Highlander 4x12 - The Blitz

 

Today on Highlander: Emotional episode with a nice epitaph. We finally find out what Duncan has been restoring that house for over the whole season. And more Richie! Enjoy it while it lasts because he's about to disappear for like ten episodes. Also featuring the greatest Sassy Female Reporter in this entire series.

Live-a-Live #11 - Mech Suit Mayhem

Our heroes have no choice but to flee from the evil laboratory. They'll be back, though. Watanabe will be avenged, as the second-longest chapter in the game continues.

Live-a-Live #10 - Park Street

Time to start powering through this game to get it done. Next up, Dr. Toei shows Akira the giant mech he unearthed from some ancient excavation site. When did this turn into Xenogears?

Live-a-Live #9 - Akira

Two chapters left... the future chapters. I take on the near-future chapter first, and it turns out to basically be a ripoff of the movie Akira.

Highlander 4x11 - Timeless

 

Very good episode here. It's a tale of two women, one who'd like to be immortal and one who'd like to be mortal. And also Duncan dressed as a woman.

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.