What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

[Squire Grooktook]

There is no much depth about Predator's special aside from cancelling your combo, it's just another long-range knockdown like a jump kick or a forward throw

Nuh uh! It's a swiss army knife with a multitude of uses in different situations. It can be used for everything from wiff canceling, pokes, anti airs, mobility, cancelling strings into dodges. It's a brilliant example of a profoundly simple move that adds an enormous number of options that are very different from your standard poke.

And that's probably the simplest move! There is no shortage of things you can do once you get the hang of changing your mid air trajectory via landed hits. The possibliities and branching paths of strings and set ups are so endless my mind boggles to think of all of them. Your playstyle evolves massively the more you play the game (well past your first clear). The ideal Predator is an acrobatic kung fu warrior gracefully dominating hordes of enemies with a different sequence of attacks each time.

[Vludi]

There is no much depth about Predator's special aside from cancelling your combo, it's just another long-range knockdown like a jump kick or a forward throw

It can be used for everything from wiff canceling, pokes, anti airs, mobility

So can jump kicks lol, i still think it's a glorified jump kick, personally i prefer using P. Hunter

[Squire Grooktook]

Not exactly, because it's a special, you can cancel normals into it IIRC, which means you can whip it out from a normal attack string faster then you would a normal jump (which would require you to wait until the animation is completely over before you can jump).

That comparison is a good illustration though. To compare the two (note that when I say jump, I'm referring to a "normal" or super jump, and not a lunging attack):

P normal/super jump attack pro's

+if it hits, can be chained into air combo, which would allow you to either reverse trajectory to knock down an enemy opposite of you, or continue on the same enemy for bigger damage. The second hit bounces enemies upward, which would allow you to either combo a down up kick for bigger damage, or launch a super jump while attacking in order to enable some crazy acrobatic mid air reversals using the normally inaccessible air combo foot dive to attack from angles enemies can almost never hit you from, which in turn ground bounces them more and allows you to continue this devastating cycle.

+hits higher, can go over projectiles and some pokes

P normal/super jump attack cons:

-less range and awkward angle makes it much harder to land and lower priority vs down up kick special

-more recovery if you miss


vs

P down up attack pro's

+Special so it can be cancelled into from normal combos, this can be used to escape dangerous situations (ie an enemy comes up on you from behind while combo'ing someone else, use the forward attack to finish the combo while dodging out of range of back stabbing enemy). Special cancels are also absurdly useful when combined with a slide, as it allows you to cancel the slide recovery and combo them effectively while advancing great distances. A great way to barge past a horde while knocking them down for some safety in your wake

+Much more range then a normal/super jump attack

+Almost instant recovery, which makes it very safe if not worrying about trading, which leads to...

+Can be used as a quick step for when you want to quickly advance a shorter distance then where a lunge jump would tak you. Reversing your direction and back stepping can do the same, but is much higher execution and this allows you to cover yourself a bit with an attack (you can also attack during the back step, which can be rewarding due to the sudden ability to direction change you'd get, but the attack would be very low priority and have shorter reach)

+Best anti air

+Hitbox active from the start, so it'll at least trade with anything that's not a projectile.

P down up attack cons

-Low priority, will trade against many close range pokes. Use standing normal or lunge jump pokes for neutral game pokes.



Probably other things I'm forgetting. Another thing I love about AVP is that even after putting many, many hours into it, I still discover new set ups, new situations, new uses for moves, with every credit. I guess this is why people love Battle Garegga so much, as I hear people say similar things about that game.

[Hagane]

So can jump kicks lol, i still think it's a glorified jump kick, personally i prefer using P. Hunter

Uh, no, for starters d, u attacks in AvsP have invincibility so right there you have a very different usage compared to normals or other specials. It can work for post-knockdown positioning, to avoid attacks, as an antiair, in combos, etc. It's also good to have decent defensive options compared to "get knocked down once and die" in FF.

I see newer Capcom fighters compared to the older as a mirror of older and newer STGs. Older STGs are stricter but have way fewer options and less depth in terms of how far you can take things (scoring), and newer STGs give more resources and interesting stuff that make survival less strict but you can choose how difficult you make things for yourself via scoreplay. In AvsP you can do a basic, less risky 1CC with Linn abusing her gun or "play for score" and take the game to its limits like avspadmirer does. There's no such choice in older Capcom games, as they are so limited and basic.

