Aside from all the RL bonkerness and adventuring through Eorzea, been very slowly chipping away at a couple of other games in the meanwhile. I’m pretty sure both have been mentioned, which would be Sea of Stars and Horizon: Forbidden West. Sea of Stars is on the (almost) 3rd playthrough while debating if I want to go into the expansion story right thereafter – it’s a compelling idea since this is such a wonderful game to begin with. The other thought is to give it a little break and move on to another in the backlog for a spell and then return.
Horizon: Forbidden West has been one I’ve been slowly making progress on since around April of last year. Once Horizon: Zero Dawn was completed, I jumped right into this one the next day practically. The amusing thing is I’ve explored and side-quested so much that now approaching 100 hours with the base game of ~55% complete and max level at that. The world in this one is HUGE compared to the first one, but every little nook and cranny of it is worth exploring, and a lot of hidden little spots placed perfectly too. The story itself is pretty good so far, as since I’m only about halfway through, I know there’s still a lot to tackle.
Moar Spaaaaaaceee~!
During the holidays, I did dabble a little bit back into No Man’s Sky on PS5 this time. I actually played it right when it came out for a long while, and then shelved it as they continued to add goodies and content. So fast forward to now and I gave it a go again to much my surprise as to how much different (for the better) the game has gotten! I’m still fairly not-great at it, but it just plays and feels/looks so much better than it did back then! I’ll probably get more back into this once other backlogged games have been tackled, I wanna see if I can get a bunny helmet too (or at least one can hope!)
There is, of course, the various journeys and adventures that continue in Final Fantasy XIV, and will for some time assuming nothing awry happens. However, it’s good to take a breather from that and take a look at another world/story to break it up every now and then.
Almost the weekend y’all! Have fun in whatever world(s) y’all are currently adventuring through!
Last night, since I usually get home crazy late with the combination of work and taking care of weekly errands, I plopped down to continue Horizon II: Forbidden West. I started it kind of early-ish on Sunday, but just barely got through the introduction areas.
After finishing Zero Dawn Friday night, I considered giving a break between the two games, but after the end of Zero Dawn, I just wanted to see what happens next. However, I’ll probably go back later to give New Game+ a go, as that would be pretty fun to do as well. I suspect hysterically so seeing as I was 30+ levels over the story’s recommended level.
Anyway, after about 7 hours thus so far, my impression of Forbidden West is this is basically a near-perfect glow-up that built on all the great that the previous game had. There are some things I don’t like as much (probably yet) they did add, but I suspect as I continue westward, it’ll make sense or be just part of the flow of exploring.
The only thing that bugs me is I cannot get the ‘Complete Edition’ or the DLC story as it’s PS5 locked and/or on Steam. I mean I suppose I could get it on PC, but… well sometimes there’s just games I’d prefer on console and this is one of them. This might just be the one that convinces me to get a PS5 eventually, but for now, I probably have another 90+ hours of adventuring to do. If it’s anything like Zero Dawn where it just vaguely points me at the next destination miles away from where I picked up said quest, and I’m then left up to my own devices to explore, then this will be an absolutely stellar time once again indeed!
So, recently I watch a video by the brilliant LGR covering SimCity 3000 nearly 25 years later. It got me thinking about the game again seeing as I played the original SimCity 3000 and SimCity 2000 a lot when I was a whee bunny. I own a copy of SimCity 3000 Unlimited, which was its successor that came out a few years later with additional features and tilesets.
Upon watching LGR’s video of it, it was then brought to my attention that it was possible to bolster the screen resolution far higher than the original settings! Intrigued, I decided to spend an evening figuring out how to do it. After a few hours, a hex editor, No-CD Patch, and another compatibility patch to make it run smoothly, I got it to run just like I remember it! Rather than use the base SimCity 3000 that I was very familiar with, I decided to give the Unlimited version a go this time.
