/vr/ - Retro Games

I think the same.

I preferred the original PC-98 game. Worse gameplay but way more batshit story to carry you through it.

You are correct.

>>10780362
This was my experience as well. I enjoyed the hell out of it up until I hit a wall where no matter what I did, I couldn't proceed. But I think the game was probably meant to lead to evolutionary dead ends most of the time, and the point is to find the right sequence of upgrades to let you keep going. The only problem is it can take hours before you realize you're screwed and the gameplay is repetitive enough that replays aren't that fun or interesting. Still, it feels like the game is only a few adjustments away from being great.

>>10780362

You're too impatient, but yeah the game could be better. Personally I love it, but if it were newly released today then I'd want a lot more from it. Much of what you do in it is just simple grinding against stupid, weak enemies, and there are certainly better types of gameplay than that.

>>10780461

I've played this game a lot and I don't know what you mean.
What dead ends? What sequence? Can't you just buy the most expensive parts? There are big steps from one era's basic body to the next era's basic body, and a few other things like that, but the most powerful steps of that sort aren't hard to gain access to. I mean yeah the game eventually becomes difficult if you never graduate beyond a dinosaur body... although even then, it's certainly beatable.

Wow, incredibly weird. I just bought a copy of this game because it was the lowest I've seen in a long time. Just turned it off a little while ago and this is the first thread on the front page. Intense. But yeah I really love it. My buddy from work who's way younger was over earlier and playing it with me and he was digging it too. I just really love the mystical vibe of this game, Pangea, the fight across time to go Eden with Gaia. I find the gameplay loop of farming in the different terrarium-like levels really relaxing. The dolphin with hands you get right before the mermaid kind of creeped me out. Also I love how cute the sprites are and how they contrast with how harsh the story is. It really is a personal favorite

>>10780542

A thing I always found fascinating about it is how most of its story-focused scenes are optional and even hidden. It has some early endings, usually bad ones but not always, that you can miss - but also, there are a few significant scenes you have to go out of your way to find that tell you something about the main story, such as why the final boss even exists. The game has such a great feeling of mystery and wonder to it, even if its action is usually very simple.

Also, holy crap, it's really $250? Hm or I could get this $26 one that ships from Kazakhstan, haha yes that is clearly the best deal. (In fact I will continue to play on emulator.)

Did you ever try the PC-98 one? It's really weak as a game, but as anon above says, it's still worth playing.

it's a game that gets progressively worse the longer you play

>bro check out this SNES hidden gem bro, BRO it's so GOOD bro
>it's a steaming pile of shit after 10 minutes
It's like clockwork.

>>10780362
Pretty shit, but the prequel/PC88 version is kino.

>>10780362
the bosses are too hard

>>10781691
Its just a great premise for a game, nobody thinks it actually worked out or is much fun. Back when I had hope for games as a medium it was enough to make me tough out this kind of interesting failure

>>10781703
It's the only game I can think of that starts with you as a fish smacking around other fish to get stronger, and ends like a fucking Shin Megami Tensei game.

>>10781869
Amazing innit?

>>10780362
Bland level design.
Loved it as a kid, though

>>10781874
>best skill in the endgame is pic related
And I mean that's kinda evolutionarily accurate. Most species aren't capable of throwing a rock with both the precision and force needed to inflinct lethal blunt force trauma. Have you seen chimpanzees try? They're certainly strong enough but because their shoulders and forearms aren't quite like ours, they can't really turn it into a projectile. We're basically the only species that's good at "throwing" things.

>>10781880
Gotta love evolutionary accuracy in a game where you can go down the goblin or lizardman route only to end up as space Jesus.

>>10781703
>>10781869
>>10781880
I play through Okumen once a year and while I love the story, dear god am I glad the whole game is only like 10 hours long because the gameplay is such a slog that I'm pretty sure I'd kill myself if I had to go through it for the full length of a normal JPRG.

>>10781885
>only to end up as space Jesus.
Who is blatantly just Shaka from Saint Seiya

>>10781887
It's worth enduring a playthough just for the wackyness desu.

>>10781889
kek I can see the resemblance.

>>10781880
>>10781885
Yes evolutionary lore is pretty interesting, but it's just mythology, so it doesn't matter if it isn't kept 100% accurate to the source material. Evolution is the mythos of the 20th century, if you will.

>>10781916
Retard

>>10781916
First off evolution comes from the 19th century, not the 20th. Secondly, the difference between it and myth is that concepts of faith by definition asks you to accept something without evidence. Evolutionary theory isn't perfect, and it got co-opted for a couple decades by bullshit like Survival of the Fittest which was never a thing in actual evolutionary theory, but there is actually a lot of rigor behind it.