[Squire Grooktook]

I forgot about the invincibility. I think it's subtle on P.Warrior though, likely a few frames on start up, as I do tend to trade hits a ton if I get poked at the very end of the foot to the face animation. That's a good thing though. Gives it distinct usefulness and balance as both a reversal and poke.

I do want to comment though that I hold older style stg's in higher regards then older style brawlers. They may have less scoring potential, but I feel they do not lack replay value none the less because the fundamentals of the genres fun factor (dodging) is still there in expert form. Sometimes they even have unique offense/defense mechanics (R-Type Force Pod, X-Multiply tentacles, etc.) that make them feel very unique and dynamic compared to many newer shmups as well.

Still, no offense to older style brawlers. I can see the appeal, but they really run contrary to what I want out of the genre. I certainly don't want to tell anyone that Final Fight is shit, but I'll be damned if I allow anyone to say anything negative about AVP in my presence!

#AvpForLife

[Hagane]

Warrior's upkicks don't have as much invincibility as Hunter's DP, but it still has enough to avoid stuff and its forward momentum can make up for the lesser invincibility as it can move you away from harm fast. Really useful on both Alien Queen fights (funnily enough you can just spam upkicks against the first Queen with proper positioning and you will beat her untouched).

[Squire Grooktook]

Yeah, escaping surrounds mid-combo with it is really a core of his game plan.

And yeah, that dp spam strat is hilarious and probably one of the few things I'd change about the game (alongside the aforementioned "Razor Claws v2" tlb idea, heh).

[Vludi]

That comparison is a good illustration though. To compare the two (note that when I say jump, I'm referring to a "normal" or super jump, and not a lunging attack):

Yeah the jump in AvP is weird, but my comparison was about jump kicks and forward throws from older brawlers, they have a pretty similar function to Warrior's special albeit with lower damage: clearing everthing in front and moving.

Uh, no, for starters d, u attacks in AvsP have invincibility .

So have throws/throw cancels in older brawlers

It's also good to have decent defensive options compared to "get knocked down once and die" in FF.

Watch the video i posted above, the guy defends just fine with the options the game gave him, he didn't even need food or lives.

In AvsP you can do a basic, less risky 1CC with Linn abusing her gun or "play for score" and take the game to its limits like avspadmirer does. There's no such choice in older Capcom games, as they are so limited and basic

So now instead of 40 mins of gunning it's 40 minutes of air throws for the exact same purpouse , dunno man, it's not much more interesting to me as i tend to prefer survival runs. You can always put handicaps in any game you want, even in Final Fight you can play without desperate attacks/food/miss if you can.

And again, if it's for pure combat engine bliss, i prefer Guardians to any Capcom brawler easily.

[Squire Grooktook]

The point is that having the normal jump (and all the direction changing antics that ensue) alongside the upkick, alongside throws, alongside lunge jumps and slides and pokes and projectiles, means that you just have more options and room for creativity in every single situation. All the options I just mentioned all have their own strength's and weaknesses in comparison to eachother (please, don't make me painstakingly describe the pro's and cons of using each one, because I could go on for hours about them), and all can be used in a multitude of ways. It's just a more free, open system with a lot more meaningful options and variety that reward creativity.

Doing all sorts of fast-paced, acrobatic varied, stunts against every single enemy wave is incredibly exhilirating. I simply can't go back to one-two punch action after that shit.

And it's just as deep at least. No arguing that.

So now instead of 40 mins of gunning it's 40 minutes of air throws

I hate to borrow the accursed 4chan's parlance, but..

>tries to argue that his own game is being described reductively by people who don't understand it's depth
>describes other game in an incredibly misleading, reductive way that indicates a lack of understanding for the games depth

[Vludi]

I'm just saying that "style" doesn't do much to me compared to a good challenge of surviving. And if it's for pure style, i'll take Guardians over AvP or any other brawlers any day https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8iPeSILEnx4
Like i said, if i want to mess with cool combo potential and the likes, i would just go to training mode in a fighting game.

[Squire Grooktook]

For me, it's not about style or combo potential, those are just icing on the cake (although like I said, combos against multiple opponents are a vastly different affair then combos against a single target, since now you need to tactically decide what to do based on how close enemies are and such).

