Dragon Quest (Switch)

They say he comes for those whose souls are weak
and call his name upon the wind
The night is cold and thick with mystery
Oh I can feel his beating wings

As described before, I've played most of the mainline Dragon Quest-games, all released for the DS (and Playstation 2) and I've had this inclination to play the first 3 games as well (since those are the only ones I've hadn't played before) and lo and behold... they are all released for the Switch. Playing the first one, you can feel that it is a bit archaic. At least it's a bit mitigated in this version. It's based on the mobile port that is based on the SNES remake of the game that originally arrived on the Famicom/NES back in 1986, although not in Europe. So basically we get a better version with a graphical overhaul and a lot more gold and Exp. that hasten the game, I've read at least. And that is probably best since there isn't much in it and just to grind to get anywhere... we don't do that anymore, I still had to grind a bit to finish of the game, but I don't want to think about how much that would have been if I've played the original.

Basically you are a decendent to Erdick, this famous warrior and you now have to find Erdick's treasures in order to gain access to the Dragonlord's castle and save this land from his darkness. You need the armour and sword of Erdick, the harp of Galen the bard, the rain bow and sun stone to make the bridge appear that take you to the island where the castle is. And you also better save the princess of the land while you at it that is guarded by a dragon herself. There's something like 5 town (+1 one destroyed), 2 shrines, 3 dungeons and Tantegral Castle and the Dragonlord's Castle. 

A journey to the centre of the earth

It's really simplistic in its approach. Really, grind for level ups and gold so that you can take more punishment and dish out more damage in order to go further on the maps and dungeons. Some things are more irritating than others, for example the limited amount of space in the inventory that both have to deal with equipment, special items and items like torches, herbs and such. I guess that with higher levels you get magic spells that take away the need for some items, but why would I waste magic points on Glow instead of healing and attack spells? Especially since the torch is actually better than the Glow spell? Those are a bit weird. Then we have the magic keys that open locked doors... and then breaks so you gotta buy more keys and when you leave a town or dungeon where you unlocked a door, the door appears again and you gotta use yet another key. Also, the game crashed once when I put the game speed at the lowest, but lucky enough the game autosaved so I didn't waste the grinding from level 20-23. Then we have the cryptic nature of some things like finding things out in the overworld just by accident while walking over it. I guess the map forces you to walk over there, but it is missable and you need the item as far as I understood it. It was charming at least with the art work of Toriyama and the music while not as diverse as in later games at least works. I've at least played it now, not sure if playing it again would be high up on my priority list.

The Last Door - Complete Edition (Switch)

Recall the dream of luxor

How fluids will arrive

As if by call or schedule

Resume through the morning tide

Where entry is by seaweed gate

And plan the plan of dreams

To lose oneself in reverb

In all that is and all that seems

Been on some kind of Lovecraftian kick since my summer vacation where I listened through Blue Öyster Cults Imaginos cycle and also got a Lovecraft collection. And then Switch got this game and since it was published by Phoenix Online that did the remake of Gabriel Knight and their own King's Quest the Silver Lining I decided to take the plunge and I gotta say, it really sucked me in. Beginning with the suicide by hanging we are introduced to Jeremiah Devitt that have received letters from an old classmate and decide to meet his old friend. Arriving at the old manor no person is there to meet him so he wanders the house, getting keys and some disturbing images and ravens following him. Turns out that after his friends wife died he went mad and hanged himself leaving some clue toward Devitt and his school back in Aberdeen. Calling the police after finding the corpse Devitt visits his psychiatrist, Dr. Wakefield and then travels to the school that was turned into a hospital. People are dying like flies and Devitts old teacher, an old priest, are the head of the hospital. He stumbles upon some kind of ritualistic murder of the patients in a room under a class room. In the catacombs he sees a light from a room and as he enters I see the most ghastly thing ever. A bug that stop me from progressing. It took them over a month to fix it with an update before I could continue. 

After that setback I could continue with watching the priest burning himself to death after retelling of their experiments in school where he part took in an experiment to enter the Last Door that Devitt and his friends tried to do. Now, game is really good. It's not hard since it's just a puzzle game where you walk around and try to get keys to enter doors and such, but the atmosphere is uncanny. The music, the sound and graphics all build this sense of dread as I played through it. And I admit, I had things running on the computer besides me, but that probably was for my benefit since it felt uneasy. And to be fair it used a couple of jump scares and quick cuts to unsettle the player, but I liked it overall.

