not. There's more combat, which TR is objectively terrible at, and more jumping sections that require reflexes, agility, and precise movement, which TR is horrible at. I'm not sure I'll finish this one. Maybe the levels get better after Venice.

 

[The Ugly One]

You think Notre Dame is hard? Try beating Atom Smasher

Since I can't beat Notre Dame, I will never experience this misfortune.

 

[Jonah Hill poster]

Unbeknownst to me, the PS3 apparently made a collection where you can play both ICO and Shadow of the Colossus as a duo. The former is still technically rare to get, if one looks at the prices for it on places like eBay, so I might just buy the collection for the time being.

 

[Book Thief]

Since I can't beat Notre Dame, I will never experience this misfortune.

I don't blame you. While TS2 is one of my favorite shooters ever, playing through the campaign on Hard is only worth it for being able to say you've 100% the game, which I wanted to. It's an experience only for the type of gamer who enjoys smashing their ball sack into a brick wall until it crumbles.

Though I suppose as a Thread Tax, while I did play TS2 and TSFP back when they were new, I hadn't played TS1 until I got my hand on PS2 emulators.

Even as someone who grew up with the TimeSplitters games, I find the first game to be a bitter pill to swallow. See, while TS2 reserves its toughest challenges for playing the Campaign on Hard, TS1 is perfectly happy to break your balls on Easy. Not only that, but the first level, Tomb, has a ton of zombies, which feature a mechanic not seen anywhere else in the series, that being that unless you decapitate them, the zombies will simply get back up a few seconds after downing them. Oh, and forget about unlocking anything. Doing so requires you to speedrun the levels, so good friggin' luck.

 

[The Ugly One]

The enemies in Tomb Raider II continue to be a massive pain in the ass. I guess somebody in the 90s said every game needs more shooting, so pretty much every time you open a door, somebody appears to kill you. Since the controls are completely unsuited to 3rd person combat, it's just a chore. The funny thing is it also turns Lara Croft into a murdering psychopath. She has no real reason to be in Venice beyond trying to find an artifact, and she's murdering dozens upon dozens of guards in some guy's mansion to try and get info so she can steal it.

EDIT: 37 enemies in the hideout level, it's just ridiculous. And there are these stupid mice everywhere that desire only to chomp on Lara's toes.

 

[Calandrino]

And there are these stupid mice everywhere that desire only to chomp on Lara's toes.

Well who can't relate, am I right

 

[WarrenZHarding]

Unbeknownst to me, the PS3 apparently made a collection where you can play both ICO and Shadow of the Colossus as a duo. The former is still technically rare to get, if one looks at the prices for it on places like eBay, so I might just buy the collection for the time being.

pcsx2 is free...

 

[Ibanez RG 350EX]

Unbeknownst to me, the PS3 apparently made a collection where you can play both ICO and Shadow of the Colossus as a duo. The former is still technically rare to get, if one looks at the prices for it on places like eBay, so I might just buy the collection for the time being.

Damn, I shouldn't have thrown my copy away years ago.

 

[Metallic Blood]

Played and completed Shantae and the Pirate's Curse for the first time today, and man, what a banger of a game.

The moment I putted my foot on the first area of the game and saw an enemy die with Metal Slug explosions, I immediately thought "... I missed you so much Symphony of the Night."

I loved almost everything about it: the light-hearted story was pretty charming, and was immensely surprised to see how non-obnoxious the 4th wall breaks were, and I believe some modern game devs should learn from it. The soundtrack is phenomenal, that I now understand completely why I keep seeing a lot of "Run! Run! Rottytops!" and "We Love Burning Town" edits on my YouTube feed. Shantae in this game is probably one of the most satisfying gaming characters to control, it's just so smooth and natural to pull off the pirate gear for platforming and mid-fight, specially the Scimitar Dash when there's a hallway full of enemies, it's just so good.

The characters designs are also pretty excelent. I don't really like horny in my games (which probably makes me not the target audience for this game), but I confess that I laughed a few of the fanservice jokes (especially that one dialogue where Sky said "Promise me to never bring those desert princess outfits back on conversation ever again.", and Shantae replies "You have my word!" *changes outfits* "This one right?")