I think (I could be wrong) but they did some re-balancing between SimCity 3000 and the Unlimited version, so getting a city off the ground was much harder than I had anticipated it would be. After creating a coastal city area with a river near the middle, it took a number of false starts to finally figure out what I was doing wrong. It felt like a combination of building out too quickly and enabling way too many ordinances off the bat causing my budged to be overblown before the city was established.
However, once the city was established and becoming self-sufficient, all I started to do was small baby steps to get it to grow and then adjust the ordinances as the city asked me to do or I saw necessary. Ultimately I ended up… spending 3 hours not even realizing it working on this city. It has been an absolute blast revisiting this game after all of this time and at 1080p resolution no less!
I very much look forward to filling out the entire city available land eventually, and seeing what nifty new buildings I either come across or can add in as I get a bigger flourishing city.
Let’s see… ah-ha! So we last left off defeating Belome and being swept away to the Midas River. Aside from it being absolutely gorgeous with all of the brilliant colors in the caverns, the river course itself to me was much easier to understand and control than the Super Nintendo version of this same course. I really enjoyed its incarnation as opposed to the original. I’m still not particularly good at it, but it’s very enjoyable. It starts off falling down a waterfall sprinkled with coins and frog coins with cave entrances (like the featured image above) and the occasional spring to bounce one back to the main waterfall. The second part is to roll on a barrel down a flat river with coins that one can jump up to reach while also avoiding some angry cheep-cheeps along the way.
Once the course is completed it ends with a toad offering a conversion for a certain amount of coins collected on the course itself. If the bar is met, then one keeps them, otherwise the coins are withheld until the course is re-ran to hit that bar. Once that’s all squared away, it’s onwards to Tadpole Pond! Upon entering for the first time, one is greeted by the tadpoles and the Frog Sage himself who tells Mallow is not a *shocked* ‘not a tadpole!
Mallow, really.
From here, it’s a fun-quick run through Rose Way, where we meet back up with Bowser and his army wanting to take back his castle. Mario & Mallow hide from sight to hear what has been happening with the Koopa King.
Zee Planning
Upon entering Rose Town, things are… a bit off. It’s gloomy, the music is the same when the Mushroom Kingdom was under siege and arrows are raining from the sky, so it’s very obvious as something is incredibly not right in this town.
~Ominous~
After exploring the town, and heading into the Inn, a whole adorable and wonderful scene happens. It starts off with a young toad named Gaz playing with figures of Mario, Bowser, and Peach reenacting the trio’s many adventures through the years. It’s all so cute and then when Mario comes in, Gaz asks for him to play for a spell and introduces another doll named Geno. While Mario plays as his ‘nemesis’ Bowser, Gaz uses Geno’s arm attack and knocks Mario out cold.
Gaz initially playing with his figures, and Mario partaking only to be knocked out by the Geno Doll.
After Mario is sent to bed, a new cut scene for the Switch version plays out. The Super Nintendo didn’t have this scene and I got really emotional. The entity we come to know as Geno comes through the window, looks at the figures, and picks the Geno doll as its chosen body to go and help fix Star Road.
This is such a great and emotional scene.
Mario wakes up, and comes down to hear Gaz talking about Geno heading into the Forest Maze to their mother. The Forest Maze area has one banger of a song and has lived rent free in my mind since the Super Nintendo days. There’s some hidden spots in here and the maze itself: there’s two routes here one is explained by the feller in his house on top of the staircase, and the other is following Geno.
Using Mallow’s Thought Peek on the Kong in the forest, I cracked up.
Mario and Mallow catch up with Geno, we’re introduced to Bowyer, a talking bow-like entity that is associated with the Smithy’s Gang, and also who has been shooting arrows at Rose Town. Mario tries to go ‘fists’ flying into deal with Bowyer, but Mallow stops him. They hide for a moment while one of the arrows brings to him the 2nd star piece, and then Geno gets involved very quickly thereafter. Geno pleads with Bowyer to stop and hand over the star, but of course does not for in which then Mallow allows Mario to get involved (while also running off without Mallow… oops.)
Mallow stopping Mario initially, and then Mario ‘ditching’ him thereafter to confront Bowyer.
