Reality

Greg Stafford. More for his work on Pendragon (1985) than his fantasy stuff.

Times I didn't save often enough - Skies of Arcadia- most of the Blue Moon area, including the political intrigue, the water dungeon, and the fight with the gigas. Dragon Quest 9- wasted several hours of metal slimes + legacy bosses because DS glitched (random numbers/symblols in the save menu instead of text) Shin Megami Tensei 4- about 4-8 hours of work lost, don't remember exact boss/dungeons involved. Quest 64- I did Green Hole without saving. I regretted that a lot more than any of these others.... MDK2- The checkpoints in this game are a little peculiar, in that they will save your existing health/powerups without replacing them should you retry at the checkpoint, so when you hit say, the 4th or 5th checkpoint in the level, you end up commited with those resources unless you want to play the entire level again. Let's just say that I got int a loop of death because I had hit checkpoint (I think 7d) with less than 30 health, and had to commit to doing a complicated section without taking any hits at all. Hardware- N64 controller Packs.Enough Said. Mario Tennis N64 had it's EEPROM fail as well. part of me wants to unlock the hidden difficulty again..... Bully PS2, Steambot Chronicles PS2, Super Smash Bros Melee, Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas, and Grafiti Kingdom - lost to disc scratches etc. Monaco- Lag spike during some speedruns (Lyon's Den comes to mind). I once deleted someone's SNES Donkey Kong Country 3 file through vibration. Probably the main reason I use GBA ports to play most SNES games. MultiPlayer- Turn 20 Chance time in Mario Party. Shenanigans involving all of my team's randomly spawning in same part of the map in Worms Armagedon. Timesplitter's 2- I can't complete the Co-op Story because the Jungle level sends you to an endless loading screen (even though it works fine in Single player and every level up to it works fine). Deleted Save files- Okami after the first Orochi Fight, Cubivore after 2 bear loops, Ocarina of Time up to the well, Paper Mario after Shy Guy's Toy Box, couple others. None of these games felt too long to replay.

Any platform series tbh. I remember consciously being this way with Rayman Origins, Rayman Legends, and Donkey Kong Country Returns. Even with lesser games I remember dropping everything and playing through completely after getting the platformer from a well intentioned family member (or maybe because of some promotional freebie). I never seem to worry about the pile of CRPGS and puzzle games whenever I have an opportunity to jump over bottomless pits. Just this year I also put off my backlog due to unplanned re-plays of platform games several times ( Rocket:robot on Wheels, Super Mario bros 2. , Raymam Origins, and Sly Cooper) . Narrowing it down to series would probbably leave Donkey Kong and Rayman in front. Edit- I missed the press for Super Meat Boy 2 The End is Nigh. It's bypassing everything and is going to be the next game I play.

"Shipping" and Supports in general have a huge gameplay impact, especially ceirtain affinities. LTCs and no-level runs REALLY need extra hit/avoid/crit at times. In the case of awakening and fates they affect things like dual guard/ dual strike / heart seal reclass options. Children on the other hand don't really add much in normal circumstances. It's pretty comparable to playing pokemon red, with a level 35+ team, getting lapras, and then stopping everything to bring it up to the level of your other people. Or using Est / trainee units. They CAN have a gameplay impact, but it requires way more effort than using what you have (the 1st gen) and while higher stats might be neat, it's ultimately for show, since as long as you hit the benchmarks to clear the enemies, it doesn't matter if they would win in a direct competition against your old more functional units. or beat the benchmarks "more" (This especially goes for the GBA games). In fates the final stats of most children is actually lower than 1st gen units, so they are doubly not worth getting, although the support bonuses still are. Awakening deserves special mention. On normal/ hard mode, children remain as insignificant as Ests in the GBA games although they do catch up faster than traditional Est unit. However, on lunatic + the children's flexible set of abilities makes getting a few worth the setup, especially if you are using a low man strategy. traditionally morgan / lucina, but some others while not as good, are still easier to do than an all 1st gen L+ run.

