What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

[Lander]

Ape Escape 2 and 3 are really fun and polished. They took the every-monkey-is-a-gag idea and just ran with it.

Shame the PSP remake of 1 never got a redux; they looped back to give it the same treatment as the sequels, but made the small yet notable oversight of doing it on a platform without a right stick...

Nioh, while very obviously built upon From's Souls games, goes in it's own direction as well, making it feel more like a game in the "genre" versus a clone.

It definitely has a unique Team Ninja flavor to it between the huge movesets and ki pulse; feels like a skilled player is much more at liberty to humiliate bosses once they master the systems. Thoroughly unforgiving, but loads of fun once you get your foot in the door.

Though I always got the sense that TN didn't quite understand the source material, despite managing to make one of the better derivatives.
The pointless Diabloot is one thing, but referring to the genre as masocore (what is this, Meat Boy?) and putting in cheap stuff like the mine level's dodge-or-die pit bats felt like it took away from what could have been an awesome almost-character-action game.

Must try the sequel one of these days. I've heard it's superb, but was disappointed to see lovable piece-of-Irish-toast William dropped in favour of created characters.

[To Far Away Times]

I'm not too far into it yet but I am enjoying how effective blocking and backing up is at the moment, reminds me of the slower paced Demons's Souls and Dark Souls 1 pace with combat. Dark Souls 3 and Elden Ring, while some of my favorite games, are really fast relative to earlier Souls games.

[hazys]

Been playing the original Sakura Taisen for Saturn, which got a fan translation in 2019 I believe. It's not hard to see why this game had Japan in a chokehold in the '90s. For 1996 the production quality is impressive: semi-frequent OVA-quality animated scenes, some very nice pre-combat CG, extensive voice-acting, interactive character portraits... great music, too.

Alongside stuff like Gunparade March this seems to be one of the first "social sim" JRPGs that would later find international success with P3 and so on. The reason it works so well in Sakura Taisen, apart from the audiovisual quality, is that it's brisk. There's surprisingly little time in a given day to socialize and get your interactions in, and you're always on your toes about when the game-structure will switch up on you. (There's no consistent time-of-day or calendar system; you're just going along with the plot.) The pacing is incredible. There's a real variety to the flow of events and gameplay elements, including lots of little mini-games you can unlock by interacting with the girls, so it never feels like a drag. The plot follows a very typical "monster-of-the-week" anime structure, but if you're partial to that it's delightful. Eventually you sort of learn to let go and get swept up in whatever situation the game takes you to next. There's definitely a dating sim affection min-maxing element if you have your sights set on one of the girls, but that's not for your first run.

The other side of the game is the grid-based SRPG battles, which are fine. They're clearly not the focus of the game but they do serve as the climax of any given episode due to the nature of the story. There's only one big fight per episode (so far) so it's hard to get fully sick of them, but their two main issues are that they're i) slow and ii) easy. Typical "slow enemy animations which have to be manually sped-up" SRPG syndrome. Text speed is also an occasional issue. But honestly clearing these encounters as quickly as possible to move the story along has been my main driver. And also, all the combat-scene sprite work is pretty charming. Lots of memorable little animations and unique interactions, even if there are like only three or four enemy types overall.

For a game with a Love Hina-esque "harem" structure the story does a pretty good job of establishing the dynamics and relationships between each of the girls, instead of placing the player in the center of every single interaction. The player character himself has way more of a personality than I expected, and is also closer to the "sheepish horndog" archetype of '90s anime than I would've guessed from an earnest military type. The girls all fall into various archetypes from their era (the default heroine, the ojousama, the ice queen, the tomboy), but the writing is rich enough to not make them grating. They will openly disagree with you or confront you, even if they're easy to please in most situations. Probably the two most out-there archetypes in the game are the taller-than-you martial arts super-tomboy who will out-eat and out-bench press you, and the... overly-attached little girl... who only seems out-there in our current context, but was very par-for-the-course at the time. Every girl gets a spotlight episode or storyline and most are pretty sweet.

Overall I'm glad this game looks to be fairly short because I definitely wouldn't be up for a PS1 JRPG-sized serving of it, but so far I'm really enjoying myself, and it's a game that would probably lend itself well to repeated playthroughs if you're willing to trudge through the (not-so-significant) combat. But really what most impresses me is how much work went into the audiovisual design, the menus, the sound, and so on... they really went all-out with the "playable anime" premise.

[Steven]

Sakura Taisen is a masterpiece, except for Iris, who is a terrible character. It was the most expensive game Sega ever made at the time of its release, and afterwards the sequels got even larger budgets, which is clearly reflected in the quality of the artwork and animation being stupidly good; go check out the OP movie for 3, which has an absolutely unbelievable amount of animation frames. The sequels are better games, too; I consider Sakura Taisen 2 to be one of the absolute best games on both the Saturn and the Dreamcast.

For the issue with the text speed, in Japanese it's synchronized with the Japanese voice acting for all voiced lines. Not sure what they did with that with the patch because I played it in Japanese (and on the Dreamcast, although I do have 2 Saturn copies of the first game), but that might have something to do with it if they didn't adjust it. On Dreamcast, the game has an extremely fast text skip function that you unlock once you finish the game; it's one of the fastest text skip functions I've ever seen in anything. They slowed it down considerably in 2 and it's not present on Saturn at all.

