Revisiting Resident Evil 4

I have a complicated history with Resident Evil 4. For a lot of people it was an instant hit, for me it was a frustrating experience. I didn’t “get” the appeal of the game for several years and only after several attempts, and because of the fact that the game influenced so many others, which gave me necessary experience to understand what it as going for, I started enjoying it. I still have plenty of criticism towards it, mind you, but nowadays replaying RE4 is an enjoyable experience for me. And I’ve replayed it many times over many different platforms, including this 2014 “Ultimate HD Edition”, which remains the best version of the game to play.

In fact, the main reason for my revisit this time was the fact that the version got even better due to fan work – I wanted to finally experience out the fantastic RE4HD mod, that more than lived up to my expectations. And in addition to that, wanted to have some fun with the recently released randomizer mod that adds some fun chaos to the overall experience. As I was about to play, the RE4 Remake got officially announced as well, so I decided that it might be the best time to revisit the original. And even in 2022 it’s still an extremely fun game… that really hates you.

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Happy about: Rogue Legacy 2

So, I don’t really like roguelikes and roguelites. I’m not fond of randomly or procedurally generated content and would always take a wonderfully hand crafted shorter experience over it. But there are occasional projects that grab my attention. And the original Rogue Legacy did grab my attention. There was something interesting and fresh about the idea (quite new at the time) of mixing the “fresh run” nature of roguelikes with permanent upgrades, plus there was enough metroidvania-ish charm to the exploration of the locations to get me interested, even if said locations were randomly generated each run.

Yet, a lot of games since then have done the same and combined the exact same basic concepts and I’ve not enjoyed any of the ones that I’ve tried. Thankfully, Rogue Legacy 2 turned out to be fun.

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O tempora: Final Fantasy VI (Pixel Remaster)

O tempora is a series of retrospective posts where I play games from ages before to see if they stood the test of time.

Well, the Pixel Remaster journey ends with Final Fantasy VI. It’s almost a shame, really, as this collection has been so wonderfully made that I can only hope more classic titles are given this treatment. But at least this collection ends with one hell of a game.

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Few notes on: Videogame music 2021

This time my yearly look at the game soundtracks was even later than I originally planned. But what can you do, when Russia invades your country your priorities change.

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Thoughts on: Scarlet Nexus

Playing Scarlet Nexus was a bit of a rollercoaster. It looks great, it has nice tunes and its combat system looks stylish and fun. But then, the more of it I’ve played, the more I grew frustrated and bored. And in the end, even though I’m a huge fan of games where you have two playable characters going through two parallel storylines, I couldn’t keep on playing with the second character. I just didn’t have it in me to play more of it. Yet, what a fascinating project this is.

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Disapprove: Wasteland 3 (with DLCs)

Even though I’ve still never gotten in the mood to try and conquer the original Wasteland, as with many other cRPGs of that era, I did enjoy Wasteland 2: Director’s Cut quite a lot. Back then I said that it didn’t feel like a Fallout game not because it couldn’t be one, but because it didn’t want to be one. It had its own take on a post-apocalyptic tactical turn-based RPG that still remains enjoyable today despite some flaws.

Wasteland 3 aims to be… different? Frankly, I’m not sure what it aims to be, but the result is not great.

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Happy about: Blasphemous

I’ve played Blasphemous about 2 years ago, just a few months after its initial release, and decided to stop my playthrough. As a fan of more exploration focused metroidvania titles, I didn’t gel well with the action focus of the game, especially since it was also going for the “Dark Souls inspired” challenge, seemingly. But a few months ago I’ve seen other people play it on streams and realized, that the game wasn’t exactly what I first thought it would be. So I decided to give it another go.

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O tempora: Final Fantasy V (Pixel Remaster)

O tempora is a series of retrospective posts where I play games from ages before to see if they stood the test of time.

Back when I was going on my Final Fantasy spree in the early 00s, trying to play all of the titles in the series, being late to the party myself, FF V left me conflicted. On one hand, I remember enjoying the vast majority of the game and the way the Jobs (character classes of FF series) were handled. On the other, I also remember serious difficulty bumps, most notable one being the final boss that I simply could not defeat no matter how hard I’ve tried, which lead to a long and exhausting grinding session, before I was finally able to finish the game. Yet, with recent years Final Fantasy V has become a very popular entry, leading to really cool charity events like Final Fantasy Four Job Fiesta, and I was curious about replaying the game myself.

Now with the Pixel Remaster version available, I was happy to see that my opinion on the game became more positive.

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