Reality

Every Boss in a Diablo-style game. These things fight my natural urge to play RPGs underleveld and "punch up"... Granted charather level doesn't matter too much but gear level Definitely, definitely, matters, even for some of the new game bosses (later playthroughs magnify this). I don't even like Hybrid diablo's bosses (eg borderlands) for this reason. Fount of Wizardry - Heros of Might and Magic 2 - I think the consensus with Heroes 2 vs Heroes 3 is that H3 wins for human multiplayer, but for singleplayyer, the H2 AI is more fun to beat up (putting aside artstyle arguments either way) I personally feel this holds true for the main campaigns and the Skirmish map. However for the bundled expansion campaigns we have a mixed bag. A lot of these are fun and intense if you do everything EXCEPT fight the final boss. None is worse in this regard than Isle of Wizardry, which has an non-moving boss with a stack of 100 black dragons. Pretty much requires Fadlan - Heroes of mIght and Magic 2 - The boss of Voyage Home expansion campaign. He running around with a Bone dragon stack (honestly even larger than Fount of Wizardry's Black Dragons) AND HE MOVES. personally I think Descendants and Price of Loyalty are the only expansion campaigns worth playing to the end, the others you should stop on the second last map to avoid the 40 turn idle after you've already won just building up a super force to attack the stationary (or trapped) super stack... a mechanic not present in the main campaigns. Mr. Big - I find N.A.R.C. to be lots of fun to play co-op on a weekend. However, we rarely every finish... the Final boss for some resign requires yout to hit height based target zones with awful hitboxes in a game that is other wise all about action rather than precision. Sometimes he'll even kill you during his ridiculously long death animation which can allow him to reset the fight even against active Credit spamming. Rahu 3 - Custom Robo GCN - Their are other Bosses with Super Armor in the series, but Rahu 3 is far and away the most over the top. He's set up as a 1v3, but is still the most absurd fight of the game. His most ridiculous feature is his 78% damage reduction. All Robots have 1000 displayed health, but because of his damage reduction he "effectively" has ~4500 health. The next most armored robot Only has 1200 effective health! He also has an expanding gun that doesn't really need to be aimed... not the most powerful of the illegal class weapons In the game, but probably the easiest for the AI to use. BFB - MDK2.. This is supposed to be an "electric jump rope" boss. Unfortunately the hitboxes of the electricity have a very unintuitive property. You can only get over them with a "neutral" jump... if you jump while moving towards them, you will actually take damage. He also has a homing attack that requires twitchy movement to shake off. He's the only disappointing boss in a game that otherwise does big setpieces really well.

Rathalos>Galeem+Dharkon>Marx>Galeem>Hands>Dharkon>Dracula>Giga Bowser > Galleom>Ganon Rathalos, and the double final boss feel the most well thought out. I think Dharkon (alone) kind of supersedes all the Brawl inspired slow/spot dodge type telegraph attack bosses, with Galleom in this game seriously showing his age. Giga Bowser doesn't seem to fit on Final Destination as well as he used to,. Giving him super armor mechanics and lower aggression AI is less satisfying than high aggression AI without super armor. I feel like the changes to the hands are great for fighting them with lots of different charathers but bad for charathers you are really comfortable with.... While all the combination attacks are fun and showy, I feel like all of them except for the Paint one are easier to dodge than having the Hands each use their normal attacks and let you getfree damage, while the stun mechanic seems like overkill in any situation EXCEPT getting to the end of Classic Mode at 9.0-9.9. It's better than i's been before since it's now designed around the idea of 2 hands being the default.

