NSO Retro: Fire Emblem (GBA)

As someone who loved the Advance Wars games on the GBA, it’s weird that I never played Fire Emblem which is, more or less, a fantasy version of Advance Wars. Well . . . sort of. Like Advance Wars it’s a turn based tactical strategy game in which you move your units across a map to engage and destroy enemy units. But unlike AW, your units in Fire Emblem are named charterers and if one falls in battle, you don’t get them back.

I didn’t know that going into FE so when I lost two of my characters in an early battle, I just thought they’d re-spawn and be available for the next. But that’s not how it works. Even key story characters can ‘die’ – well, they get ‘wounded’ which means they’re still around for cutscenes, but not for battles. It certainly made things a little tricky for me over the next few missions because I only had a limited number of characters to work with.

You do get access to new characters fairly regularly as you progress so if one does fall, you won’t ever find yourself totally short, not unless you’re really reckless in your play. Fire Emblem encourages a more slow, methodical approach to its battles where retreating to heal or protect is as important as attacking the enemy,

You’ll also want to make use of the terrain and the various defensive bonuses it can provide. Placing a unit in a fort, for example, not only gives it a defence boost but allows it to automatically regenerate health between turns. Like AW, your units perform best when matched against units of an opposing class, although in FE, your weapon type is also a key factor.

Weapons also break after a set number of uses, so it’s also important to ensure you purchase spares or upgraded versions whenever you have the opportunity. By fighting in battles your characters can also level up, and by obtaining certain items you can upgrade their class to a more powerful type.

Every ‘chapter’ in the game which advances the story is another battle on a new map and the game does a good job of mixing up the locations. The first ten or so chapters is a self-contained story that serves as an extended tutorial, although characters that feature throughout this first ‘act’ do reappear later.

So far, so enjoyable. I was having a great time with Fire Emblem because it was, more less, a fantasy Advance Wars. But the deeper I got into the game, the more problems I began to encounter. The first is the weapon / item management system which becomes a little tedious as you need to keep track of all your characters, their weapon types and replacements.

There’s not always vendors available to purchase new gear on a map, so you’ll sometimes be forced to spend several turns on a map where one is available simply purchasing and (slowly) re-equipping your characters. Like I said, FE encourages slow, methodical play – but the further you go and the more challenging things get, it feels like your progression is reduced to a crawl.

It’s easy to lose even your strongest units as the enemy – which always outnumbers you – often sends every unit within range to target one of yours whilst ignoring everyone else. And even the strongest unit can’t necessarily withstand several attacks on the same turn. That means that you’ll often need to ‘bait’ enemy units away and tackle them one at a time. And in the later chapters this does result in the game becoming a bit of a grind to get through.

The worst example is probably the mission where you’re required to kill about 40 enemy units to win, on a map that continually triggers a blizzard which means you can’t move any unit more than one or two spaces per turn. Oh, and if, like me, you didn’t bring a rogue, you’ll discover that the map doesn’t have enough keys to open the doors necessary to progress meaning you’ll have to restart the entire thing and lose more than 50 minutes of tedious grind. F**K

The game is also, frankly, too long. Advance Wars knew when to wrap things up, but Fire Emblem just keeps going. At one point I thought the game was ending, but when it continued on, I discovered I had another 6 or 7 chapters to go. I had to take an extended break from the game and come back to it before slogging my way through the next few missions but at that point, I was so sick of how slow it was and bored by the story that I just watched the last couple of missions on YouTube to see how it ends.

I also wasn’t a fan of how much the game hides things from you. There are so many characters, items and weapons that you only get access to if you ‘visit’ – an action you can perform on the battle map – the right towns or homes, or ‘talk’ to certain characters with certain other characters to get them to join you. I discovered there are even hidden ‘shops’ that look like trees? But why?

Fire Emblem is a game that deliberately tries to makes things difficult for the player, but not in a good way. The challenge should come from figuring out the best strategy to defeat the enemy on each map, not using trial and error to locate important items or characters, or spending ten minutes shuffling your characters around as you trade replacement weapons.

The actual tactical strategy part of the game is fun, but it’s all the convoluted systems around that which kind of spoil it over time. Overall though, despite losing patience with it, I still had a good time playing Fire Emblem and it’s made me interested in checking out a more recent entry in the series, so you can expect a review of Fire Emblem: Three Houses on the Switch sometime in the near future.

