The 2024 Backlog Challenge

[wongojack | 329]

13 hours ago, LHCGreg said:

I'm rather late joining this thread but I do have a list that was made before the start of 2024:

For retro games I like to pick 2 random games from my collection and then decide on one of them to play next. That's not really in the spirit of this thread so for the purposes of this thread I'm only including the specifically named games from those goals.

1. Gunvein
2. The Ninja Saviors: Return of the Warriors
3. Huntdown
4. Enter the Gungeon
5. Ghosts 'n Goblins Resurrection
6. Super Meat Boy
7. Prison City
8. Mushihimesama
9. Battle Circuit

 

Thoughts on games I've already beaten as of making this post:

Gunvein: I was never super into shmups in the past. I'd play them and enjoy them but not more than any other genre. Last year I saw a bunch of Touhou games on Steam and picked up Touhou 10: Mountain of Faith, partly to throw some $ to the creator for finally making the games easily available to non-Japanese after having played some of the earlier games in the series through other means 10+ years ago. I really enjoyed it and realized I like newer bullet hell style shmups a lot more than the style from the 8 and 16 bit era that I was more used to. So I decided I'll play a couple every year. This year's are Gunvein and Mushihimesama. Gunvein was already on my radar and being familiar with the designer, Boghog, from his takes on beat em ups pushed it to the top of my list. The story goes that NGDEV asked for feedback on an early version and Boghog gave them back a detailed tome and they asked if he wanted to work for them on the game.

Gunvein plays very well. It's got three ship types and three difficulty levels. You can only have 3 lives and 3 bombs at once so you can't stockpile resources too much. Bomb fragments (10 fragments for 1 bomb) are given frequently for killing enemies. Quicker kills increases the rate you get fragments at. Extra lives are given at score intervals (every 300,000 for Mild, every 600,000 for Intense and Expert). I 1cc'ed Mild (the easiest) pretty quickly. After a week or two of putting time in practice mode and doing a couple attempts every day I 1cc'ed Intense (medium). Grade: A

The Ninja Saviors: Return of the Warriors: Great beat em up. It's strictly left/right and vertical, no movement towards/away from the screen like in most beat em ups. Despite that, it still manages to have the spacing and crowd control feel of a beat em up with the more typical screen layout. You have just one life and unlimited continues. You can block by holding the attack button. There are 5 playable characters (2 more than the SNES version) and they all play meaningfully different from each other; they're not just "the strong slow guy", "the fast weak guy", and "the balanced guy". The game tracks your time taken as your "score" but it only counts if you don't use any continues. My one big criticism is that, once you've done a few playthroughs, there are only a couple places where you're in any real danger of losing your 1cc, namely the stage 5 boss and the final boss. The rest of the game is pretty smooth sailing. It would be nice to have a more even spread of difficulty. I 1cc'ed with all characters on both Normal and Hard difficulties. I picked up the SNES Ninja Warriors from ebay shortly after, inspired to bid more than I would have before playing the new version. I liked the SNES version more - it has that more even difficulty spread that I wanted. Grade: S. I still love a good beat em up even if it's not absolutely perfect.

Huntdown: @Webhead123 already gave a good rundown earlier in the thread. tl;dr 2D pixel art run and gun with an emphasis on cover and learning boss patterns. I'll add that I loved that frequent one-liners. Throw a grenade, blasting a group of enemies to bits. "I like my salsa chunky." Unfortunately I didn't notice any differences between difficulty levels in story mode other than your max health. I beat story mode with Anna Conda on Normal (5 hit points) and John Sawyer on Hard (3 hit points), and beat all 4 arcade mode difficulties. Grade: A

