MicShazam

I shamefully admit to having given no small portion of my life to unlocking slutty DOA stuff.

The Batlord

But srsly Arkham patient interview tapes are amazing. Even the Riddler gives good comic book porn, because of course he does even if no one who isn't a Batman: The Animated Series junkie recognizes the voice actor's brilliance or the super fun possibilities of his psychotic OCD.

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SmokeAndMirrors

IKR?
We have Google Image Search for that. I think it's what developers must do as a prize or token when they're out of other ideas for unlockables. Like filler material, basically. I DID dig the concept art for Fallout 3 though. Some concept art is cool, but yeah, we have Google for that.

Oh, and while we're on the topic of unlockables: **** Paywalls.

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"Like whispers in the dark..."

The Batlord

I've been playing Phantasy Star II for over an hour now and this game feels hostile. Phantasy Star II is an RPG for the SEGA Genesis that I guess was an attempt to get a chunk of that sweet, sweet Final Fantasy money, except they didn't want to make an obvious ripoff so they decided to make a game that is obtuse and confusing. I started out in this city and first things first gotta start pressing buttons to see what they do. When I open the menu it's like the devs had to pay by the letter:

ITEM
STATE
TECH
STRNG
EQP

Now I can guess that TECH is short for "TECHNIQUES", and it is, but when I press it and it gives me a list of characters to choose from and then techniques to use the only technique I have is named "RES". What the **** is that? There's no explanation for what it does so I have to use it. It heals a party member. Great. I just had to waste MP to find that out but whatevs.

Then I go exploring the city, which is a giant square with shops and whatnot scattered around in such a way that I just know I'm going to get lost numerous times trying to find any particular building, such as going to the clinic after fighting enemies outside the city. This turns out to be case.

Among other buildings we have a cloning store. Like, I can clone my characters apparently. It won't let me clone anybody right now so I assume this to be a place to revive characters whose hit points go down to zero. This also turns out to be the case. WTF? Any other RPG will simply give me items to revive a character as if they've just been knocked unconscious. Phantasy Star II thinks this is pussy ****. It wants the surviving characters to drag the corpse of their friend back to town and replace them with an exact duplicate who has all of their memories. That's some ****ed up ****.

And then we have the stores. Now, in most games if I'm at the weapon shop it will tell me the stats of any given weapon and who can use it. Phantasy Star II pees on such a notion. The only way to know if a weapon is better is if it's more expensive, and the only way to know if a character can use it is if I BUY IT AND THEN HOPE THAT SOMEBODY CAN EQUIP IT!!! And did I mention that enemy encounters give out an amount of money that probably allows my characters to buy a pack of gum to split between them?

Time to leave the city and get down to grinding. The fights in this game are... different. I don't choose how I fight like in games, I press "FIGHT" after a random encounter has started and my characters fight automatically as I sit back and watch my fingernail clippings form a modest pile on the floor. I guess to make this more engaging the fights have inscrutable rules that result in enemies always hitting first, often times hitting twice or even thrice before my characters get to hit once, so I'm constantly yelling at the game for what I perceive to be an unfair amount of time since my character's last attack.

It doesn't make me feel any better that the pittance I get from these battles is enough to heal my characters back in town and then buy another pack of gum.

Oh and back to the store thing. It turns out that one of my characters DOESN'T HAVE A WEAPON OR ANY OTHER MEANS TO ATTACK WITH!!! So I go to the weapon shop to buy her one and wouldn't you know it she can't equip it. And I just spent most of my money on it and can't buy anything else. And my other character can't equip it either even though "DAGGER" seems like a very obvious upgrade to "KNIFE". Even basic logic can't save me from wasting money on things I can't use. After twenty minutes of more grinding I finally have enough to buy "STEEL BAR", so I do, and HOLY **** SHE CAN EQUIP IT!!! I now feel as if I have won my first great victory in this game and set off to lay waste to the giant bees and mosquitoes infesting the countryside. Turns out she still can't attack and I have no ****ing clue why and my heart shrunk three sizes.

WHAT THE **** DO YOU WANT FROM ME, PHANTASY STAR II?!?!?!

So in conclusion 10/10 this game is awesome or my hatred for it will force me to beat it. Not sure which.

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MicShazam

I've played some of those old Phantasy Star games a bit, so I feel your pain.

If I remember correctly (which I might not), Phantasy Star 1 and/or two also had a quirk in the battle system where you will simply waste a move if the targeted enemy is dead before your character decides to cast his/her spell - instead of auto targeting another enemy like other JRPG's do. It might have been another game, but I highly suspect it was this series that subscribed to that bull****.

And oh yeah, long live emulators with save states. I'd hate to use the shops in these games without being able to undo with a quick load.

The Batlord

Like, I still can't get my other character to attack and I don't know if there's a story thing that will unlock her ability to attack or I need to equip another weapon but then I'd have to spend precious money on something that might not even work. All she's doing right now is taking some of the heat off of my only character who can attack and that's useful I guess. I could look it up online but I refuse to use anything to get an advantage. I will treat this game like a puppy and kick it until it does what I want and I won't give it the satisfaction of knowing that it drove me to underhanded tactics.

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Oriphiel

Try playing the ****ty PS2 port of No One Lives Forever, even on easy and with the auto-targeting turned on.

I know for a fact that I'm one of the only people to have ever actually played through it all the way to the end, because the devs blatantly lied about one of the main features of the port, and in all these years nobody has ever called them out on it, not even the people who reviewed it.

But then again, at least it didn't make me physically ill like ****ing Red Ninja.