It's more about the neutral game. Zig zagging mid air and bouncing all over the place as you reactively put all your abilities to their use for the most masterful clear (that's also stylish, as a bonus) is what the game is all about imo. What's truly genius is that even when pulling off all that shit, the tactics game becomes even better (since keeping it going is tough and requires masterful spacing and recognition of when to use what tool)

Of course, as I said, I'm not going to try and tell anyone that Final Fight is shit (in fact, this convo is actually making me want to spend more time with it. KoR, Streets of Rage, Golden Axe, and the host of other older brawlers do nothing for me, but maybe more time with that one might open up a hidden pleasure), and I'm not going to ask anyone to like Avp, but anyone who attempts to argue that it lacks depth or variety or strategy/tactics just doesn't know that much about the game TBH.

[Hagane]

So have throws/throw cancels in older brawlers

They have pretty much nothing in common.

Watch the video i posted above, the guy defends just fine with the options the game gave him, he didn't even need food or lives.

That has nothing to do with the fact that if you get knocked down even once you either die or lose most of your life trying to get away.

So now instead of 40 mins of gunning it's 40 minutes of air throws for the exact same purpouse

So have you tried to pull off even a fraction of that? You'd be able to appreciate the difficulty of execution if you ever tried to do some of that stuff.

FF isn't really all that challenging, it's just has looooots of dumb design decisions that make it very punishing when you haven't memorized it. Once you memorize it it's not really hard since it has such a low execution ceiling, and its AI is of a very basic input reading style compared to the better context based AI of AvsP or Armored Warriors. No reason for me to go back to WW when I can play ST.

[Vludi]

They have pretty much nothing in common.

Clear your front, jump kicks and foward throws serve this purpouse just fine.

That has nothing to do with the fact that if you get knocked down even once you either die or lose most of your life trying to get away.

He overcomes every situation where he was knocked down though, maybe you don't know this, but you can stand up faster if you mash buttons/joystick.

So have you tried to pull off even a fraction of that? You'd be able to appreciate the difficulty of execution if you ever tried to do some of that stuff.

I was never particularly impressed/interested on them. I make some air throws here and there with Linn and many cancels with Hunter for offensive purpouse, but i'm not to crazy about making it look "pretty".

And your last comparison is just wrong, comparing Final Fight to AvP is more like comparing ST to MvC or VS. Would you say ST sucks compared to MvC because there is no dashing and not many aereal combos?, it's kinda a superficial analysis.

[Blinge]

Well i like Scott Pilgrim so, uh.... =]

[BIL]

I love this forum. ^__^ Enjoyed the last page+ of posts from you three.

Spent yesterday's lazy Sunday dicking about with Guardic Gaiden. Could just as easily post in chat's "shumps ticker" thread, but eh. This is the last game I play when I want a typical STG's discipline and focus (the leaner TGL/えいえるじい mode excepted).

As insanely sloppy as its busiest STG bits get, the equally deranged arsenal establishes a very unique - and compelling, I find - ebb and flow. Bombing undodgeable flak while tanking hits to nail enough kills to spawn the items that perpetuate the carnage is hardly fine design - but death is kept *just* near enough to make it undeniably cathartic. Add the honeycomb overworld with its unashamedly base gearfinding+statbuilding compulsions, and you've got some good 2D action junk food. ¦3

[Ghegs]

While on the topic, are any of the Neo Geo beat'em-ups good?

[qmish]

People may hate me for this but i like Sengoku 2 much more than Sengoku 3. As for Robo Army and Mutation Nation, they could be enjoyable, but surely dont stand any near Capcom's hits.

[soprano1]

People may hate me for this but i like Sengoku 2 much more than Sengoku 3. As for Robo Army and Mutation Nation, they could be enjoyable, but surely dont stand any near Capcom's hits.

Both Sengoku 2 and 3 (and the first for that matter) aren't very good. 3 looks pretty, but has horrible gameplay.
Agree with you on the other two.

[Ruldra]

I'd consider Sengoku 2 the best one in the series, but not even that one kept my interest for long either. Capcom brawlers are in a whole different league.

But the game does have some amazing visuals.

Spoiler

Spoiler

[Imhotep]

I can recommend Sengoku 2 (7.5/10). It doesn't play like a traditional belt fighter, it's about positioning and choosing the right character for the situation. Enemies can be desposed very fast when approached right, but lives are lost quickly when something gets out of hand.
Improvisation doesn't work, but figuring out how to approach each situation can be fun. The levels are organized as rows of specific, diverse situations. The background graphics change often and are memorable. The presentation in general is outstanding.

