Reality

Various cartridge n64 tilting things... mostly pixel vomit, but in some cases (Vigilante 8 and Yoshi's Story) it did things to the audio which sounded like... more than static. Negative -1.000.000 free block memory paks ... a sadly common experience. These were not done on purpose since I try to take care of my n64, but it's easy to acciidently shake it up during gameplay. Loading deleted save files in Mario Tennis 64 and Space Station Silicon Valley.... Honestly I have no explanation of this to this day. Forcing Diddy Kong Racing to show the "Wrong Way" sign whle driving the right way, forever. Top Hunter Ruth and Cathy: While doing co-op my borther swapped planes right before the cage-fight miniboss in the last normal stage. He could not plane swap back in-bounds. When the timer ran out, it killed him as intended, but we couldn't keep going because his charather never despawned after death, instead existing in a state of hitstun permeantly, so we had to start the game over entirely. A very cursed (pre-internet) Pokemon Gold cartridge... from what I can tell, I got one of the more dangerous bad eggs from the day care, and although I put it and (my transformed party pokemon) into a PC box, it seemed to sporadically spread to anything else in that specific box. Using Pokemon Stadium 2' allowed the pokemon to be extracted, albeit as different specieis with illegal movesets. Majesty:Fantasy Kingdom Sim - 0 HP heroes, unremovable gravestones, heroes cloing, 5 heroes occupying a 4 hero guild, monster spawning on the edge of map and being pinned by rees, caravan spawning on edge of map in Trading Routes and being pinned by trees, Heroes trying to get to a pinned monstner and NEVER giving up their futile attempts to path to him. Monaco:What's Yours is Mine - Rubberbanding due to heavy ping on a scale difficult to describe.... Peple can warp from one side of levels to the other, guards can attack multiple times per frame, and the physical properties of walls break down, allowing people to phase through them and permenatly trap themselves when the lag goes back to normal. Having North American, European, and Asian players in the same lobby is FINE Contraption Maker: Minor Physics gone wrong moments... usually related to ropes. Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas - It's well known that the car-spawning system acts up when you go to deserted areas like the woods... but in my game the plane-spawning system has also been out to get me. Once it spawned one of the Boeing commerical airplanes (the AT-400) AT STREET LEVEL. Needless to say... pretty much everything within a 1 block radius exploded.

Puyo Puyo Tetris - When I first got into Puyo Puyo, it was actually for the cheesy comedic story sketches, and PPT is one of the best in the series for that. Gameplaywise, it contains the classic Puyo Puyo Tsu ruleset, and the titular variant ruleset. The former can be played either against online or for score attack for dozens of hours without getting old, and the latter, while not quite as good, still puts many other matching-puzzle games to shame in its own right.

Peach - Has been growing on me as one of my favorite charathers moveset wise. Donkey Kong - Like him in every game as a chill out charather. Conditional: Mario / Doctor Mario: Not sure if the Cape has been confirmed to remain as his Side B. I like other things about the chrarthers, especially from smash 4, The cape is what truly makes him special.

I think it would be tacky honestly. I'm reminded of forum debates about Star Control Origins 's story. I always argued that the captain had an overall personality even with the branchign dialogue that ADDED to the game, that is, he waaas asquare jawed space pulp hero. I think that having options is fun, but they don't really respect the genre if taken too far, and going to the point of a binary story just encouarges what-if shenganigans and disconnects the the game from the classic genre work that it is homaging... Only gaining a pretty dull what-if side story that relies on novelty, but is dull upon closer inspection due to not really developing naturally or solely as player as gent in story rather than the captain as agent.