Pokémon Puzzle League x Tetris - I call it PPL rather than Tetris Attack or Panel de Pon, because it is the most "classic" of the lot (since the AI doesn't kill itself so fast) of them before you switch to all multiplayer play. PPL needs a revival independent of being in a crossover anyway. Puzzle Bobble x Magical Drop /// These two are closely related to begin with, could be married without causing too many problems. Pokémon Puzzle League x Puyo Puyo - In both of these games you receive garbage from top to bottom, which may make it a simpler implemnation than Puyo Puyo Tetris, where one player received garbage from the top, while the other received it from the bottom... putting in a skill gap where "recovery" strats for one player meant using a bad scoring formation (devil counter,etc al) or actually making use of the garbage to further score with fast digging>< Solomon's Key x Marisa's Trap Tower - I hate to talk about Solomon's Key since I think it is solidily "replaced" by games that came out shortly after it Zipang/Fire and Ice/Troddlers and even a number of indie games with a spiritual version of it's block mechanic do it better than the old thing. It's hard to think of way to jazz it up that works good in practice rather than only theory. Troddlers tried to do "lemmings x Solomon's Key" but ended up feeling more like the latter than the former due to its pace. I remember competent lightworld/darkworld and phase mechanic Solmon Key likes as well. I think this really specific crossover could work because the pace of vanilla Solomon's key always seemed absurd given it's mechanics and the number of good 1 player 2 character simulplay puzzle platformers is lacking. The Solomon block mechanic even brings up an special case here if you need to trade blocks from one charather's inventory to the other. Spindizzy Worlds x Super Monkey Ball - Battle of physics heavy momentum games from one generation to anonther. Spindizzy World's great level design deserves working camera control transitions to avoid it's marble madness esque blind spot problems. AquaAqua x Pipeworks - These are both games that push you to scoring before survival and both about water. Signifgant tweaks would be needed rather than a straight crossover, hopefully keeping the addictive parts of each game while minimizing the annoying parts. Aqua Aqua needs a perspective fix for the edge of the wall, and needs to remove the major negative tiles (bomb/ice) and increase the frequency of the minor negative tile (downer)… this is partly for Aqua Aqua's own sake, as the challenge of the major tile is so swingy that you just dedicate a corner to dump them on, but also because the inclusion of Pipework's negative tiles (4 way, etc) makes up for things without transforming the scoring challenge into a survial challenge in an unnatural way.... that will come anyway when you run out of space. Head over Heels x Solstice - HoH is truly brilliant and knocks lesser isometrics like equinox out of the way. Solstice alone outclasses it in the genre puzzlewise, but not quite memorability. I think together they could fix the "well I'm here too early, I'll go look for other rooms to do first emptiness" that HoH still shares at times with early isometrics. Solstice of course brings obvious things to the table. Xi Jumbo x Mahjong - This is mostly based on a what if? daydream prompted by the stacking possible in Bombastic (Xi Jumbo 2)'s Advanded mode. The frantic scoring and the survival of the pieces diseappearing under your charathers might work on a Mahjong tileset, although in hindsight it would probably be lacking compared to the Dice of the original 2 games

"Early 90s RPG bosses" - I like these because these games put restrictions on the player that few other games do.. extremely limited MP (sometimes there are no MP restore items at all) limited inventory space, and above all, only having 9-15 turns of healing (and a heavy burden hoarding it all the way to the boss in the first place) against bosses whose AI tends to do party wide damage every turn. The mid game ones can even show up before you have an AOE heal.They create a tense damage race situation that even the hardest modern RPGs and new game + post game content don't really compare with. Lashiec - Phantasy Star 4 Profound Darkness - Phantasy Star 4 Baramos Dragon Quest 3 Zoma - Dragon Quest 3 Magnate- Final Fantasy Legend 2 Julius - Final Fantasy Adventure "Spectacle Bosses" - Bosses I loved to pieces when I was younger and would reload the last save (etc) to refight them and see the ending over and over again. Gannondorf - Ocarina of Time Raphael the Raven - Yoshi's Island Scwhang Schwing - MDK2 General Corrosive - Metal Arms Alien Brain - Metal Slug 3 Lavos - Chrono Trigger Bowser - Paper Mario 64 Andross - Starfox 64 The Super Titan - Colony Wars

Avaliability, but also a couple things. Leaves you with time... I think I would 100% suggest 1 persona, 1 SMT, then lokoing at "classic" DRPGs rather than a marathon of all persona or all SMT... seeing as many mechanics and different approaches to a subgenre as possible appeals to me more than loyaltly to a series. Persona 3 and 4 are wedded to the "day of the week" system which has upsides and downsides, but personally I think that it kind of makes the game lose tempo at the time whenthe plot points SHOULD be escalating. I mean they do, but they don't feel like they do it as much as they could be.