Enter the Gungeon: I have mixed feelings on this one. I like the combat in general. I did not like the enormous variance in difficulty between runs depending on what you find and how many bosses you beat without taking a hit. Beating a boss without taking a hit gives you an extra heart of max health. Take 1 hit instead of 0? Too bad, you just increased the difficulty of your run. It reminds me a bit of Gradius Syndrome from shmups where a small mistake has a relatively large impact on your chances of success. I also didn't like how so many weapons and items are gated behind unlocks, whether purchased with in-game currency between runs or by accomplishing some achievement. You only have a small fraction of the good stuff available from the beginning and I still hadn't unlocked it all by the time I was done. I unlocked all the hidden characters, killed every character's past (if applicable), and beat every hidden floor at least once, including Bullet Hell (I did not win at Punch-Out against the Rat but that's not required to clear the floor). Grade: B

I'm currently playing Ghosts 'n Goblins Resurrection and liking it so far. I know @Sumez is a big fan.

Awesome post.  I also have to sort of adjust my style of backlog attack for the thread, but I find it really fun to read everyone's posts and their approach.

 

We share a common goal for the year which is Get into Master System.  I haven't "beaten" many of the games, but I've played a bunch while participating in a high score club on another site.  Has been very rewarding to pursue an overdue element of my backlog - even if I'm not racking up the "beats."

[LHCGreg | 149]

5 hours ago, wongojack said:

Awesome post.  I also have to sort of adjust my style of backlog attack for the thread, but I find it really fun to read everyone's posts and their approach.

 

We share a common goal for the year which is Get into Master System.  I haven't "beaten" many of the games, but I've played a bunch while participating in a high score club on another site.  Has been very rewarding to pursue an overdue element of my backlog - even if I'm not racking up the "beats."

I've already accomplished that goal of getting into Master System. I beat Kenseiden and the SMS port of Ghouls 'n Ghosts. So far it kinda matches my impression of being more "interesting" than "good". People who grew up with NES and never played Master System aren't missing out in the same way as someone who grew up with one of the 16 bit or 32 bit consoles and didn't play the other consoles from that generation.

[wongojack | 329]

3 hours ago, LHCGreg said:

I've already accomplished that goal of getting into Master System. I beat Kenseiden and the SMS port of Ghouls 'n Ghosts. So far it kinda matches my impression of being more "interesting" than "good". People who grew up with NES and never played Master System aren't missing out in the same way as someone who grew up with one of the 16 bit or 32 bit consoles and didn't play the other consoles from that generation.

Hey - do your thing.  I wanted to make sure I got more of a variety, but there's no wrong way to "get into" something.

[Floating Platforms | 826]

Inscryption is done, for now

I completed the story mode late last night, but I'm saving the challenge mode for later. I think it will be fun to strategize with my brother on that when he visits next.

What a great experience that was and I'm honestly surprised that so much of this game was never spoiled for me. The only thing that I've heard was that it takes a turn and starts going unusual places. I had seen about 10-30 minutes of gameplay with the talking cards in your deck, and the alternate routes you can take and I knew that there were various puzzles to solve.  So, imagine my surprise when

Spoiler

I finally beat that final boss and couldn't think of anything else to do aside from start a new game, which opened up a literal new game with all new mechanics. That was a jaw dropping moment. The 2nd and 3rd parts of the story were quite a bit easier overall. Part of that was knowing more about what would help me and part of that was the checkpoint systems.

I loved the simple gameplay mechanics and loops. It was fun learning what the various icons on the maps and cards meant and then putting together a satisfying run. Solving the various puzzles was extremely satisfying. The art style and character design was outstanding and giving each boss a unique (and usually thought-provoking) hook kept me wanting to see more. The story and lore was best in the beginning but kind of trailed off. It felt obvious as to where it was all going once you got far enough.

[T-Pac | 8,208]

27/40 - Phalanx [Super Nintendo Entertainment System - 1992]

Finished: 2024/06/16

Caveats: Used save states and played on easy mode.

[T-Pac]

[a3quit4s | 4,406]

2 minutes ago, T-Pac said:

27/40 - Phalanx [Super Nintendo Entertainment System - 1992]

Finished: 2024/06/16

Caveats: Used save states and played on easy mode.

