ITTA ended up being an odd one. A boss rush bullet hell game that ends up being fairly easy. There's nothing wrong with the bosses but because I one-shotted most of them, they became rather forgettable. Why was it easy? You have the most generous dodge roll I have ever seen. Invincible for the entire duration and you can roll infinitely with no cooldown. When it comes to boss rush games, Furi still tops the list for me by a large margin.

How has Ys 9 been going so far? That's one I was thinking of starting this year.

I checked and I've been playing it for 24 hours for on average about 45 minutes per day. HowLongToBeat.com lists it as between 23-32 depending on how much you do so I must be nearing the end? It's difficult to gauge where I'm actually at other than a) I'm about to enter the 5th day of the investigation, so I hope something new happens because b) I seem to be pretty much out of places to explore and people to talk to. Not sure how long you were expecting, but I can describe the game as very....thick.

I'm working on getting PS1 games to 50 and then beyond. Only problem is 41-49 are JRPG's so it might take a couple years.

I did peek at the site remake and said "yep, that's a different layout" and had no other thoughts. Feel free to message me on PSN if this place ever goes belly up.~

ISCO: I, uh, sorta played it for like 6 hours today and got to the end. Let me back up though and give you a full review:

This game was obviously not made for consoles. The interface and controls are very clunky, and took me a while to get the hang of. Additionally, I had a jarring first impression - this is really more of an adventure game but one that is mostly controlled by tabletop-RPG skill checks instead of item puzzles. You might think there wouldn't be a fail state, but there are two, and your health pools can be deducted from failing those checks or even just choosing particular conversational branches. I Game Over'd unexpectedly and got returned to a save 20 minutes ago, having to redo some talking again. Old-school quicksaving is a good idea.

I also seemingly got stuck later where I had failed all the available (at the time) checks and there was nowhere else to explore or people to talk to. In Googling for help, I accidentally saw some spoilers, though thankfully not endgame ones. Still. Turns out the problem was I hadn't technically done something in my quest log and that was holding everything up. Once I got that figured out, I was off and running.

Also, so you know, this game is extremely political in nature. Everyone has an opinion about the commies or the liberals or the government etc etc, and you are expected to frequently engage. So if you're trying to escape into a fictional world to get away from our current environment, this is not the game for you.

I would still probably recommend it, but things could have been better, both the game itself and my playthrough of it. It was part of my subscription, so no harm no foul.

Deus Ex and Panzer Dragoon - the new pb&j???

I did get to see some of the original game footage and I do have it as an unlockable on Orta so I’ll get to give it a go one day. The art in the OGs credits, you’re right, is very striking and this remake just isn’t on that level of craft and unified art concept/direction.

I am big on the tunes so totally understandable from your end! For me I got a lot out of both OSTs, definitely going in my all-time queue/rotation.

In the end thanks for asking me to try this out and being cool with letting our pages comments section get blasted with Panzer Dragoon deets. I enjoyed researching a lot of the background and sharing my thoughts with you and getting your thoughts back. Halloween-times sounds good - we’ll see what we both have still unbeaten. Cheers m8