EarthBound

[cedar nimbus]

Sponsored by RAID SHADOW LEGENDS

[amber vector]

And WAR THUNDER

[lucid sundial]

My opinion is that Earthbound is a video game.

[cedar nimbus]

War thunder is at least a good game

[light thistle]

you might change your mind after you watch my video!

[lucid sundial]

https://tenor.com/view/subscribe-click-subscribe-youtube-gif-14617137

[lofty palm]

I love the game but I also understand why people don't like it. Also different strokes for different folks? Like its fine that you don't like it? I don't need to convince you to like it lol. Thats what GotM is about

[amber vector]

I already unsubscribed

My bottom 3 is those two Alex Kidd games y'all made me play and Strider

[lofty palm]

https://tenor.com/view/pedro-monkey-puppet-meme-awkward-gif-7127558666087764733

[lofty palm]

This is the hottest hot take of all takes

[cedar nimbus]

Earthbound is when an Art Major doesn't have a game dev major as a close friend

[amber vector]

Oh, and that awful 🥚 game

[lofty palm]

As someone who likes RPG's (a lot) can we all agree RPG's are a little boring?

[amber vector]

Maybe sometimes

[cedar nimbus]

That's why having different main mechanics to switch things up are important

like the Atilier games with the crafting systems

[amber vector]

The bit in RPGs that get me is when you get towards the end and they have you revisit every city/area again with a lot of backtracking for the finale. But I'm cool as long as I'm mostly exploring new areas

[lucid sundial]

This is actually pretty close to the truth.

[cedar nimbus]

nailed it

[lucid sundial]

The lead designer was a copy writer, and wrote jokes for commercials and such in Japan.

[lofty palm]

Crafting sucks lol

[lucid sundial]

Which is why the game is kind of conventional (very Dragon Quest-like) and weirdly unconventional at the same time.

[marble crypt]

Couldn't say about everyone but for me Earthbound mechanically is just a stereotypical JRPG of old with some gimmicks like ||Jeff's inventory-based skills||.

[raw canopy]

https://tenor.com/view/chris-van-vliet-cvv-gif-26872730

[lucid sundial]

https://tenor.com/view/my-beloved-gif-4058739639109258997

[light thistle]

get out of here with your sensible takes! only divisive hot takes allowed

[lofty palm]

Its starting to feel like that episode of aqua teen where the house gets a virus and theres popup ads in the house

[lucid sundial]

https://tenor.com/view/visitor-1000visitor-jokes-joke-congratulations-gif-16441277

[burnt egret]

https://tenor.com/view/no-i-dont-think-i-will-captain-america-old-capt-gif-17162888

[golden niche]

Realistically, I think it comes down to this. Earthbound only really has it's uniquenenss going for it. It has a lot of problems similar to other older RPGs, but by it's own release date, many of it's problems were no longer commonplace anymore, I think. So, it has it's uniqueness (the art, music, writing, setting, and characters). If you find all that stuff good and charming, you'll like it. But if you don't like the things that make it unique, then it can just seem really bad.

As for judging it today, the things that made earthbound unique aren't particularly unique anymore. so if you've played anything else that was inspired by it, it likely has no novelty for you. So it no longer has that uniqueness thing going for it, and without that, it really doesn't have anything. It's been copied and done better a lot more since, so this is understandable.

[raw canopy]

I think what is throwing people off is that there has to be at least 5 games with zero redeemable qualities.

[golden niche]

For RPG's I've played, it is better than the first Lufia. So, there's one from me. 😆

Lufia has similarly boring combat with motionless sprites, but better battle music imo. But, it has the most horrific random encounter rate ever, which takes an okay game right to the bottom for me.

[raw canopy]

For technicalities it feels like a good NES rpg or a terrible SNES rpg

I love final fantasy and phantasy star but i'd still rather play this over FF1 or PS1

[golden niche]

Problem is this came out almost a decade later than those.

[raw canopy]

Ya, comparing it to FF3/6 which was contemporary, EB gets slaughtered

[golden niche]

so, even judging it during it's time, it can just seem bad mechanically. So really, it is all just the novelty of it. And if it isn't novel to you, then really, it's objectively bad.

[raw canopy]

I sitll think that without any qualifiers saying it is "bottom 5 of all time" is ragebait 🙂

Bottom 5 16bit jrpgs... OK maybe

[golden niche]

I mean, secret of the stars, lufia, 7th saga.... that's 3 for me that I can say EB is better than. Most of the SNES RPGs I've played are pretty great, so there's that.

One of the dungeons and dragons rpg games maybe? were any of those on SNES?

[raw canopy]

i think eye of the beholder

[open mulch]

Earthbound was in development hell for like five years

So it has a lot of 1990 mechanics

[golden niche]

Okay, eye of the beholder is worse too.

[raw canopy]

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/snes/category/48-role-playing

[mossy jolt]

It's better than the Breath of Fire games we played imo

[open mulch]

Iwata reprogrammed it mostly by himself over six months and got it shipped

[golden niche]

I can agree on BoF2. I'm not a big fan. I like 1 better, weirdly enough. I like 1 quite a bit. But I didn't finish BoF2. got too bored. But I got a lot farther in it than EB the first few times I played it. lol.

[raw canopy]

Music, story, dialogue all feel unique and to this day still not commonplace (and setting)

[mossy jolt]

I mean... I like it more than Chrono Trigger but I've never been a big Chrono Trigger fan. 🙃

[raw canopy]

HOWEVER, still am kinda unmotivated to play right now and feels kinda like a slog just due to combat and inventory mechanics - currently just arrived at || Tenda village || but will make sure I'm playing a bit every day so that I finish in time to also play ED.

I think what throws me off on the combat is that the easy fights are easy and the hard fights feel more like I'm managing status effects than doing cool stuff with my characters.

[mossy jolt]

I like how Ness is all at once your tank, main physical attacker, AND healer. So you kinda gotta sacrifice one part for another in tough battles from time to time.

[golden niche]

I very much agree they are unique, but not vibing with me (or bill apparently). which is a risk of doing something unique. The music mostly reminds me of like old 60's sci-fi soundscapes than anything... it's just kind of there to me.
Story is pretty meh, honestly. What even is the story? I'm halfway through the game and I know nothing more of my main goal now than I did after the first 10 minutes of the game. There's just kind of random set pieces of weird interactions in each town... but the whole game feels like sidequests rather than a cohesive story.

[mossy jolt]

There's a pretty good payoff at the end imo that sorta ties it altogether. I obviously won't spoil what that is.

[golden niche]

this was also a big problem for me with BoF2 - storywise.

[golden niche]

I'm hopeful, but also seems like bad storytelling if the story is ignored for 50% of the game.

[mossy jolt]

The plot is ever present. It's just a macguffin quest with a quirky coat of paint

Find the 8 spots so Ness can be powerful enough to challenge the evil entity before it's too late

There are repeat plot elements like the Mani Mani statue and other subtexts relating to said evil

[golden niche]

Yeah, it hints at evil... but the 8 spots hardly feel like a focus in the game. They're just kind of there. To the point, I don't even really think about them until I suddenly find myself at one. There's no real explaination for them, they don't feel all that rewarding to accomplish, and it doesn't really contribute to my feeling of progression. They feel like subtext to the random sidequest stuff going on at every town rather than the actual focus of the game, if that makes sense.

[mossy jolt]

That's fine tbh. Earthbound is really about the moment to moment things, the wacky characters you meet along the way etc etc

[golden niche]

The first one is an exception. You're told about it from the beginning, and then the other stuff turns into obstacles that you have to clear to achieve it. The rest? so far, they are just there. I didn't know they were there, and I feel like I could miss them lol.

[mossy jolt]

I like how it feels like kids playing in the backyard.

Like "oh, then what if we can't escape because of zombies, ooh, then I'll be the inventer who breaks you out! Ooh and what if there's aliens and dinosaurs!"

Iunno it's endearing to me. And I don't have any nostalgic connection to the game;played it the first time when I was an adult.

[fathom prairie]

100% same, it was very charming to me, never got past the intro before this month

[lofty palm]

Thank god someone I generally consider sane agrees with this

People gush Chrono Trigger and I never gave a rats ass about that game

[lucid sundial]

I don’t mind a story that’s a set of vignettes if they are fun and/or interesting and Earthbound hits for me.

[mossy jolt]

CT broke a lot of ground for RPGs at the time and maybe because I didn't play it at the time, it's pretty much just a "par for the course" good RPG for me.

[lucid sundial]

Mother 3 is also a macguffin collection quest but does a better job tying them together later in the game.

[lofty palm]

Yeah I mean all that is fine and good, and neither did I play it when contemporary. It just feels like a weird mishmosh to me.

[mossy jolt]

I actually like Mother 3 a lot less than EB.

[lofty palm]

Good to innovate, but they had a lot of ideas that felt half baked to me, and the multiple endings are really stupid IMO

[mossy jolt]

I like Mother 1 more than M3 tbh

[lucid sundial]

I think Mother 3 is peak.

[lofty palm]

Mother 3 I do enjoy a good bit. Earthbound is the goat for me tho

[lucid sundial]

For the series at least

[mossy jolt]

I don't like how linear 3 is tbh. Like 1 and 2 has a lot of room to explore and do your own thing. Being locked to whatever chapter you're doing in 3 kinda takes me out of it a bit.

[lofty palm]

Well yeah lol. Not of all time. Of all Mother Series time lol

Eh atleast the story is good. Mother 1 was fun, but the fact that mother 2 just feels like 95% the same game makes Mother 1 feel pointless

[sinful tulip]

It’s a dragon quest clone with a funky setting and fun art/music direction. I think they were very successful given the well they were drawing from. Is it better than what many consider the greatest 16 bit rpgs of all time? lol idk but it’s definitely a top snes rpg

[mossy jolt]

Mother 1 tells a better story than EB imo, it's just dated and has a lot of grindy design

[lofty palm]

Its not without its merits, but I don't remember really anything much about the game

OTHER then Magicant

[lucid sundial]

Mother 3’s story is the one that blew me away.

[lofty palm]

Pink cloud Magicant is cool

[lucid sundial]

And I played that one post Undertale.