[T-Pac]

Strangest artwork of all time lol

[Brickman | 4,218]

 Pokemon Fire Red (GBA). I won't expand on Pokemon because everyone know this game by this point. To me this is the definitive way to experience the original Pokemon games. They've updated it with QOL features, added an item to re play trainer battles, adjusted the weird difficulty inconsistencies of the original as well as bumped up the difficulty a little, graphics upgrade and a new area. 9/10

Aladdin (SNES). It's pretty good, I prefer the MD version more even if it is a little inconsistent. The platforming is pretty fun but apples instead of a sword is weird and the boss levels are awful except for Jafar. Still, it's worth a play because it does look nice, great soundtrack and as I said, fun platforming. 7.5/10

 Dr. Mario & Panel de Pon (GBA)- Not a bad way to play these games on the one cart. I finished Dr. Mario Level 20 (that was my clear condition) but I got stuck on the 2nd last level of Panel de Pon and called it a day. Dr Mario is mostly the same as other versions but the music is remixed and worse. I'd never played vanilla Panel de pon before and found it to be pretty fun but a little too repetitive because they took out the story mode. They really should have kept a story mode and mixed it up a little. 7/10

Should easily finish my backlog challenge this year. Almost finished Dave the Diver, half way through Summer Pockets and plan to start a racing game in a month or so. I've also now passed 35 GBA titles completed, so I'll try and push that to 45 before the end of the year (currently on 37).

[Reed Rothchild | 9,977]

@BlackVega 0/5
@ThePhleo 0/0
@MrWunderful 0/lots
@FireHazard51 0/9
@Rudybegga 0/10
@koifish 0/5

[ThePhleo | 2,276]

12 hours ago, Reed Rothchild said:

@BlackVega 0/5
@ThePhleo 0/0
@MrWunderful 0/lots
@FireHazard51 0/9
@Rudybegga 0/10
@koifish 0/5

 

Pfft....you guys PLAY video games?

He says while playing some crappy mobile game that doesn't count towards the score

[Reed Rothchild | 9,977]

Ace Attorney 3 - On the 4th case.  So far I'm confident in saying this looks to be the best game in the trilogy.  Love the roster.

Trails in the Sky SC - Chapter 6...or maybe 5?  Holy hell does this game go on forever, and that's with exploiting the easier retries.

Spider-Man - 75% on campaign, and I plan on doing the DLCs as well.  I may go for the platinum if it's within striking distance, but I honestly have no idea if that's the case.  I'm not stopping 50 crimes at the end of the game if that's what it needs.

My kids all started Tears of the Kingdom at the same time as well, and then begged me to start alongside them, so I did.  I only play a little bit at a time when we're all sitting together, so it's gonna take awhile.

[Rudybegga | 53]

On 6/18/2024 at 11:44 AM, Reed Rothchild said:

Ace Attorney 3 - On the 4th case.  So far I'm confident in saying this looks to be the best game in the trilogy.  Love the roster.

Oh yeah!  Best in the series!  My favorite case is probably the last one on the second one, though.

[Sumez | 3,174]

Mega Man Battle Network - Beaten 7/6

When the first Mega Man Battle Network game originally came out, I gave it a quick try and decided against buying it. The "Mega Man" connection felt super vague, and was obviously designed for kids. Since then, the series has attained quite a fanbase - and probably most of them were kids at the time, so it's only recently that they have become old enough that the popularity of the games has become apparent to me, which made me interested in giving them a new chance.

At least the part about being designed for kids is very prevalent. It's one of many games that came out around the turn of the millennium trying to ride the Pokémon wave and get a piece of that same lucrative market (see also: Bomberman Max, SMT DemiKids, Custom Robo, etc). Cute, easily identifiable critters, collection aspects, accompanying TV show, etc. There are no less than SIX MMBN games on GBA alone, not including a bunch of spinoffs - and I'm getting a strong feeling it was planned that way from the start. This first game definitely leaves a lot of tracks open for sequels to build on.