>>10781940
Started off in the 19th, got big in the 20th. Same thing with Communism. Evolution requires no more or less "faith" than that of Christianity. In fact, I'd say it takes a lot MORE. Because keep in mind, evolutionary thought was forced into academia by bad actors and bribery, not by any scientific merit. It was brute forced in, often because of falsified evidence. I was one of the ones who never believed in evolution, even as a child. Not because I was a part of some protestant cult, or because I was born in "da south!", but because I knew it was bunko bullshit. Nothing can't explode and become something, dead matter cannot become living matter no matter how many years go by, and there has to be a single "missing link" that isn't a hoax.

>>10781971
>Not because I was a part of some protestant cult, or because I was born in "da south!"
Yeah that didn't have any part in your mental condition, clearly.

>>10781989
>Deliberately misreads statement
>Builds a strawman
Boy, I must be on reddit!.

>>10781916
Shaddup christcuck

>>10781940
Survival of the fittest is a perfect summation of natural selection

>>10781994
>S-S-S-S-S-HUT UP C--C-C-C-HRIST C-C-C-C-KEK!
Take the cock out of your mouth, faggot. You are precisely the sort of low IQ peon that is useful to those currently in power.

>>10780687
Many such cases!

>>10782003
the level of christian support for israel is enough to negate any counter example you could bring

>>10782007
I'm not protestant, so this does not apply to me. If you equate Joel Osteen, Kenneth Copeland, and the jehova's witnesses as "Christian" then you are grossly misinformed.

>>10782005
Especially on SNES.

>>10782020
>real christianity has never been been tried

anyway, dinosaurs

>>10781971
Evolution is science. It has useful, predictive power. The people who use it every day in research and development don't need to apply faith. Results speak for themselves.

>>10782032
Dinosaurs likely never existed, all the skeletons you see in museums are fake, and many of the bones are "assumptions" and mockups. Same with many of the artists renditions of "cavemen" and other creatures. It's funny just how much our view of the evolution mythos is conjured up by artistic drawings and Hollywood films like Jurassic Park. See, your average redditor isn't really debating the "basedence", they're debating Jurassic Park and their nostalgia for that fucking movie and others just like it. The idea of dinosaurs being "cool" basically trumps any real effort to determine whether these supposed creatures ever existed in the form we are told. I once saw a funny meme of how modern basedentists would interpret a rabbit skeleton, and they probably would view it as some grotesque creature straight out of a horror film.

>>10781916
>>10781971
>>10782048
You've got my interest. Where can I read more about this?

>>10782003
Shut up christcuck

>>10782001
It's not, it's a massive oversimplification that misses the point. The problem with "survival of the fittest" is it explains things too linearly, which is not how it works. It ignores things like evolutionary bottlenecks and overadaptation causing a species to die out when things change in a different way. It also ignore that you know, it's often NOT the fittest that survive. Sometimes it's just the lucky, or those that simply breed too numerously to evolutionary pressures to wipe out. People often conflate that with being the fittest but not really, dinosaurs had perfectly adapted to the climate they were part of, but that also means they were completely fucked when the Chicxulub meteor caused a 15-year winter.

>>10782089
survival of the fittest*

*what constitutes fitness subject to change

>>10780687
Not wrong. And it's not even a case of the game just getting repetitive or boring - the mechanics of the game literally degrade as it progresses.

that's a lot of dead anons

>>10780686
See I didn't even know about the asteroid belt level before this playthrough. I don't know how I never noticed it but my girlfriend pointed out the moving cloud on the dino map screen and I went back to it after getting a bird body. Had never seen the gargoyle transformation before. And the alien giving the pterodactyl the knowledge beam explains where the birdmen come from. This is my third playthrough over the years and still finding new stuff. But what do you mean the hint about why Bolbox even exists? I must have missed that one? I paid 270$ after tax and shipping fees, but a few years ago you never saw it for less than 400$. I heard someone call people that still buy cartridges instead of emulating "sticker collectors" and I guess that's fair enough. But damn, look how beautiful this sticker is.

>>10782713
>But what do you mean the hint about why Bolbox even exists? I must have missed that one?

Nah, it's nothing very specific - I was talking vaguely to avoid spoilers or something, although it seems like half the people in this thread hate the game anyway and wouldn't care. I just meant the general idea that most/all the game's most unearthly enemies are a result of meddling by the Martian dudes, like you say. There's a conversation you can overhear atop a mountain in the final era (missable of course!) in which one of them is dismayed to learn that some earthly creatures have begun to figure out the workings of the crystals they've been putting onto the planet, and that their interference might have been more harmful than helpful. I guess the greatest of the products of the earthly animals' harnessing of the crystals is Bolbox.

It's more or less clear, even if you miss all the optional alien meetings, that you're the avatar of "natural" evolution, which is somehow the good and right way of developing, and that the enemy base you invade at the end is the culmination of "unnatural" evolution that is bad because it relies on weird glowy technology rather than respectable stone axes and because it creates a scary blob monster that is not fit to marry the sexy goddess waiting for you in Eden or whatever (I forget the details of all this). But as a kid at least, I really did not understand where that weird technology was supposed to have come from.

The moving cloud was the coolest thing. I only learned about it from Nintendo Power.