It's been a long time since I last played Sengoku 1, but I remember it to be equally good or at least interesting.

[BrianC]

I don't know what to say about Capcom's AC BMU AI since I'm not that good at them, but FF2 for SNES definitely has disappointing AI, even on "expert" mode.

Lately, I have been playing Fire Emblem Fates Birthright. I also started playing Mutant Mudds Super Challenge and Wario Ware Touched, the latter I got from My Nintendo as a reward.

[Vludi]

While on the topic, are any of the Neo Geo beat'em-ups good?

Sengoku 2 has decent gameplay and great presentation, same with Mutation Nation. Sengoku 3 has better gameplay but so-so presentation. The rest just aren't worth playing imo.

[Squire Grooktook]

Spent yesterday's lazy Sunday dicking about with Guardic Gaiden. Could just as easily post in chat's "shumps ticker" thread, but eh. This is the last game I play when I want a typical STG's discipline and focus (the leaner TGL/えいえるじい mode excepted).

As insanely sloppy as its busiest STG bits get, the equally deranged arsenal establishes a very unique - and compelling, I find - ebb and flow. Bombing undodgeable flak while tanking hits to nail enough kills to spawn the items that perpetuate the carnage is hardly fine design - but death is kept *just* near enough to make it undeniably cathartic. Add the honeycomb overworld with its unashamedly base gearfinding+statbuilding compulsions, and you've got some good 2D action junk food. ¦3

The games battle flow always makes me think of ARPG's where you momentarily pause the action to select your abilities (Mega Man Battle Network, the Mana games I think, etc.) in the way I often pick a weapon for a specific situation, use it up as much as I can, then pause and switch. In a way, Compile really channeled the manic weapon switching and destruction here more then many other of their games.

I always wonder why more console devs didn't pick up this formula. Lot of potential there for making more manic and visceral action-adventure's then the standard Zelda model.

Both Sengoku 2 and 3 (and the first for that matter) aren't very good. 3 looks pretty, but has horrible gameplay.
Agree with you on the other two.

What

Sengoku 3's gameplay is pretty fantastic, another late-genre standout for me.

[Hagane]

Can't say much about Sengoku 2 but I don't really like Sengoku 3 at all. I hate how it looks. Some of the character sprites are cool, but the backgrounds and special effects are ugly, the choice of colors dubious, and worst of all the enemy designs utterly uninspired.

It also felt really underwhelming to play. There are very few enemies on screen at once, usually 4 tops and 2 or 3 if the sprites are larger. As such it has very little variation in terms of enemy waves. That would be remedied if the enemies were competent and especially finetuned for this as in Armored Warriors, which also has fewer enemies than usual, but this is not the case here. They are all pretty dumb and juggle fodder. The most they will do in terms of variety is come running at you from the sides.

Even the combo system feels undeveloped for such a late game. Juggles are braindead as the physics are super floaty, you can keep entire groups juggled for like half a minute with jabs, there's not a juggle limit in place. There's not much variety combo wise either, as you cannot combo from or to throws, specials are heavily limited by a bar, there are no OTGs... so it's pretty much chain into launcher into air chain and that's it.

Speaking about specials, them being tied to a bar heavily limits their usage compared to a Capcom game. Denjin Makai II also requires meter for specials but they regenerate much faster and you can trade a bit of life if you ever run out of bar mid-combo. In Sengoku they are more of a situtional move to be used sparingly, which is a worse approach.

The Neo Geo was the best for fighters, but their beat'em ups weren't that stellar. I think it's just a matter of versus fighters making much more money so they built most of their expertise on those instead. But seeing the lack of enemies on screen in Sengoku 3 maybe the system just wasn't really suited for belt scrollers.

[Leandro]

They have pretty much nothing in common.

He overcomes every situation where he was knocked down though, maybe you don't know this, but you can stand up faster if you mash buttons/joystick.

Yeah, it seems Hagane doesn't know you can stand up really fast if you quickly circle the stick while mashing buttons. Actually, Hagane arguments against FF sounds like somebody who got really frustrated and angry with the game while trying and not succeeding to get a 1 credit clear, LOL.


