Dear Backloggery pals:
It is my pleasure to present to you this month's publication featuring two articles. One about SMTV and the other one is a collaboration with Adamalons where we talk about : that game that had the most convoluted story.
Enjoy! [Link]

Persona 4 Golden is the only Persona game I've beaten so far, while I really enjoyed it I remember during the last dungeon I was ready for it to be over.

Thank you! It's the artwork from the Shadows of Luclin expansion pack for EverQuest. It was my first MMO and I've always loved old school fantasy art work.

When you begin a new game during the splash screen, there's a disclaimer telling you not to play the game on Nesticle. I never really understood why.

Yup, Suikoden 2 is IMHO one of the best JRPG of all time! I probably liked it more than most of FFs!
There is a remastered of the first two coming, so yeah, is a good chance to try em!

Circle of the Moon is a great time, so far! I'll admit I don't quite understand how the DSS system works, but I haven't read the manual yet, so that's on me, I guess. I'm sure I'll figure it out, or just look it up lol.

Oh yeah, and Turtles NES. That game is brutal. I kind of wish I watched Mike Matei's video on it beforehand, as I would have found out that some of the turtles do better with certain enemies. It's just one of those games where the difficulty curve skyrockets once you reach the final levels. I'm just glad you can easily cheese the final boss; depending on where you're standing, he'll just keep jumping back and forth, haha.

Enjoy Yakuza.

Keep that hairspray away from me!

Heya! Pizza Power!
You have a fine collection yourself! And seems like we have similar taste in gaming! Most of your favourites, are also mine! Neat!
Kefka is indeed a great villain! Probably one of the best in JRPG history, alongside Luca Blight.
My first FF was VII (not a surprise, since I'm european), which was the game that sort of made the gamer I am right now! It sure made a big impact on me, made me see the VG in a different way.
After beating VII, I started to dig in the old JRPGs, and oh man VI was great! III on nes was also a solid one, an underrated title in the FF saga IMHO. Anyway, hope we will be nice net buddies!
I also have a twitch with some friends where we play pretty much everything, from retro to modern (lot of bullet hell and fighting games too). Feel free to hop in!

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I just watched this for the second time the night before last

Another Mario movie worth watching
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Great article. Grandia is one of those games I loved a lot when I was younger, but whenever I talked to people about it, the response would usually be the equivalent of somebody dismissively waving their arm at you. That's why I find it unusual that twenty or so years later, people are just now discovering the game. I find it odd that, like, at least ten or so people on here were playing it within the last five months. While I'm certain I influenced a couple of people like Rarity, the others I never interacted with, it makes me wonder if a popular YouTuber or talked about it or something and were like "Wait, the PlayStation had more than just Squaresoft RPGs?"

But you know what, this is definitely a case of "better late than never", because now more people can realize that Grandia was the true unsung hero of 32-bit RPGs. While the people I tried getting to notice this game back in the day were the kind of people who weren't really in need to step outta their comfort zone (read: play popular 32-bit and above Square RPGs like FFIX and Kingdom Hearts), the ones who finally noticed the game enough definitely weren't disappointed. As a matter of fact, my friend a few years back (around the beginning of the Trump era) bought a used PSP at a convention and it had Grandia on it. This man who's never played an RPG in his life actually got into and loved it! Now he loves Persona, which okay, nowadays isn't so "niche" but that's still super cool.

Anyway, thanks for the article.

Dear Backloggery Pals!
It is my pleasure to present to you a new article for this month about Grandia.
This time featuring Raritycatchme's great tips for the most difficult dungeon in the game: The Tower of Temptation!
Have fun everyone and thanks!
[Link]

I'm enjoying the side scrollers. The RPGs though? The first one is essentially everything that is antiquated and frustrating about 8 bit RPGs. I'm basically stuck on a boss that I cannot damage and there are no clues as to what works and what doesn't. Sure, the walkthrough hints at a sword hidden on a random tile somewhere, but I checked and its not there. By the end of the first "quest" the game had already shown me everything it has to offer, but then there's three more quests to go and each one starts you back at level 1 with default equipment. It's a shame because the graphics and sound are nice, and since its an RPG I can sink time into it when I am too burned out from work to commit to a more intense game (which is seemingly every day now).

"Do you have any game you enjoy but never beat?

The answer that comes to mind is Star Force... and probably Hades and Flinthook by this point.

Yeah, I remember. I had to take the time to stockpile 99 scroll weapons for each toitle. However, when MrFwibbles played it years ago, he stated that you can make those enemies disappear if you go off the screen enough, or "despawn" if you will. In other words, it's just like in Shadow Warrior Ninja Gaiden with those dang eagles.

If you play online, I could help you with EDF5. I haven't played it for some time, but I helped a few people to get through the game after I hit 100%, and have plenty of armour.

I haven't played Iron Rain. It was developed by Yuke's, which is actually a Japanese company. The hardcore fans of the series all seem to hate it, and say that the grind takes way too long. One fan, who has platinumed every game in the series including the Japanese versions, even called it "Iron Turd". So I always stayed away from it.

Hello all!
This year I challenged myself to publish one article per month on my blog.
If you are curious, I'm talking about TMNT for the NES this month.
Fell free to have a look, if you so desire!
Cheers and thanks!
[Link]

EDF6 has only been released in Japan so far, and is a PS4/PS5 exclusive (PS4 users can play with PS5 users online, but the save data can only be transferred from PS4 to PS5 and not the other way round). No English release has been announced, but it seems inevitable because it's the best-selling game in the franchise so far.

