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But that's exactly where folkloric & mythological figures like that derive their narrative power from. Their capacity to act as a clear embodiment of a concept, function or ideal. Making them more complex or nuanced takes that power away from them, rather than improving them.

I'm familiar with the effect of appealing to the lowest common denominator.

It's satisfying because it's easy. Don't let that fool you.

I am A-OK with black/white ideals in my folklore and funnybooks. Real life is complex and discomforting, and often tedious until it's jarringly not. It's why I regard the dumb (direct) and gay (uncomplicatedly joyous/sorrowful) Batman and his ilk as valuable. He's an impossibly smart and buff man of profound tragedy, who bludgeons evildoers to make a future where starving bums don't murder parents in front of their children. Wow, and here I was bitching about mowing the lawn! JOB DONE

Marooned here in the wind-lashed straits of I R L, where the worst shit happens,

Spoiler: show

this is also why I find the likes of MovieBob so terribly amusing. I am a morbid sort ;3

"When I was ten, I read fairy tales in secret and would have been ashamed if I had been found doing so. Now that I am fifty I read them openly. When I became a man I put away childish things, including the fear of childishness and the desire to be very grown up.” - Dutch Schaefer

"The climactic reveal of SMB3 is burned - no, seared - into my memory the way JFK's assassination was for my parents' generation... or the way 9/11 would be for mine a scant 12 years from then." - MovieBob

WTB domed president's brain exploding in his wife's face & thousands of burning pulverised corpses 3; Disney Corp PLS HALP

I need to unwind too, and I can enjoy Batman. My point was just that we shouldn't let it guide us, and that it's important to recognize it for what it is.

It's too easy yo get carried away romanticizing and buy into it all, and it felt like there was something in that which I was reacting to. Old myths, new myths, it's all the same. Enjoy yourself; caveat emptor.

Still playing Touhou Puzzle Bobble. Beat Reimu's course in story mode and another scenario unlocked. Need more practice. Still haven't made it past the first battle as Marisa.

I bought Fire Emblem NES from the eShop. Dark emulator from the WiiU era is back. Not sure why they didn't use the superior emulator from the NSO service. The Famicom games from the JP eShop has Fire Emblem. While input lag isn't an issue with the game, the graphics and sound are definitely superior for the JP version for the FC NSO games.

There's a difference between being "guided" and being "inspired".

I've bailed on Arkham Knight. Looking at the whole trilogy, it's an interesting contrast of style vs substance.

Ironically, while the gameplay is inferior, I think Arkham Asylum was the most fun of the trilogy. The Tim Burton haunted house aesthetic was delightful, and Mark Hammil's Joker hurling abuse at his goons every time I took one down was a blast. Then Arkham City came along and the series got really grim. Knight looks better than City, but it's a really unpleasant experience overall. The Arkham Knight doesn't get properly enraged and berate his goons as I take them down, and taking on professional mercenaries just isn't as fun as terrifying cartoon meat heads. Plus I didn't need to see The Killing Joke's torture scenes play out in full HD.

And with all the fun drained out of the otherwise drop-dead-gorgeous set dressing, the best gameplay in the trilogy feels so much more hollow. Mark of the Ninja did the predator gameplay better, and One Finger Death Punch 2 did the timing-based mass combat better.

And yeah, those "Batmobile as a free-rolling mobile turret vs RC tanks" parts are pretty lame and annoyingly plentiful.

Aggressive youtube video recommendations ruined the ending of this game for me years ago. At 70GB and with Cyberpunk releasing in less than a week, I need the HD space.

Sure. Of course there is.

That being said, "inspired" is pretty vague. Some days I feel inspired to put marmalade on my toast. Some people are inspired to go on suicide missions for a religious establishment. Go figure.

Recently, I've been inspired to play Bloodstained ROTN. First time through, and having lots of fun. It's way easier than I thought it would be so far at about halfway through.

Mild spoilers? I can't tell if I should do this for the game since it's old, but anyway:



It's the most fun I've had on a newer game in a very long time. Excited to play the rest, hoping that there is a sequel.

Yes, you should look at GI Joe instead, where you can learn how to steal apples.

Holy crap. That's exactly what I'm talking about. I pretty much know all of those. There was the fire safety one, and also the one about choosing a password for strangers coming over to you house when your parents aren't home. Damn GI Joe formed some of my ethics. Loved that show though. It was so much fun.

