The only one I have that hasn't been mentioned yet is Suikoden II. Gorgeous sprite art, and it's also just a solid game. Ironically, it's getting a remaster very soon which is sure to clean up its biggest weakness (the English localization), though we don't know how the rest of it will shake out.
I consider the fifth gen to be a lost generation for sprite-based games, this is one of those on the console that make the case for an interesting "what could have been" scenario (Symphony of the Night, Final Fantasy Tactics, and Valkyrie Profile also being sprite-based standouts).
Thanks. For those that don't read Japanese (and want to drop it in their favorite MTL or what have you), here's the relevant interview answer from creative director Jonathan Dumont:
Can we get a link? If you mean https://www.gamedeveloper.com/, they've only had one article specifically on Shadows this year and it's about a service platform for the series, not the story.
It's definitely one of those that can take a little while to click with the player. I had the advantage of being deeply interested in the setting. It made me miss living in Oregon so, so much. Aside from that, I really came to like the characters by the end of the original game and Before the Storm.
I've continued to enjoy the series--yes, even the newest one--aside from LiS 2, which felt like misery porn after a while. That said, all of the games excel at getting the quiet moments right, and it's worth taking a moment to pause when the game offers the chance.
"The original NES hardware literally only had around 55 colors that were pre-programmed in and no other color was allowed," Wozniak explained. "We broke this rule by adding 5 colors to help with a few things the NES palette lacked—namely, darker and desaturated colors. But we justified that decision by treating it as compensation for the fact that everyone is playing these games on much brighter, higher fidelity screens than the CRTs of the past."
This is a great example of how some retro-style projects get it and some don't. The successful projects are the one that have the feel of the games you used to play in the context of today's gaming, not the ones that do a historically accurate, 1:1 conversion. There's an art to it.
Great to hear! I struggled a bit with the first two Sky games but the Crossbell games completely blew me away. Azure's one of my all-time favorites.
By the way, if you haven't seen it, there is a major scene for Randy (along with Wazy and Rixia) if you select him for the final bonding event in Azure. Easy to miss stuff, should be findable on YouTube, etc.
If it makes any difference, I don't have major compulsions/FOMO to do open world content. I even regret doing as much of the Enemy Skill farming as I did. So it felt well and truly optional to me. I set most of it aside.
I had major problems with Remake myself, mostly stemming from punishing encounter design and them padding out a 6+ hour section into a full game. The catwalk lights, the lab, and other stuff obliterated the pacing, and it was painfully obvious how much better the dungeon design based on the original content was when compared to the new stuff.
The good news is, in Rebirth, that 1:1 remake feeling is front and center if you want it, instead supplemented this time by optional content. I felt like I had much more room to put together materia builds, and it has one of the best video game soundtracks I've ever heard. I'd be over the moon if they did a version of Final Fantasy VI that felt like most of Rebirth did.
Except for the limit breaks. Why they didn't give those full target tracking and allowed them to whiff is an outright bizarre design decision (along with the constant splitting of the party).
Had the same thought. Plus, according to some of these reviews, there's no information age units, so that gives them a possible fourth era to work with in upcoming DLC.
Civ7 does indeed use Denuvo. Concerning for a game like this with far more CPU usage than your typical game.
For me, Civ6 at launch felt like a couple steps forward and a couple steps back. I really appreciated the increased transparency with diplomacy, but the AI was aggressively bad in mid and late-game, something they never ended up getting right.
Still thoroughly sucked into Pathfinder: Kingmaker. At least I've stopped poking around in side areas now, just focusing on advancing the main story. Also doing companion quests. This might be the longest not-live-service
game I've ever played? I think I still have at least two more full chapters to go.
We still have a ways to go before reaching the inflation-adjusted, $150-per-game peak of mass market games in the 1990's. A key difference is games back then had way higher marginal cost (it's near zero now).
The interesting thing is that the market is becoming a lot more like it was back then, full of people that only buy one or two games a year and only play those. Of course now, the model is retaining players with DLC and MTX, whereas in 1995 it was more because people could only afford one or two games a year.
Yeah, I don't think I realized how much nostalgia I had attached to the movie's music.
The trailer had all the elements that felt good about movie games from back then, but there was a lot of actual trash put out back in the day.
Hopefully the gameplay is good on this.