Just play Persona 5. My main warning for Persona... the DRPG aspect of the game is VERY poor Dungeons have the trappings of DRPG design, but really kind of (other than music) are kind of generic until each game's endgame dungeon, at which point they go straight into the DRPG's BS territory without quite hitting any "fun hard" spot.... there are no GOOD puzzle/exploration DRPG dungeons and there are no medium dungeons, for the "usual" dungeons it's mostly just used to divide combat areas and put chests slightly, but not really out of the way. Use status effects and prepare for status effects to be used against you. Instant death is a status effect, especially in Persona 3. Other than that combat is fun enough, but its clear that Presentation and story is first place.

Echoes for portraits. Awakening for Map and combat - Was a big deal for my expectations for handheld 3D especially at the beginning of a new hardware generation (mostly due to Original DS games and their N64ness)

I remember that at the end of 2017 Chrono Trigger was 8th, Breath and Nier were 5th and 4th. I feel like Famitsu polls make people constrained in the RPG and "influence" things. It's cute that some of these lists still have Wizardry on them, and all, but they never seem to be indicating how people have fun with games. Kind of feel like "most boring taste" kind of things in a way. Chrono Trigger is fun lightweight RPG. I do feel like 9 polls out of 10, Famitsu would have put Dragon Warrior 3 over it, but it's okay to see it do so high. Kind of weird how CT seems to do better when the poll is unspecifc as to genre while DQ3 seems to do better in the more common "restricted" polls. I personally hope Nier's popularity cools off over time since I feel like while it's got a great setting, and the many alternate endings and branches are fun, but gameplay wise it's kind of boring and repetitive despite good setpieces in boss battles, and it's harder to forgive an Action RPG for being lightweight than a turn based RPG.

DS > 3DS > GBA > Telius > Kaga I guess there are outliers... I hate Echoes, the rest of 3DS is potentially good to great. I actually really enjoy Parts of Radiant Dawn way over GBA... it's kind of a game that you have to pick your own endpoint before the boringly designed chapters show up to replay though. Path of Radiance doesn't have the same saving grace since it is Sacred Stones 2.0. It's a higher high, lower lower kind of thing. For Kaga… FE5 is my favorite game after 11-14. FE1 is short enough to be used as a time waster. But FE2-FE4 just bother me so much that I can't speak well of the era overall. SD and NM have what I care about, UI speed, AI speed, higher difficulties that are fun to puzzle out, a fun version of re-classing, and "enough" of a story to please.

I really like FE8. It was my first FE, but I think it's music has a hold over me that the rest of it doesn't; It gives you some "extra' to the theme without beating you over the head with practically more "extra" than the core theme itself. FE5 is great because it's mostly the theme in standard but I like how it handles the final section compared to others Everything else is fine, mostly judge whether they feel to me like their own thing or 'short" versions of 8 (not to be unfair to the other GBA games, but that is the order I played them) The only ones I don't like are FE9, 10 , and Brawl... they're over-orchestrated and clearly use more instruments than they needed to. My personal preference goes 8>5>11/ 12 (it's reused)>3 >4>7>6>1> 9>10

My online presence is meant to be more "in-game" than forum. In terms of a ready lobby for an RTS "Reality has entered the room" appearing in text is a simple lead in to any number of jokes. The Sinistar as an avatar captures the "big, sudden entrance" aesthetic since that is what it does in its own game. Reality as a concept also used to deeply disturb me in high school and my early college years because I kind of fell into a quantam philosophy school of thought and had a sense that it was making me unhappy, but I couldn't get over on my own until I had done lots of reading. I use the Sinistar avatar and username Reality consistently on most entertainment websites. My former name on most websites was n64lord, which came with either the simple n64 logo as avatar or(later) boxart of Space Station Silicon Valley. Nowadays...I'm even more of a "collector" but I have retired the name and only have two legacy accounts (mafiascum and smogon) that use it. On business and academic websites, I use a photo of myself at age 5? getting in a display vehicle that the city police put up at the state fair. For now I find it funny to have a full head of blonde hair, but maybe I will change my mind after I've lived a more years with my forward bald receding hairline. Or being asked if it's a photo of a son or grandson.

Roller coaster Tycoon 1: A game that is all about challenging your creativity by teasing you with a few well built rides to start with or a fancy landscape even when making money or guests in park are the stated goals, out-designing Chris Sawyer is the real challenge of every level.

