DQXI Southern Heliodor: Most Illuminating

You can get to the Manglegrove by heading south from the Heliodorian Foothills, and there's nothing particularly onerous on the way there. So now... here.

....Doesn't seem so bad out here.

One of the first things you spot out here is a merchant, and he has this interesting thing for sale. The Boomerang is an improvement in weapon quality for Erik, and impressively (considering my reticence for purchasing gear thus far), I deem this worth my money.

Oh, hi, Smog. He's back.

Well, if this isn't the worst combination around.

Wow. We're starting to really feel our relative power level. At least we have plenty of healing.

Erik has finally got enough SP to get his first skill- Half-Inch. Stealing common drops from enemies is real good.

And with Erdward's Flame Slash and Erik's Half-Inch combining, a new Pep Power has opened up to us- Itemised Kill. Itemised Kill is basically Half-Inch, but it does damage, and instead of either "steal common item if succeed, nothing if fail", it's "steal rare item if succeed, common item if fail". This thing could come in handy against the right enemy, and it's why I packed Flame Slash.

DQXI Downtown Heliodor: Brothers In Arms

You know, when I say "we get thrown in the dungeon", I don't mean "literally".

I mean... what else am I supposed to say? I come from Dundrasil and floated to Cobblestone in a basket?

Hendrik, "...investigation" is not an investigation.

Sounds to me like you won't be doing a lot of judgement. Sounds more like you've already made your choice.

Achievement unlocked: Get arrested! Truly, what RPG is complete without a visit to the slammer?

DQXI Heliodor: A Luminary's Welcome

Welcome to the first overworld map!

Now that we have a map, I can show it off! I'm surprisingly bad at being in the habit of doing it, and it's not like the map is that interesting...

If you push the Y Button, you can get some useful information up here.

Maps of Nearby Areas... well, it's not something I use, but if you're easily lost and/or a better visual navigator, this might help jog your memory on navigation.

Local Monsters tells you what monsters it is possible to find in an area, regardless of what circumstances they require to appear in, as well as having exactly the correct number of "blank spaces" of enemies- at this stage in the game, I will find enough enemies on this map to fill the ??? spaces, no more, no less. There are caveats, of course, but the information you're not getting won't influence your strategies in any significant way.

This one I really don't get. Purple dots for Quests are labelled by default. Perhaps if you want to make sure you've accounted for them all?

"Sparkly Spots" tells you where all the blue shinies are, although it won't tell you what they are until you've found them. Once it does, though, it will also tell you when the sparkly spots have regenerated and you can harvest them again for more resources. If you know where to find what you need, this is a good way to help you stay on top of the timing of its regeneration.

Scattered across Erdrea, usually outside towns, are horse hailers. It's literally as good as they say- use one, and you're instantly put on your horse. This is the only way to spawn her if she goes missing, to note.

We already have our horse, though, so off into the world we go. "Parting Place" intrigues me, honestly.

Now THIS is Legendary: Echoes of an Elusive Age S

Attract cutscene here

Ah, nothing beats the Overture in getting the hype blood flowing. Welcome to Dragon Quest: one of the very first RPGs ever, codifier for so many of the fundamentals of the genre, and home sweet home for any RPG veteran looking to get back to the basics every once in a while. Dragon Quest isn't a particularly serious story- if you're looking for goofy puns, you're in luck- but it has spent thirty years refining its craft to hit its one note as loudly as it can possibly get. Besides, that just makes the darker moments hit all the harder.

Echoes of an Elusive Age feels like a massive celebration of the series, and is an easy favourite of the bunch. The history of the series rings loudly as we journey through Erdrea. The games themselves are non-linear, though- even with stories that are directly connected, like the I-II-III or IV-V-VI trilogies, being familiar with one is not necessary for another, but you'll be tickled if you are and you spot the threads connecting different lands.

We start, as all great journeys do, by naming our character. Dragon Quest's Heroes are silent protagonists all the way down, and while some of the games (3, 4 and 9) let you bring a female representative, many are largely male. As much as I like the game, I blame 5 for this- that story in particular requires a male protagonist, and after that, the devs likely just focused their efforts in other areas rather than design female protagonist options.

Draconian Quests, accessible by pushing the X Button (at least on Switch, which is what I'll be using), are additional difficulty options. You can start them only on file start and while you can toggle them off, you can never put them back on once you do. "Reduced Experience from Easy Fights" is a highly recommended option, because it can get incredibly easy to overlevel if you're trying to get things from fights that aren't EXP. I won't be using it this run because the list of Draconian Quests you have applied show up on screenshots and I'd rather not have them around.

• Reduced EXP from Easy Fights: Enemies give no EXP if you're "overlevelled", and I think there is a scaling effect missing from the vanilla experience.
• All Enemies are Stronger: Enemies have stat buffs and some bosses get additional turns.
• No Shopping: You can't use shops. There are some uses for Gold, but not much.
• No Armour: You can't equip anything other than weapons. This won't leave you naked, but it will sting.
• Shypox: Sometimes, the Hero will skip a turn in battle. They also sometimes get too shy to talk to people. Super Shypox applies this to everyone in the party.
• Townsfolk Talk Tripe: NPCs will occasionally lie to you. Sadly, these lies are obvious and they say the equivalent of "April Fools!" after the fact, it's just a cosmetic thing.
• Party Wipe: If the Hero dies, you Game Over. Normally, everyone has to die for a Game Over, but this makes the Hero more of a target to keep alive at all costs.