I'm partial to Black//White, especially for environmental/town music . I think Dreamyard and Route 10 are my favorites. I don't really like it's battle music as much though. Red and Blue are probably a distant second mostly because of hearing them remixed in Pokemon Stadium I think Ruby/saphire has the best battle music (including for legendaries).

seeing this talk of racing game's reminds me of the Micromachines- When I was a kid I actually played Hotwheels games, but when I got into mircomachines with V3 I was instantly converted by the higher level of polish and originality. Most people I see talk online about the franchise seem to prefer the 4th gen genesis/snes games though. The series is having a rough time, with a so-so spirtual revival (Toybox Turbos) and the badly received Micro Machines World Series. The strongest games in the series went all out with "toy cars in real environments" because of the size, you might have them going through sand castles on a beach, a kitchen table where cereal boxes would be the size of buildings and food would be a serious obstacle, billiard tables, etc. The game also didn't limit itself to simple cars, using the full range of MM toys to include levels where you might race around similarly miniature speedboats or helicopters in bathtubs and the like. The modern games still keep the brilliant environments (see the hungry hippos level in MMWS) but are crippled by making the physics even more slipperey, and not focusing of the unique micro machine race system- In the classic series you raced to get a screen length away from the the other cars, and were awarded points and then everybody was set back up at the new point of the track. It helped to prevent things like people gaining an impenetrable lead and helped empasize the close quarters aspect of the game, which kept things exciting throughout. It did have some problems on levels with big jumps or the teleporters in V3's chemistry lab levels, but It made the game's pretty unique. The classic developers of the series, Codemasters, are still around, and hopefully they can reclaim their past ambition and go for giant car lists (as opposed to the meagre 30ish cars in the modern games) and level design, as well as returning to the old physics and shaking off the copious Nerf license product placement.

I'm not a particular fans of these two games, but after reviewing some data, I think that the "combined" remake idea has to be abandoned. 1: There are over 34- non family related unique charathers in EACH game 2: There are only around 6 actual direct descendants 3: The non royal people who appear in both games is pretty limited (Marcus, Bartre, Merlinus, Karel only in endgame lol) There are a few more in the form of NPC or non recruitable people who affect the plot. 4: Binding Blade in particular suffers from character bloat on its own. 5: I don't like using public voting data, but FE6 is a 33 hour game and FE7 is a 39 hour game. While each are shorter than modern FE games, combined they would indeed be ridiculous, even compared to Genealogy or A Fully DLC-d 3DS game. For the record I'm with the people who think these games were too easy. It's typical to mock sacred stones for it's low enemy stats, but while it's "any charather with 14 AS can double 90% of enemies" was a thing, FE7 is pretty much the same except bumped up to 16 AS, and even then it's not till like chapter 19 before you even need that for bosses, and like till Chapter 26 for regular enemies (of the good classes obv, there's no speedy enemy wyverns/generals). Enemy stats should definitely be buffed for both normal and hard mode, especially if skills or whatnot are added as additional player tools. although it hurts my headcannon that enemies in Bern/Grado/Daien are so shitty because the bad guy nations are always suffering from a plauge in the FE.series The games should only be remade if they are remade separately. A combined game would have the (New) Mystery of the Emblem problems with its cast size EVEN if all of gen 1 became unplayable let alone leaving 5 of them into gen 2 (as you would expect due to lords+Marcus+Bartre) . It would have to cut chapters because both games have more than their share of filler and tutorials. It would even probbably have to make the current gaidens into regular chapters to make the story flow better. Frankly the combined idea can not work because remade FE6 and FE7 should each be made bigger on their own (tot fix lack of story in former and gameplay in latter) and any "Echoes" project would not be working with games that were "only" the size of the originals. Trying to both fix the current issues AND combine them just pushes length into ridiculous territory, especially for what should only be a side project for Intelligent Systems.

I'm inclined to say that you have the freedom to use any team f units because most FE games aren't particularly difficult on Normal Mode. However I've noticeed that people on their 1st or 2nd game can sometimes get stuck even in places I'm accustomed to treating as easy games i the franchise, and they actually appreciate more concrete advise- their are high tier units, and then their are high tier units that are easy to use. I think I can make the moderate suggestion that until you lose a given chapter 4-5 tuimes, then there is no reason to resort to looking up which units are good, although I've never personally put that into practice. I think most of the time when people take a loss they can "get" what they can do differently spontaneously on their own even with the same resources.