Playing the two RPGs on the SNES mini (played FF6 years ago with more positive opinion) Secret of Mana - I still like the atmopshere and the tone of the story, but it's kind of annoying compared to most other ARPGS - There are several very frustating bosses early on (the third boss comes to mind), the game feels more linear than most - The implementaiton of Magic is ... kind of a cop out, it's annoying that there are attacks that you can't dodge by position (that also freeze time) and later in the game when you have access to it yourself, it feels like you use it primarily to cheese things with invincibility frames rather than damage them. Features a weird and bizarre weapon damage type / monster resistance system - that made me think that base damage was a lie or that damage ranges were really extremely broad - The exception is the sword, which unfairly gets neutral or positive damage on pretty much everything in the game - The weapon level up system also further discuorages using all of the alternatee weapons on top of never knowing whetehr an enemy was resiting it or you just hit them during their block animation. Puzzles take too long to appear in the game - most of the first half has very boring dungeon design due to this. The stupid Scroll Lock thing was bad enough in multiplayer where you can at least talk to the other person, but in singleplayer it's even more nonsencial, forcing liberal use of charather switches to get the AI unstuck... the AI also had a habit of fighting everything on sight, preventing use of "stun and run" to save time due to the scroll lock. I couldn't come up with much of a solution besides keeping them dead for long periods of movement, and only taking care of them for bosses, etc. FF 6 - I've always felt this game was a little bloated, but that it was definately a good game, although nowhere near eclipsing FF7-10 games as it's fan's often suggest. However it's gameplay was startlingly non-reactive for my replay. I feel like in the majority of fights enemies (and even bosses) have 3 attacks that do basically nothing to your party, and 1 attack that actually deals damage (usually 1 shotting 1 member or taking 60-80% off everyone). This basically meant that the game encouraged playing on autopilot other than an occasionl "healing/revival" turn, but there is no sense of topping off health or anything to prevent deaths in advance, since the game is SO FREE the rest of the time, and relied so heavily on spike damage from singular big attacks rather than anything else the boss did mattering due to wearing you down etc. The SNES-mini preserves the infuriating tutorial design of the original - Gau having a tutorial but the other gimmicky charathers (especially Sabin due to his introductory boss fight) is nonsensical. In general, having a mix of unique charathers and a couple of normal charathers is annoying because it just led me to favor the normies over the others (pick thing from command list, use attack,). You do occasional get to make use of the splitting party for things like the World of Ruin 3 door/switches, but It wasn't reaelly enough of an encouragement to make me use everyone, especialy since I didn't really need to level them up to prepare them for it. I went with the formula - 12 on level healing items between every dungeon, 2 on level MP restores, armor/weapon updates every 3rd town - Seemed to fit this game pretty closely up until Magitek Research Facility, then pulled ahead. Game was too easy in general, although I was prepared for that from my old playthrough. Game partially implements a Chrono Trigger - esque chest content upgrade system with locations it expects you to revisit ... but without text (Chrono Trigger's peek inside) it's more obscure and you get punished for playing dungeons throughly the first time. In short, kind of a big reminder of my rant about FF5 being a paradigm shift into "breadth not depth" and combining light RPG type mechanics into mainstream RPGs. FF6's gameplay was simultiousnly simple and rough around the edges, and didn't really hold my interest, but I only needed a single weekend to blow through it. Most memorable moment - When I first resuced Celes I forgot to get her equipment and took her and Locke Bare-handed through the cave up to the digging-machine boss which then one shot both of them in turn due to not having the magic immunity. She still played out her dialogue about having the Rune Sword to protect herself.

I know a couple of non-gaming people who would neverthless go through all the built in streetpass daily minigame things for progress. Mostly parents of Kids. One guy definately played Mii Force more than his kid actually played pokemon. Could easily see a Fire Emblem themed version of a Mii streetpass game.

New Backlog 2018 Wizardry 8 Master of Magic The other SSI games included on the GoG "Forgotten Realms Archives Volume Two" after Pool of Radiance Lode Runner 3D (n64) Aggresive Inline (GCN) Red Dead Redemption 2 (expecting Winter release) Doom Eternal (expecting Summer 2019 tbh) Mr Driller 2 Yoshi Switch Star control Origins (pretty much guranteed June or July release) Star Control: Ghosts of the Precursors (release uncertain) Grinding up to a Tier 10 in World of Tanks Replays Roller Coaster Tycoon - want to force my physical disc to work, but compatibiliy mode is not having it. Star Wars: Tie Fighter - I have gotten dosbox to run it, but goign to invest in a joystick rather than use it's full keyboard controls (laptop is missing keys it expects you to have) Ape Escape: Pumped and Primed - pending a re-purchase due to scratched disk Steambot Chronicles - pending a re-purchase due to scratched disk Majesty: The Fantasy Kingdom Sim - trying to solve my recording issues so I can get the RTA speedrun in addition to the IGT speedrun. Last Year's stuff

I had a namco plug and play with Dig Dug, Rally X, Pac Man, and Galaga on it. Also had tons of cereal box give away discs (Roller Coaster Tycoon and Backyard Kids Soccer come to mind) I eventually had GBC and then the Nintendo 64 as my first console, probbably 2 months or so apart. Granted we had like only 6 games for like the first 2 years.

