This Let's Play is hosted on the Something Awful Forums.

This Let's Play is hosted on the Something Awful Forums.

This Let's Play is hosted on the Something Awful Forums.

In which one man sprints across Wallachia to beat up a guy who’s surprisingly into BDSM for the time period. Although Trevor Belmont slew Dracula in their great battle, Dracula managed to speak a curse that spread throughout Europe. (You just didn’t realize it because it was an NES game. Also Dracula was a weird bird thing in the end. It was probably hard to understand him.) It’s been three years since Dracula’s defeat, and somehow things have gotten worse for everyone. Plagues and banditry ravage the land, and neither of them have a personification that can be whipped to death. Elsewhere, two characters who worked for Dracula and were never seen in the NES game are mad at each other. Isaac, former Devil Forgemaster, is angered at his peer, Hector, who betrayed Dracula at the end of the last conflict. Desiring revenge, Isaac got Hector’s wife, Rosaly, burned at the stake for witchcraft. Now he wants Hector to regain the power he threw away to, I dunno, beat him up at full power to prove a point? Well, easily-backfiring plans aside, Hector has no choice but to answer Isaac’s heckling and start forging devils once again. Curse of Darkness is a bit of an odd duck. This is a followup to Lament of Innocence , the first 3D brawler that came out in 2003. But story-wise, this one is actually the sequel to Castlevania III . And despite being a sequel, it’s mainly about two characters who had nothing to do with Dracula’s Curse and focuses on a concept that doesn’t exist outside of this game. It’s a weird set of decisions, but certainly they don’t make a bad game. If you liked Lament of Innocence as a beat-em-up with light Metroidvania elements, you’ll probably like Curse of Darkness too. Hector’s movement is similar to Leon’s, but our Devil Forgemaster has more weapons than just a whip of Alchemy. This game’s weapon variety means you’ll probably find a style you like sooner or later, and there’s no shortage of different monsters to use them on. It may not be quite as stylish as your Devil May Cries, but it’s still a solid hack and slash if you like flipping around rooms and punching cyclopes. Episode List (click for more details) 2 posts - 1 participant Read full topic