By the way, I think Final Fight is really good. It's not only about spacing, there's a lot more going for it: knowing how to use invincibility frames precisely; when to choose between punching, grappling, jump kick etc; which enemy in a wave to go after first, and the list goes on. Each enemy formation is a challenge to be conquered.

I'm not a lover of old school beatem'ups though, I don't like Captain Commando for instance. I just think Final Fight did something really special and it's still solid to this day. My other favorite old school beat'em up is Caddys and Dinos, to me it's FF on roids, the same incredible pace but in a context where you have expanded movement, some overpowered attacks and a much more manageable final level. Yet, it doesn't replace FF, different game contexts.

And Squire I recommend Shadow Over Mystara, it's so much fun to dominate this game, and surprisingly it's not very difficult.

[Hagane]

I know about the quick wakeup. It doesn't work in most situations, you'll get hit before you wakeup because there's no invincibility, so if someone attacks on your wakeup (it happens a lot, particularly with fat guys, Andores and knife wielders) there's a huge chance you'll get hit at least once. There's a reason that was ditched in favor of wakeup invincibility later. It's full of bad design like that, but to be fair that's something to be expected from a first attempt.

I quit it because I don't think it's worth my time. No reason for me to play it over the much better later Capcom games, and it would be dumb to force myself to play something I find lacking just to prove a point anyways.

[Vludi]

Fat guys and Andores will never attack you if you are fast enough with the wake up, it's just Gados that can be annoying, but most of the time doing a desperate attack is enough.

And nah that's just your opinion, most of Final Fight's design was deliberate even if you don't like it, that's why they developed Warriors of Fate 3 years later which is essentially "Final Fight: hard mode", having even more aggressive AI, huge waves of enemies all the time and bosses with HUGE life bars.

[Ed Oscuro]

Heh, this Sengoku discussion reminds me of ones from years ago. I've never been good at brawlers (don't like the overly intricate / repetitive style much, and the learning curve has always been too high for me when I've tried - sometime I'll give them another go though, along with getting back into the harder recent 3d brawler-ish games) but I certainly do agree with the general comments about Sengoku 3's looks. I did like the neon sign, at least.

Speaking of bad design, though, been playing some D&D stuff recently. Baldur's Gate: EE on Steam took a while for me to warm up to it (things finally got interesting when I got to the city of the title) but I kind of like it now (though I'm not a fan of micromanaging, so I'm just scrubbin' and automagically powered up my party's stats, stuff, and replenish their health instead of trying to deal with the mage micromanagement).

I also have been checking out a few old Dungeons & Dragons games via DOSbox. Time for a game report, then - sorry for the length, but I noticed some things aren't anywhere on the Internet.

Al-Qadim: The Genie's Curse - It's based in the Arab-lite pastiche campaign setting of D&D, so it features "funny" island names like "The Prison of Al-Katraz" and other dumb-easy puns. I don't know where people get that this is Zelda-like from. There are some very vaguely similar elements (with the setting it does feel more like Beyond Oasis, but still not very much like it) like the top-down perspective, attacking with a sword, and pushing stones occasionally, but there's a lot of other stuff that's not at all alike Zelda. It doesn't have a totally uninteresting population, but its few towns are heavily constricted and the plot rolls out problems in a linear fashion, despite having multiple ways of allowing some non-linear play, so you generally spend a lot of time running down familiar routes when you're not running down featureless dungeon corridors, which is a shame. At the eleventh hour the game throws an easy chance at some non-linear questing by letting you travel back to your transportation, only to tell you that there's no time to do anything but go right back into the dungeon. Clearly the designers were thinking that they wanted to give everybody in the game a chance to thank the munificent hero, but I'd rather have an interesting game to play. (Adding insult to injury, the endgame is just a few brief illustrated scenes with text.)

Since this is an early '90s PC game, they really loooove their shades and their (quite awful, feels like 15fps due to the scroll size?) "smooth" scrolling and fade-ins all the damn time. There are a few spots that can repeatedly hand your ass to you and send you back to the title screen repeatedly. Getting back into the action takes forever and is not just a bit aggravating (I'm still not really sure who the spooky hands and eyes were really supposed to be, besides serving as a gaming cliche). Even simple healing locks up the action for a regrettable few seconds, trading seconds of your real life for the sake of your avatar's. On the other hand, you can power through text boxes and the menu instantly (ironically, skipped text boxes just prolonged the game for me, as I had to reload to see text many times).

