The first 3 Mass Effect titles were some of my favorite of the X360 generation. I was never much of a shooter person, but the promise of deep writing and RPG mechanics sucked me in, mixed with the space setting I knew Bioware could knock out of the park based on Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic. Needless to say, I was not disappointed. I played all three games in the series at least twice, checking out the alignment options, and seeing how it changed the story. Each time, I very much enjoyed the fleshed-out world, the writing, the great characters, and the variety of things to do, and the permutations of choice.
Enter late 2024/early 2025, and I decided to get back to that N7 grind with Mass Effect: Legendary Edition on Xbox Game Pass. So far I have beaten Mass Effect and Mass Effect 2, and I have not been disappointed in going back to these games. ME1 changes the most with the Legendary Edition, introducing a new, streamlined leveling system, cutting the number of levels in half, while ME2 seems largely the same. Honestly I cannot tell if there were a ton of little changes put into the titles, it has been a while since I played the X360 originals. The big change for me this time is how I am roleplaying Shepard. First, I am playing as the female Shepard, who is voiced by Jennifer Hale. While the character model doesn’t look as great as the male character model, the voice is definitely better. Hale is very emotive, doing a great job, especially in the second part of how I am playing the game.
The biggest difference in this playthrough is how I am playing Shepard as a Renegade. Starting in ME1, it is established early that much of the galaxy’s denizens are uneasy with humans, especially how fast they have ascended in galactic culture. I am a life-long fan of Star Trek, so I am always used to embracing multiculturalism in my sci-fi. However, you can play Shepard as a straight-up human-first racist, and yeah it can feel uncomfortable. This is especially due to the fact that you are forced to assemble a crew of different races, and they will occasionally comment on some of the attitudes they experience in the world. While it can be entertaining to play this version of Shepard, this feels like the more contrived personality for the character, at least the full on Xenophobic stuff. I also hoped I would have gotten to see the all-human Council, but no such luck.
The collection is pretty great, showing the evolution in a fantastic game series. I have still never played Mass Effect: Andromeda, but maybe I will carve some time out when I finish the third game, which won’t be happening for a while. Still have so much to play!
I promise, this is not a New Year’s Resolutions post. Instead, this is a time of having my eyes opened. I am founding a cult. I am not founding a cult, I just feel nervous talking about anything real. 2024 was the worst year I have ever had, health-wise. As of this writing, I am currently waiting to be discharged from the hospital for the 3rd time in 12 months for Pancreatitis. For those of you who have also had it, I am sorry, you know how painful it is. It feels like something is trying to escape your abdomen by stabbing its way out. There is also one way in which it is commonly caused, and that cause is the reason why I keep getting it.
While I have been drinking less alcohol over the years, I am also getting older. I am approaching 40, and it appears I can no longer treat my body like a dumpster, that’s on fire, and that no one is coming to put out. I have to put out that fire, and to that end, I am giving up alcohol, in its entirety. It is responsible for pretty much any health issues I have, is the biggest barrier I have left to losing weight, improving my mental health, as well as my finances.
So what does this all mean? Honestly I have no clue. I am not resolving to do anything. I don’t promise to work out, engage in some sort of pursuit. Every time I have, I have fallen very short, very fast. I just know some things need to change, and this change just happened to come at the new year. Good luck to me.
I have some grid thing up on my Twitter page, pinned even, with a bunch of games I thought I was going to beat in 2024. Haha. I am barely getting to any of that, maybe I will try again next year. Instead, I have been looking at the JRPG gaps, and I think I can list 3 I really want to get to before year’s end.
Xenosaga Episode I: I love the Xeno-series in all its permutations, at least what I have played. Xenogears is an all-time great, and I love Xenoblade Chronicles 1-3 very much. My huge gap is Xenosaga, for which I have no real excuse. I had a PS2 back then, I had played, and loved Xenogears. I hope that finally getting to this title will get me to play the other two, and fill in a major gap, from a time of my life where I was playing a lot of games.
Lunar: Eternal Blue Complete: I have played most versions of Lunar: Silver Star Story, hell, I even have the iOS version. I have started Eternal Blue several times in my life and just never followed through. I don’t know if it was because I was attached to the original cast, or what, but if it is as compact as the Silver Star games, I think I can get this one done.
