I'm gonna review old and mysterious games, some famous, some never before seen outside of Japan.
I stream on twitch @ AraknieRetro: www.twitch.tv/araknieretro
Then the full streams end up in Araknie Plays It Retro, where they will be uploaded in full: www.youtube.com/@AraknieRetroTwitchVODS
Please remember that it's only me that reviews these games, and my opinion is my own subjective one. Basically you could call this "Personal Taste RU-vid Gaming Edition" if you wanted to. Heh.
Also i don't want to really edit these too much. Unless my writing really needs that kind of visual aid for more complicated reviews or i wanna try a "funny" joke.
I hope you enjoy your stay, i'll try not to be too serious here but for my dumbness there's always my Twitch, but i'll be political if the game is political.
I can't understand how someone thought it was okay to f up your game if you failed to remove a plant the right way 2 hours prior to the time you actually need it. And then you have to start the game over from the very beginning.
The accent is bad enough, making it vert hard to even understand you... But the review itself, is Awful, and just plain wrong. Basically boils down to: Soyboy cant deal with a Hard Game, and wants Pre-Rendered 64 bit Graphics, on a Genesis. You do realize, that a 50 ft tall, 20,000 pound Mech... isnt going to React like a Grasshopper... Right?! There is a delay, due to Realism... and guess what? It doesnt take long to learn how to time your jumps properly. Just like, in the REAL WORLD... where you have to operate Heavy Machinery, you ALSO have to ADAPT. A Semi Truck, is never going to Accelerate, nor be as Nimble, as a Ferrari. Ohh Boo Hoo, for the dude whom cant handle a little Realism. Nor learn to ADAPT, like any other Grown Up. In fact, the Realism is one of the most refreshing things about this game! When I realized that I could accidentally blow myself up, with the Explosives that I had just launched... I was pleasantly Astounded. Even more Shocked... when some of my "Friends" actually started to Join in the fight, and actually Blew up other Enemies! Not many games, do anything like that... because it takes a LOT more programming efforts... to make it work properly. But thats not everything either. You learn very quickly, that you typically cant stand in One Place, trying to fight off so many attacking enemies. You will get Swarmed, and Shot up quickly, if you do. Stick and Move, like REAL life Fights / War. And the Space Stage, where you say you just float? Nope. The area is large, and if you actually explored it, you would find: 1) A large enemy ship on the far right of the field 2) That below you, there is the planets Atmosphere. You can lure enemies into the atmosphere... and pull up at the last moment... to cause them to Burn Up in the Atmosphere. Its a Fantastic, Creative, Semi-Realistic, and Unique gameplay Mechanic. Spoiling the Storyline surprise, in a review, is also Extremely Bad Form. Anyone should have the ability to be shocked at the very end, when the full story is revealed. As far as the Graphics goes... they are Good. There is a lot of great details in the Mechs and Ships, and the animation of them all, is also fantastic. The backgrounds, are not as good.. but that problem isnt really isnt the fault of the designers. Its a big issue with the Genesis itself. The Genesis's limited color palette, made for Very bad Organic's. Plants, Grass, Water, and more... not having enough shades of color, and often the use of darker and duller shades.. makes Organics look pretty bad. It was also an issue in Thurderforce 3, when they tried to use Heavy amounts of "Organic" graphics, in the backgrounds. The later mechanical stages, looked infinitely Better. That said... there are some really great Graphical features in this game. Massive Ships, that take up half the screen... or even Several screens worth of space... are Phenomenal... and there is almost nothing like it, found in any other game. The explosions are also extremely well done, and quite realistic looking. The movie-trailer like animation... with explosion trails flying off of the damaged ships... is fantastic (As is the multi-layers of ships, making a very 3D look to it). And the music... is some of the most EPIC of the Entire