boagman wrote:Well, I know I was referring to the first one, and perhaps the last battle is the only thing that really bugged me.
I can understand not liking certain aspects of the game. Ninja Gaiden is my favourite action sidescroller on the system despite the first 5/8ths of its boss lineup being dull. Both are still a far cry from bad games, even favourite bad ones.
You're wrong about the Joker, though (I'm guessing you've not played in a while) - the punch has more than enough reach to connect without the player taking damage, and it's a good idea to stay in close and pound him. At close range he can't shoot you, it's easier to judge the lightning's safe spots, and like every other enemy in the game, he can't do contact damage while recovering from a hit, so when he dashes away he'll pass harmlessly through you; chase and repeat. Jumping over his bullets is best, since ducking them will keep him out of striking range and leave you open to the lightning.
One of my favourite last bosses of the era along with Jaquio, both too erratic to ever completely pin down even if you have their patterns nailed.
Wow...it has been a while since I've played. I don't even stinking *remember* the lightning.
As Squire said, Jaquio is the charismatic antagonist of the first two Ninja Gaidens (NES) - check out his flawless comic timing when he owns Ryu here! "Have a nice day." *BOOM*
He's the second of the game's final boss trio, and quite tricky since it takes practice to hit his levitating form without getting batted away yourself, and his flame minions are damnably erratic.
In the second game's rematch his movement pattern is far more complex and similarly erratic, but that game's massive firepower boost makes him easier to handle. As long as you're not trying to one-life the thing, then he's serious business since there's two more bosses after him and he can easily soften up an unwary player.
Squire Grooktook wrote:Jaquio is Ninja Gaiden 1 and 2. 1 is harder imo, though that may be due to the infamous punishment for losing a life against him.
Getting bumped back all the way to the start of the Act was the most retarded thing ever, especially considering it's the only such case where that happens in the game (it was clearly intentional). I'm surprised I managed to actually beat Ninja Gaiden, never touching that bullshit again. Vice Project Doom was a way better platformer (much more fluid, far better melee weapon that didn't feel impossible to hit with, you could run while ducking).
TransatlanticFoe wrote:Last Battle is one my friend had as a kid and we played loads, but never made it more than about halfway through. The bit where you power up and hulk out is unintentionally hilarious. It really is a terrible game though!
It's a shame it took forever for a decent Hokuto No Ken game to actually get made (without getting a renaming no less). The arcade fighting game was pretty awesome in a crazy "everyone has infinites!" sort of way. Speaking of which, I actually quite like the latest Koei game, Fist of the North Star: Ken's Rage 2. The Musou beat'em ups aren't very popular though, which is understandable as they are quite repetitive, but I like 'em nonetheless...
Ninja Gaiden II and III do the boss rush bitchslap too. ^__^ It may be mild Stockholm syndrome talking but I respect the audacity. All three at least keep slain bosses dead for when the player limps back in. Best to kill them all unerringly and remorselessly like a real MFN ninja.
VPD is awesome too, I'm looking for GUN-DEC (its Famicom counterpart). The crouchrun surprised me, very cool compared to the stodgy crouch-walk in supposedly more advanced stuff like Castlevania IV.
edit: Castlevania spelling disaster
Last edited by BIL on Wed Mar 27, 2013 1:20 am, edited 2 times in total.
BIL wrote:In the second game's rematch his movement pattern is far more complex and similarly erratic, but that game's massive firepower boost makes him easier to handle.
Actually, that's my strategy for both games. Get the updraft flame projectile, save up all your ammo over the course of the stages, and then just nuke him.
RegalSin wrote:Japan an almost perfect society always threatened by outsiders....................
Instead I am stuck in the America's where women rule with an iron crotch, and a man could get arrested for sitting behind a computer too long.
TransatlanticFoe wrote:Super Hang On is a great early MD game!
Giving a go of the MAME version, and the RNG really drives me up the walls. This endless stream of psychotic assholes randomly appear and might move into you, or be a gaggle of them exactly where you have to be to maximize your turbo to make time (and if it happens enough times in the same section, you're just fucked), and if you brush up against them ever so slightly you're thrown off the road and have to reset. It's not enough to just cripple you by -4 seconds from the speed hit.
