The Messenger opens with your unnamed ninja character being given a scroll by a mysterious hero of legend. Your goal from that point on is to trek across the world and deliver said scroll to a group of monks at the top of the highest mountain peak, thus fulfilling an age-old prophecy and ostensibly pushing back the invading forces of Hell.
The reveal of what is contained on the scroll is hilarious.
And that’s the kind of game The Messenger is. It’s a 2D action platformer that stars a ninja out to stop the destruction of his world by demons, but also it takes every opportunity to joke around and keep the adventure a little more light-hearted. This retro-styled throwback game takes plenty of inspiration from games like Ninja Gaiden and Super Metroid and even takes a few cues from the original Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles on the NES. While I’m sure it’s only coincidence, it also feels and plays remarkably similarly to Ninja Striker on 3DS. That’s a compliment, too, because I very much adore Ninja Striker.
I -and most other video game enthusiasts- have been ears-deep in a deluge of quality games these days, and that can often make it easy for certain games to get lost in the shuffle. One particular case was the unfortunate timing of the releases of Octopath Traveler and the Mega Man X Legacy Collections. With release dates just slightly more than a week apart, poor Octopath Traveler was destined to be left behind once all those Mega Mans hit. (And now that Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate is out, even said Mega Mans will be ignored.)
Even so! I have been picking it up here and there to get in an hour or two a week, and I’m still really liking it! Progression through the game has not been quite as smooth as with your garden-variety JRPG, and I think that’s something that I really appreciate about it. One of the things that stands out most is that the entire world is open to you from the moment you clear your starting character’s first chapter. There are no plot gates or lands only accessible by boat/airship. The only thing limiting your travels is whether or not you can handle any area’s local monsters. There are convenient flags on the map which tell you where to go to progress each character’s tale, but that’s really all the direction you’re given. If you feel like you just want to grind up to the point where you can visit the edge of the world, then have at it!
At the outset, I opted to take a very semi-focused route, heading straight toward H’annit’s second chapter, and stopping in the towns along the way to recruit other travelers. But then I doubled back and checked out another town in the opposite direction. After that, I learned that secondary jobs are earned by discovering their shrines hidden around the world, so that became a pretty lengthy distraction. And finally, after having expanded my party to five (one more than can be active), I made it to my original destination and… got absolutely trounced. And by the regular monsters in the area, not even the boss!
Which brings me to why I started writing this in the first place: Octopath Traveler is hard! All the Chapter 1s are fairly tame, but with bosses that scale based on the size of your party. But once you begin hitting Chapter 2s, the difficulty ratchets up to eleven. Unfortunately, this makes grinding a bit of a necessity. It doesn’t take long, because enemies in your level range give out generous amounts of experience points, which seem to be the most important part of survival. Equipment gives nice stat increases, but is generally prohibitively expensive, and monsters don’t drop quite as much money as they do EXP. It helps that I recruited Tressa the merchant, who has several skills that make earning cash easier, but it still seemed like for every new piece of equipment I worked to afford, I gained a couple levels while grinding for the cash.
On the upside of it all, the combat system is still really fun, being a sort of puzzle where you need to balance your BP (that give you extra turns or buff your skills) with breaking enemies’ guards. It was easy at first, but as the monsters started getting stronger and coming in bigger groups, it became trickier to decide which ones to target first or when to spend those oh-so-precious BPs. Do you break all the enemies at once to get a free turn, or do you just focus on taking one down at a time? There’s way more strategy in normal battles in Octopath Traveler than in most similar RPGs.
The boss battles continue to delight me as well. Each one is trickier than the last, and many seem to have a gimmick that really forces you to adapt to different strategies. The boss of Tressa’s Chapter 1 was a duo of pirates who started out pretty basic, but once one of them took a lot of damage, the other began taking any attacks that would have hit his comrade’s weaknesses. And you would think, “Okay, this guy is taking hits for his friend, I’ll just use his weakness instead” but then those end up landing on the first guy, and you’re all like “aaugh these knuckleheads are smarter than I thought!” So you’re forced to use multi-target attacks or alternate breaking them so that they can’t stop you from hitting them with the correct weapon/element. It’s tough! And I love it! H’aanit’s second boss did something completely different, which was to re-roll it’s weaknesses and gain an extra shield point every time it recovered from a break. That battle in particular took roughly 20 minutes and I ended it with my two casters completely drained of MP and the whole party on the brink of death. It was thrilling! Usually battles so close are reserved for final bosses, but every single boss is like that in Octopath Traveler.
