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I did not play this when it was new, though it would be shocking if I had. The English-language print-run for Earthbound was small, and it was a collector's item WAY before the bullish collector-driven market that has emerged over the last decade. To my knowledge, there is no other game that approaches this one in terms of the cultural and critical journey it went on for 25+ years (against a backdrop of physical scarcity). There are some huge shortcuts hidden within the design for example, a "friendly monsters" sidequest that catapults you through your list of yet-unlearned abilities. Characters have some strengths that are out of your hands, but you also have the flexibility to 'respec' each character to each boss-fight by toggling abilities (I spend a lot of time finessing configurations here, and I love it).
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The game is a boss gauntlet first and foremost: the more you minimize the noise of random encounters, the more interesting it is. Ability points matter way more than experience points. The light and dark in this game are more affecting and unsettling than usual for the series.Īt the level of strategy, FFIX checks some boxes that I, personally, like to see checked. But it is not known for these moments because its characters have a vibrant buoyancy to them. There are moments where Final Fantasy IX goes right up to the edge of the abyss. The way the game wades into a grim allegory of Nuclear Annihilation. The way he feels like a fluke, a defective instrument of war. The way Vivi grapples with sobering questions about personhood, self-determination, and death. First, there is such a striking contrast between the innocence of its characters and the existential dread of its themes. I'm drawn to it primarily for two 'big picture' reasons. The best handheld Castlevania, and an underrated gem. But later you can play as a mage with very high magic stats, or a fighter with high combat stats, or even a thief with ludicrous luck stats to help find otherwise very rare equipment. On a first playthrough, Nathan is decent-enough at everything (magic, combat, etc). After beating the game, you unlock D&D style character classes with pronounced strengths and weaknesses. I suspect, but haven't yet confirmed for myself, the CotM is among the most replayable games in the series. Circle of the Moon has a much stronger main character and supporting cast. Circle of the Moon blends the old and the new - Nathan uses the vampire killer whip, and only the whip, but the attack can be enchanted and improved in a variety of ways (think: ice beam in Metroid, etc). I’ll keep dreaming of the day when I can have a nuanced philosophical conversation with an AI, and when Destiny rewards me with an interesting thought experiment rather than a cool gun at the end of each mission.Aria of Sorrow embraces the new-school of CV combat, with a wide range of equipable weapons (giant two-handed axes alongside short daggers, etc). Obviously that back and forth can only go so far - there are only so many responses the developers could anticipate. It has its limits: at certain points, you’re asked to pick which statements about the nature of consciousness that you agree with, and then it pokes at supposed contradictions within your answers. I was in the middle of my first year of my philosophy degree when it released, and thoughts directly inspired by the game made it into my coursework.
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Where it succeeded was in blending those and other elements together to create satisfying cerebral head scratchers.įor me though, the most memorable parts of it weren’t the puzzles but the philosophical musings that accompanied them. The puzzle elements themselves are nothing revolutionary - we’ve been redirecting laser beams for decades, and the cloning mechanics that appear later on in the game are similar to those in PB Winterbottom. The puzzles are always good and often brilliant, creating that ‘I’m a GENIUS’ feeling that only the best games can manage. Imagine the Stanley Parable narrator but with more pompous severity and you’ll have a good idea what you’re in for. In The Talos Principle you play as a robot, guided through the game by a disembodied voice calling itself Elohim.
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What was the logical next step for the developers of dual machine gun toting, beheaded bomber slaying Serious Sam? A thoughtful, philosophical puzzler in the vein of Portal, of course. One a day, every day, perhaps for all time. Have You Played? is an endless stream of game retrospectives.