I like the music, I like the sense of speed it has; but don't think it's particularly good.
PSX Vita: Slightly more popular than Color TV-Game system. Almost as successful as the Wii U.
The more that I play it, the more I thing Sonic Adventure 2 fits. I fucking love that game still.
The story is stupid, the control for Sonic is both crazy tight and flawed as hell [crazy tight to the point where it's almost detrimental, the context sensitive button will murder your face, you have no idea what you're going to homing attack, rail balance control is a cool concept that I wish stayed in the series [but here it's nearly completely broken, sometimes Sonic just won't balance properly], rail switching is so badly implemented that I can't believe the game shipped like that [it'd be safer to jump off and try to land on the rail than fling yourself sideways, but since rail switching involves jumping while tilting the stick, you could try to do the former and end up doing the latter, falling to your death], etc], the shooting levels are fun but pretty boring, the emerald hunting missions are just dicks [gimped fucking radar], and the somersault is completely stupid and I should be able to spindash under things that want a somersault.
Also, anytime the game attempts gravity alteration, it's glitchy and screwy. It's like it desperately wishes it was Super Mario Galaxy but 6 years earlier [remember those planets, you'd try to get off of them and find yourself kind-of stuck].
But the Sonic/Shadow levels are still a blast to play [Final Rush, City Escape, and Metal Harbor are great] and try to A-rank for the most part, it's a visually nice game [more so than SA1, even considering that a lot of the environments are lower poly in SA2 because it keeps 60fps on the DC, unlike SA1], the soundtrack is great, and occasionally I'll really love one of the shooting levels [Cosmic Wall is my favorite in the whole game].
And that crazy tight control means that unless you misjudge your homing attack distance [would be fixed by an Unleashed style targeting reticle] and fly wildly into the abyss being just out of range for a lock-on, or press B to lightdash and end up doing a bounce attack right into the abyss [would be fixed by Unleashed's use of different buttons for each action], you probably have very little excuse for dying: you point the stick in a direction and Sonic goes exactly where you beckon [something made worse by Unleashed-style control, where Sonic's turning radius has gone to hell and he needs to drift and quickstep to approximate it, he's got 20x more momentum, etc].
It's the low-point of Sonic's series high points. It introduced a bunch of shit that dragged the series down without being particularly worse off itself for it. It's almost quite good. That doesn't stop the fact that at least half the game is shit, and half of the good half is still pretty flawed. And the rest doesn't come close to amazing.
It's also the game I've spent the most time with on my Gamecube. It's quite fun if you know which levels to play. The boss rush mode is probably the most fun part of the game, most of the bosses are fairly enjoyable. And SA2B's multiplayer is great, if your friend is remotely good at the game [jumping over checkpoints is a strategy, haha]. I think Final Rush is the second best pre-Generations 3D Sonic stage layout [my all time favorite is Red Mountain from SA1, which had loads of neat shortcuts, more paths than most other 3D Sonic stages, and a generally better design than Final Rush thanks to it not being made of rails set over a bottomless pit], with all of its shortcuts [developer intended or otherwise], a cool setting, bitchin' music, better use of rails than most other rail-oriented Sonic stages [looking right at you, Rail Canyon and Sky Rail], and outright dangerous enemies [fucking Artificial Chaos, asset reuse at its worst, but ]. It loses out the top spot for those vertical rails that the game wants you to homing attack to climb up... except this is a pre-Unleashed game, so you don't get a lock-on for rails [occasionally you will hit the bit next to the rail, bounce off, and fall to your death].
Come check out my website, I guess. Random stuff I've worked on over the last two decades.
(For some reason there are tons of people on the internet who get super pissed off if you say Breath of Fire is terrible. It truly is the GunBird (ShitBird) of jRPGs.)
(Like it's some kind of personal attack to their soul. It's not like it's a crime to liek terrible things. We're all terrible things.)