After that rough chapter, I’ve decided that may next goal is to recruit the final three travelers before moving onto any more advanced chapters. Hopefully even those easier scenarios will give me the necessary experience buff to make progressing the stories a little more manageable. Even if they don’t, I guess that just means I get to spend more time playing this really fun game. It’s win-win!
You know, I think I’m really starting to get the hang of this “just stop playing games that you aren’t having fun with” thing. It’s an amazing time-saver! At least, unless the game in question is a Mega Man X game…
~ Game Over ~
Mega Man X4 (Switch) – While I do think it holds up fairly well on a high level, it really makes me long for the gorgeous pixel graphics of the SNES games. What can I say? I’m old.
Super Dungeon Bros (PS4) – At first I thought “This is kinda like Gauntlet! Sweet!” But it’s not the kind of game that’s properly balanced for single-player, so I gave up and deleted it.
Mega Man X Legacy Collection (Switch) – X Challenge is indeed a challenge, as I needed to keep the difficulty firmly on Easy to make my way to the end. (Spoiler: It’s crazy broken.)
Mega Man X4 (Switch) – The previous one was an X playthrough, this one was a Zero run.
Mega Man X3 (Switch) – Another run to gather up some stray “hunter medals” (achievements). Also this time I got the gold armor and Z-Saber, so Kaiser Sigma wasn’t impossibly hard.
Mega Man X5 (Switch) – Despite having pretty good memories of if, I kind of can’t stand Mega Man X5. Imagine that!
Batman: The Telltale Series (PS4) – While I really liked it, I couldn’t help but feel like I would have enjoyed it more as a straight-up animated mini-series instead of a “game.”
Mega Man X5 (Switch) – I played it again to go through Zero’s story. Why? Masochism.
Mega Man X6 (Switch) – This is generally considered to be an absolute trash fire of a game, but after this playthrough, I’ve come think it’s actually quite a bit better than tedious ol’ X5.
Legend of Kay Anniversary (PS4) – I got this in a bundle last year, and it seemed like it would be a nice, breezy adventure. It is those things! But it is also hella boring, so I deleted it.
Mega Man X5 (Switch) – I needed to see all three endings to earn a hunter medal…
I’ve been a huge fan of Japanese game developer IntiCreates for years. Since Mega Man Zero’s release in 2002, to be exact. And while I do have an appreciation for their more modern games (aside from the fairly gross Gal*Gun series), I feel like their true calling is in the retraux scene. Note my love for the recent(ish) Blaster Master Zero and Mighty Gunvolt Burst.
Mighty Gunvolt Burst, in particular, was nice because it was an impeccable stand-in for a new Mega Man game in a time when it seemed like there wouldn’t be any more new Mega Man games. And then, seemingly out of nowhere (because I’m terrible at paying attention), they come out with this brand-spanking-new game that looks exactly like an NES Castlevania. There’s something I never knew that I wanted so badly.
I backed the Kickstarter campaign for Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night, so I should have been fully aware that the “teaser” retro throwback game, Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon, was coming. But I mostly just shuffle any emails from Kickstarter into archive folders these days, unless they obviously contain a download code of some description. So Curse of the Moon came as a delectable little surprise to me, and I could not be any more pleased with it. It is exactly what I want from a 2D platformer that wears its inspiration on its sleeve.
Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon takes place in an alternate timeline from that of the “main” Bloodstained game. And by that, I mean a world where Castlevania stopped evolving from its NES roots and remained a tough-as-nails stage-based platformer. If you look at Curse’s graphics and compare them side-to-side with, say, Castlevania III, you’d be hard pressed to find any evidence that they’re different games. Oh, sure, the art style varies a little, but on the whole, there’s no mistaking where Inti Creates took inspiration from.
The gameplay is also very much in line with Castlevania III, sending you through a number of spooky stages to vanquish demons, all the while recruiting a team of friends, allowing you to swap between characters on the fly. Each party member in Curse has the requisite unique abilities and attacks, but all of them maintain the age-old Castlevania crutch of not being able to change direction mid-jump.