Now Playing: Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection

Marvel vs. Capcom Fighting Collection is fantastic. It includes every title you’d want as part of what you might call the ‘golden age’ of Marvel / Capcom crossover fighting games. It also includes The Punisher (?) . . . which I’ll talk about later.

Marvel vs. Capcom 2 was one of my favourite games on the Dreamcast, so when I saw it included as part of this collection, I was happy to pick it up for MvC2 alone. But the collection also includes X-Men: Children of the Atom and Marvel Super Heroes – two games I loved playing on the Sega Saturn back in the day.

And then we have X-Men vs. Street Fighter which I’d always wanted to play, but it never received an EU release on the Saturn. And to round things off we have Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter & Marvel vs. Capcom 1, neither of which I’d played.

Knowing that if I started with MvC2 I might never get around to playing the others, I sensibly decided to leave that one until last to give every other game a fair shake in release order. And whilst MvC2 with its ridiculously comprehensive roster (56 characters!) does make the other games feel a tad redundant, I’m pleased to say that each and every one still holds up well on their own and are all worth playing.

I recall X-Men: Children of the Atom being tough back in the day and I still find it tough now. Maybe it’s just me, but COTA feels a lot tougher to get through than any of the other games in this collection – and the final Magneto fight still gives me no end of trouble. It’s got the most limited roster and mechanics, but there’s a pure simplicity about it that still makes it enjoyable to play.

Marvel Super Heroes also suffers a little with its limited roster, but it makes up for it with its unique ‘Infinity Stone’ system that lets you collect and utilise the various infinity stones throughout your fights – each stone can trigger a different boost, and you can even steal stones from your opponent. The final fight against Thanos is also very fun.

X-Men vs. Street Fighter is just as good as I’d always hoped. It has a great roster and introduces the ‘team’ system for the first time. It feels great to play, looks gorgeous and features some of the best stages and pre/post battle scenes in the collection – although the final fight against Apocalypse can be a tad annoying.

As someone who was always more of an X-Men fan than a fan of Marvel in general, Marvel Super Heroes vs. Street Fighter doesn’t excite me as much as its predecessor. It’s still fun to play because mechanically speaking, it’s basically the same game, I just think it has the weakest available roster – or rather, the least interesting roster to me.

So what about Marvel vs. Capcom 1? Is there any reason at all to play this over its sequel? Well, certainly not in terms of roster but then no game here can compete with MvC2 with regard to that. But it does do a couple of unique things that I think makes it still worth playing today.

The first is the ‘support partner’ system. You only pick two fighters for your team, and the third is randomly selected every round so you never know who you’re going to get. You can’t control them directly – they only serve in a support role. It’s a neat little twist that’s unique to MvC1. I also really like the final fight against Onslaught.

Marvel vs. Capcom 2 is a fantastic game with a fantastic roster of just about everyone you could possibly want, and you can now pick three characters per team that allows you to put together a crazy number of combinations. I do have some gripes, however. The first is that the 3D effect stages don’t hold up as well now as they did back in the day.

It also feels that in order to accommodate three characters per team, they streamlined certain actions (there’s no light attacks, for example) and cut back on the animations / effects. I also think the final boss fight is a little weak. Abyss isn’t very interesting in terms of visual design, or fun to actually fight.

And finally we have The Punisher . . . I don’t really know why this is here as it’s not a fighting game but a kind of bad Streets of Rage style side scrolling beat ‘em up. It’s not terrible, it’s just rather mediocre. I blasted through it for the achievements and I know I’ll never bother with it again.

Overall this Fighting Collection is pretty great. The Punisher inclusion is weird – but whatever. Everything is worth playing, even if MvC2 somewhat overshadows everything else thanks to its massive roster. I like the visual options to tweak each game, but I do wish there was a little more bonus material for the collection. You get the music and some artwork but it’s pretty basic stuff. The training mode is a very nice (and surprising) addition though.

There’s also only one save slot for the entire collection. One! It’s not a major issue, just kind of stupid. It does feel like this collection was knocked out a little on the cheap, but I guess that’s to be expected. What really matters though are the games and that’s exactly what this collection delivers. If you’re an old fan like me or even if you’ve never tried these games before then be sure to check it out.

8/10

Avowed: First Impressions

I was wary of picking up Avowed at release for a couple of reasons. The first is that I’ve not played the Pillars of Eternity games so I was totally unfamiliar with the world I’d be stepping into. The second and more important reason was that I really wasn’t a fan of The Outer Worlds which, despite liking the setting, I found the general plot and quests dreadfully boring, the characters dull and/or insufferable and the gameplay to be serviceable at best.