Final Fantasy Tactics Advance: Tried it so many times, got kind of into it, could never follow through. I was too much of a fan of the PS1 Final Fantasy Tactics, that the tonal change to the GBA series really threw me. In my advanced age, I am way more willing to meet a game where it is at, so this would be a great time to give this series another try.
I find it very odd I had never heard of this game, except in passing, like when reading Chris Scullion’s NES Encyclopedia. This game has had a ton of iterations, across decades, on multiple systems. The first version of this game was the 1989 version of Pipe Mania, released on the Amiga. The NES version seems to have gotten something of a graphical upgrade from what I was able to notice, and the music choices are pretty catchy, and works well for the type of puzzle game it is; it gives at times some of the frenetic push that helps puzzle games like this and Tetris.
The gameplay is pretty straightforward, granted with some experimentation. You put down pieces of pipe that come from the list on the left-hand side of the screen. Pieces cannot be rotated, with unneeded pieces either having to be placed off to the side, or placed in your path in order to be blown up by a needed piece replacing it. There is a slight score/time penalty to blowing up pieces though, so you kind of have to be judicious in how you use that mechanic. After a set time delay, a liquid, called “Flooz” for this game starts coming through the track of pipe you have laid down. The level ends when the Flooz either cannot go through anymore pipes, or hits a wall. Clearing the level involves putting down a minimum amount of piping, and score is calculated by how long the track is, with bonuses for making tracks loop, using the cross-shaped pipes.
Would I rather play this over something like Tetris? Probably not. But this is a very competent puzzle game that I can see coming back to once in a while. I felt utterly stupid at first while playing it, but after a few tries, I found something approximating a groove. Pipe Dream is a game that hits that right ratio of frustration-to-satisfaction that a good puzzle game should.
Should you play it?: If you enjoy puzzle games, yes. Especially if you like puzzle games with quick individual levels. I cannot remember spending any more than 90 seconds on any level I actually completed. It is a quick, frenetic game that will actually wake you up in your pipe-laying panic. I am sure there are some crazy pros out there who can make the pipe-tracks last seemingly forever, and I am sure the later levels would ask that of me, at least in comparison to what I was accomplishing.
So I had an idea earlier when watching a video from Retro Game Corps on YouTube. I have this library of games on my computer, including many classics from decades ago. I have a Retroid Pocket 3+, which is such a great device, and plays a multitude of games so well, all the way up to things like some Gamecube and PS2 games, though I tend to stick with the older, and handheld stuff on the device. I know the Retroid Pocket 4 Pro is out, and its ability to play the entire library of Gamecube and PS2, especially upscaled is so impressive. However, it is already mid-August, and I do have a Steam Deck for the heavier stuff. So I think I will wait for early 2025 to see if Retroid announces a Retroid Pocket 5/Pro. They seem to be upgrading chipsets every year, so for now I can wait. I am excited to see if a hypothetical Pocket 5 Pro can play OG Xbox games well. But back to my idea; I have all of these older, not long games, especially on things like the 8, and 16-bit generations. The Daijisho front-end that I use on my Pocket 3+ has a very handy function for each individual system, marked as “random”. It doesn’t blindly load me into a game, but it shows me a random game I have loaded, and I can play it. I think this is something worth exploring, exploring old libraries and just taking myself back to the ye olden times of 1985-roughly 2008? That sounds right. In any case, this sounds like a fun little project, so let’s get to the first thing.
Adventure Island 2 (NES, 1991) Developer: Now Production Publisher: Hudson Soft I feel like this is going to be a regular event for the oldest games I play in this little endeavor; I have no idea what the story of the game is. I had to go to Wikipedia to see what it is. My guess is that the entire story of the game is contained in the instruction manual, which is something I also want to build a digital collection of. So without that explanation, I have a…grass-skirt wearing dude with a baseball cap riding skateboards, throwing stone axes and riding dinosaurs. I definitely played this game as a child, probably renting it from Blockbuster way back when.