A small part of Al-Qadim is an action game with a hilariously inept difficulty curve. When you start out, everything can kill you easily, your abilities are nil and an awful rush-retreat combat pattern is advocated despite the fact that the character often got stuck moonwalking (I really have no idea), and healing is extremely tough to come by. It's very easy to get locked into an unwinnable situation at the start, through thankfully there are much fewer of those later on. Anyhow, your first reward of the game is a healing pool...and you get no good directions to it, and so you have to go traipsing about through tons more extremely deadly critters on the chance you can find it. Soon after this, and especially once you've hit some levels, combat becomes easier and easier, to the point that the end game fights have almost no difficulty, though now there is the annoying mechanic of having to enter the menu repeatedly. It should be said, though, that I never once used magic or the sling. I really don't know what use the elemental potions were supposed to be, and the strength / invulnerability (dex?) potions weren't very useful either.

Al-Qadim is mostly an adventure game, and really suffers at times from it. One thing that has annoyed D&D fans is the lack of role-playing: Your pre-rolled character has a sword that supposedly can't hurt good guys and you musti always strive to be "honorable." "Bad" dialogue options are given even less credence than they are in Baldur's Gate (where evil dialogue responses tend towards "stupid evil" and can be relied on to forfeit the best rewards); here you get multiple chances to blow things by uttering a dumb response. On the plus side, the "right" responses are smartly written and figuring them out can be satisfying as well, and it's not like this is The Blackwell Legacy, where the character is so straitjacketed that players are inconvenienced. If anything, I appreciated some of the mildly clever ways that evil characters dispose of themselves by the character's simply being honest, a bit like the sitcom Due South from the year after this game.

A lot of the dialogue is fine, but Carnac The Magnificent might say of the puzzle designers: "May the winds of the Sahara blow scorpions up their turbans." I also thought a desert dog might drag a dead cow into the bedroom of the author of the sole GameFAQs walkthrough, but...at least they tried to help, and didn't get sidetracked on nonsense. However I did find a couple reliable resources: The first is the official hint book, which is a bit inconvenient in digital form at times, but has almost everything of note listed. Another is Resulka's Let's Play of the game, which should at least prove it can be done.

There are a few things which I didn't find any source mention or make clear enough, so here they are:

- This is a "three savegame discipline" game; keep one save at the last safe point before the current task at all times. There are some things that can screw you up here; in some places you should destroy everything, and in others you shouldn't touch a single thing without a plan. Use the other two saves to constantly update progress.
- Always be ready to pull out the inventory for healing, and always keep a bunch of Potions of Extra Healing about - I'd guess that 20 is safe when starting out (you get lots more through the course of the game, and unless you just stand toe-to-toe with every monster and execute the basic swing without any sword upgrades throughout the whole game, you should be fine).
- Never anger anything or anybody when you have the option to do otherwise. Likewise, always try to find the "honorable" choice.
- Again, be careful hitting Enter or Control keys; the game likes to throw up text boxes when you don't expect it and it's easy to shoot past them.
- Training for the extra moves is important; the spin is pretty powerful and has the best range of all. Unfortunately you'll still have to abuse the hit-and-run combat pattern when there aren't obstacles to catch enemies on (spiders can't go through cell doors, for instance). Likewise, note that spells can get caught on geometry - against enemy wizards this can be quite helpful, as your sword flies through railings which deflect their shots!
- Finding special items (listed in the hint book, thankfully) is a good idea for extra power and protection.

- When searching around the oasis to the west of the starting town, the healing pool is at the pool's northwest. The hint guide shows this in a map, of course.

- Using simple save/load strategy allows painless "guess the number" gambling - the safe and smart way to get rich - but I felt there was one interesting twist to strategy: Instead of starting at 50 for a guess, it's quick to knock that down to 25. You should be much closer to the correct number 1/4 of the time. If forced to go higher I could try 75 (which can have the same benefit if the number is high; at worst, you're left knowing the number is between 25 and 75 without too many wasted guesses), but for quick play it might be best just to quickly fail the game if 25 doesn't work out. Of course, once you've got 30 potions of extra healing you've really got nothing more to spend money on, even as the game keeps piling it on.
- There's a free 10 gold hiding at the top left side of the front of the palace that the official hint book doesn't list. Not worth the effort, of course, but it's there.
- Those "lichen-friendly porous stones" must be hit eight times each before they reveal their secrets. Keep tapping away.
- When attempting to eavesdrop on a character by some carts, just walk behind - north or above - the cart just left of him. You might have to walk back and forth a bit, or just wait there; for some reason it doesn't immediately work. If you go west beyond the carts, invisible guards will catch you for no apparent reason!