@ OP We haven't had a thread like this in a while, although I think that Harvey put up something similiar last year (although it had important differences) Rareware: When I was young, Rareware was the point of comparison for all other video games - Diddy Kong Racing felt like a more complete game than MK64, Banjo Kazooie than Mario 64, and Goldeneye than every console and arcade shooter. Not exposed to PC gaming att that point. I would never play it on SNES, but the GBA Donkey Kong Country ports blew my mind and almost rivaled pokemon for the amount of playtime I put in them. A lot of people bring up the microsoft taint thing (mostly due to Conker and Kinect), but Viva Pinata and Kameo were actually good, and Banjo:GBA is good given the system limitations (compare to Rayman 3 GBA or Spyro GBA especially). Of their arcade and home computer games - I'm a little less enthustatic about some of them - Knight lore might have been innovative back in the day, but why play it over head and heels / solstice / equiniox? On the other hand, Battletoads Arcade resonantes with me a little because my bowling alley actually had a machine installed, so I knew about it even before PC retrogaming ever occured to me. Nintendo: Platform games are life. Party Games are love. Haven't decided if I should credit a sub-division (eg with Sega I prefer Amusement Vision to the others) My console history favors them but I think even now that I've owned consoles for every company I still prefer them a lot. Maybe not for the most open-minded of reasons, but maybe as part of my jerk reflex toward RPGs, I find that an arcade-action oriented brand is helpful... Psygnosis: Their logo was like, the European seal of quality for pre-6th gen games (in their role as a publisher) As a developer, well I talk a whole lot more about Colony Wars than it's source material ( Descent and Descent:Freespace). Bottom Line, I consider Descent to be a better game and series, but not as personlly memorable to me. Probbably best known for Wipeout series due to it's cultural imporatnace in England (despite being a F-zero genre clone in the eyes of American Audiences). I find myself drawn to their few puzzle games the most these days. Obviously part of why I like them, is because as a kid I couldn't tell why they had their logo on a lot of boxes and thought they were also responsible for things like (Lemmings, Alundra, Roll Away). Granted that, they were more involved then most publishers at the time and apparently gave the developers under them access to their art assets and such resources but even with only their own developed games I find a lot to like with them. Midway: Sometimes Midway Williams - The greatest American arcade cabinent maker. I still play a lot of their games through ccompliation releases, but honestly I think that people are rather harsh to their "non-classic" games that came out later in life. Yes, Defender/NBA Jam/Smash TV, will always be their best, but I think some of the 5th and even 6th gen stuff is fun in it's own right - The old 3D gauntlents (Dark Legacy) and the Rampage series (albeit heavily depedent on playing in multilayer). I even appreciate Dr. Muto a little (albeit a budget 6th gen platformer is less memorable than a budget 5th gen platformer). One thing I especially appreciate is that the score-scaling in their games is more consistent than Namco/Capcom - it's easy to tell what a "good score" is across the board in Midway games as opposed to Namco inconsistently switching games between (shoot for 1 million and shoot for 100,000). Hamumu: An indie developer's company (Mike Hommel) - I reserve him only for favorites lists and not "best of lists" but that doesn't bother me. I first encountered him through a cereal box not as much as prize as Age of Empires or Roller Coaster Tycoon and I fell in love with the charm and quirkiness of his game. I would eventually play his full games, and like the majority of them. What I really like Hamumu for is for his Journal, which is honestly one of my favorite things ever made, was formative in my pop-culture taste in movies and television shows, and so on. I also like that (until 2-3 years ago) He seemed like onn of the last indie developers to consider Indie companies as 3rd parties, because I get tired of "self-depreciation" pretty easily and this self-confidence was very refreshing.