One of the things that makes Curse unique is the way it handles replays. First of all, you’re given access to an ability to go back to previous stages at any time. This allows you to search out any power-ups you missed, or maybe make different choices, as it also undoes any recruitments that you’d made. There are also a handful of different endings based on those choices, and two unlockable alternate game modes which serve as New Game +es to a couple of those endings. So there’s really quite a lot of reasons to play through multiple times. And there’s a Boss Rush mode as well, for those who have the stomach for such things.
Another thing that separates Curse from its inspiration is its level of difficulty. On the normal mode (Veteran), it’s exactly like a less sadistic version of Castlevania III. Tough, but fair. And never makes you want to chuck a controller across the room. I cleared the “hard path” on Veteran without any Game Overs, so hooray for me. The Casual mode takes it one step further by eliminating the knockback you take when you get hit, and also giving you infinite lives. Veteran mode refills your stock of lives on every stage, too, so it’s not like Game Overs are going to be much of a problem either way. Personally, I felt that the game was even a little too easy, but having recently played through Castlevania III for the first time (and nearly lost my mind doing it), I’m definitely not going to complain about it.
The last thing that really makes Curse stand out are the bosses. While it will otherwise hew very close to NES standards, the amount of colours and spectacular effects on display in the boss fights would likely make an actual NES explode. They are beautiful and fantastic, and generally very fun, with clever gimmicks. The only thing I don’t like is that every boss has a final desperation move that they execute just before death, and these are very difficult to anticipate and dodge. I mean, it’s an awesome touch, but kind of a cheap way to screw you over if you only won by the skin of your teeth. (Note: Upon further investigation, the bosses’ final attacks only seem to do one pip of damage; not especially dangerous.)
At the end of the day, I’m going to tell you “Hell yes play this game!” Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon is a fantastic throwback to the good ol’ days of Castlevania, but without that nigh-impossible level of difficulty. It’s made so that you can reminisce but not have to worry about getting frustrated to the point of a rage-quit. While it’s going to be a very different kind of game, I’m now more hyped than ever for Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night.
I’ve recently made big, long, rambling posts about the first four games in the Mega Man X series, and continuing my vision quest through the series, I’m now done with Mega Man X5. Some might say that this was the last good one. Sadly, I can’t agree, as Mega Man X5 is actually the first outright bad one.
While the games in most Mega Man series get better for the first few sequels and then start dropping off, I’ve noted many times before that the Mega Man X games degrade with each subsequent title. The edges get a little rougher, new features that don’t work right get stapled on, and the purity of the action platformer vanishes into an over-ambitious mess. Mega Man X5 is where it all begins to come to a head, and it’s especially tragic, because this was supposed to be the series’ grand finale.
This is somewhat appropriate, as X5 in and of itself is a tragic story; a tale of two bestest-buddy robots desperately fighting against the odds to survive. Throughout the previous four games, the groundwork had been laid for the final climactic showdown between X and Zero, forced to fight each other because no matter how hard they try, they simply cannot escape their destinies. And then that big fight is massively underwhelming and you’re left thinking “that was it?” and you have to fight all the Mavericks again and a few forms of Sigma, like always. Oh well!
But besides the lack of payoff for the decade that built up to it, there are so many other problems with Mega Man X5. The first, and most egregious, is that the game has the absolute worst pacing. Remember how revolutionary Mega Man X felt when compared to the original series, simply because it was made faster and more action-focused? Yeah, that’s been lost to time. X5 is dreadfully slow on all fronts. Cutscenes are long and can’t be skipped. You’ve got Alia giving you “advice” several times each stage (and can’t be skipped). Tidal Whale’s stage is the slowest and most tedious autoscroller to ever exist, and you have to play it at least three times to collect all the power-ups. All the bosses in the fortress stages have a life bar nearly as tall as the screen. It’s madness, I tell you!
And even after all that, the game isn’t all that much fun. Good level design is lacking in most cases, with most obstacles meant to stop you in your tracks, which just hurts the pacing even more. Cheap kills are scattered about, from blind jumps onto spikes to surprise enemies that will absolutely knock you into a hole because there’s no way to know they were coming. The game is fairly generous with its checkpoints, but that’s no excuse for the number of “gotcha” deaths to be more than zero. The game can also be a bit buggy, with questionable hit detection, and one case where I just spontaneously exploded for no discernible reason.