Battle speed is annoyingly slow unless you press a button to make it faster, but it generally gets better as the series went on and although it's been a while, I think 2 gives an option to play the battles at high speed, at least on Dreamcast. 2, and only 2, and once again at least on Dreamcast, has an optional hard mode that you unlock upon completing the game for the first time. Sakura Taisen 2 also has some of the most interesting and creative battles I've seen, far surpassing basically any strategy RPG I've played, which is quite surprising considering the strategy part is not the main focus of the series.

They are all relatively short games, though, with 1, 2, 3, and V (yeah, they switched to roman numerals for V) and Shin Sakura Taisen on PS4 all being about 15~20 hours max. 4 is only about 6.5~7 hours, probably because they rushed the entire development of the game from concept to finish in order to get it on shelves ASAP; the devs made it because they were told of the discontinuation of the Dreamcast and didn't want 3 to be the last one on the Dreamcast. You've probably noticed by now due to how many times I've mentioned the Dreamcast, but yes, Dreamcast is the best way to play all of these games.

[Lander]

I'm not too far into it yet but I am enjoying how effective blocking and backing up is at the moment, reminds me of the slower paced Demons's Souls and Dark Souls 1 pace with combat. Dark Souls 3 and Elden Ring, while some of my favorite games, are really fast relative to earlier Souls games.

It gets pretty crazy once you find the rhythm and really start to abuse the systems, sometimes resembling Ninja Gaiden's sheer aggressive efficiency. Has that fighting game thing where certain moves are just better or more safe, like never using the high stance roll when you can freely cancel into the low dash (ideally with just-framed full stamina refill fo' free), and then cancel back to get your heavies in.

Feels really good to shred through a map that way and time Living Weapon to wipe the tough fights, though it takes a while to reach the balance sweet-spot between brutal poverty adventuring and Lv99 EZ Walk. I remember getting pasted by the Tengu enemies for a good while before getting there.

...Or you can roll an Onmyo build and use slow talismans to trivialize everything, but I was never much for that.

Pretty impressive that they pulled off the RPG build range thing on top of signature technical combat, now I think about it. The alpha was harshly punishing to defensive play, since lock-on didn't lock your facing and backturned hits were double damage, so retreating was super dangerous. Much wailing and gnashing of teeth from the hardcore sect when they changed that, but I think it worked out

[Sima Tuna]

Is there any good English-language entry point for Sakura Taisen games? I don't read Japanese. What about the few localized Sakura Wars games?

I'm currently playing Gothic 2: Night of the Raven. Game is hard as balls but very enjoyable.

[Steven]

Is there any good English-language entry point for Sakura Taisen games? I don't read Japanese. What about the few localized Sakura Wars games?

Saturn patch, which lets you play the worst or second worst version of the first game, depending on how you feel about the PS2 remake (which I mostly disliked). That's it. Alternatively, there are translated scripts for every game on GameFAQs, but I think they are partial and I don't know how good they are.

There is V on PS2 and the overeseas-exclusive Wii version that doesn't exist in Japan, but it's the worst game in the entire series aside from its Japanese PS2 exclusive prologue game, which is considered kusoge with absolutely no redeeming factors. Nobody liked V, which is a very big reason why the series died for a decade and a half after it was made. In a vacuum it's actually okay, which is why people that start with it generally seem to like it, but compared to what came before it fails at basically everything.

I guess there is also Shin Sakura Taisen on PS4, but I recommend saving that until after 1-4.

[Gamer707b]

Decided to take a break from bullet hell shmupping for a bit. Been in a N64 mood, so fired up Star Wars Rouge Squadron. I've had the game for over 10 years, and I've been wanting to get back to it "one day." I was into heavy retro buying years back, and now I'm trying to get to some of them. So far I'm enjoying this one.

[SuperDeadite]

Sakura Taisen 3 is the best of the series for me. Japanese fans generally consider 2 to be the best, but with the exception of Orihime (who is a total fuckin badass), the game was basically just more of the same. 3 though really won me over. The cast is just perfect. The new 3D battles are fun (and still look great on VGA-CRT), the plot felt fresher, and no fuckin Iris.

By the way, for the last month I have been completely addicted to The Armor of Glittering Clarias. Style wise, this feels more like a Sakura Taisen game than a Giga game. Change a few plot details, and this could easily be "Sakura Taisen London." I highly recommend this one to any ST fan.

[hazys]

Sakura Taisen is a masterpiece, except for Iris, who is a terrible character. It was the most expensive game Sega ever made at the time of its release, and afterwards the sequels got even larger budgets, which is clearly reflected in the quality of the artwork and animation being stupidly good; go check out the OP movie for 3, which has an absolutely unbelievable amount of animation frames. The sequels are better games, too; I consider Sakura Taisen 2 to be one of the absolute best games on both the Saturn and the Dreamcast.

Thanks for clearing that up, I wasn't aware of the improvements made to the Dreamcast port. Seems like the definitive edition, but the patch is for Saturn and EOPs can't be choosers, so...