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The Batlord

I GOT IT! She didn't have a weapon equipped so she was set to defend in battle and for whatever ****ing reason giving her a weapon doesn't change that so I just had to manually set her to attack and now everything's far better even if I'm stuck grinding for money for equipment in this one area because the next area has enemies that chew through my HP like crack-addled termites.

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DwnWthVwls

No, it is amazing. I watched my dad play it growing up and tried to play also, but i was too young to understand any of it.

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I don't got a god complex, you got a simple god...

The Batlord

Phantasy Star II: The Legendary Journey Continues...

So I've got my characters more or less figured out, have them equipped with bombass ****, and even picked up a third party member, so I'm feeling pretty good. Then I try the first dungeon, which is a nameless structure on the standard RPG overworld and after a couple abortive attempts at lower levels with worse equipment I'm finally making headway, but Jesus Christ these dungeons despise human life. They are sprawling, featureless mazes made of endlessly recycled sameness with nothing to help me get my bearings and even at this early stage in the game have numerous warp squares that send me to a random spot somewhere in the dungeon from which I have to pick up the pieces of my life and figure out how to live out the remainder in relative sanity. Dungeons even have this weird overlay from I guess the ceiling that's crisscrossing pipes with blinking lights that throws off the visual geometry of the rest of the map making it even more confusing.

But I'm making the best of it even if I have only a tentative grip on where the **** I am at any given time. Luckily I end up wandering over and over and over the same spots again and again and again until they almost become familiar so now it's just a question of whether my healing resources will hold out until I reach the end. Luckily they do and I find what I have been searching for for the last hour: "SMALL KEY". There's another structure to the south that I couldn't get into earlier so I figure this must be to that, and since there's no warp square to send me to the beginning of the map I decide forgo using my "ESCAPIPE" and walk out while looking for a couple locked chests I'd seen along the way. I find them, leave, and go to the next structure having seen almost nothing in the way of plot things.

At my destination I try to open the door with SMALL KEY but am met with a message I'd completely forgotten: "Maybe dynamite can open this door."

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck. Now I remember, some guy at a village said there might be DYNAMITE at the first dungeon. So... WHY THE **** DID YOU GIVE ME SMALL KEY AND NOT THE ****ING DYNAMITE?!?!?! I guess there must be more chests I missed, so with heavy heart I trudge all the ****ing way back to dungeon 1 and try to find my way through the parts I was less certain of and after like half an hour find the chest and get DYNAMITE. I am in no mood for this game's **** at this point so as I am triumphantly marching back AGAIN I see ANOTHER ****ING UNOPENED CHEST I had somehow completely missed right the blastark near the entrance.

"No, no, **** you, I am done, kiss my ass, bye!!!" I shout at my TV like a sane person. I do not care what DIOMITE, SIL RIBBON, or amount of MESETAS are in that chest, I am ****ing outtie.

BACK to dungeon 2 and I finally blow up the door and what should greet me but, no, oh no, no no no... another maze. No, not just another maze. The real maze. The maze that the first was kindly preparing me to face. This maze had the same ****ing design, the same ****ing color scheme, the same color-swapped monsters, but with such an added complexity of arbitrariness that made any idea of "finding your way" into an impossibility for all but the most freakishly directionful.

Remember how the Silph Co warp squares in Pokemon scare you when you're a kid cause you're young and puzzles are scary? Well there were stairs and sensible level design at Silph Co and the game told you which floor you were on. I didn't know what floor I was on here. I couldn't even be sure this Byzantine morass of pointless walls and endless warp squares wasn't all one floor. Have you ever been so lost that it starts to feel claustrophobic? When your sense of bearings has been completely severed from your head and the only world you can imagine is what you can see right in front of you? Even behind you has become a wisp of smoke. At this point I'm just walking forward. Is that a branching path? Should I check what's over there before doubling back to see what's down here? At first I do. Then after an hour I decide that **** it there are so many unexplored paths behind me that doubling back is a waste of time. Just turn that corner. Hit that warp square. Reach the end of that long deadend. And for the love of god don't run out of healing resources cause I don't know if I could deal with the despair of having to warp out of here with an item and then do this all over again.

By some miracle I reach the end, some plot stuff happens, and I journey to the next area of the overworld. Walk around a bit, find a city, buy some stuff, nothing plot-related is rearing it's head, so leave and then find another structure.

You can do this. You've got this. Did you see the stats on those new weapons? Your team is a battle-hardened meat grinder and nothing can stop them. Inhale. Exhale. Let's do it.

I enter the structure and there's a door: "Maybe dynamite can open this door."

Wut. But but but I only had the one DYNAMITE. What is-... NO. That guy at the village who told me about DYNAMITE said there were two at dungeon 1 didn't he?



So I calmly walk all the way the **** back to get another DYNAMITE, find it with actually not as much trouble as I was afraid of since that dungeon is my homie now, and blow up the door at dungeon 3. Luckily it's not the same as the last dungeons. Those were brown. This one is green. Nice. Was I more lost here than before? I don't think it's possible to be more lost at a certain point, only lost for longer, and recognizing the passage of time when lost in a maze is problematic. But I do remember thinking "If my healing resources run out before I reach the end I will jump off a cliff" more than before, but then I still hadn't fully recovered my mental faculties from that ordeal so I was probably like shooting fish in a barrel for a sadistic dev taking his virginity out on the world.

Actually finding the end was more a pleasant surprise than a triumph tbh. And then I saw the door. No. No. No no ****ing no: "Maybe dynamite can open this door."

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