11 months later here, and it's still glitchy as f***. I fell off the crane, and there was no way to get back to it. I also fell off the walking machine. Can someone in Cyan code solid floors, please?
My earliest computer memory was clicking thru Myst in 3rd grade computer session. One of my crowning personal achievements was beating Riven on my own, after a few gaming mags at the time had hopelessly given up on it. For me it's peak puzzle gaming. There really will never be a game like Riven again.
"Proceeds will go toward rebuilding the marshes" 😂😂😂 that joke actually took me out. Chrono Cross is not only my favorite RPG, its my favorite video game of all time. Thank you for such an entertaining video
This was so delicate and vulnerable, truly beyond moving; I adored the format and analysis of this particular video. This is truly a beautiful body of work. I adore you Cullen.
Thank you, genuinely! Always some worries doing a vid like this for those exact reason, but this style of video has become my favorite way to express myself creatively. Hope to keep making them!
There's something about FF3 that hits different. Im not scared by any of the games, especially the more anime-y recent entries. But the sections in her home always get me. Something about being trapped in what should be a safe personal space knowing there are invasive beings seeping in really fucks with me - its great
There's a subtly I just love about how the ghost invasions get that I just hadn't seen elsewhere. There's so many of them too, the one in the dark room fucked me up massively. Wonderfully unnerving game.
I really loved URU, of the cyan games it was my favorite to just hang out in and revisit. As I mastered the worlds and got stuff working I really felt like I belonged and could call my little Relto home. I still boot up the online version about once a year just to take a tour.
There's a subtle tragedy to a photographer who can't move on from something their lost. When you take a picture of something, you can preserve it. A captured instant, catalyst of a memory immortalizing a brief beat in time. Suddenly, one day, pictures and the memories they bring are taunting. A reminder that something is gone and can't be regained. I like the idea that this finally got flipped again by the end. Living on to preserve the memory of a lost loved one rather than be haunted by it. Carrying the story of their life with you like a picture Or a tattoo.
I have played ff1 through 7, and this is my favorite, I found it really fun. The job system is less “fragmented” than 5, the world is interesting and uni que, dungeons are mostly well designed, with one exception (not the crystal tower, there is a much, much worse area) and you get stupidly op at the end. I actually did a long essay on why i like this game so much, and what it does well, though that may be beyond the scope of a RU-vid comment. 16:52 I also think this game is better than DQ11 , mainly because of the whole post game, which is mandatory to understand the story. 28:47 The boss with one attack? I beat her first try on the famicom in the early level 50s. FYI use single target full heal spells with two healers, and buff or summon on the first turn. I did not grind in this dungeon or eureka at all. The best strategy would be to get the loot from a quarter of eureka, hightail it back to the invincible, get the rest of eureka’s loot, back to the ship, quarter of the actual dungeons loot, back to ship, rest of the dungeons loot, back to ship and you can complete the game half asleep from that point on, no grinding required. You should do all the optional dungeons, get all the summons and do the penultimate dungeon before the ancient maze, if you feel unprepared. The final dungeon in NES FF1 requires a lot of grinding, and so do a lot of that game (you have to use the strategy I outlined for the crystal tower for every dungeon in FF1, and it is super boring, even in the good ones.)
Honestly, I assume it's budget reasons. Cyan's artists are great at environments and relatively still objects but people are complicated and it's clear that they're more indie than AAA in the modern era. It doesn't get that much better with the Riven Remake, but I guess I'm glad they're still trying even if I'd prefer the FMVs.
@AnonymusAxolotl the ties to the first two might be a bit confusing at first, but there's enough intrigue with Rei that you should have no issue! Game is sick as fuck!
love your "vibes" reviews On an unrelated note, your Ys reviews recently got me into the franchise, started playing in the story order. Currently halfway through Felghana and man I gotta say the Napish engine is one of my favourites of all time.
@krispy_kornflake hoping the next one will be less heavy! Thank you so much! I need to get back to Ys VI, it's my blind spot for the series unfortunately lol but I love felghana!
Gods, I adore this game and the series in general. ...3, specifically... left something of a mark on my soul, after finishing it for the first time and especially after seeing the ending. ...The exchange at the end was... something I needed, then. Good work as always, and thank ya for talkin' about it.
@@culIen 3 is my personal favorite, but 2 is a very close second. Haven't touched 4 since the original fan translation, but I'm glad that game's more widely available now
@earthbound9999 I thought about making a video on 2, but specifically the funny wii port that only got a British localization. Just need to finish the ps2 version first!