On paper, a Mega Man themed JRPG is a fun idea. Instead of a strictly command based combat system, you're fighting enemies in realtime on a 6x3 square grid, with one half dedicated to your character, and the other to enemies, called "viruses" in this game.
Instead of moving around smoothly, you skip around the tiles on the grid, which enforces the more tactical feel of the battles. Every enemy has a unique and clearly defined moveset, which might be hard to grasp at first, but analyzing how they act can make dealing with them easier. Add to that, unique mashups with different enemy types, and the ability for both sides to affect the tiles on the floor, restricting movement and such.
It is honestly quite a good idea with a lot of potential. I'm not sure how well the game really utilizes it, but there are some great moments for sure. It kind of reminds me of Crypt of the Necrodancer, without there rhythm element - where knowing how an enemy moves makes it easy to deal with it on its own, but having to deal with others at the same time will create unique scenarios that require new decisions on the fly.

To aid you in battle, there's also a card system. They call them "battle chips", but picking the chips you take into battle is literally the exact same as building a collectible card deck, and you'll draw until you have a full hand of five cardschips every time a bar fills up during combat. You might want to think about which cardschips work well in synergy with eachother, but realistically you probably get the best results just picking the strongest ones.
There's also an interesting system in play that restricts which cardschips you can play. Each of them has a letter code which allows you to play multiple chips if they all match the same code or if they are all the exact same type. It feels like it's designed to reward more focused distinct playstyles, but ultimately the code for different cards rarely match up like you'd want. Often cards of the same type can show up with different codes, so it seems like it's designed more around the idea of grinding for specific versions of specific chips around the tail end of the game in orer to streamline your "deck".

The setting is kind of unique - instead of just making an RPG featuring Mega Man robots, Mega Man, as well as anything he'll be fighting (which also includes plenty of cameos from well known robot masters), exists inside a digital virtual world. And you'll be switching between controlling an annoying 11 year old kid who works as Mega Man's "operator", and Mega Man himself as he explores the digital world, representing various computer system controlling everything in the real world.

It also does the Pokémon thing, where everything in the game's world seems to be centered around these "Navis" and their operations in the virtual world, and it's the only thing people living there ever cares about.
I guess it's vaguely more excused in MMBN, due to the frankly relatively realistic "near future" sci-fi world where every appliance and object is controller by the same unified computer network, from phones and ovens to picture frames. Something you could say is largely true today, although our network features doesn't typically feature physical corridors for AI avatars to move around and defeat viruses in, by using cards with pictures of cannons and swords.

There's definitely a potential for a really entertaining game based on all these components, but Mega Man Battle Network also suffers from quite a lot of little issues which all work together to make playing the game a lot less enjoyable than it could have been with just a bit more care put into its development.
The most glaring omission is basic UI things - during combat you have no way to tell which cards match their letter code without hovering your cursor over them. So often picking multiples comes down to just selecting the one you want, and then blindly mashing all the others, which is faster than trying to check and remember which match. Also, managing your "deck" is painful, with no way to sort and categorize the chips you have equipped, or the ones in your stoarage - which can easily reach a couple hundreds. Instead you're scrolling a singular list with only a few visible at a time.

It's also quite annoying that the game's visual style doesn't really fit the small GBA resolution well. The sprites look nice, but all the areas feel like they are much too large to ever see properly on the screen, with most places you can go being off-screen. This is especially annoying in the really abstract "dungeons" of the computer world, which are very mazelike, and it's incredibly hard too see where you are because you can rarely see more than a single straight road or a fork on the screen at a time. Yet they are still too small and linear to really justify drawing your own map either.

These are all things that I think a modern re-release could (and should!) have addressed without messing too much with the core experience of the game. Especially since at least some of this was actually fixed in the sequels.
Instead, the only thing they did in Legacy Collection was overlaying the dialogue text with a smoother (and uglier) font, which completely clashes with the visual style of the rest of the game. It's still fixed width, which results in some really awkwardly placed commas, and many words and names which remain awkwardly shortened for the English localization, which feels reminiscent of NES era JRPGs. They even kept in all the spelling errors of the English dialogue. I'm not sure if that's commendable or not, but at least from the sequels going forward there's a lot more goofy dialogue which I'm sure some fans of the series appreciate keeping.