This is mostly a superhero thing, but I don't like the post-Grant Morrision "Supergods" thing. I think that the "re-construction" movement rubs me the wrong way (especially when it's done as a homage to Morrison rather than by Morrison himself) , the way it sometimes spreads into certain episodes of the BTAS and the two justice league animations, as well as live action and smaller films is endlessly tacky. I just find that using superman or batman (etc) this way doesn't always seem authentic the way that eg, Christopher Reeves did. Like, I do love Flex Mentallo, but in a case like that, it makes sense to use an independnet property to show your theory of superheroes off. But when this is used in a normalized superhero story, or even a non-Morrison elseworld story (Recently, the Dark Metal comics come to mind) I feel like the property is being hi-jacked and rather than helping to tell the audience what they already know, eg superman/etc as a elemental ideal and fixture for American or humanity, I instead am taken out of the story and feel like I'm being told to "refer to my notes from Sequart or Rolling Stone articles. The problem with "re-construction" is that super heros aren't allowed to be "ONLY" superheros in any contet. As far how to do it well---- The DC One Million miniseries , Flex Mentallo and ,yes, even the classic Grant Morrison All Star Superman run. But these cases are good, because they are thematically built up and the point of those series from the begining, instead of being glued on at the last minute despite having a different creative agenda than the rest of the story. All too often "supergods" shows up to warp stories that are altogether unrelated, or even potentially counter to the idea(Red Son's final chapter comes to mind)

I'm sure there are some people who want to complete the original charathers for every FE"archetype" I personally hate reminders about Fire Emblem's conservatism and don't see the need for Julian, Oifey, Gotoh, etc. Some people might want more plot bosses - FE1/3's Medeus and Gharnef, FE5's Raydrik FE6's Idounn and Janne, FE10's Sephiran and Ashera, FE14 Garon- Probbably Birthright version to complement Fell Takumi as Conqest's endboss. - Even the FE7 Fire Dragon and Duma could probbably be me put in with mild creative liberties. Certain midgame Bosses - FE4's Trabant, Leptor, Langobolt FE13's trio - Validar, Gangrel, Walhart although Aversa or Adolphus could sneak in Both FE7 and FE12's Assasin's have partial represnation in Heroes, which creates a bizarre disconnect that their groups are complete, especially as banners were devoted to it. I think this overules their relative unimportance to plot. I think a lot of people still want, Liight Brand / Levin Sword / Wind Sword / Flame Lance / Thunder Axe - Not so much consensus about which charathers should be thee wielders of all these. Personally I think going straight to 5 kind of runs th novelty of the RES thing into the ground, and honestly I don't think it would really be as notable as in mainline due to how FEH handles colors anyway.

If low difficulty is a problem, I don't think your suggested idea of "holding back" will help enough for Awakening. I find that using skill combinations or children aren't really neccesary to make Hard Mode in Awakening easy - It's simple enough to take charathers in their starting classes and leave them in it and still have the problems with being allowed to indiscrimaiately move units forward and let enemies attack them from multiple slots and still win. Awakening is quite fun if played as a time-killing kind of light RPG or as a puzzle game on lunatic + I don't think that trying to play it as a Strategy RPG really works that well in either the normal-hard or the Lunatic modes though. It's a good game overall, as long as you don't try to make it into something that it is not. I would recommend you try the Lunatic + despite your reservations about it. It can be fun, even if the encounter design does push it slightly outside of the SRPG genre.

They should be infantry, mostly because if a game has terrain, it's there for a reason, and shouldn't be by-passed willy-nilly.

