The worst ones are when you position yourself to avoid an attack but then they ice hockey track on to you to effectively force a perfect dodge or else you take damage regardless.

You had me at imsim and ropes. Please make this.

Basically all of the crystal equipment. That crystal sword in the albinauric village especially.

This was all after blitzing Max Payne 1/2 and Alan Wake 1/American Nightmare. Maybe I'll return to give Control a third chance but probably not until after Control 2 is out.

I ran into most of these problems myself + encountered a softlock that had me puzzling for a way out of a room for like 30 minutes when it was just bugged. I came back later after a patch that said it had improved texture streaming but then it was actually worse for me on my machine on any setting.

Probably doesn't actually count but the first thing that came into my mind that wasn't Pro Skater is Uniracers.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=El41...

Another great post. Very interesting to read your more in depth thoughts playing them now cross referencing them with mine playing these games as they came out one by one 15-10 years ago. If that hypothetical mod for 1 ever did materialize somehow I'd be curious to experience it.

In general I prefer minimalist interfaces and HUD elements. The closer you can get to ICO or Alan Wake 1 the better. But if you've made a game that's *about* the numbers in some way or another like a lot of JRPGs then there's no avoiding it and it's just a different kind of fun/engagement.

If you at all like Dragon Ball I gotta recommend the Dragon Ball Z PS2 games. Particularly Budokai 3 and Budokai Tenkaichi 2 or 3. Not your typical fighting games but they've got RPG mechanics to customize every fighter, secrets and unlockables, and branching paths in the story modes.

Also they're still not even selling it again yet you have to have already owned it. At least for the moment. It'll probably go back up soon but at this point given it took them years just to hack off the infected limb I doubt an official multiplayer restoration is in the cards. We'll see.

I'm reading in the Steam reviews that their method of getting rid of GFWL was just to say fuck it and completely axe the multiplayer as well. So its effectively an offline only game on PC now and apparently this even broke old saves. Which sucks a lot. I was hoping to play this once it was restored.

This setup is gorgeous I gotta know the settings behind this.

I was playing Seamless Co-Op earlier and had this happen which reminded me of this thread. This was from a single soldier in the scorpion catacombs. Earlier in the run I noticed I got two instances of a smithing stone from a Messmer Soldier like George also. I didn't manage to snap that one though.

Sorry btw if you'd rather not have unsolicited advice or anything. I just got real excited thinking about this one in particular, I love the accumulating blood then washing it off for a buff idea and definitely agree that this sword could use the extra juice. Extremely hyped for the release of this.

One way to twist this into an attack Ash would be to use the Stamp art. It has that opening stance which has tons of poise and defense, but then can transition into an attack. And to make it fancy you could have it so the sweep sprays out all the blood as an AoE while also using up the blood tokens

This also makes me think about how DQ5 expresses multiple major story beats solely through the tone of world map exploration. Making the player lost, taking away or adding allies, suddenly discovering new ways to traverse, finding a specific tile you remember from before. All work to tell the story.

I haven't played DQ3, but I did play DQ5 at a young age and fully went through it again a few years ago, and it has a very similar moment to this with a scripted battle. Its one of the most impactful moments in an already consistently emotionally charged game. Its a shame to see that "art" be lost.

Can confirm its been like this since at least 2016. I'm glad the habit never died. I even saw it once in the Elden Ring DLC IIRC.