Some issues would be less straight forward to fix, however. The most glarring one is that, being a story focused RPG of sorts, the storytelling is incredibly bad. And I'm not just talking video game bad, or "kids' game" bad. It feels like a story written not just for little kids, but straight up toddlers. Or by toddlers, even. I can put up with bad video game stories as long as they just serve to drive forward the game, but this is really a remarkable level of embarassing, the likes of which I don't remember ever seeing anywhere else.
It really feels like outside of the core combat gameplay, few people involved with the creation of the game really gave much of a crap about it. It is very obvious that they just needed to get this game out the gate as fast as possible, so they could start working on five more sequels before the GBA would eventually be taken off the market.

There's some post-game challenge stuff which I accidentally wandered into while looking for the final boss. But once they started requiring grinding out a full collection of chips I was outta there. The game already has a massive problem with dungeons outstaying their welcome, which is too bad given some of them actually have really some fun gimmicks. MMBN is definitely a game with a potential that far outclasses what is actually there.

[Reed Rothchild | 9,977]

Spider-Man

Yeah, it was fun.  Very much "inspired' by a lot of the stuff in the Arkham games, which is fine.  If you're gonna copy, copy what works.  Traversal works very well, as everyone already knows, and the fan servicey stuff is all pretty cool (even though I'm not a massive Marvel fan or anything).  And several of the missions do have some very cool setpieces.

That being said, I was never in love with it.  It's a very, very good game, but when I'm putting together my top 200 games, I don't see it making the cut.  And by the end, I was pretty ready to move on: I started the DLC and got about 30 minutes before shelving it.  I'll let my need for this sort of open world game recharge a bit before I return.

I'll also give HZD the slight nod over it.

1. Bloodborne (9.5/10)
2. The Witness (9/10)
3. Tunic (9/10)
4. Inscryption (8.5/10)
5. Yakuza 2 Kiwami (8.5/10)
6. Firewatch (8.5/10)
7. Assassin's Creed: Black Flag (8/10)
8. Horizon Zero Dawn (8/10)
9. Spider-Man (8/10)
10. Bayonetta 3 (8/10)
11. The Walking Dead Complete (7.5/10)
12. Rise of the Tomb Raider (7.5/10)
13. The Stanley Parable (7.5/10)
14. Resident Evil 3 (7.5/10)
15. The Talos Principle (7/10)
16. The Quarry (7/10)
17. A Plague Tale: Innocence (7/10)
18. Bravely Default (6.5/10)
19. Pikmin 1 (6.5/10)
20. Dark Forces (5.5/10)
21. Beyond Oasis (5/10)
22. Turok 3 (4.5/10)

[T-Pac | 8,208]

28/40 - Kung Fu [Nintendo Entertainment System - 1985]

Finished: 2024/06/23

Caveats: Looped Game A once (with and without save-states). Looped Game B once with save-states.

[T-Pac]

[Sumez | 3,174]

Crime City - Beaten 13/6

I've long been championing a certain criminally underrated subgenre of arcade platformers. You can trace it back to the first Elevator Action game, where every shot fired has to count, and dodging has to be done with planning and dedication, usually ducking or jumping one shot at a time. The most seminal of these "spy action" sort of games, is arguablly Rolilng Thunder, which in turn would influence the first Shinobi game - probably one of the most popular iterations on the formula. It's a far cry from the constant forward momoentum of hail of bullets posed by run'n'gun games such as Contra, yet they do share a few common characteristics.