(Like, I think about how much chicken I consume in a year.. and how many chicken heads came with that. What do they do with those surplus things? I really don't wanna know..)
(It's dogchow and fertilizer isn't it. I'm eating chicken heads in my corn.)
(Also I watch Supernatural, a show decidedly outside of my demographic. Also: know waaay too much about General Hospital. :/ :\ :/)
PSX Vita: Slightly more popular than Color TV-Game system. Almost as successful as the Wii U.
The Neopets game for the PS2 was actually a servicable Zelda clone but, you know, Neopets. I regret that it was my first video game purchase.
Also Sonic '06, despite being a pretty shitty pre-alpha, is one of the most entertaining things I've ever seen. The cutscenes, the ways to skip most of a level, oh man.
BryanM wrote:(For some reason there are tons of people on the internet who get super pissed off if you say Breath of Fire is terrible. It truly is the GunBird (ShitBird) of jRPGs.)
Did you play Dragon Quarter? Very unorthodox jRPG.
RNGmaster wrote:The Neopets game for the PS2 was actually a servicable Zelda clone but, you know, Neopets. I regret that it was my first video game purchase.
I like the cover art.
The rear gate is closed down
The way out is cut off
I actually love Sonic Adventure 2. I never had any of the problems with homing or rail switching, both felt perfect to me. Sonic in the Adventure games is probably my favorite 3d platforming character to control. The context sensitive button stuff was poorly implemented, but they were so brief that it's hard to really care.
Also I'm probably one of the few people in the universe who actually liked Knuckle's stages. I just love how the series has such massive, imaginative environments, and the Knuckle's stages give you a break from the intense speedy action to just chill out and explore and adventure through these environments at your leisure. Really, the only part of the game I feel is outright bad is the shooting stages.
Honestly, it's worth owning and playing the entire game for Final Rush. Probably my favorite stage in any platformer, ever.
RegalSin wrote:Japan an almost perfect society always threatened by outsiders....................
Instead I am stuck in the America's where women rule with an iron crotch, and a man could get arrested for sitting behind a computer too long.
BIL wrote:In the second game's rematch his movement pattern is far more complex and similarly erratic, but that game's massive firepower boost makes him easier to handle.
Actually, that's my strategy for both games. Get the updraft flame projectile, save up all your ammo over the course of the stages, and then just nuke him.
Hey, along with getting a free life refill you lose your subweapon before fighting Jaquio in NG1. :/ I didn't even acknowledge this until yesterday, I kind of play NG1 off the cuff and aim to maximise my swordsmanship so subweapon issues tend to slip by me unnoticed. Turns out it pays off when handling Big J, where homing flame manipulation and accurate slashing is paramount!
Strange, I remember I beat him with the flame updraft. Maybe if you beat the first form (masked demon) and then die at Jaquio, then return to him afterward? I know I used a sub weapon....
RegalSin wrote:Japan an almost perfect society always threatened by outsiders....................
Instead I am stuck in the America's where women rule with an iron crotch, and a man could get arrested for sitting behind a computer too long.
Yeah, that makes sense. Returning after death does weird stuff (iirc I'd sometimes get a brief screenfull of garbage in either NG1 or NG2 that'd make me think the game had crashed for a second).
Now I wonder if you get the life refills when you've failed previously. If for some reason you don't want to demolish the final horde guarding the altar room, you can just slum it through on recovery after taking a hit then get a brand new lifebar for The Masked Devil. Would be funny if you lose this on a retry.
Just recorded a no-miss run of version: Ninja Gaiden in FCEUX, encoding now and will upload, god willing. Otherwise will post the input file. It's a clearly experienced but rather drunken, carefree run featuring several brushes with disaster. As failure can be just as instructive as victory I'm quite happy with this result. Shows there are no "impossible situations" in this game, even if you're playing a bit dumb. Raised my pulse a bit in 6-3 when I lost the jumpslash before that pi... hang on, I always lose the jumpslash before that pit. I should stop doing that.
Interesting, thanks for the confirmation. The left hand gives and the right hand takes away, it seems.