But after seeing some footage of Avowed during its ‘early access’ release I decided to take a chance and pick it up and after putting about 10 or so hours into the game, I’m really glad I did. First of all, the game does look gorgeous. It’s bright and colourful and there’s a nice attention to detail all throughout the environment.

The game also does a decent job of easing you into its world – there’s a helpful pop-up glossary you can access during conversations if any words, phrases or names elude you. It’s not perfect because stopping mid-conversation to read additional text does interrupt the flow of things – but the game carefully front loads all of the important stuff early on, so it’s something you just have to get out of the way.

It’s still too early for me to talk about the general plot, but I’m intrigued by what I’ve seen and I’m enjoying my interactions with the characters I’ve met and the writing for the small number of quests I’ve completed thus far. I only have one companion at the moment – Kai – voiced by the same actor as Garrus from Mass Effect. And everyone loved Garrus, so it’s not a surprise he’s one of the first characters you’ll meet.

But I think I’d like Kai even without that voice. If anything, I’d say the voice (initially) detracts a little from the character – at least for me – because it’s hard to disassociate it from Garrus and see Kai as their own, unique character. But you do get there, after some time and some more conversations.

What’s really surprised me about Avowed though is how good it feels to play. Some of the early footage made the combat look a little rough, but I’m pleased to say the final game has some of the best first person combat I’ve played. The game does a good job of dropping all the various weapon types into your hands early on so you can get a feel for what you like.

There’s no ‘classes’ as such, just stats and skill trees relating to melee weapons, ranged weapons and magic, but you can mix and match as you please. And everything feels fun to use. There’s a nice sense of impact and feedback to attacks whatever you pick. It actually makes it hard deciding what to stick with and upgrade.

I’m mostly sticking to magic because that feels really good and I like how the spell system works, but I also have an alternative weapon set I like to switch to with a 2 handed rifle – I’m a mage who also likes to shoot and it’s great that the game gives me the freedom and flexibility within its skills and stats to let me do that. This is one of the those games where I’m actively seeking out enemies because it’s just so fun to fight.

I also really like the exploration aspect. The ‘zone’ I’m currently in isn’t massive, but there’s a lot of places to see and explore and every time I’ve seen something that looked interesting no matter how small, I’ve always found some treasure tucked away. I also love how there’s no stamina for sprinting, very generous fall damage (because there’s a fair amount of verticality to environments so you’ll be doing quite a bit of climbing as you explore) nicely spaced fast travel points, and the ability to send items directly to your camp stash.

I’ve still got a long way to go with Avowed but I like what I’ve seen so far. Hopefully I’ll have a review up next month.

Now Playing: Command & Conquer Remastered

This Command & Conquer Remastered Collection features Tiberian Dawn and Red Alert, both of which I reviewed back in 2016 as part of the C&C Ultimate Collection, so if you’re interested in my thoughts on each title you can check them out here. That’s why this review isn’t so much about the individual games, but the overall package.

And as a package, this Remastered Collection is excellent. Not only do you get both original campaigns, you get a complete campaign list with all branching missions available. You also get all expansion missions, previously console exclusive missions and the fun, not so serious ‘themed’ mini-campaigns. In other words, you get every official mission ever available on any platform for both games. You also get a handy Map Editor and mod support.

In terms of bonus content you get a customisable jukebox so you can play I AM A MECHANICAL MAN on a loop until you go insane, and an extensive collection of behind the scenes videos from when they were recording the live-action mission briefings.

There are some quality of life improvements to the UI and controls – being able to queue unit builds is a very welcome change. And everything is fully customisable so you can pick and choose between legacy and modern options as you please. They also added a skirmish mode for both games.

In terms of the visual upgrades, both games now look fantastic. I didn’t fully appreciate just what a great job they’d done until I flipped back and forth between the original and remastered visuals – which is a toggle I’ll always love in remastered editions. The new visuals capture the spirit of the originals perfectly. Buildings, units and terrain all look great and you can even zoom right in to scrutinise the extra details.

The only real criticism I have of this collection is how they upscaled the live-action or CGI videos. Some of them look kind of terrible. It’s a shame when every other aspect of this remaster from a visual point of view is so perfectly done. But it seems like they really did the best they could with what they had.

