Shining Soul for GBA! Could also be Shining Soul II, which has connection to SUDA51 and is the framework his DS action RPG Contact was built upon! Also SSII has a weirdly techno OST !
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That’s Eric / Alex the warrior from Shining Soul 2.
One of his alts gives him green hair with purple highlights on his clothes. King drip imo
SS2 is neat in general. Cool soundtrack, thoughtful storyline / side-content.
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Here we go, Daikatana for Game Boy Color.
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I’ve seen Daikatana GBC mentioned a few times in various forums.
Turns out that it wasn’t the hidden gem I was expecting.
Nothing clicked for me.
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I’m sure Brandish is on your list somewhere (or does the movement disqualify it?), but I’d like to specifically recommend the PSP remake, which I love dearly.
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The PSP remake of Brandish is awesome. Reviewed it way back in 2017.
I’m thinking that this time around I’d like to do Brandish 2: The Planet Buster on Super Famicom.
And… just finished Ys 4: Dawn of Ys. That was excellent. Easily the best of the 8 & 16-bit series.
And…and… I just published my full review of it - PepsimanVsJoe's videogame blog: 2025 Special - Ys 4: The Dawn of Ys
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On Radia Senki: Reimeihen and The Magic of Scheherazade now.
Radia is really ambitious. At the very least, I can’t recall any other Famicom games doing real-time party-based combat. The slow movement speed during battle also kind of works in the game’s favor, since you can’t just zip over and rescue someone on the other side of the screen.
So much backtracking though. It makes the world feel very small (which it likely is).
Scheherazade is exactly what I expected out of Culture Brain. It’s structured like Zelda, but moving between screens can trigger turn-based battles. The combat difficulty is a bit low, so they spice things up with hidden pitfalls and instant death attacks. I don’t have any experience with the Japanese version, but given the potential headaches, I think Culture Brain USA made the right call in designing the overworld to be more linear. Getting lost while your allies are shredded by instant death spells sounds nasty.
Finished the Scheherazade review. This game tried my patience too many times - PepsimanVsJoe's videogame blog: 2025 Special - The Magic of Scheherazade
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Since Radia Senki turned out to be longer than I thought, I’ve started on another game: Golvellius - Valley of Doom. I’m not sure if this was intended as a parody of action-adventure games or what, but most of the time I’m enjoying its absurdity.
I wish I knew what Compile was going for with this early puzzle though. A nearby fairy told me to “push the blue rock” which 1) doesn’t narrow it down and 2) is actually a lie. I’m supposed to stab the correct rock 5 times with the sword. No way I’d figure that out without a guide.
The game’s a charming piece of work otherwise.
Oh and I’ve already completed the review for it.
Bonus! I finally mention The Tower of Druaga for the first time. It only took me like 30 freaking reviews to get around to it.
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Radia Senki review is finished.
Kinda lost myself mid-review when I realized that the person who played this for 10 minutes decades ago and the person who finished it after 8 hours ended up at the same “This is neat” conclusion
Here’s a review for Arcus Odyssey. Yep. I’m just piling them on.
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And I might as well toss in the obligatory Link’s Awakening review
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ayy pepsiman, how ya been? good to see you, hitting up that centy review soon
and yeah, longtime fan of what i call swordbois, gotta get back on my ys kick soon but i too started up alundra last year for what’s gotta be the 3rd time since it dropped, got further than usual but still put it down. the somber tone is one thing; i dig the challenging zelda-like dungeons but the platforming parts of the puzzles feel mind numbing at times. i still wanna finish it one day, but it’s way longer than it seemed starting out!
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oh man, as a kid i adored golvellius and its “we kind of have zelda at home, but not really” vibes
secrets all over the place, and the way the dungeons switch up from the overworld style of play felt cool at the time. the ending felt like a cliffhanger that never got resolved, but i’d since learned that a sequel did happen, it just stayed on the MSX. i really gotta play that one someday!
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“swordbois” is a good word for it. I’ll try to work it into the next review.
Lately been getting sidetracked by Oblivion Remastered & Vampire Survivors, but I am about 3/4ths of the way through Final Fantasy Adventure aka Seiken Densetsu 1 aka Adventures of Mana.
The bosses that would go on to appear in Secret & Trials of Mana are cool to see. The rest of the game is also pretty decent, though sometimes I wish they were a bit more obvious with the hints. The dungeon’s destructible walls are unmarked, and the means to tear them down are consumables.
Also, nearly everything causes status effects, which I actually kind of like. Without them, the combat difficulty would be nonexistent, since a high stamina stat ensures everything only does a point or two of damage.
EDIT: Game is done. Overall pretty good.
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