Nintendo Switch (previously NX)

Siliconemelons said:

Bros

I never got past like the first cannon or two of SoM… then i was at my friends house playing the end of Secret if Evermore with some space dog and I never cared after…

Guess its time to dig up and emulator - or is there a new better version of SoM

Click to expand...

There's a PS4 version of SoM that's newer. Better? Nope. Outside of fixing some of the dialogue, there's no cut content added back in and we still don't know who the hell most of the villains are. Plus it's in that pseudo-3D style like FF3 3D and whatnot. The SNES version's still rad though.

I loved Evermore too for sure. Was obsessed with it for months after Chrono Trigger ran its course. First time I ever played Evermore, on a rented cart, their save was in the junkyard in Omnitopia, so I saw a lot of that area before I ever did any of the earlier areas. That sort of thing happened a lot back then. Also saw the Factory in Mario RPG before I saw the rest of the game.

... said:

it's so insane they didnt' bring t he next secret of mana game to america, then legend of mana was so wacky. its like they didn't even realize what made SoM good.

secret of evermore (made by an american studio i think?) had really great mechanics ,but no multi player at all (though i have a hacked rom that adds it), and it's goofy as fuck in it's story/character dialogue.

Click to expand...

Yeah LoM was weird-ass. All the "precious moments" style characters, the terrible battle system, bosses you could stunlock with regular attacks for about 95% of the game...

I played through the two player hack of Secret of Evermore with one of my girlfriends...through most of Prehistoria, but we gave up because the hack freezes every so often. After the third or so freeze we turned it off. It's a shame because she actually liked the game and it would have been her second beaten game of all time, lol.

... said:

yea secret of everymore is a 'more shallow' secret of mana, but it has a lot of interesting mechanics.

it's slimmer because there are (i think?) 4 'continents'. each continent has a sword, an axe, and a spear. that's all the weapons. they do that because the spear has a ranged attack, the axe typically breaks obstacles to open new ways like in zelda. the dog (not a 2 player game) can sniff up ingredients for alchemy, and it's a 'better' combatant with no magic.

alchemy is what the game has instead of magic. it's interesting because for example lightning bolt may cost 1 clay, shock root. rock slide may take 2 clay 1 mud. heal may take 1 pure water, 1 butt weed. there is a cap like secret of mana on how many of each thing you can hold. its like 10 or 20, not 99.

so when you decide what spells to equip (you have a limit of like 8 spells) you have to choose to not double up on ingredients. you can't use all spells with clay because you can only hold so much clay.

and it also has a lot of like...items you can get htat perminantly increase your paremeters and there's like a trading system in the...second continent where you trade items around to give you things that augment your guy.

so it has some fun mechanics that make it interesting, but it doesn't have trhe sheer depth of secret of mana since it's 2 characters vs 3. 3 weapons vs...8? less zones overall i would say. still pretty fun and innovative. but i doubt it'll ever see a remaster/remake.

Click to expand...

The trading system in the second continent of Evermore (Nobilia) is pretty awesome, with some interesting rewards. I usually just blow past it on replays, yet back in 1995 I spent HOURS tooling around in that city, trading items from merchant to merchant and seeing what I could find at the end of various trading chains.

I think Nobilia might have been the biggest city in any SNES RPG to that point (maybe ever), at least in terms of being densely-populated and having a lot to do (there might be some other game with a city that's a giant field, IDK). I can't remember anything being bigger than Nobilia was at the time.

The Sword, Axe, and Spear were the first 3 weapons in SoM, but they're the ONLY ones you get in SoE. Because of that SoE always felt incomplete to me, like more weapons were intended and they just didn't get to them? SoM is a much more fun experience as a result, because some of the best weapons (the Whip, the Javelin) are nowhere to be found in SoE. Matter of fact I'd say the weapons SoE got were some of the more boring weapons from SoM, though being able to throw the Spear was new. I usually stuck with that for the whole game.