Zero’s Timely Dilemma - Let’s Play Mega Man Zero (Revisited) You know what they say: you either live long enough to become the villain, or wake up and do some rad sword maneuvers. It’s been a long time since X and crew defeated Redips… or Lumine if you don’t consider Command Mission canon. The city of Neo Arcadia was established by X, and it should have been a place of peace. However, the city’s government began accusing Reploids of being Maverick, whether it was true or not. This injustice could threaten any and all Reploids who hadn’t bent the knee to Neo Arcadia. While many have fled for their lives, nobody has the power to stand up to this tyranny. Nobody, save a legendary figure who once fought alongside X… Welcome to Mega Man Zero, the first of Capcom’s handheld Mega Man platformers and the continuation to the X series. If you’re wondering what came before this, you can check out this thread for the Classic series and this thread for the X series . Some knowledge of X might help you here, but for the most part the Zero series can stand on its own in terms of its story. As for its gameplay, you can carry over your experience from X for this one. The high speed of those games translated well to the Game Boy Advance, so dashing and wall jumping feel as good as ever. That being said, we’re playing as Zero here, and he doesn’t exactly have the power-copying capabilities his blue partner had. His Z Saber is pretty versatile, but that’s about it. Another important note: this is typically considered one of the hardest Mega Man series out there. I don’t exactly agree with that statement, but Zero 1 can definitely be cruel to newcomers, especially if you care about the game’s ranking system. Without the help (and lives) of the collectible Cyber Elves, Zero will have to rely more on figuring out boss patterns and maneuvering around them, because he can’t exactly tank hits. As a final note, if you want to find the hacks I used for this LP, they’re the Mega Man Zero Revisited and Mega Man Zero Restored hacks. The former can be especially helpful if you’ve ever struggled to get into the first game. Episode List (click for more details) New Management, Old Zero - Let’s Play Mega Man Zero 2 Neo Arcadia’s Pantheon budget has been dreadful this past year. Zero has fought alone for a year, but even a legendary Reploid has his limits. His equipment has dulled, and so has his desire to keep up his aimless fight. He’s resolved himself to find the Resistance again, no matter where they wound up after Neo Arcadia’s defeat. After the experimental nature of Zero 1, Zero 2 is slightly more in line with other Mega Man games. Slightly . The Resistance now has a budget higher than Ciel’s pocket change, which means missions feel just a little more formal. You’re still being graded on your performance, but this time around there’s more of a reward for keeping up a high rank. And while Zero keeps his blade, gun, and boomerang, he also has a new weapon at his disposal! It’s… uh… well, interesting in concept at least. Episode List (click for more details) Alpha and Omega - Let’s Play Mega Man Zero 3 Is nominal determinism real, or did Dr. Weil have enough sense to change his name before committing innumerable crimes? It’s been two months since Zero’s battle with Elpizo. The Dark Elf is still missing, and relations with Neo Arcadia remain tense. Luckily, Ciel has just about finished her new energy system, and if all goes well it could be the key to ending hostilities for good. Which means, of course, a new wrench is about to be thrown in the works. A strange ship has crashed into the planet, and it bears a similar reading to the Dark Elf. What that could mean remains to be seen, but in all likelihood it will lead to more trouble… We’re halfway done with the Zero games, and if you thought the last game was a change from the first, this one’s even bigger. Weapon levels are out, we’ve got equipable ability chips, and most importantly the Cyber Elves don’t have to die to be used! The base game’s about the same in that you’ll die quickly if you’re not careful, and the ranking system is still a little judgmental if you’re not used to it. But if you’ve been put off by the first two games, this one might be mire your speed. Just, you know, make sure you’re up to date on the plot. You won’t be confused if you don’t, but we will be getting some emotional payoff this time around. Episode List (click for more details) Twilight of the Reploids - Let’s Play Mega Man Zero 4 Nature is healing, and that just makes Weil mad. We last left on a pretty good note. Zero refused to be chained down by the past or physicality and the Mother Elf can now roam free. There’s just one little wrinkle we’ve yet to take care of: the tyrant with a chip on his shoulder being in charge of society as we know it. Zero, Ciel and a handful of other Resistance members have hit the road as they try to combat Weil’s rule. One day, they meet a curious group: humans who have fled Neo Arcadia to establish a life elsewhere. And moreover, they’ve actually found a perfect spot to settle: the now-flourishing crater where Eurasia hit the world. Of course, Dr. Weil won’t take such news well. To ensure nobody exists outside of his influence, he’s sent a team of Reploids with attitude to ruin the environment. With their reverse Captain Planet powers combined, they are Ragnarok, and now Zero has to fight fascism for humanity and nature. We’ve got one last Zero game left. Mega Man Zero 4 does a rare thing for the Mega Man series at large and actually ends. Although many aspects of the previous Zero games have been wrapped up, there’s some time left to dispose of Dr. Weil, bring the Cyber Elf evolution to a head, and even touch on something from the X series to bring the narrative to a close. That said, this might be the most experimental Zero game next to the first, and the format’s actually different than the last two. Most notably, they ditched the Shield Boomerang and rod weapon in favor of the Z Knuckle, a weapon they expect you to use more than I wind up doing. There’s also a crafting system, because why not. It might sound like I’m harsh on this one, but I still like it. But it does feel weird after 2 and 3. Episode List (click for more details) No, X has not been pronounced “cross” all this time. After the events of Ragnarok, Ciel was able to focus her efforts on bringing peace to the world and repairing Human-Reploid relations. Now, some time later, the world has begun to heal. Human beings once again live alongside Reploids, and war seems a thing of the past. However, that doesn’t mean that everything has healed. Once again, Reploids have the potential to go Maverick, and although nobody has come close to the threat Sigma posed ages ago, they’re still dangerous. A young girl by the name of Aile knows that all too well, having lost her mother to a Maverick raid. And as it turns out, she’ll be dealing with a lot more Mavericks now; the company she works for, Giro Express, is a delivery company that prides itself on the variety of jobs they’ll take. And it seems that her latest package isn’t so innocuous. It’s also just as much for her as it is the original recipients. Although Zero’s time may be over, he lives on in spirit. As does his gameplay! There’s a reason the ZX games are included in the Mega Man Zero collection, and it’s not just because there’s only two of them and they couldn’t justify separating them. ZX plays a lot like the Zero games, so if you go to that series to this one it should feel almost the same, outside of being on different handhelds. That being said, if you’ve ever had trouble with the Zero games, ZX is at least a little kinder. I mean, there are still lives and frankly bosses can still be pretty tough. But there’s no ranking system, and your upgrades are in no way limited like they were before. You get hit a hundred times in a mission? Nobody cares! Find a health upgrade? You can just pick it up without eating an elf! At its base, ZX is a far more approachable game compared to Zero. It’s also a Metroidvania, which might be an upgrade or a dealbreaker depending on how you feel about that genre. I don’t know if I’d say I’m overly enthused about it, but I don’t think it necessarily hurts the game either. A real horizontal move for a game on such a vertical system. Episode List (click for more details) 74 posts - 3 participants Read full topic