Genesis library. Id still rate Thunderforce II, as the best... But some of these tracks are still Absolute Bangers. That Jazzy Synth distorted lead... is to D13 for. Yes, there is a limited amount of tracks... but its more about the Quality of the tracks, than Quantity. You have to realize, that the carts only fit so much data on them... and, you also have to balance the sound data, with the program data, and the graphics data. If you make the graphics really larger and detailed... Guess What? You run out of room for more Audio Tracks. The music quality of Thunderforce II is LEAGES better than TF3. Why? They had to SEVERELY COMPRESS the audio as much as they could... so that they could fit more tracks in, as well as to be able to fit more detailed graphics on the Stages. Also, to make larger and longer stages... they also compressed the graphical details too. Almost every stage in TF3, looks like trash... compared to the final stage, which is far more Detailed. Compare TF3's side scrolling stages, to TF2. There is no comparison at all. TF2's stages are far more detailed... and Look so much better. It Almost looks like the Resolution is Doubled... because TF3's levels are so low-res / compressed. And finally... Here is the deal: Back when we used to buy these Console games.. They were very expensive. Especially early on... as there was no such thing as Game Rentals. You rolled the dice, and took a chance... And you wanted to play and enjoy that game, for as long as possible. If you could beat a game in a single day... it actually Ticked you off !!! In fact, it took me something like a year of on and off playing, before I finally beat Thunderforce II... and I STILL LOVE that flippin game. Target Earth is very Similar. It was never meant to be defeated on your Work-Time Break period. It was designed to be replayed over and over again... until you gradually built up the knowledge, experience, and skills... to eventually be able to have some excellent runs... and to eventually be able to fully complete the game. You likely never Spent the $70 (and thats not counting Inflation, and lack of funds... due to working limited hours as a young man, still in school), to purchase the game... to be able to Appreciate the VALUE of a Challenging game. You are also likely the same kind of dude, that will ONLY play the Mario Brothers games... if you are using a Switch based CHEAT system... because you are too lazy to want to develop the skills, to "Get GOOD". And its that Bad attitude... combined with games that are WAY too easy today... that has lead to every game having almost no Meaning and Value at all. A Game isnt a 10, just because you can breeze through it, without dying once. Thats a pathetic JOKE... and only a true NARCISSIST would want to play baby-level games like that, because a NARCISSIST cant handle any challenge at all, without their Soap Bubble EGOS, being BRUISED... and sending them into a fit of NARCISSIST RAGE. Normal people, with normally functioning brains... We actually ENJOY a CHALLENGING game. We dont want "Participation Trophies", for coming in Dead Last, in a foot-race. When we are Crushed... we dust ourselves off... Try again... and ENJOY the experiences, all over again. If and when it becomes too much... we stop playing for a few days.. or maybe even a month. But eventually, we come back, and try again. Its not the Destination, that matters most. Its the Journey. And the thing is... this game has some of the most incredibly Creative states, that it makes the Journey, that much more amazing. Also... I have tried Cybernator for the SNES.. which I believe was based off of this style of game (if not made by the same company?). It pales in comparison, in every single metric. But hey... it doesnt have that small half second delay... so you and your POOR gaming skills, might be able to actually handle it... >_< Anyway... this game is a 9 all day long. Its one of the few reasons to even Own a Genesis. In fact, out of the original 52 games that I had bought for my Genesis... I only replayed like 7 of them... and THIS game, and Thunderforce 2, were my top two replayed games... out of those 7. All of the rest of the library, just collected dust. Once and Done... as they were not really all that good / fun / challenging.