The real story is that Devitt suffers from amnesia and looks for answers to what happened and therefore tried to connect with his old friend. Which took him to Aberdeen where he is knocked unconscious by a serial killer and transported back to London in a coffin and after being released stumble upon another friend, Alexandre DuPre where he is injected by a serum to enter the veil once again. Then the game shifts perspective to Dr. Wakefield and a Dr. Kaufman. Wakefield tries to find his patient and Kaufman is a friend that have connections to the occult and helps in the search. First they try to find information about DuPre at an asylum. That leads to an officer that puts them on course toward Kaufman's old teacher Dr. Wright who suffers some kind of Alzheimer. Kaufman grows sick and eventually dies and leaves the final clue for Wakefield to an island where they are in the midst of pagan rituals, dressed up in masks and a child have gone missing... am I the only one that got the Wicker Man vibes of that chapter? Turns out that the island used to have a ritual to enter the other side by installing terror on people so that they enter the land of fog. Which Wakefield is submitted too and there he finds Devitt. Looking through the lands he is given a choice to either turn back or try to save Devitt. 

I'm Burnin' for you!

It's hard to tell the story since it's not that hard and as stated earlier, it's the atmosphere you want. Think about a late autumn night, alone and silence with only the sound of the howling wind. This game gives me that chill, but interesting enough I knew I never could die and that doesn't need to be. I highly recommend it for the Halloween holidays... that is, what, like 20 days ago... I blame the bug. If there something I don't like about the game it's that the ending... wasn't that satisfactory. They hinted about this custodian that like a spider guarded the last door and would hunt down anyone it found within the fog. I assume it might have been the creature you saw below the tunnels around the Wright mansion, but it wasn't giving me a final ending winning over it to get to the door. And then of course, what happened after entering the door? What is its purpose and why did they seek it beyond the mere curiosity of the the bored student that had to return? And what about the eye? Why does it exist? Maybe it's just the lovecraftian way.

Dr. Mario (Wii U)

The Doctor is in the house!

Got a bit of urge to play some puzzle game and started up my Wii U again and found Dr. Mario. And the search function at the blog states that I haven't written on it before so, new game finished after 30 minutes!

We got it the first time for the NES back in the 90's and the most fun thing about it is its multiplayer action that me and my sister had going trying to beat it first or at least not die first since we were hardly any experts on it. Playing it on its own... I prefer Tetris actually. I will give it that the music is good and it is satisfying in defeating the viruses as they plop and then the big ones in the magnifying glass wriggles in pain until each of the colours are gone and they just... poff out of existence. Now, I can't recall if there ever was any story beyond that you have to destroy the viruses, but in one of the Nintendo Magazines we had I could read about this comic advertising the game:

Wish I had all of the comics since it's just campy fun.

Life Force (Switch)

We meet again!

Got through my favorite Konami shooter once again, this time the arcade version. Helped a lot by the fact that I could turn up rapid fire for everything. Mostly the same as the NES port, but certain differences. Audio is better, you even have a voice both describing what happens, what you should do against the bosses and what power-ups you picked up. The stage shifts are nice since it just go into the next one by turning the ship. They also have arranged the stages a bit differently since stage 2 is stage 5 and vice versa and no Egyptian mummy head for end boss or a stage themed after that. 

Also, the power-ups doesn't work like on the NES since there you could save up and choose the ones you wanted, instead you get what you get. I assume the port was made to look more like the Gradius-series since it's a spin-off of that. Would I play this or the port? Doesn't matter really. Pretty much the same. Maybe slight benefit for the port with the Konami code giving me enough life to not need to save scum past certain parts. 

Scramble (Switch)

This seemed interesting

Buying up all those Anniversary Collections from Konami on the Switch I took the Arcade one and saw that it had Life Force that was ported over to the NES (and other consoles like TG-16). Life Force was a bit harder to beat without building up some reflexes I started looking on some of the other games. First of was Scramble, an arcade game from 1981 where you control a jet that is making a run for the enemy base. Basically fly past all obstacles while hitting the fuel stations so that the jet doesn't crash and then defeat the enemy base, and then repeat. Nothing special, but a small distraction that takes around 5 minutes to make one run.

The graphics looks like it came from the early 80's

It's nothing else to say about it. It's seen by some as the first Gradius and that's it.

The Legend of Zelda: Link's Awakening (Switch)

Feels like 1993 (or more accurate 1999 when the DX version was released and the first time I played the game)

As mentioned in this post I was waiting for the remake of Link's Awakening to drop on the switch and I got it after work on release date and finished it the following Sunday morning. A really beautiful remake and the depth perspective is really popping out in this environment. Take for example the dream shrine where you get the ocarina, I always assumed the bed was reachable by going down, but now I can actually see the intent was a plateau.  

