The "What Are You Playing Now?" Thread

[Yttrium]

I have a ... unauthorized method to play a lot of retro stuff. And this is much more complicated than emulators + roms. Anyway, I've been showing the wife the joys of RPGs on the SNES, so I'm working through 7th Saga, and I'll go through FF2 (FFIV) after it finishes. I may also give a short pass to Super Mario RPG, since I've wanted to play it for years.

Any recommendations for Sega or SGenesis RPGs of value?

[Wool]

The 16bit era is what got me into (j)rpgs. Off the top of my head:

Genesis:
Phantasy Star series was the Sega equivalent to Final Fantasy, not as good but pretty solid. 2 was the first time I ever discovered the magic of grinding in a video game,

Spoiler for spoiler:

also the first time video game death was sad

as just getting to the second town was a huge ordeal for me as a kid. 4 was the first time I remember production values being good enough that I actually cared about the story. 3 was the worst of the bunch but had a novel branching dynamic where you made choices that changed what characters you play as in future chapters.

Land Stalker is a solid action rpg, if you can get used to the crazy awkward platforming.

Shining Force I and II are the first srpgs I ever played. Diverse fantasy units, pretty cool.

Genesis version of Shadowrun was pretty awesome.

Beyond Oasis is a kickass action rpg.

I'm sure there were others, but these are the best ones I can remember. I didn't have a snes as a kid, so the above are why I am addicted to the genre to this day.

If you get into the Sega CD stuff too, Lunar is good. I played a remastered port of it on the PSP last year and it still holds up pretty well.

[Yaxa]

I have a ... unauthorized method to play a lot of retro stuff.

Flash cartridges and original hardware?

I'll go through FF2 (FFIV) after it finishes.

FFV often gets overlooked as the SNES version was never released outside of Japan. But it's actually quite good. More traditional fantasy than FFVI. I'd suggest playing the fan translation of the Japanese SNES version, as it's much more accurate than the official PS1 and GBA releases.

[Mileron]

Unfortunately, I can only offer SNES suggestions, as that's really the only system I had throughout the 90s. Some are action RPGs.
FFIV (2), FFVI (3), Lufia + 2, FF Mystic Quest (Come on, the story is fun), Secret of Mana, Secret of Evermore, Super Mario RPG, Earthbound, Breath of Fire + 2, Robotrek, Chrono Trigger, Shadowrun, Soulblazer, Link to the Past, E.V.O.: Search for Eden, Illusion of Gaia...

I'm sure there's more that I'm not thinking of.

Oh wait, I did play one of the Shining Force games for a whole ten minutes... I guess that wouldn't count.

[Yttrium]

The Phantasy Star games come up often, I'll make sure to check them out.

Heck, I'll check all of the items you have all listed. Mileron, it turns out that I've played all of those on the SNES (and owned most of them), excepting Robotrek and EVO.

I have created a soft-mod Xbox, using the guidelines at a location I will reveal in PMs, to load a custom dashboard onto an Xbox. It's an old hack, well-established, and only set me back $75 (w/ extra controller to mod and a memory card and the one required game). I can put an emulator on it for anything 16-bit (SNES/Genesis/TG16/NeoGeo/Saturn) or older, and I have the giant dump of ROMs available in torrents. So, I'm using a comfortable controller, the Xbox S-controller, to play these games on the BIG screen with save states, fast-forward and rewind, and nice software filters to "help" the graphics along.

Everything you guys have listed are in the ROMs I have. Thanks

*if this violates our posting guidelines, I'll gladly revise the post to exclude references to illegal activity*

[Yaxa]

I'd be surprised if anyone still cared about hacking the original Xbox. But since most emulators are available for Windows, using an old PC and a wireless 360 controller is a far more flexible (if less sleek) solution, imo.

What I don't get is why so many people use smoothing filters (the same can be observed with ScummVM). If I'm playing old school games, I want the old school, pixelly look. I don't want some algorithm trying to fake details that were never there.