Having now finished the game (I got Kanna), I had a great time! The last couple episodes really pile on the drama, and it's a very satisfactory conclusion. I was surprised by some of the themes and plot elements brought up, but I don't wanna get into spoilers here. I can certainly see myself doing another run later and probably go for Sumire. The combat section never really puts up a challenge, but some of the latter bosses do make you think a bit more tactically. Fantastic animated scenes as well.

Regarding text speed it might be an issue with the patch, since the text finishes loading well before the voice acting is done, but this isn't as big an issue as some of the catchphrases the girls will sometimes say before their turn in battle, which loads at a crawl. Never unbearable, just a nuisance.

Here's hoping the translation of 2 is finished soon. I think someone's working on 3 as well.

[BrianC]

I only played the Sakura Taisen Columns games, but I enjoyed what have played of them. Only the DC sequel has a translation, though. They both have visual novel elements and the plot of the Saturn one seems to have something to do with a school play with the loser having to play an embarrassing role like a tree. I also saw an anime based off Sakura Taisen and remember it being enjoyable.

[Steven]

Sakura Taisen 3 is the best of the series for me. Japanese fans generally consider 2 to be the best, but with the exception of Orihime (who is a total fuckin badass), the game was basically just more of the same. 3 though really won me over. The cast is just perfect. The new 3D battles are fun (and still look great on VGA-CRT), the plot felt fresher, and no fuckin Iris.

By the way, for the last month I have been completely addicted to The Armor of Glittering Clarias. Style wise, this feels more like a Sakura Taisen game than a Giga game. Change a few plot details, and this could easily be "Sakura Taisen London." I highly recommend this one to any ST fan.

Giga is dead now, so finding a copy might be mildly interesting.

As for 3, just getting rid of Iris alone makes it worth playing, but I found it oddly detached from the previous games and 4, and the new battle system has some oddities, like having your units get stuck on each other when fighting in smaller maps. I think I vaguely remember this being at least fixed in Atsuki Chishio Ni and maybe in 4, but I don't remember and it might just have been Kanna being able to jump over people and Iris teleporting through people. I really don't remember. Coquelicot is probably the single best/least annoying child character in anything ever, too, so even her presence is a welcome inversion of the typical stupid annoying little kid character type thing.

It's definitely a more advanced game on a technical level, what with the new Analog LIPS and stuff. It's really too bad that they had the opportunity to make a really great remake of the first game using the new ideas from 3 but ended up making Atsuki Chishio Ni instead. The Kohran chapter in Atsuki Chishio Ni is unforgivably poorly written.

Sakura Taisen is a masterpiece, except for Iris, who is a terrible character. It was the most expensive game Sega ever made at the time of its release, and afterwards the sequels got even larger budgets, which is clearly reflected in the quality of the artwork and animation being stupidly good; go check out the OP movie for 3, which has an absolutely unbelievable amount of animation frames. The sequels are better games, too; I consider Sakura Taisen 2 to be one of the absolute best games on both the Saturn and the Dreamcast.

Thanks for clearing that up, I wasn't aware of the improvements made to the Dreamcast port. Seems like the definitive edition, but the patch is for Saturn and EOPs can't be choosers, so...

Having now finished the game (I got Kanna), I had a great time! The last couple episodes really pile on the drama, and it's a very satisfactory conclusion. I was surprised by some of the themes and plot elements brought up, but I don't wanna get into spoilers here. I can certainly see myself doing another run later and probably go for Sumire. The combat section never really puts up a challenge, but some of the latter bosses do make you think a bit more tactically. Fantastic animated scenes as well.

Regarding text speed it might be an issue with the patch, since the text finishes loading well before the voice acting is done, but this isn't as big an issue as some of the catchphrases the girls will sometimes say before their turn in battle, which loads at a crawl. Never unbearable, just a nuisance.

Here's hoping the translation of 2 is finished soon. I think someone's working on 3 as well.

The best way to play is technically the PC versions, but good luck getting them to run without a mid-2000s Windows PC. It can be done, especially if you get the rare 2007 versions, but no promises... so yeah, Dreamcast lol.

I finished a Sumire playthrough about a year ago after a Sakura playthrough and have been meaning to do all of the rest, but I haven't gotten to it yet. I think you get something if you finish everyone's routes in at least one game, but like everything else, I forgot.

These games do bring up a lot of stuff that was pretty surprising, though, and if you don't know your Japanese history all that well you might get a little lost at times. The writing generally gets better from 1-3, although 4 was clearly rushed, V was flat and lifeless, and most people HATE Atsuki Chishio Ni's Kohran chapter, and it's easy to see why; it's REALLY REALLY REALLY BAD and also creates an extremely obvious continuity error with 2 that shouldn't exist.

I only played the Sakura Taisen Columns games, but I enjoyed what have played of them. Only the DC sequel has a translation, though. They both have visual novel elements and the plot of the Saturn one seems to have something to do with a school play with the loser having to play an embarrassing role like a tree. I also saw an anime based off Sakura Taisen and remember it being enjoyable.

Columns is great and Columns 2 is even better, but they play somewhat differently, notably with 2 being slower but having more depth due to the fire/wind/mountain/etc. thingy.