[mossy jolt]

I like Mother 3 it's just my least favorite in a series I PK Love.

I dunno it felt like it was supposed to be a shock to me that x would happen or that y character was actually z and it was just obvious to me and took me out of it. I dunno.

[olive echo]

That's what make the game great is you as a kid really don't understand what is happing. A metro hits earth you go out with you neighbor ||who you really want to be your friend|| to see what is happing. Then rest is unclear why it is all happing. I found a breath of fresh air to a game. It reminds going out as a kid to have an adventure with no real idea what is going to happen.

[lucid sundial]

It’s a coming of age tale. Like Stand By Me but with more Mr. Saturns.

[open mulch]

Apparently Stand By Me is culturally significant in Japan

[golden niche]

Yeah, maybe earthbound to you all is pokemon red to me.

[lucid sundial]

Or at least it canonically exists in the Pokémon world.

[wintry blade]

I would have been shocked if y WASNT z personally. But I think what the game does well is ||make it so obvious that you know while holding the reveal just out of reach so that you can't be 100% sure, then knocks that last flimsy hope against hope out from under you||

[lucid sundial]

And the kids watching the movie are all like, “I don’t get it, they’re in the woods but they’re not catching any Pokémon!!!”

[wintry blade]

Either way it's well written and I cried

I don't think earthbound is gonna make me cry

[lucid sundial]

That one part is obvious but still hurts.

[wintry blade]

Well maybe the inventory will make me cry

[lucid sundial]

The whole thing about the true nature of the world in Mother 3 was unexpected, though.

And the end is shocking.

But somewhat hopeful

[burnt egret]

I have yet to play through Mother 3 so thank you all for the spoiler tags

I've been told many times to expect to cry

Hoping to jump in to it after this completion

[wintry blade]

Ugh I'm losing the will to play this game. Why is it making me teleport everywhere

[golden niche]

I have arrived in moonside, which has been trippy and more interesting than a lot of the stuff I was doing before hand.

[wintry blade]

Moonside is fun

[light thistle]

omg ragebait!!

[open mulch]

BoF 3 gotm will be epic

[lofty palm]

I have experience with bof 1 and 2. They're good "classic rpg's" solid but nothing to crazy write home about

3....I have the psp version and never could get into it more then an hour or so.

4 is a visual feast but i've never touched it either.

Someday

[hot bough]

I love BoF1 and BoF2, but I have nostalgia blinders on for the GBA versions.

Might rip the SNES NSO versions when I rip Earthbound for this and try that retranslation patch for BoFII.

[lusty kraken]

BoF 1 and 2 have aged rather poorly, but BoF 3 and 4 still hold up imo

[sinful tulip]

Magicant is cool as heck

[golden niche]

Yeah, one and two are pretty generic fantasy JRPGs. Nothing amazing, but nothing really horribly broken either. I kind of think of them as the baseline rpg. An rpg needs to better than BoF to be good, otherwise it’s bad.

[dusky marsh]

Sorry I forgot I can't curse here 😭

Who else going for mastery?

[golden niche]

I’m considering it. Not sure I want to deal with 1/128 chance loot drops though. Sounds pretty miserable.

[hot bough]

Do GotMs give more points for full mastery? I'm trying to remember all the subtleties of the different tiers.

[cedar nimbus]

I think you get double the points for mastery

[golden niche]

Only for game of the quarter. Not game of the month.

And it’s an additional 2 points for 3 total possible for the GotQ.

[hot bough]

Thank you for clarification! Unfortunately I'm playing the Switch/2 version of GotQ now so no completion for me, lol

[golden niche]

I just typically try for mastery on games that I’m enjoying or don’t seem too difficult to do. I enjoy it for the most part.

For some games that I’m not enjoying that much, the achievements can really give me just enough enjoyment to push through.

Or they can really make it fun for a game that I’ve already played before. Like the set for links awakening was really good. And the middle of gear solid set is probably one of my favorite ones. That showed me all kinds of stuff. I’ve never done in the game, and that’s one of my favorite games of all time.

[hot bough]

That's really valid, too!

[lusty kraken]

Beat the five moles in that awful gold mine, think that's a good place to call it a night.

[golden niche]

You’re catching up to me. I just finished off all that crap last night.

[indigo heath]

I got mastery a few days ago. I only had to grind for the broken antenna, everything else I found rng manipulation tutorials that weren’t too difficult or time consuming to pull off

Strongly recommend that for the other 3 rare item achievements

Or other two since idk if an antenna rng manipulation exists

[dusky marsh]

It can be, but since I'm in love with the game it didn't bother me at all. 120 starmen supers on 1.5x speed, auto wins with the Casey Bat, it is going to make the final boss much easier with all these extra levels

[austere ledge]

I didn't realize the Casey Bat had an actual function

[fathom prairie]

I didn’t need it because I got so over leveled I was auto clearing the super star men anyway lol

[fair nexus]

Wow, I missed the whole "Bill tries the hater route and finds out he loves it"

Just made it over to Happy Happy Valley, and that's a good summary of the games strengths and weaknesses

Even at the time the gameplay itself wasn't anything that special. Now? It's subpar really, especially the annoying inventory system.

But if you click with the world and the story it's just a really interesting playthrough. I want to see what's around every corner, because the world is just strange enough, just weird enough, that I think it'll be interesting

[fathom prairie]

Kinda bummed yall already played mother 3 I don’t think I have the oomph in me to get it going without the social pressure lol

[amber vector]

We can pressure each other

[olive echo]

A bunch of us played it in January.

[open mulch]

should have played it in January like I did

Jaylash beat me to it

[amber vector]

If there's enough of y'all here that liked Earthbound enough to play it in that other thread for old games, I'd be down to join

[fathom prairie]

I got here late March, unfortunately

[amber vector]

Same. I was in the server for ages, but didn't start doing GotX stuff until around March/April too

[open mulch]

https://tenor.com/view/skill-issue-gif-19411985

[fathom prairie]

I’ll wait (years if necessary) for a special rewind and play something you missed category

[amber vector]

Is that a thing? I know I saw in January they did a thing to play anything from the previous year you hadn't

I'm not in a rush to get to Mother 3, but I'll play it solo sometime. Or if y'all ever wanna get together for a flashback or something later on, I'd be down

[fair nexus]

There was some contention over doing January's theme again. Would not assume it's automatic

The only auto-theme is probably wishlist

[amber vector]

Ahhh, okay. I had assumed it was a yearly thing

I'm guessing it didn't go over well for a lot of people?

[fathom prairie]

Well I bet the people who 3/3 find it quite dull

[amber vector]

That's fair, I was about to ask what happens to people who 3/3'd everything

[fair nexus]

Also, people skip the games they're not interested in. It works well for newer people, less for older

[olive echo]

I found it kinda dull. But others loved it.

[fathom prairie]

Tough thing to balance

[fair nexus]

It also led to very little discussion

Sorta like the Conker thread now

[amber vector]

So I guess I should play Eternal Darkness next?

[fathom prairie]

I’d say it’s much more playable than Conker

If you 3/3 all year, and January is the repeat thing again, I do think you should be thrown a bone. Get your 3 points by playing a game you have to decide on with Zu or something

[lofty palm]

Or you just have to beat Zu in feats of strength

We're going to need a lot of Ko-Fi tips for that one

[sullen storm]

it's funny that enemies are able to dogde the attacks against themselves 🤣

[open mulch]

we did the math, there would need to be a couple of Januarys like that before people started to max out

Even Rapid dipped on enough throughout the years to have shit to play

[fathom prairie]

Oh so it has gone back beyond just the current year? Got it

[olive echo]

Gotx got really popular in the end of 2021 and beginning of 2022. So there is still a lot games for the leaders in points. I just found it more of people during their own thing which to me defeats the purpose of gotx to me.

[lucid sundial]

There was at least a good discussion for Policenauts.

[open mulch]

Yeah, I liked it because I found 2 story-heavy games I missed and we were able to discuss them

then Metroid Fusion just because the 34XX had just come in

I'd probably do FFT, Front Mission and ??? this time

I need some HLTB games for the CES plane rides

[olive echo]

Did you play Paper Mario?

[open mulch]

no

there we go

[mossy jolt]

I need to Vagrant Story and Dino Crisis 2 (now that we played 1) so I got some good stuff if we do January as a repeat theme

Was really happy to knock out Clock Tower and DKC3 last Jan.

[golden niche]

Policenauts was fun. I don't even remember what other games I played in january, honestly. I would do order of eclessia for sure since I missed out on that one and it was fun for the little bit I played. Not sure what else I'd pick up if we did it again.

Oh wait I remember the other two I played. I did Ihatovo and advance wars 2.

[lofty palm]

I haven't played Thousand Year door yet, but OG Paper mario is real good. Always did like that one a lot

Flashback month I did...Banjo Kazooie and Metroid Prime, but then was down with just a night or two so I did Harmful Park to wrap up the 3/3 for the month

I've only been here since just before the new year. I think I played GotM games for a month or two and didn't even log completions.

then i started abusing hard drugs realized you guys are ok and started actively participating

[olive echo]

I did CT, Mother 3 and Policenauts. If we do it again I will follow Zu on 50 plus hours gotm

[lofty palm]

Thats a hell of a month Jay

[lucid sundial]

TTYD is a treat.

Peak Intelligent Systems writing.

[amber vector]

I also still need to play TTYD

And more Mario & Luigi

I played the first M&L recently-ish with the plan to binge most/all of the series over some months to play the new one that came out, but then got caught up with other stuff and GotX taking a lot of that timeslot in my life

Cause I usually play 2 solo games at a time + something smaller on a handheld on the side. And GotX has since taken over a lot of that 3rd smaller side handheld time

Not that I'm complaining, y'all rock

[lucid sundial]

The Switch remake of TTYD is great, some nice but subtle graphical enhancements and some nice quality of life features.

[amber vector]

Yeah, I'll definitely go that route when I do. Maybe I'll replay 64 before I do

[fathom prairie]

I’d just hop right to TTYD over a replay of 64. TTYD is way better and I like both

[olive echo]

TTYD hasn't won yet.

[lucid sundial]

We should fix that.