DQ Heroes have very little in the way of "canon" names- and annoyingly, the main ones from VIII onward are the numbers of their games (so, this guy goes by "Eleven"). Erdward is the name I like to give him when I want his name to sound like a name (...for a given definition of such), but there is no official usage of it.

In addition to all the miscellaneous settings we have to tinker with, we get the option to play in 3D or 2D mode. There's a feature later on that's mandatory 2D, but we'll be playing predominately in 3D mode. There are key differences in the battle engine between these options, and I prefer the 3D engine's take where differences exist.

The Simpsons Game Snapshot: Bargain Bin

Yes, we're playing The Simpsons Game (2007) on this blog. This game has excellent writing, written by the Simpsons writers themselves (I'm told the head writer is Matt Selman), and whatever the faults of the gameplay itself, the narrative I'm going to show off today is an excellent meta-narrative about video games as a whole.

Context: The Simpsons have discovered a manual for a video game set in Springfield, and harness their video game powers for selfish ends. When aliens invade the town, the Simpsons seek out a cheat guide to match the aliens' power levels and fight them off.

Lisa: Oh my god. It's the mother ship!
Bart: This must be the level boss for this part of the game!

(This game has subtitles, but I disagree with their sense of timing.)

It is time to fight the final boss of the aliens, Kang and Kodos themselves. (Yes, the aliens are Rigelians, it's impossible for the Simpsons to deal with aliens and not bump into them.)

Homer: The boss!? Quick, everyone look busy!

Homer, meanwhile, has foolishly misunderstood the word "boss". He's dealt with a little too much Mr Burns in his life.

Kang and Kodos start firing lasers at the family.

...And a hatch opens.

Bart: Guys, look! The hatch opens after every four laser bursts! That's the weak spot where we need to fire!

I applaud your pattern recognition, but I think you need at least one more cycle to prove that.

Kang: Hey Kodos, that ugly kid's right! Why are we exposing our weak spot after every four laser bursts?
Kodos: You're right! Why do we even need to expose our weak spot at all?

 I assume you're venting heat from firing your laser. The fact the weak spot is so prominently coloured probably means your ship needs a better design, but cycle systems have some justification. Maybe that's just as video games progressed, though.

Kang: Thanks for the heads-up, Earth dumbass!

...Can he hear you? I don't think Kang and Kodos ever actually communicate with the Simpsons in this game.

Kodos: Screw fighting one family! Why don't we just blow up the whole town? They can't stop us from doing that!
Kang: Sounds good to space-me!

The Rigelians have gotten way too genre-savvy now. As powerful as the Simpsons are, they can't match spaceships in movement and firepower.

Advance Wars 2 Snapshot: Duty & Honour

Welcome to bonus stage! Today, we will be playing one mission of Advance Wars 2, in order to show off a small segment of the game that I love without committing to going through the whole thing. AW2 isn't long, and it's an incredibly strong game from a writing standpoint, but it's much more heavily focused on character and not on plot. I would recommend playing it- although there is a remake coming out in the near future (well, hopefully).

I won't go into much detail about the nature of level selection and what information this screen is sharing with the player, since it's not particularly relevant on this micro level, but this screen is the only way to tell what mission you've selected ahead of time (you may choose which levels you want to play semi-freely in this campaign).

Before we begin, a plot summary of Advance Wars 2: Black Hole is invading Wars World, and the four countries must chase them away. We will be in Yellow Comet for this mission- the other countries are Orange Star, Blue Moon, and Green Earth.

Missions usually begin with the villains discussing their plans. This is a faceless Black Hole soldier, as weird as his sprite might be.

And this is Adder, a moderately high-ranked member of the Black Hole army. He's only said two words and I expect you've gathered a great deal of his personality from his appearance alone. This is a pretty good mission for showing off what Adder is like as a character, but he'll need to say more than "Very well" for that.

This is Flak, the lowest-ranked Black Hole CO and the dumbest character in the trilogy. Although saying that, he's not actually as dumb as he is portrayed- he's certainly a bit of an idiot, but he's clearly got some braincells to rub together here, and AW1 has some true dunderheads running around...

Narrative-wise, Adder has mounted a laser cannon of some description, and he expects Yellow Comet to come marching in to get hit by it.

Flak doesn't see any reason for Yellow Comet to swallow the bait.

That's certainly an effective bait. Although I wonder whom "the world" is. At this point in the story, the other three known nations are Orange Star (which can and has freely lent aid to repel Black Hole from Yellow Comet by this point), Blue Moon and Green Earth (who are both in the middle of repelling Black Hole invasions of their own). None of these countries are going to think less of Yellow Comet for allowing cities to be taken over.