GC: "Having been a card-carrying RPG nerd for over two decades, I can count on one hand the number of console and handheld RPGs that were nearly too difficult to finish. Seventh Saga confounded me for years (I finally sat down and finished it a few years back), Phantasy Star II's first person dungeons made me insane, the Cave to Rhone segment in Dragon Warrior II nearly gave me a stroke, and...that's about it. Sure there are side quests that are insanely difficult (or extraneous challenges like beating Star Ocean II's Indelacio with the limiter off) but when it comes to core game experiences, I've not run into many RPGs that I couldn't handle. I can now add another entry to the "very difficult" list."
411mania talks about this week's game releases. Highlights include Let's Tap, Fate/unlimited codes PORTABLE, Class of Heroes, Flower, Sun, and Rain, and Ghostbusters: The Video Game.
GamresInfo writes: "I remember all those years ago when I attempted to play a very old-school role-playing game. It was Wizardry V for the Super Nintendo. And it was difficult figuring out how to do anything and everything. Plus, did I mention how brutal and boring it was? Yeah, it felt like a complex computer game. It wasn't until my teenage years that I played the Eye of the Beholder - a series *seriously* based on the first edition of Dungeons and Dragons - on my dad's old work computer."
Gambus Kahn writes: Old-school, what does this mean to you as a gamer? Does it mean inferior graphics, simple midi music, innocence, simplistic game control, or was it the need to strive in order to survive. I think that many people who are non-gamers look back at old-school gaming and automatically assume that simplistic controls equals easy. However, enthusiast gamers know better than that, we remember the days of learning every single element of a game, because it was just the only way to survive. When I picked up my copy of the Dark Spire, I pretty much knew what to expect, old-school gameplay combined with old-school graphics and aesthetics. What I didn't expect was how The Dark Spire would change me as a gamer, it wasn't just the splash of nostalgia that this game conveys but it reawakened the need to strive, the need to survive, and the need to become fully involved and become one with the game in order to even advance.
