Ghosts and Goblins is pretty clunky but Daimakaimura/Ghouls and Ghosts is a masterpiece of the genre and a notch above the best Castlevania (which are still great games, but not as tight as an arcade game is).
Magnificient level design, visuals, enemies and bosses, fun and varied weapons and excellent use of RNG. Only flaw is that a couple of weapons are garbage and you need to actively avoid them to win. Still top 5 Capcom game, easily.
The gameplay in Final Fantasy VII aged about as well as the graphics did (ha ha ha Popeye arms ha ha). Playing it as someone who began with later games in the series, I remember being really perplexed at certain mechanics, such as being unable to use a basic attack when your limit gauge is full and the “it’s 3D now so we better make the most of it” dungeon design.
Super Mario RPG has charm for days and I think it’s aged very well graphically, but in terms of its gameplay, it’s insultingly easy and the combat is very repetitive. Most enemy attacks are functionally identical and the designs for them get lazy after a while (Sword Rain and Arrow Rain). Additionally, a lot of the minigames are jump puzzles and exercises in frustration.
These are both games I really like, by the way.
Also, since I might as well take my two big favorites down a peg, the facial animations in Final Fantasy X and X-2 are more cringey today than Tidus’s laughing in that one scene which is awkward and uncomfortable on purpose that’s the point you fucking idiots.
Super Mario RPG is one of a handful of games I will constantly replay-- It’s an all-time classic.
Yes, it’s easy, but you can make it a bit tougher on yourself by doing no equip/low-level runs, and the battle tedium is a symptom of all RPGs… To this day, The World Ends With You is the only RPG I was willingly looking for fights to engage in; It’s combat is so diverse and creative.
I mentioned red and blue earlier in the thread. Yeah looking back at gen1 now. You would think no one bothered to actually play test the game.
Several glitches, bugs and broken shit include
.When slash is used by a poke that is faster than it’s target. It’s always a critical hit
.Wrap and Fire Spin flat out made it so that the target can’t battle until the move misses. So if you’re lucky you can fire spin or wrap your foe to death without them getting a turn to attack.
Fire wasn’t super effective against ice nor did it resist it
When hyperbeam KO’s a foe. It doesn’t require a reacharge
Amnesia was the most busted stat boosting move of all time due to special being one stat
Only 3 moves did super effective damage to psychics. Pin missle, twin needle and lick. Which the strongest was like a base power of 30
When slept. the turn used to wake up counts as your turn. So if one is lucky enough they can keep sleeping their foe and attacking till they’re KO’d
Vine Whip for some stupid fucking reason only had 10pp. You have any idea how much of a bitch it is to get through rock tunel with that shit???
Fire definitely was SE against Ice. It didn’t resist it though. Neutral damage. It might have changed later more for balance purposes than common sense though.
Slash and any high CH Rate move like Razor Leaf or Crabhammer were almost guaranteed CH’s regardless of speed.
Body Slam never paralyzing Normal-types was lulzy as well.
It got really obvious that some of these were straight up glitches when they got patched in Stadium 1 though, like the Hyper Beam one.
Pin Missile was clutch against Psychics though. Made Jolteon the only Electric besides Zapdos that wasn’t completely walled.
Most types were gimped by simply having weak moves through a lot of generations. Grass and Bug instantly come to mind.
Dragon and Ghost too, but Ghost at least had Shadow Ball post Gen 2 (Which was pointless for the ghosts themselves because “lol Ghost is a Physical-type.”) and Outrage because it was weak and pretty exploitable.
Tedious, repetitive battles are inevitable in most RPGs by simple fact that fighting is usually the only way to gain more abilities and strength… Doing something over and over again is bound to become boring eventually.
Ironically, the game I mentioned having fun battles also has other ways to gain skills and experience outside of fighting. The World Ends With You features EXP gain for your Pins even while the game is turned off, doing Street pass stuff, or playing Tin Pin Slammer. Also, you can gain new Pins in shops or in Street pass, or by sleep experience changing the way certain Pins evolve and grow.
You don’t need to tell me how TWEWY works; it’s one of my top two games.
Again, I’d say that you need to play more RPGs, because plenty of RPGs (especially WRPGs) give you EXP for completing quests, or finding new areas, or other things that aren’t combat. Also, if your combat systems aren’t one-note and autopilot, then battling is no longer tedious. And if you design a balanced EXP curve, you won’t have to grind for sufficient EXP in the first place, which further reduces tedium.
4 player Konami beat-em-ups. They were so awesome as a kid, couldn’t get enough of them. Turtles and Simpsons were the pinnacle of fun in the arcade. Even when TMNT 2 came home for the NES and we could finally play the arcade (kinda) version at home it was great.
But now they are basically mind-numbingly unplayable. The only interest is in trying to one-credit them, and even then it’s not fun.
^^ A fantastic IP in the hands of idiots. Been knowing this for years. They’re probably too scared to attempt anything that isn’t a Sonic game.
If i were rich, i’d buy or rent rights to the IP from Sega and then hire somebody like WayForward to resurrect it. Or Capcom. Or Nintendo. Anybody but Goddamn Sega. They can’t even handle Sonic right these days. Hurts to be an Old-school Sega fanboy sometimes.
Lick? If I remember correctly, psychics were flat out immune to ghost in gen 1 due to a typo in the effectiveness table (which is hilarious when the anime made a huge deal out of “ghost beats psychic omg”).
Also Leech Life was super effective against psychic, and the attack was also shit. I can’t even remember the attack Twin Needle, who had that move?
Freeze was also permanent unless the frozen target got hit by a fire attack, i.e. Ice Beam, Ice Punch and Blizzard had a percentage chance of literally insta-killing. Blizzard also had 95% accuracy lol
Beedrill. Signature move. It works as well as you can expect.
Blizzard was OP though. 90% accuracy and 30% Freeze Chance with permafreeze was bananas.
I guess there are reasons for modders to try to update the engine in every pokemon game after all. Especially regarding the Physical/Special split. I still can’t get over the fact that Ghost was a Physical type and Dark was Special.
Capcom’s beat’em ups pretty much made Konami’s irrelevant. Whereas Capcom put more and more fighting game elements in the mix, experimented with several styles of play and had lots of character variety (plus vastly superior level design) Konami mostly stayed very simplistic save things like Violent Storm, which is them trying to do a Capcom game.
I’m probably going to get flamed for this, but I really loved the battle system in FFXIII. The paradigm shift thing was extremely fun and fast paced. It took a combination of preparation, strategy, and skill to master it.
Now, go ahead and bash me for my opinion, everyone! I still had fun playing a game you hated, so I win!
Paradigm shift would have been a lot better if they added the ability to quick shift with a button press or analog direction. Also, the auto-doom mechanic was dumb as hell
Speaking of Final Fight, that is one game that didn’t age well at all. Characters move at a snail’s pace, invincible moves have a stupidly strict input making using them harder than it should, stupid “AI” that reads your inputs so enemies perfectly stay out of range as you move, the knife guys having such long range that they can avoid invincible moves from max range so if you get KO’d you are pretty much dead, silly throw ranges for bosses like Rolento (who can infinite throw you in a corner) and Abigail, few high damage options outside of infinites… 1CCing the game feels like a chore to me, having to dance around all those design problems.
Many of these problems come from them treading new ground of course and got fixed in later games. Playing AvsP, Punisher, Shadow Over Mystara or Armored Warriors and then coming back to Final Fight doesn’t feel good.