For the anime, there are like 2 of them that are worth watching: Katsudou Shashin, which takes place between 3 and 4 and oddly serves as a prologue to V Episode 0 (which you probably shouldn't play because it's not good lol. You'll have to play it in order to finish the storyline of Katsudou Shashin, though) and V, and the Sumire OVA that takes place after 4, which is somewhat relevant to the plot of Shin Sakura Taisen.

[dummy]

Finished Assassin's Creed 1

Times I used the throwing knives: 0

Times I used monks: 0

Times I used the praying/pretending to be a monk button: 1 (forced to do it in the tutorial)

Times I used the hidden blade: 2 (forced in the tutorial and the very first templar guard in the temple of Solomon/prologue)**

Basically, Assassin's Creed 1 is a game that you could easily get by with just the sword. The sword is literally the only thing you need. You occasionally need the your fists/bare hands for interrogations, but thats about it. Its a game that not only has very few tools (only four, 1-hidden blade, 2-sword, 3-throwing knives and 4-fists) but requires even less tools.

**about the hidden blade. As I said, I always used the sword and the direct approach, and this showed something strange. So, combat in the AC games is somewhat RNG-based, for example you have this counterattack mechanic, and and depending on the RNG, your character either kicks/throws away the enemy he countered against (non-lethal), or he kills them (lethal). When it comes to the nine targets, the "bosses" if you will, should you engage them in combat or chase after them and repeatedly hit them with the sword (some targets run away rather than fight, such as the slaver or the chubby rich guy), they will fall down on the ground, and Altair automatically, without any input from the player, uses the hidden blade on them.

In fact, "automatic" is a word that I'd use to describe AC 1 (and maybe later games). Parkour is automatic, stealth is automatic, Combat is mostly automatic, you only do two things: A-repeatedly mash the attack button, or B-use counterattacks. Because of A I never had to really use the dodge command since the enemies almost never had the chance to attack me because I was relentlessly bullying them with my sword. And on the off-chance they did attack me, counterattacking was the better option. Speaking of dodging....

And I had heard that the only unique thing that AC 1 has going for it, that is, the one and only thing that only AC 1 has and the other games don't, is a "praying" mechanic in which Altair, the protag, pretends to be a monk and makes a praying gesture so long as you hold the A button (or X in Sony consoles). This is supposedly the only unique trait of AC 1, and alongside this mechanic, AC 1 has one type of hiding place that the other games don't: monks.

It kinda depends on what we mean by "unique". The mechanic of pretending to be a monk was replaced in AC2 by blending--you can hide in any group of 3+ civilians, with no need for special gestures. Some later games like Valhalla do have groups of monks for you to hide in. I think every mechanic from AC1 has appeared in at least one other AC game, although every other AC game removes at least one or two mechanics that were present in AC1. For example Unity doesn't let you fight with the hidden blade as your weapon in open combat, and AC2 doesn't have the parkour "vaulting" ability from AC1.

Fists-only

You get the dodge and counter abilities at certain points in the story. I feel confident that it's possible to do fists-only before that, but it probably is something really dumb like "punch once, sprint away, repeat". Or maybe spamming the grab ability, like piss off the guards, lead them to a roof, throw them off it.

For some strange reason, Altair can dodge only and only when his sword is out. He can't dodge for some reason if he's in a fistfight stance. It might be possible to do a fists-only run the way you mentioned, but that feels very cheesy and video gamey, and it also seems tedious to do. Fighting normally against sword-wielding enemies using only the fists doesn't seem possible.

And speaking of unique things, I'm a few hours into Assassin's Creed 2, and so far there's nothing that AC 1 has that AC 2 doesn't. That is, everything from AC 1 returns to AC 2, the monk blending system has been evolved as you said.

I've researched a little bit and it seems that despite the overall similarities, each of the Ezio trilogy games have something unique going for them that the other two games don't, making each of them worth playing (can't say the same for AC 1).

AC 2 has a bunch of fun puzzles.
Brotherhood is 2 but with a lot of new weapons and mechanics and a structurally different city.
Revelations is Bro but with less weapons, but it instead has bomb crafting and a new hookblade traversal system.

3 has different systems (combat, parkour, stealth, etc), so it's different enough. 4 has more of a focus on seas and ships. Rogue is 4 but with less content but some new weapons and mechanics.

AC 1 has nothing going for it though, gameplay-wise that is. It obviously has a different setting and atmosphere than the other games, but aesthetics aside it's a lesser version of AC 2. I can't say I recommend AC 1 for the gameplay, play it only if you're interested in the story and/or the setting.

Speaking of stories, I dislike the Desmond sections, not because of the writing, but because of their gameplay. In AC 1 you can't even run as Desmond, you have a slow-ass walk, and everytime on the main menu when you want to continue the game, you have to sit through a somewhat long loading screen, but instead of being booted into the ancient Arabian setting, you're instead booted on the modern day setting with Desmond staring into the animus. You then select the continue option of the Animus and then go through another loading screen, and only then are you booted into the ancient time setting.......why? Why did the director of the game thought this was a good idea? Desmond doesn't even have a different gameplay style or anything, he's just a lesser version of Altair/Ezio. In 1, all he can do is walk and talk to people, something you can also do as Altair.
In 2 all he can do is walk, talk, punch and do parkour. Thing is, the new additions, punching and doing parkour, is something that both Altair and Ezio can do too......Desmond doesn't even have a different fighting style or parkour style, so I fail to see the pragmatic value of the modern day setting.