This is a very competent game, with fun mechanics, and the physics are consistent and easy to learn. Some of the dinosaur companions you ride can feel a bit slippery, but they have the added bonus of giving you a chance to be struck by an enemy and not die. While dying is almost too easy to do, due to not being on a dinosaur results in one-hit kills, you never feel like the game is going out of its way to be cheap. The game has a continue system, and really, save states solve everything when it comes to old-school chicanery.
The levels are not particularly imaginative, with contemporary NES games doing far more in the level-design space by the early 1990’s. Fortunately, the levels are short, and meet the bare-minimum standard for being varied enough. The worst type of levels are the swimming levels, which if you don’t at least have the axes at the ready, you can feel pretty weak and slow. I did enjoy the vertical levels, as the enemy placement seemed more like a puzzle piece, and less of a way of killing you.
There appear to be warps, I triggered one by accident, but I have no clue what I did, or if it is repeatable. This game clearly took a lot of cues from the standard-bearers of the NES library, and it is definitely good, but not great. Is it worth this series being re-released on something modern, thinking that people would pay real money for it? No, but if you know how to use RetroArch, it is totally fine as a time-filler, and a great example of how the NES really ran the gamut of some of the best games ever made, to some unplayable messes. This game sits somewhere right above the middle, and I look forward to seeing if future entries appear in my random list.
Should you play it?: Yes, it is easily accessible, especially if you’re willing to ride those high seas. I cannot imagine this game is expensive at a retro-games store either, or something like eBay. (Edit: This game was apparently also available on the 3DS E-Shop, at least in Europe, obviously not anymore as that shop closed down.)
I am more inclined to think that the vast majority of people who play many video games have a significant backlog. Humble Bundles, Steam Sales, Green Man Gaming, free games on the Epic Games Store, and other things (Sailing them seas) have blessed us all with more hours of cheap entertainment that we can know what to do with. My own PC, and various hard drives are living memorials essentially to video games; games I own, games I have played, never played, played some of, and games I will play games time and time again until they day I die.
I have been into quite a bit lately, and having fun in doing so. I recently replayed Yakuza 0 and Yakuza Kiwami. Since beating Infinite Wealth, I wanted to get back to the earlier parts of the story, and experience some of that again. I don’t know when I will get to Kiwami 2, and onwards, but really that’s fine. I have played and beaten all of those in the past, and I find myself looking toward my backlogs, both purchases sitting on a shelf, digital front-end, or however, and I question the need to buy new games. I have been so remiss in some titles through the years, and I have the means to easily play those. There are some titles I will get on day 1, or whatever, like for instance, Eiyuden Chronicle. I was a Kickstarter Backer for this game, and it is a game that I waited months to play, but now that I am in it, I am so happy. It is still early for me, but I do plan on writing more about that as I get through it.
I have also been playing around more with my Retroid Pocket 3+. Specifically I have been eyeing GBA games I missed out on as a youngster. So I started Advanced Wars on the GBA, and I got through the field training sessions. I am looking forward to getting more into that. The only entry I ever got far into was Advanced Wars: Dual Strike on the Nintendo DS. I lent that game to a guy I knew in college, never got it back. That and Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon. From what I have seen, they both are games that command premium prices on the secondary market.
So back…to backlogs. Video games are expensive, and I have a massive backlog. I plan on looking at the calendar for releases this year, and make a list of games I really do want to drop everything and play right away. As of this moment, all I can think of is the newest Legend of Heroes entry. But for the moment, I think I want to concentrate on the massive list of games I have missed through the years, especially in that older-game space. I have so much I want to try, and I think it is time I write all of this out, change some habits. Failure to launch, to fire, to trying and bailing early, I am wrapping my mind around what makes me do these things. I feel inspired by things I see on Twitch, how streamers tackle retro games. I also love it when I can find well-written review and video content, from folks like Indy Gamer Chick, and Retro Game Corps. Jeff Gerstmann’s ranking NES games videos also greatly appeal to me. Gameifying my gaming; truly a testament to how the modern world has ruined my attention span.
