Waiting for Silksong, like many, so I’ve finally played through Castlevania: Circle of the Moon. I bought the Castlevania Advance Collection years ago, but it didn’t work on my desktop PC for some reason. I played the game for a few hours on my Steam Deck years ago, but never felt like finishing it. Since I got nothing else going on right now, I might as well go through these games, since I managed to make them work.
The “port” itself is nothing special. You get a pretty basic emulator, that just plays the old games as they were. Save states and a rewind are as good as it’s gonna get, the rest is kinda half-baked.
As for the game, it’s kinda mediocre to bad. Controls don’t feel great, everything’s pretty stiff, and you’re stuck with sprint being on double-tapping a direction, which never stops being a complete pain, so getting around just isn’t that fun. It also feels like the devs wanted to pad out the relatively short runtime as much as possible, by placing the save rooms and teleporters in the most inconvenient places, so if you die, you’ll have to go through the same sections over and over again. Save states or the rewind help here of course, depending on how much you wanna use those features. At least the game looks decent enough and the music is pretty good.
BTW, in case anyone cares, the reason I could never play this game on my desktop was because of my keyboard layout. If you use a custom one and maybe even something that doesn’t match your Windows language/region/dunno, you get an instant VC++ error on launch. Once I changed it to default US QWERTY it works normally. Only found this out recently, through a comment on the Steam forums.
Maybe I manage to finish the next game in the collection, Harmony of Dissonance, over the next couple of days, probably not, but then I’ll just come back to it.
I’ve dug up my New3DS again and am ordering some games for it. Castlevania is somewhat of a gaming blind spot for me, is there one playable on the 3DS you’d recommend?
I haven’t played most Castlevania games myself, I mainly know the DS games, and played two of them like 10 years ago, Portrait of Ruin and Dawn of Sorrow. I remember them being pretty good. The third DS game, Order of Ecclesia didn’t work for me back then, because of anti-piracy stuff. Any of those three games should be fine on the 3DS (Dawn of Sorrow is a sequel to the GBA game Aria of Sorrow, but I don’t think it really matters plot wise)
This is actually why I got the Advance Collection and the more recent Dominus Collection, because I wanted to go back and check out a few of the games I missed and re-play the DS games, to see how well they held up.
If you hacked your 3DS, you can of course also try games for other systems, like the GBA games (mostly for the aforementioned Aria of Sorrow) or maybe even Symphony of the Night, which supposedly runs fine with some tinkering.
If you’re not into the whole Metroidvania stuff and want more classic, linear side scrollers, then the old NES/SNES games are also available somehow (but maybe not anymore, unless you’re doing homebrew stuff). The standout here is probably Super Castlevania IV, but tbh I never really played these myself.
How hard is it to hack your 3DS? I haven’t done it and I haven’t really experimented with stuff like that for like 20 years. I feel like it could be a good idea to look into after Nintendo closed the eShop and second hand 3DS games are getting more and more expensive.
I could see it being alright back in the day, and it has some neat stuff, like the graphics and music, and the magic system is ok (lots of repeating stuff though, just in a different color). It just didn’t hold up, I think.
Finished Persona 3 Reload. Overall it’s a good remake, although it’s not necessarily better than FES.
Started Xenoblade Chronicles 3. I don’t particularly like the combat system, I think the ones in the other games were more interesting, but I’m interested in the story.
Played Slay the Princess. I liked the idea and what it was trying to do, but never really vibed with it. Without spoilers, I have some issues with how you progress the game which made me feel detached from the characters.
Playing Citizen Sleeper. Haven’t finished it yet but I’m liking the stories.
Also playing a bit of Phantasy Star Online on the Ephinea server. Playing as HUnewearl, no idea what I’m doing but it’s fun.
Still on the ninja grind, at this point I’m hopefully done with Ninja Gaiden 3: Razor’s Edge relatively soon. Not yet, though.
I really wish this solid fundamental combat system wasn’t trapped inside a godawful game. I really truly hate everything the story and presentation is doing. The setting is shit, the narrative is shit, the QTE gameplay is shit. The levels are boring. The voice acting is bad, but not even in a fun and campy way anymore but just bad. And worst of all - unlike the previous games this attempts to be “story focused”. So instead of just getting a cutscene at the start and end of a chapter and then action in between you are non-stop engaging with the terrible garbage they’re serving.
And they even managed to fuck up executing the combat even though they have the most solid fundamentals in place of the entire series. I hate the Steel On Bone counters, and the combat is designed around spamming them all the time. It’s boring. QTE-ing a single SOB counter into multiple instant kills feels unearned, and so much less satisfying than deliberately delimbing enemies with specific combos in NG2 to set them up for instant execution.
Plus the bosses are actually even worse here. Some are okay, I know it’s infamous but the T-rex actually felt fine to me but stuff like the tank and helicopter bosses are just pure trash. I’ve also heard the final boss is a world record holder in unfair bullshit so you know, I have that to look forward to too, I guess.
Mainly Mario kart though, chill to take your mind off after work (and when working at home, ha). Though, I’ll stop playing most of these games when Silksong gets released this Thursday.
I really enjoy these posts of yours. I take it your Pixelfed account is at @MyNameIsAtticus? Linking it here, so I can hopefully just click the link and follow through my fedia.io account.
EDIT: Aw, man. I can follow, but not actually see anything through fedia.io or through the Interstellar app.
I managed to beat Chibi-Robo and, dang, that story really went some places right at the end. If someone had attempted to spoil it for me one hour before I reached it myself, I’d be insulted by how gullible they thought I was.
In terms of my personal main quest, the game hasn’t explicitly stated that I’m the new husband but he lost his wedding ring and I found it and there’s no prompt to give it back and I can’t help but notice the symbolism.
I just recently beat the hardest difficulty of Dungeon Clawler using the character that damages enemies when it gets self-damage. Kept basically doing the same run over and over to get the achievement and say I’ve done it.
Besides that, Gemcraft Chasing Shadows. Been trying not to cheat too much after finding out about the glitch that allows you to upgrade gems at a low mana cost.
Otherwise I haven’t been playing many other games. Been hesitant to install Steins;Gate for some reason despite really wanting to play it.
God, can these companies fuck off with their third party launchers? Its why I don’t buy any game off Steam which has that warning, not worth the hassle
bin.pol.social
Najstarsze