Anyway, after AC 2 I think instead of continuing the AC series I'll start playing either Ephemeral Fantasia, or Panzer Dragoon Saga. A user here mentioned Sakura Taisen 1, and I'm interested in that too, especially because of my....strange personality, which should make the VN choices I'm presented with interesting.

[SuperDeadite]

Sakura Taisen 3 is the best of the series for me. Japanese fans generally consider 2 to be the best, but with the exception of Orihime (who is a total fuckin badass), the game was basically just more of the same. 3 though really won me over. The cast is just perfect. The new 3D battles are fun (and still look great on VGA-CRT), the plot felt fresher, and no fuckin Iris.

By the way, for the last month I have been completely addicted to The Armor of Glittering Clarias. Style wise, this feels more like a Sakura Taisen game than a Giga game. Change a few plot details, and this could easily be "Sakura Taisen London." I highly recommend this one to any ST fan.

Giga is dead now, so finding a copy might be mildly interesting.

As for 3, just getting rid of Iris alone makes it worth playing, but I found it oddly detached from the previous games and 4, and the new battle system has some oddities, like having your units get stuck on each other when fighting in smaller maps. I think I vaguely remember this being at least fixed in Atsuki Chishio Ni and maybe in 4, but I don't remember and it might just have been Kanna being able to jump over people and Iris teleporting through people. I really don't remember. Coquelicot is probably the single best/least annoying child character in anything ever, too, so even her presence is a welcome inversion of the typical stupid annoying little kid character type thing.

It's definitely a more advanced game on a technical level, what with the new Analog LIPS and stuff. It's really too bad that they had the opportunity to make a really great remake of the first game using the new ideas from 3 but ended up making Atsuki Chishio Ni instead. The Kohran chapter in Atsuki Chishio Ni is unforgivably poorly written.

Sakura Taisen is a masterpiece, except for Iris, who is a terrible character. It was the most expensive game Sega ever made at the time of its release, and afterwards the sequels got even larger budgets, which is clearly reflected in the quality of the artwork and animation being stupidly good; go check out the OP movie for 3, which has an absolutely unbelievable amount of animation frames. The sequels are better games, too; I consider Sakura Taisen 2 to be one of the absolute best games on both the Saturn and the Dreamcast.

Thanks for clearing that up, I wasn't aware of the improvements made to the Dreamcast port. Seems like the definitive edition, but the patch is for Saturn and EOPs can't be choosers, so...

Having now finished the game (I got Kanna), I had a great time! The last couple episodes really pile on the drama, and it's a very satisfactory conclusion. I was surprised by some of the themes and plot elements brought up, but I don't wanna get into spoilers here. I can certainly see myself doing another run later and probably go for Sumire. The combat section never really puts up a challenge, but some of the latter bosses do make you think a bit more tactically. Fantastic animated scenes as well.

Regarding text speed it might be an issue with the patch, since the text finishes loading well before the voice acting is done, but this isn't as big an issue as some of the catchphrases the girls will sometimes say before their turn in battle, which loads at a crawl. Never unbearable, just a nuisance.

Here's hoping the translation of 2 is finished soon. I think someone's working on 3 as well.

The best way to play is technically the PC versions, but good luck getting them to run without a mid-2000s Windows PC. It can be done, especially if you get the rare 2007 versions, but no promises... so yeah, Dreamcast lol.

I finished a Sumire playthrough about a year ago after a Sakura playthrough and have been meaning to do all of the rest, but I haven't gotten to it yet. I think you get something if you finish everyone's routes in at least one game, but like everything else, I forgot.

These games do bring up a lot of stuff that was pretty surprising, though, and if you don't know your Japanese history all that well you might get a little lost at times. The writing generally gets better from 1-3, although 4 was clearly rushed, V was flat and lifeless, and most people HATE Atsuki Chishio Ni's Kohran chapter, and it's easy to see why; it's REALLY REALLY REALLY BAD and also creates an extremely obvious continuity error with 2 that shouldn't exist.

I only played the Sakura Taisen Columns games, but I enjoyed what have played of them. Only the DC sequel has a translation, though. They both have visual novel elements and the plot of the Saturn one seems to have something to do with a school play with the loser having to play an embarrassing role like a tree. I also saw an anime based off Sakura Taisen and remember it being enjoyable.

Columns is great and Columns 2 is even better, but they play somewhat differently, notably with 2 being slower but having more depth due to the fire/wind/mountain/etc. thingy.

For the anime, there are like 2 of them that are worth watching: Katsudou Shashin, which takes place between 3 and 4 and oddly serves as a prologue to V Episode 0 (which you probably shouldn't play because it's not good lol. You'll have to play it in order to finish the storyline of Katsudou Shashin, though) and V, and the Sumire OVA that takes place after 4, which is somewhat relevant to the plot of Shin Sakura Taisen.

Clarias (main game) and Clarias F (expansion pack) are still in stock on Amazon Japan for about 5,000yen each. Pick them both up before they disappear.

The massive Baldr Masterpiece Chronicle is also still in stock as well and well worth picking up as the awful copy protection of the original releases was removed, and all games were patched to run on directx9 Win10.

