Shining Force CD was completely off my list cause my Sega CD took a giant shit playing fucking Echo of all the fucking things. If you're going to play them on an emulator, I'd highly advise against cheating. Just like Phantasy Star games, if you're max lvl - you'll finish them in about 30 minutes if you're following the walkthrough. Amazing how those games were so short, but took a fuck ton of hours to finish. Whether that was because I was too fucking dumb to figure out a simple puzzle as a kid, or through that hellish grind that something like Phantasy Star 2 had where you would go out of town - fight like 2, MAYBE 3 things and then have to go to the inn and rest. Keep doing that until you can buy new weapons and armor so you can go an extra square or two out and fight worse shit, limp back, hope you dont hit the hardest of the first tier of the mobs and rinse/repeat till you're leveled up enough to get to the next town. Oof.
I had this setup below. Felt like I was king shit when I finally got the 32X and could build this monster. The SNES never turned into a transformer like that afaik.
What a ridiculous monstrosity. It looks like the Genesis is on life support. Nope, SNES never had add-ons like this. They kept mining more and more power out of the base system. It's amazing the visual difference between stuff like FF4 in 1991 versus Chrono Trigger and Treasure Hunter G in 1995/1996. Late-stage SNES games looked incredible.
The "hellish grind" reminds me of Dragon Quest 6 (Super Famicom version, not the remake we got here). The beginning of that game really is hellish. Enemies give 1 EXP and 1 Gold and weapon/armor upgrades from the first town run you like 750 if you want stuff that's actually good. And you have to hit the inn after every 2-3 fights up until around level 3 or 4, luckily the inn is free. Fuck up and you lose half your money, and it's real easy to do that. You get an item you can bring to the second town and give to someone to get like 450 gold, which is huge, but if you proceed to go die before you spend it, it's half-gone. There's also a chest with 200 gold in the second town, so that and the item sale are almost enough to get the equipment and only have to grind out 100 or so more gold. Which is best done around the second town where enemies give a whopping 2 gold each.
Luckily the game gets a lot easier once properly equipped, then nosedives in difficulty when you get the second and third party members in fairly quick succession. So it's really just the first 2 hours that are hellish, as opposed to some early games like Phantasy Star 2 and 7th Saga where you're constantly being outdated by enemies every time you go one town further.
What a ridiculous monstrosity. It looks like the Genesis is on life support. Nope, SNES never had add-ons like this. They kept mining more and more power out of the base system. It's amazing the visual difference between stuff like FF4 in 1991 versus Chrono Trigger and Treasure Hunter G in 1995/1996. Late-stage SNES games looked incredible.
After finishing Tunic 100% (great game but goddamn it's cryptic, basically a mix of classic Zelda and Dark Souls), I've been playing Blasphemous 2, which also feels like Dark Souls but in a Metroidvania, a bit like Hollow Knight but without the cutesy graphics and in an even more fucked up religious atmosphere than Diablo.
I'm probably getting close to the end game but it's been excellent so far, I'm enjoying it even more than the first game and it's still just as beautiful and creepy at the same time as the first game, in its very stylized way.
XC2. The grind is real. Needing to have the game on to run Merc missions is annoying.
Ya Xenoblade 2. It picks up a lot around Chapter 4-5. It has the best music out of the 3 games though. The merc missions are good for leveling up your Blades, just very time consuming so I will just leave the game running and watch Netflix or something.XC2 being Xenoblade 2? I didn't know it had anything like that. Sounds more like a phone game. I only got like 10% of the way through that one before I lost interest, good music though.
Was planning on doing Nioh or more CRPGs, but instead I'm replaying Dark Souls 1. Again. Fromsoft games are like "f your backlog, play us again instead"