Hottest SNES Game (Ro64)

[Büge]

Now you're just arguing SimAntics.

[Niku]

I missed Breath of Fire 2 despite being a big fan of the first game, and have never gotten around to going back to it. Blackthorne falls into that same area as Flashback for me. Demon's Crest is one of the best and most beautiful games on the system. SimAnt gave Buge the opening he needed.

Gotta go with the red guys.

[beatbandito]

Now you're just arguing SimAntics.

With this pun the contract has been signed. When the day of your death comes, it will be by my hand.

[Classic]

I missed Breath of Fire 2 despite being a big fan of the first game, and have never gotten around to going back to it.

You're not missing much. Like NWN2, basically all of its concepts have been done better elsewhere and I don't know if its localization's... peculiarities... can make it worth revisiting outside of skimming an LP.

[François]

Demon's Crest is one of the best and most beautiful games on the system.

You usually wouldn't expect that a game about greedy demons in hell alternately humiliating and murdering each other would have an art direction that's equal parts tense, majestic and sorrowful, but clearly someone at Capcom thought otherwise and we're all the richer for it.

[Rico]

I missed Breath of Fire 2 despite being a big fan of the first game, and have never gotten around to going back to it.

You're not missing much. Like NWN2, basically all of its concepts have been done better elsewhere and I don't know if its localization's... peculiarities... can make it worth revisiting outside of skimming an LP.

2 has a certain charm. 1 isn't worth playing but I'd rather play 2 and skip 3. 4 and 5 are different enough from the first 3 I'd consider them separately.

[Friday]

2 has a certain charm. 1 isn't worth playing but I'd rather play 2 and skip 3. 4 and 5 are different enough from the first 3 I'd consider them separately.

You and I are on the same wavelength here. I'd also like to add that 2 has Katt AND Deis AND Best Nina and no other game in the world can boast that.

There's also this:

[Mothra]

Demon's Crest is a little too dear to my heart not to take this round handily.

[Classic]

I just spent like 45 minutes of my life ranting about dumb videogames again. Maybe it should get moved. Maybe I should just delete it because I talk about gross teenage fixations that I'm pretty sure no one wanted shared beyond my previous blurb.

[Breath of Fire] 2 has a certain charm. 1 isn't worth playing but I'd rather play 2 and skip 3. 4 and 5 are different enough from the first 3 I'd consider them separately.

3 has such a "unique" pacing that I think slogging through it is worthwhile. Or rather...

3, like NWN2's main campaign has this problem where shit becomes a slog. In NWN2 they need to get you from level 5 or so, when you first visit Neverwinter, to level 10, when you can start reasonably challenging the foes they want to start flinging at you. So there's this weird "filler arc" where the party goes and is muscle for a gang (or they work for the shadow thieves HEY-O! TOPICAL!) and genocides some orcs to accumulate the XP to hit 10. They drip feed you some NPCs (I guess Casavir is less super-paladin-boring if you play a female PC?) but you feel it's a slog and there's nothing about it that makes you feel like you're taking initiative or being clever. NWN2 throws all of its strengths out the window to show off its greatest weaknesses. Same for the final dungeon slog, but Obsidian never seems to be able to make final dungeons more than a final gauntlet to see if you're worthy to enjoy their glorious denouement.

3 starts with what's very much a set of tutorial dungeons and concludes that segment by stripping you of all NPC support. Then your standard revenge/seeking your NPC friends takes a sharp left when a few chance encounters go pear-shaped and you wind up in what feels like a chaotic cat-and-mouse against foes that you've got no business tangling with, until running is no longer an option and you realize, "O, I am not as weak as I was 5-8 hours ago. I can win this desperate battle!" And it feels good.
... And then... Stuff happens. What, I don't really remember because it's kind of a boring slog. Like, I remember a few neat vignettes, but how they connect to one another? I'm at a total loss. It tries to do the World of Ruin timeskip without the ruining stuff to really refresh the map (though if you really cared about McNeil town NPC 8, they will probably say something new or will have aged) and it falls flat because it doesn't let you choose which plot threads or party members to follow up with. Also Momo is a mad-scientist/grad student who studies magical explosions. She fights with a bazooka and a complete lack of give-a-fuck.

Its master system and dragon system are pretty neat. Which is a definite advantage it has over 2. 2 doesn't have very much in the way of character customization. Although its 8 supporting character roster does mean your party makeup can be varied.

I'd also like to add that 2 has Katt AND Deis AND Best Nina and no other game in the world can boast that.