Enemy design and deployment is ROTN's biggest shortcoming. Solid engine, fantastic mechanics, big yet lean no-flab map... even looks good, for the most part, and Michiru Yamane remains talismanic. But its biggest hitters pale next to COTM's, Aria's, Ecclesia's, and even the famously frictionless SOTN's.

Get some mahfuckin Grave Keepers, Salomes, Venus Weeds, Fallen Angels, Wind Demons, Dark Armours, Arch Demons, Valkyries and Cagnazzos in there, and demote a few bosses to Rare Pants-Shitter status (Kawaii Bathory's nice pursuit/dragnet game, plus OH FML superlazor, and a later killer I won't spoil who has the most vicious Fast Aimed Shot game in the entire Dracula X sub-series).

And ditch those copy/paste "Elemental" things. Punishingly boring on both aesthetic and technical levels. Holy cow, even killing them for their nice drops is a chore. The dumb things won't stay onscreen, and when they are it's often inside a wall. TBH I'm glad they look like programmer art, wasting a decent monster design would've been yet worse. Those anaemic stairwell faries can GTFO too. There's a reason SOTN's familiars were non-combatants, it'd look absolutely ridiculous taking a two-handed greatsword to 'em. Like John Belushi's Samurai obliterating a birthday cake, table and all. -_-

Despite all this invective, I thoroughly enjoyed ROTN (enough to clear Nightmare from a base character start), and would day 1 a sequel without question. I just hate seeing it lag behind its handheld predecessors this way. Why are the endgame ULTIME DEMONS an exact copy of COTM's early-game Thunder Demons? (three pre-set, successively further-ranged vertical bolts). Why not rip off COTM's Wind Demons, instead? The sort of sweeping projectile hellstorm that's a) like dodging freeway traffic, and b) incentivises aggressive takedowns. In ROTN, I'm letting those goofy DEBIL LORDZ crack one off, because I know they're immobile and harmless during.

Not that Wind Demon is even an endgame foe in the first place. That'd be Dark Armours and Fallen Angels, the former an advancing brickwall that relentlessly launches bricks at your face, the latter an aggressive airborne pursuer with homing lasers to make Taito envious. There's absolutely nothing like these active threats in ROTN's late-game, nor smartly terrain-tailored roadblock/bulldozers ala Venus Weed/Salome, or even just common foes who angrily swing at passing players, like Valkyrie/Cagnazzo. It tops out at around 75%, sub-optimally deployed at that.

Still looking forward to ROTN's upcoming Classic Mode and its advertised "five harrowing stages." Even the monsters they've currently got could put on a decent show if wisely deployed, but I'm hoping there'll be a few upgrades if not entirely new creations in there.

It's a bit of a shame. I haven't finished it yet, but I can already tell that many things are unbalanced and the item system is messy. The shards are an interesting element, but it seems like there is one for each demon, so that means I'm going to have a lot by the end. Then I'm paying attention to weapons and armour and food and apparently also making all of those things. From one perspective, that's a lot of depth and potential replay value, but that's only if it's well implemented. I find it utterly boring to run between rooms bringing eggs and milk just to realize I should have bought more ketchup to make an omurice. Add to that the clunky pause menu interface and it's a frustrating mess.

As far as the difficulty goes, and the boss balance, I think the point was (I'm just kind of guessing here) that the harder, old-school games were intended to be the Bloodstained COTM series, and ROTN is basically supposed to be a more accessible game for modern audiences that are more easily turned-off by difficulty.




Oh cool. I didn't know about that. A quick search just turns up that it's going to be a linear rework, but I can't find mention of the visual style. I wonder if it's going to be more modern or a more 8-bit artwork style like COTM?

RE Classic Mode, I'm hoping they just use the ROTN engine to design some more classically ruined elegance. ROTN is a frequently beautiful game, imo. It reminds me of Lament of Innocence (PS2), with vastly better-arranged scenery (an obvious benefit of moving from full 3D to pseudo-2D).



Nobody would confuse its graphics for modern AAA, but do we really need that for a classic airlock-tight sidescroller? In all honesty, I find too much detail distracting - there's enough added "traffic" running through my visual cortex with texture-mapped floors and ceilings panning around. PS2's a fine benchmark to aim for, ala Shattered Soldier.