[fathom prairie]

It’s a good’un

[olive echo]

What theme does it fit

[fathom prairie]

Second chance September lol

[fair nexus]

Sequel September

[lucid sundial]

Paper Peptember

[olive echo]

This?

[lucid sundial]

Yes. Game must involve paper and Italian meats.

[olive echo]

https://peptember.com/ Just going to leave this here

[lucid sundial]

https://tenor.com/view/should-i-be-worried-ina-garten-barefoot-contessa-i’m-worried-i’m-worried-about-you-gif-10353485735451582159

[olive echo]

No, just the image

and this

[lucid sundial]

I have a new religion now.

[lofty palm]

Pehpehrohnie

[olive echo]

I still don't understand why they choose March and not September.

[olive siren]

Just finished earthbound.
What a great game! I understand all the criticism in this thread, but i had a really good time with it. The pixelart is very nice, and there is a good but of variaty too. Especially after just having finished DQ3.
The inventory system was objectively bad, but i didn't need it all too often. Healing was done by magic, so i just ignored all the healing items and that was that.
Also, the game just is charming. You have to call your mom otherwise you get homesick, and the game doesn't take itself so serious. It's lovely.
Much prefer this over DQ3.

[wintry blade]

Know what I just realized? I'd like battles in this game like 20% better if it did the Mario RPG style system of mapping different actions to different keys

That way if my health is rolling to zero I don't have to scroll through menus in a panic to get to life up or my nuke

I guess you'd still have to assign shortcuts though...

[mossy jolt]

Nah those panic moments kinda rule imo

[wintry blade]

I'm so bad at them lol

Just being a hater I guess

[fathom prairie]

I liked the rolling hp, that’s grace enough! And it’s funny that fast text speed can actually save your booty

[wintry blade]

Hall of Fame bat is good right? I'm about to participate in the horn of life economy for a lil bit

[sinful tulip]

It’s decent but you find an upgrade really soon anyway

[wintry blade]

Thanks I won't waste my time

I did manage to flush out some of escargot express anyway

[lofty palm]

I just got to the deep darkness. Definitely approaching the last chunk of the game. Enjoying it but ready to take a swing at something else and locking in my streak lol

[raw canopy]

at deep darkness you only have 4/8

i'm not much further and really struggling to think of playing another 50% of the game

at least thi smonth,

this is why i'mn not a huge fan of jrpg in gotm

[open mulch]

https://tenor.com/view/skill-issue-lettuce-lettuce-issue-gif-23888065

[raw canopy]

jrpg is my favorite genre but don't want it to be timed by zu's internal clock

[lofty palm]

Not sure if I was a little out of synch with a direct playthrough but I went back and did the 5th sanctuary prior to doing the pyramids and all that

[raw canopy]

lol wonder if i just straight up skipped a sanctuary, i'm raw dogging the game

[open mulch]

50% of the game 13 days into a 31 day month

https://tenor.com/view/bookio-gif-13932157847762104386

[raw canopy]

brother, i still need to play ED and idek wtf that game is

[lofty palm]

Also I like to just cross reference lets plays and according to the short one (only about 15 hours) theres only 3-4 hours left soooo its been awhile but I think the game sorta ups the pace in the last like 1/3rd

But again i've played this game before and am abusing fast forward.

Yeah according to this you can/should do the sanctuary in dalaam and the one in fourside before going to deep darkness. Thank the lort for teleport

Looks like the dalaam one is pretty straightforward

[sinful tulip]

Yeah you’re pretty close to the last stretch

[olive echo]

Last 3 sanctaury go fast

[raw canopy]

I've got tomorrow off, but doing some state fair things. Then I've also got the whole last week of August off.

ps. I hate the state fair

[lofty palm]

Yeah Thats what I assumed. Synch has maybe an extra 1.5 hours to double back and do the 5th and 6th sanctuaries "whenever"

[fathom prairie]

At least you can eat something terribly bad for you and equally as delicious at state fairs

[lofty palm]

Aw man

Theres one up in a farmy part of NJ about 45 mins from me thats pretty hick. Tractor pulls. Truck pulls. Blue ribbons for pigs, goats, cows, horses, sheeps, chickens. Produce. Etc. its pretty fun.

Anyway they have frozen cheesecake dipped in chocolate then dipped in a topping of your choice (oreo or reeses is the move here)

🔥🔥🔥🔥🔥

[woven forge]

I did not expect Paula to be level 1, lol. Time to farm her up a bit

[lusty kraken]

PSI Teleport learned, that's going to help immensely

[cedar nimbus]

When you have the space for it

[wintry blade]

Oh man I bet there's some skilled earthbound speed runners who can use psi teleport in unexpected situations

[dusky marsh]

Broken antenna didn't take too long either

[fathom prairie]

The guide I followed suggested using it to get through || deep swamp parts || but I never did

[blazing shoal]

Ya know, I really needed that coffee in saturn village. What a neat little message.

[open mulch]

https://tenor.com/view/naomi-campbell-2000s-sipping-tea-sips-tea-tea-gif-3190106368792469416

[lofty palm]

"coffee"

https://tenor.com/view/right-yeah-right-yeah-oh-yeah-ohh-gif-14553729619893238098

[blazing shoal]

You guys don't experience that every morning?

[lofty palm]

https://tenor.com/view/cocaine-drug-gif-12408899

[fringe badger]

i like how you get Paula at level 1 way off in the middle of everything kills a lv1 in one hit land

it's either the exploding trees you can't get away from on one side or moles and such on the other that immediately hit for 40hp

[fringe badger]

...but if you reset the save and go for the cave first while the bear is still there it's trivial

[golden niche]

Metal Gear Solid achievement sucks. Never a fan of speedrun crap being included in standard sets.

[hot bough]

Need to start this for real tonight. Any time locked retroachievements?

[golden niche]

No, but there are missbales, some super grindy rare drop ones, and one speed run technique one that is really annoying.

[hot bough]

Ewwww

[shrewd spade]

Miss Bales? Is she related to Christian Bale?

[woven forge]

it took me a until threed to realize the towns are numbers, lol

[indigo heath]

I didnt find this one too bad with a skip sandwich DX and a youtube video showing where to go

[golden niche]

I just got it myself. It still sucked. Took me a good 25 minutes. I actually set a turbo button to b, which brings up your status screen and pauses. Doing that, I was able to hold it while moving and run the game at like half speed. It still took several attempts and it has RNG tied to it. The second robot in the long hall is totally positioned by RNG and will kill an attempt outside of your control.

[hot bough]

Oh wait, only Retroarch has it for Android SNES, doesn't it

[fringe badger]

of the listed standalones, one isn't on android and the other version's android options are only also a libretro core
https://docs.retroachievements.org/general/emulator-support-and-issues.html#snes-super-famicom-satellaview-sufami-turbo

[golden niche]

Finished up magnet hill. I feel like I’m getting close to the end. Maybe?

[marble crypt]

Got to the Moonside. Man, I feel sorry for everyone who have epilepsy.

[hot bough]

Thanks for looking. I'm not a big Retroarch fan out of stubbornness to deal with the UI, so I'll plod along on my own, then, lol.

[fringe badger]

yeah any time i come across a program like retroarch or blender or whatever that looks like it was put together by people from jupiter, i kinda just try to get in their head and figure out what would have made sense to them at the time. eventually the patterns start coming to the surface

can totally see how that's not everyone's jam tho

[austere ledge]

Feeling this one. Alice is a bit of a nod to both how trippy this game is and also Alis Landeel. If I'm wavering on something here it's Favorite Thing (Rockin is classic)

[austere ledge]

Belatedly I would if I weren't using a mod, but like. This is kind of an important journey. gotta do it

[fringe badger]

there's actually like four mods that are supported on ra
*edit: it's actually just two but a boat load of translations

i'm using the modern controls one

[dusky marsh]

Yeah I would just transfer my safe to a RA compatible mod

[hot bough]

Care to link that one? I'm losing my mind at A being the menu and L being the catch-all "click" lmao

[dusky marsh]

You could button remap A to L and Start to A

[fringe badger]

it's the (new controls) that isn't a translation https://retroachievements.org/game/264/hashes

A automatically checks/talks with nearby people, so the menu is simplified to four options. menu is X, map is Y

i got my patch from the romhack original page but the hash matches so it should be the same

also psa to let the console sit for a bit before booting a game so syncthing can actually pull the updated saves

was wondering why ness was under 200hp

[hot bough]

https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/1111/ heck yeah.

[fringe badger]

yep

hadn't noticed it got the 1111, neat

[hot bough]

Wish I could merge it with the "Pokey into Porky" patch but oh well

[wintry blade]

They should make a patch to patch the patch

[lucid sundial]

https://tenor.com/view/the-simpsons-ralph-wiggum-lazy-gif-18651248

[lucid sundial]

Sounds like they poked when they should have porked.

[golden niche]

I just remapped my controls and went original. There are some achievements for using left hand only for some reason, so I mapped mine with this layout using the command names from this image:
B -> talk (L)
A -> cancel (select)
X -> command select (A)
Select -> map (X)
Y -> setup as a turbo button for L for faster battle stuff.

[hot bough]

Well yes, lol. Pokey's name is technically a mistranslation.

[hot bough]

I just applied them both. Seems to work fine, I think I likely just overwrote this singular part of New Controls:

References to the map button have been changed where appropriate.

[wintry blade]

I feel like grinding/just getting through dungeons is harder in this game than the bosses

[golden niche]

Made it to the weird statue man dungeon tower thing in scaraba. That’s probably enough for today.

[lusty kraken]

Oh hey, also made it to Scaraba!

Just got there, so not quite where you are

[golden niche]

I’ve been just like 30-60 minutes ahead of you this whole time. Lol.

Have the day off and we went on a bit of a trip, so I had a few hours to play on a drive.

[austere ledge]

I invited someone who just started playing Earthbound a couple days ago

@wicked ocean Say hello to the Earthbounders Sor

[wicked ocean]

Oh hello!

Yeah~ I just got the Milky Well sanctuary.

[austere ledge]

Damn good progress for a couple of days. My executive dysfunction will not abide that shit

Also post what you named everything

[wicked ocean]

Oh yes

[austere ledge]

Did you remember to get Lilliput Steps by the way? For whatever reason people miss that one sometimes. I know I've done it

[wicked ocean]

I did, yep!

