"Good" kusoge

[Steven]

Anyone play Devil's Third and have impressions? Never had a Wii U and now it's stupidly expensive anyway. Always had a feeling it might be decent in spite of the kusoge tier reviews it got.

I've always heard that it's actually pretty decent. Japanese version isn't ridiculously expensive like the NA version, but it's still more than I'd pay for a Wii U game, especially since the Wii U is region locked and my Wii U is American and I'm too lazy to hack it.

Of course, there is always that whole thing where people that have a rare and expensive game say it's super awesome and then you play it and find out very quickly that the game is not that great and that people are saying those things simply because the game is expensive, much like with games like the NA version of Magic Knight Rayearth on Saturn, which is one of the cheapest games on the Saturn in Japan, too. Magic Knight Rayearth isn't bad (at least, the Japanese version isn't. lol Wrecking Designs), but it's certainly nothing special at all.

[BryanM]

For fans of games like KungFu/Hokuto No Ken, go play "Guerriere Lyeward" for X68000. Just do it!

I hear and obey, milord~

I do like how aggressively everything runs at you, no posers like Last Battle here. The consistency on the sprite art is very sketch; I particularly dislike how the protagonist's sprite has some body horror going on with a Longcat abdomen and little mole legs.. and muffin hands. The softcore porn skits are mysterious and don't feel well-earned (they're given too freely to foster a sense of pride and accomplishment), though I understand they have to be there for the plot. 3/5 icycalms.

These PC consoles are really cool and it's a pity we never had many games like that domestically for the 386/486 era. Games like Rusty et el. At this point, they're like fantasy consoles like the Pico8 to us Bugerlanders.

[cj iwakura]

Compile Heart are a blight on humanity. I actually played Sprung when I thought it was the closest thing we'd get to a dating sim in the US. Boy is it some drek, no matter whether you play as the girl or the guy, they're both bland as spoiled milk.

What on earth sucks about God Hand lol. It's one of the best games in its genre - some of the best combat in any 3D action game.

The problem is, it's just a game about punching people.

[Steven]

Compile Heart is a weird company. They'll put out some garbage, but then they will put out some stuff that is actually good, but after that they revert to making garbage for a few years, and that's not even counting those awful Neptune spinoffs that they shit out.

They still have yet to learn that optimizing games for the target hardware is a real thing that exists and that it's good; 25~30 FPS with dips into the teens is typically good enough for them, and they are apparently still putting out 30FPS games on PS5 for some reason despite basically no increases in graphics quality from PS3, and even then you could probably pass most of their PS3 games off as original Xbox games and nobody would question it. Fortunately, the PS5 gets some of their PS4 games like Mary Skelter 2 and Finale running at a constant 60FPS, but that's just because the PS5 has way more than enough overhead to do so.

[Steven]

Today I went to Book Off and I found kusoge: Groove Jigoku V. I don't know anything about this game except that it's apparently kusoge. I know this because it say that it's kusoge right on the obi:



クソゲー決定版, huh. If you insist.

[BryanM]

From my Pico-8 explorations, I offer you... Cow Clicker.

I'll not spoil why it's much less fun than Cookie Clicker, but you'll start to understand very quickly once you start to play.

Compile Heart is a weird company. They'll put out some garbage, but then they will put out some stuff that is actually good, but after that they revert to making garbage for a few years, and that's not even counting those awful Neptune spinoffs that they shit out.

If you think that's bad, you should check out Squaresoft's legendary mobile division. Just hot garbage nobody wants, if you thought nobody wanted a King's Knight sequel, well, the shit throwers flung one of those at the wall too, alongside everything else. (Leadership even sold Lara Croft so they could make an NFT game. Some good shepherds, over there.)

I'd joke about them needing to outsource their final fantasy games in order to make a decent one because it's close to the truth, but I hear a couple of them (out of the thousands they've made) have their fans. Fans that will always be sad because they somehow shut these games off faster than they make them.

It's still absolutely pathetic: just make two live service games. One, a retro pixelart style in the vein of 5 and 6. The other, a retro 3d style in the vein of 7. Make them the best in their vein instead of 100% incremental games meant to be played on the toilet/train in portrait mode, and they'd have gotten so much market share - it's not exactly like they'll ever be making games of that kind on the consoles ever again. Graphics whores wouldn't care; they wouldn't be cannibalizing their main business.

What they get is a munchkin re-telling of 7 instead. Forget about terms of talent - this isn't about an A Team or B Team or Z Team or whatever. They're playing a completely different sport instead. And it ain't makin' games.

It just gets increasingly farcical as more $0 games at the quality level of Genshin get made. It's on par with Blockbuster Video not buying Netflix when they had the chance - Squeenix should have been absolutely dominating this market, but they're not even a distant runner-up. They can barely be considered a participant.

[Steven]

Fortunately, I do not have one of those smart phone things, so I can't actually play those. I did hear that Square put out some Final Fantasy mobile game some time ago where you just slide your finger or stylus or whatever up and down on the screen to play the game and that's pretty much it.

I do remember seeing the ads for the mobile Octopath game on the train, though. I wonder how that turned out, not that it matters because I can't play it and I'm sure it's probably shut down or announced to be shut down already.

[BryanM]

All The Bravest really did set expectations for the market in the toilet, eh? Just a mere seven years later Genshin Impact released with its $200 million budget, one of the most expensive games ever made. And look at that, they even bothered to use Unity for its original purpose: porting your game to a bunch of different devices. PC, Mobile, Console... I'll never understand the Unity fetish the market has, when they rarely port anything. It's dumb that Langrisser M is the exception, not the norm.

It's been years since all it took to be a market leader was to throw together a browser card game featuring cool anime monsters/hot anime girls. Time moves fast, man. Bruce Campbell once said TV shows age like fish, and the same is true of games.

.... freakin' square man. Their flagship franchise, and the game they chose to launch with to set the tone and expectations forever was All The Bravest. Jackie_Chan_Exploding_Head.jpg

"Dur dur this isn't a game it's an APP! ddur" <- Actual literal quote one of the developers used to defend the game.

so I can't actually play those.

You technically can, but mobile emulation on PC is quite a bit of a hog, honestly. Largeish install size (GB's), longish boot up times.

There are actually a lot of games (majority of them not-square) that can be fun for a week or so which is a great deal for $0, there's just the danger of the wicked FOMO trap.

I wonder how that turned out, not that it matters because I can't play it and I'm sure it's probably shut down or announced to be shut down already.

Incredibly enough, Champions of the Continent has pretty good buzz. It seems like it was actually made by someone who cared. It made a million bucks last month in Japan, years after its initial launch and was ranked #600 for US games. It'll probably last another four to ten more years; if it wasn't Squaresoft or it wasn't the apocalypse, I'd say it'd last 12+.

You shouldn't go in expecting the full exact original game, walking is a point-to-point affair, but I'm confident enough to say it isn't All The Bravest. This crowd is a very jaded bunch; jaded in different ways than we are, true, but they've been through some shit too, man. Kicked around like dogs, and I heard some maniac even tried to get them to spend time+money on a gaming-simulation-app where they would slide their finger up and down, hypothetically. We shouldn't belittle their time in their trenches.

Now someone who didn't care, was whoever had control over the Secret of Mana game. What do you think Secret of Mana fans would want? An action RPG with lots of hot sword-on-rabbit hot action? No! How about yet another menu jRPG battler! There's only fifty million of the things already!