2024. I have been putting off writing this because I didn’t want to feel like it was just getting caught up in the New Year’s zeitgeist. I am not a huge fan of resolutions, mainly because I was never good at the follow through. We are almost 2 weeks into the new year however, and I have been able to sit down and think about what I really want out of myself now. I am no longer a young man, nor am I an old man. I need to expect more from myself. I have this habit of withdrawing into myself, retreating from life for various reasons. Depression, anxiety, lack of motivation coming from both, feeling down about various parts of my life, and the list goes on; I know I am not unique in that sense.
I think it’s time I try to break through some of my own insecurities and be a better version of me. I don’t hate myself (today), but I know I have many areas in which to improve. I find myself not even indulging in my hobbies in my free time, I mainly just binge crap TV lately. I have a huge backlog of Gunpla, and I really haven’t touched video games yet this year. Therapy helps, but I have also been neglecting my health with both the medications I should be taking and working out.
I know with video games, I will be good in a few weeks with the release of Like a Dragon: Infinite Wealth, as well as the imminent release of Persona 3 Reload. If I had to say which I am more excited to play, honestly Like a Dragon is a brand new direction for the series, and appears to be a very fitting sendoff. I have no doubt that game will make me cry. Persona 3 is an amazing game, my major hope for it is that the female protagonist route gets added as some DLC, or the Persona 3 Ultimate edition or some shit. I am used to buying Persona games twice, I’ll do it for that too.
In any case, this post is actually longer than I thought it would be. I want to get back to writing on this desperately, I miss putting my thoughts out there for the few who deign to read. I don’t know what the future holds, I just know I want to be present more in my own future. Here is to hoping.
This past Summer has felt like a giant waste of time. I barely played any video games, barely did much of anything really. Only recently have I been feeling more like myself, and able to sort of interact with the world again. During the Summer, I don’t know if it was depression or what, but I was really insular, not really playing video games, really not interacting with the outside world. Which is a shame, as one of my most anticipated games came out during the Summer, The Legend of Heroes: Trails into Reverie. Instead, I just vegged out for what felt like months and watched old TV on my computer. I don’t think I even turned my TV on for something like 60 days.
Luckily that gloomy period is over, and I am back to being my generally cynical, but pretty happy-self. To that end, I have finally delved deeply into Trails into Reverie. I am over 4-dozen hours in, and as expected I love this game. It quickly became the most bonkers, nonsense-anime game this series has turned out, and I am here for it. It’s not perfect, one big flaw being the sheer scope of the roster. You seem to get every single character ever used in the previous games in your party eventually, as well as new ones. I think I read somewhere that you get over 40 characters in total, which is absolutely insane. Coupled with the massive roster, the game really wants you to grind in the ever evolving dungeon, the Reverie Corridor. This dungeon is…away from the main story for the most part, which could change later, I just don’t know yet. The setup really resembles the main gameplay loop from Trails in the Sky 3rd, being something of a dungeon-crawler setup. Also for those who didn’t play 3rd, think how Tartarus is set up in Persona 3.
Just be forewarned: The game is very grind-heavy. If you don’t like the idea of spending entire play sessions just rotating through a huge cast, making sure the levels of your party are approaching parity, then this may not be the game for you. There are catch-up items that you can get in battle, but relying on those is really not feasible, as the grinding will also make sure you are flush with cash, and have enough materials and accessories for your giant cast.
The story of this game is…great for me, but I have played every game in the series preceding this one. This game may in fact be the worst jumping-off point I have ever seen in a video game series. If you haven’t played every Trails game, you will be lost in some way, if not several, if not totally lost. So far Trails in the Sky seems the least represented, but it’s still there. If you haven’t played the Crossbell duology, and Trails of Cold Steel in its entirety, you will be very confused as to what is going on. For those of you that have taken in all Zemuria has to offer previously however, the story is great, and seems to be something of tying a bow on the current cast, before Falcom gets Kuro no Keseki over to the West. The triple-protagonist system in the game is handled well, controlling the cast (for now) in the main stories. I am almost certain the 3 disparate groups will eventually come together.
The fact you have so many characters lends itself to variety in battle, with many compositions being not only viable, but fun to play. That is a good thing, as the amount of systems layered on top of each other is kind of nuts. There are several gauges, bars, turn orders, orders, etc. I could try to explain it, but without context, it’s useless. It is a lot, and really the culmination of all 3 Trails series coming together. I actually am hoping Kuro no Keseki pares some of this back, being a fresh start in the Zemurian story.