I am being v.v.gross on this one, but 2 is a truly wicked attack on a 12 year old and its marks on my psyche are intense and problematic. I still recommend consuming it in LP form over playing it personally because it is a mid-90's JRPG and unless you're using the GBA version, I think the game has some grind problems (not as sloggy as 3, I think). But christ. These are character art pages from that LP which means there are some spoilers for that LP in the posts. Katt/Lin, (Best)Nina, Deis, not to mention the Shaman system and some of the very o-i-had-not-considered-the-appeal-of-that-in-my-12-years-on-earth-but-now-i-get-it super-successful fusions. Also, they make the obvious fusion sex jokes.

Deis is basically always characterized in an awesome way, and Lin/Katt is some manner of awesome whenever she appears (I thought she was great in Dragon Quarter anyway), but Nina can sometimes have a problem of being a little too... Damselly maybe? (come to think of it, one of the early scenes in 4 with Nina made me uncomfortable to the point I didn't have the stomach to continue with the story.) But in 2, (and 1- sorta) she earns it by being a credible badass when you first meet her, both in story scenes and in battle.

The main character's dragon powers are dramatically toned down, which makes how hard the game talks up the dragon clan kind of a tough sell. There are lots of little minigames and systems that are neat, but never quite go anywhere, even though they're compelling until you realize their limitations. The township minigame gets reincarnated in later games as the fairy colony, but the original is probably the best, in spite of its weird limitations.

[Esperath]

Also Momo is a mad-scientist/grad student who studies magical explosions. She fights with a bazooka and a complete lack of give-a-fuck.

This is pretty much all I remember from BoF3. That and the fuckin' "follow the red star through this fucking empty-ass desert forever to get to the endgame."

[Rico]

Also, "try to play BoF3, get to ghost house, remember why you stopped."

[Friday]

Demon's Crest at 10, SimAnt barely edging out Bof2, 5 to 4.

Advancing: Demon's Crest, SimAnt
Eliminated: Bof2, Blackthorne

Since nobody else has talked about Blackthorne, I'll add that it's a pretty kickass game and you can press Y to shoot behind you and no, there is no better "I am a fucking badass" move coded into any videogame to date.

Next up:

51. EVO
3. Yoshi's Island
40. TMNT: Turtles in Time
61. Final Fantasy Mystic Quest

[Healy]

Nobody else is voting for Yoshi's Island? It's one of the best platformers I've ever played, and also one of the prettiest.

[Niku]

This one is kind of a runaway for me. Turtles in Time is a beautiful port of the arcade brawler and has some great digitized voice samples for maximum amusement but at the end of the day is an SNES port of an arcade brawler which are always compromised by their player count. Mystic Quest is maligned for a reason despite being a fairly solid time with some wicked tunes. EVO is bizarre in all the best ways a game can be, a perfect example of the sort of middle ware game design that has disappeared from the console space and moved onto Steam where the sum of its parts make for a far greater whole and also you can be a flying dinosaur stretchy necked monster that turns into a beautiful mermaid. Yoshi's Island: fuck Jeff Gerstmann.

EVO and Yoshi.

[Classic]

I think EVO gets in just for being so ambitious and weird.
I'm sure there have been spiritual successors to EVO, at the very least, there have been on the narrative end.

Oddly, of the four games listed, EVO is the only one I didn't have a copy of in my youth.

[nosimpleway]

I think EVO gets in just for being so ambitious and weird.
I'm sure there have been spiritual successors to EVO, at the very least, there have been on the narrative end.

SNES-era Enix just looooooved the creation-of-the-world AU history plot for their games. EVO was just one of many of those.

Functionally, I remember being pretty excited for Cubivore when it was announced, then it dropped off the radar completely. Apparently it was released but not very fun? idk

[Classic]

I think of those as Quintet games more than Enix games.
And according to wiki, EVO wasn't done by that house. O well.

[Friday]

Yoshi's barely squeaks by over TMNT.

Advancing: EVO, Yoshi's Island
Eliminated: TMNT, FFMQ

Next up:

30. Out of this World
23. Killer Instinct
16. Mortal Kombat II
14. Final Fight

HRUP. EXCELLENT. C-C-C-C-C-COMBO BREAKER.

...

MA-SUUUU-BA

[Rico]

Final Fight felt obvious. Flipped a coin between MK2 and KI and KI won.

[beatbandito]

Who votes for the SNES ports of fighting games?