I don't have a screenshot, sadly, but it's basically all defaults, but with Love as my Favorite Thing

[austere ledge]

Which hack did you say you're using? MaternalBound?

[wicked ocean]

I honestly don't remember which it is, let me go peruse RHDN to refresh my memory

Yyyyes, I think it's Maternalbound

Or... no. I don't have English on the title screen, so it's not that one

it's one of the RetroAchievements-compatible ones, though

https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/6140/ Here it is. Mother 2: Perfect Edition

[austere ledge]

Ah yes

Forgot about that one for a moment

[wicked ocean]

I patched this up for an earlier run like... last year? and I didn't label it because for some reason I care about RetroArch's thumbnails

[wicked ocean]

🪦

[lofty palm]

Phew. Just blasted through the last like 4 hours of this game

Had fun but happy to be locked in with a point

[golden niche]

I’m in the henge base, farming… so tedious. 😆

[wintry blade]

I imagine I'm somewhere near that? I feel like the game has run out of things to say at this point

Two more sanctuaries to go

[wintry blade]

Does brain food lunch work for poo?

I'm about to purge my entire inventory and own only multi bottle rockets and brain food lunches

[lofty palm]

I mean yeah go for it but after doing it theres really not much game left or need for it lol. Maybe an hour, hour and a half max if you go straight through

I used save states to not over level. I tried the whole rng thing but I think I was doing it wrong lol

[fathom prairie]

If you’re leveled enough to have heal omega on ness with a good bank of pp, you’re kinda done with healing items ime

besides using them to clear inventory

but I mean, I was over leveled from over leveling and wanting poo’s sword

[mossy jolt]

In case you haven't seen it: Warning spoilers; watch after beating it

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-hVuv7mDNqM&list=RD-hVuv7mDNqM&start_radio=1

[open mulch]

Hell yeah!

[indigo heath]

Which mod is this? Next time I play I’d probably do a gender swap mod

[austere ledge]

That exact mod

[indigo heath]

So just called “gender swap”? Cool I’ll look it up 🙂

[austere ledge]

https://www.romhacking.net/hacks/7731/

[lusty kraken]

Hell yeah!

[dusky marsh]

Well this sucked

1400 tries

[lusty kraken]

https://tenor.com/view/how-many-kadeem-tales-fight-the-power-s3e1-gif-26452769

[indigo heath]

please don't suffer for the gutsy bat, there's a couple good rng manip routes you can do that will be much less frustrating

[golden niche]

I still need this. Not looking forward to it.

You’ve passed me now.

[lusty kraken]

With FF and auto-defeat, it went rather quickly. Less than 30 minutes and got a ton of levels.

[hot bough]

Y'all are scaring me. I just got to Onett and the Sharks outside are kicking my ass when they team up.

Also how tf does Auto Fight work inside battle? I didn't seem able to turn it off and almost died.

[golden niche]

I think it cancels after the current turn ends of you press b or select during the turn.

[golden niche]

https://tenor.com/view/keep-the-hope-alive-traetwothree-future-superstars-don't-give-up-nick-cannon-future-superstars-gif-3362823767986174946

Matches my enthusiasm ^

[wicked ocean]

I really hate the Enraged Fire Plug/Robo-pump enemy combo

[hot bough]

Why is the font like this, lol

[golden niche]

You’re using a hack of some kind that messed it up, or you patched a non-compatible rom with said hack and corrupted things?

That’s my best guess.

[hot bough]

I'll do it at home later. Figured the website patcher would be fine.

If it's an incompatible file, then not much I can do about the one I have

[golden niche]

The patch should list which version to use when patching.

I don’t think it’s the patchers fault, just incompatible files.

[hot bough]

Fair enough, I won't be too bothered then

Oh. I have to expand my file, ig, so if I'm gonna mess with it, it's definitely a tonight at home thing.

[wintry blade]

Oh what the heck healing gamma can revive?

I've been playing this game wrong for 25 years

God damn it

[golden niche]

I had no idea either. This game doesn’t tell you what anything does. lol.

[fringe badger]

so this is a fun missable https://retroachievements.org/achievement/376282

you need to a) get homesick which is at best a 3/256 chance and b) have an unlooted trash can nearby

was looking over the missables a bit more closely because jeff's sequence is all about that and am now just back in threed again

[golden niche]

It’s not too bad if you just do all of threed in one stint. Spend some time leveling against the floppies(?) and you’ll probably be homesick pretty easily.

But does require planning for sure.

[lucid sundial]

That’s the fun of it.

[lusty kraken]

Done! Good game, but Mother 3 is better.

[golden niche]

I’m hoping to finish tonight. We will se though. Didn’t have any chance during the day.

Too busy.

[fathom prairie]

Maybe I'll play Mother 3 if we get a january backlog dive

[wintry blade]

Do I really need the star pendant?

Especially after fighting 128 of these psychic psycho dudes... I think I'll be ok

[fathom prairie]

Only rare item I grinded it out for was the sword and I didn’t need that either

I just didn’t want poor Poo going unarmed

[wintry blade]

But think of the inventory slot you save

Alright I abandoned the star pendant . Time to explore my mind

[wicked ocean]

hooo boy, the fifth sanctuary boss is tense

[wintry blade]

Which one is that?

I had trouble with the 8th and I grinded beforehand too

[wicked ocean]

Plague Rat of Doom

and you know how rat/mouse enemies are

[wicked ocean]

actually, it's even scarier when you haven't levelled up Poo fully

[wintry blade]

Oh yeah I do remember hating that rat actually

I feel like the mother games are good about making enemies dangerous even if you grind

[golden niche]

Well, 85 battles in and 15 levels later, still no kings sword. 😩

[wintry blade]

That xp isnt bad though

I finished the game at level 96. Probably the highest lvl I've been in any RPG except ng+ chrono trigger

||and it didn't even matter because you just pray the incomprehensible monster away anyway||

[golden niche]

Bah. Fight 130, thought it was dropping. Stupid brain food lunch.

It’s been 1.5 hours now. This sucks.

[hot bough]

Am I supposed to level on the Sharks in Onett or is there somewhere else to go first before I get my butt handed to me?

[golden niche]

Got it. Finally. 175 battles. Ness is level 87 now. Gross. Guess the rest of the game will be easy.

[mossy jolt]

Heads up: try not to let Ness be level 99 before you get the last "Your Sanctuary"

[dusky marsh]

yeah the stonehedge one looked insane but the other ones are fairly close to the telephones, and don't look so bad. 1400 tries didn't take too horribly bad with 4x speed but it still made everything feel like a waste of time lol

[golden niche]

I’ll try. Not my fault though. Stupid sword.

[golden niche]

Well, I made it magicant. Almost done I think, but I’m tired. Got to call it a night tonight.

[dusky marsh]

I'll say that doing the manips for the gutsy bat, goddess ribbon and star pendant all save an ungodly amount of time over grinding. especially the gutsy bat

[fading snow]

Why I'm likely skipping most these 1/128 chance items, playing on NSO so I'm not concerned with it too much and the game has been pretty breezy difficulty wise

[tall hill]

I might have to power through some of this game on my weekend next week. I'm still only in Threed.

[dusky marsh]

Feels good

[fair nexus]

There seems to be a pattern of Ness and friends continuously getting jumped

[golden niche]

Just seems complicated. I may try to figure it out now. Sword of kings was bad and o have bad luck. I knew I wasn’t going to come in under the average of 128.

[wintry blade]

Stranger danger. Can't be too careful leaving the house

[fair nexus]

|| Cops, cultists, zombies and ghosts || already so far

[marble crypt]

God, that photography man is sometimes annoying. Three (!) encounters under five minutes, crazy

[mossy jolt]

https://tenor.com/view/earthbound-fuzzypickles-gif-9657774

[open mulch]

https://tenor.com/view/earthbound-earthbound-ness-earthbound-picmix-no-problem-here-gif-12033394992942868935

[cedar nimbus]

the highest level I've gotten in a single playthrough RPG was 97 in Atelier Ryza 3

though I don't know if 99 was the cap

[golden niche]

Could not get this to work. Always loaded with a purple dinosaur in the way before the cave.

[fair nexus]

Cleared the Saturn village, now I'm treking in the desert

No idea how I'm doing on pacing here

[golden niche]

I got a broken antenna pretty fast. Only 63 battles. 95 battles in farming a star pendant…

[golden niche]

259 fights… everyone is max level now. Still no star pendant. 😡

282. Finally got it.

[lusty kraken]

Yuck. I only went for the Royal Sword because Poo needs equipment, I didn't bother trying to get the others

[indigo heath]

Ah that sucks. Maybe your file was 2 or 3? Only thing I can think of there 🙁

[golden niche]

Nope, it was definitely one. Maybe I was using the L button instead of the a button or something I did remap my controls for the left handed only stuff. Directions weren’t exactly clear what buttons to push though. But I could never get it to work. There was always a dinosaur outside the cave.

[crude fable]

Considering starting this now to try and knock it out before the end of the month, but I don't know if time stress is the best environment in which to do my first full playthrough in 20+ years

[open mulch]

https://tenor.com/view/do-it-what-are-you-waiting-for-determined-angry-gif-5247874

[fair nexus]

Spent a while playing today, made it to Summers. Needed to go a little faster to make it comfortably this month I think

[fringe badger]

welp i'll take at least one of these being a bit less painful

now if only jeff would fix that stupid gun of his one of these nights

k

[fringe badger]

mildly confused how the cheevo for that has a 10% unlock rate

[wicked ocean]

managed to get it pretty early, around level 68

[wicked ocean]

maybe people gamesharking for it? that or retroachievements kind of people are the kind of people who will grind for it

[fringe badger]

maybe the latter. 75% are hardcore mode, a bit more than the normal from the looks of it

[dusky marsh]

Can't GameShark on hardcore. Just a bunch of grinders

[golden niche]

I just need the gutsy bat. Beat the game and got everything else tonight. Found a rng manip for the bat. I’ll hopefully practice and pull it off, but later. I need a break. Going to do eternal darkness.

