WOOOO! I just beat ________!!!!!

[The Lurker]

Beat Bloodstained.  I thought it was just ok.  The combat was pretty good, and exploring was interesting, but the story was crazy boring to the point where I could barely pay attention to the cut scenes and I never read any of the flavor text drops.  Which was fine except for two key areas where I got stuck because I had no idea what to do.  I'm assuming there must have been hints in all that boring text somewhere.

The way I see it, when you're playing a game like Bloodstained it's perfectly okay for story to take a backseat to gameplay. That's what I've always been about anyway is gameplay. All I really need is just a general narrative. Example: Contra: Alien invasion - Blow stuff up, beat bosses. Castlevania: Whip monsters, kill Dracula. Megaman - Steal powers, beat mad scientist. Dead or Alive - Bodacious big boobed babes beat bad bosses. Metroid - A loving tribute to the Alien series.

Now there are exceptions to this rule, like in a game like any Final Fantasy game story is absolutely necessary.

Problem was that it wasn't an attempt to recreate the Castlevania experience.

Technically it was.

[Lesbunny]

Beat Bloodstained.  I thought it was just ok.  The combat was pretty good, and exploring was interesting, but the story was crazy boring to the point where I could barely pay attention to the cut scenes and I never read any of the flavor text drops.  Which was fine except for two key areas where I got stuck because I had no idea what to do.  I'm assuming there must have been hints in all that boring text somewhere.

The way I see it, when you're playing a game like Bloodstained it's perfectly okay for story to take a backseat to gameplay. That's what I've always been about anyway is gameplay. All I really need is just a general narrative. Example: Contra: Alien invasion - Blow stuff up, beat bosses. Castlevania: Whip monsters, kill Dracula. Megaman - Steal powers, beat mad scientist. Dead or Alive - Bodacious big boobed babes beat bad bosses. Metroid - A loving tribute to the Alien series.

Now there are exceptions to this rule, like in a game like any Final Fantasy game story is absolutely necessary.

Problem was that it wasn't an attempt to recreate the Castlevania experience.

Technically it was.

Not as described.

[Variety of Cells]

Beat Bloodstained.  I thought it was just ok.  The combat was pretty good, and exploring was interesting, but the story was crazy boring to the point where I could barely pay attention to the cut scenes and I never read any of the flavor text drops.  Which was fine except for two key areas where I got stuck because I had no idea what to do.  I'm assuming there must have been hints in all that boring text somewhere.

The way I see it, when you're playing a game like Bloodstained it's perfectly okay for story to take a backseat to gameplay. That's what I've always been about anyway is gameplay. All I really need is just a general narrative. Example: Contra: Alien invasion - Blow stuff up, beat bosses. Castlevania: Whip monsters, kill Dracula. Megaman - Steal powers, beat mad scientist. Dead or Alive - Bodacious big boobed babes beat bad bosses. Metroid - A loving tribute to the Alien series.

Now there are exceptions to this rule, like in a game like any Final Fantasy game story is absolutely necessary.

I agree with you 100%. The story should be able to just be in the background with this kind of game. However, there were multiple points where you couldn’t progress without having read a bunch of the boring text, unless you googled it. To get anything other than the lamest of endings that excludes at least 3 of the last bosses, the game requires you to read a ton of boring and convoluted text.  And I think that’s a problem.

[Pak-Man]

Finally beat Fire Emblem, The Three Houses. Well, actually I beat it a few days ago, but I lost Petra and didn't want to count that as my official win. Tonight I have conquered it without losing a single troop.

I took the hidden-ish Edelgard path, which is significantly shorter than the other three paths, so I still have a lot of three-housing ahead of me. I feel like I got the good ending and can't see how the other endings could possibly be happy ones, but from what I've been hearing, every ending feels like that because you get a different perspective and the chance to have a positive influence on your house, so I'm looking forward to seeing the other endings and getting the full story.

[Iron Curtain]

As of late, I have started to use DRM-free services such as GOG and itch.io, so I have bought old games I once paid for in physical optical disc format but now in convenient DRM-free Windows executable files. Such titles are:

• The Journeyman Project 2: Buried in Time
• The Journeyman Project 3: Legacy of Time
• Zork: Grand Inquisitor

I have also bought Overlord because Nintendo hasn't yet released a Pikmin game on the Nintendo Switch and I didn't beat the first one, and while I played the original Journeyman Project: TURBO!, I didn't play the remake titled The Journeyman Project: Pegasus Prime which was originally released for the Japanese Playstation between the release of Journeyman Projects 2 & 3. It never came to the computer until around the 2000's, but I'm glad I was finally able to play it (and beat it, for that matter) on GOG when I started buying games on GOG and itch.io instead of Steam!

[CJones]

I can't beat Gennichiro 

My first time through I beat him in three tries. This time it's up to 8. Still no win.