Honestly, when I read the title, I thought it would be something like the (snapdragon) mechanic in the SRPG Ogre Battle:Knights of Lodis. To me it seems, to have a potentially similiar destabilizing effect on gameplay, but seems to be more story heavy and dramatic. I think it might be a little strange wthin Fire Emblem settings that emphasized the Gods more than others because the "source" of their curse and deformity would seem out of charatherr for the only beings capable of inflicting such a thing. (Telius's is probbably out due to meeting the two goddesses, FE6-8 are fine because of the vagueness of god in their settings, and Naga is a lot less important in Marth's Arachnea than in Judgral/Ylisse though so that could go either way ) Another thing I thought about was that the "demi-human/classic mythology monster" thing might cause a thematic disconnect from Fire-Emblem, which iss normally more a low-fantasy than a high-fantasy, having centaurs in your army might make the game feel more like Shining Force / Ogre Battle than a Fire Emblem game, for example. To me, the idea might be worth it, even with these problems, because the story emphasis on the thing does sound interesting (not to mention the large and unused benches in many fire games). It's hard to think of video games that do multiple dramatic death scenes other than the Valkyrie Profile series. There, it's also a humanity thing rather than a "dead and buried thing" since they become einherjar (due to the viking setting). I think if I tried it 1: FE4 - Skashaer / FE7 Rebecca - I'm pretty sure all of Gen1 breaks the "no mature" rule, and there are only a few commoners. Gen 2 people are younger, and it is awkward because of the royalty rule, but it is heavily implied in many families that one descendant doesn't get to inherit the country (usually the one who doesn't get the holy weapon) 2: I feel like, swordfighters, should become hybirds that are still thematically very fast creatures, so I guess they would be gnolls "human/hyena" For an archer, I think I would go with a Tigress even though the only time in fiction they use bows is in Gauntlent: Dark Legacy I feel likke Tigress would help to emphazithes the sadness of the situation due to being able to echo the classic knight of the round table story about one. 3: Gnoll: Strand Hunt = If target is at a lower height, do effective damage to them. Tigress: Flush prey = skill stat is calculated from own skill+skill of all adjacent units

The rescue mission in C19 is the only good use for this mechanic; the way it appears in C24 and the Final map is absolutely atrocious and has no real story purpose. Heck, Even more than any statisctal advantage, taking Ced>Cyas is worth it simply because his deployment is locked in those maps instead of Cyas who could show up somewhere useless (granted that Cyas has the staff rank to rewarp) C20 is the other notable map with a drastic effect due to the locked rooms, but IMO the super weak enemies in that map give you plenty of time to correct even the worst formations. I think the seperations in Chapter 9 ad 13 are more positive game design, but it's partly because that the seperated units are entirely new rectruits/stock charathers and thus more controlled than in the other Thracia starts. I don't see the point in extending this to more FE games. Some games have split up deployment slots that you are still alowed to swap people in (FE12's end mapstook this sto the extreme of all four corners. ) Even t hough the units clearly use different entrances to the castle and have walls between them.

I played FE5 first, mostly because I was afraid if I did FE4 I would give up partway through. Storywise, it doesn't really spoil that much (one side plot from chapter 5 of FE4?) You could even assume it was using a FE7 type setup with the evil empire, since there is not much hint in FE5 that they were ever not in power, and FE5 also never pans out to show you the map beyond the Thracia sub-area. I also feel that FE5 is relatively light on story, and can't spoil you for that reason. The majority of charathers in FE5 are original to it as well, and the charathers returning from FE4 only have 4~ish lines of dialouge. FE5 is closer to modern FE in some ways - it has 2 speed advantage doubling, rescue and drop commands, trading, and so on. In FE4 you would have to adjust to the lack or dumber implementation of all of these staples. So in summary - FE5 doesn't spoil much, other than a side plot, and "why there's an evil empire present" but the latter isn't really a spoiler when you probbably assumed that anyway because it's fire emblem. It's much more interesting to play due to it's map design and also more intuitive due to it's mechaical heritage being in modern games.

Well the things that most come to mind are 2-D soldier type enemies or the staff? wielding moblins in Link to the Past - because they are also left handed, when you use the sword against them, you can clink against them - this is especially important in a game like Four Swords Adventures or Minish Cap where they aggro more aggresively.. Having them be right handed would make them almost as free as the 1Hit kill puzzle enemies like bats, since clinking would be less likely. In 3D thus far, it hasn't really been a problem because the things it mainly applies to (wolfos/stalfos/lizalfos,darknut) usually have their shield/blocking hitbox count on both sides anyway, and many enemy attacks can be strafed away from in either direction despite how on paper the (same side as their hand) should be harder to do so on. The principle of the thing in 3D would apply if the shields (especially the player's own shield) were toned down to only protect the space which they actually occupy.