[wicked ocean]

I don't know if I'm gonna grind for anything else, I got the sword way early and I'm trying to fight off the irrational "lucky streak" thoughts X3;

[wicked ocean]

jesus christ I just beat Starman Deluxe effectively solo

because I forgot that lategame bosses like to have PSI shields

Everyone got themselves killed with reflected damage except Ness, who I managed not to fumble the heal on

[austere ledge]

All right, time for me to stop procrastinating on this today. Both Eternal Darkness and Conker are down, and I shouldn't take super long with this game given how familiar I am with it

[lofty palm]

Ironically in the last fight I cleared the first "Phase" faster when I basically killed everyone immediately, then struggled to revive them later. When I actually did everything "correctly" it was harder and took longer LOL

||also forgot that pray is in the third phase not the second so I had to do the first part of the fight twice but it wasn't too bad||

[raw canopy]

Are any of the items missable? I'm assuming I'm OK just playing kinda blind?

I took a break because I was getting a little oversaturated with EB but will jump back into it soon.

[golden niche]

Yea, many items are missable.

There are full areas that can only be accessed once.

[raw canopy]

Does it make the game significantly harder without them?

[golden niche]

No, not particularly. There is one that is pretty important I think, for countering status effects later on. Sea pendant I think it’s called. That one makes some stuff significantly easier. I’d definitely grab that one. The rest aren’t game changing really.

[raw canopy]

Thank you! I'll check out information on that one and try to avoid anything else. I've already read enough about sword of kings here and thats where i'm going next so might farm a bit there.

[golden niche]

There are the other pieces of poos gear besides the sword. I think some of those are missable.

[fair nexus]

Got Poo, in the sixth sanctuary currently. How much do I have left?

[lofty palm]

You just recently got Poo and you're doing the sanctuary in Dalaam?

[fair nexus]

.. yes? Is that bad?

[lofty palm]

If so with FF on and kinda breezing through/no item farming....3-4 hours?

No not at all. I got Poo and didn't realize I could warp back to dalaam and do the sanctuary there, so I did the one after that first, then doubled back

[fair nexus]

I did the fifth sanctuary first for some levelling

Not bad, should finish up this week then

I might do a bit of item grinding

[golden niche]

Yeah, you're getting very close. Item grinding is a PITA.

[lofty palm]

Yeah I've done a playthrough before. Took me maybe...45 minutes with fastforward to get the sword of kings. Thats the only item farming I did

With fastforward basically on permanantly towards the end like I said a few hours.

Deep darkness and tenda village are like the last "standalone new area" things to do

After that it all bleeds into one another more or less

[open mulch]

https://tenor.com/view/archer-sterling-archer-hey-phrasing-phrasing-gif-4228674

[golden niche]

RNG Manip for the win.

[fair nexus]

Item grinding is a PITA

30 minutes, with FF, no sword of kings yet

[fair nexus]

33 minutes later, no sword of kings and I'm done for the night

I might give up on it soon

[golden niche]

I know you don’t want to hear this, but it’s one of the easier ones too. I highly recommend fighting some rng manipulation stuff and going that route. The star pendant nearly broke me.

[fair nexus]

Alternatively I can move on and beat the game normally

[lusty kraken]

I thought the Sword of Kings was worth it. I didn't really see the benefit of the others, especially since they generally take longer.

[golden niche]

Gutsy bat is not worth it, since your stats are definitely maxed out by the time you get it from the grind anyway 😆

[fair nexus]

THANKS FOR THE BRAIN FOOD LUNCH

[fair nexus]

2:30 of grinding later, I give up

[lofty palm]

Yeah I got the sword of kings pretty quick. The game is like....90% over at that point anyway so I really didn't feel like doing any more item grinding

[fair nexus]

Game is not hard enough for me to bother with it

[fair nexus]

As I'm coming up on the ending, I have to say I really like the game. Never played and enjoyed a game solely on vibes, but that's basically what happened here

[tall hill]

Holy crap, 10k exp from some random caterpillar.

[lofty palm]

^ Yeah theres one in each desert and they're like metal slimes in Dragon Quest. Sorta little harder to kill but give gobs of EXP

[fair nexus]

I one rounded the boss thanks to grinding at least

The more I think about the game the more I like it actually. Can't really put it into words, but it's just so pleasant

Besides for || Poo's meditation training, what type of horror creepypasta was that ||

[tall hill]

Gave the kid ||in the Fourside alley blocking Everdred some dirty socks.||

[marble crypt]

I shouldn't have switched to Casey Bat, shouldn't at all

[wicked ocean]

Yeah, no, the Casey Bat is not worth it X)

I think it's got a 75% miss rate?

The one thing it might be useful for is getting over the Offense threshold to one-hit KO Super Starmen in the Stonehenge base for Sword of Kings grinding

going by starmen.net's guide

[tall hill]

Gotta love padding. Going through ||Dungeon Man|| twice because whatever I guess?

[tall hill]

Oh cute, Paula's mom will make Steak for you

[lofty palm]

I think you mean Trash

"Ness caught a whiff of trash and was reminded of home"

[shrewd spade]

https://tenor.com/view/trash-trash-man-im-the-trash-man-iasip-danny-devito-gif-15616885

[lucid sundial]

https://tenor.com/view/raccoon-trash-panda-hello-can-i-help-you-may-i-help-you-gif-16128616368141671183

[tall hill]

Goodie, more back tracking.

the last chunk of this game has felt pretty padded tbh.

[tall hill]

Also, just got PK Fire Omega, but the entire spell line has felt pretty useless to me. It always does so little damage, even enemies that are weak to it feel like they take barely any additional damage.

[tall hill]

Finally! Lifeup Omega

[fringe badger]

welp. put so much thought into preparing for this just for ness to crit bash twice in a row and it was over in 2 turns

i guess i just have a couple extra big rockets now

[sand beacon]

In honor of all the dual screen devices being announced

[dusky marsh]

Ironically it was the terrible 3dsxl and 3ds ergos that got me to look for emulation handhelds lmao. I am not buying into this ds craze

[lofty palm]

There are some enemies that it definitely benefits to use PSI against but yeah for the most part you just save your PP for healing and use Paula's Psi for attacks on tougher mobs

[lofty palm]

For me its not the ergo its the implementation. The DS and 3DS were designed as proprietary consoles with two screens. Android with two screens or windows just seems like.... a chore on a handheld lol

[tall hill]

I more specifically meant the Fire line. Freeze has been almost broken useful the entire game. I still get use out of Freeze Beta even at the end of the game lol.

Thunder is also kinda useless, though in the way that I just straight up dislike random chance attacks lol. It's in the same camp as the slingshots/yoyos for me. Never gonna see the light of day.

[lofty palm]

Yeah freeze is the main spell I used. Fire is good if you chew through PP on it and use the higher leveled ones

[fair nexus]

Fire is good for those long row of enemies fights

[tall hill]

Which, in my experience at least, was mostly just slugs lol. Who are slow and usually go down in one melee hit from any character.

Or it's those pink ball guys, who are also super frail.

[lofty palm]

Wow

How you gonna do my boy FOPPY like that

[fair nexus]

Foppy just looks a friend

[tall hill]

Just Sukapon's loser little bro.

[fair nexus]

Feel bad killing him/them

[fathom prairie]

Those guys were just free xp

[sinful tulip]

Foppy is the goat

[lofty palm]

If not friend why friend shaped

[lusty kraken]

If not suppose to kick, why ball shaped?

Or, I guess more appropriately, whack with a bat

[fair nexus]

Ness is just extremely buff compared to basically anything in the game

[lofty palm]

Yeah what was Giygas thinking tbh

Silly little monsters are no match for a ripped 12 year old with a bat

[fair nexus]

Biblically accurate Ness

[crude lintel]

Kraken down and on we sail.

[lucid sundial]

I want a pet foppy

It’s like a tomato grew legs

And then decided to make himself a slight inconvenience

[lofty palm]

"Foppy a tried to be your friend. But it didn't work very well"

[hot bough]

Got Paula, but now I need to grind more to level her up but also avoid the exploding trees until she's a little tougher.

[austere ledge]

Don't go west. Go east.

[hot bough]

They're suggesting I head back to Twoson to talk to her family, right? Is that just optional?

[austere ledge]

You do need to do that, but you don't need to do it right now. You should actually explore the cave in Happy Happy Village first.

[hot bough]

Thanks for the advice! I'll pull it back open now that I'm done eating.

[hot bough]

... these moles are way better to fight. Hell yeah.

[fringe badger]

yyeah absolutely go for the cave first. especially while the bear is still alive. made the same mistake

[hot bough]

Bear went bye-bye after some time so now Paula has died twice to... bears. But I'm getting somewhere.

[hot bough]

Ohhh it's ||a Your Sanctuary||. Let's see how this goes.

[fringe badger]

fuck this person in particular

and shoutouts to retroarch menus being not only at least as arcane as always on pc with a keyboard, but with a bonus of freaking out every time you move the mouse around

at the very least, resets are quick enough if you use the phone in the lobby. took maybe 20 tries

[marble crypt]

Is there are any additional tips for grinding ||Sword of Kings||? I made a savestate at the entrance, trying to fish out lone ||Starman Super||, made about a 200 attempts and no avail. Not doing it for cheevos, mind, just wanna have that just in case.

[golden niche]

There is an rng manip, but it’s pretty long and has a bunch of tricky bits.

[marble crypt]

Got ut just a couple minutes before your reply. Feels like a complete random

[fair nexus]

At the end game, not the biggest fan of "walk in a straight line and fight annoying enemies over and over."

[lofty palm]

So again. Maybe I'm just an idiot but I watched a few videos and still didn't understand the RNG Manipulation

[golden niche]

Which one?

[lofty palm]

Save state and menu moving

Like I had a save state right by a starman super but I guess I was supposed to have my save state, do a one hit green circle fight, check for the drop, then load state, move the cursor once, save again, then rinse and repeat

Just seemed kinda wild to make a million save states (also my miyoo mini + was getting whacky and corruping save slots and shit)

I had more luck just running back and forth picking off starmen delux's to get it. And after getting the sword of kings had 0 interest in getting any more rare drops lol. I don't do cheevos and the game isn't really hard enough to need any of those items

[golden niche]

Yeah, you don’t have do that unless you’re looking for a new manip pattern typically. People have found repeatable patterns that you can just copy by loading a saved game in slot one. Just try to learn and follow one of those.

