I honestly think your writing on Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey perfectly puts to words my feelings on the entire 360/PS3 generation. It was a time where Japanese design for games like those aforementioned two had hit what I consider to be all time highs. Gorgeous, exciting games with love and passion poured into them and unique ideas bursting out of every crevice that we’re all met with annoyance, dismissal, and “Japanese people are so weird, huh?” That truly breaks my heart. Those games are both titles that I find so exciting even to this day, yet I can’t help but see that this was the moment where the JRPG wave finally broke and receded from the western shoreline, profit seeking keeping the genre from truly thriving again until the past few years. All of the immaculately designed games that could have taken off and inspired dozens of others instead faltered in favor for games that went on to devolve into franchises full of messy disasters.
tim is one of the few people who write a two hour script, strictly adhere to reading it without deviation, and leaving traps to keep things interesting
as i was looking for the week's episode, I saw the thumbnail and thought tim finally posted his next review, but then I realised I'm on insert credit's page
saw the last remnant and went "oh yeah i meant to play that for the last 16 years" and found out that the remaster got delisted from the steam store in 2018. Bizzare
Was going to comment something to the effect of: "Now this is a tasty bowl to smoke while grinding out archetypes in Metaphor Refantazio, the year's most Xbox 360-era-like JRPG" but opted to not comment on the video until I had smoked it down to the filter, only to be totally delighted by the serendipity of the outro. Incredible video as always, hoping your perfect description of the appeal of Virtual On motivates Sega to acknowledge its existence in some way more substantial than a Yakuza arcade game cameo.
Aaahhh, I actually made it to #24, I remember last night seeing the title and thinking, "is that the same as the Wednesday Campanella song 桃太郎 line?". This line in your script is the first one that genuinly makes me wanna play the game mentioned on the list, as I LOVE that song.
I vividly remember how excited I was about Blue Dragon and Lost Odyssey, and equally vividly remember how disappointed I was with both. Lost Odyssey is one of the few games I have played through multiple times despite disliking it just because it FEELS like I SHOULD like it (along with FFT Advance)
I know you care about generosity in art, Tim, and you always deliver it. Length is one thing, but the true generosity lies in your hyphens, commas, and attributive nouns.
That’s a really good list. I would have put N3 Ninety-nine Nights, Operation Darkness and Bladestorm: The Hundred Year War on my own. If my personal circumstances had been different I would have liked Lost Odyssey as well…
One can dream: smth like this for EVERY CONSOLE EVER?! ahaha 🎉 (Yeah I know: <a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="124">2:04</a>:00 ahaha but damn this was good) Always a big lover of Tim's work :)
I feel like among all these games, if I have to try just one, Bullet Witch would be my pick. As somebody who unabashedly loves 360/PS3 era linear cinematic shooters, BW feels like a appealing balance of decisively weird and unintentionally janky. Also I don't take Tim's feature length essays for granted and I'm very glad to get another one out of the blue.
I do believe that another Action Button will one day happen (I do have you on Patreon). Though I still have a bunch of discs of some the games on this list, there are some that I don't have, and with the online market place closing it does make it a bit more difficult to get them (I am assuming that backwards compatible games still listed on the Xbox store will lead to having the game being downloadable on the 360 console itself). Lost Odyssey being #1 is no surprise to me.
Oh my god. Seeing Tim's face in my feed made me believe that it was an Action Button review, just for two seconds. Still happy for this episode of course but hell my brain is hooked for eternity
"If you believe another happens eventually... Well I suppose I must go now" I guess that's all the proof i need that we won't be seeing a new action button video anytime soon lol
marked out so hard for steins;gate in the top five. still my default choice for someone who wants a first VN to read. (though I happened to play it on the Vita)
<a href="#" class="seekto" data-time="121">2:01</a>:47 Mushihimesama Futari didn't make the list but at least got a few seconds of gameplay. To many the best CAVE shmup on the console. Please M2, do your magic and release it with the ShotTriggers treatment it deserves.