In Civ:6:Gather Storm, I,m playing as Mali. I have more money than god. Combined with the Financier, you can just straight up by districts. Everybody is allied with me except Zulu.  I love just buying everything.

[Pak-Man]

I just showed Fire Emblem: New Mystery of the Emblem what's what. No deaths and recruited everyone.

It's a good game with some awesome maps, but there a LOT of ways you can ruin your end-game without meaning to.

There are 12 collectable thingamajigs in the first half of the game. You have to collect all of those to make the first of 5 doodads. Some of them are in the hands of random thieves that try to escape the map. Some are hidden in out-of-the-way treasure chests. Then, if you don't get all 5 doodads, your game ends with Chapter 20 and you get the bad ending.

Furthermore there are 4 completely random characters that you collect through the course of the game that serve to recruit 4 other characters in the final battle. If you don't recruit all 4, you don't get the best ending. The game is nice enough to tell you between levels which characters you'll need, but when those characters recruit the new characters, it puts them in range of the final boss, so if you haven't been leveling up those characters, there's a good chance they could die.

That said, I found it to be an incredibly satisfying entry to the series. Next up on my run-the-series tour - Genealogy of the Holy War.

[Pak-Man]

Just beat Milkmaid of the Milky Way, which is a charming little point-and-click that's written entirely in rhyme and somehow manages to not be annoying because of it.

[Variety of Cells]

Finally beat Xenoblade Chronicles II.  Jesus that game was long.  I just don't have time for long games like that any more.  But the combat mechanics ended up being a lot of fun once they added more layers in about halfway through the game.  And the story kept going back and forth between really interesting and over the top anime where character's emotions didn't make any sense.

I had actually given up on the game about halfway through.  It started to get a bit repetitive, and I could tell I was no where near the end.  But then I was on a really boring job for a week where I basically just played my Switch all day, so I picked it back up.

Overall I enjoyed it, but it didn't need to be that long in my opinion. 

[Iron Curtain]

I just beat Dragon Quest on the Nintendo Switch, which was once known on the NES as Dragon Warrior back when Enix (now 1/2 of Square-Enix) couldn't get the trademark to Dragon Quest but now they can, so… Anyway, the game is pretty dated, but it's an NES/Famicom game. I just started playing Dragon Quest II and I'm liking it a lot too. Maybe even more than Dragon Quest I. I'll have to beat it to make a judgment one way or another…

[Pak-Man]

I just beat Dragon Quest on the Nintendo Switch, which was once known on the NES as Dragon Warrior back when Enix (now 1/2 of Square-Enix) couldn't get the trademark to Dragon Quest but now they can, so… Anyway, the game is pretty dated, but it's an NES/Famicom game. I just started playing Dragon Quest II and I'm liking it a lot too. Maybe even more than Dragon Quest I. I'll have to beat it to make a judgment one way or another…

So are these remakes with updated graphics and sound, or are they presented in all of their 8-bit glory?

[Edward J Grug III]

Finally beat Xenoblade Chronicles II.  Jesus that game was long.  I just don't have time for long games like that any more.  But the combat mechanics ended up being a lot of fun once they added more layers in about halfway through the game.  And the story kept going back and forth between really interesting and over the top anime where character's emotions didn't make any sense.

I had actually given up on the game about halfway through.  It started to get a bit repetitive, and I could tell I was no where near the end.  But then I was on a really boring job for a week where I basically just played my Switch all day, so I picked it back up.

Overall I enjoyed it, but it didn't need to be that long in my opinion.

I've started the first Xenoblade twice, and I really enjoy it, but I just don't have the time to dedicate to it. Might actually stand a chance when it hits the Switch though?

[MartyS (Gromit)]

Got Mars to 100% terraformed in Surviving Mars and built a capitol city.  Got one of the easier scenarios to solve so didn't have to waste too much research time on it and it didn't kill off my colony or Earth.  Looks like my first time playing I got hit with the hardest one, killed off most of my colony and then Earth, from there it was a downward spiral to extinction. 

I might try again and pick that hard scenario manually, If I knew it was coming I could gear up for it and maybe get it solved in time...

[Iron Curtain]

I just beat Dragon Quest on the Nintendo Switch, which was once known on the NES as Dragon Warrior back when Enix (now 1/2 of Square-Enix) couldn't get the trademark to Dragon Quest but now they can, so… Anyway, the game is pretty dated, but it's an NES/Famicom game. I just started playing Dragon Quest II and I'm liking it a lot too. Maybe even more than Dragon Quest I. I'll have to beat it to make a judgment one way or another…

So are these remakes with updated graphics and sound, or are they presented in all of their 8-bit glory?

They are remakes with updated graphics and sound. To wit, the gameplay is still exactly the same (it’s still that you’re moving one square at a time), but they’re not confined to the graphical and audio limitations of their past systems. Other than that, they’re still exactly the same games. The music is recycled from Dragon Quest: Builders, which were really just orchestral versions of the original chiptune versions anyway.