20 Reasons Why Arcanine is WRONG in his Kyrandia review video 1. Criticizes the labyrinth section but makes no mention of how cool it is to figure out to use the berries to light it up and use the game's unique object permanence mechanic in a surprising and unexpected way. Also, I liked the labyrinth! Because drawing maps is cool! :happyfrog: 2. No mention of the cool settings option to make Brandon walk really fast nyoooooooooooom 3. Doesn't name Brandywine (the dragon) as the best character 4. Says "will literally kill you if you don't react fast enough to Malcolm's throwing knife" and then goes on about "reflexes", but the scene with the throwing knife isn't actually timed (or, if it is, it's pretty slow). In that scene, clicking or pressing ANYTHING (even your options screen) except for the throwing knife in the tree will trigger the death scene, which leads to the illusion that it's timed. Reflexes don't really matter in that scene at all. 5. Doesn't do proper justice to the absolutely gorgeous out-of-this-world amazing soundtrack 6. Says there are two labyrinths in the game but the forest where the Alchemy Stones are can be considered a labyrinth too so there's three of them 7. Doesn't mention the actual real true bullshit of the game: the birthstone puzzle dish, half of which is just random and stupid 8. Does not mention the bullshit of having to pixelhunt for the sunstone, which is made even worse by only letting you picking up the sunstone after the birthstones quest is active even if you do find it before then, only giving you a vague voice line instead 9. Doesn't mention the cool death where you get swallowed by an oversized shark 10. Doesn't mention the bell puzzle and how the bell puzzle doesn't really work in some versions of the game due to different soundfonts and the notes of the bells being wrong, besides, putting cultural knowledge checks in your game is pretty lame in the first place 11. Doesn't mention how the game is MOSTLY pretty cool at not letting you softlock yourself unlike many other point-n-clicks before it, but then has TWO very possible and annoying softlocks right at the end anyway 12. Doesn't mention how many of the death scenes are mostly telegraphed (unlike many sierra games) giving you the opportunity to save your game before trying dangerous things (e.g. brandon walking on the rope of the broken bridge: he won't do it if you click on it the first time, will only actually do it if you insist) 13. The game is a 6 out of 10, not 7 outo f 10. Honestly the bullshit birthsotne puzzle might bring it down to 5 out of 10 14. Says that you don't really need notes for the game because the game "carries itself" however many crucial hints are only given to the player once and cannot be repeated unless you load a previous save and redo the dialogue 15. Doesn't acknowledge how some of the game's mechanics aren't really hinted at anywhere and can only be discovered by bruteforcing, which is pretty lame. For example the alchemy stone combinations, or that you gotta combine stones with flowers in the cauldron. 16. When talking about object permanence, doesn't mention the apple, which is an exception because you can eat it and de-permafy it, which is one of the softlocks. There's a backup apple but what if you eat that one too??? 17. Does mention that some items are useless and says that's good for immersion, but fails to acknowledge the pegasus statue, which goes too far as a red herring. 18. Ends the video with «ciao-ciao» but that's italian, not finnish, so is inappropriate in the context 19. In "Thanks for Watching", the "watching" word is capitalized for no reason 20. Doesn't mention that you can't just cut someone in half with a rusty saw in one swing wtf that just doesn't happen no matter how strong you are m8
So, Lands of Lore is the friendly version of Eye of the Beholder. If you have trouble with that one is totally fair to steer away from it. I'd rather suggest you playing more modern takes if you still like the genre but want some accessibility to them. Like the two Legends of Grimrock you can pretty much customize the difficulty to your liking. Other titles you might enjoy are Vaproum and Starcrawlers. Still hard games if you want them to be, but getting lost ain't a problem in them, good mapping and nice landmarks.
@@raakzblanvod4189 i played old Sierra games, those have difficult and obscure puzzles. Both Grimrock games give you enough hints on how to proceed, it's not that hard.
@@raakzblanvod4189 Only if you like and have played at least one of the more 3D ones, aka from 6 to 9. Then you might enjoy also that one, even if it's a bit rough around the edges because of a pretty low budget.
Good review. I'd give it probably the exact same score if I was doing my own review. I think this is a pretty neat game but there is a lot that just feels either not fully fleshed out or ill conceived. This would probably be a good game for a Trials of Mana style modern remake. I think this is a broader issue with RPGs from the early 2000s but the pacing here is so bad. I ended up quitting my recent play through after sitting through about 45 minutes of terrible dialogue and then promptly getting killed without an opportunity to save. I also think I might have mis-built my character (and why I got killed) since the job system is super opaque. I do think it has a good soundtrack by GBA standards but if you've never played the gameboy version the original soundtrack holds up surprisingly well especially considering the limitations of the original gameboy. The original version is also worth checking out since it loses all of the bloat that drags this version down and is a fun breezy RPG. I'd probably give the original game a full letter grade higher in fact (so B/B+) just because it is still a fun light game that is easy to pick up and play.