There’s so much more to complain about, but I feel like these are the new issues for me; things that hadn’t impacted me quite as much when I played this game as a teenager. They’re the problems that I can’t deal with in my old age. There’s also the fact that X5 has a bunch of tacked-on systems that I’ve been trying to read up on but still don’t fully understand, which is never a good sign. Again, it’s a tragedy, as X5 was supposed to be a massive celebration of the whole series that wrapped it all up. There are so many loving references to all things Mega Man, but there’s just too much cruft there, which bogs it down and keeps it from being the epic finale that should have been.
Monster Hunter Generations Ultimate is out! Officially released on Tuesday, I was hoping to stay up slightly too late to play it on Monday, since it was supposed to go live on the eShop at 11PM. But it didn’t quite work out that way for some reason, and actually went live at 2AM. I like to think it was Capcom/Nintendo helping make sure I went to bed on time.
The point is: there’s a Monster Hunter on Switch now. Life is perfect.
I’m not entirely sure what else to write about this. I never expected Capcom to actually localize this game (because why bother when Monster Hunter World is already raking in mad skrilla?). To that end, I hadn’t ever really dug deep into what kind of new things they’ve updated it with. There’s the cover monster, whom I know only as “Jet Dragon.” I have actually (and unsuccessfully) hunted him before, via the demo of the Japanese version that came out like a year ago. I also know vaguely of the new final boss who I think is a giant mantis that pilots a mecha made of scrap. Not unlike the old final boss who is a squid that wears power armor made of skellingtons.
Monster Hunter has gotten weird.
Watching the intro movie, it seems that my old nemesis Barioth has returned as well. My short playtime thus far has not revealed any other additions to the monster roster.
Oh, it’s important to note that this is an enhanced port of Monster Hunter Generations. You know, that 3DS game that I’ve already poured like 200 hours into? If it were a vanilla port, I’d probably skip it. This Ultimate version, however, adds (presumably) a bunch of new (and returning) monsters and also G-Rank hunts. Maybe other things, too? In theory, that means it has roughly 50% more content (quests) than the base game, and that new content will be ultra-mega-hard. Which is great!
The huge twist with this release is that you can import your progress from the 3DS game to give yourself a head-start and jump right into the new content (assuming you’re that far). I was absolutely torn on this feature. On one hand, it would be nice to bring over all the hard work I poured into MHG. On the other hand, I kinda want to go through it all again, because it’s fun! This is one of those Tough Life Decisions that adults warn you about when you’re growing up.
In the end, since I first launched the game while on the bus to work, I had no access to my 3DS and started a new character. I can always import good ol’ Jenna at some other point in time, should I feel the need. For the time being, I will move forward with Velvet, who I named after the protagonist of Tales of Berseria because I was drawing a blank on more interesting names. I would like to mention that I find naming characters in this kind of game intensely stressful. It would be so much easier if I’d just play as a male character…
And so that’s that. I don’t think I’ll have much else to say about MHGU. It’s Monster Hunter. I love it. I will play it obsessively until December 7. Some old song and dance.
This morning, Nintendo streamed a commercial about upcoming indie games for Switch. It’s not really too important to me, because indie games don’t fit into my budget anymore. Still, I watched it like a good little consumer whore. Here are some vague impressions on the video games that were showed off, because these mindless lists are so easy to write as compared to expressing perceptive and insightful thoughts.
As you may expect, I have been playing the Mega Man X Legacy Collection somewhat obsessively lately. To that end, I have beaten X2 through X4 and also the bonus X Challenge mode. And I have some things to say about these games!
Let’s start off by noting the less obvious: I almost never replay these games. It’s always the original Mega Man X that I go back to, so I’m not nearly as familiar with the rest of the series. As such, I had to do a lot more goofing around in them, looking for hidden secrets and trying desperately to remember which weapon works on which boss. Sometimes it worked in a game’s favour, sometimes not so much. How did it all roll out? Let’s take a look!
Yesterday, I witnessed evidence that we indeed live in the brightest timeline. But we’ll have to build up to that.