I'm a lot more interested in them making camera zoom a basic option mapped to right stick, ala Dragon: Marked For Death. There's a few points in ROTN where the game outright relies on an overly-tight zoom to give otherwise easily-spotted chargers an advantage. Very bad, boys! Eye of Horus clears that up, but I shouldn't have to bake a tray of cannolis for graveyard lady to get it. >_<

I agree. I'm blown away by the amazing backgrounds in the castle. The way the rooms give you a sense of depth and richness. It transforms a simple fetch-quest into a chance to capture details you missed the last time through the room. The only thing that let's it down is some of the 2D areas that are plain and dull (like the main room with store and the workbench). It's weird that they didn't focus more attention on the town rooms when you end up spending so much time in them.

Your image:


That would be amazing. I like it. I would also be okay with a 32-bit version. (which I truly hope is coming)



You know, I didn't really think about it that way. My newest console is a PS2, so I'm used to console games looking older. Clearly a new AAA game is going to be much fancier and modern-realistic, but I never even gave it a thought that this game wasn't "new." It looks stunning to me.

The camera zoom is definitely a weird thing. I walked around with the special glasses on for awhile when I first got them, but then I ran into a werewolf and I couldn't see him on screen while being attacked. I don't think we should have to use up an item slot to have that functionality. It's definitely a stretch.




I haven't played that yet, or the sequel. You would recommend?

Just in case you didn't know, there's actually two FOV-altering eyepieces: the Convex Glasses (zoom in), and Eye of Horus (zoom out). The werewolf I think you might mean (ground level of the leftmost Clock Tower, entering from the elevator shaft) dashes in from ridiculously close, even with Horus equipped... and some later enemies do exactly the same thing, making me think that's their entire gimmick. Not good. -_-

The clock tower, both inside and out, gives me some good Castlevania 64 vibes, with the damp, weathered stonework and long-suffering gears toiling away... but getting bad camera-blindsided by a werewolf is just a little too reminiscent of CV64, which outgrows that nonsense by the end of its first stage.

Lament of Innocence is a first-rate combat engine, trapped in Wolfenstein 3D-calibre map design. Just like Wolf3D, it's not without charm and deviousness (some great secret-hunting), but it's perpetually limited by boxy angles and a sense of flatness. An old internet acquaintance, who worked for Konami Hawaii at the time, claimed management brought in a gold copy to show off - and he almost got fired on the spot when, assuming he was playing a beta, he enthused that it'd be "great once they got some actual stage design in." He was a trustworthy chap, but true or not, that's too funny (and justified) to question.

It's a fun time if you can get it cheap. Damn shame Igarashi was so shit-eatingly slagging off CV64 at the time, while nuzzling Hideki Kamiya's hindquarters, to boot... because LOI's fierce combat and deadeye control combined with 64's perilous verticality would've been a legitimately great 3D Castlevania. Instead, it's just a mildly notable highlight of the wilderness years between DMC1 and DMC3.

Never got around to Curse of Darkness myself, but people I trust seemed to find it more or less Lament Again, for good and bad. I wish he'd gotten to do pseudo-sidescrolling PS2 Castlevanias back then, instead - I could imagine something very similar to ROTN resulting, but maybe with a bit less grindy crafting (to be fair, that stuff is incredibly relaxing in its "gone fishing" way).

---

You know, it's especially funny how arrogant Igarashi came across pre-LOI's release, given the only Castlevania he'd headed up to that point was Harmony of Dissonance. Which is, whether you like it or not (it's so nice I bought it thrice), a sophomore trainwreck ala DMC2. SOTN was directed by Toru Hagihara (Rondo) with Nobuya Nakazato (FC Bucky O'Hare/Contra Spirits/HardCorps/Rocket Knight) assisting. COTM was directed by Shigeharu "Umechan" Umezaki (FC Contra, Super Contra, Salamander & Gradius II), again with Nakazato contributing. That's a lot of precision 2D expertise.

Apart from producing an at-the-time welcome, but in retrospect glaringly inaccurate PS1 port of X68k, HOD was Igarashi's first time in the director's seat. The only other notable I see in HOD's credits is Takashi Takeda, enemy designer for HardCorps and Bloodlines (Great Takeda Robot mirite). That figures, as while I'm sure he's a nice chap, HOD's boss roster reflects the most vacuous tech demo aspect of those two games, with precious little of their underlying grit. There's also its flabby, redundancy-pocked map, astonishingly ill-judged air handling, dog-ugly sprites, and an OST with a couple hard hits and wheelbarrows of shit.