Ah yes, this is real nostalgia. Malcolm was an interesting antagonist. The music was melancholy, just the way I still like it today. I completely forgot how many different puzzles and mazes there were. Also I know there were sequels, but I never played those. Great work man 👍
Nice to se you here, i like this quite a fair bit. I also heard the second one is better so i'm real curious to play that one, but i've got a list of games before that i've recorded, oh boy how many games i have.
This game was a complete revelation when it came out in Europe (which was starved of RPGs). It is probably the game I have played most to completion and I never personally experienced getting stuck in scenery or found it that grindy (i just picked one weapon per character I think and stuck to it). I loved the magic, music, mulitplayer and menu interface. I also liked the combat (mixing dice rolls with action) but I would never use the charging up option for weapons, so it was flawed. I do agree the story went missing for a large part of the game and the dialogue/translation was substandard and slowdown was an issue. So if you don't enjoy the combat it would become a real chore. It felt right up there with Zelda 3 at the time, but I doubf it will have aged as well.
Yeah, it surely benefits from having 3-way multiplayer, i bet in that way combat drastically improves and you don't have to rely on a CPU that barely does anything no matter what setting you use and gets stuck in the scenery all the time and you have to go back and make them follow you perfectly. It's clearly a game meant for the infamously cancelled SNES Playstation CD add-on but having to downscale everything to a cartridge limited what your companions could do for sure.
completely agree - this game is intrinsic to my childhood. I love the combat and the magic, though the latter can be broken. The writing in this game is very poor and 'barebones' would indeed by a very good description of the story, esp knowing 40% of the game was cut. Really pathetic Square never went back and attempted to restore any of that content from their remaster. The soundtrack is fucking incomparable.
I think the Commander Keen series was the first multigame PC series where I owned every game because I got the registered versions for Christmas the year my family got our first PC, and already had Keen Dreams and all the Shareware episodes. I remember when Wolfenstein Youngblood came out I hoped they would make a DLC where BJ Blazkowicz teams up with his grandson BJ Blazkowicz II aka Commander Keen but it never happened and after playing the game it probably wouldn't have been as fun as I anticipated.
This is my all time favorite Quintet game. I always hoped for a sequel and I still hope for a remaster. I have a massive soft spot for techie type characters so getting to play as an inventor using his robots in combat was a great idea IMO.
My main issue with this is the lack of multiplayer. The Gameboy games that started the series (Though you wouldn't know it was part of a series based on the US title) had multiplayer so why not the SNES game?
Sega is the one that recently announced a new 2D Shinobi game and they still release 2D Sonic games. So, since they are of the few AAA publishers still doing side-scrollers it is possible. I wonder if Vectorman is present in the "more old returning franchises" they announced june last year, it would be cool.
I have no idea if I would like this genre as turn based dungeon crawlers can leave me cold. But this looks beautiful and with your recommendation and the price on GoG I've added it to the backlog. The maps do look glorious and I like a good jumpscare. It does make me wonder why with all these FPSes we haven't had more single player but multimember party type FPS adventures.
They exist, they are called StarCrawlers, Island of the Caliph and Vaporum, but they are not triple A anymore. Ubisoft did announce Might & Magic XI back in december but who knows how that will turn out after the abysmal budget they gave to X: Legacy. To be fair, the dev did their most and used every cent to the best of their ability but they could only do so much. Basically the indie space is your only hope outside of playing the old ones.
I had a Mac when I was young, so I played the more story driven Marathon series from Bunbie around the same time (I think the source code is freely available). Doom made me scream at a friend's house. I'm not sure any other game has ever done that, maybe the Alien FPS on PS1 which is terrifying. I definitely need to get Doom 1 & 2.
I am hoovering up pretty much any decent or interesting pre-2004 PC game on GoG but this doesn't make the cut. I am looking to go through your PC reviews but I don't seem able to see a PC playlist? If there isn't one and you get the time it would be much appreciated.