Overall, this Remastered Collection is simply the best way to experience these two classic games. Its a comprehensive collection in terms of content, it provides all the modern control customisation you’d want and delivers fantastic in-game visuals. If you’re an old fan or even if you’ve never touched this series before, then be sure to check it out.

8/10

Suburban Killbot: Steam Replay 2024

In 2024 I played 21 games on Steam unlocking 486 achievements. 38% of these games were new releases, 62% were released in the last 1-7 years and 0% were released 8 or more years ago. This is a slight change to last year – 35 games, 747 achievements, 31% new, 66% recent, and 3% old.

Only 4% of my total playtime was spent in VR games in 2024 compared to 2% last year, but with a new Quest 3 and several VR games I’m interested in playing releasing towards the end of 2024, I expect this percentage to increase by next year.

32% of my time was spent playing games with a controller. The top 3 were Dragon Age: The Veilguard, Forza Horizon 5 and Hellblade 2. This was an increase from 15% last year.

My longest daily streak in 2024 was 42 days from Sun, April 28th to Sun, June 9th in which I played 9 different games. In 2023 it was a ridiculous 107 days and 16 different games.

My overall top 3 most played games by % of playtime were Starfield (21%) Dragon Age: The Veilguard (15%) and Horizon: Forbidden West (13%).

November was the busiest month with 14% of my total playtime, and December was the slowest with only 2%.

Now Playing: Balatro

Balatro is a rogue-like deck building game and if you follow this blog you’ll know that’s not the kind of thing I usually play. But after seeing so much praise for the game online in ‘Best of 2024’ lists and GOTY nominations, I guess I just wanted to see what all the fuss was about.

Even so, I probably wouldn’t have picked it up if it also wasn’t themed around another game I know and like to play – poker. So Balatro may not be my typical type of game – I’m not usually interested in either rogue-likes or deck builders – but the poker angle intrigued me.

You begin by choosing a deck of cards and are tasked with building poker hands to score chips. There are three ‘blinds’ (Small, Big & Boss) to each ‘ante’ of difficulty and each requires an increasing number of chips to progress. You can only play a set number of hands per blind, so the goal is to put together hands that offer the most chips per play.

Individual cards offer a base chip score, and the poker hands offer a base multiplication effect determined by the rarity of the hand. So far, so simple – and after a few failed attempts to progress beyond the third or fourth ante I must admit I was wondering if it just wasn’t a game for me . . . but then things began to click into place.

Because Balatro is all about multipliers (mults) and modifiers that allow you to massively and sometimes ridiculously increase your chip score per hand. You do this by purchasing items at a shop between blinds. Items that let you increase the base mult of specific poker hands, for example, or the mult of a specific card. You can also find and stack ‘Joker’ cards that offer a wide variety of chip boosting effects.

And everything stacks. It just keeps stacking! And you want to find ways to make it stack even higher so you can earn even more ridiculous multipliers. And this is where I went from feeling Balatro might not be for me, to playing Balatro for hours at a time.

There’s something very satisfying about embarking on a run and seeing a strategy pay off. About seeing all those mults align. Once you hit ante 8 you win the run, but you can continue on in an ‘endless’ mode if you choose. And once you do start a new run, everything resets.

So yes, it’s possible to ‘beat’ Balatro fairly easily if you go on a good run, but the game offers multiple decks with their own modifiers as well as harder difficulty options (stakes). And, being a rogue-like, there’s a heavy dose of randomisation to every run so you never know exactly what kind of cards, jokers or modifiers you might get access to as you progress. It’s very much a game of making the best of what you’ve got and what you’ve got changes every run.

Of course, the flip side to this is that some runs just suck balls. I’ve had some runs where I’ve struggled to get through the first couple of antes or even failed them because I’d had such a terrible initial selection of modifiers or jokers to work with. Other times I’ve had runs going super smooth, only to hit a randomised Boss blind that’s the complete antithesis of the strategy I’m relying on.

Because you do kind of have to find and stick to a single strategy each run to maximise your score. Runs aren’t really long enough to give you time to adjust your strategy or spread your mults too thin, especially not when you’re deep into the run. That – and the unavoidable repetition – is the frustrating side of Balatro, but I guess that’s the frustrating side of most rogue-likes.

Overall, I’ve really enjoyed my time with Balatro. I can’t say I’ve found it as addictive as people online like to suggest, but considering it’s not the kind of game I typically play, I’d say it did a pretty great job of hooking me in. It’s fairly cheap too, so there’s no reason not to give it a spin.

8/10