Among other things, yesterday was the day that Nintendo aired a big, beautiful Nintendo Direct focused solely on Super Smash Bros Ultimate. Despite the fact that I’m already 100% on-board for the new Smash, I was a little bit concerned about what could be revealed in this presentation. You know, given some of the more questionable design decisions in Super Smash Bros for Wii U. But it all turned out great! Everyone is here and everything is great!
I won’t ponder everything that they showed off, but I am going to discuss some of the things that I found the most interesting and/or hype-generating.
Castlevania – So the Direct starts off by revealing that Simon Belmont is now a fighter. Okay, cool. That’s literally all I needed. A++ presentation. Thank you and good night.
Then they go on to show off this sweet new Dracula’s Castle stage, and that Richter Belmont is also going to be a playable fighter, as an Echo of Simon. Okay! Super! Really, you had me at Simon. Then they show off all the cool monsters that will appear in Dracula’s Castle, and that Dracula himself will show up and do the traditional Dracula boss fight from all those Castlevania games that he’s in. Guys really you have done a wonderful job.THEN they show how there are going to be over 30 music tracks from the Castlevania series in the game. Also there’s going to be a Death’s Scythe items that instantly kills fighters with high enough damage, and Alucard is an assist trophy character.
I’m dying now. Dying of happiness. Castlevania is one of my favourite video game franchises and it just invaded Super Smash Bros in a major way. Thank you, Mr. Sakurai, for giving me this. Simon is going to be my new main. Sorry Ike, but there’s a new beefcake in town.
But! The cherry on top here is that when they showed off all the monsters that can appear in Dracula’s Castle, there was a shadow that was noted only as ?????.
You know what that is? It’s friggin’ Dracula-Kun! Yes, the main character of the Castlevania parody series Boku Dracula-Kun -also known as Kid Dracula or Baby Alucard- is in Super Smash Bros. I could never have even dreamed of something so wonderful happening. There are only two other things in the world that could make me this happy, and one has absolutely nothing to do with video games. So yes, I’m pretty damn stoked on this new Smash game.
Shovel Knight – Shovel Knight is in Smash too! Oh, happy day! …but he’s just an assist trophy? Oh… Well that’s a little disappointing. But Shovel Knight is still in Smash! He’s now officially reached the Legendary tier of video game characters. Did you know that Shovel Knight is my favourite anything of everything?
Chrom and Dark Samus – Two popular characters that I don’t really have much of affinity for, being introduced as Echo fighters. Chrom seems to be a faster version of Ike, which is… I’ve always been fond of Ike the way he is. He’s so immensely powerful that I don’t mind the lack of speed. And Dark Samus… whatever. She’s cool, but I’ve sadly grown out of Samus. She was my main in Smash 64 and Melee, but those days are behind us.
Stages – New Donk City Hall is the other new stage that they showed off in this Direct, and it looks pretty sweet. What really needs to be mention is that there are 103 stages in Smash Ultimate. One hundred and three. That… that may be too many. I already had a tough time picking a stage from Melee’s 29 options. Probably I’ll just pick Dream Land from Smash 3DS all the time because that’s the best stage ever. Oh! But there’s a stage morph option now that makes the game flip between two stages, which is neat. I would love if it could just morph into anything at any time, but I can see how that might be unfeasible.
Final Smash Meter – This is a feature that needed to be there from the point where Final Smashes were first introduced (Brawl). Instead of breaking a Smash Ball, a meter builds during the fight, and when it fills, you get a Final Smash! It’s less powerful than the Smash Ball version, but that’s okay! This is how every other fighting game with equivalent super moves works, so it’s weird that Smash Bros hadn’t incorporated it until now.
I would like to take a little sidebar here to reiterate how brilliant the Fake Smash Ball is. I love it.
Monster Hunter – Smash 4 had a couple Monster Hunter costumes for the Mii Fighters as DLC, but Smash Ultimate is ramping it up a bit with… Rathalos? Just Rathalos? Apparently he appears as a boss, and also an assist trophy, but they didn’t really elaborate on anything else. The stage on which he is a boss is clearly based on the Ancestral Steppe map from Monster Hunter 4 Ultimate, but they didn’t call it out at all. And does that mean that there will be a Hunter as a playable fighter? Really, the Rathalos clip just left me with more questions than anything. Regardless, I am jazzed that Monster Hunter is now officially a part of Smash.