[dummy]

By the way, does anyone here like strategy games (RTS, TBS, Tactics, grand strategy, city builders, 4X, Tower Defense, etc)? Especially City Builders and 4X games, does anyone here like those genres?

If so, what are you favorite strategy games? I want to see if Shmuppers who are fans of strategy games have a drastically different taste than people who are only fans of strategy games (and not shmups).

On a related note, does anyone here like "programming" games? Carnage Heart, Gladiabots, RoboForge, SpaceChem, that sort of thing?

[Sima Tuna]

By the way, does anyone here like strategy games (RTS, TBS, Tactics, grand strategy, city builders, 4X, Tower Defense, etc)? Especially City Builders and 4X games, does anyone here like those genres?

If so, what are you favorite strategy games? I want to see if Shmuppers who are fans of strategy games have a drastically different taste than people who are only fans of strategy games (and not shmups).

On a related note, does anyone here like "programming" games? Carnage Heart, Gladiabots, RoboForge, SpaceChem, that sort of thing?

I like tactics rpgs. Tactics Ogre, Ogre Battle, Final Fantasy Tactics, Fire Emblem (mostly the older games) etc. I don't know if you count Warband as a strategy game. I've played Stellaris and Total War. Total War: Rome and Total War: Medieval II were my favorites. I also like the older tecmo-koei strategy games, like Romance of the Three Kingdoms and Uncharted Waters: New Horizons.

[NYN]

I'll buy it for that alone. Heck, I bought the Wii-exclusive The Forgotten Sands just for that.

Asking you, if you might remember: is the unlockable the Mac port? Same as SoT? Or is it the all improved SNES version? Do you know? Does anyone know? The Interbet sure doesn't, that much is plain.

Is the remaster PoP Classic worth the get?

And why is it exactly I never once hear somebody mention PoP2: The Shadow and the Flame? Who here has still the sand for it?

[Lander]

By the way, does anyone here like strategy games (RTS, TBS, Tactics, grand strategy, city builders, 4X, Tower Defense, etc)? Especially City Builders and 4X games, does anyone here like those genres?

I wouldn't call myself a genre savant, but enjoy some Command & Conquer. Red Alert 2 is probably my favourite in mechanical terms - simple baseline, but with enough unique units, abilities, and counters to be interesting - but my nostalgia is all rooted in cheesy FMV Kane ranting about Tiberium.

Oh, and Constructor I don't know how well the RTS mechanics hold up, but the tongue-in-cheek satire of british life always entertained.

City builders are a bit of a white whale, in that I've had a lingering interest for ages, but have never known where to start with the genre.

Though the longer form / wider scope grand strategy stuff has always seemed a bit intimidating; like it'd take a lot of lengthy sessions to start understanding whether my choices would screw me in the long term.

On a related note, does anyone here like "programming" games? Carnage Heart, Gladiabots, RoboForge, SpaceChem, that sort of thing?

Definitely, though I've only laid hands on the Zachtronics games; TIS-100, Shenzhen I/O and Exapunks are favourites. Fun theses on fundaments, modularity, and concurrency, respectively.

The rest I appreciate from a distance. Perhaps it's due to being a programmer by trade rather than an engineer, but the more abstract machinery of SpaceChem, Opus Magnum, etc. tends to tie me in knots much quicker than traditional textual syntax

[SuperDeadite]

Made a video showcasing all 6 characters from 閃鋼のクラリアスF (The Armor of Glittering Clarias F.)
This game is all I've been playing for a month now. Too much fun!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V5VA6l6jeJU

[dummy]

Those of you who have played all and/or most of the Sakura Taisen games (1, 2, 3, 4, Atsui/ps2 remake of 1, 5, shin/the musou game), how would rank or rate the games in terms gameplay and gameplay alone? On a scale of 1 to 10, what score would you give you to the gameplay quality of the top game of your ranking? On a related note, I've heard that the gameplay of Valkyria Chronicles series is similar to Sakura Taisen 3 and post-ST3 games....if so, how would you compare the gameplay of VC against ST (or rank the VC series games' gameplay alongside the ST games)? On another related note, how would you say Sakura Taisen fares against other SRPGs, such as Front Mission or Tactics Ogre or Fire Emblem and whatnot?

City builders are a bit of a white whale, in that I've had a lingering interest for ages, but have never known where to start with the genre.

Cities: Skylines (2015) is generally the most popular game of that genre, that is, the general consensus is that Cities: Skylines is the best the genre has to offer. I've played very little of it, so personally I can't give you a proper opinion of the game myself, but what little I played of it didn't frustrate me in any way and did not show signs of large flaws, so the popularity of the game+my own relatively positive experience with the game makes Cities: Skylines an appealing recommendation.

On the other hand, if you like older/90s stuff (since you mentioned loving Red Alert 2), I can recommend SimCity 3000, a 1999 game and a rather excellent city builder for its time.
Jurassic Park: Operation Genesis is also a pretty cool game though it focuses more on the relationship of the city with the local flora and fauna+dinosaurs rather than just the city itself.

On the RTS side of things, I highly recommend Supreme Commander, so if you ever get in the mood to play another RTS game sometime and don't know what to play, Supreme Commander (especially alongside its expansion pack: Forged Alliance) is an excellent choice.