- The most annoying and dangerous thing in the game is in the desert Isle of Hajar: Not only is it actually unnecessary to travel there, but it has a very nasty action / puzzle at the end. When you clear this isle you MUST have many potions of extra healing - or perhaps a great deal of luck and speed will help, but you can't really rely on it. When you enter the final clearing from the south, with a large treasure chest surrounded on all other sides by pillars, the screen will lock on your position and you can no longer retreat. Advancing will summon a blitz of lightning bolts which will easily knock you around, won't lessen or dissipate over time, and can kill you in far less than a second (depending on how many hit you). The GameFAQs walkthrough is especially bad on this point, and the official guidebook is also useless here. Resulka won the day by beating this in only 3 tries, without using super fast reflexes either.

The key to beating this is simply to rush to the location of the treasure chest. It will disappear three times, and when it reappears the fourth time you can finally grab it. Don't wait to run to the treasure chest; you need to make it disappear for it to reappear, and the lightning bolts will keep bouncing and you'll still be endangered until you have the treasure. Do keep your finger on the Menu key at all times so you can suck down another potion of extra healing when needed.

- At a late stage in the game, you will have the option to go east through a dungeon, running into a bunch of guards, or west, into monsters. Go west, until the game tells you one is having an argument with himself. Then run back the way you came, and into a room of damaged pillars (with gargoyles on top). I got to the farthest right possible in this room, maybe behind a pillar. At this point the monster looked my way for a moment, then disappeared. Traveling back through the rest of the dungeon, note the text prompts telling you about fighting. Outside one doorway, you're told there's fighting inside. Wait here until you explicitly hear there's just two fighters left before going in. In truth you can, if you're determined, probably clear everybody out with ease the old-fashioned way, but it's a much better idea to let them wear each other out.

- I didn't need any of the secret papers, slingshot, or magic to finish the game with what was apparently a very good ending. The sword spin is all I needed. In fact I didn't even use the sling and magic at all - which is another way this game differs from its supposed console inspirations. It doesn't have a very good interface.

Still, it had a few good moments.

Next, onto more of Ravenloft: Strahd's Possession! It turns out that it's probably one of the Eye of the Beholder games I thought was this one, but this has some interesting parts so far. Some really pimp characters in here too, and you can even get away with resting out of doors! The only problem seems to be a possibly unavoidable crash bug when entering a necessary house. Tough thing about the D&D license games - they included some somewhat technically competent games, but with a lot of that D&D clumsiness and not nearly the level of smoothness you'd get from something like DOOM. Still, I'll be interested to see how this, its sequel, and Menzoberranzan - a game I've wanted to play since I bought it nearly 20 years ago - turn out.

[soprano1]

Both Sengoku 2 and 3 (and the first for that matter) aren't very good. 3 looks pretty, but has horrible gameplay.
Agree with you on the other two.

What

Sengoku 3's gameplay is pretty fantastic, another late-genre standout for me.[/quote]

Hey, if you enjoyed it, cool. I couldn't stand it.

[qmish]

While Sengoku 3 has pretty large moveset and combo system, me personally often dislikes approach in beatemups when you need to spend much time with every enemy. Also S3 is just ugly as hell. Main characters may look pretty but everything else is bland and uninspired. They should have done Gaia Crusaders 2 instead.

Sengoku 1 might be most weird and atmospheric but it's least enjoyable to play because of clunky control and bad hitboxes.

Sengoku 2 stands as best for me because it's both very well on presentation (beautiful detailed backgrounds, cool demons as enemies, trippy scenes of teleportation and horse run etc) and enjoyable to play (you have two types of strike, blocking, magic and transformation, also sometimes can parry attacks and projectiles), as I prefer "kill quick but could die quick too" more than "okay here we go two zombies lets land 40 hits begore continuing oh yeah sengoku 3 forever I m chaining, mom".

Sadly it's popular belief that S2 plays as bad as S1, blame hg101 or gaffers. S3 has it's fans but it's up to what you want more. s1 = weirdness, s3 = combat, s2 = balance.