[lofty palm]

Yeah. I just felt it wasn't worth it and was lucky enough to get the sword after about 30 mins.

[fringe badger]

i'll probably just put on a podcast or smth

[lofty palm]

Better lock in

Could take 10 mins or 3 hours lol

[marble crypt]

Got myself another Sword of Kings out of the blue. Fml

[olive echo]

smth?

[hot bough]

"something"

[hot bough]

God, weirdly, the most dragging part of this is the inventory management and the four different items they don't let you store + equipment.

Even with Paula, it sucks

[fair nexus]

That's a really neat ending

[austere ledge]

This was funny when I was 9

[austere ledge]

man people really hating on ED this month

[austere ledge]

Yeah. If you played this game in your formative years, it turned a lot of other games' endings into, like. "That's it?"

[austere ledge]

mom is bullying me

[lucid sundial]

Moooooooommmmmmmm!!!!!!

[lofty palm]

Transience started thinking about his mom!

Transience missed

Transience missed

Transience missed

[gaunt epoch]

Well it took longer than I would like but I finished it. But I have to say the game as whole felt surprisingly underwhelming for something I had heard touted as one of the best/most important RPGs in console history. I can see why people like it, glad I played it. Unlike to repeat the experience.

[lofty palm]

I'm just gonna go back to my argument of lighning in a bottle/was really interesting until like 2010 when everything started doing "the earthbound thing"

[fair nexus]

Earthbound also has good enough themes and story to be able to gush about it for minutes on end in a video, so that helps

[gaunt epoch]

It can carry a video essay, and I've never played anything like it. So I'm glad I did, but I find only artistic appreciation, not any personal joy. Happens sometimes when well made, or at least uniquely concieved, art just does not land for me.

[blazing shoal]

I just finished it, genuinely enjoyed it. It’s definitely a weird game so good for the theme of the month, but I loved it. I never grinded for items so the difficulty throughout the game actually kept up with me which was nice. I never auto battled because I felt I had to be in control in case a big attack came out from an enemy. I think the pacing was fine, if I wasn’t trying to finish it in a month. If I played this as a kid over a few months, I think it would have really shined.

[golden niche]

I think it just doesn’t excel in the areas that I typically think are the critical areas of an rpg for me, and then the flaws really kill my enjoyment. The combat system is extremely dated for its time and really isn’t good. It’s not bad, but just meh. And the story doesn’t do it for me. I feel it’s really weak, and the gimmick at the end doesn’t hit, because they really don’t build anything. It’s like when a movie tries to make you feel bad when a character dies and you just don’t care because they spent all of 2 seconds developing the character.

[open mulch]

removing my vote from the totally not hentai date simulator

-# smdh

[golden niche]

I’m glad it touched you in some way. I wish it had lived up to the hype for me. Maybe if I’d played it as a kid or back closer to when it released anyway.

[lofty palm]

Wish someone would touch me in some way

[open mulch]

https://tenor.com/view/failboat-take-the-l-gif-26055456

[lofty palm]

Pray
Milkman prayed that someone would hear his request

[sullen storm]

Got to Fourside and... what the heck? 😅

[blazing shoal]

Ya I’d say that I’m overly empathetic, so I can feel for characters in media pretty easily. I named the dog after my dog in the beginning, and the scene where ||Ness sees himself as a baby and they’re worried about the dog liking the baby|| almost made me tear up since my wife and I are about to have our first kid. I dunno, I think I’ve heard that it was also one of the first rpgs to have just a modern setting, but I could be misremembering. If it’s true though, it does feel refreshing having just a stray dog or a snake that you fight at the beginning. It’s cute, it’s charming.

[fathom prairie]

I was smoking weed while I was playing so you know, maybe try that

-# if legal in your area

I thought it was very charming indeed

[blazing shoal]

To be fair though, I’ve not played that many rpgs of the era, as I think I had like a sega genesis or something later.

Mostly grew up playing gameboy advance as my brother hogged the console lol.

[lofty palm]

Friggen west coast hippy

[fathom prairie]

https://tenor.com/view/waltergotme-gif-18867690

[lofty palm]

Carl is a biblically accurate New Jersey guy

[fathom prairie]

https://tenor.com/view/carl-athf-aqua-teen-hunger-force-adult-swim-dont-matter-gif-18398614

Ya classic

[near bane]

fwiw, I did rent it when it was released and remember really disliking it then too. I think at the time though I was mostly disappointed it wasn't FF 2 (4) or 3 (6) epic storytelling (for the time). That was probably an unfair comparison since it's not trying to be, as much as I want it to be.

[austere ledge]

I'm actually a fan of the oppressive atmosphere in Threed

||enemies occasionally spawning near the center of town really helps to express that this town is embattled and not fucking safe||

Also the music here makes for good ambience to the point that it's limiting my use of FF while wandering around

If there's a thing I dislike about using FF in this game it's that. The music is very good

Also the game is kind of a mood piece, so sometimes slowing down a bit helps

I do have to say that the world feels so much more compact and manageable than it did when I was young. Like when I was young, Peaceful Rest Valley was a deep dive and a bit of a slog. It goes quick now that I'm all grown up, and it's much easier than I remember: lots of magic butterflies ease resource management, which is good because the main character has fuck all for inventory slots for hamburgers and cold remedies at this point

Also hell's bells is Paula made of glass

Even after I leveled her up a bit, ||Mondo Mole ate her alive. Even Shield didn't save her. I probably should've used Flash to make it cry and Freeze to keep it immobilized as much as possible, since Paula can't really damage it anyway||

Won that fight by the skin of my teeth. I wasn't going to hold up much longer

[hot bough]

Fwiw, it's weak to ||PSI Thunder||.

I may have over leveled but I got through it quick somehow myself.

[austere ledge]

||If it hits||

[hot bough]

True

[golden niche]

I never used thunder. Too unreliable.

[austere ledge]

this is worthless

[lusty kraken]

I'm hoping that you're joking, because the magic butterflies are awesome

[lofty palm]

Jeff can't use Psi so when you're playing as just him they're worthless

[lusty kraken]

I thought the magic butterflies also restored a bit of health, or was it just PP?

[lofty palm]

Hmm afaik its just PP and 20 or 25

[austere ledge]

20 PP, IIRC

[lusty kraken]

Well nuts, I thought it was HP also. That would be quite useless for Jeff.

[fathom prairie]

Just PP, but they usually appear in places they’re highly likely to respawn so you can use the pp to heal your whole party up by collecting a few

[austere ledge]

"modest dungeon" is accurate

[austere ledge]

This gets your hotel a one-star review

[woven forge]

how do i fix the broken air gun? I ended up looking it up and I meet the criteria, but nothing happened

[fathom prairie]

Find somewhere free to sleep and keep trying, it’s a chance thing

[woven forge]

ahh, too bad I don’t have a free spot, I guess I’ll wait then

[fathom prairie]

I mean, money in EB gets pretty plentiful as well

[marble crypt]

Phew, it was a long journey for me. A couple of aspects didn't aged well, some cryptic shit present, a bit grindy sometimes but good 6/8 on my scale. Not sure if I'll play it ever again tho

[woven forge]

oh ok, that’s good to know. i did end up getting it two hotel visits later

[subtle swallow]

I've finally the whole team, I'm really enjoying it but to finish it by the end of the month, I've to look at the guide sometimes.

[woven forge]

yeah I’m gonna have to push kinda hard to make sure I can finish, but I’ve been liking it

[shrewd spade]

Same. Just now made it to Moonside.

Inventory management has been my only real complaint. Some other parts are obviously aged, but otherwise been having fun with it.

[hot bough]

Wish there was a cheat or mod to deal with inventory It really is the worst part.

[woven forge]

I even just wish the equipped stuff wasn’t in the inventory. and town map and what not

it is tough to manage

[fair nexus]

Moving the sound stone, atm, receiver, and map out of inventory would by itself be huge

[woven forge]

oh yeah the atm card is rough too, haha

[austere ledge]

I love when my ATM card takes up as much space in my backpack as my lunch

||imagine having supportive parents||

[austere ledge]

thanks I spent an inordinate amount of effort picking it out

[fringe badger]

big fan of how a ketchup packet takes as much space as a frying pan

[fringe badger]

just did the fifth and sixth sanctuaries. camera guy needs to chill out

[austere ledge]

this is bullying

We Have Blues Brothers At Home are really shit with money is2g

[austere ledge]

Itoi dragging the NYPD since 1994

[lucid sundial]

https://tenor.com/view/dwight-realistic-timeline-gif-25872288

[austere ledge]

OK, I actually forced myself to engage with the inventory system in the desert mine. I went in and did not come back out until all five moles were dead

Actually got to the point of having to eat a psi caramel just before the last mole (and then didn't actually cast anything off Alice because Paula can damn near one-shot them)

Also I was sold a false bill of goods. I was told chicks cure homesickness. No they do not.

Alice started tuning out a couple of moles in and I was like "no we are not going back out until purification is complete"

But really, the game is so lenient with rest spots and magic butterflies, at least so far, that engagement with the inventory system happens on a basically consensual basis

Like sure there's a food vendor right outside the mine but it's kind of pointless unless you're doing what I'm doing. Or if you have a freak accident and your MC eats shit, but they have half the crew's hit points to themselves

[lucid sundial]

Yeah from maybe Threed on the party had generally felt pretty self-sufficient to me. Not a lot of need to carry a ton of items because you have lots of heals with PSI

Especially if you are willing to backtrack here or there to rest.

[austere ledge]

Hell, even before Threed. Like Peaceful Rest Valley? Magic butterflies everywhere.

[austere ledge]

I find myself wondering how often people here use the generic weapons, given their apparent higher miss rate and lack of critical hit capability

I know when I was a kid I just went with whatever had the highest offense, regardless of whether it came with a higher miss chance or lack of crits

[fathom prairie]

There’s some weapons that definitely aren’t worth the lower hit

[austere ledge]

This place was creepy when I was a kid

Remind me to never piss this guy off because you cannot hide from him

||heyyy he ignores the Moonside yes and no reversi||

[lucid sundial]

I’ve had him not be able to find me before.

