The 1000 Games I've Beaten (#501 - 508)

 

#501 Elder Scrolls: Arena (PC) – Spring 2014

The first and maybe most ambitious game in this series. It started life as an arena combat game (hence the name) and somewhere along the line the developers decided to create an entire world. As such, Elder Scrolls pioneered the "massive open world" RPG design that later became all the rage with things like Fallout 3 and Witcher 3. It's basically a single-player game disguised as a giant MMO, so it's no wonder they eventually made an actual MMO out of this world.

Editor's Note: I finally brought this list back from the dead. The first 500 did really poor views compared to most other posts so it petered out. Time to continue it. Since I'm over 1000 now, maybe I should rename it "The First 1000 Games I Beat". Low views or not, these are interesting retrospectives for me to write and bring me back a bit. The nostalgia was much higher with the early entries, though, which is another reason I fell off from doing these.

While later Elder Scrolls games each focused on a different province of the world (and fleshing out that one area as much as possible), this first one covers all of Tamriel using procedurally-generated zones. So for a long time it was the only way to go to interesting locales like the desert lands of Elsweyr. As a result the world here is vastly less detailed than any of the sequels, but it's still huge, and interesting for what it is.

My experience with this game is an unusual one. I'd played ES4: Oblivion a bit and watched a girlfriend play a lot more of it, and really liked it. A few years later I watched a friend play a lot of ES5 and while it was much more streamlined and "mainstream" than the rough, D&D-like ES4, I liked that one too. So I decided to try the series from the beginning, warts and all. Got the Elder Scrolls box set, which I still have, and which contains a whole bunch of maps for every game. Really draws you into the world. Each province is meticulously detailed in every game. Anywhere you can see, you can go.

However, a huge world is only great if it has interesting content. A lot of open world games are mostly empty. Not these. In most of these games, you can walk in virtually any direction and find interesting things going on and side-stories to play out. When I played Fallout 3 and Fallout New Vegas I was particularly impressed by this. It was like playing out a season of The Twilight Zone or something. Everywhere I went, some new, interesting, often eerie tale was playing out.

All of that said, back to Arena. Once the Elder Scrolls games move away from procedurally-generated and into concrete worlds (ES3: Morrowind) they get much better at this kind of thing. The first two often have large space just for the sake of having large space. Following the main quest, though, I still found a lot of interesting stories in this game. For a long time I've maintained that I like this one more than ES2: Daggerfall, which is a bold stance, given how much more advancement and QOL features ES2 had.

I just found Arena to work better, have less bugs, and be easier to traverse and keep track of. Also liked how each chapter of this game basically covered a different province where you'd need to find specific NPCs and do a couple of dungeons. While probably 95% of the space in each province went unused (and was pretty empty regardless), it still felt like you were getting a nice dose of each of them.

There are about a zillion classes in this game, so many that I can't even remember all of them. On top of that, every class can pretty much learn any ability (to varying degrees of effectiveness, depending on class). So there's a ton of build variety and customization here. Using skills or spells repeatedly will improve them, so there's always something to grind if you're not doing anything else.

This series really fell off after Elder Scrolls 5: Skyrim despite how huge that game was in pop culture. The sad thing is, it fell off only because of lack of follow-up. Instead of that follow-up, the company spent a decade coasting on remastering and porting Skyrim over and over again. 13+ years later, is anyone still excited for ES6? I don't know. Not even sure when we're going to get it, or if it'll be worth the wait, but it all seems doubtful at this juncture. I've got zero faith in Bethesda to deliver. Regardless, the first five will always be around and be quality open world games that are at the top of their class. Arena isn't much to look at now, but for a game from the early 1990's it jumps off the page.

Toughest Part: The very beginning. They have you escaping from a tough dungeon before you really know what you're doing yet, and a new player can run into issues here. Especially if on character creation you chose a class that isn't very good, like Acrobat or something. Once you get through this dungeon and get out into the open world, it's a pretty great feeling though. One that'd be emulated in many, many games of this genre from here on out.

Most Memorable Part: The Crystal Tower, main dungeon of Summerset Isles. Considering that region has been largely-untouched in this series, it has some really cool ideas, and the Crystal Tower looks different from the rest of the game. It also has the game's coolest boss fight, a Balrog.

Posts HERE.

