Ninja Gaiden [NES] + R2RKMF: Scrolling Action Monogatari

[copy-paster]

X68000 Akumajou is challenging but it's very fun! Sharp handling and great pixel art works, tough but exploitable bosses, and the infamous 4 hit and you die mechanic as early as stage 3.

One way to make the game less painful, at least to me is grab the herb on st3's below the ground candle (you need to get through the mud first and it's easy to miss it, make sure to correctly position yourself) and keep it for the rest of the game. Sure it will take 10 hearts per use but the game is very generous with it as well.

[BryanM]

This Dinoblade prototype video is something that made me feel happy the entire time watching the thing.

(Yes, I think this is the non-shmup non-rpg thread.)

[BIL]

(Yes, I think this is the non-shmup non-rpg thread.)

That's where you're wrong (■｀w´■) Gun.Smoke and Faxanadu are most welcome ITT. Happily, we now have an esteemed second wing for hardcore killing games similar to Sekiro!

EDIT: alright that's amazing, I thought it was a guy in a fancy helmet fighting dinos and went "lmao" then I realised exactly what I was looking at and my colleague asked me if I was feeling alright. God and Jebus bless Dinoblade.

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Meanwhile, elsewhere!

Is there a 2D game where you play a buff, shirtless dude, wielding melee weapons that isn't awesome?

I can think of a couple, but I have hard evidence the developers were fat. (｀w´メ)

Sword of Sodan Retrospective

Is there a 2D game where you play a buff, shirtless dude, wielding melee weapons that isn't awesome?

Sword of Sodan

tbh, in addition to the devs being fat, Sodan also featured a player character who wasn't topless. The kiss of death to an ailing barbarizer! See also Haunted Castle (pff) and Dragon Unit (a REAL tragedy, as Undead_TAMA and co are fuckin buff. the curse of modesty will undo even the sexiest men!)

Been MIRIN Rastan a lot in the few hours I've had for gaming lately. A consummate barbarian swashbuckler! The striking/zoning aspect is FTG tight - while bump damage lacks oomph, player and enemy weapons alike are laser precise. And there's a surprisingly rich movement suite for its cruel terrain. Between low/high jumps, and their walking/running variants, it's versatile, yet snappily binary; completed by the bloodening rush attack, perfect for smiting foes and seizing ground in the same tactical heartbeat.

The x3 damage on jumpslash is an especially slick reward for artful OTG slayings - whether a vaulting divebomb, or a chasm-hurdling leap that beheads interceptors in one bloody swoop. There's also a killer aggression incentive via weapon timeouts. Not a fan of this ethos, typically; I prefer to budget my ammo, learning when to conserve, and where to brutally unload. But the level design complements perfectly, with pickups placed like oases. Grab that flail and bust some fuckin heads, son! Hanging back like a weenie will only complicate matters later on!

In pure aesthetic terms, it's a more varied game than I'd recalled. Decent sense of journey over valleys, swamps, and volcanic hellzones. Rastan himself, despite the clear AHNULD riff, is also perfectly-judged. Buddy is formidably ripped, but not bodybuilder-bravura; on the contrary, he's lean and taut and unmistakably hungry AF. "Used to be a thief and murderer to survive in a harsh world" indeed. Very arguably nearer Robert Howard's iconic rogue than his most famous screen adaptation; I could easily believe this was a Conan license, initially, ala Ikari's development as a Rambo II game ("The Furious Rescue," in Japanese theatres).

The rope setpieces can be a bit daft, but with the pace and intensity surrounding them, they're easily forgiven. A crisply technical yet viscerally momentum-based Combat Platformer, very unlike forerunning titans Green Beret and Makaimura, and their close descendants Dracula and Rygar. While it's certainly rougher-edged, their bullseye bump damage notably amiss, I find it every bit as invigorating and, above all, as amenable to lethal technique.

Gonna jump in hard once next week's out, after putting some hours on F/A. I so love a good new-to-me, never mind two, three, four, etc etc etc. Ham-chans working as intended.

[XoPachi]

Gravity Circuit is on sale and got an enormous new update with a ton of difficulty modifiers and touch ups to it's systems.
Some of the harder stage layouts have really questionable little challenges (Wave's stage has some ROM hack-y Kaizo BS at small points).
But, the game isn't a cakewalk anymore even with everything collected and unlocked. Bosses are not terribly hard, but you have to actually work and place Bursts with a bit more thought now. Not that they've given arbitrary invulnerability, but you really need to weave through actually dense attacks now.
And with 1.5x more health on them, you have to really make every hit count. This is kind of how they should feel on normal honestly. I'd say they're a straight upgrade.
G-Dash is kind of dangerous to spam now and there's direct answers to it's usage in some places. And the modifier that sends you to the beginning of the level on death adds a good pressure. Especially with double hazard damage. Though it didn't have to send you all the way back to the damn hub world. The beginning of the stage would be fine.

[BryanM]

Contra DLC for Vampire Survivors might be the highest profile Konami-adjacent product in years... For some reason I thought Silent Hill f had been announced a ridiculously long time ago, but it hasn't even been two years... I feel kind of like an idiot even entertaining the idea they'd do a Tokimeki 1 remake.

... it's weird to think they've been kind of ass-blasted as a company for a while now. Tokimeki 3 was funded by a crowdfunding initiative. This was before the fan-fuckery that was Kickblaster scams, so it wasn't a mere pre-order campaign. They sold shares of the game's profits, I think? The game that came out was considered rather shitty compared to the standards of its predecessors; an off-putting art style, alongside an experimental 3d cell-shading thing (actually used effectively later in Love Plus), much fewer characters, etc.

This was over 20 years ago, so the rot has been in the corp for awhile.

I'm just a stupid anon, but maybe they could have used the profits from the previous games in the franchise to fund the new games in the franchise? Ah, the hell do I know.

It just amazes me how they could make so many influential games, wildly successful and the inspiration for tons of others, and just constantly buttfumble everything. Love Plus was so successful, news agencies would run stories about some goober marrying the thing in real life. New Love Plus was doomed to fail since it had the same cast and was more like an enhanced version of the first game, like asking people to replay the exact same game they just played. As soon as it didn't do too great, they gave up on the franchise completely!

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Gave Hagane the Final Conflict a play to get it to imprint in my mind better. My first impressions are I don't like it too much; either you just walk by the enemies or have to come to a complete stop and dismantle them carefully. I prefer games where playing skillfully is rewarded with being able to move fast. Maybe it has layers or something, I'll report back if I change my mind and won't say anything more if I don't.

It seems more competent than a Valis, but I'm not sure if that makes it better than a Valis.

The x3 damage on jumpslash

I've always thought this feature really might be a bug, like multiple hits landing on multiple frames. Is it only 3x? It feels like so much more than that.

The risk from jumping is almost always a big fat zero, since how often is there a ceiling spike lingering over your head? Not using jump attacks on the first boss gives you an epic battle, a fearsome fight for the sidescrolling history books. But use the air attack, and you barely see the guy for a couple frames before he instantly explodes in gore before he can even do anything.

It all just seems really iffy.