I was really negative about this game during pre-release, especially in private, but I held back about it in public. When it came out and I played it, I hated the gameplay immmediy, to the point of scalping the game on amazon shortly after beating it on hard. I think it has one of, if not the, best supporting casts in the series, but the main charathers/villians are fairly weak as is the overal plot. However it's pretty firmly my 3rd least fire emblem, although it can occaisionally climb to fourth-least when I consider aspects of blade of light. I sometimes read through the other supports and stuff online,, but I don't ever want to replay this thing. I don't have the oppurtunity to play the DLC but i can tell that while better, It wouldn't be enough. I pretty much get more negative about this game as time goes on.

don't fix what isn't broke But honestly, I would be sad to see ANOTHER console generation of bomberman games be met with indifference. Bomberman games should be seen as a multiplayer spectcacle on the same footing as mario kart or smash bros. bomb jumping The standard mode of bomberman's should still be good, but the default power-up frequency and set has not been restored to he levels it had in saturn games, or at least the 4th gen SNES or turbografx setup. It's also possible that co-op of the puzzle story / score attack of things like Saturn/Super Bomberman could be made more energetic, preferably by say, cylcing through mini-competetions between the players ala Rampage or something. Finally there is the option of "wild experimentation". When things like Bomberman Hero were made in the 90s, they had no chance because they were one platformer among many. Things like generations/jetters would be even more mediocre. However, although no such 1P was amazing, some of them had spurts of creative ideas, such as using the bombs to bounce or as platform tools rather than weapons. It's not like creative games can't be made around the use of bombs, look at Silent Bomber (PS1) for example. They mistakes of 1999-2002 bomberman was making generic platformer/action games with bombs as a tool, rather than making bombs the core focus. The multiplayer modes of said games were functional, but if their "main mode" had been worth something in the first place, they would have added longevity to a game that scored at least average. It would probbably even be possible to make a puzzle-esque 1P game entirely around bomb jumping, and with a singular focus it could be made to stand out (bomb jumping in metroid is a tool among many, but in a game all about it could upscaled to multi-story jumps). Of course this has the disadvantage, even if done well, of probbably using different physics than the classic multiplayer mode, while a Saturn/Super bomberman kind of story would be more distinctly a "bomberman" game in all areas.

1- Emerald- kind of wins by default, only played once. Used sceptile. I think the rivals were toned down, but I can't remember. 2- Sapphire- For some reason the may/rival has relatively high level teams in some of the fights. also wild pokemon typing feel limited up to the electric gym. However after you get past watson and the second rival fight the game is pretty trivial. However marshtomp/swampert will even trivialize the game's early difficulty hump. The double gym leader gave me problems the first time I played it. 3- Coloseum - I kind of feel like Umbreon is mediocre, but gen3 espeon is a REALLY strong starter pokemon, and confusion/psychic are tremendously damaging on most opponets in the game. You can also take advantage of the double battle format more than the computer's by packing around surf users and the like early on. There are some annoying things like the status effect trainers I think the female cipher admin. The shadow pokemon's high crit chance can sometimes be a problem. 4- Red - the last time I played Red I did it to import a team to finally put Stadium R2 out of it's misery. I didn't really use the starter because it wasn't part of the gang I had in mind. game did not give me problems, especially as one of the guys was golem. 5- Yellow - not really that much different from red. Having to grab a butterfree or nidoran before brock kind of primes you to play abusively compared to just breaking him with a starter though 6- Pearl- I went with infernape. I remember almost the entire game being trivial. 7-XD - Ursaring is the god emperor. Eevee is also pretty good (assuming jolteon, vaporeon, or espeon). I feel like the "diversified" shadow attacks are less dangerous than the high crit shadow rush from the first game. 8- Silver- I remember taking a level 35ish poliwhirl through the elite four. It's also the only game I bothered to nuzlocke, and it kind of made me decide that nuzlockes were pointless in general due to how easily the game was.