In short, Igarashi had no place whatsoever posing as a Castlevania or even action gaming luminary, and it's first-rate schadenfreude that his big console debut turned out the way it did. Or it would be, except I love this series, and I bought all of these games at release. Then nearly went blind playing the (vastly superior) handheld followups. BAWWWWWW

"Buh buh but did you RLY give HOD a chance? Hmmm?" Open wide.

("Igarashi considers HOD a demo game" is something I vaguely recall hearing over the years, the obvious and immediate retort being that I sure as shit didn't pay demo price for it, or the two JP copies - Super Happy Funtyme Value Print, then OG because I'm a blazing shelfqueen - I got years later. WTB one killer game, not a heaving misstep and its superior next-year rebound)

(I recall something very similar happening with Akira Yamaoka, post-SH4, where he was suddenly the all-knowing series guru. my Konami Hawaii pal reckoned this was a symptom of the company's beancounter-driven disintegration from the mid-00s onward. it was even worse in Yamaoka's case, because while he hadn't contributed shit to the games' content, he'd done a wonderful job with their soundtracks, making it hard to write him off. in the end, while Igarashi undeniably improved in his stewardship, Yamaoka became an absolute non-entity. this all makes me kinda sad! BATMAN would just punch and kick those lousy bigwigs until they paid talented people to make good games again!)

Indeed. At least IGA isn't totally brain-dead and mindlessly ego-driven or he wouldn't have been able to drive ROTN to the level it's at now. There is still some hope at least that the next outing will be yet another improvement for him and others who work on it with him.

And IAC, he's not doing real Castlevania titles anymore, so it's some other nonsense Konami is pushing these days. As reboots go, I've not been excited about that (whatever it is).

Hey man those were some great reads! I dread to touch HoDiss again. more like new phone hu dis!



Yeah Yamaoka's stewardship over SH surely submitted several shitshows, shame...

Although in Yamaoka's meagre defense, he at least continued to put out some fairly bangin choonz as the series turned to dogshit. 3;

(bangin choonz is all he was ever supposed to do >_<)

Also his hard gay solo album has some unironically killer stuff. MFW roaming post-apocalyptic petrol station in a trucker hat and shades grabbing twinkies and gunning down borgs

there has been a pretty big resurgence of this kind of EBMy techno over the last few years. loads of great stuff about:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4-zj2Tbhq_A
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D0vaIn4Z5e4
https://youtu.be/ikfGP6lhYIA

Niiice, gonna blast these loud when I get home. In the best tradition of Japanese VG artists, Yamaoka's always been cheerfully, artfully parroting of Western stuff... found tons of great stuff BITD looking up his inspirations, wouldn't surprise me if - actually, I'm pretty sure I read he is - into his EBM.

Should give ROTM another shot. I remember being turned off by the visuals and a number of bugs in the PS4 version (the game crashed on me at least more than once), and I wasn't in a very IgaVania mood at the time...I think I wanted something a little "different" while still playing with that excellent floaty handling, a wish that was ultimately answered by the more speedy and Search and Destroy oriented doujin games by Team Ladybug.

But perhaps it deserves another shot!

Stability seems to have improved a lot in the year+ post release - I've had a few crashes, but they tended to occur after I'd been playing for frankly embarrassing lengths of time. Hunting down cacao beans to make hot cocoa to upgrade my INT be addictive yo (honestly, the grinding/crafting skinnerbox is such arrant junkfood, but just like SOTN, this is categorically "recreational gaming" )

(I made a SIIICK Skinnerbox Riddim grinding Schmoos for Crissaegrim, this last revisit... I was so mortified I junked the video file but Immryr's glorious cacophonies have inspired me to whip it up again. It's rad I swear. >_>)

I noticed ROTN would crash more often if I had a ton of screen captures on my PS4 HDD. Definitely the most unstable game I've played in my year on the platform, though not quite the nightmare I saw reported from early adopters ca 2019. (I've never had the game crash out while opening the crafting menu, only while loading new areas)

Can't have enough of that stuff. Love what I'm hearing, please recommend more.



Judging by his Silent Hill soundtracks, he always struck me as more of a Neubauten guy :3

The fucking shit

Oh yeah his SH stuff, definitely for the most part - though there's the occasional pumpy outlier like SH2's (beautifully titled) Terror In The Depths Of The Fog and SH4's criminally unused Remodeling. (Criminally Unused/Unfinished being SH4's middle names). He could also rock the fuck out too, ala the bitter smoulderings of SH1's She and SH2's Overdose Delusion. A pretty well-rounded pop-rock/electronic musician, understandably beloved. And his whole BeatMania/Popn'Music discog too, never played/listened to those much but some of it's great.