This Let's Play is hosted on the Something Awful Forums.

This Let's Play is hosted on the Something Awful Forums.

Dustborn is a 2024 game developed by Red Thread Games and published by Quantic Dream (yes, that Quantic Dream). It is simultaneously a ripoff, an anti-redemption story, a bad game, a bad comic book, a bad musical, and an attempt by a director to defy gravity and fix his declining career. It’s also a shame because it feels like everyone who developed it (except the director, who is also the lead writer) deserved better. I should start by mentioning that the developers of this game were the targets of a harassment campaign by the American right wing, namely over the (mistaken) idea that they received US taxpayer funds to develop Dustborn. This is incorrect - while Red Thread DID get government grants, they were NOT from the United States (one was from a fund called Creative Europe and I think the rest were from the government of Norway, and in any case they were a fraction of the production budget). I also want to make it abundantly clear that while I believe Ragnar Tornquist (the director, writer and CEO of Red Thread) got exactly what was coming for him in terms of his career being over, I do NOT believe that the other people on the development team deserved to lose their jobs or that anyone involved in the making of this pile of shit deserved a harassment campaign, because I KNOW there are people who will accuse me of this. I believe some very talented people worked on this game and were stymied by a lack of directorial vision and a chaotic development process loaded with feature creep. I simultaneously believe that this is one of the worst games ever created. With that said, it’s time to dunk. There was a time when I believed I would not see a second YIIK in my lifetime. Clearly, I was wrong. Will this be a 100% LP? No. There are multiple reasons for this, but the biggest is that the game does not allow you to manually save or load, presumably because it’s trying to ape Telltale with the “choices matter but actually don’t” thing. The other reason is that there are multiple endings depending on how you interact with the game’s morality system, and I am not playing through this three times to see that - especially without manual saves. Which morality route will you be taking? I will most likely be going for the “Librarian” route, which is the “good” route. This is because the other routes require you to abuse the hell out of superpowers and I plan on skipping most of the combat because it’s a carbon copy of the Batman: Arkham games. 1 post - 1 participant Read full topic

Back in the olden days, the rainbow was implied for you peons playing out and about. A mysterious force named Dark Matter has possessed King Dedede, and it aiming to ruin Dream Land! Kirby has to team up with some animal-like creatures in order to stop it! Although Kirby featured in a small handful of spinoff titles in his early years, Dream Land 2 is only the third game in the series. This was also the second handheld game in the series, following Kirby’s Adventure on the NES. Which means the series still has a lot of growing to do. Although the number of copy abilities might seem smaller than what Adventure had to offer, this is the first game to try ability combinations. More specifically, powers function differently when Kirby teams up with one of his three Animal Friends. Rick the hamster (-like), Coo the Owl (-like), and Kine the fish (-like). These companions have their own advantages on their own, but they also change the nature of Kirby’s seven copy abilities in their own ways. Also important to note, for this LP I’m using the Kirby’s Dream Land 2 DX hack by kkzero. Dream Land 2 was originally for the Game Boy, which meant it was just in black and white. While it was certainly compatible with the Super Game Boy Adapter, it still used a pretty limited color palette. Plus, then it’s not a handheld game anymore. The DX hack properly colorizes the game, and it looks quite nice. Episode List (click for more details) 6 posts - 1 participant Read full topic

This Let's Play is hosted on the Something Awful Forums.