Sixth console generation 3D platformers Ape Escape 3: Maybe it lost a little compared to the ps1 games (levels are less vertical, somewhat less bombastic comedy) but it's still a really solid game. Takes a few levels too many to ramp the difficulty up, but I really enjoy it. Vexx (gamecube has less slowdown than ps2 but I never tested). Somewhat weird "collectathon" style platformer... Best feature is REALLY extensive movement and movement combos of your different flips and rolls. Has really huge level sizes, sometimes moreso than even Mario Sunshine. Includes a few areas that are as "abstract" as the secret zones of Sunshine. Dr. Muto - I just personally really love the music of this game. Weaker platforming, but has a good deal of humor. Large variety of minigames and sub-controls with the different gadgets/monsters. Rayman 3 - I don't like it as much as Rayman2, and it kind of has a "flawed" attempt at replay value - the scoring/combo system that isn't really interesting enough to actually try for unlike something more direct (eg Yoshi's Island). The game does have a lot of personality and humor. Has a number of combat section with simple lock on combat schlock, but not hurt by this too much because of the humor of the enemy body/language expression making up for their simplicity. Has a couple really standout moments like an level where the entire thing is a mirrored surface. Tak 2 the most linear and focused Tak game. Also thankfully harder than the too-easy Tak 1. I think of it as "rayman2 esque,compared to Mario-esque in its level design.. Has a surprisingly large amount of levels (probably more than Jak/Ratchet tbh) It does mix in long and very short levels, but it works out In my opinion. Tak 3 has too much combat, stop here. Billy Hatcher and the Giant Egg - Sometimes called a sega version of Glover. It has a mix of good levels and boring levels. It's a physics heavy game where controlling a giant egg is the focus of the game since your charather can't jump nearly as high without it, can't attack when separated, etc, etc. I actually feel like it's less "clever" than Glover, but it mixes in a lot of traditional platforming to supplement the unique oppurtinities that the egg provides (leaving it on a marble chute track and racing it, tossing it like a ball into things, riding on top of it to cross things you can't cross on foot, etc) Tokobot Plus - I tried it out because I swear I saw it every used game store's ps2 section. It's a cute puzzle platform that is mostly based on a "ladder" mechanic where the number of tokobots you have with you vs forced splitting them is the main mechanic. Kind of short and has some annoying shit thiugh. 6th console generation non-platform games with heavy platform elements. MDK2 - Third person shooter with extreme arcade focus. Has platforming to make you incorporate the "retractable" parachute. The other 2 playable charathers have "shorter" stages but still have a degree of platforming... mostly because of having very harsh fall damage and level design forcing you to take on thin platforms in high spaces. Marble Blast Ultra / Super Monkey Ball / Mercury Meltdown - Yeah puzzle games, but all well made, based on physics, and where the biggest danger is falling out of the level. Marble Blast even has a dedicated jump mechanic and by far the most vertical stages of the three. Ape Escape Pumped and Primed - A "party" game of sorts.. but the majority of stages are scrolling (still 3D though) stages with the full arsenal of Ape Escape mainline game mechanics given to all players. I think it works pretty well, and Rayman Arena - a racing game, but with the rayman 2 mechanics and an all "on-foot" cast. Heavy use of slides and the rayman 2 grapple. I have a soft spot for this and I liked it even in singleplayer. The stages also encourage platforming during the race with most shortcuts hidden in vertical areas or having hazards around them. I could go all day about 5th generation or give 6th gen dishonorable mentions (scaler/voodoo vince/sphinx:enter the mummy) but

Robo (Chrono Trigger) Graham of Daventry (King's Quest 1) Bowser (Mario Party) Arle Nadja (Puyo Puyo) Grunty Winkybunion (Banjo Kazooie) Banjo (Banjo Kazooie) Rayman (Rayman 2) Diddy Kong (Donkey Kong Country 2) Yoshi (Yoshi's Island) Dr. Fluke Hawkins (MDK2) Boupha (Dr. Lunatic Supreme with Cheese) Generics Rogues (Majesty:The Fantasy Kingdom Sim) Female Burly 1 PC (Wizardry 8) Ring Members of Humakt (King of Dragon Pass) Osean Fleet (Ace Combat 5) Soul Man (Worms Armageddon)

A Rareware smasbros game. Not Rareware chars in Nintendo's smashbros. An All rareware crossover fighting game. A legend of Zelda game with "competing" parties in the style of Wiz 7 (hard to explain) Burning Rangers 2 A fighting game RPG with the gimmick of realtime with pause macros to counter enemies who would in turn fight with macros themselves. A Fire Emblem game that included back most of Pool of Radiance's combat mechanics Or better yet Knights of the Chalice with all skirmishes and no overworld RPG timewasting.