 

Crime City was Taito's attempt at ripping off Rolling Thunder, though a few Elevator Action references has made it into the game. Probabably one of the more overlooked of their arcade titles as well, at least compared to how well made it is. For some reason it has not yet been ported to any console, but I imagine it's only a question of time before we see it joining the Arcade Archives lineup. Instead of  a spy, you take control of one of two hardcore city cops as they "go for a kill time", as we all know cops tend to enjoy. The severity of your crime doesn't matter. Robbed a bank? You're dead meat!

Though it does demand some of the aforementioned precision, the pace in Crime City is pretty high, and new guns drop frequently enough that you can be quite wasteful with your ammunition and still never run out. The most unique aspect to the gameplay is the ability to roll into enemies. Though it looks like a dodge roll, it will not protect you from damage, but rolling is quite often a very effecient way to take out bad guys when you don't have the time to stand still and fire your gun. It can even be initiated mid-air which frankly looks hilarious.

The game starts out basic, allowing you to pretty much just (literally) roll down the street, as thugs fall at your feet. But towards the last few stages, things get really hectic as enemies try to corner you from both sides, and dudes will walk in from the edge of the screen and try to pin you with molotovs while you're already busy dodging other enemy projectiles. When the pressure is high is when the game is the most enjoyable.
IMO the only real weakness in this design, is the complete lack of randomness. There is some unpredictability in what's going to appear if you hang out in the same place for a while, but as long as you're moving forward, the exact same enemies will show up every single time, making it very easy to learn the stages and execute them as planned. A small stain on an otherwise really fun game that I think more people should definitely play!

I don't have much free time to sit down and dedicate myself to a full run of an arcade game these days, especially with my cabinet being positioned right next to the room where my kid sleeps during the few minutes where I do get some time for myself.
But fortunately Crime City is both a really quick playthrough, and also definitely in the easier end of arcade one-credit-clears. In fact it might be the fastest one I have ever gotten. Every session I played with the game has been documented on my Twitch channel, and I'd barely logged a total of five hours when I got my first clear. I'm probably going to be less fortunate with the remaining arcade games on my backlog list for this year, provided I even get the time for them in the first place.
I could see myself going back to the game and attempt a challenge run however. Either on a higher difficulty, or attempting a run which doesn't use guns at all. It should be pretty challenging, but definitely doable!

 

[Tantalus | 500]

I finished up Mole Mania earlier this week. A reasonably fun puzzle game for the Game Boy. It starts off easy and slowly ramps up the difficulty. It never gets overly hard, though there were a few times where I was scratching my head on the later levels.

[T-Pac | 8,208]

29/40 - Xevious [Nintendo Entertainment System - 1988]

Finished: 2024/06/30

Caveats: Used save-states to complete one loop.

[T-Pac]

[Floating Platforms | 826]

Hypnospace Outlaw is done

This is not a game that's meant to be played on consoles, but if I hadn't played it on Playstation, it never would have happened since my Steam time is so infrequent. But, definitely play this with a mouse and keyboard if you have the option.

Using the controller, I eventually kind of gave up on the basic gameplay aspect of things and started using a guide. It was too tedious to search through the pages and use the search function and type with the sticks. It might have been different if there were a couple more breadcrumbs in certain spots, or a bit more to do in any given area. There are really only a handful of cases or missions that you're meant to solve and the majority of the time is spent hunting and pecking and hacking your way to the thing you're supposed to find.

It's a bit of a shame because the world building is fantastic and I wanted there to be more actual reasons to really dive deep and if you can guess correctly about where the infractions will be, it's easy to skip a bunch of fun stuff. The game is certainly pulling on the nostalgia strings with its graphical style and geocities vibe. It made me wish that there were more websites these days that had the types of mini-games that can be found here. Text and single images and then links to the next "page" in a virtual choose-your-own-adventure.  But the real standout was the music. Plenty of kitschy, fun tunes to enjoy while slowly scrolling and reading about these fake people's fake lives. It's a fun game that is maybe too short on PC but too clunky on the Playstation.

[Tantalus | 500]

Star Fox Adventures is done, and it was okay.