The fight itself is a lot of fun, and Bowyer uses ‘X,’ ‘Y,’ and ‘A’ disabling buttons to try and slow the party down. Ultimately leading to Bowyer getting irritated enough to disable all three buttons at once. Geno speaks up and states the trio make a good team, and leads into introducing the player into using a Trio Attack, which is kind of like a Limit Break if one is familiar with any of the later Final Fantasy games.
Let’s hoober’n goooooo~!!
With the wheel at 100%, it’s time to use the ever first Trio Attack in the game to end the fight, and claim the 2nd star!
Pew pew~!
Two down, Five to go!
With Bowyer defeated, the 2nd star piece is ours! Just a quick stop back in Rose Town afterwards, then it’s back on the road heading to the Pipe Vault, then ultimately to Moleville!
About a week back, I began Super Mario RPG on Switch, which is an absolutely true and wonderful retelling/remake of its Super Nintendo predecessor. The story and everything is nearly identical to the original, but with everything getting a gorgeous makeover with some nice Quality of Life adjustments as well to make things easier and/or quicker.
The Intro Area: Bowser’s Castle trying to save Princess Peach.
So after a quick romp through Bowser’s Castle to save Princess Peach, the save is abruptly interrupted with a massive Sword falling from the sky and penetrating Bowser’s Castle throwing Bowser, Mario, and Peach out and far away from it.
The Title Card after the intro level (also the one from the SNES version minus the tagline: Legend of the Seven Stars).
From there, Mario crash lands back at his house: Mario’s Pad and is greeted by Toad trying to escort Peach back to the Mushroom Kingdom, only to find out she’s been Kidnapped by Bowser – again. After some quick optional tutorial lessons from Toad, Mario is off to Bowser’s Castle again only for the Sword, that is part of the Smithy Gang, to destroy the bridge losing access to said castle. Mario flees back to his pad to tell the tale to Toad. Thus leading both of them off to the Mushroom Kingdom to tell the Chancellor of what has all happened.
The System Menu highlighting the battle controls, and Toad recalling ‘The Good Old Days’ from the SNES version.
Real quick shout out to the menus. It’s nice that the battle controls can be changed back to the SNES version, which allows for selecting and executing the different options with A, B, X, Y, instead of hitting say X, and then hitting A to execute it. For us older players, this can be confusing who are used to the old controls. So it’s really nice this option exists. Another thing is allowing to change the difficulty at any time too for folks who just want to see the story and not worry about all the RPG elements.
Mallow running around the Mushroom Kingdom after Croco to get his coin back.
Once the tale is explained to the Chancellor, Mario goes off to meet Mallow, a ‘Tadpole,’ who is chasing after a feller named Croco that stole his coin. After a fun new cutscene, Mallow and Mario join up and they seek after Croco. Originally in the SNES version, when Mario used Fire on Croco, a text box would simply come up saying ‘YEOUCH!’ hinting his weakness. This version his tail catches on fire and is ‘stunned’ for a turn, giving the player a free hit. It’s a nice change to make the early levels a bit easier.
Upon returning to the Mushroom Kingdom, it’s being overtaken by some of the Smithy Gang. Claymorton (originally named Mack in the SNES version), being the leader of this part of the gang that Mario and Mallow have to take on. The fight is fun, and afterwards, Mario & Mallow are awarded the first Star Piece, along with being told to go to the Kero Sewers and forwards after that to Tadpole Pond to meet Mallow’s ‘grandfather.’
Belome and the exit from Kero Sewers
Kero Sewers is the first major ‘dungeon’ in the game, but it’s not too rough with a cat-like boss named Belome at the end of it. Belome likes to eat a lot, and certainly shows it in the fight with some other debuff mechanics to try and slow Mario & Mallow down. Once defeated, the gate opens, a lot of water comes through, and the two are off to the Midas River! This concludes the first whole area of Super Mario RPG, the next part starts off with a fun mini-game course before heading to Tadpole Pond.