I did say this game reminds me too much of Symphony of the Night, but I think it's unfair to call it a "clone" or "rip-off", the game does a lot of extra things that made the experience so enjoyable. I might visit other indie Metroidvanias, if they are as good or perhaps even better than this one. Or maybe even other Shantae games for that matter, since this was my first entry.

This is also the same company who made the Ducktales Remastered, so to be fair, I think I should've expected kino already.

9/10 game.

TL;DR:

 

[Croco]

I beat Phantasy Star III. It was certainly one of the game I've ever played. But seriously, I'm struggling to think of something say about besides that's pretty boring and tedious. The generation thing is kind of cool and ahead of its time, but the final generation is 90% the same regardless, and the story and setting doesn't really have anything interesting going on. I literally did nothing in any random encounter the entire game except use the auto-battle to spam regular attacks. I never used any attack spells, buffing spells, or items the entire game, only the party heal spell during the games 4 boss fights. The final boss was the only fight the entire game that had even a bare minimum standard level of thinking required. The dungeons are bad but not in any particular unique way that would be fun to complain about, they're just blandly designed to waste your time with needing to walk around in roundabout paths. Also, insane levels of backtracking.

It kind of feels like what people who hate JRPGs are imaging in their head when they complain about them. Like when someone goes off about JRPGs being braindead and just mashing A until you win, they're thinking of Phantasy Star III even if they don't know it. Even the plot and setting are super generic.

Final note, I've seen games where the name of a status affliction covers up a character's max HP, but this game has Poison cover up a character's current HP. Which is certainly a choice. It's the only real problem caused by the status effect too since the damage from it is basically nothing. Just being mildly annoyed by not knowing how low someone's HP is.

I hope that you used an emulator, used fast forward, savestates, and an updated mod. Looks like Mega Drive has the "Generations of Doom" retranslation. Most of these jrpgs from the 90s have turbo autists making worthwhile modifications to the original. Nobody should ever have to grind a random enemy encounter, fast foward and smash that attack button.

 

[Retarded Weeb]

I hope that you used an emulator, used fast forward, savestates, and an updated mod. Looks like Mega Drive has the "Generations of Doom" retranslation. Most of these jrpgs from the 90s have turbo autists making worthwhile modifications to the original. Nobody should ever have to grind a random enemy encounter, fast foward and smash that attack button.

I was playing the original Japanese version, so no modifications. I went in raw. You better believe though that I was holding down the fast forward button for almost the entire fucking game because everything was slow - both battles and even just walking around.

 

[Saint Agustin]

I started Tomb Raider 2 after being genuinely surprised by how good Tomb Raider 1 was, and man...this game is just trying way too hard to be something it's not. There's more combat, which TR is objectively terrible at, and more jumping sections that require reflexes, agility, and precise movement, which TR is horrible at. I'm not sure I'll finish this one. Maybe the levels get better after Venice.

old school tomb raider is a testament of it's time and doesn't stand for modern gaming. Literally perfect for the 90's.

TR2 is a major improvement in level design, mechanics, gameplay and enemy IA.

TR2 is perfect, although long. And TR4 is the best of the series.

TR5 Chronicles is meh.

Angel of Darkness is awful and literally unfinished... And that's when everything went to shit.

 

[The Ugly One]

old school tomb raider is a testament of it's time and doesn't stand for modern gaming. Literally perfect for the 90's.

TR2 is a major improvement in level design, mechanics, gameplay and enemy IA.

TR2 is perfect, although long. And TR4 is the best of the series.

TR5 Chronicles is meh.

Angel of Darkness is awful and literally unfinished... And that's when everything went to shit.

Disagree, TR2 is worse than TR1 in nearly every way except the graphics. The levels are more linear and simple. It relies heavily on enemies spawning behind you or just randomly surprising you with a dog or mouse or something around a corner, and it's an absolute chore to play. It's basically trying to be an action game and failing, while TR1 was more of a puzzle game.

 

[Saint Agustin]

Disagree, TR2 is worse than TR1 in nearly every way except the graphics. The levels are more linear and simple. It relies heavily on enemies spawning behind you or just randomly surprising you with a dog or mouse or something around a corner, and it's an absolute chore to play. It's basically trying to be an action game and failing, while TR1 was more of a puzzle game.