I went with Genealogy for worst. God it's awful. As the saying goes, it's the best Fire Emblem the first time you play, and the worst the second time. Once you get beyond enjoying the story, it simply has nothing to offer. Low difficulty, tedious, clunky, etc. Gaiden is also quite bad, but at least it can have spurts of novelty factor. But no chapter of The Holy War is really worth replaying, none of them. I would say that Shadows of Valentia was also badly designed, but due to speeding up gameplay, and refining player abilities, it isn't necessarily un-fun to play most of the time like Gaiden is. However, some of its bad maps (eg the postgame) rival or even surpass Gaiden in badness and the inclusion of many gaiden mechanics is baffling considering that the developers would have had hindsight this time. Awakening is also often criticized and the normal and hard modes are indeed heinously easy. However I think that Lunatic and Lunatic+ can get you to think more than almost anything in FE6-9. Even if the difficulty of the latter focuses more on your pre-planning than on-map positioning. I've gotten over some of my distaste for it. Revelations and Birthright have weakish lunatic modes but they still avoid the pitfalls of FE6-7 Hard mode (EG suddenly letting up on the difficulty between C8-14 as you recruit the bulk of the good units after the long drought during the most interesting part of the game) and don't turn into the exclusive playground for hardcore players that FE11 12 and Awakening do. This helps to mitigate their NM being as bad as Awakening NM. I find they're probably like 7th and 8th best game playwise and not entirely horrible as some people act like they are. As for good gameplay. New Mystery, FE11, and Conquest are easily the best, although the former rely on their extended difficulties more than Conquest does. FE10 is probably the next best thing, but is held behind due to overly long enemy phases, animation quality, and kind of being front loaded map design wise due to the relatively trivial GM maps and to an extent the endgame as well. Also while Radiant Dawn's maps (especially it's Maniac mode maps) are designed better than earlier games, some of it's unique mechanics are not well designed. Base EXP comes to mind. Thankfully they aren't as totalizing as the mechanics in games like Awakening,Fates,Valentia are, which largely allows the map design to stand on its own. FE5 is close behind it, althogh I find the game to drop a little in quality post-lenster and the gaiden maps are also a low point. Like FE10, it has good map design with a larger "some exceptions" than FE10, but not necessarily good unique mechanics (movement stars seem nice until you start to think of them as an additional "crit" factor)

This is very recent, but I'm starting to think that the Famicom and Super Famicom Fire Emblem games (1-5) especially Mystery of Emblem, Have had long lasting damaging effects on the SRPG sub-genre as a whole. Especially when you consider that the West had things like Rebelstar (1984) and Pool of Radiance (1988) Before FE1 (1990) came out. The first 4 of these games also mishandle level ups. In the first game, marth (and anyone else for that matter) will become pretty much an untouchable god cabable of soloing even with highmanning experience (awakening is not even as broken). FE2 's use of levels is pretty much sinful throughout, although it's influence on the genre is minor. The third game can keep up a veneer of playability for longer, but by the time you get halfway through the player curve makes a big jump ahead of the enemy level curve (even with the capped stats) additionally it's enemy placement level design is almost directly felt as far forward as 2004 with only minor innovations . I'm talking here of Front mission, early Disgaea, and Shining Force, among others, not just FE 6-9. *I know Rebelstar, Pool of Radiance, X-com, etc aren't strictly SRPGs, but I digress... if Strategy is going to be in in the title of (S)RPGs, then the enemy options should expand beyond basic levels and movement control should not be limited to physical units and wall tiles, nevermind Phase versus Turn based gameplay,

I have the Yoshi's Wooly World Amibo, the 8 bit Mario, and the Mario maker (blue overall) amibo. I'm pretty sour on the concept tbh. My niece seems entertained though. These count as generic amibo's for most games, and I don't really like the negligible effect it has in some of them (Botw and MK come to mind) I do like the look of yoshi a lot for a figurine, but I mean I would rather have a Folkmanis hand puppet or a Rosie B Simpler Marionette. Generally don't like toys unless you can make them dance/talk. especially if I'm paying 19 to 39 dollars anyway.

Some steam games, especially older games, can store save data locally even if they use the cloud for other things. This shouldn't be problem with Sky or Cold Steel though. I probably wouldn't try to run PS3 era games on a "computer on it's last legs" I like steam more and more for my PC games because I have a history of being careless with my computer and like being able to re download it at short notice without going through the hassle of the disc installation. I've read that many people (without knowing it) value steam as a "game's manager" and hence they'll even set their non-steam games to the steam library. It's probably alien to MAC users etc (it's actually quite simple to make a game manager from scratch) , but it is a really helpful additional service if you don't play PC games much. GoG does not really provide this as its "library" function is not as convenient mostly due to having to go through 2 step menus to launch or install games. In either case both are low enough DRM that you can simply set steam or GOG to "log up on power on" and then set the games as desktop shortcuts or whatever without ever really interacting with them. You can play installed games offline without any trouble this is just to minimize the chance of Cloud not catching save data.

In dynasty warriors 7 and 8 , were any of the unlock able weapons for character too bulky.? I'm asking because in Hyrule Warriors there were quite a few lvl3 weapons that I hated because the model was too large for the attack animations (zant comes to mind) I can't think of many on my own besides Meng Huo

All I can think of is how annoying she is going to be on the map's where's she's an enemy officer (I guess the bad guy and the dream stages>) I remember hating fighting midna in Hyrule warriors because she moves around so much when doing her attack string, and this looks like a ramped up version of the problem. I'll probbably be fun when you get to use her though.