This Let's Play is hosted on the Something Awful Forums.

A few of our buddies (???), they sure look shady. Its is the year 757 on the Grann calendar. The continent of Jugdral has been thrown into unrest as an incident has ignited the flames of war between the Kingdoms of Grannvale and Isaach. The noble houses of Grannvale are forced to turn their attention towards this growing conflict, leaving their own homeland weaker for it. Although there are parties within its borders looking to seize power, there is a more immediate problem: brigands invading from Grannvale’s neighbor, Verdane. This is the story of the son of one of Grannvale’s house Chalphy, Sigurd, standing up to this threat when no one else was around to do so. And, of course, the march of incidents following that will change his life and the course of Jugdral’s history. Genealogy of the Holy War is not the first game of the series that came to the Super Famicom. No, that would be Mystery of the Emblem, and while I didn’t LP that game, I did cover the remake of it . So while Fire Emblem started on SFC by telling the second story of Marth, I think the series’ presence on the console is defined by the Jugdral duology. Holy War is probably the most unique game in the series, both in terms of presentation and definitely in gameplay. It is simultaneously a set of ideas that I’m almost certain Intelligent Systems will never touch again, and also several mechanics that would live on through the rest of the series. But if you want a basic idea of how this plays, it’s your typical loadout of units in a Fire Emblem game. Only you get to deploy everybody, and you’ll be gallivanting across the continent to take on each and every squadron that’s thrown against you. There are quite a few more mechanics at play, but I’m not going to bog down the intro paragraph with them. Needless to say, though, this is a very dense game. Both in terms of gameplay, and in story. It’s been a while since I’ve had to add this, but please don’t spoil anything that hasn’t happened in the thread. Because a lot happens, and it’s cool to watch it play out over the course of the game. Episode List (click for more details) 2 posts - 1 participant Read full topic

This Let's Play is hosted on the Something Awful Forums.

This Let's Play is hosted on the Something Awful Forums.

This Let's Play is hosted on the Something Awful Forums.

The Desert That Makes You Old And Also Give Weird Advice Ganon only provided the monsters. The rest of Hyrule is just like that. The Prince of Darkness, Ganon, has plagued the land of Hyrule. He seeks to gather the three pieces of a powerful artifact known as the Triforce so that he can truly reign supreme. As he already owns the Triforce of Power, it seems his victory is assured. As a last ditch effort, Hyrule’s Princess Zelda splits her own Triforce of Wisdom into eight pieces and scatters them throughout the land. Zelda is now in Ganon’s clutches, and terrible demons now seek to gather her Triforce pieces. However, there is still one hope left for the Kingdom: A young boy named Link A young girl named Lin. After saving Zelda’s attendant Impa, she is told of the situation, and she sets out to save the Triforce, Zelda, and all of Hyrule. Welcome to the original Legend of Zelda! This is definitely the original version and not a mod from Gamebanana by SariaOfTheKokiri . If you remember it looking any differently, that’s on you. Anyway, this is the first game of the series that you have almost certainly heard of. It should look familiar, in that it’s an adventure game where you explore the land of Hyrule and gather up various odds and ends to make your way through dungeons and battle various demons. But if you’re used to a bit more guidance in these games, you’ll be in for a rougher time. You’re more or less on your own unless you’ve got the manual, a hint guide, or some friends on the playground who may or may not be trustworthy when it comes to game advice. Without any of those, Hyrule is a harsh and strange place and navigating it requires a bit of trial and error. And burning some bushes. Episode List (click for more details) Northern Hyrule is a bit more populated than the south, but that doesn’t mean anyone around here is normal this time. Ganon is dead, and Hyrule is saved. Or at least, that’s what happened when we left off. Unfortunately, Ganon’s minions still live, and would love nothing more than to bring their master back. You might think Lin would be concerned about this, but she has a different problem: a mysterious symbol has appeared on her hand, and it turns out she’s destined to save a different Zelda from her eternal slumber. Now, she must travel the land and evade the demons trying to blood sacrifice her while also proving she has the courage to find the third piece of the Triforce. Welcome to Zelda 2, the game history does not know how to deal with. It was the sequel to a beloved game and sought to shake things up by adding RPG mechanics. While it did pretty well for itself back in the day, some circles think this game’s a bit too weird and difficult anymore. Which is kinda funny considering a lot of people thought pre-BoTW Zelda was getting too stagnant and easy. Regardless, the Adventure of Link Lin definitely shakes things up compared to the first Zelda, giving this game a different tone to its predecessor while still keeping a good sense of adventure… as long as you can handle NES limitations. Episode List (click for more details) 22 posts - 2 participants Read full topic