Panel de Pon / Tetris or Panel de Pon / Puyo Puyo - Sega treats their game with so much respect revently, and it's sad that Panel de Pon has largely died with Tetris Attack/Pokemon Puzzle Leauge. I know that the fan-online version exists, but much like the fan-made Puyo Puyo VS it isn't ideal. I don't think Panel de Pon is quite as god a game as Puyo Puyo, but it still deserves better especially compared to Dr. Mario Bust a Move / Magical Drop Could easily get the Puyo Puyo Tetris treatment given their close relation to each other. Driver / Grand Theft Auto - Now everyone knows that becoming "GTA-lite" killed the Driver franchise. But beyond D3, I think the small games didn't do too badly for what they were. Grand Theft Auto itself has also suffered since GT3-Vice-San Andreas - The three classic PS2 games I feel are the triumph that they are because they are able to focus on a specific era, which helps to unify the music, locations, and even story of the games. GTA4-5 have kind of a problem with their theming being too close to modern day or resorting to meta-commentary on the type of players who do GTA. I think that Driver's 70s setting could help provide structure that recent GTA has recently lacked. In the meantime, it could be interesting to see a GTA with a much more serious physics model for it's cars and an incentive to appreciate the story for a little longer before descending into "make your own fun" anarchy. Hot Shots Golf / Mario Tennis - There has been one* Hot Shots Tennis game (the PSP game is only a port of the PS2). I think that slightly different arcade physics of HST could do well in Mario Tennis, and I must admit I preferred it's level structure and higher difficulty compared to (do the 6 tournaments with every chararhter). Most importantly, the ability to do the main tour / unlockable content in 2 Player was a godsend, it always felt awkward doing the doubles trophies in SP when I had two people who loved the game. Ape Escape / Rocket on Wheels - I think that both of these platformers were unfairly overshadowed in the 5th console generation - Both had the best physics of the platformers on their respective console, and while both were shorter than "the big games" they still had a respectable length and varied gameplay design. Ape Escape did have 2 platformer sequels (and many trashy spin offs, while Rocket was never heard from again. No one's going to argue Rocket > Banjo/Mario Some people might argue Ape Escape > Crash/Spyro though but it seems cruel to consign these to the forgotten (search for an animal mascot) trend of the 4th-5th generation. MDK / Metal Arms Third Person Shooters are generally seen as a "weak" genre, and only have a handful of games with more good points than flaws. MDK and Metal Arms also have some similiar theming due to the humor - the aliens and the Mil bots are fairly comparable as entertaining enemies go. They are dissimllar in a couple ways, but I like them as "getting" the arcade experience despite the TPS elements, which is severely lacking in most of the genre.

I think it's hurt due to half gameplay and half story reasons. I like the concept of the element grid and the field system, and especially the turn color magic. I don't like how non-summon magic attacks become largely irrelavnt. I don't like the excess amounts of healing. Vigora and to a lesser extent Eagleye are the best "magics" in the game, since they help to fuel the fierce attack spam (3 staminia attacK). The star system instead of tradtional experience had an okay theory behind it but - It kind of hurts the game both casually and for completeionist - Casually it gurantees that you are always on-level (although other than for Dario/Miguel it feels more like overleveled) and for completetionist it means that non-active party members are really hard to get to their maximum stat caps. Story is - going halfway into being a CT sequel was worse than doing none at all obvuosly, the ghost children, Porre, arguably Shala come off great, but Magus and Robo, and the use of the Planet as a charather, are especially wrecked, all on top of the general incompativiilty of a "swashbuckling" game with a "melanchollic" game cause problems. The story on it's own merits holds up okay until you fight Mother Brain and then... *implied robot vs dinosaur war, time loop, schlala-belahtassar collabration, 7th dragon etc* But it's quite nice before it goes off the deep end, with the old Dragoon core's subplots, Miguel, and Kid at the orphanage being highlights. The large cast is a problem, not just because large casts are inherently bad, but also because a lot them don't really have reasons to be invested in the story. At least in Suikoden many of the minor people are affected by the war, but CC goes all out with joke charathers. Having 3 plant-based and 4 baby charathers alone is probbably a JRPG record. Other times charathers blend together (The Draggoon squad all recruited at once). Charathers like Leena and Magus have start-and-stop problems where (probbably development time) shows you what they were going to be, but in the final game they do almost nothing. The better charathers work during their non-shared parts, although except in cases like Kid and Norris, this tends to be limited strictly to their recruitment quests and their ultimate weapon quests. It's definately a likable game, but yeah, it's problems extend even to people who play it first instead of Chrono Trigger.