I have a dozen or so generic cases for PS2/GCN/Xbox stuff. For some reason all of my 7th-8th gen games have original cases. Some of my PSX and PC games have Paper dvd sleeve cases. I have many, many PS2 and Gamecube games that are show scratched to the visible eye but still run well. I have a smaller number that can freeze randomly but mostly work well ,I call them 40 minute rule games( Bully, Steam bot Chronicles). Some of these can be played normally except for one specific crash-heavy area (graffiti kingdom). Because of this experience, I will accept scratches on discs when buying from used game stores (because of 1 or 2 week return policies), because I find that many of them will still run. When using amazon and the like I won't risk buying scratched discs. I've bought a lot of games with original cases but no manual. I find that non-PC games have lazy manuals with only a few exceptions (Warioware, Soul Reaver, Colony Wars, Steambot Chronicles) While PC games have manuals that are endlessly readable, I'm talking about 40 page monsters like the BG2 or the Tie fighter manual. Therefore I never miss them. The vast majority of my cartridge games, console and portable are unboxed. I think the only exceptions are Conker, Turok, International Superstar Soccer, Jet Grind Radio (GBA) and Gunstar Super Heroes (GBA). Some of my n64 / GBC / GBA games have faded stickers. For N64 I tend to write the name of the game on the top in sharpie anyway, and I've done so at least twice for GBC when the sticker completely came off. I think one of them was Oracle of Seasons.

I've played only Phantasia and Symphonia. Symphonia was an alright game. I dislike Phantasia though. There was stuff about it I liked (story, opening sequence), but it is too flawed to be a good game. I've seen people describe it as a SNES/Super Famicom hidden Gem but I reject that because it compares REALLY badly with other RPGs on the console. The main problem is as the first game in the series, they did not balance enemy hitstun. this means that the player can combo anything and everything to death and almost never have to take damage since even bosses can be locked into their flinching animation. Because of this- the game gets repetitive fast, as the fighting game-esque combat makes random encounters last longer than normal rpgs on its own, but without any chance of danger, it goes straight into problem territory. Despite a solid story it also has kind of an identity crisis- At times it feels like it's trying to be Seiken Deketsu 2 (mostly the maigc life tree and Dhaos attacking the industralized human city to preserve the planet's life source) and other times it feels like it's borrowing from final fantasy 6 (brief subplot about the use of mechs and a mana-draining cannon, also the unvisited other world). The bad gameplay is the main problem. Most if not all of the later games give enemies some super armor or invicibility frames after you knock them down so you can't just cheese everything like in this game. It also starts some of the inconsistent series tradition- Some dungeons teleport you out after killing the boss, some dungeons give you a yes/no teleport option, and some most force you to backtrack out of the thing on foot. Speaking of backtracking it's a little bad in general- you have to walk the length of the continent on foot twice during the unicorn sidequest. The game is just all around problematic due to it's lack of identity (it uses 20% animesque sprites and 80% the look of the standard squaresoft SNES RPG), bad combat, and repetitiveness. I don't recomend that fans of the series play it all, even if they are interested in the series roots. Most of the stuff in this first game is "thematically' preserved in later games anyway (Derris Emblem in final dungeon as a puzzle that teleports your charathers away, the summons, two interlocked worlds one more magical than the other, elf-human relations).