Try TR3. Is more open, most enemies are fauna (only a few levels have hitscan enemies, mostly the Nevada and Antártica ones) and the levels are greatly expanded and open, more focused on exploration than combat (even though there are more weapons to choose from)

 

[Gan Ying]

I actually like TR2's combat. It's not winning any awards but it's better than the first game's combat which was almost entirely "get on a box and hold ctrl" or "jump left to right while holding ctrl." The box strat stills works on animals in TR2 but against the wops it's useless. The best way I've found to deal with them is run straight at them and do a grounded roll behind them. They are just as slow as Lara at turning around so you can usually off them without taking much damage. Once you get the hang of it, it feels a lot more natural than it seems.

Against late game melee enemies like the yetis and chinese spear ghosts(?) you're almost always in an open-ish area where you have to take full advantage of the movement to avoid getting hit. Sometimes you have to jump back, sometimes you have to jump forward and do the air flip, sometimes you just have to run at them and roll.

The thing that makes classic TR enjoyable (to me) is that once you have the controls down the movement looks really smooth despite the inherent stiffness. TR2 (and the later games) manage to make this apply to the combat as well.

 

[Croco]

I was playing the original Japanese version, so no modifications. I went in raw. You better believe though that I was holding down the fast forward button for almost the entire fucking game because everything was slow - both battles and even just walking around.

Cool. Using JRPGs as a tool to learn another language seems like a fun challenge. I have been contemplating playing Shenmue in Spanish to familiarize myself with a second language.

 

[Chuck 'n Geck]

I have been contemplating playing Shenmue in Spanish to familiarize myself with a second language.

Maybe Mario Grianni could teach you some.

In the Japanese dub specifically.

 

[SSj_Ness (Yiffed)]

Yeah, a lot of pre-SF4 fighting games are really sweaty - especially since most of them require your inputs to be precise (as in, if it wants a diagonal in QCF, it has to be there) and well-timed.

There's plenty of manuals and videos (most of them Japanese) on how to combo good, but without the food fundamentals (i.e. keeping distance, knowing how long your pokes are gonna be, blocking etc) combos won't be quite as practical... and me fighting against the AI 99% of the time is why I've never learned the fundamentals and why I still play fighting games like a nooblet.

Yeah, SF4 did the right thing normalizing easy inputs. Now I just wish combos would be easier, they should at least have a variety of low damage auto combos. SF6 has a few low mashing light kick with Mai, but there should be more like that.

That said, focusing on one character/(aut)ism/groove helps quite a bit - for obvious reasons; as well as having a good controller, something that would allow you to feel the diagonal inputs better. The chinesium gamepads that come with most consoles nowadays (and put most of their budget into the pizzazz and not the buttons/sticks/D-pads) are not that - and modern fighting games are usually simplified for this exact reason, which is something that's been happening since Marvel vs Capcom 2. Just saying, if you decide to jump into an SNK fighting game, or Rainbow Mika in SFA3, you'd really need to whirl that penis with a balltop/clicky d-pad/hexagonal gate analog stick every which way.

I play on Switch Lite so I'm basically stuck with the default controls. Technically I think you can connect a controller to it but that's impractical.

...also, minor nitpick, but Capcom Fighting Evolution is probably the most MUGEN a Capcom fightan would ever get. This game had to be glued together from the ashes of Capcom Fighting All-Stars: Code Holder, and boy does it show. Disproportionate everything, barely animated backgrounds, unanimated Midnight Bliss sequences, a team system that might as well be a two-way character selector (Justice School also has that, but that one comes with assists) and the thing that reminds me of MUGEN the most: every character coming with their own system and super meter.

Like, sure, it has Ingrid (the most animated new feature in the game) from CFAS and an unironically banger soundtrack, but again, you could probably recreate the entirety of Capcom Fighting Jam in MUGEN, with those two things intact, in 20-ish minutes, and not notice much of a difference structurally.

I never played MUGEN so I had nothing to compare it to, but I'm familiar with its concept. I still think it came out pretty well, I'd like a sequel with a lot more polish and options.

