Thank You Very Much!!

Maaaan, ya playing Resident Evil 5 and didn't invite me?

Thank you, it's very much appreciated, and a long time coming!

Hm, that's a shame that the experience was tainted for you there. Playing it now, I didn't run into anything really egregious, so I would think any major issues have been patched. At the least, I have seen the developer very active working for bugfixes on the Steam pages, so while it's sad that they might have had some struggles early, at least it wasn't abandoned.

I enjoyed the game a lot! I think my biggest issue with Heroes was that it cut itself off right when things were getting good and you were out of what felt like the prologue: you've finally assembled your posse, you took out the comic relief villain and are preparing to head out on the main quest, and...credits. So when Bounties just picked up there and opened up the world for you to explore, I felt it worked really well. Each character got their own development now, and the new mechanics added helped things feel a lot more cohesive. Doc's storyline in particular was top-tier, the saloon shootout feeling like it came straight out of Unforgiven, and getting the story of the hellish background of Coyote Saint.

Funnily enough, I also went in the order of Crow-Tuco-Scorpion-Creed. I decided that I'd take on the paths that were nominally labeled as averting the war first, then pursing the gang. Crow was the one who gave me the most trouble for sure.

You know, I didn't even notice that number discrepancy until you mentioned it, thinking that there were two counted deaths in Bounties and not considering Monty. But even during that sequence where Creed was supposedly taking a suicide capsule, I felt like there was no way he was dead and the cave-in was awfully convenient. Taking a few seconds to grab the body on the minecart ride out of there would probably save some trouble in the next installment...

Here are all the games I beat in 2021 ranked from least favorite to favorite:

13. Stretch Panic
12. Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals
11. The Legend of Dragoon
10. Dragon Quest IX: Sentinels of the Starry Skies
9. Wild Arms 5
8. The Wizard of Oz: Beyond the Yellow Brick Road
7. Mega Man X: Command Mission
6. Little Nightmares II
5. [CrossCode DLC] A New Home
4. Advance Wars 2: Black Hole Rising
3. Deltarune: Chapter 2
2. HuniePop 2: Double Date
1. Psychonauts 2

Happy Ring Day!

Is so very overwhelming, now, though.

I wish I could just import my Steam library or something. x.x

Buk indeed.

Pretty sure your Spookums was ing The Legend of Dragoon.

Yeah, Red Mages are pretty darned cool, if I do say so myself.

Also, I dunno if you've ever heard of the Yakuza games, but I recently was introduced to them and I am officially a convert. I cannot recommend Yakuza: Like a Dragon enough. It satisfies that need for a JRPG in my life but also carries on the series' trademark super serious story tempered by hilarious situations, characters, and sub plots. 9/10 for sure. I cried at the end, man.

I think I've clocked over 250 hours in DQ9 lol. But you're definitely right about the lack of a primary antagonist. I dunno, I just had a lot of fun with the random dungeons and boosting my characters' stats. Oh, the class changing thing is pretty useful though, as your characters keep all their active skills and distributed skill points. For example, if you get to 30 skill points in Shield with class A, and change to class B, you still have 30 skill points in shield. I don't recall if that was ever properly explained or not, but that's why I ended up changing everyone to a Monk for awhile so they could learn Psyche Up. And not all classes are created equally, sadly. I believe only the Sage can cast Kazing. I think my final party was a Paladin, Sage, Armamentalist, and either a Ranger or a Monk.