Dota - League of Legends - I have spent lots of time in some F2P games, but these I never got into because they never really caught my attention. Counter Strike - Nothing against it, but Insurgency and nowadays Insugency Sandstorm fill up 100% of the time I would invest in them Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon and Splinter Cell sub-series (I've played some of the main series games?) Europalis Universalis Crusader Kings Total War Football Manager Neverwinter Nights Icewind Dale / Planescape Torment Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic The Elder Scroll Witcher Other than the PC I haven't let console or genre boundaries really stop me from getting first person experience of the most talked about games of every generation. I feel the strategy games the most because my friend's list seems made up 90% of these people. But it's so hard to keep on top of the strategy series I do play already >< The PC centric RPGs are intentionally avoided because I think they don't appeal to me from the few that I did play. I personally think that the best period of CRPGs is way earlier than most people Betrayal at Kondor/Ultima Underworld/Wizardry 6 >>> Fallout, Baldur's Gate. Charather progression development/combat > story every day. Tom Clancy - Swat 4 exists

I hate to go into my stock JRPG rant - there was just that moment when my love relationship turned into love-hate after Skies of Arcadia, where I came up with a shopping between dungeons/towns formula that fits pretty much 90% of Squeenix RPGs and a good deal of others. Games that I especially recognized as being mechanilly interesting if their battle system did everything it promised it would if it only stopped the path of least resistance masher party first of all. include: Chrono Cross, Final Fantasy 6, Dragon Quest 8, Persona 5, Earthbound, Tales of Symphonia, Golden Sun 1, Final Fantasy 5 - I don't replay my "old" JRPGs because I'm pretty they would be also vulnerable to the new mindset. Shin Megami Tensei 4 - I've come down to think about it and I think the fixed HP per level instead of a VIT stat is what really lets you super power the main charather… Leveling up INT or Dex(for physical builds) is a lot easier when everything is a dump stat. 4's "hard random encounters but easy bosses, vs 4A's easy random encouters, hard bosses" is hard to decide on. Gucamalee - something about it rubbed me the wrong way. Thinking back it was pretty good in a lot of ways.. Either the game was too hipsterish, I kept wondering if dividing the brawler from the platformer would make a better game, or I got disappointed that the insane mode playthrough was no harder than playthrough 1. Unruly Heroes - excited to see a game use the Ubiart "Rayman" art engine. But don't really like it as a brawlwer with light platforming... . main problem is that hitstun is kind of hard to get feedback on and promotes really lazy long range punching. Secret of Mana - the SNES Classic made me realize that I prefer the GB Final Fantasy Legend (Seiken 1) over it's famous sequel. I would say that the game pausing during both enemy/player magic and the need to either cheese or grind for bosses compared to the GB made me feel the game took longer than it needed to. Also a SNES game with good music atmosphere is NICE, but it isn't a unique accomplishment compared to a GB game with these, which is like 1 in 100. Poxnora - some F2P game that I picked up to review for a friend (neither of us knowning the servers were shutting down lol). Kind of like a smaller scale Master of Magic - instead of 4x world screen it's all smaller scale 26x26 battles. Suffers from horrendous overcomplication of having pretty much every faction have it's own status effects and damage types etc, but I think it did too much to reach the fun of MoM or Heroes of Might and Magic "everything school is broken, go In the direction you want". Instead Poxnora seemed to boil down into using your offensive strategy before the other player used his. without even really paying attention to counteract them. Evil Genius - I wanted Majesty, but in a different setting. However, despite also having autonomy, it's not really the same kind of game at all. You babysit or you die, and the earlygame scaling makes sure you stay on the hotseat. Sad the gameplay didn't live up to the AAA presentation and humor the game had. Hitman 2 and Hitman Blood Money- Very fun to watch at AGDQ, but I didn't really enjoy playing them myself. I like the idea of how freeform it is, but Dishonored or Dark Messiah scratch that itch for me at lot more. Star link : Battle for Atlas - Game is too susceptible to Circle Strafing . It comes very close to avoiding the "for kids" trap, but sadly, once you realize enemy patterns, it becomes too easy, too quickly.