Honorable Mention - Rolemaster: Magestorm - Fall 1998

Arena jogged my memory about a really good PC game that I DID play in-era. It should have gotten an honorable mention back in the 1998 post, as I played it during the same two weeks or so where I played Axelay. This is a game I never beat, because you couldn't beat it. It was an arena-based PVP MMO warzone online where you chose one of four classes, then joined various battlegrounds on the side of one of three factions: Green team, blue team, red team. This led to lots of "WCW vs NWO vs Wolfpack" jokes in mid 1998. This game was straight-up fantastic, and basically a multiplayer deathmatch arena where you slung spells back and forth, gained EXP for kills, and captured various resource points (like regeneration pools) that you and your team would then have to defend. The winning team would get a big chunk of EXP. There were only a few arenas/stages to play, but you got a lot of mileage out of them. All four classes were super-compelling in different ways and all four could do some crazy stuff.

Mage - Your basic wizard class who got elemental spells like fire and ice. I remember them getting this Ice Bolt spell around level 4 or 6 that was super OP for the level, so you'd have Mages racking up kills for a few levels after that with this big ice-kamehameha.

Cleric - The healer class, probably the easiest to level up since you'd get EXP for casting heals on people. You could hide out and just spam heals on your allies. Also got attack spells that were flying hammers and didn't do much damage.

Mentalist - Oddball class that could do all the oddball things, could cast electric element spells like flying sparks, had some "mind attack" spells that didn't need to be aimed and could go through non-thick barriers/walls, and it even had a DoT. Most importantly, it could FLY. So you weren't as powerful as Mage or Arcanist, but you could fly up and away from fights, and ambush people with damage spells that they couldn't even see the source of. Probably had the highest skill variance/ceiling, in that a player who mastered the Mentalist could own a battlefield.

Arcanist - The class I ended up maining. The only class that could outgun Mage at high levels, though it took some time to develop. This class used light and shadow spells, and was completely reliant on mana regeneration at pools and captured points since their mana didn't regenerate on its own like other classes. However, stay near a pool and you could do some serious damage with light spells. The shadow spells damaged MP instead of HP, so Arcanists could wipe out an opponent's MP. Never really saw the point though, cause if I could land some strikes on anybody I'd want to do damage.

The only downside to this game was how damn long it took to gain levels. I think I got to level 6 or 7 before I tapped out. You could level to 30 in total, but hardly anyone was 30. The game would match you with people in your level range (sets of like, 3 or 5, I think, probably expanding as the levels went up). While the first four or so levels were fairly quick, after that it took hours of battling to go up a single level.

Played this constantly for like two weeks, but unfortunately things fell apart when hacking became prevalent. Some programs were going around that let people give themselves spells from higher levels. So you had a lot of people using higher-level spells to get an advantage in lower-level arenas, and eventually it became so prevalent that the game staff just gave up on policing it. Before long the game was mostly a ghost town, with 75% empty arenas where you'd have 5-10 low level people sniping at each other with level 30 spell lineups. While this was sort of cool (got to see some big explosions), it killed the game. There were no rules, no way to be competitive without also cheating, and no incentive to level to see the more powerful spells. Oh well. Hopefully somebody out there besides me remembers how cool this game was.

#502 Adventure Island (NES) – Spring 2014

A game that I played in grade school after friends of mine said it was "BETTER THAN MARIO" and no, it isn't. I tried to do a full playthrough in 2011 or so and couldn't get past a certain ice level about 75% of the way through the game. Tried again in 2014 and finished it this time. The game certainly has fans and it's a likeable enough romp. Has a great invincibility tune, as well.

Toughest Part: Whatever that ice level was. They had sections with unavoidable traps and it just started feeling cheap.

Post HERE.

#503 Shinobi 3 (Sega Genesis) – Spring 2014

Very solid ninja game that's probably in my Genesis top five. Mostly played this for the post, but also because I'd heard of it so many times over the years. One of these days I'll play the first two Shinobies. I wish I had more to say about this, because it's among the best Sega Genesis games you can get; I just don't remember it well enough to get in-depth with my experience with it.

Post HERE.

#504 Killzone 2 (Playstation 3) – Spring 2014

Next in this series that I got into around the time of the PS4 launch, due to KZ4 being one of the few launch games for that system. KZ2 jumps to HD and fares a lot better for it, but I missed the Aliens style chain gun from the first game in the series. This game contains more blasting an authoritarian space empire with high-tech weapons, sort of a more-realistic Halo without as much of the fun. Do I like this series more than Resistance: Fall of Man and its series? As far as Sony's "Halokillers" go, I think I'd give the overall duke to the Resistance games.