I have it, but i doesn't show up always, i dunno why, youtube is kinda broken since they change the code every 3 hours to fight ablockers, you have no idea behind the scenes how messy it is some days. I'll link the playlist to you, hopefully it works. ru-vid.com/group/PLHe9iD5qvEwKw1VH_ASV7XM4HRsHncqQT
This review is spot on! To me the games just felt like more generic Zelda GB content rather than anything with meaning, inspiration or purpose. The games were just going through the motions, and the random references to the N64 games felt extremely tacked on. Like you point out by the end they feel like products without a creative vision, and there isn’t much of a sense of adventure to it all, especially as each dungeon (and the lead up to each dungeon) feels detached to the last. Doesn’t feel like everything happens in the same connected game world
They are still quality and worth playing if you like top down adventures, nothing bad like the endless super hard to play clones on Turbografx or what have you, but it's just pretty good. But just because of the moment to moment gameplay, otherwise it would be also hard to finish. It's kind of incredible but i'd rather play Crusader of Centy, Brain Lord or Beyond Oasis, it's not often you can say that about a Zelda game.
Found your channel while looking for reviews of Esper Dream on Famicom (I have both Esper Dream 1 and 2 on cartridge and wasn’t sure whether to skip 1 or not). It’s great! Thanks for covering the more obscure games from history that rarely get talked about these days. Love your reviews!
Thank you for the kind words and yes i play lots of obscure titles, intermixed with the more popular stuff, there's gonna be some really weird ones in the next few months.
Quant'è stupendo Super Metroid~ Mi hai fatto venire voglia di rigiocarci ahah Comunque sono d'accordo, non ha senso usare una guida la prima volta perché l'esplorazione è proprio il bello del gioco ed è soddisfacente quando si riesce ad andare avanti o scoprire oggetti nascosti, ecc.
Always like that for every game, never use the guide the first time you play something, it's gonna feel very guided and not as intense. I don't worry about if i miss so some stuff, games don't go anywhere i can always play them again.
I haven't checked your stuff in a long time, now I see I've been missing out on a lot 😂 The humor is still excellent, glad to see you're still doing these with so much passion 👍
Oh yeah, this passion's never gonna go away. I'm full in old games, always collect a batch of them every few months, digitally or physically, i just love it.
Do you know that there's going to be a prequel this game called Simon the Sorcerer Origins? Fans hope after that game they'll make a true sequel to Simon the Sorcerer 3D because of it's cliffhanger ending.
@@araknieretro You're not the person that said that. But do you agree that Simon the Sorcerer 3D needs a true sequel because of it's cliffhanger ending?
3 was technically the best, but my fav was always the second - I prefered the more hand pixeled look to the digitized photographs of 3 :D thanks for the great vid <3
Yeah on this channel i purely have my take about gameplay mostly, that's where the votes come from. Unless it's point and click and then the story is the deciding factor. I just adapt to the genres and thanks for being here, karo!
this was legitimately one of those childhood games i forgot about, my brother was playing it and i looked for like 2 hours when i was like 6, awesome video
Hey, Jay, thanks for passing by. Glad to have a memory unlocked moment. But yeah, if you ever wanna play UU it's on GOG, so you know it's gonna be running well on modern computers
Yeah, i talked about them tangentially because of the double protagonist stuff but there was nothing to say about them specifically so i didn't, lol. Pretty standard stuff, nothing stand-out.
Nice review! I forgot about this game but it's nice to see it again. The Addams Family does come across as another generic licensed platformer game and sure, those were a dime a dozen back in the 90s, but I reckon this one can be fun. I think we can all agree the developers were very ambitious with this one, some of the enemies, levels, and secrets are ridiculous lol.
Yeah, they were, apparently i missed an entire secret section of multiple zones to find the 5th heart and i could not tell you where to beign searching, i just discovered it after the fact, wacky stuff.
I agree there are many attributes of this game that are impresive for the year it was made. I'm surprised I've never heard of this before - I don't believe I have seen or heard any mention of "Esper's Dream" in my entire life, and that's surprising given I've researched a lot of 80s and 90s games over the years. Goes to show just how many games are out there, it's fascinating. Thanks for introducing me to this game through your review Arakie. :)