King of Dragon Pass is a pretty unique game made by a company more known for tabletop RPGs than videogames. It is a kind of management sim with fantasy/strategy elements mixed in where you play as a Clan of *pseduo-vikings* and must handle relations with other clans, other species, your ancestors, internal strife, and most importantly, the cattle population. The game has two modes: Short and Long. Long mode ends when you successfully get the other tribes/clans to unite under a king or queen. King of Dragon Pass is a pretty random game, but it can be "raced" to some extent with practice because keeping your own clan's happiness high as well as the relationship with other clan's can get you through most of the scripted pre-requirment events for the endgame somewhat consistently. There are many choices to make in the game, but some are not draft material IMO, as they are certainly too crippling to go without. However, one set of choices- which set of Gods to build shrines too (and thus what magic to get) is a top level decision that does seem pretty promising (if not particularly balanced). Orlanth: Ernalda : Elmal : Humakt : Issaries : Lhankor Mhy : Urox : Vinga : Barntar : Chalana Alloy : Maran Gor : Ancestor Spirits : Odayla : Urdala Strictly speaking- the game doesn't cap the amount of shrines you can build (although the resource drain of having multiple does mean that from a practical standpoint there is a limit of about 4). It is possible to play the game without (although I don't you'd go fast). making much use of your shrines, but for draft purposes we are requiring use of them so someone can't take 2 gods + 2 deadweights and skimp on paying the shrine upkeep to the latter. The only other things that seem vaguely draftable are Sacred Time magic point allocation and Ring Member's god of choice. But this doesn't seem worthwhile because the former is simply too punishing and the latter doesn't have enough of an effect. It is tempting to cap drafts for KODP at 3P because during the clan creation at the beginning of the game you are asked to pick a major God between Elmal, Orlanth, Erdala. Although beating the game with (demolishing your freebie major god shrine) and then drafting say, 4 minor Gods. Is possible, it usually costs a large amount of clan happiness which can factor into the endgame. Prospective rules: Draft for 3 players- Each player drafts 1 of the three major gods, and then 3 minor gods each. The 2 undrafted minor gods are simply striked. Eurmal and Malia are free to all players as they don't use shrines not that you'd want to use them. Followers of undrafted gods can be used freely in the clan ring. Sacrifice on the battle screen can be done freely (despite the flavor suggesting it's Orlanth/humakt). Players are obligated to at least build a small shrine to each of their drafted gods before endgame. Players may accept help from followers of other gods in events but should not use Chalana Alloy themselves via the Magic screen.. Players may freely choose other clan creation options (hate/like dragons, war/peace, slave/free. tribal enemy, etc). Scoring is to be based on in-game years/seasons till endgame. Rules should work for any combination of Normal/Hard/Short/Long. If anyone would like to make suggestions, or try to set up a start date, I'm open to ideas, and can offer to play myself pretty readily for the next 2-3 months. RE: poll- I'm leaning toward option 2 myself, as 1 seems too strict and everything below 2 seems as lenient as playing the game on vanilla.

This is a bit of a sidetrack, but I'm starting to get the itch to look into DW3 or DW5. I'll consider the Empires expansions, but not the Xtreme Legends since I want to play in 2P. I've read a lot about the "classic warrior's games" and from what I can tell DW3- Hardest game in series, some maps are really well designed (hu lua gate, ru nan, Ji Ting) More focus on helping your army's officers survive and actually clear out the peons/oildiers than later games. Supposed to have very weak story outside of the encylcopedia, somehow worse english voice acting than normal. draw distance pop in priotizes grunts over officers DW4- Has the controversial duel system , lowish difficulty (I've beaten a new campaign on hard with a fresh charather multiple times without too much trouble) Although it has some nasty levels like the Wu version of Nanman. Every level has events scripted into it. (although this is more a downside of 2/3 as 5 and the modern games do this too). Story line is simplifled, and Sun jian / Cao-cao/ Liu Bei are used as the leaders of each kingdom long after their deaths. Dream stages aren't labeled as they are in SW and later games (eg dong zhou lives). Can get away with just ridding horses from officer to officer and KO count isn't too important. Things like elements and musou are superficial due to being under powered compared to how they are in both DW3 and DW5. DW5- Gives all the charather's lots of hitstun, which makes oversize weapon guys like xu zhu more even with other charathers, but also destroys the difficulty even on Hard/Chaos mode.Can change direction mid combo. Also buffs musous and adds a rage mode, which the enemy can use, but tips balance in favor of player if learned well. Storyline and which charathers are present in the battles is closer to history or at least RTK (barring the happy endings). Although I hear it doesn't present the overall flow of the war due o the individual character format. Smaller number of maps than DW4. .The only one of these I've played myself is DW4. And it's been pretty fun in 2P, but I feel the need to mix something new in. I'm not concerned at all with Story or Graphics- I've read a translation of the actual novel now, so really I'm only concerned with gameplay. Graphics really don't bother me since I've played a lot of ropey PS1 and N64 games. My main concerns are that the DW3 singleplayer seems to have the most involved SP of them (which is good) but from what I've heard DW4-onward made a lot of under the hood changes to the 2P, particularly in rendering prioty for generics, officers, and bodyguards- which means that it may not run well even though I'm really interested in it on paper. I'm a little negative about DW5 because from what I've heard about it, it probbably gets repetitive quicker than DW4. I've never played DW4 Empires, so I think if I did get a DW5, I could get it as DW5E first to offset what looks like (relatively more shallow) gameplay. However, it's rendering should be able to cope with 2P better than DW3 as I find DW4's to be bearable. I find most of the bad english and chinese pronuciation in DW4 to be more funny than annoying (exception sun ce, gan ning) so I don't see that as a major downside of DW3. As for my companion, he's played DW4, SW2, Hyrule Warriors, and WO3, but considers DW4 to be his favorite. I think this means he would prefer DW5 due to being more similar to 4 than 3 is. So I'd just like to ask the Warriors fans here what they'd think would work out best. I'm biased toward DW3, but I what I really want is a game that punishes focusing entirely on officer killing and never interacting with your allies , so DW4E or DW5E might also fill my need. I want to keep in mind the limitation of the draw engine (and the other player might not be ready for the arrow spam) so I'm ready to give DW5 the first chance if I hear from other people about it.

