The re/decompilation well has been well and truly poisoned for me by an absolute onslaught of vibe coded crap, it was really exciting when we had stuff like Dusklight (Twilight Princess) and the Lylat Wars but now several are coming out of the woodwork almost daily it feels like, there's a user on twitter called VideogameEsoterica or whatever the fuck and none of them are on the level of something like Dusklight imo. I guess grudgingly I'll admit some are so simple you probably wont notice, but there's another Youtuber who showed two 2 decomps for Goldeneye, one AI and one that had actual effort put into it, the AI one was a buggy mess.
So now, I'm not excited by them anymore, everyone should check out dusklight though
I like the FF7 remakes but I think most people would agree that Rebirth at least went a bit too far with the 'reimagined' part, they made a town that was like 3 screens into a full on jungle map, it's like turning Market Town into a Labyrinth, or Kokiri Forest into an actual forest sized area, I think how they made it seems best.
I think the best value for this IMO (at least for me) is playing a 'new/non remake' non BOTW style 3D Zelda again, maybe the '3D' qualifier is just me unfairly discounting the Link's Awakening remake and Zelda but I haven't played those and I think separating top down Zelda from 3D ones is okay right?
Play
Now I'm not playing absolutely terrifying games for a while again, I was kinda' like '…what was I doing again?' and decided I was probably playing Dark Chronicle so I resumed my save, very comfy dungeon crawling IMO. I will try to stay blind with regards to inventing so I can drag myself kicking and screaming into the realm of joy and discovery for once in my adult life, but I might need to look up the basics of upgrading and synth, although I did just make a Bastard Sword for Monica so maybe I do get it.
Ace Combat 5
Massive step up from Ace Combat 4 which was okay but feels very Ace Combat by numbers the more I play this, which has more varied missions, more interesting story and vastly better control feel somehow? The concept of modern jets with missiles that have the range of a few miles is actually pretty funny the more I think about it though
Afterburner Climax - Now I can emulate XBLA I can fucking finally play this…and it's way harder than I thought! Or maybe I just don't know how to play it, but it really does have the same Sega Arcade spirit of games like Outrun though, and it's somehow similar to Ace Combat but completely different, both games are in essence about shooting down planes but only of them has a super gauge for bullet time and full screen multiple missile lock on
Fire Emblem: Fortune's Weave
I've been up and down with my feelings on this game, but if there's one thing I am sure on it's that this game without the downtime of the World Map is an easy 10, with it the game is honestly just a slog sometimes, such a slog that I can't see me playing this game more than once. I think this is the absolute worst game to recommend to someone to get into the series, the insane bloat does not represent what the series is about, thankfully Path of Radiance is right there and doesn't have a world map whatsoever to boot. Underneath all that? Good story, good characters, some of the best maps in the series, eh.
Want
Been watching streams of the Zelda remake and I have to admit I'm still not crazy about how it looks but I won't deny some of the dungeon design looks pretty damn good, going to play it sometime next year probably, were it not for Fire Emblem and GTA6 (which I wish was delayed a bit further, yes I know I could just simply not play it day 1 but…) I'd probably be playing it right now
EDIT - ACTUALLY I should get back to Dragon Quest 6 ooooh
Do you have to pretend to be an Orc now or something on that server though 🤔
And my vents are lovely and fragrant, thank you :D The pongiest of the four is the Claw A1M, which has a slight whiff to it, though I got that second hand, so the guy before me might've had an issue…
omg I thought you'd ignore this part ha ha
This is a huge win, as I'm enjoying the game a lot and being able to get through missions in a pick up and play sense is going to be great.
It's really nice when you get a game that just feels at home on these things, Hades and games like the newly released Final Fantasy Resonance just make more sense on them in my opinion, I think Visual Novels are great at this but I know now everyone is going to wanna read Steins;Gate, Fate/Stay Night or Tsukihime.
Also the Portal 3 was announced recently, do I submitto the FOMO (I never got the Portal 2 and I wish I did) or do I wait for the Odin 3 Mini announcement? The O2M is still my favourite handheld in the scene so if they just copy that and make a better screen and more battery, same chip as the O3 regular I'm SO in…if it exists
Alastor