#505 Super Mario Bros 2 (NES) – Spring 2014

Finished the NES version of SMB2 for the first time, as like SMB1 I'd always deferred to the Mario All-Stars version once I was able to beat any of these games. This was, of course, Doki Doki Panic, which I also tried out before going back to the North American SMB2 following a takeover by the dark warlock Toad.

Favorite Character: The Princess. It isn't even a question. She can hover, which makes a lot of the game drastically easier. Yeah, Luigi can moon-jump (usually to his death) which can be fun, while Toad can...dig fast? and collect souls for the underworld. The Princess has them all trounced, though.

Toughest Part: World 5-1, if playing as anybody besides the Princess. You have to scale this waterfall by leaping from log to log and it's rough. World 7-2, the last level, is also pretty rough no matter who you're playing as.

Kind of Strange: What happened to World 7-3? And how weird is it that 7-2 is the last level? Such an odd number after the rest of the worlds had three levels each.

Post HERE.

#506 Samurai Warriors 3 (Wii) – Summer 2014

Don't remember this one too well, but it's a Samurai Warriors game so it's good. Always kinda preferred these over the Dynasty series due to the coolness of characters like Dark Lord Nobunaga and his purple fire sword. Unfortunately I have a lot more trouble telling these apart, and probably couldn't pick this game out of a series lineup. It's odd how this game was Wii-only, which boxes in the playerbase. After this the series finally jumped to HD with Samurai Warriors 4...which I never got around to, but I did get Samurai Warriors 5 on the board later.

Favorite Character: Definitely Nobunaga. His entire "dark lord" look here is awesome, and the dark-element purple flaming sword is one of the most appealing weapons in a musuo game.

#507 Seiken Densetsu 3 (Super Famicom) – Summer 2014

This one was a looooong time coming. It had been near the tip top of my "things to play" list since about 1999, and I must have been saving it. Like so many of the great Japan-only Super Famicom RPGs, it kept getting bumped off of my to-do list by more recent things. I still haven't played most of those. No Bahamut Lagoon, Star Ocean, Rudra no Hihou, etc.

Unfortunately when I finally got to Seiken Densetsu 3 in 2014, I wasn't crazy about it. Had to stop and level grind constantly and the combat was sluggish compared to Secret of Mana. However, it eventually grew on me and I think it's something that shows off a lot of what SoM's true potential could have been (along with Chrono Trigger also taking elements from it).

I played through this game 3 times to get all 3 of the lategame paths / final bosses. This also let me try all six characters at least once each. The second and third playthroughs were much more enjoyable once I knew what to expect. This really was one of the Super Famicom's top games that never got a US release and it gets my seal of approval now after a rocky start.

Favorite Character: In this version, probably Kevin the beastman. He can absolutely shred things, even in the lategame.

Favorite Design Element: The class system is done in such a way to add a ton of replay value, with the class changes happening later in the game and giving you options that are surprisingly distinct from each other. This is a robust game, especially for the 90's.

Favorite Tune: It's a dark horse candidate. The final boss theme is a Dark Lich remix and it exudes so much menace that it made an impression.

Posts HERE.

#508 Suikogaiden Vol 2 (Playstation) – Summer 2014

Another thing I don't remember well enough to really say too much about. What mainly stands out is Ellie and Rina being ridiculously gorgeous. Ellie in particular has the outfit of outfits. It's more of a visual novel than a game, but it counts.

Post HERE.

That's it for today because I got verbose with the first few games. I'll be doing a couple more entries in this list soon to close out 2014.

Honorable Mention: Forgot to bring this up in the entry on the game much much much earlier on this list, so I need to add something to A Link to the Past. First time I ever finished the game, it was with the Red Sword (L3). After studying the game in Nintendo Power, I thought the Master Sword was IT, so it was pretty awesome when I eventually found the Red Sword late in the game and it was a complete surprise. I had the Master Sword way too long which probably made the game harder than it needed to be. And I didn't know about the Gold Sword (L4) at all, so I used the Red Sword for the last several dungeons and bosses. As a result, Ganon was a lot tougher the first time I played the game than he's been on any successive playthrough. Every time I fight him I expect this drawn-out epic fight and instead it's over fairly quick.

So to close this post out, I went and did a "Master Sword Only" run to recapture that drawn-out difficulty of the very first run. Here's the fight with Ganon, where I couldn't even damage him without charging up. Using the Master Sword turned this into a real fight.