 

[Chuck 'n Geck]

Yeah, SF4 did the right thing normalizing easy inputs. Now I just wish combos would be easier, they should at least have a variety of low damage auto combos. SF6 has a few low mashing light kick with Mai, but there should be more like that.

Quite a few fighting games have a universal combo string that applies to all characters, and quite literally goes light-medium-heavy. These are called "magic buttons" AFAIK - in contrast to normal "buttons" used to play neutral/footsies. Maybe you already knew that, but that'd strongly help you even with mashing your way out.

Funnily enough, the PS1 port of Marvel vs Capcom actually had a dedicated noob mode, decades before SF6 got one and made it tournament-legal. That one's nerfed, with only two super meter bars and performing certain moves being downright impossible (which makes Ryu, especially when he cosplays Akuma, much less useful - you can't even do a Raging Demon without a TAS because every button is on turbo) - but you do get two autocombo buttons to the left and four dedicated special move buttons to the right.

I play on Switch Lite so I'm basically stuck with the default controls. Technically I think you can connect a controller to it but that's impractical.

Ehhhhh, it's way more practical than you think. Sure, fighting games have gone to great extent to make themselves ultracasual, and even all three of Capcom Fighting Collections have gone as far as to incorporate simple specials and supers - but even then, whenever you play a fighting game, you may wanna be aware of what direction you're pushing in. And it's not something 98% of "how to fightan for biggeners" videos will tell you; and it's also not something modern OEM controllers are made to do well since the buttons and sticks are made from even purer Chinesium, to make room for 3D rumbles and gyros and mic inputs and whatever the fuck. While still selling for $60 a pop. 80$, for the Switch 2 Pro controller.

The noobification is partially why, for current year goyslop like GG Strive or SF6, fightsticks are less of a nice-to-have, and more of a luxury item. Not the case for poverty fighting games that show up from time to time, such as Melty, though. That said, arcade sticks come with a lot of travel and grinding, for a genre that usually only registers 8 cardinal directions and on/off states for attack buttons, so you may wanna look deeper than that.

Usually, the cheapest and most affordable option for more "tactile" input is a keeb. Sure, the amount of comfort you get depends on the keeb, but say you wanna do a Hadouken, which is QCF. You just roll your two fingers over two keys (so down, down-right, right in quick succession), press the punch button, and voila. That also helps with chargers like Guile, since you won't get accidental horizontal/vertical inputs where it needs to be strictly vertical/horizontal respectively. Cons: mastering people with 360 motions or KOF-level inputs (i.e. Geese Howard's deadry rape) will be like learning to type a Satanic spell.

So someone with arthritis thought that maybe it'd be a good idea to turn that into a proper controller - and that's how Hitbox and its' clones were born. Same cons as before, only this time you don't have all the extra keys lying around, so no one during a tournament's gonna ask if you've bound easy move macros to the whole thing. Depending on the manufacturer, it can also be Switch-compatible, wireless and so thin you can pack it inside of a laptop compartment - they do cost, though. Ironically, for something that comes with no stick.

The "impractical" table setup definitely has merit to it, I saw quite a few photos - and even videos - of people playing Street Fighter on a propped-up Steam Deck, with a Snack Box Micro laid in front, so it's kinda like playing on a bartop cabinet.

Your third option could be fightpads. I know at least a couple that even have a clicky D-pad: 8bitdo Neo Geo Bluetooth Controller and Razer Raion, but the first one isn't compatible with the Switch without an entirely separate dongle, and the second is wired-only and only got two revisions because the first one came with a busted D-pad you could click INTO.

I don't exactly recommend maining the analog stick because it feels extra clumsy for this type of game - unless it comes with an octagonal gate. So Gamecube controllers and Hori Fighting Commander Octa, if you can get either.

I never played MUGEN so I had nothing to compare it to, but I'm familiar with its concept. I still think it came out pretty well, I'd like a sequel with a lot more polish and options.

MUGEN is as much of a "direct sequel", and prequel, as it could - provided you spend more than one hour on your build.

Man, I lowkey wish Capcom All-Stars was a thing.