In some games, if I think the final boss is cool I'll replay the save file before the final boss dungeon over and over, like 20-30 times. Off the top of my head I did this in - Super Mario 64, Colony Wars, Ocarina of Time, Final Fantasy Adventure, SMW2:Yoshi's Island, Pokemon Red, Silver, Sapphire, Twilight Princess, Wind Waker, Banjo Tooie, DK 64, Star Fox 64 (well you can't save, but I played the game many times even after getting all medals on expert mode) . I think I have more serious obsessions with two games though. Mario Tennis- I took up the real life sport over this. I took the time to beat the GBC version 3 times despite the 5 set 6 game match format. And then in MT 64 I beat the planet cup in singles with every charather. It's hard to get across just how much tennis this is (setting aside the Multiplayer I played), but for reference, you have to beat mushroom-flower-star cups with everyone in singles and doubles before being able to access the 3 handicap cups (rainbow, moon,planet). Yeah it's a lot more grindy than Mario Power Tennis (and presumably later games in the series) where beating star cup with 1 charather unlocks the handicap cups for everyone (or at least themselves). But It didn't feel too long to me. I think I lost 2 controllers to Mario Tennis 64, and I'm pretty sure I corrupted the EEPROM at some point and started over. But yeah, that's the story of how I ended up putting more hours into a sports game than any other game. Spooky Castle and Dr Lunatic- Once upon a time, my parents installed the 1998 Egames 100 bundle. One of the glorified demos on that bundle would change my life. That demo was Spooky Castle. Spooky Castle was designed by an indie developer named Mike Hommel, for about 5 years, that would never sink in, as I just replayed the demo over and over (it's about 20 or 25 levels long and the last few levels are kind of difficult). As a demo the credit reel showed me the real game Dr. L over and over. It was something that I always looked forward too. However Dr. L once retailed for a 40$ and I never felt comfortable as a kid asking for so much. Besides I was getting into n64, and then gamecube for the first time. But I kept that one demo on my PC and never forgot some of is phrases. In 2012 or so, I would check Mike Hommel's website at long last. I would not purchase Dr. L until 2013, but I found something much more important- Mike Hommel's journal. This had been ongoing semi-reguarly since 2003. I don't know why, but I read the entire thing through and quickly I built a cult of personality around the man. The journal would rule my life throughout college- I adopted some of Mike Hommel's tastes- I would never have heard of Jon Stewart's Tonight Show or Joss Whedon's Firefly without Mike Hommel. As for Dr. Lunatic itself- All those years of not playing it had given it time to grow up too- When I finally played it (as Dr. Lunatic Supreme with Cheese) it no longer resembled the thing advertised in the Spooky Castle credits and now boasted several thousand levels. The game would prove to be the very definition of "uneven quality" as it had come about due to the combined effort of Mike Hommel and hundreds of his early customers sharing the level editor, but even in 2013, the game had a charm that I could not resist. I haven't crossed 30% completion in this game, and it isn't for want of hours put into it. I keep Dr. L installed as much as possible (although my last 3 computers did not take well to its ancient programming). Although I will never tell people that Dr. L is one of the best games of all time, or even a must-own game- in my private thoughts, it is almost the archetype for games in general.

I'm not really up for this.I'll edit in pictures tomorow. Actually I just realized I can just get rid of everything and make a 4x4 entirely of puzzle games. Puzzle Game Sequels- Lemmings. Lode Runner. Bombastic/Xi Jumbo. Wetrix/AquaAqua. ChuChu Rocket. Roll Away/Kula World. Lost Vikings. Adventures of Lolo. Mr. Driller. Solomon's Key.