[Yttrium]

Well, two things, Yaxa:

The controller solution is what I started with : a relatively recent laptop running a clean Linux install with the emulators. I was using a wired 360 controller-for-PC, and the output was going to the big TV via HDMI. The delay introduced from controller->USB->OS->graphics response in emulator->OS->HDMI->TV was enough that I missed jumps in Super Mario Bros. consistently. I tried again with my primary machine, a near-new lappy with Win7, and had *worse* results. Switching to the hardware interpretation of the Xbox allows for a seamless experience, without the penalty of having to hook up and tear down my lappy attachment every time.

As for the smoothing filters, you make a point - for small screens. However, for a large screen and high resolution, most of these games weren't designed for the graphics to be scaled like this. It smooths out the edges for some of the fonts, for example, and that makes it easier to read. There are no fewer than a two dozen filters on the SNES emulator, for example, and it's easy to switch through them and find the best option (for me, SuperScale2x). Some of them even add scanlines, for that REAL RETRO LOOK. Apart from graphical smoothing, none of them "add" anything to the graphics. Occasionally, some of them even create visual glitches in some games, based on the integrity of the images that shipped. YMMV.

The Original Xbox stopped shipping sometime in 2006 or 2007, I think, and the Xbox Live support for it was disabled in 2009. Those numbers are off the top of my head, they may be off slightly. Regardless, there's not a big demand for the units, so hacking one up seemed like a great idea to me. I never owned one until now, and I just have the one game (there are three options for the softmod hack, and I went with Splinter Cell, the most reliable option).

[Silke]

I used to be really big into the whole emulator scene and still have a bunch of burned DVDs with tons of ROMs, images and emulators stashed away somewhere at home. However I haven't really done anything with it all recently. I remember getting MAME to work correctly was something of an artform especially considering how often it was updated.

[Yaxa]

The controller solution is what I started with : a relatively recent laptop running a clean Linux install with the emulators. I was using a wired 360 controller-for-PC, and the output was going to the big TV via HDMI. The delay introduced from controller->USB->OS->graphics response in emulator->OS->HDMI->TV was enough that I missed jumps in Super Mario Bros. consistently. I tried again with my primary machine, a near-new lappy with Win7, and had *worse* results. Switching to the hardware interpretation of the Xbox allows for a seamless experience, without the penalty of having to hook up and tear down my lappy attachment every time.

I haven't had any issues with input delays despite using a wireless controller. I'm using an old Athlon XP 2400+ hooked up via VGA, with the TV set not to do any post-processing on the image (the main source for delays).

As for the smoothing filters, you make a point - for small screens. However, for a large screen and high resolution, most of these games weren't designed for the graphics to be scaled like this. It smooths out the edges for some of the fonts, for example, and that makes it easier to read. There are no fewer than a two dozen filters on the SNES emulator, for example, and it's easy to switch through them and find the best option (for me, SuperScale2x). Some of them even add scanlines, for that REAL RETRO LOOK. Apart from graphical smoothing, none of them "add" anything to the graphics. Occasionally, some of them even create visual glitches in some games, based on the integrity of the images that shipped. YMMV.

Any kind of interpolation attempts to add details. Look at edges of the Yoshi sign in these examples. What used to be simply a lopsided board now suddenly has wobbly edges because the interpolator tries to be smart and guess what goes in between the black and white pixels. I'd rather have straight up pixel resizing. Even on a large screen.

[Goladus]

FFV often gets overlooked as the SNES version was never released outside of Japan. But it's actually quite good. More traditional fantasy than FFVI. I'd suggest playing the fan translation of the Japanese SNES version, as it's much more accurate than the official PS1 and GBA releases.

FFV has an awesome fan-made translated version out there. I think there may have been an official release of FFV at some point on playstation or something, I forget. But I agree, FFV was released in the golden age of Final Fantasy and is on par with IV, VI, and VII for overall quality.