It was a bit borked how it made you re-level weapons each time you got an upgrade, though. So if you "mained" the Spear, you'd have to level it up 3x (once for Prehistoria, Antiqua, Gothica). Doesn't help that you had to slay like ONE HUNDRED FIFTY enemies to level each one up. The only one that was really necessary to keep leveling was the Spear (so you could keep throwing it). So you either stopped and grinded midway through each world, or you kept using the L3 Horn Spear for most of the game. I usually just did the latter. The game is so glitchy that by Gothica the enemies generally either did almost no damage, or did too much damage, depending on how many stat-altering spells "got stuck" over the course of the game. What I mean is that spells like Atlas and the defense/evade upgrade spells would stay on if you saved the game while the buffs were running and reloaded the game. I would usually keep the buffs on while playing, so my odds of hitting a save point with them running was high. Every time I'd quit out and return to that save, I would inadvertently bump my stats up. Wasn't until years later that I realized this is why the game seemed to get dramatically easier as it went on.

I didn't bother with the fourth world's weapons, since you got the Bazooka in that world and it obsoleted the three main weapons. Just buy a bunch of the strongest ammo and because the game was glitched, you could fire it unlimited times anyway. The Dog's fully-powered laser attack was even better still than the Bazooka, and I usually play as him for the final boss. Talking 2000ish damage vs the Bazooka's 900ish damage vs every other weapon's 300ish damage. And why didn't the Dog have to re-level his attack in every world? Lul.

As for the spells (Alchemy), I infinitely prefered SoM's system because MP came back at inns, no need to restock materials. Also SoM grouped up spells, while SoE (again) didn't group similar Alchemy formulas, so you had to level them all individually. There are like 3 or 4 fireball type spells over the course of the game. Get a new, stronger fire spell? Have fun leveling it up from L1 because it isn't going to carry over any spell levels from the previous fireball you used.

I discovered that the Lance spell (in Gothica I think) is wildly overpowered, so I usually just used that for the second half of the game spell-wise. It's one of those SoM-type spammable spells that can function as a win button, though. The mats are cheap, the animation locks bosses up for a few seconds, and it just looks cool (laser-lances firing down from the sky). Also liked Crush, the giant stone hand spell from Antiqua.

Tasty The Treat said:

I feel like Trump really stuck it to Nintendo today. Like that wasn't his intentional doing, but it's what happened due to Nintendo being so quick to jump on the tariffs as an excuse for their high prices. Now the tariffs are on hold and they're stuck looking like assholes with a shitty excuse that no longer works for why they're trying to charge so much.

It also makes most of the gaming media look like a bunch of partisan hacks for being so quick to attack Trump over the tariffs with all their shitty articles defending the pricing.

Click to expand...

That whole thing was hilarious. Game journo sites tripping over their dicks to blame Trump for something. Now they'll need to find another excuse for why Nintendo is doing the thing they were already doing and will continue doing either way.

Rude said:

Rajaah did you get the physical cart of castlevania Dominus collection yet? I missed the pre-order last October and I'm hoping those faggots make another round of them.

Click to expand...

Naw I just got it digital last October. I still haven't gotten to Order of Ecclesia (thinking this Halloween) but I played the hell out of Dawn and especially Portrait. The remake of Haunted Castle is decent enough to play through once too.

Lenas said:

Nintendo, an international company, made a press statement. Journalists reported the statement worldwide. That's how reporting works. What is with you guys trying to make this into more than it is?

No one is making excuses for Nintendo and 90% of you retards are still going to buy the console. Is that why you are blaming "the media"? Because you need someone other than Nintendo to blame when you give them your money anyway?

This whole thing is hilarious.

Click to expand...

Dogg, we just like shitting on the Kotakus of the world. Gaming websites that have been taken over by activist writers who seize any opportunity to make things about politics. Maybe they should find a new field?

Switch 2 was going to be expensive either way. Nintendo's waiting to assess if they need further price adjustments. That's being reported. Cool. What's hilarious is how many sites/writers were chomping at the bit to do "Orange Man Bad" reporting.