I enjoyed it well enough to start, but was ready to be done with it by the end. Regular combat is terrible. The Arwing sections were annoying. There were not enough unique locations, so they ended up re-using the same ones too often, which meant re-tracing my steps way too many times. I also think Rare having to shoe-horn in the Star Fox licence detracted from the game rather than adding to it.

I did enjoy some of the boss battles. I also thought the graphics were pretty good for one of the earlier era Gamecube games.

With some refinements, I do think there is enough here that could have gone on to make a good base for a (spiritual) sequel, had Rare stuck with developing games for Nintendo. Instead, it feels like a final whimper before they were sold to Microsoft.

[Sumez | 3,174]

Mega Man Battle Network 2 - Beaten 17/6

When talking about Mega Man Battle Network 1, I mentioned some really glaring issues with the game's core interface. The fact that the next game immediately fixes those issues is pretty emblematic of the difference between the two games. I also think it accentuates the lack of care really put into the first game, because any playtester would tell you to fix that, and it would take very little time to do so. 
I've already mentioned this multiple times, but it bears repeating - MMBN was always intended to be a mass-produced series of games, hooking its audience into a sense of FOMO. This game released only seven months after the first! That's shorter than the delay you'd expect from any newly announced game release date these days. 

So yeah, Mega Man Battle Network 2 is basically the first game, except with a bunch of tiny improvements that overall make it a much better game. Not that all the most obvious shortcomings have been addressed - far from it. Dungeons still overstay their welcome by quite a lot. The story is still garbage (though considerably less so), and the amount of needless backtracking and travelling between metro stations that you're expected to do is even more excessive this time around.

But the combat mechanics are still the highlight of the game. And even though little is actually changed from the first game, the ways the sequel does expand on it, ultimately results in a much more satisfying experience.
Most of the enemies from the first game return, but a lot of new ones eventually join the fray, creating much more unique and puzzling match-ups. This also result in a bunch of new, more unique types of battle chips (the "cards" that you play during combat, remember?) which ultimately supersede most of the "attack, but with higher damage output"  ones that would dominate a good "deck" in the previous game. Instead, the unique properties and behaviors of each chip becomes a lot more important throughout the later parts of this game. There is even an elemental weakness system in play that surprisingly doesn't suck. At the same time, they also nerfed the "charge shot" upgrade, so that your regular shots don't end up being so powerful that the battle chips are useless.
The tiles that you stand on can now also have a lot more properties compared to previously where breaking them was the primary way to interact, and this plays into the elemental system as well, and can really effect how an encounter plays out.
And finally, your healing skills become a lot more relevant in the sequel, since you no longer heal automatically between every encounter. In the first game, they were nearly pointless, but this time around it's actually a resource that you want to balance.

Another mild improvement comes from the game's central "internet" dungeon. The place you return to multiple times throughout the game, which gradually expands how far it can be explored. In the first game, this was a tedious maze where every corridor looked the same - in this one the layout feels a bit more unique, and is split into smaller, and more unique looking areas, making it feel less confusing. And that's fortunate, because you're straight up forced to revisit it much more frequently in this game. It even has various little "town squares" that you can visit.

Something I omitted mentioning in my already way-too-long writeup on MMBN1 is that one of the series' bolder moves is to never reward the player with EXP from combat, playing into that "number go up" compulsion that a game like this would almost be expected to do.
Instead, you get rated for how you perform in each encounter, based primarily on your speed and ability to avoid damage. Perform well, and you're more likely to get the enemy's "battle chip". Otherwise, your rating affects how much money you win, which can then be used to purchase increasingly expensive upgrades to your health, or special battle chips. But honestly, the primary thing governing your character's strength, absolutely is the chips you'll be able to grind your way into.
I really don't want to grind, so I just took what I came across, but I think the mechanic is cool, and arguably more gratifying than what a game like Pokémon does.

