Abandonment
May. 14th, 2012 10:00 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
indigozealMetroid: Fatal programming error: you start off every new play session with only 30 energy, whether 30 energy represents your entire life bar or 30 energy will at your current stage mean death in one hit. You have to farm yourself up to full health, and getting stuck in a difficult area means that every time you fire up the system, you're going to spend five minutes just getting yourself to the point where you can die in ten seconds.
The Dark Spire: You're allowed to have four sidequests going at a time in this dungeon-crawler, and I'd gotten a couple of my slots bogged down with unwinnable scenarios. The first is a gambling sidequest where the odds of winning (totally uninfluenced by skill and only faintly influenced by stats, as I learned to my chagrin) are something like 1-in-1000; I've gone at it with my thief character for a few hours straight, and nothing. The second was a lost-ring sidequest I wanted to solve myself, but I caved after searching every square of the first couple (100+ room) floors fruitlessly, whereupon I discovered that there is no actual lost ring - you're supposed to feed the fraudster one of the random drops you get nigh up on the seventh floor. It wasn't a "fuck this" give-up moment, but I kinda lost interest after that. I tried to get back into it, only to find that my memory of the sprawling labyrinth had near-completely evaporated. Must try again, as there is great care put into the game, these miscalculated incidents notwithstanding.
The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks: They actually made a bad Zelda game. Outside of the CD-I titles, I mean. There's no exploration; you just make designated stops with your train. The gameplay is literally on rails. All your item and heart-container collecting is accomplished through catch-'em-all collectionist sidequests. I'll go back to finish it, but just to get it over, not to savor and explore it like one normally does with a Zelda.
Zelda II: The Adventure of Link: Great Palace, of course. I've actually finished this once before on NES (not before snapping the cartridge housing in frustration at the final battle, though), but my GBA cart is stuck just before victory. It's been so long since getting stuck that I could actually do with another trek through the title at this point.
Deep Labyrinth: Outside its pleasant outdoor dungeons and unusual (albeit very sporadically-developed) tale about a boy dealing with his parents' broken marriage, this dungeon-crawler is kinda bleh and unremarkable. Then it introduced invisible one-hit kill monsters. Nope.
Magical Vacation: I've mentioned before this game with character designs by Legend of Mana's lead artist and a sprawling cast of PCs (about fifteen at once). The latter, in fact, is kind of in a way the problem, as getting the band back together post-opening disaster so the main plot can start in earnest takes freaking forever - as long as it would to finish many other handheld titles. Despite this issue, Vacation's story is perfectly comfortable with dawdling through several patience-trying tangents; I wandered off when the game started getting inordinately invested in a samurai terrier's love woes. (Additional pitiful note: the huge cast of swap-out-able characters would've been really spectacular had the game been in the SD2/3 mold like God intended.)
Final Fantasy II: Likewise, I think I mentioned already the time I got lost in the ocean for five or so hours looking for Mysidia. I initially thought the translation was faithful since it was up to a point free of J2E-style stupidity, but then came the "you spoony guy" line and so I had no idea what they were pulling. Both events took the nonexistent luster off the proceedings.
Golden Sun: I tried doing a playlog of this way back in the Triassic, but, oh, my God, this game will not shut up. You could level this charge against a lot of modern RPGs (hello, TWEwY), but the exchanges in this game are so, so depthlessly banal that it is such a trial to press through cutscenes. Then I learned that the story for the game doesn't even conclude in this cartridge - you have to wait until the next installment for any resolution. I'd be aggravated if the characters weren't already annoying the hell out of me. As it stands, I can't fathom why the hell so many cut it such an unreasonable amount of slack.
And yet I pulled through Glory of Heracles.
The Dark Spire: You're allowed to have four sidequests going at a time in this dungeon-crawler, and I'd gotten a couple of my slots bogged down with unwinnable scenarios. The first is a gambling sidequest where the odds of winning (totally uninfluenced by skill and only faintly influenced by stats, as I learned to my chagrin) are something like 1-in-1000; I've gone at it with my thief character for a few hours straight, and nothing. The second was a lost-ring sidequest I wanted to solve myself, but I caved after searching every square of the first couple (100+ room) floors fruitlessly, whereupon I discovered that there is no actual lost ring - you're supposed to feed the fraudster one of the random drops you get nigh up on the seventh floor. It wasn't a "fuck this" give-up moment, but I kinda lost interest after that. I tried to get back into it, only to find that my memory of the sprawling labyrinth had near-completely evaporated. Must try again, as there is great care put into the game, these miscalculated incidents notwithstanding.
The Legend of Zelda: Spirit Tracks: They actually made a bad Zelda game. Outside of the CD-I titles, I mean. There's no exploration; you just make designated stops with your train. The gameplay is literally on rails. All your item and heart-container collecting is accomplished through catch-'em-all collectionist sidequests. I'll go back to finish it, but just to get it over, not to savor and explore it like one normally does with a Zelda.
Zelda II: The Adventure of Link: Great Palace, of course. I've actually finished this once before on NES (not before snapping the cartridge housing in frustration at the final battle, though), but my GBA cart is stuck just before victory. It's been so long since getting stuck that I could actually do with another trek through the title at this point.
Deep Labyrinth: Outside its pleasant outdoor dungeons and unusual (albeit very sporadically-developed) tale about a boy dealing with his parents' broken marriage, this dungeon-crawler is kinda bleh and unremarkable. Then it introduced invisible one-hit kill monsters. Nope.
Magical Vacation: I've mentioned before this game with character designs by Legend of Mana's lead artist and a sprawling cast of PCs (about fifteen at once). The latter, in fact, is kind of in a way the problem, as getting the band back together post-opening disaster so the main plot can start in earnest takes freaking forever - as long as it would to finish many other handheld titles. Despite this issue, Vacation's story is perfectly comfortable with dawdling through several patience-trying tangents; I wandered off when the game started getting inordinately invested in a samurai terrier's love woes. (Additional pitiful note: the huge cast of swap-out-able characters would've been really spectacular had the game been in the SD2/3 mold like God intended.)
Final Fantasy II: Likewise, I think I mentioned already the time I got lost in the ocean for five or so hours looking for Mysidia. I initially thought the translation was faithful since it was up to a point free of J2E-style stupidity, but then came the "you spoony guy" line and so I had no idea what they were pulling. Both events took the nonexistent luster off the proceedings.
Golden Sun: I tried doing a playlog of this way back in the Triassic, but, oh, my God, this game will not shut up. You could level this charge against a lot of modern RPGs (hello, TWEwY), but the exchanges in this game are so, so depthlessly banal that it is such a trial to press through cutscenes. Then I learned that the story for the game doesn't even conclude in this cartridge - you have to wait until the next installment for any resolution. I'd be aggravated if the characters weren't already annoying the hell out of me. As it stands, I can't fathom why the hell so many cut it such an unreasonable amount of slack.
And yet I pulled through Glory of Heracles.
