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

[chopemon]

Just had a romp through Resi 2 on the Dreamcast (the Japanese version). Looks great and lovely to go through it again. Got confused at the level layout in a couple of places since playing the remake and getting things mixed up between the two. Really nice that all the extras are unlocked from the start as well

[Cepp]

Started The Legend of Sword and Fairy / Chinese Paladin which was originally a DOS Taiwanese RPG. Im playing the Windows freeware release as that's the only version with an English translation.

The translation is a little jank but good enough. Its all wuxia fantasy stuff which you don't see very often (in English anyway). Combat is JRPGlike and the battle screen perspective reminds me of Breath of Fire.

Theres an XP remake on Steam that looks gorgeous but its only in Chinese sadly - https://store.steampowered.com/app/6...ord_and_Fairy/

[chopemon]

Played through most of Mario Galaxy before dropping it out of frustration with some swimming levels. I just can't get the hang of the underwater controls for some reason so I'm done with it.

Switched to Onimusha Dawn of Dreams and I'm in love. Been after a high quality PS2 action game for a while and this is great. Looks fantastic and while the combat is a bit basic, it moves at a good pace and I'm having a fantastic time with it. Since it's a 2006 game I overlooked it at the time as I was all about the 360 but if this had a 360 port at release I think a lot more people would remember this. Can't wait to play more.

[Sketcz]

Started The Legend of Sword and Fairy / Chinese Paladin which was originally a DOS Taiwanese RPG. Im playing the Windows freeware release as that's the only version with an English translation.

If it's freeware, got any links to this English edition?

[Cepp]

If it's freeware, got any links to this English edition?

You can get the game from http://update1.baiyou100.com/resource/Pal98rqp.zip
The translation files are available at https://www.romhacking.net/games/2349/

Extract the game and then copy over the win_files. There's no way to get the dos_files working as far as I know. Copy over sdlapal.exe to the game's folder as well for some enhancements like proper fullscreen support, Xinput support...etc

The monster and boss designs are so good. The dungeons are little maze-like but not too bad.

[Neon Ignition]

Not been updating in the other play thread because I've been working on the OG Xbox a lot and I forgot how short so many games were on it. Mostly though the real delight has been returning to Rallisport Challenge 2 and discovering that it's still brilliant

[Sketcz]

The monster and boss designs are so good. The dungeons are little maze-like but not too bad.

Cheers chap!

[fuse]

I had never played Super Aleste before, but I gave it a spin recently and it immediately hooked me. The biggest complaint I can levy at it is the amount of destructible scenery and how tough it is too tell between what you'll collide with and what's just background noise, but it's not as bad as I feared when I first saw a wall of solid matter in front of me. As a kid I picked Axelay over it for the flashy effects (Super Play constantly fawning over that Stage 4 boss didn't help!), but having gone back to that in recent years I've not been quite so forgiving of its shortfalls.

Also some GG Shinobi 2. I used to love this, and am delighted to find it has aged WONDERFULLY. Naturally it's not looking so hot blown up on a big screen, but it moves nicely, the controls are great (walking crouch and mid-air course correction!), the level structure and goals are brilliant, and the bosses are really well balanced. Was worried this was going to be one best left in the past, but nope, this is still a total delight.

[Nu-Eclipse]

I've been hammering (Or should I say "I've been getting hammered by...? ) Raiden via Arcade Archives on the Switch. One of the true godfathers of bullet hell shmups.

Still as brutal in 2021 as it was back in 1990 but also still lots of fun too, even if getting to Stage 3 is a genuine struggle!

[chopemon]

Just finished Onimusha Dawn of Dreams. It's a tad too long for it's own good and some of the RPG style systems are somewhat obtuse but could be remedied with some better UI in places. It has some frustrating enemy encounters and your AI partner often gets battered if you leave them alone. Just through normal play I managed to completely trivialise the frustrating looking last few bosses. Part way through the game you unlock the Oni mode where you consume a meter to become invincible, automatically draw in power ups and do more damage. You can stay in this invincible mode as long as you keep the bar topped up and by the end third of the game you have enough money to buy the maximum amount of potions that give you this meter. So for the last few bosses I just popped into Oni mode and consumed potions to make myself invincible for the whole fight. It sounds broken but it was a welcome 'exploit' at the 20 hour mark after powering through some annoying enemy combo encounters.

I really enjoyed playing through a big, meaty linear Capcom action adventure. It sets up a fifth game and it's a shame the series didn't carry on during the PS360 era.

[fallenangle]

^ That's one of my favourite 'sequels'. I wasn't a great fan of the third game in the series so I was expecting Onimusha: DofD to be another step down the path of ruining a previously very enjoyable game series. But what they'd done was add some more depth to the combat and given you, what I found, was a far more effective AI partnership system than in any first or third person game game I can think of that I've played.

Of course if you left them alone to fight too long they'd be in trouble but never have I felt such a good balance between a co-op AI and you as a player. In too many squad based games, even with multiple AI teammates, you still have to do 90% of the work and that means they're practically redundant. With DofD the AI ally seemed to be a much more genuine feeling fight partnership.

It was an inspired new direction for the series whilst keeping the original core elements and I'd hoped it would result in an even better fifth game in the series. As said, we're still waiting.

[chopemon]

I wish they'd put team mate switching on a dpad button press rather than having to find the mirrors to switch at. Would have made it a bit snappier and could have made combat even more interesting. Capcom really missed a trick by shipping this in 2006 with no 360 version. I know I was buying almost everything that came out for the 360 in the first year and I suspect other people were as well. This could have made much more of an impact. Although, judging by Capcom in the 360 era, the fifth game would have been made by a now closed western studio...

[fuse]

Gradius III on the Super Famicom - managed to have some brief fun with it, despite the rather serious performance issues. By the time you're fully kitted out with options as well as your missile and laser choices, there's major slow-down and sprites flickering in and out of view all over the shop.

[randombs]

Battlefield 4

Still beavering away at it. My team’s AI is atrocious. They can barely hit anything. They’re like sweary Stormtroopers.

Art of Rally

Looks like Lonely Mountain in a car but the cool retro music makes it a bit more lively.

[Goemon]

Gradius III on the Super Famicom - managed to have some brief fun with it, despite the rather serious performance issues. By the time you're fully kitted out with options as well as your missile and laser choices, there's major slow-down and sprites flickering in and out of view all over the shop.

I feel like this game is held in some sort of a ‘classic’ regard but I really don’t think it is TBH.

I flashed saved my way through it a while ago and the slow down/flickering coupled with the inane difficulty, gave a less than stellar experience. I now pretty much avoid it like the plague.