Evil Genius: After Dungeon Keeper, I had basically run out of games in the hybird "RTS/godsim w indirect control" genre as my childhood cereal box game : Majesty:Fantasy Kingdom Sim. Evil Genius was pretty much the only other thing left in the genre. And then I played it..... Loonyland 2 and Kid Mystic: I'm usually willing to take a bullet for Mike Hommel, but these games actually disapoint me compared to the other game's on the Dr. L engine. Loonyland 2 suffers from the MMO RPG design, since the Madcap mode just leads into mindless grinding with the Eau de Monster potion (especially if you further want to do the true arena). Kid Mystic stays arcadey through it's main game, but the challenge and puzzle modes have the same problem with less variety - purchassing masses and masses of stats with money gotten through mob combat instead of at least boss-refights. The Arcade-Only fixed stat design of Loonyland1 and Dr. L blows these games out of the water in the long run. Gain Ground: The game that actually made me shell out for the second Sega Genesis compilation - I'm always looking for a smash tv or gauntlent expy. The other games made it worth it in the end, but Gain Ground itself was largely untouched because the hitboxes annoy me. Chrono Cross: The sequel to Chrono Trigger, when RPGs were at their most important to me. I stll like it well enough as an average game despite it's problems. Borderlands 2: I had had no Diablo or MMORPG type experience prior. I thought BL2 would be a gentle entry point as a hybird game, as one of my favorite internet personalities talks about the "big" MMORPGs a lot. I played 190 hours, and found the game pretty annoying. I had been suckered into it. Battleblock theater: This game really made me consider the problem of excess movement options, since the "double jump puzzles" ended up feeling pretty samey too me after a while. Beat on Insane mode, never bothereed with the community made maps. Gucamalee: I found it unsatisfying as both a beat-em-up and a platformer, and the Hard mode didn't redeem it for me the way it seems to have done for other people. I also played the entirety of hard mode with the chupacbra costume for the most glass-cannon- type of experience. Skies of Arcadia: I like this game, but it just happened to be the one that retroactively poisoned all the JRPGs before it (for me personally). It's well known that SoA is an easier RPG, but it was the first one I ever played systematically with planned out amount of on-level healing in each between dungeon town, etc. Of course for late game even that is unncesarry for trivializing the game because of the broken healer, but everything up to the water dungeon was enough to wake me up and realize that I was ALREADY breaking/power gaming JRPGs on a general basis rather than a game specific basis. SMTIV: A game I consousilly seeked out after a series of JRPGs that I considered too easy... as you might know, SMTIV has two hard bosses at the beggining, and then you get to steamroll everything until Pluto and the law/chaos specific end bosses and death superbosses. SMTIV does feature strong REGULAR encounters to make up for the on-average, weak bosses (the opposite design of SMTIV Final). Unfortunately, the game's uneven curve was not what I needed, since I had intentionally been looking up for a hard game, so during the playthrough I dismissed minotaur/medusa as a fluke and by the time the game did get hard again, JRPGs had already completed the plunge to their current position among my scale of video game genres. Nosgoth: The Legacy of Kain/Soul Reaver series is mostly driven by it's story (Soul Reaver/Soul Reaver 2 are okay action/puzzle hybirds, but the blood omen games and the final game don't really have any gameplay worth the time) Square Enix bought the property and released Team Fortress 2. Honestly, The game was okay with the kind of asyymetic balance that (Left4Dead2) Multiplayer had, but lacked the focus and fun-factor of the Valve game - because the game was oriented around kills and not objectives, it couldn't rise above team-deathmatch standards. While the Vampire movement was fun, it was also too strong to aim against without the various stun/knockdown abilities, but then the game just goes the other way and instead of too many people wanting Vampire you had too many wanting Human. The Devs did put out artwork pages and some (out of game) lore, but it didn't fully satisfy people, and the game's problems contnued to be an issue throughout it's life until it's servers were finally taken down. It was never a terrible game, but at the end of the day, most people supported it in hope of a new Legacy of Kain game later rather than for Nosgoth itself, and the other half of the fans (team based shooter/L4D2 people) knew that it was inherently not all that well put together and were playing it simultanesouly with better team shooters as a novelty to begin with.