EDF5 is objectively the best game in the series, and is great for both newcomers and old players who have been out of the loop for a while. Some people find it a bit too easy, but you can always limit your armour or use weaker weapons if you feel that way. I think Hard with limits on is quite well balanced.

Yeah, you can add me. No problems there. I'm surprised you bothered to ask; most people just do it.

I'm disappointed in EDF6. It has a huge amount of missions that are either directly copied and pasted from EDF5, copied from EDF5 with some of the enemy types changed (which is very quick and easy to do for anyone who's familiar with modding the games), or new EDF6 missions that are also repeated several times with only minor changes. Because of all of the repetition, while you only have to play through all missions 12 times (Hard, Hardest and Inferno x 4 classes) for 100% completion, it ends up feeling like you did everything 30 times, and it gets tiresome incredibly quickly. The best way to alleviate this is to play in offline split screen mode and get the credit for completing each mission with 2 different classes at the same time, but it's not a good sign when the player is actively trying to cut the game in half just so they don't feel as bored when playing it.

The balance between classes is incredibly poor, and possibly the worst it's ever been. As a Fencer, I can one-shot enemies that I have to reload my strongest weapon 5 or 6 times to kill as a Wing Diver. I can blow away entire groups of enemies in one shot of YH7 mortar as a Fencer, whereas as a Wing Diver I have to kite them all the way around the edge of the map in a full loop. Air Raider's new drones suck; you can do more damage over time with limpets, which are still as weak as ever, but are the only other realistic choice for a weapon that doesn't require credits to reload. Normally I'd use ZEXR-GUN as a staple of my Air Raider loadout, but they gave all of his turrets to Ranger for some reason.

There are barely any new weapons in the game, and their usage is very situational. Fencer's new katanas melt large enemies in seconds, but are very slow, only work at close range, and struggle to hit smaller enemies. Air Raider's new poison gas and electric cloud weapons do lots of small hits very quickly over a wide area and last a long time, but also quickly stun (and kill) other players, and their area of effect is hard to see. I don't recall seeing any new Ranger and WD weapons; I don't think they got anything.

The new enemies are... OK. There are quite a few of them, actually, but Kruhls are basically fast-moving Hectors, and Krakens are basically flying Hectors. The androids are extremely common and are basically popcorn enemies that fling themselves around like Spider-Man. The Skyulas (fishmen) look like tiny Erginuses but behave like Arcelus. Basically there's precious little NEW content.

I don't consider myself a collector, I just try to get hold of every game that I feel is above average for each console. It can be a bit frustrating to see good games released in very limited quantities, and then to see the price skyrocket before I get around to buying a copy. Sometimes I come across a very obscure game (such as Chikyuu Kaihou Gun ZAS for the Game Boy), then check the price on eBay, and it's crazy expensive just because nobody's ever heard of it. Then I have to think hard about how much I'm willing to pay for it.

I've bought a few games over the years that have cost several hundred US dollars, but I don't think I've ever spent over $400 on any one game. I'm not American, but I tend to find it easier to recall game prices in US dollars for some reason.

I would never go for a full set for any system, because to me, all that would mean is that I own a huge amount of bad games that I'd never want to play. I'm not all that bothered about paying hundreds of dollars extra for cardboard boxes for old games, either.

I'd recommend both! The Switch one is slightly more robust, bur the 3DS one is also enjoyable. If you have to pick only one, then Switch. Otherwise, play both!

I just got Ishin yesterday, and have already put 10 hours into it. On the side, I’m replaying Yakuza 5 as well, which I beat on PS3, but not since. 0 is definitely one of the best games in the series, I’d put Kiwami 2 near the top myself, but 0 is probably still better. The original Yakuza 2 on PS2 I remember being really good too, so the remake didn’t have to improve much. Funny, cause the original Yakuza 1 on PS2 was pretty bad. I chalk it up to mostly three factors, load times (the city of Kamurocho is sliced up into a number of tiny block-wide loading screens, which feel really awkward when you’re running around), the translation butchering some of the names of the characters (which got fixed in 4 or 5, along with the Kiwami games), and the English dub (for some reason, they went will an English dub and ONLY that, which can get pretty grating with the gratuitous swears). Oh yeah, and the gun oriented bosses probably don’t help. In a lot of later games, gun enemies are handled a lot better, but in 1/K1, the gun bosses dodge and weave around you, shoot you (which stuns you and knocks you down for a few seconds), and you have to try to hit them before they do it again.

So far, the only real issue I’ve had with D2R in comparison to the original is maybe 1/3 or so of the time when I kill Shenk the Overseer in Act V, the screen will glitch pretty bad during the catapult fire animation during his death. Other than that, I haven’t really found and glitches. I guess there is killing a unique enemy when they’re off the map not triggering the loot, but I’m pretty sure that was in the original.

I’d probably rank it over the original solely because of the change to the stash. Not only do you get your usual larger stash compared to base Diablo II (it may be bigger, not sure), but you get three pages of shared stash. Yes, shared stash, meaning you can do what I do and hoard your set/unique gear that can benefit other classes, and then log in as that character and use it if they have the stats. I think I have three pieces of Immortal King, two pieces of Natalya’s, one piece of Aldur’s, and a few other high tier set pieces.

The controls borrow a lot from Diablo III’s console release. You can map skills to buttons or RT/R2 plus any button. The controls didn’t take me long at all to pick up.

Here is a list of all the changes
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