Combatribes (Arcade) - old arcade Double Dragon clone that’s unfortunately extremely unfair and limited. Very small but dense background stages, extremely difficult bosses and not a lot of variation in enemies. Probably took me 15 to 20 credits to finish.
Maybe only worth playing for the novelty of fighting a giant Native American boss in a baseball stadium stage. Also a shocking turn before the final boss.
The SNES version is better, it even has an actual story with cutscenes between stages and they made changes to the health system and stages later on(it’s different for the last few stages). It’s more fair than the arcade game as well.
Cross-posting from the discord:
Not really played much so far this year but after getting Balb to give Alishia Dragoon a play on his stream, I couldn’t resist giving it a play through myself as I hadn’t played it in a few years.
I played through Etrian Untold late too, and really enjoyed it. The new area they added in - I think it was called Gladsheim - complemented the adventure perfectly while also being an interesting dungeon with a new twist in every floor. The presentation is also top notch - excellent use of 3D to layer the menus, and it really added a sense of place when exploring dungeons.
If you haven’t played it yet, do check out Etrian Odyssey IV - it has the most inventive dungeon design in the series, and the world map itself is an enjoyable metagame dungeon where you have to plan your movement based on FOE behaviour and terrain. Unlike the other games in the series dungeons in IV can have varying amounts of floors and shapes, and they can even have several entrances from the world map! The only blight to IV is the unremarkable 3D in dungeons - it looks like a 2D image pushed into the background (Layered menus still look great). They’d improve upon that massively with Untold of course.
One of my favourite things about the series is the second-person narrative and minimal use of spoken dialogue, it really feels like an adventure where your imagination fills in the gaps.
Sounds so unique! Who is the developer?
Is it part of the SMT universe? Or am I thinking of something else?
I think the DS games were co-developed by Atlus and Lancarse (Lancarse also worked with Taito on Legend of Kage 2). The 3DS games were all internal Atlus as far as I know.
The map drawing aspects still make it feel unique, it’s a shame the series’ ambitions peaked with IV, but with 3DS on the way out it’ll also be interesting to see how they rethink it.
Here’s the navel exploration from EO III. This was expanded and became the world map (airship travel instead) in IV: https://youtu.be/RUlP2KNMgeo
I really need a better camera app for the iPhone for taking screenshots off a TV. lol!
They also didn’t spend much time on those static screens at the end of Streets of Rage 2, did they?
Mr. X is a pita.
Forgot to post this one from a week and a half ago. @Socksfelloff and I plowed through Contra 3.
TRY HARD MODE. No thanks! Lol
Funnily enough I started playing Contra 3 this week. I can’t get past the first level. It’s embarrassing how bad I am at the moment, and how tough it is, so mega kudos for completing it!
Need to properly put time in but Legend of Legacy is almost irritatingly addictive
I’m sure I could get there if I put enough time into it. I used to be insanely good at Contra 3, but struggled with a couple spots when we played recently. What a phenomenal game though.
Funny enough, Contra 3 and 4 are the only games in the series I’ve beat, despite owning the original on NES back in the day.
If you have trouble with the 1st level, I can’t imagine the later ones since they get really crazy!
Ah, cool, I beat Contra 1, Super C, Contra 3, 4 and Hard Corps as well. Oddly enough Contra 4 was the 1st Contra I owned.