I never liked his increasing reliance on Mary "WAWAWAWOWW, I am Melissa Etheridge" McGlynn from SH3 on, though. Not a bad vocalist, but giving the series a universal "face" / "muse" ate into the first two games' sadly abandoned individuality. Wish I could find instrumentals of her vocal tracks. This bit of SH0's "Shot Down In Flames" is heartbreaking, that guitar explodes like a bottle on a wall.

Also I neber forgive 4 misreading that sh3 bit on MUH FREE OST It's "There is another reason: to fill your heart with hatred" NAHT "There is another reason to fill your heart with hatred." GET IT RIGHT :O

Revisiting some old stuff before I try some new(-to me) stuff.

1) first Agarest. When I played it originally I got a bad ending because I couldn't be arsed to follow a guide. I'm not a big fan of having to follow a guide to the letter like it's a homework assignment, but also not a big fan of these 'bad' endings that result in the game being cut short. So I came up with a plan. I hacked a generation 4 save file to make it so I would meet the necessary conditions at the beginning of gen 5, and resumed playing the game from there until the 'good' end.

2) Panzer Dragoon Saga. I played this back in the day, but not from start to finish. I was told that the spoken language in the game was a fictional one and didn't realize that this is only true of the introduction video sequence (I hadn't learned any Japanese yet!). The controls and UI are better than some modern games and the load times aren't even bad. The problems are the large, often bland, environments with limited draw distance, and slowdown, all of which basically couldn't be helped because of the hardware. I'm surprised by how intricately some of the character models are animated... they use effin' motion capture or something???

3) Sins of the Solar Empire. This game works in Windows 2000 now.

4) Master of Magic. I heard this has been updated, rebalanced, and has some mods available. Maybe it's no longer possible to enchant a bunch of items and then steamroll everything.

5) Crusader Kings Complete. I don't know anything about this game but it seemed to be worth a look.

6) 東方蒼神縁起-週末. I had a dlsite coupon so I bought this.

How is Wonder Labyrinth anyway? I played Team Ladybug's SMT and Konosuba games and those were nice but nothing special. Luna Nights approaches greatness but doesn't quite make it imo. Would be great if Wonder Labyrinth addressed Luna Nights's flaws.

Bumboclaat. Actually got a Crissaegrim first try despite being at ~40LCK, which just vindicates my landmark observation that the stat is a giant bag of dicks in SOTN. However the riddim was off. Then I got fuckin Ramen, what are you try to say you Schmoo fuck? Finally I got something a bit better, though not by fuckin much, and felt an immediate overpowering urge to bite my own dick off

Diagnosis: just use the combat knife, zero grind and it stab fuckers in the face/neck/back real good



Schmoo and his rare drop have come to epitomise the absolute worst of SOTN to me over the years. When I see the sentiment "SOTN is much easier with the Crissaegrim" I get a *sensible chuckle* "Chocolate cake is much easier when you add some cookies and cool whip on top" CUNTS

Happily the game is categorically grind/skinnerbox-proofed so you don't need to so much as cross paths with the Inverted Library's cast of assclowns. I do anyway though. I like how the Staurolite looks in JP menu ("STAUROLITE" )

I knew Crissaegrim was a rare, but I hadn't looked at charts. I also got that one with fairly little grinding. The bane of my bane was the Masamune. The panther is a pain in the dick to kill and it took me like 4 days of that shit to get it. I guess someone out there claimed to have disassembled the code to figure out how frequently drops happen and how the stats effect things, but the conclusion was vague and pointed to many factors all effecting one another.

Alucard so fab. look at dem moves. S M O O T H

everyones favourite bishonen WAMPYR



yeah the conclusion here is definitely : don't grind for these OP weapons, as they are not needed. only do if you're in a collecting kinda mood ¦3

The most fabulous BULLDOZER OF CORPSES there ever was or will be



Five Star Corpse Disposal Service Got Tha Ladies Spreadin


DAMMIT, I had the most badass GIF of How 2 Not Get Shredded By Granfaloon Lazors but I junked it - because ROTN kept crashing Oh wellz. Good excuse to go back tbh.