Like if you call then hang out in the hotel ATM room they’ll call you back and say they cancelled because they can’t find you.

[austere ledge]

You can hide in the closet, but not in ||the back room of Jackie's Cafe||

[indigo heath]

I think most places that are larger than can fit on a full screen let you call him (same for for sale sign or pizza guy too) so that the character has somewhere to go without despawning (though i've had for sale customers despawn immediately for some reason anyways)

||lost underworld|| doesn't count though, nobody can reach you there

[hot bough]

I feel like I must have missed something in ||Jeff's section||, I don't see a way forward.

Ahhhh. Having to ||use an item when the monkey activated itself the first time|| is kind of obtuse. Thanks, game.

[silver parrot]

Alright, time to start this in earnest.

Who wants to take bets on my chances? I'm still in my Pajamas

[shrewd spade]

Had the same issue. Went back and forth a bit trying to find what I missed.

[sullen storm]

old school RPGs...

I thought this one wouldn't be too obscure... I was wrong

there are worse ones, but still there are some moments which are not clear

I have started keeping a guide at hand because there are more and more the further you go in the game

[austere ledge]

If you have lots of free time for the next few days and a guide? Might be able to do it, but put FF on a shoulder button and don't expect to get all the rare items

[austere ledge]

As an introvert, I feel understood

[cedar nimbus]

eh use it right away to get some PP back

unless this is the woes of grinding for those rare items

[golden niche]

it is that.

[indigo heath]

this game was sold with a guide in the US so no shame in using a guide to get through things imo

[austere ledge]

this man needs some serious help

and girls keep bullying me

metro flooded again

[shrewd spade]

Hey, we're at the same part right now!

[fringe badger]

it status: ain't

[blazing shoal]

Oh hey what a timely video to pop up in my subscription today. https://youtu.be/U-fv_oyYhqc

[austere ledge]

So as I've gotten older, it's a bit clearer how different Poo is even from the other people of Dalaam. Not just in the prince way, but like, his unique diet and shit

Like it's not just that he can't eat the western diet that the other three characters can. He can't even eat the way the people of his country normally do

Or Scaraban food, or whatever other non-western food that isn't a solid block of trans fats and sugar like western food is

Like when you're young and stupid it's easy to get it mixed up with regards to how much of his weird recovery scheme is him being the one non-western player-character and how much of it is his training, but it's definitely all his training

And now I have a headcanon: ||his natural PSI power is much weaker than Ness or Paula's, and his training was oriented towards maximizing that limited potential. I base this headcanon on nothing but his shitty PP stat and how he's dependent upon his unique ability to recover PP from drinking water to be a functional character for a while, because his physical attack is useless for a long time and being a source of Freeze, heals, and sometimes group physical shielding that can easily recover his PP is basically all he offers until way higher on the offense growth curve||

well, and Teleport Beta, I guess

I find a lot about this game's general... balancing? to be very questionable now that I'm older and wiser, but there actually is a logic to how they built Poo's developmental curve when I zoom in on it

||he starts with no Offense or Defense, because he can't use normal equipment and he shows up very behind the level curve, which hits him especially hard due to his inability to use normal equipment. All he's got going for him is recovering PP from water. But later on, he has actual useful equipment and his Offense and Defense have better level-based growth, so his ability to just hit things gets a lot less useless even when his ability to recover PP from water is no longer that important because you can just buy good PP restoration items. Well, I guess there's the thing where he recovers full HP and PP from brain food lunches, not just 300 HP and 50 PP. That's... not trivial, once he's got a few times that much max PP||

||definitely helps if you're gonna spam Starstorm I imagine, and "spamming PSI despite having shit max PP" is kind of his brand||

[sullen storm]

oh no, I filled escargo express ://///

[fathom prairie]

we got another pack rat! lol

[golden niche]

https://tenor.com/view/sesame-street-ernie-cookies-national-cookie-day-cookie-day-gif-18070938

I did the same thing... inventory in this game is just terrible.

[fair nexus]

Healing items are basically useless because of PSI Lifeup, ditch them

[golden niche]

Throw out everything the game will let you except psi healing items and bottle rockets.

[lucid sundial]

https://tenor.com/view/sesame-street-cookie-monster-eats-your-art-eating-muppet-crazy-eyes-gif-1461380403278441959

Me getting that 6 HP bump eating every cookie I get immediately.

[austere ledge]

I'm in the water level now

I liked water levels when I was a kid

So I was a big fan of Deep Darkness

[austere ledge]

in adulthood, Deep Darkness became kind of a slog tbh

[raw canopy]

I hadn't realized that you could fill up escargot express. After I did that I spent like 30 minutes cleaning up my whole inventory going between mom's house and onett

[olive echo]

I never filled up escargot express.

[raw canopy]

I was just sending my hp items there

Was a lot of fun having to clear all the cookies out....

[tall hill]

Really man, cookies?

cookies

[raw canopy]

Idk man I hardly ever used healing items so I figured just send em

[fathom prairie]

https://tenor.com/view/real-housewives-housewives-bravo-bravo-tv-real-housewives-out-of-context-gif-21373547

[raw canopy]

You should see my houses in Skyrim and Fallout....

[tall hill]

The things heal like 4-6 hp, they're worthless literally as soon as the opening act is over lol.

[raw canopy]

I was playing blind. I was not aware the game would not only give me garbo items but also give me no way to store them

[burnt egret]

I am spending waaaaaaaaaaay too much time grinding for this ||Sword of Kings||, clearly I lost the RNG war today...

Good news is that I'm super close to the end at this point, yea?

[tall hill]

I only got the ||Bracer of Kings||, because it's basically free, and had no desire to get any of the others lol.

[golden niche]

You’re not alone. And people seem to think I was stupid because of it. 😆 #1400633990179848329 message

I may have a problem though. I have chests full of rotten flesh in Minecraft.

[open mulch]

https://tenor.com/view/stop-it-get-some-help-gif-15058124

[fathom prairie]

Man lava trash is an early build for me lol

[austere ledge]

I didn't even grind for it. I was just doing my regular exploring

I am also definitely overleveled. I brought the Casey bat for instakilling, but it was completely unnecessary to equip it. I already instakill Starman Supers

Finally, Poo has a good offense score

Also I learned a thing: enemies cannot defend against Jeff's guns. They ignore guard and even shields I think

[golden niche]

Hey, assault suits valken was 🔥and you know it!

No IGN conker lovers here.

[open mulch]

They honestly thought it was an all time classic

Stuns me every time I see it

[austere ledge]

They also thought God Hand was shit

they have no taste

[golden niche]

They seemed trustworthy in the late 90’s…

[fathom prairie]

Money hats

[golden niche]

Conker was the beginning of their downward spiral into obscurity

[fringe badger]

do people bother holding on to psi caramels or do they just bank on butterflies being around

hm they're pretty much clowned on by brain food lunches

[woven forge]

i like finding spots where i can “respawn” butterflies over and over by just leaving the screen and coming back, lol, and then I get my psi back up

[fringe badger]

just spent two hours doing inventory management and finally using up capsules

[fringe badger]

whacked like 30 starmen super, got the sword, finished up stonehenge and left

right at the exit, a random cave boy fancied its chances

lmao

[lucid sundial]

I’ve generally saved the caramels for if I need PP restored during battle.

Same for brain food lunch

[sullen storm]

time to try my rng luck with that sword

[sullen storm]

still on it 😴 after all of this involuntary grinding, rest of the dungeon must be a breeze

[golden niche]

Dungeons.

[austere ledge]

Beat the dog duo. Need to get Alice ready for ||Magicant||

maybe rng manip a Star Pendant

[sullen storm]

Ness got to Lv70, still no sword 😅

this is like the bus stop dilemma, now you cannot just leave

[sullen storm]

horrible, I will have to try again tomorrow

[fair nexus]

Escape the pain, abandon the grind

Best decision I ever made (in this game)

[sullen storm]

and it's probably high up in a global rank 🤣

[austere ledge]

@sullen storm Are you actually fighting the Starman Supers, or are you instakilling them via ambush?

[sullen storm]

both

if I catch them alone I can instakill them

I even got a call from Dad telling me off I have been "working too long" and now I went back to base and received 180K$ 🤣

tomorrow I will get it

(or not)

I got to [🧢Ness|ʟᴠ.76] [🎀Paula|ʟᴠ.72] [👓Jeff|ʟᴠ.70] [🥋Poo|ʟᴠ.67]

[austere ledge]

Yeah you're even higher-level than I am 😂

I'm 72 68 66 63

[lofty palm]

Luckily I got it pretty quick

But after getting it I really felt like it was a waste of time, despite being sub-1 hour to get

[austere ledge]

OK, the Star Pendant rng manip is pretty sensitive to following the movement exactly 😭

...very sensitive goddamn

this is going to be harder than I expected

oh wait I missed a step, that explains some shit

Close enough. Star Pendant is free

[austere ledge]

don't sleep on rock candy

[austere ledge]

Also, in retrospect, the RNG manip for the Star Pendant is actually very easy? Slightly tricky at first, but after doing it once, I fucked off to do some other stuff, then came back and did it from memory easily

So once you've got one, getting the second and third will be cake

Also: don't hoard healing items, even psi caramels and cups of lifenoodles. If one or two party members get clapped in a dungeon or you're running low on PP, don't walk back to a healing point. Save time, use the cup of lifenoodles or whatever, and keep going. Otherwise, even psi caramels and cups of lifenoodles will pile up in your inventory

Psi caramels are basically replaceable a bit after midgame and cups of lifenoodles are replaceable as early as Saturn Valley, and while they look expensive, you will be drowning in money to the point that two of the later areas of the game use bullshit fees on their ATMs to try to curb your bottomless Swiss bank account

[austere ledge]

oh hey guess what else is free

(this may not work if your save file is in the second or third slot)

[austere ledge]

This... this is on Paula

This cannot possibly be intended behavior

Her HP just exploded by over 50% in one level

[indigo heath]

Where’d you find the magic fry pan manip? I didn’t see one but admittedly didn’t look too much after seeing there wasn’t a retro achievement for it in the normal set

[austere ledge]

It didn't get moved to the guy's new channel. It's still on his old channel. Let me find it

@indigo heath https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3XVq69gU3Rc

[indigo heath]

Neat, TY!