I mean, can you blame me? (Now I can't even unsee it so I begin to wonder what I was thinking)

Overall, it's a pretty faithful. Differences is that the warp system have been improved with more warp points as well as the Mambo hooks you up to the network instead of taking you to one point making traveling around the island faster. You have bottles to store fairies making the game even easier actually. You have more buttons now so things like the sword, shield, pegasus boots and bracelets get their own dedicated buttons which diminishes the need for constantly pause and unpause the game to equip the right gear. I usually put the feather on X as a dedicated jump-button. New collectibles in figurines that you can place out in the houses of Mabe village and you win them in the crane game. Both the crane game and fishing pond is improved so that you actually have something to gain from using them (figurines and seashells).

The biggest changes is the inclusion of Dampé the gravedigger from Ocarina of Time that now allows Link to arrange dungeons on his own and then play them. Dubbed Zelda Maker after the Mario Maker games. For people who like those games this might be something to spend time on, but I only played enough to get the heart piece and sea shell. I'm usually to uninspired to create things by myself so I probably won't bother (just like I haven't gotten any Mario Maker game and Dragon Quest Builders just last till the end of the story mode). Also combat have been improved with Link have to outmanoeuvre certain enemies like shielded ones, or that the bomb-eating monsters now have a cool down and wont even eat the bombs first couple of seconds after a bomb prior (lucky they implemented that picking up the bombs pause the timer).

Is there some problems? I couldn't find any options to adjust sound and music. At some places the music was very silent and I miss the DX version when (although sharp sound) the game blasted Tal Tal Heights as I began traversing the mountain. To subdued here and no way other than to bring all sounds up. Another thing is the removal of the photograph mouse and hut (Dampé have taken his place). Gameplay wise it doesn't matter, and it was mostly something to sell the Game Boy Camera I gathered, but the scenes were funny and I would have loved to see the expressions up close that the photographs captured as well as keeping memories of the journey. 

I mean, look at them!

That is actually the only thing I miss in the game. Well, besides the heart container I gotta missed from a boss, cause I was one short and I had to go through all the dungeons again to be sure and I couldn't find it so I think that implies that if you don't get it it's gone for that playthrough. Which is weird (I suspect the angler fish to be the culprit). I would wish they remade the Oracle games as well in this engine since it looks amazing and the improvements to gameplay is fantastic and the reason I would probably prefer this version over DX. 

Castlevania II: Simon's Quest (Switch)

Only a woman can break his spell
Pure in heart who will offer herself
To Nosferatu

The second game in the series and takes place 7 years after the first where Simon has to travel the land of Transylvania in search of Dracula's relics spread out in different mansions in order to summon Dracula and kill him of and stop the curse that have been laid on Simon. In parts I actually like this game more than the first, mostly since I can see that if I had the game as a kid I might been able to win it. First of it's "open world", go where you want if you can handle the enemies. Secondly, it introduced RPG elements like EXP and levels rewarding defeating enemies so you can take more damage and survive the harsher environments. Thirdly, you can permanently upgrade your weapons and buy helping aids like laurels. And you can choose between your subweapons freely. All that makes it more likely that I could have won the game. Also the relics give Simon different abilities, of course better used in later games like Symphony of the Night and Harmony of Dissonance.

That said, there are problems with the game, better articulated by the AVGN, but take the cryptic nature of the crystals you carry with you and where to use them. I can see certain hints in the village, but the translation butchered parts of them and the other part is that the game gives itself an excuse to lie to the player with the corruption of Dracula. Still, with pen and paper I feel one should be able to do it. This time I even got the best ending that is determined by how many day/night cycles you go through before finishing of Dracula. To do this I skipped picking up certain upgrades for the whip since I didn't have enough hearts passing through (hearts are both the EXP and currency, also, after a certain level-threshold weaker enemies don't give EXP). That made traversing certain mansions and areas harder, but I still made it. The reward was a nice ending cutscene with Simon kneeling before the grave of Dracula and when the night comes, Dracula's hand raises from the grave.

THE SLEEPER HAS AWAKENED!

Music is decent, not many tracks at all. Hardly any bosses which feels like they run out of time implementing since shouldn't there be a boss at every mansion? And I think you can skip one boss since it doesn't do anything other than give you a certain subweapon and doesn't even block the way to the relic of the mansion. Like my fascination for Zelda II I probably would play this game more often than the other games in the series for the NES. First time playing it was the Wii Virtual Console, and I got it for Wii U and 3DS as well. Interesting that it is seen as a bad game, even though it pretty much laid the foundation for the GBA-games that I recall where loved by most people. I've seen Egoraptors point on that as well, and I can see that it might have some coverage, but still.