One thing about FFV though is that it can have one of the more difficult endgames. There's no easy place to grind out massive amounts of xp as in FFIV, and you don't have the genji/offering/dice, Quick/X-magic type combinations that could end 99% of the battles in the game in a turn or two. It's still the same old ATB system, though, so it's not all that hard.

It's also a lot longer than FFIV, I would say it's closer to FFVI in terms of length and amount of content.

[Ronaan]

Ah, Phantasy Star 2 (I think), must have been over 20 years ago that we played it on a friend's Genesis.

We never finished it (sadface)... final boss always kicked our junk.

[Yaxa]

I'm nearing the end of Lego Harry Potter: Years 5-7 and the further I get, the more that typical Lego humor feels out of place. The second half of the Potter series just seems too serious for the levity of Lego games, which cheapens the overall experience.

As far as mechanics go the game doesn't divert much from the first installment. Giving Ron and Hermione their own character-specific items (the put-outer and the bag of deus-ex-machina items, respectively) brings them up to par with Harry and his cloak, but ultimately only serve to slow the pace by making you switch characters more frequently.

As in the previous game, you will have to re-play each area with a different choice of characters in order to uncover the many hidden items that are inaccessible with the default, story-mode characters.

[Wool]

It didn't take me long to get tired of Folklore.

The base of the game is still fine, but it gets kind of old/repetitive, and has a few annoyances that are driving me crazy. I've set aside my obsessive compulsive tendencies and have refused to do any more sidequests. They are abominable.

The sixaxis controls that Sony shoehorned into all their early games gets more and more obnoxious as the game continues as well. Why is it I can kill a boss, and the hard part being not tearing out all my hair while trying to catch it in my ghostbuster pokeball?

The plot also drives me crazy. I can't decide if it's interesting or not because for the entire game each npc I have talked to has known the answers my character wanted, but would tell her/him to go ask the next person instead. Who would repeat the pattern. Waste my freaking time man.

This game could have ended in the first chapter if these npcs weren't such assholes. There mystery solved, was that so hard? Now that I'm near the end, stuff is finally happening, but I still conveniently don't know what is going on. The game tells you different things, and still deliberately withholds information from you, argh.

Ah, Phantasy Star 2 (I think), must have been over 20 years ago that we played it on a friend's Genesis.

We never finished it (sadface)... final boss always kicked our junk.

I never finished it either actually. I beat all the others, but Phantasy Star 2 shares the distinction with Final Fantasy Legends (not sure which one, the gameboy ones) as being the only game I ever got lost in and didn't know where to go next. Pretty sure I was near the end though. You know who you know whats and you know what you know whats, and the world gets all you know whatty.

[Yaxa]

I recently started Assassin's Creed: Revolutions... what a disappointment. The main game seems to be a carbon copy of Brotherhood and the Desmond back story is heavy exposition packed into a puzzle mini-game. And while the series has never been that big on realism as far as the acrobatics go, the idea of a middle-aged, grey-bearded Ezio pulling off all those moves is somewhat laughable.

The setting is, of course, a matter of taste. But it's definitely not my cup of tea. I'll probably finish the game anyway, but so far my motivation is approaching zero.

[Silke]

I finally finished the main game of Final Fantasy XIII-2. Overall I think I liked the first one better. About halfway through the game I broke down and bought the strategy guide and I have no idea how anybody would be able to beat the game without it. It's not that the game is hard. It's just VERY complicated and VERY confusing. Even with the guide it took some time to figure out how things are all connected and how to unlock everything.

I went into the final fight with 142 fragments. I guess that you can, in theory, collect 151 of the 160 prior to starting the final fight but some are going to take some time to finish up. The final fight took a bit of time (the last phase took me 15 minutes on my successful attempt, previously I had a 5 minute attempt in which I didn't switch paradigms fast enough and died). My target time was 11 and a half minutes so I didn't come anywhere close to getting 5 stars. I have some ideas thought and I'm going to look up some strats.

My plan is to get 100% completion on the game (all trophies) but not sure if I'll take a break for a bit or just plow ahead and try and do it now.

