Individual Games (to the level I'm familiar with them)

There were a couple of games I didn't include in the first "individual games" page, so I'm adding this one. I may include more as I become acquainted with them....

Lufia II

This SNES game is not that unique among RPGs except for the exceptional number and level of puzzles. There are some classic physical logic puzzles along with several new twists on some old themes. There's a "Concentration" style matching game at one point. There's a change the colors of all the tiles game in which changing one tile changes all those that border it along a side (quite challenging until you get used to it). There's one "cut down all the grass before it grows too tall" game that I had to read a cheat sheet to complete!

The rest of the name of this game is "Rise of the Sinistrals." Sinistrals turn out to be gods with evil intent toward your planet. A sub-plot in the story involves the hero's girlfriend/wife. He starts out being close friends of a shopkeeper from his hometown, and she begins his quest with him. But when he marries a "knockout" (in more than one sense) warrior lady, she runs back home. She comes back before the end of the game.

This game really has to be played twice, because there are several places where you end up cutting yourself off from entering a castle/dungeon before you've finished with it, if you don't know what you're doing. It is modified top-down with separate battle screens, and a battle system similar to SquareSoft's Active Time Battle. It is the first game I found that had a battle ability that could be used when you had received enough damage. (This is similar to the "Limit Break" of FFVII. By FFVIII the limit break isn't based on the amount of damage you've taken, but on if your hit points are low enough. If you keep your people healed up during battle you would still get your Limit on FFVII, but not on FFVIII.)

Shadowrun

If you want your child to grow up to be nominally human -- DON'T buy this game! The only point of this game is to shoot just about anything that moves, and to buy a more powerful gun to do it with. You end up with a submachine gun. One unreality in the game is that you NEVER run out of ammunition. It acts as if simply owning a gun is enough to be able to shoot at anything as many times as you wish for life.

As if all the gun violence were not enough, you also engage in cyber larceny by linking your "head computer" to various computers belonging to your enemies. Once inside their computers you steal information and "nuyen," the currency of the new Seattle that is the setting for the game. This is a semi-3D game with real time battles. Your guardian spirit is a dog which you meet in a dockside warehouse. There's also a girl who can morph into a fox and back -- it's part of her stage act! You hire shadowrunners, guns for hire who will follow you and shoot at anything that threatens you.

"So why does this guy know this game if he's so down on it?" you might ask. I have only tried it a few times. You have to be able to "aim" your gun, something I'm not very good at. And since I didn't really like the content, I haven't played it much. My wife rented the game in Michigan and has since bought it. She has finished it at least twice, and started it many more times.

The Lost Vikings

This is not an RPG, but actually an adventure game. It has a side-on presentation. The story is that three Vikings, each with different abilities, get captured by space aliens and have to find their way back home. There are puzzles to figure out in just about every area, and the dexterity required gets trickier and trickier as you progress. We have it, but we've never finished it. I recall one screen in which you have to ride bubbles that only go up. You need to go across, of course, so the trick is to jump from bubble to bubble. But you have to wait until a bubble appears, you have to jump before the bubble you're in pops, and you have to arrange to land close to the middle of the next bubble or you'll miss it. A very tricky move that you have to complete six to ten times over for each character. You have to move all three without missing to finish the area. Very challenging!

There is a certain amount of humor in the game. Each Viking has a particular vulgar habit which he will engage in on occasion when he's not moving. And since you have to move each of the three individually, there's a lot of time for them to stand around "bored." One other feature is that if you repeat an area too many times the Vikings will start quipping about it. At the moment we can't recall if there is a two-player mode for this game, but it would make sense and I seem to think it had one.

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