This Let's Play is hosted on the Something Awful Forums.

This Let's Play is hosted on the Something Awful Forums.

This Let's Play is hosted on the Something Awful Forums.

This Let's Play is hosted on the Something Awful Forums.

This Let's Play is hosted on the Something Awful Forums.

This Let's Play is hosted on the Something Awful Forums.

This Let's Play is hosted on the Something Awful Forums.

This Let's Play is hosted on the Something Awful Forums.

Back in the olden days, the rainbow was implied for you peons playing out and about. A mysterious force named Dark Matter has possessed King Dedede, and it aiming to ruin Dream Land! Kirby has to team up with some animal-like creatures in order to stop it! Although Kirby featured in a small handful of spinoff titles in his early years, Dream Land 2 is only the third game in the series. This was also the second handheld game in the series, following Kirby’s Adventure on the NES. Which means the series still has a lot of growing to do. Although the number of copy abilities might seem smaller than what Adventure had to offer, this is the first game to try ability combinations. More specifically, powers function differently when Kirby teams up with one of his three Animal Friends. Rick the hamster (-like), Coo the Owl (-like), and Kine the fish (-like). These companions have their own advantages on their own, but they also change the nature of Kirby’s seven copy abilities in their own ways. Also important to note, for this LP I’m using the Kirby’s Dream Land 2 DX hack by kkzero. Dream Land 2 was originally for the Game Boy, which meant it was just in black and white. While it was certainly compatible with the Super Game Boy Adapter, it still used a pretty limited color palette. Plus, then it’s not a handheld game anymore. The DX hack properly colorizes the game, and it looks quite nice. Episode List (click for more details) 2 posts - 1 participant Read full topic

This Let's Play is hosted on the Something Awful Forums.

This Let's Play is hosted on the Something Awful Forums.

This Let's Play is hosted on the Something Awful Forums.

This Let's Play is hosted on the Something Awful Forums.

This Let's Play is hosted on the Something Awful Forums.

“I fear not the man who has skipped leg day to work on his core. I fear the man who has skipped core day to work entirely on his right leg.” - Bruce Lee, probably “Oh yeah, I played through that on stream. That one leg was really strong by the end.” - Ryan Hybrid Heaven is an incredibly unique RPG released on the Nintendo 64 in 1999 by Konami Computer Entertainment Osaka, or KCEO. KCEO was a spinoff studio of Konami who developed, among other things, both N64 Goemon games and International ...

Okay I know screen crunch was also the theme of the last thread title, but trust me it’s really a problem. Dr. Eggman is stealing animals and putting them into robots in an attempt to take over the world. Uh… you’ve heard that one before, haven’t you? That’s, uh, pretty much the entire plot. He’s… also kidnapped Tails, Knuckles and some child Sonic’s never met before. Yeah that’s it for plot summary. But that’s fine, because you’re here to see Sonic run his way through colorful, creative env...