Handling Jaquio is all about luring his flames in such a way that they accelerate towards you and speed off the screen, instead of sticking around to gang up on you. Sometimes you want to get between them as they rocket past either side of Ryu, which is why I kind of scoffed at the notion of this game having collision issues in the Makaimura topic.
I never have any problems with him on a no-miss, but I do have to be very careful each time as it's more about developing a feel than executing a straight pattern. In the replay I'm uploading, I handle him carefully for most of the fight then get cocky and screw up - you can see how quickly things will go bad. As is often the case in this game, if things get out of control it's best to eat the damage and use the recovery period to counterattack.
Unlimited Saga is wonderful. It's one of the most creative JRPGs I've ever played, and the whole thing is not only very charming, but the closest any console game has felt to a pen and paper RPG to me. I was hooked from the beginning when they had watercolor portraits talking to each other in silent text bubbles, with the protagonist narrating the whole while aloud. Such novel presentation.
BryanM wrote:(For some reason there are tons of people on the internet who get super pissed off if you say Breath of Fire is terrible. It truly is the GunBird (ShitBird) of jRPGs.)
I'm glad you mentioned this. I started with BOF III on the PS1 and felt it was tacky in some of the mechanics, lacking on the story and overall it didn't have the charm of the FF series, or the epicness of Phantasy Star. The series almost always feels it should or could have been some more, but its growth was stunted at some point.
I remember renting Breath Of Fire III when it first came out and thinking it was awesome. I love the whole 2d sprites on blocky realtime 3d backgrounds aesthetic.
MX7 wrote:I remember renting Breath Of Fire III when it first came out and thinking it was awesome. I love the whole 2d sprites on blocky realtime 3d backgrounds aesthetic.
Yeah, I love that style too for some reason. I hated the inverse though [blocky 3D models on static backgrounds].
Come check out my website, I guess. Random stuff I've worked on over the last two decades.
Oh, here's a shitbird I like: Friday the 13rd on the NES. The attempt at a strategic layer to build up your forces to take down the monster, the repetitive music; pretty much everything but the "you're derping in the forest when Jason attacks the kids, so you lose" is endearing to me.
Specineff wrote:The series almost always feels it should or could have been some more, but its growth was stunted at some point.
The later games in the series are up to the standard of blah, but BoF1 man. It's 2/5; as low as you can go without being a broken Star Gazer-esque kusoge.
I can see how it's possible to like it; I don't see how it's possible to say things like:
"The game could stand to be made a lot harder. Otherwise the original is pretty much perfect."
Outside of the many objective flaws, it has one of the things that's always bothered me about Capcom games: they always had this essence of "emptiness", like in Demon's Crest. Maybe it's from characters that have no relationships, or a lack of NPCs; I dunno.
Demon's Crest only has the "empty" feeling to it assuming you're not going for the true ending against the Infinite Demon. The game really develops a sense of completion and fufillment when you go from the crappy bad end + short end to the painstakingly achieved true end which has you fully putting to use all your powers and exploring all the interesting places throughout the games world.
Otherwise, it has some of the same flaws as early Metroidvania's, but it's still enjoyable.
RegalSin wrote:Japan an almost perfect society always threatened by outsiders....................
Instead I am stuck in the America's where women rule with an iron crotch, and a man could get arrested for sitting behind a computer too long.
Ninja Masters. It's utterly broken and full of infinites, but zoning is also extremely powerful so it kinda balances out. Basically if you get hit once you die, and fast. Even though I wouldn't play it seriously, it's fun every once in a while for its great visuals, fun characters full of stuff and rather advanced system for its time. With some tweaks it could be a masterpiece.
The first four Breath of Fire installments are by the numbers. But Dragon Quarter is one of the most unique, unorthodox and at the same time coherent and polished role-playing experiences to have come out of Japan.
Yeah. Dragon Quarter just kicks major ass. I really need to go and replay that.
I don't want to go as far as bad, but my two favorite unfinished/extremely flawed games are Gunvalkyrie and Stretch Panic, but I might have made that known already.
