Live-a-Live #8 - Cave-Plundering

That's unfortunate, because no one took baths either.

Live-a-Live #7 - Red Dio Redemption

Following on the heels of the shortest chapter (the wrestler), I go for the second-shortest chapter. This one is nearly all dialogue and story, oddly enough. These chapters are wildly different from one another so far. We had the dungeon crawl, the training minigame-fest, the fighting game, and now a story-heavy scenario. Wonder what the last three will have in store.

Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night - Part Three (End)

 

WHO'S THAT POKEMON?

Live-a-Live #6 - The Masaru Smackdown

 Fast forward to modern-day Japan, as we meet a pro wrestler who is training to be the greatest fighter in the world. So... pro wrestling is a real sport in the world of Live-a-Live? It's still real to Square, dammit!

Live-a-Live #5 - The Highest Monk II: The Next Highest Monk

Roshi and Yun train to battle the Cobra-Kai as Live-a-Live rolls on.

Live-a-Live #4 - The Highest Monk

No one gets higher than Roshi, as he meditates atop a mountain. Really wondering why this game didn't get a U.S. release; it's very playable. Finding it more entertaining than the often-confusing Romancing SaGa III, the closest thing to this that Square put out at the time. It's like one of their other departments thought they could out-SaGa the SaGa department, and made this game.

Live-a-Live #3 - Tiger Style

Level 10 and decked out in Genji equipment, Oboro is very prepared for the final chapter. But first, he's got to finish his own. Too bad I missed out on Muramasa, because Oboro's attack power is on the low side.

Live-a-Live #2 - Oboro Muramasa

LIVE. WIN.

Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night - Part Two

 

Miriam chases the moon.

Live-a-Live (Super Famicom, 1994)

The next Super Famicom RPG that I'm going to cover is the relatively-unknown Live-a-Live. In the vein of the SaGa games, this one has a bunch of characters to choose from. The difference is that rather than each of them playing all the way through the same game with slightly-to-moderately different scenarios, in this game they all have a chapter of their own before converging at the end. It's most comparable to Dragon Warrior 4, but the way you can choose the order of the chapters puts a new spin on things. It's almost episodic. You can't really go wrong with mid-90's Square, so let's get to it.

Originally Posted in 2014

Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night (Playstation 4, 2019)

 

Here we go, the main event. This was on a bunch of systems; PS4 is what I'm playing it on.

Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon 2 (Lots of systems, 2020)

 

This one is scary because they cranked the difficulty way up. It's like going from Mega Man 10 to Mega Man 9, roughly. While the first Curse of the Moon was intended to tide people over until Ritual of the Night was finished, the Kickstarter for ROTN was so successful that they did a second retro throwback side-game after it, and here we are. The purpose of this one seems to be to just obliterate people.

Bloodstained: Curse of the Moon (Lots of systems, 2018)

 

Time for me to finally take a dip in the Bloodstained series. These games look and play just like the Castlevania games, only a bit modernized. This is because they were made by the same guy, via crowdfunding. And the series has been very successful, much more Shovel Knight and less Mighty No. 9. The main goal was to create the game Ritual of the Night, and the crowdfunding overachieved enough that we also got a couple of NES-style spinoffs including this one. Starting with the shortest and easiest of the games, let's get to it.

Carrion (Nintendo Switch, 2020)

 

WHAT HAS GOD WROUGHT?

This is a John Carpenter's The Thing inspired game where you play as the creature. In Soviet Russia...bug hunts YOU.

Aliens: Fireteam Elite (Playstation 5, 2021)

 

Bug Hunt concludes with the biggest bug hunt of all. This game turned out a lot better than I expected. It isn't great, but it's a fun play, and what Colonial Marines probably should have been.

Earth Defense Force 4.1 - The Shadow of New Despair (Playstation 4, 2015)

 

BUG HUNT continues as I play an EDF game for the first time. These are known for being super fun shoot 'em ups. This one is a PS4 remaster of an XBox 360 game, so it looks a little antiquated at this point, but hopefully the gameplay is as good as I've heard.

Cosmo Tank (Game Boy, 1990)

Next I'm taking a look at an interesting Atlus game from 1990 that is remembered fondly by the few people that knew about it back then. This is a fun game with great music, and it has the boost of being featured in the Game Boy Player's Guide. To segue to Halloween, the next couple of posts will have a Bug Hunt theme.

Highlander 4x10 - Chivalry

 

Today on Highlander: Richie gets laid! Methos returns! And the story of how Duncan learned to dress respectably!

Highlander 4x09 - The Wrath of Kali

 

Highlander posts seem to be the most-read and most commented on posts on here, so it's time we do more of 'em. This one here is probably an average episode by most standards, maybe a shade above average. However for me, it's one of my favorite episodes. I think it was one of the first ones I saw as a kid, since I started really watching this early in S4. Prior to that I'd only sometimes caught it in the first 3 seasons. I had no idea who Kalas was until the DVD sets came out years later. In any case, here we go, one of my first episodes and one of my favorites, and I'm going to use WAY too many words.

Highlander 4x08 - Reluctant Heroes

 

This episode contains a Fop. A Dandy Lad. Anyone who has seen Rob Roy knows how despicable an evil foppish dandy can be. Outside of a strong villain (another of the many who should have lasted more than one episode), there isn't a lot to this one. We get some good Duncan and Richie hangout moments though, and I'll enjoy those while they last since Richie is entirely absent from the last 40% or so of the season.