[Steven]

Those of you who have played all and/or most of the Sakura Taisen games (1, 2, 3, 4, Atsui/ps2 remake of 1, 5, shin/the musou game), how would rank or rate the games in terms gameplay and gameplay alone? On a scale of 1 to 10, what score would you give you to the gameplay quality of the top game of your ranking?

If you are referring specifically to the strategy parts, and disregarding map design and enemy placement, and therefore focusing only on the mechanics of how they function, I'd give every one of them like a 5. In every single case, and without exception, it's there and nothing is broken, but nothing is great. It's simply serviceable.

If it was possible to skip everything else and play only the battles, most would probably consider the games not worth playing. There is no equipment. There are no experience levels. In the case of Shin Sakura Taisen, there is no strategy for the most part. Unit stats are semi-fixed, and stats will be temporarily increased or decreased on a per-character basis per chapter based on your answers during the LIPS parts. After the chapter is over, everything gets reset to default.

There are some special combination attacks that you can do with Ogami/Taiga/Kamiyama and someone else, but you have to meet certain requirements outside of battle to do them, which again is mostly dependent on your answers during LIPS parts, and these attacks are not permanent, so you can lose them between chapters, although I think once your ending is basically locked in you get to keep that girl's combination attack... but it's been a while and I might be wrong. These combination attacks are intentionally supremely cheesy, so they are worth checking out just to see how ridiculous they are!

On a related note, I've heard that the gameplay of Valkyria Chronicles series is similar to Sakura Taisen 3 and post-ST3 games....if so, how would you compare the gameplay of VC against ST (or rank the VC series games' gameplay alongside the ST games)? On another related note, how would you say Sakura Taisen fares against other SRPGs, such as Front Mission or Tactics Ogre or Fire Emblem and whatnot?

A decent amount of the Sakura Taisen devs went on to make VC and they improved on the battle system of 3/4/V to use it in those games. They are the closest thing there is to a successor to Sakura Taisen, so if you've played VC, imagine that but without equipment/EXP/classes/tank/APC/etc. and you have a decent approximation of how the battle system in 3/4/V works.

That said, Sakura Taisen 2, as I mentioned above a few posts ago, has more interesting and creative stage designs and win/loss conditions than any Fire Emblem or Devil Survivor or anything else I've played.

Clarias (main game) and Clarias F (expansion pack) are still in stock on Amazon Japan for about 5,000yen each. Pick them both up before they disappear.

The massive Baldr Masterpiece Chronicle is also still in stock as well and well worth picking up as the awful copy protection of the original releases was removed, and all games were patched to run on directx9 Win10.

Might have to go pick those up. I forgot Giga did Baldr, which I've wanted to play for a while. Baldr Sky 1 and 2 are on GOG as a combination thingy, but no Japanese text = do not want.

By the way, does anyone here like strategy games (RTS, TBS, Tactics, grand strategy, city builders, 4X, Tower Defense, etc)? Especially City Builders and 4X games, does anyone here like those genres?

Yes.

If so, what are you favorite strategy games? I want to see if Shmuppers who are fans of strategy games have a drastically different taste than people who are only fans of strategy games (and not shmups).

Obligatory Devil Survivor and Total Annihilation. I also got Workers & Resources: Soviet Republic not long ago because it looks amazing but have not had time to play it yet, partially because learning how to actually play it is intimidating as hell due to how complex it is.

[XoPachi]

Just noticed Link loses his reflection when he passes over the patch of sand where Dark Link spawns. Excellent detail.

[SuperDeadite]

So after finishing up Clarias, I felt like I wanted something a little less intense, so now playing Baldr Bringer. Unlike the rest of the series, Bringer plays more like a Borderlands style looter shooter, but top-down 2D. (with robots and hentai) I don't play this genre much, but I'm really digging it.

[Steven]

Finished Metal Gear Solid 2 (which is the best one) in Japanese for the first time, having previously done Peace Walker before its English release and also PC Ground Zeroes with its crazy DOF (if you haven't seen the DOF on PC Ground Zeroes, go check it out. It's insane! They made it way too strong) in Japanese. Normal difficulty, 0 kills, 0 alerts aside from the mandatory ones, 0 rations, 0 continues, and all of that stuff. Watched all of the cutscenes and codec stuff, so it took about 7.5 hours.

Played Master Collection version on Steam Deck, which now works mostly perfectly. The aiming sensitivity is not great and the audio balance quite poor, but it's playable and has Japanese, so I guess it's finally time to retire my old faithful US Vita copy of HD Collection. *Big Boss Salute*

The audio quality itself is generally low, and while there is a mod to fix this for English, for Japanese you're still fucked as far as I know. MGS 3 has it even worse.

The script was nowhere near as difficult as I thought it would be, but I'd have to have the English translation side-by-side to compare it to the translation. I'm not sure how many people here know this, but for some reason Kojima decided to not put Japanese voice acting in the Japanese PS2 release of Substance at all, only English, so that would be an okay way to do it. You have to get Sons of Liberty if you want Japanese voice acting on PS2.

I don't really have much else to say. It's MGS 2 in Japanese. MGS 3 is next and in progress. Already got the tsuchinoko and am at Bolshaya Past Base now.