[austere ledge]

It's a little weird, though. Even with a crit, Paula doesn't hit especially hard with the Magic Fry Pan. Now that I'm older and know what I'm looking at, it's pretty clear that the real purpose of it is to make the caster more survivable by giving her a higher chance of surviving an attack that would otherwise wipe out her tiny HP meter

[indigo heath]

It has a higher miss rate too right

[austere ledge]

If you want her hitting things with her regular attack she might be better off with the Holy Fry Pan still. She can beat Poo's offense at least

Yes

[austere ledge]

Looking up the Goddess Ribbon, I have mixed feelings on it

compared to the Saturn Ribbon, it grants an extra 20 Defense, but loses the 40 Luck bonus

[austere ledge]

All right. Cleared a bunch of space in storage, except I have some brain food lunches and truffles in there still (this is fine)

Emptied out Alice's inventory, except for... Ultimate Bat, Diamond Band, Star Pendant, Souvenir Coin

and Alice is level 74 with nearly 700 HP and 255 PP. I'm probably ready.

I remember the next part being such an awful slog in childhood and also dying a lot, so I'm slightly paranoid about it, though I know it's going to be very "What was that all about?" 30 years later

oh right I knew I was forgetting something. gotta buy the house in Onett

Alice can be a property owner

"Ocean view"

baby photos are incredibly awkward

[austere ledge]

yeah I am hella overprepared. Just made it to ||Alice's Nightmare|| and I used a grand total of... one magic pudding and one magic tart along the way (I'm going into the fight missing like 13 PP)

||and my inner demons just rolled over and showed their belly. didn't use even 50 PP that fight||

aaand somehow I just gained 430 PP

That's gained, not total

[indigo heath]

i think i was in the early 70s or maybe late 60s when I got to where you are too. I only did an hour or so of grinding to get the broken antenna to get me there, didnt have much issue as a result. I always was scared of battles as a kid and avoided them which perpetuated me feeling underprepared and wanting to skip more battles 😅

[austere ledge]

and now the Goddess Ribbon manip isn't working

||I keep getting Alice's mom walking to the left after loading, despite having my text speed set to fast, clicking the D-pad once before hitting Continue, etc||

[subtle swallow]

I just beat the game! Really good in my opinion, I enjoyed it a lot, so much I think I got lost. Not grinding for anything, and not trying to complete the achievements, I just looked at RA and it says 43 hours 😅

[indigo heath]

||do you start pressing the d pad before your home loads in? I had a similar problem before making sure I was doing that||

[sullen storm]

the grind continues today

sigh

why was I doing this? 🤣

[fair nexus]

Escape! Freedom!

Poo is a PSI based character anyways

[sullen storm]

if I get to Lv80 with Ness I quit

am at 78

[fair nexus]

I got to a bit lower before quitting

[sullen storm]

got it!!

my threat worked 🤣

the cheevo triggers before winning the fight though

[austere ledge]

Oh, no, I don't. Do I need to hold down-right while loading in?

[golden niche]

It does this for all the rare drops, which is nice. You can just run if the cheevo doesn’t pop.

[austere ledge]

So, as the month draws to a close

what's everyone's favorite track from this game?

I'm kind of partial to Kraken of the Sea myself

[golden niche]

Giygas fight music

[fair nexus]

Stonehenge base music grew on me

[austere ledge]

it is very good

[lucid sundial]

https://youtu.be/F2kW0LKnTMc?si=QtF9DrdDisC7X7-K

[lofty palm]

Based

[fringe badger]

so i got the sword of kings relatively painlessly. same for the parabolic antenna

i have found my hair-rending pain

spent an entire hour in battle with that guy, nothing, now wandering around winters with poo de-armored trying to get the effect beforehand

...and it diamonds ness

[fringe badger]

maddening

[cedar nimbus]

Yeah that fight suckksssss

[austere ledge]

all right, I should probably go ahead and knock this off. I could probably roll credits in an hour if I felt like it

I do not need the Goddess Ribbon, I do not need the Gaia Beam, I do not need the Gutsy Bat

[austere ledge]

All right. Got an inventory full of more truffles, brain food lunches, magic pudding, multi bottle rockets, lifenoodles, and nerd gadgets than I'm going to realistically use. Let's go

[fringe badger]

[austere ledge]

I didn't understand this when I was younger. I do now.

[indigo heath]

That’s what worked for me, yeah. Looks like you’re past that (tho maybe there’s a manip for the last area of the game too?)

[austere ledge]

I copied my save file, so in theory I could go back and get it. But I don't really need to. I beat the game, and I'm playing a version that doesn't have achievements

[golden niche]

gutys bat is free. Easiest manip, I think.

[austere ledge]

If I ever come back for the achievements, I'll probably do that

But honestly, I likely won't. This is not unlikely to be the last time I play the game.

This should have been a nostalgia trip, but it was just something I remembered well. It wasn't as emotional of an experience as I thought it might be. It's just, "Yeah, I know this part."

Which is weird. I loved this game as a kid. It's still all right, though the flaws show a lot more today.

But I suppose we cannot simply return to the past. Even when I return to something familiar, I'm different now.

[amber vector]

Damn, I didn't expect existential dread today

[olive echo]

Will this get 60 completed games

[amber vector]

What are we at now?

Oooh, 59?

We're close

[austere ledge]

?

[cedar nimbus]

Earthbound is full of existential moments

[sullen storm]

but this game get supper trippy 😵‍💫 😵‍💫 😵‍💫

[olive echo]

we might get 65 at this pace

[fringe badger]

RNG manip guides are fun. they explain like 50% of what you actually need to know

ok yeah once i finish this i am never touching this game again

[fathom prairie]

it's a lot more fun of a game if you just don't bother with the low drop stuff, imo

[fringe badger]

feel like i've seen everything there is to see. and the inventory doesn't do it any favors either

it's been funny and caught me off guard a couple times, but it's one of those where i have zero personal nostalgia for it so it ends up being a resounding "okay i guess"

[fringe badger]

but yeah the 1/128 is what's really rough. good other than that

the retroachievements paradox. it makes these old games more fun to play, while also making them incredibly frustrating at the same time

[golden niche]

I blame the set developer for this one. There is already a sub set for rare drops. Including these in the main game was a bad decision.

[fringe badger]

it does give me a chuckle looking through some of the bonus sets

i mastered ratchet and clank 3, looked at the bonuses
-complete the whole game without dying. oof, but i could see that
-complete the game 99 times. dean norris stare.jpg

[fringe badger]

getting to this now that i've done the thing. of the remixes from 1, probably the home theme, don't think i've heard a version of pollyanna that did it wrong yet. of the originals, fourside theme hits so hard when you first reach it they keep remixing its motif later in the same game

honorable mention to anything the runaway five touches, dishonorable mention to monkey cave, and mention to dungeon guy

also how's this for timing lmao. i know marco meatball is into handhelds a bit, dunno if this guy might be as well

[fringe badger]

second thought on this, for someone playing it casually, not opening all the presents because of cheevos and compounding the inventory problem as a result, and not caring about the rare drops either, it's pretty neat. hint guy is a good add and probably did a lot of legwork back in the day

[blazing shoal]

Heh I posted that earlier as well.

[golden niche]

I will say the desert song with the radio static was pretty cool, and kind of unbelievable to me on snes. That one did impress me. Didn’t really care for the song, but that effect was pretty cool.

[gleaming patrol]

Don't think I'm going to finish this in time.

Just got to Dalaam after kicking that rat in the sewers.

[golden niche]

The rest goes pretty quick I think. Hard to remember, but I think you could still finish.

If you don’t farm for the rare equipment stuff.

[gleaming patrol]

Think I'm going to try, need to see how much time I have for playing tomorrow.

[olive echo]

https://tenor.com/view/go-for-it-you-can-do-it-encourage-do-it-gif-14006408

[shrewd spade]

Finally played this iconic game. I get why it became a cult classic, but think that a single playthrough was enough for me. Solid 7/10. Maybe 9/10 when factoring the time it was released.

[silver parrot]

I feel ya. Im cooked. MiL has decided on an inpromptu visit today. Probably still going to playthrough. Been super enjoyable

[fathom prairie]

You’ve got roughly 25.5 hours to fit it in, put your handheld in the bathroom

[raw canopy]

"Sorry MiL, I've got the shits!"
from the bathroom- beep boop beep boop

[silver parrot]

https://tenor.com/view/jack-nicholson-jack-nicholson-yes-yes-nod-head-nod-gif-17444176260167585294

[fringe badger]

huh. listening through the soundtrack now. i never actually stayed in a hospital long enough to hear it does the same opening hits from fourside. wonder if that's just a leitmotif through the entire game

[indigo heath]

It is. The hotel theme is kind of similar too but not quite the same. The music right before credits is also similar

[olive echo]

Can we get to 70 completed?

[fathom prairie]

if the Zard locks in

[fathom prairie]

Oh we’re there once Rapid catches up I think

[cedar nimbus]

I didn't expect this to get to 50 let alone close to 70

[fringe badger]

i wasn't around in january or whenever it was. was input delay a noticeable Thing for anybody playing mother 3? sounds like there's a rhythm aspect

[lucid sundial]

I played it a while back and didn’t have too many issues chaining hits together playing on a RG351p

[fringe badger]

thinking of kicking retroachievements for the first playthrough and just raw dogging it like it's 2006

this will probably be mostly on a brick so there isn't oodles of overhead, but probably enough i imagine

where is the number of completions counted? or is it just ctrl-f in the channel

[olive echo]

I forgot the rhythm thing. While I was playing it.

[fathom prairie]

Either searching the channel or using https://randomizer.retrohandhelds.gg/stats

[fringe badger]

neat. and lol what counted as a completion for rrt4

[golden niche]

It’s typically rolling credits unless thats weird. So just finished a Grand Prix was enough for r4.

[fringe badger]

fair enough. just enough to only leave a good impression

[golden niche]

I think many people at least played through two different car types, and others did multiple teams for the full story. I unlocked all 321 cars for the first time.