Beat Zelda Kingtears the other day and for all my mountain of nitpicks about the game I gotta say I was very positive on the final dungeon and battle(s). Every Big Epic Game wants its home stretch to feel like a culmination of all the mechanics and imagery in the game but Kingtears pulls it off exceptionally well. Made me wish other parts of the game could’ve temporarily restricted healing, saving and fast travel for a scripted challenge gauntlet! Also, I never would’ve expected a Zelda game of all things to mess with its own UI during the final boss fight to freak me out but I guess everyone in the industry has played Undertale and Nier by now huh?
Also finding the Quake II and Tactics Ogre remasters hard to put down.
I guess I remembered correctly that TO gets kind of messy in its last act, narratively and mechanically, which even all the Reborn enhancements don’t change. Also much easier, which I guess is one of the classic oddities of Matsuno game design. Quirks in the new balancing are starting to come through as well, like base accuracy percentages for every character being so high that entire moves and mechanics (facing, terrain bonuses, etc.) become pretty much irrelevant. The very slow rate of character growth also makes it frequently more effective to recruit enemy units to replace your generics (easy to do, thanks to the rewind mechanic) than to actually stick with your units weaker units for the long haul, which feels weird. (I assume training units by hand gets you higher stat caps? Maybe?) Still a great game despite its flaws, but it really makes me think how amazing a new title iterating all these mechanics from the ground up could be. Fat chance of that unfortunately!!
Already mentioned how Quake II feels like a step down from its predecessor in some ways (“great” to merely “good”) but it’s still so goddamn much fun and feels so fluid and aggressive with all the remastered enhancements. I actually kind of like the interconnected levels even if they produce a looser feel and (slightly) more backtracking than the conceptual gems of classic Id. The “point me in the direction I’m supposed to go” button is a clear concession to modern player expectations but given how convoluted the progression in these levels can get I’ll gladly accept it in the interest of keeping the game fast-paced — which, granted, might not be the greatest of compliments to the original designs. I never did love Doom’s on-and-off pacing where you’re either locked in intense battles to gain ground or wandering aimlessly through empty levels until you stumble into the red key for the red door on the other side of the map. I thought the first Quake struck the perfect balance of retaining that labyrinthine feel while making the levels visually coherent and straightforward enough to navigate at a reasonably brisk pace.
But it’s also part of the era, I guess. I tried going back to the endgame levels of Perfect Dark a few weeks ago (the 360 remaster) and for all the cool unique features in that game, it really turns into a slog by the end where the “challenge” comes from obtuse (sometimes time-sensitive!) objectives, confusing level layouts, cheap enemy placements, and RNG mechanics (enemy behavior/shot damage) weighed against the game’s absence of checkpoints or healing. Personally I would not mind that and Goldeneye getting the Nightdive premium treatment!!