Call of Duty: MW 2 - I mean I grew up a Nintendokid, so the hate for this in the communities I paid attention too was pretty much the highest or tied for the highest with RPG communities. Meteos - On the surface it's a very cheap and simple looking game. Lode Runner - although I already considered puzzle games one of my favroite genres in my pre-increpare days, I didn't really think much of certain older games with "only" the one mechanic to repeat throughout the entire thing. Boy was I wrong. Kirby: Canvas Curse - I traditionally don't really like Kirby games, but I found that Canvas curse was really well designed and had a more succesful attempt at difficulty than it's brethern. Dragon Quest 8 - I was kind of inclined to favor SNES/PS1 RPGs, and to ignore the DQ brand's simplicity, especially since it didn't seem to have extenuating circumstances and other sources of appeal like pokemon/paper mario did to excuse it's easiness. Eyetoy: Kinect and Eyetoy: Antigrave - Eyetoy:Play was like crack to me from the beggining but I really didn't think that ligthning could strike twice, since by the time I got around to lookking for the other Eyetoy games, the Wii era had dawned, and it became obvious how hit or miss games like these were. Plus being focused on "racing" and exercise as opposed to a party game seemed to be a problem.

From the OP Weapon Durability: When I played I found BoTW. weapon durability really exciting when I fought the first Lynenl in the (heavily suggestesd) stealth section to get the lightning arrows for the zora quuest. It was exciting to see me have to run through almost everything to take him down. However, I went to Hyrule Castle basement second before doing the other 3 divine beasts, and immediately got the Hylian shield (as well as well tons of weapons)... In all the rest of my fights in the game, I never went through an entire weapon in one monster apart from higher lynels who themselves only took 3-4, since the Castle's weapons were so beastly. My first White and Silver Lynel's actually felt anti-climatic. In summary, After the beggining of the game ... the point of durability ran it's course and it became as annoying as in other games. I kind of think dropping it entirely or giving a late-dungeon item to nullify it would be best. Right or Left: It's not important that he's right or left, only that all the humanoid monster's use the same one as him, so that shield/weapon's line up when you face each other (moreso in 2D) Number of Dungeons; OOt had about 8 (3 child with spirit stones, 5 adult) Majora had 4, Twilight Princess had 7 (3 fused shadow, 4 fused shadow) Skyward Sword 7, Windwaker had 6 although number can change a bit depending on if you consider gannon/moon/zant castle as additional dungeons, as well as mid-game things like bottom of the well or the bokoplin prison stealth area of skyward sword. I think a lot of the games with small dungeon count (Wind Waker and Majora's Mask) made up for it greatly by putting dungeon-like design in the overwolrd areas so that the journey TO the dungeon itsself feels like more of an adventure. I think this is more accurate to the 2D games, especially stuff like Awakening and the Oracle games. I like having those mini-quests. I think 5-6 true dungeons is best, with 1-2 pseduo dungeons, as I don't normally count final boss areas as dungeons.

Best: Calill The Gandalf Club - Athos, Gotoh, and Nomah Certain holy men - Saul from FE6, Artur from FE8, Boah from FE11, Certain Dandies - Innes from FE8, Bastian from FE9 Worst: Most RD and SoV third tiers - I hate overdesigned outfits. A lot of the non-bandit/fighter "midriff males" Linus from FE7, Sothe from FE9, Odin from Fates are the worst offenders off the top of my head.

My rarest 5 stars by distribution Eprhaim: Restoration Lord - 5 summoning focus Sonya: Vengeful Mage - 4 summoning focus Faye: Devoted Heart - 4 summoning focus Camilla: Spring Princess 3 summoning focus Karel: Sword Demon - 3 summoning focus Cordelia: Perfect Bride - 3 summoning focus Sakura: Gentle Nekomata - 2 summoning focus Shiro: Raw Talent - 2 summoning focus Athena: Borderland Sword - 1 summoning focus Athena and Karel are easy to get at low rarities, but rare to get already as a 5 star. Sakura is my rarest seasonal, and Shiro is my rarest normal 5 star lock.

I don't know about opening the floodgates of the ""2 range glass cannon + 1 cavalier to rescue + 2nd cavalier to use swap and drop on same turn" That does definately deal with Henning, but it also promotes the continued use of cheese throughout the entire series. There are lots of bosses with both a default 1 range weapon and a 1-2 range secondary in FE5-9 at the very least. I kind of think that while it's okay to do that as an experienced player, doing it as a new player (or only new to FE6) would take some of the magic away from fire emblem.