Dragon Quest VI SFC, Part X - Finale

 

Day 12 of The Twelve Days of DQsmas arrives. Whew, that was a haul.

With the big optional dungeon / superboss still remaining, I've got lots and lots (and lots) of grinding to do.

Dragon Quest VI SFC, Part IX - Demigods and Hungry Ghosts

 

Day 11 of The Twelve Days of DQsmas brings us the grand finale of DQ6.

At the top of Deathtamoor's Castle, the final battle for the fate of the world begins. Which world? I don't know. Probably the Dark World, but also probably one of the other two. Maybe both of 'em. I stopped keeping up a while ago,

Dragon Quest VI SFC, Part VIII - The Oppressive Force of Gravity

 

Day 10 of the Twelve Days of DQsmas is upon us. With Sorrow Town cured, the next one is Greed Town. Wait, so each Dark World town is essentially a personality issue that needs to be fixed? Is this suddenly an Ultima game? Will the next town be Wrath, and I need to cure it by visiting Empath Abbey?

Dragon Quest VI SFC, Part VII - Fine Dining and Culinary Excellence

This was the missing chapter when I did the remake. Here I raise Zenithia Castle and battle Duran Duran, while that Hawk guy continues to hang around.

Dragon Quest VI SFC, Part VI - Land of the Hawk

 

Now we enter uncharted territory with the remainder of this infernal game, after abandoning it for a while.

Previously on DQVI: I defeated Gracos, Demonlord of the Sea, found the legendary armor, and found the legendary shield. Also the hero won a beauty pageant by having the fiercest runway walk. Now, I have to repair a rusted sword and find the legendary helm before I head into the final battle.

Dragon Quest VI SFC, Part V - The Ballad of Clean Ken

 

My God! ...wait, who?

Dragon Quest VI SFC, Part IV - A Very Yuji Horii Christmas

DQ6 continues with more class-leveling! I'm all about the class-leveling in this game. The story really isn't interesting and the game world is a bit bloated, so the strong point of this game is the tree of classes and wealth of abilities to collect.

Need to issue a BIG correction: I said in the past that class mastery bonuses (+10 to a stat, etc) carried over between classes. Since then I've been informed that they don't. So that's unfortunate. Still worth maxing multiple classes to stack up the abilities, though.

Dragon Quest VI SFC, Part III - Glockenspiel

Not quite as breathtaking as the remake, but not too shabby either...

Dragon Quest VI SFC, Part II - Mirror Mirror

 

Today on DQVI: The intro scene finally comes to life as our heroes take on Fort Dragonia Mudo's Palace.

Dragon Quest VI (Super Famicom, 1995)

 

DQsmas continues with me bringing back DQ6 from the dead. I never finished covering the original version so it's my one remaining loose end in the first six games of this series. Covering it the same time as the remake was an experiment and it didn't work out great for the original. Regardless, I'm re-editing the first 60-70% or so that I did, then covering the last 30-40%. Let's go.

I've never been that crazy about this game and definitely put it in the bottom half of the series quality-wise. I've only played the SFC version once before, in 2001, so it'll be interesting to revisit it after all this time. This version never got an official US translation (all of the US releases were based on the remake) so I'm playing it on the same fan-translation from 2001.

Dragon Quest 3 HD-2D Remake, Finale - End of the Beginning

"Considering as we have the ancient disease of pride which has caused innumerable homicides, the people of Alefgard agreed that no other house should be built higher than the towers of Zoma's Citadel." - Thomas Aquinas, probably

Dragon Quest 3 HD-2D Remake, Part 6 - Merry DQsmas

 

Previously on DQ3: Our heroes defeated Baramos, only to have Zoma appear with an army of Mystery Drones and fly them menacingly over Aliahan, prompting our heroes to climb down to Hell.

The Crow (2024)

 

A rare movie review, because for some reason I actually had a lot to say about this movie. The original is one of the most atmospheric movies of the 90's, with a powerful performance by Brandon Lee (his last, mind you, which makes the movie even more impactful). It wasn't something that needed to be remade to begin with, and they bungled this one on every level to boot.

My Top 11 Worst Square Game Areas

This started out as a "worst RPG areas" list, but I was drawing a blank on non-Square entities so it became a Square list. Not to dump on Square here, as they're my favorite game developer of all time (with Konami and From Software essentially tied with them, but yeah). These are worst areas, so not limited to dungeons. Can also be overworld zones, provinces, etc. Because I'm limited to Squaresoft, the whole list won't be dominated by Phantasy Star 2 dungeons. Also, this list won out over the competition, "Top 10 Thiccest Dragon Quest Maous" so there we go.

Dragon Quest 3 HD-2D Remake, Part 5 - Descent to Avernus

 

Today on Dragon Quest: I sail the Santa Maria de la Inmaculate Concepcion to new lands and take on Baramos in what is definitely the final battle of DQ3.

Super Earth Defense Force (Super NES, 1991)

 

1991 gave us two massive cultural touchstones that completely shook the world: Highlander II, and this space shooter from Jaleco that I never heard about until recently. Thought it was related to the Earth Defense Force series from 2005+, but nope, totally unrelated it seems. Trying it out anyway, as Jaleco usually makes good games. Also, "Jaleco" is like the most rad-to-the-max 80's/90's video game company title.

This is without a doubt the most attention this game has gotten in a long, long time.

My Top 10 Tedious Boss Fights

 

In honor of Romancing SaGa 2's terrible final boss, today I'm looking at a bunch of tedious boss fights. These are fights that gave me varying degrees of grief, not necessarily because of the difficulty, but because of their tedious elements. You know the type of fight, the kind you want to skip every time you replay a game.

Romancing SaGa 2, Finale - Live on in Song

 

This is it, the final episode of this very strange, but very good game. Unfortunately, the final boss is horrible.

Romancing SaGa 2, Part 8 - Rocbouquet and the Final Emperor

Previously on RS2: I finally unlocked the Final Emperor, AKA the guy I named at the beginning.

Now, some queen is trapped and our heroes have to save her. Unbeknownst to them but knownst to us, the "queen" is actually Rocbouquet of the Seven Heroes.

In other news "Rocbouquet" is probably the coolest goddamn name I've ever heard

Eighteen Games That Were Huge Letdowns (Updated for 2024)

Today I'm going to look at nine eighteen games that I had high initial expectations for, expectations that were shattered once I got ahold of them. This is a bit different from my Games I Tapped Out On Midway Through and Games I Didn't Enjoy But Still Finished lists in that, whether I finished these games or not, they didn't live up to the hype in any way.

Note: There are a few "no-brainer" entries that won't be on the list (for instance, No Man's Sky) because I haven't played them. Also, there are some games that very much deserve to be on this list (Fable) but won't because I played them well after release (aka after I knew better than to expect anything). In short, this list is limited to things that I played while the hype was still strong, only to find them to be a huge letdown. Also, nothing on this list is necessarily a bad game. Some of them might fall into that category, while others might just be things that didn't jive with me personally.

Note 2: Previously posted in January 2018 with nine entries. Updated with nine new ones.