(Retro) What have you been playing this week? Vol.2

[Cepp]

Started a new save on Ultima 3, I'm still at the begining levelling up. You can really see the influence Ultima had on Dragon Quest with this game.

It has some quirks being an earlier game in the series. Every party member has their own stash of gold for instance as well as their own food counter. The menus are clunky and the controls are stiff, more so than I'd expect for a game release in 1989. In towns, parts of the map such as rooms and areas round corners aren't viewable until you enter that area. I'm assuming that was done to indicate that your characters can only see what's around them. If that's so then I can see the reasoning but I'm glad it was dropped in later games.

It's a little combat heavy but I was expecting that. It's fun and quite relaxing.

[samanosuke]

The SMS port of Ultima IV has always intrigued me. I wonder if being a console version makes it a little more accessible to play in the modern day?

[Cepp]

The SMS port of Ultima IV has always intrigued me. I wonder if being a console version makes it a little more accessible to play in the modern day?

I'm curious about that port as well, I always hear good things about it. IIRC it's faithful to the original and probably the best way to play it on console.

[gunrock]

I loved Ultima III on the C64, back in the day. Had a depth that I probably imagined, but really liked it. Combat was so hard, I found.

[Cepp]

It's ****ing hard is what it is, it's been quite a struggle to get to grips with. Selecting an action in battle (move, magic, attack...etc) and then pressing b to cancel uses up a turn, the game utilises severe level scaling, characters miss with far more frequency than I'm used to (probably rectifiable when I increase my stats later on) and there's an entire sub menu I wasn't aware of, that you don't access by using the d-pad, but by pressing select on the controller! At least now I can redistribute food and gold, some 7 hours in.

I think if I was to start over I'd have a much easier time with it now but it was a very rough start.

-edit-
You can create up to 20 party members in this game although only 4 can be in your party at once. I created 4 new level 1 characters which reset the monsters to their weakest level and farmed gold which I've now transferred to my main party. That should help massively tomorrow.

[endo]

Super Mario World, and lots of it. Been playing this for the nth time on the Switch online thing. Not much left to say about this game apart from that it's about as much of a classic as it's possible for a game to be. Utterly timeless and staggeringly well made. Love it to bits.

And a bit of Outrun 2, after finally locating the power brick for my 360.

[Atticus]

Couple of crackers [MENTION=3220]endo[/MENTION]

[endo]

I just had an urge to play Outrun 2 a couple of weeks ago and thought I knew where everything was, but after finally finding my missing wireless adapter, I couldn't find the frigging power brick for the 360. Been loving playing this again though since. What a game.

As for SMW, it's just a sheer joy from start to finish.

[Cepp]

You just can't go wrong with a bit of Outrun 2, what an amazing game.

[Ghost]

Been playing through the Streets of Rage trilogy before starting SoR4. I love the first two games and have played through them both occasionally over the years whenever theres a mega drive compilation.

But the third one I haven’t played since it was originally released and I didn’t have fond memories of it as it felt very different to the first two plus I hated the pallet swap for blaze and axel and the awful profile pictures/character art for the characters, also the music was completely different in tone to the previous games.

Playing through the games back to back to back its pretty startling how much they changed in the third game, Axels punches have been sped up 3x or 4x compared to the previous game and the specials are replenished by a timer instead of having a limited number like the first game or using up your health bar like the second game, it removes some of the strategy from the game imo.

For me the best by far is 2, then 1 and lastly 3. Cant wait to get started on the 4th one

[paulus]

For anybody who wants to try SOR 4, its on XBox Gamepass (along with 100+ others) and if your a first time user like me its a quid for the first month?

Oh & be sure to grab the brilliant new Ori Game & Demons Tilt Pinball while you are at it !

[samanosuke]

Finished off Space Adventure Cobra (MCD) so that one can go straight back on the shelf. The final stretch was a bit of a chore to be honest with some horrific random battles only made worse by the awful menu-driven “combat” system. The ending wasn’t much to write home about either. Well what started out as being quite a novel (see what I did there?) game turned out to be a bit crap.

Back on to Final Fantasy III/VI (SNES) and picking up where I left off some 15 hours or so in. I am going to make it my mission to finally play this through to the end! Things are picking up right now (back at Narshe again having seen the Esper story) and I am absolutely loving this game. Easily my favourite FF game and quite possibly in my top ten of all time. I prefer it to Chrono Trigger, it’s that good.

Lastly been giving Xeno Crisis (MD) a good crack. Does a game from 2019 count as retro? Anyway, managed to get to the fourth level for the first time the other day and now can get as far as the boss of the level. Blimey it’s tough!! Love this game though, if it was released BITD then I bet it’d be held in similar esteem as Gunstar Heroes for pushing the system to its absolute limits.

[Cepp]

Made some good progress in Ultima III. I managed to grind enough gold to increase most of my needed stats which made the overworld enemies a lot easier. I purchased some horses and picked up a few key quest items, including the Silver Pick from the bottom of the Cave of Death, which certainly lives up to its name. I almost wiped on the 7th floor and resorted to spinning around on the spot, in the dark, so I could regenerate my MP without getting into another encounter, cure everyone of poison, heal my entire party and have enough MP to use the Surface spell to teleport back to the surface the moment I picked up the Silver Pick.

Looking at how some of my characters stats max out at 50 and 75, I wish I'd chosen different races for some of them now. Your character's race puts a hard limit on how much certain stats can be increased, making some more and less suited to each profession. I'm not starting over though so I'll make do.

It's probably time I levelled my characters past level 5 now. You need the Mark of Kings to do so and increase your HP beyond 550 and I do have that after finding it in the Cave of Gold. Some of the dungeon monsters really pack a punch so the extra HP would be welcome.

I just hope I don't get curb stomped by the stronger enemies that will generate.

Back on to Final Fantasy III/VI (SNES) and picking up where I left off some 15 hours or so in. I am going to make it my mission to finally play this through to the end! Things are picking up right now (back at Narshe again having seen the Esper story) and I am absolutely loving this game. Easily my favourite FF game and quite possibly in my top ten of all time. I prefer it to Chrono Trigger, it’s that good.

I bounced off this years ago just after the world ended. Probably didn't help that I was playing the PSX release. One of those games that needs a second chance really.

[Cepp]

I deleted my main character in Ultima III by mistake

Thank god for the Game Genie is all I can say. I still need to do a little bit of grinding to increase my levels/hp again, but that's nothing next to the time investment needed to build back up his other stats without it.

[beecee]

Fired up the Super NT with the Sd2Snes and had some Rock n Roll racing action, and using the MSU1 version with the real music. must have played for around 2 hours. then forgot to take note of the code to get back to the same level...