>>10782206

No they don't. You get your largest and most fun move set as a quadrupedal mammal, most of the way through the game. And if you don't figure out how to evolve further, which probably a lot of players didn't, then you'll keep those moves through the rest of the game.

>>10780362
>what do you all think?

I think my dick evolves into a strange but greater form every time I see Gaia on screen in both versions

>>10780362
enjoyment peaked during the fish stages. nothing in the rest of the game could top the "rumors spread amongst the sea cucumbers" line

>>10782901
In the SNES version? Yes. In the PC-98 version? I think things peaked in the Dinosaur era

"I like the least interesting tutorial part of the game the most" - average /vr/ user

>>10780362
>it quickly becomes a slog as upgrades begin to cost way too many evo points.

just stop evolving once you becum a flying dinosaur.
you can beat the game as a dino. but the final boss will be harder unless you evolve into a back-kicking donkey/lion. the final evolution is a human, which is only good for having the highest HP.

>>10781880
>Most species aren't capable of throwing a rock with both the precision and force needed to inflinct lethal blunt force

should make JRPGs with killer hobbits.

>>10780362
Play the PC version

>>10781869
>and ends like a fucking Shin Megami Tensei game.
Nah nah, this is some fucking Go Nagai-level shit
This is basically Devilman with some Getter Emperor bullshit

>>10784839
unironically, hobbits can be dangerous with slingshots & crossbows.

Would you play a remake that's basically the SNES version of the game but over extends itself to be a full adaptation of the PC version's story?

>>10782878
Shame about her dead sister

>>10784876
The game ended on a cliffhanger, so why not?

>>10781869
Leave it to godly creatures like Marilyn "Satan" Monroe to brag how trillions years of bullshit is nothing to them.

Japanese fanfic twists of Judeo-Christianity can be funny sometimes.

>>10784348
Nah that's really the issue with the game. The fish stages are fun but land stages quickly devolve into boring flat plains with mobs to kill. The only fun part is the build variety. It's a real slog by the time your unlock humans, assuming you didn't just stay a dragon.

>>10784876

If it were good, that would be awesome. It probably wouldn't of course.

>>10784993
>wouldn't
be

>>10784839
Not a JRPG, but these little guys with buffs are one of the most OP unit in Master of Magic.

>>10784876
I mean, you could probably make Evo a fun game with no mechanical changes just better levels and bosses. Hell it would be a lot more fun just being much easier and grindless, most people could power through

>>10785589
+1 to hit in MoM doubles your damage output, that's most of why people intuitively feel the power of slingers

>>10785589
>>10785696
>That satisfying whoosh-POP as they obliterate a high-tier opposing unit from across the field in a single turn

>>10781869
If this was made today, this is when the JAM Project song would kick in
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DyrSTcSAJy8

>>10784861
tbf, the level of influence Devilman had on SMT is quite possibly beyond measure. It was an insanely influential manga.

>>10782713
>I paid 270$ after tax and shipping fees, but a few years ago you never saw it for less than 400$.
That's crazy. I remember emulating it with friends back in the late 00s and prices were already in the low $200s from what I can remember. Interesting to see that prices are coming down a bit.

>gameplay is repetitive as hell and very grindy, and most upgrades are pointless since you are better off saving up the points for the best upgrade
>at the most random moments, suddenly the game has something very interesting going on, or a unique "bad end" for you to see
I swear to fuck it feels like they worked on the actual gameplay last in this game, then had to rush it out the door. Like they spent 75% of their dev cycle working out the different little bits of plot or bad ends to the game, then started working on the movement and combat and realized they were out of time.

>>10786345
The jap PC version apparently has tons of (forgiving) bad ends. Forgiving as in you just pop back to a checkpoint the game made for you, which is incredibly kind for a 1990 game. Sierra adventure games never did that despite silly enjoyable deaths being a big feature

>>10786345
>>gameplay is repetitive as hell and very grindy, and most upgrades are pointless since you are better off saving up the points for the best upgrade
fwiw, I miss games that did this. On the whole, point-buy systems have been replaced by the usually much less interesting skill tree systems where every upgrade is locked into one of a handful of specific progressions.

>>10781869
how do I download Neko Project 2? I have the 7zs from their official site but it won't let me open them as "they're not an archive". never seen this with 7zip

>>10786484
I am specifically using this link:
http://nenecchi.kirara.st/#PC-98

>>10786484
I could not get that shit working through the standalone emulator, eventually I gave up and just ran it through the NP 2 Kai fork in retroarch. It's not perfect but at leat it meant actually getting to play the game.
Protip, floppy disk 1 is literally just the intro and boot function, but you HAVE to run the game starting with disk 1, then swap to disk 2 after the game has booted.

>>10786361
The bad ends are meant to be fun jokes and they actively encourage fucking up on purpose so that you can see them all, as they'll instantly revert the process.

>>10786515
Oh, but if you just want to see all the evolutionary dead end joke endings, someone uploaded them all here
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLOxFyCVa6u1udUlxhKUyBBQpZJ5YUzABL