There's a lot of stuff to get into for completionists in Mega Man Battle Network 2. But like the first game, it quickly evolves into "just collect every single enemy's battle chip", and once again I couldn't be bothered. This is a part of the game that I'm never going to visit, but I did enjoy my time with this one. It's a lot more enjoyable than the first, but once again all of that essentially comes from the core combat. The rest is frankly pretty fluffy and forgettable. And the characters are still really annoying.
 

Edited July 2 by Sumez

[LHCGreg | 149]

Ghosts 'n Goblins Resurrection is done. I got the true ending on Squire difficulty, then Knight difficulty, and finally Legend difficulty.

If you've played other games in the series, you know basically what to expect. Resurrection has only a single jump like Ghosts and Ghouls, not a double jump like Super Ghouls. There are no lives or continues. You get as many tries as you want and you're going to need them. There are a certain number of bees you can collect in each level. Bees can be used to unlock magic from a skill tree. Unlike previous games you can use magic at any time, not just when you have gold armor, and you can cycle between the magic you have with the shoulder buttons. Each spell has a different amount of cooldown after using it during which you cannot use any magic.

The four difficulty levels are:

• Page: You respawn where you are after dying. The description says you can't experience the full game on this difficulty. I didn't bother with this difficulty because you're not getting the GnG experience if there's no penalty for dying.
• Squire: Checkpoints are fairly frequent, maybe around 4 per level plus another right before the boss. You can take 4 hits before dying.
• Knight: Same amount of checkpoints as Squire. You can take 3 hits before dying.
• Legend: Fewer checkpoints, usually one one in the middle and one right before the boss. The last two levels of each loop only have a single checkpoint right before the boss. You can take 2 hits before dying.

Number of enemies also generally increases with each difficulty level.

The second loop has levels that are more difficult remixes of the first loop.

To get the true ending, you need to complete two loops as usual. Instead of needing a special weapon on the second loop, you need to find a special chest on each level for both loops, kill the magician inside, then enter a portal earlier in the level after killing the magician (usually requiring you to die or restart from last checkpoint) in order to reach to a "hell hole" where you have to either kill a certain number of enemies or survive for a certain period of time. You will need a guide in order to find all of these.

Especially on Legend, the game is all about figuring out a plan that works (including being able to adjust for the randomness in the game) and executing it to perfection. On lower difficulties you can get away with suboptimal plans and mistakes in execution with the extra health and frequent checkpoints but Legend is pretty unforgiving and will force you to come up with better strategies than you used on Knight. Watching djmikehaggar's incredible 1:29:16 true ending speedrun of Legend (only 1 death!) helped me out in a few places.

Great game, probably my favorite in the series out of Ghouls, Super Ghouls, and GnGR.

Grade: A

[Reed Rothchild | 9,977]

Mid-year check-in:

@Philosoraptor 52/75
@T-Pac 29/40
@Brickman 27/??
@Reed Rothchild 21/35
@Sumez 20/55
@ikk 17/35
@Lago 13/25
@Tantalus 12/15
@Floating Platforms 10/30
@spacepup 8/??
@Splain 7/15
@fox 7/30
@Foochie776 6/15
@Rhuno 5/7
@LHCGreg 5/9
@twiztor 5/13
@greenthunder 5/18
@Jicsan 5/22
@Gloves 4/10
@Gaia Gensouki 4/553
@wongojack 3/14
@the_wizard_666 3/50
@JamesRobot 2/6
@Webhead123 2/10
@Jeevan 1/1
@Murray 1/4
@G-type 1/7
@ScaryD 1/10
@peg 1/16
@BlackVega 0/5
@koifish 0/5
@FireHazard51 0/9
@Rudybegga 0/10
@ThePhleo 0/0
@MrWunderful 0/lots

[G-type | 2,840]

2/7

(3 if I count beating Solaris with save states)

[fox | 1,779]

I’m about 1/3 the way thru Paper Mario and TTYD remake.  Enjoying it but taking my time with it.

[peg | 382]

My goal was achieved for the year, anything else from here on is extra credit.