By now, it should be obvious I am a total mark for the Trails series, and I really hope Falcom continues its tradition of getting the games out of Japan, and in front of a more worldwide audience. These games combine a great aesthetic, music, story, and most of all, heart to make a JRPG world that feels lived-in. 11 games into the series and I have to say is all I want is more. I cannot wait to finish this stellar title, and fidget waiting for Kuro no Keseki.
UPDATE: I did finish the game, my impressions hold up. I love this game, and I think anyone who loves JRPGs should give this series a go.
So I have been meaning to write these reviews for a while, but you know, I get lazy. At first, had I been more timely with when I actually finished these games, you would have seen two reviews. However, in seeing how this process (or lack thereof) went, I have decided to run one review covering both games. While it would be easy to think that by going this route, the games won’t be adequately reviewed, I beg to differ. If anything, Trails in the Sky SC Evolution and Trails in the Sky 3rd Evolution really tie together to almost make one story, and helps to get the ball rolling on the future games in The Legend of Heroes series. It is worth noting though, that just because the two games tell an almost continuous story, it does not mean the games are of equal quality.
I am too lazy to grab my screengrabs from my Vita, I didn’t play this game in Japanese.
First, let’s get into what the two games share. First, the games share the same combat system, which has many similarities to their non-Vita versions, with the exception of a key detail that I brought up in my review of the first game; the ability to attack enemies on the field to gain an even better version of initiative in battle. Like all of the Legend of Heroes games, you see enemies on the field, and interact with them to initiate combat. Both games’ fights occur in separate battle screens, and are turn-based fights with movement occurring on a grid. Turn order is listed on the left-hand side of the screen, with some turns conferring bonuses such as health regeneration, or guaranteed critical hits. A key skill to master in both games is the ability to deny bonuses to enemies, while maximizing their use for your own characters. This can usually be achieved by using “Arts”, which is the series’ version of magic, as they have casting times. The other way is by unleashing character-specific “S-Breaks” which are usable if a character has banked between 100-200 CP, which is a resource dedicated to character specific skills. The meter tends to fill slowly, and saving your S-Breaks for the right moment can dramatically change the tide of a fight. This combat system is roughly the same in the entire Legend of Heroes series, with minor tweaks and changes in subsequent story-arcs. It’s a simple combat system, but affords a good deal of depth, especially in the boss encounters, which can be somewhat tough, even on normal in both games. The later bosses in Trails in the Sky 3rd in particular gave me something of a hard time, not in a frustrating way though; sometimes difficulty in this type of game can be genuine fun.
Anelace low-key became one of my favorite characters.
The music for both games is great, with the original soundtracks being redone for the Evolution releases. They generally take advantage of the hardware jump from the PSP to the Vita very well, with more complicated arrangements and better layering to tracks that were already good. While the music is not as good as what we would see in later games like Trails to Azure, Falcom consistently puts out killer soundtracks that fit their games perfectly. Even if you don’t find yourself playing the games, the music is pretty much all available on Spotify, so go give it a listen.
Now let us get into where the games really diverge, the story and structure. Trails in the Sky SC follows the same structure as the first game, albeit with slightly more freedom in certain respects. Quests are generally collected from a board, and the quests are largely optional. Completing the optional quests are a main source of money, and Bracer Points (BP). Amassing BP raises your Bracer rank, with better rewards for each rank up.
Trails in the Sky 3rd however, abandons this structure entirely, playing like a dungeon crawler, with choke points in the story coming at regular intervals. There are no side quests, and largely the game is played in the same physical structure. This is literally the only game in the entire Trails series that follows this structure, and it is easy to see why; this game is a lot more limited in scope, and constrained in the story.
The worst game of this series, but still decent.
It is in this constrained story that Trails in the Sky 3rd suffers the most. I have read in places this game was originally planned as an add-on for Trails in the Sky SC, and I would believe that. The game is largely a vehicle for explaining the back-story, and expanding the importance of the main character of this game, Father Kevin Graham. However, the plot is rather thin compared to the much more robust second game. Trails in the Sky SC is easily the best told story in the trilogy, with deep, meaningful evolution of characters and plot; the 3rd game suffers for this. While the story on its own is fine, SC’s tale is so expertly-crafted that Father Graham’s tale suffers by comparison.