[Ghegs]

I'll buy it for that alone. Heck, I bought the Wii-exclusive The Forgotten Sands just for that.

Asking you, if you might remember: is the unlockable the Mac port? Same as SoT? Or is it the all improved SNES version? Do you know? Does anyone know? The Interbet sure doesn't, that much is plain.

Sorry, didn't notice this before. Yes, the unlockable Prince of Persia in The Forgotten Sands is the Mac version.

I'm not sure if I would call the SNES version an improved version...it has more, certainly, but I really like the trimness and length of the original. I think the original is the perfect length for a single-sitting playthrough, and the SNES version more or less triples the length.

[Sumez]

The time limit on SNES is doubled, and it also takes about twice as long to play through. It's stretching what's acceptable for a single session, but I think it manages to fit well within what works.

I agree it's not like a straight objective improvement over the original(s) (with Mac, Amiga, and MS-DOS versions all being brilliant representatives) - it's an alternate take on the same game, and I think both versions are worth playing independent of the other.
Ultimately I do think the SNES game is the better one though, so if I were to pick one as "the ultimate" POP1, I'd pick that one. A lot of the new stages are really good, and the way it mixes up environments and a couple of new enemies is done extremely tastefully.

[ryu]

Was playing Silent Hill: The Short Message with friends last night. The gameplay is somewhat reminiscent of Shattered Memories, just really watered down: No puzzles, only one monster to run from and the map only consists of small rooms and tight corridors. However they got the atmosphere right. Still, the game is way too in-your-face with its portrayal of the protagonist's mental issues and her life problems. Playing this felt really exhausting and the trigger warnings appear to be sensible for once. Otherwise the story is alright. I saw a lot of symbolism that actually wasn't there in the end. Disappointing on the one hand because it feels like they could have made something more interesting, but on the other hand I wasn't able to see the ending midway through the game so that's something.

Not a terrible way to spend an otherwise empty evening if you can tolerate the shaky controls and terrible main character. But certainly no revival of the franchise. The developers forgot their job was to make a game firstmost.

[xxx1993]

Been playing the heck out of Operation Wolf Returns: First Mission lately.

[null1024]

A lot of Beatmania IIDX, hampered slightly because I think button 7 on P1 side at my local Round 1 is screwing up, leaving me to mostly be playing BMS songs at home.
I could try and learn P2 side [or just play on P2 side with auto-scratch on until it's fixed lol, because I know I'm far too lazy to change my hand positioning]. I could also go down to Miami and play at the IIDX 29 cab at Arcade Odyssey, but that's a long-ass drive, I put a bunch of money on my R1 card, non-Lightning IIDX cabinets don't have headphone jacks [genuinely like what the FUCK Konami, it was like 20 years before they did it], and it doesn't save scores because it's offline [fuck live service shit, I wish games let me save scores to USB, even though I know exposed ports on an arcade cabinet are a maintenance nightmare and a lot of cabs out-in-the-wild only just barely get away with having headphone jacks that don't get damaged].

I haven't progressed nearly as much as I'd like, but the game is just naturally hard.
It doesn't feel so bad being stuck when everyone is just like "lmao, the game is just like that; you'll get better, and then you hit your head for a while, repeat".
Probably should start mucking about with using random on lower difficulties so I can get some weirder patterns into my muscle memory, a lot of lower level songs just never do anything interesting to your hands, so you don't learn what comes up in higher level ones [which are generally also expecting more from you at the same time; I know there are parts of some songs that I absolutely just mash on and I don't actually know how I'm supposed to hit things ].

Also, I really need to move my garbage pile home controller into a proper enclosure. I already made the frame I'm putting it in, I just need to cut the holes. I miiiight have made the body too small though, but we'll see. I have some more MDF lying around, so I could probably hack together an extension, even if I would rather not have to.

[Steven]

MGS3 done. I forgot to eat The End's parrot, which I captured and completed the game with the parrot in my possession, and I never called Sigint. He still gets some lines in other scripted radio conversations if you never call him, which I either forgot or never realized before. I was very tempted to eat the tsuchinoko, but I'll do that next time.

Unfortunately the aiming sensitivity is maybe even worse, or possibly just more annoying, here than it is in 2. Hard to tell which is worse or if they are the same, but I somehow felt it was worse here. There is a crouch walk mod for this, so I might try that on my next playthrough. I feel like that might sort of break the game balance, but who cares. Not really sure what I will do now, and I have a Japanese copy of MGS4 somewhere, but I don't really feel like finding it right now.

BTW in case you didn't know, Calorie Mates are real and they are good. They are probably not good for you, and I think they weren't invented for a while after the game actually takes place (edit: checked, and this game happens 19 years before Calorie Mates existed), but they do exist and I do like them. Well, there was that potato flavoured one that they stopped making about a decade ago that was supremely nasty, but other than that they are good. The plain one was also a bit weird, but they don't make that anymore either. The new vanilla one that replaced the plain flavour (is plain a fucking flavour? Whatever. You know what I mean) is the best one, so I hope it doesn't go away. Damn, I just realized that I probably wrote more about Calorie Mates than I did about the game. Oh well. That's how it goes.