I did a bad job with JPEG conversion and stretching. If this included non-traditional RPGs my chart would be different, probbably including Star Control 2, Secret of Mana, Disgaea, Star Flight, Mario Tennis GBC, System Shock 2, Vagrant Story maybe Silent Storm. Only the Bioware games and Chrono Trigger are really "hard" picks. 3x3 Explanations

Shiny Entertainment- the 2D Earthworm Jims, the first MDK, and 3 other cult games Wild 9- 2d platformer which features throwing enemies into objects ala mischief makers/klonoa. Messiah, which honestly I think is passable although it does take a lot from REZ. and Sacrifice, a strategy game voiced by Tim Curry. In 2002 Shiny ended its life as an independent and was bought by Infogrames, so I don't consider the movie-tie in shovelware that they've made since then to be Shiny games. Reflections- Some amiga era stuff (decent but mostly of interest to enthusiasts) The Destruction Derby series in, and of course Driver and Stuntman. Granted Driver 3 exists.... Psygnosis- Psygnosis was once a very important European Publisher during the amiga-PS1 eras. However they did have a small Development group, which made many excellent games during the same time, my favorite being Colony Wars and G-Police. Factor 5 - They mostly did ports in their early history, but were a signifigant player in the release of Turrican. Their best games are undoubtedly Rogue Squadron, Battle for Naboo, and Rogue Leader. They also did the port of Indiana Jones and Infernal Machine from PC to N64, which should count to their credit as they fixed a HORRIBLE PC game and mostly due to control/camera changes, the N64 version is almost a completely different game. After the third Rogue Sqaudron game (admitedly the weakest), they basically disappeared. Camelot - Shining Force Series, Mario Golf series, Mario Tennis Series, Golden Sun series. Maybe the third golden sun game and the 3DS mario tennis count as bad, but I'm more inclined to count them as "average". Regardless, most of their games still stand strong today. Left Field- Kobe Bryant's courtside for n64 and gamecube, the wonderful excitebike 64, and MTX motorax on PS2. Unfortunately, since 2004, they have made nothing worth buying. Bioware- I like them most for MDK 2, baldur's gate, neverwinter nights and Jade Empire. These days they are probbably better known for their star wars RPG work and Mass Effect. They have some duds in their history, but are still an overwhelmingly reliable development house. Treasure- made a lot of excellant 5th gen games (radiant silvergun, mischeif makers, guardian heroes, sin and punishment bangai-O) were still a pretty strong developer on PS2 and GBA in my opinion. They seem more at the mercy of their parent company these days and their latest games are all remakes / virtual console versions of their classics. Retro- Metroid Prime trilogy and Donkey Kong Country Returns- really don't see any wrong here. Crystal Dynamics- Gex series (bit subjective as to whether they are good, but I like them despite being inferior to the big 5th gen platformers). They also work on the Legacy of Kain series (I guess Blood Omen 2 counts as a bad game), and all Tomb Raider games since Legend. These are all given favorable receptions although personally I do feel like their first few TR games are too "safe" and the Square Enix led ones are closer to Uncharted than Tomb Raider. Zed Two- only made five games Wetrix- a very good puzzle game if you like score attack. It's sequel Aqua Aqua. Future Tactics - A VERY interesting game that plays like Valkyria Chronlices in some ways, although instead of focusing on RPG and building up team members it focuses on deformable terrain. Worms Blast- not a great game, but loosely it plays like bust-a-move so it isn't terrible or anything. Finally their weakest game is Taz Express- which nevertheless has some good points- it's puzzles do test your multitask ability, it's visibly a test-bed for the deformable terrain better used in Future Tactics, and the sound effects/landscapes are pretty accurate to the Warner Bros cartoon. Parallax- Made the original Descent Games Volition- split from above and made the Descent: Freespace games, Red Faction series, and now is best known for Saints Row. Hudson Soft- Best known for Mario Party and Bomberman. They have a really interesting history if you have the hardware though, their early history was spent porting NES games to Japanese disk-based home computers. But by the time of turbografx and PC-engine, they made some other interesting games besides their flagship bomberman- their is Neutopia 1 and 2- which play similiarly to stuff like Link to the Past/Alundra, the Bonk platformers, and so on. Most of their games are obscure to this day, but they've actually made other 2-D zelda style games (Elemental Gimmick Gear) and even Phantasy Star Online clones. It is true that Bomberman and Mario Party themselves are pretty much a shell of their former selfs though. They have a passing involvment with scores of other important NES-Saturn games as a publisher.