I would say to anyone though, that despite some of the drawbacks encountered in Trails in the Sky 3rd, it is still worth playing, if nothing else for the threads it weaves together, and helps close the book on a story that is overall very well-told. It’s a shame though the Evolution versions of the Trails in the Sky trilogy are stranded on the Playstation Vita, as these are the versions I got to experience after jumping through some hoops. The versions we have on Steam will have to do for 99% of the playing audience, but really it’s worth it, go play Trails in the Sky.
Ever since I was about 5 years old, we had some form of video game system in the house. My parents were not the type to play games themselves, so the hobby was a new one in my house, and it was something I took to immediately. I had this NES, and we had a handful of games that we owned. More often than not though, new games were experienced through renting them at a Blockbuster. I get it, I am old. However, it was those games that we owned, that I would get to play again and again that really made me realize how much fun gaming is as a hobby. Now some of the “classics” I owned as a kid were titles such as: Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles by Konami, Captain Skyhawk by Rare, The Legend of Zelda and Super Mario Bros/Duck Hunt obviously by Nintendo, and Infiltrator by Chris Gray. Some of those games are absolutely great, and some are…borderline unplayable really. But three of the games that I owned absolutely changed the way I looked at video games, and would go on to inform a lot of what I liked, and even like to this day. The first of those games is:
Super Mario Bros. 3 to this day is one of my favorite games of all time. It was probably the first title I ever played that gave me the sense that games could be expansive. To this day I still go back and forth in my head as to which is better, this game or Super Mario World. Right now I am leaning toward the SNES entry, but if you ask me again tomorrow the answer may change. This game had great new power-ups, fantastic level design, and music that was catchy as all hell (Thanks Koji Kondo!). The game had secrets, twists, level-skips, and even fun little additions, like being able to play classic Mario Bros. in 2-player mode. To this day I think the Hammer-Bros and Tanooki suits are two of the greatest power-ups the Mario series has ever seen, they are functional, look great, and have little-hidden tricks of their own. The NES was a time Nintendo was truly firing on all cylinders, and this game is a timeless example as to what the best of this era was. But this isn’t the only game I am going to share, oh no! The next title that really made “gaming” click for me was…
I am sharing the Japanese cover-art for Mega Man 2 because it is good. The American art, while better than the first game…isn’t saying much. Art aside though, the game itself is all-good, all the time. Featuring great level design, great bosses, great weapons, and amazing music, this is still my favorite Mega Man game. You could sit me down with this game right now, and I’ll leap right into playing like I did when I was 7 years old. While this title lacks some of the staples of Mega Man today, like the Mega Buster, sliding, and even Rush the dog, the game doesn’t feel substantially different from things that would come later. The platforming is tight, the bosses often have multiple good weapons to use against them, and the art still holds up, decades later. This is a game that is easy to play with the Legacy Collections out in the world, and it is one that no one should really miss. Now one last game I want to talk about, this one is a little bit less ubiquitous than the past two, but this title I hammered at for hours, gladly. Now let’s talk about…
…Maniac Mansion! …for the NES? What? Yes, as a child, I cut my teeth on point-and-click adventure games by playing Maniac Mansion on the NES. This is a port from the famous Lucasarts PC game, and as far as I can tell, it’s a good one? I wouldn’t know how to compare, because I still have never touched the PC version. I can say playing a point-and-click on a NES gamepad was difficult, but really getting to play such a puzzle-heavy game at such a young age was a ton of fun, and I put countless hours trying to figure out how to beat the game…and not drown all my teenagers in the pool, or getting them tossed in jail, or abducted by mad scientists. This game may be a little harder to come across by legit means, but if you ever get the chance, please give it a go, Use Paint Brush with Paint Remover. In any case, these are some of the games that made “gaming” click for me! What about you, what games made this hobby more than a passing fancy for you? Comment, tweet, message, let me know.
Ray Knows Nothing 