Edit: I read that you can beat the final boss on Easy and still get the Trophy. I had no idea there even was an Easy setting prior to reading that. I promptly set the game to Easy and beat the crap out of him for my Trophy.

[Yaxa]

I went into the final fight with 142 fragments. I guess that you can, in theory, collect 151 of the 160 prior to starting the final fight but some are going to take some time to finish up. The final fight took a bit of time (the last phase took me 15 minutes on my successful attempt, previously I had a 5 minute attempt in which I didn't switch paradigms fast enough and died). My target time was 11 and a half minutes so I didn't come anywhere close to getting 5 stars. I have some ideas thought and I'm going to look up some strats.

Spoiler for boss fight:

That's kind of a catch-22. You actually have to be slow in order to get the bestiary data on some of the Bahamut versions. If you finish anywhere near target time, you won't ever see all of them. Unfortunately, defeating them and then failing the rest doesn't count for bestiary credit.

[Zumino Zufeilon]

Ah, Phantasy Star 2 (I think), must have been over 20 years ago that we played it on a friend's Genesis.

We never finished it (sadface)... final boss always kicked our junk.

Phantasy Star 2 was awesome, but it was a bit gimmicky IMO. You HAD to have a specific spell, that was the only way to actually win. If you didn't have that spell, you couldn't kill the end boss fast enough to actually win.

All of the Phantasy Star games (well, 1,2, and 3 anyways) were so open ended you could easily get lost. Which I find funny as there was only one way to win them.


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk, cause I was lonely being the only one without it!

[Silke]

I decided to just try and finish FFXIII-2 to 100% and I'm pretty close. I unlocked all of the Paradox endings (except the secret) and have 158 out of 160 Fragments. The two I'm missing are the Monster Bestiary fragment and the Slot Machine Fragment. Neither are difficult but both are VERY time consuming. After those two I just have a couple more time consuming things to do (finish 10,000 steps on a Chocobo, replay and get perfect on a couple boss fights cinematic actions and get the 99,999 damage trophy).

I've clocked in around 41 hours on this game (compared to nearly 90 on the original). I figure if I quit now I wouldn't even come back and do it.

Also, I've got to say that the ending sucked hardcore.

Spoiler for The End:

To Be Continued? Really?

[Wool]

I started playing FEAR 3, because I was in the mood for something short and simple. Unfortunately I ended up wasting half my allotted play time trying to fix the abominable fov.

I'm not unsympathetic to console ports. I don't really care if the menu screen says press start to play, but the fov is kind of important. It can't be something that hard to fix, so why do they almost never fix it? Apparently at release players couldn't either, you were only able to edit the config file some time later. But to the game's credit (I guess) even after I did so, I still felt nauseous. Oh well.

I've only played the first level, so it's really too soon to judge, but I get the feeling this will be my least favorite in the series. The shooting is competent, but some of the gameplay can be cumbersome. For some ungodly reason they decided to add a cover mechanic to a bullet time shooter. And it has it's own dedicated button press. While sure, context sensitive commands can be a problem, I find having too many buttons to press incredibly annoying, especially in a cover shooter where you die in a couple of seconds out of cover. You might as well add a cover mechanic to Doom.

Again, too soon to judge, but it doesn't seem very creepy. It's funny really. The series always depended on those moments where you had to be looking in just the right spot to see what they wanted you to see. I never really had a problem with that before, but I keep getting the off chord piano cue that something spooky just happened, but I was looking in the wrong direction.

The saving grace seems to be that you can play it co-op, although it's unlikely that I will, alas.

[Lunal]

Currently playing through Clive Barker's the Undying. The game had been sitting in a box at my house collecting dust, and I had never played it because it was so old. Dang! This game is genuinely good. Easily one of the best horror PC games I have seen, and with great gameplay. Also, it has what might be the creepiest weapon in any game - the Tibetan War Cannon.

My only complaint are the dated graphics, but hey the game is dated.