Other stuff – The menu seems to be… slightly better than Smash Wii U’s awful mess? It still looks like a big mess, but at least it’s laid out a little better. I can still see myself getting lost trying to find anything that isn’t the main Smash mode, so that’s not great. I’m curious about the mystery mode that they censored out for this video, but not so much that I feel the need to speculate. And: It looks like they fixed Classic Mode! It’s just like it used to be in Smash 64 and Melee, but tailored to each character! It remains to be seen if it’ll be fun again or not, but it’s looking good so far! Hopefully that dreadful Master Fortress has been trashed.
King K. Rool – I’m all for adding more villains to Smash (because you can only have heroes beat each other up for so long), but I personally don’t give a single flip about K. Rool. Here’s a third Donkey Kong series character that I’ll never play as. Where the heck is Dixie already? K. Rool’s reveal trailer was absolutely the best thing, however.
Lastly, for your viewing pleasure, an embedded video of the presentation I just typed over one thousand words about:
The Awesome Adventures of Captain Spirit (PS4) – A free “prologue” for Life is Strange 2. I’m still not entirely clear on whether this will have anything to do with the full game or not.
Mega Man 7 (Switch) – I’m usually pretty hard on MM7, but playing it right after MM8 made me realize that it’s actually not all that bad! Except for Slash Man. He can go suck an egg.
Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon (Switch) – Nightmare mode run for true(?) ending.
Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon (Switch) – Another replay, Zangetsu-only this time.
Mega Man 2 (Switch) – Wait, Mega Man’s feet are slippery in this one, too? Why do I not remember this? Maybe that’s why I don’t think it’s quite as perfect as MM3.
Mega Man 3 (Switch) – Speaking of which, I did that too.
I Am Setsuna. (Switch) – I’m glad I played it, but something about it felt hollow. Maybe because the team very clearly wanted to make a Chrono Trigger sequel but weren’t allowed the license.
Fran Bow (PC) – The first two chapters of the game are very interesting and spooky, and then it kind of veers off in a completely different fantasy-styled direction before circling back to spooky.
Tales of Berseria (PS4) – It took about 30 hours before the plot finally got interesting and the characters started growing on me. But this may have been Stockholm Syndrome setting in.
Heavy Rain (PS4) – I prefer to try to find the positives in every game I play, but this one… While the high-level story was interesting, pretty much everything else about it was plain ol’ bad.
Mega Man X (Switch) – Yes, I have two portable versions of Mega Man X already, but I never take my 3DS or PSP out with me anymore. Plus, this one comes with all the sequels!
Rockman X (Switch) – The X Legacy Collection allows you to play the Japanese versions of all included games, so… I did that. As it turns out, not much was changed for the localization!
Mega Man X2 (Switch) – Maybe it’s because I play it much less frequently, but X2 is significantly tougher than the original. A little trolly too, in regards to the placement of several power-ups.
Mega Man X3 (Switch) – And then you get to this one, which is ridiculously tough, and even moreso if you’re trying a buster-only run. But at least it gives you a bunch of cool new abilities.
~ Now Playing ~
MGSV: The Phantom Pain (PC) – I bless the rains down in Africa, gonna cover up all of the sounds from my footsteps, ooh-ooh.
Pokémon Quest (Switch) – I’d like to complain about the completely erratic difficulty spikes, but that’s freemium for you! And I’m certainly not paying a cent into this one.
Slain: Back From Hell (Switch) – It’s kind of like if Doom and Castlevania had baby, and then that baby got really into heavy metal. Which is to say I love this game.
Octopath Traveler (Switch) – It’s a little bit too talky, but the battle system is excellent and a ton of fun. Feels a little bit like a more hands-on FFXIII, in a way. (NB: I’m a big fan of FFXIII.)
Soul Blazer (SNES) – I really adore Illusion of Gaia, but had never played its prequel, so I hacked my tiny SNES to do so. It’s quite good! I just need to make some more time for it.
Mega Man X Legacy Collection (Switch) – I’ve been listing the individual games here as I play them, but the new X Challenge mode can’t fit in that way. Short review: it is BONKERS.