YOUU YOU ARE THE SHILL WHO MADE THE LOWEST RATED YS GAME SOUND GOOD. fuck.. well i am rushing it I know it's bad. Gameplay wise yes. Good .. better than trash games... But the anime barf particle effects cloud the enemy moves which itself are fast which would be ok... If they weren't weirdly telegraphed. Specially bosses There was no proper way and after steam horse knight I ended up crutching on flash shield. I love that I can upgrade weapons to +72 (+9 to each stat) cause it actually makes a difference. Going to weak and puny adol to unkillable adol. But god damnit. The boss gimicks. But I will emphasize. I was rushing the game cause I wanted to finish this then 8 then 9 within 5 days Yea that's not happening. I guess that's what finally made me giveup Tho if it was good in its own right . I would have forgotten about time. Tldr I was rushing It is better than trash But Louder and bigger telegraphs that are visible from the corner of your eye like dmc and ds and this game would be amazing. I want to come back to it after 8 and 9 . Hope they pull me into the ys games
Ahh i wanted to see why you said you like Trails in Ys turns out you just like the story and don't care about the gameplay this is another "It could have been anime" game
Kind of question whether your problem with the body swap was really because you could only vibe with an ostensibly white male lead or that's a retrospective conclusion you reached due to your self-admitted 'white guilt'. Did you not enjoy any media where the lead character didn't look like you? My personal problem with the body-swap aspect s that it yanks the game's narrative in a direction that wasn't properly broadcast (making it more difficult for somebody invested in the story they were being told to stay invested) and that it just... goes nowhere. The conversation about bigotry has no real payoff outside of Marbule's story and associated characters and once it's resolved it's mostly ignored by the plot. Maybe if Lynx's motives were related to racism it would factor in, but he's just an agent of FATE; him being a demi-human has nothing to do with anything, people hate him because he's a jerk. I guess the theme might tie in to the dragon conflict, except that also had nothing to do with bigotry and everything to do with the reptites being summoned from across dimensions to kill humanity. It's ultimately a plot point that doesn't do any service to the actual story and at the end feels like a 'well THAT happened!' moment that almost completely squanders its potential. Maybe your reasons were as shallow as 'I'm not a cat :(', I certainly can't tell you otherwise, but it really is just a baffling narrative dalliance that the game doesn't really need. I say this somebody who actually heard about this plot point and was stoked about the possibilities only to see what a waste it ultimately was.
@MmeCShadow I vividly remember being bummed not getting to play the rest of the game as the guy I was promised and then recall being checked out for the rest of the experience when I realize you couldn't play as Serge anymore. I don't really have white guilt in the severe derogatory sense, but I can acknowledge I was a really dumb teen who just didn't want to play as someone else. I mostly liked media where I could easily self insert, and that's not an issue anymore. And yeah it doesn't have a lot of explicit payoff, but I think it's still a valuable part of the game and I think it's neat.
@Synthonym Not exactly. The remake is out and it has remixed the puzzles so much that it feels like a new game (a great one, too) in a lot of ways. I'll think the exact same thing when I finish that, since the point was that you can really only experience these games for the first time once.
I honestly do not mean to stir anything up here, but I had always heard from reviews that Trails of Cold Steel 4 kinda sucked... so I was kinda dreading having to "power through it" just to get the full story, but... I actually really liked it. I have not played any of the 3 Trails in the Sky games, but I DID watch literally 3+ hours of youtube videos detailing the 3 games' entire story and character breakdowns before I first began with Trails from Zero and, played Zero, Azure, CS 1,2,3, and 4, and Reverie (and cannot WAIT for Daybreak to release in a couple of days). But I wasn't part of "the community" when CS 4 was released, so I legitimately do not understand what people dislike so much about it. I happened to enjoy more so than CS 1 and 3, but CS 2 rivals CS 4 for me. Edit: I really enjoyed Rean being mostly out of the story and unplayable for the first chapter or so. I admire the fact that the all of the supporting characters are strong enough that the developers took the risk of leaving the main character almost completely out; it takes some "balls" for any story teller in any medium to exclude the main protagonist for such a long period. Oh, but don't get me wrong... I like Rean more so than Lloyd (but haven't "spent enough time" with Estelle and Joshua to properly rank them), as Rean reminds me more so than myself than any other character (umm... except... yeahhhh... Unfortunately I DON'T have a harem =D hahahah), but I simply highly respect the fact that the developers have enough faith in their secondary characters to allow them to carry the story without the protagonist. That's just at least somewhat rare to a certain degree in any storytelling medium, and I respect that, I guess? I don't know hahah, I just really enjoyed CS4 and don't understand the "hate".
Great video! I just finished the Riven remake, and wanted to scroll back to see what others were saying about the games. We also grew up with Humongous Entertainment games and the Myst series. PJ Sam and Riven are both masterpieces in my book. I'm sorry you feel like you missed out on the Myst/Riven initial hype. What's important is that you're here now, and it sounds like you did it with a group of friends, which is awesome! Your final analogy of the game as a dying world was poignant. Riven was a real place for many of us, but once it's over, as with most puzzle games, we can never truly return
I still remember when it first came out, reading a review of chrono cross in EGM or whatever I used to subscribe to. They gave it a 10/10...maybe the only one I've ever seen
Played the original in '97 or '98. Playing the remake currently. Outer Wilds is worth your time. Like crazy worth your time. The things you're saying about Riven are the things people say about Outer Wilds. Do NOT spoil it for yourself, just get it and play it.
So the videos in this supercut were made kind of far apart from one another, and I haven't watched this in awhile, so I'm honestly not even sure if I do bring it up or not. If I didn't, I think I kind of just assumed people would have known how good it was? Regardless, hope you enjoy the rest!
There's only four things I dislike about the game... 1) job adjustment phase (and the mp to zero / elixir waste thing) 2) crystal tower + xande + 4 dark crystals + final boss all in one go. Pretty sure most people will just escape every battle if they die just to get back quicker to where they were. Simulated difficulty and annoying. Just drop a save before Cloud of Darkness and make it as hard as you want 3) when you get the final "op" jobs you already have a bunch of jobs almost level 99 so weaken yourself if you wanna equip them and spend hours catching back up. The final boss can be beaten easily with whm + 3 warriors at JL99 spamming advance 4) Mini/Toad sections
Chrono cross is fantastic. The ending of the game when you realize the entire world you where playing in was a by product of a scientific experiment always stuck with me. Very cool
