Ryan: "I'm gunna make this crab nuts..." 
 
 ....
 
Jeff:  "...Crab nuts..."

Now I want to spend all day spreading insanity.

F you, I'm poo'ing.

@Jeff: WeSC is pronounced Wii-Ess-See, abbreviating "We are the Superlative Conspiracy".

Swedish common knowledge. ;)

I think Breath of Death VII was a buck on Indie Arcade. I really liked the game and the humor. I guess if you're under twenty, you probably don't remember these kinds of RPGs.

@christ0phe: She isn't the spell-caster she's the healer in the game. The only magic spell you have with her is "heal" when you first get her.

A game type I have no nostalgia for, filled with references to games I've never played. Not for me :(

Groan-inducing writing I'm seeing here.

@ArbitraryWater said:

Not going to lie: Neither of these games look especially great, with the somewhat overeager attempts at humor covering for the perfectly alright mechanics. But at that dirt cheap, it's not like you're losing much, especially since neither of these games is supposedly very long.

Each one is 8-10 hours long.

The obligatory nitpick for a giantbomb quick look? Making bosses Insane on the first turn. Insane pretty much axes the defense of an enemy but raises the hell out of the offense which makes it something you want to use when setting up for a finisher instead of letting a boss wail on your team from the beginning.

Not going to lie: Neither of these games look especially great, with the somewhat overeager attempts at humor covering for the perfectly alright mechanics. But at that dirt cheap, it's not like you're losing much, especially since neither of these games is supposedly very long.

Cthulhu is gonna make you insane in the membrane.

buying a pair of wesc jeans cuz jeff gerstmann is proper fly!

Looks rubbish.

I'm using Firefox and I can't get the video to play. It only highlights the play button!

just buy it, its 2.99 for both games right now on steam, you don't like it? the price of a coffee is gone for a day, big loss...>.> so just buy it. ^^

What if... Cthulhu was INSANE?!

WESC makes a good pair of jeans. I like mine. 

...Quite a lot of meme referencing RPGs being Quick Looked. The gameplay looks good enough, but I wish these games would make actual jokes and not just references.

Edit: Although I DO like the Phantasy Star IV-view of the Skeleton and Ghost Lady overlooking the cliff...

lool vintage XD

@AlexW00d said:

I dunno whether it gets mentioned, but these two sold more in their first day on Steam than the entire year of being on xbox live.

Well, yeah. Being promoted with giant images and a small discount on the very front of a service with more than 30 million members and several million logged in at any time will obviously sell more than being stuck in the hidden area of a service that most of the service's 25 million members don't know about. Besides, they need that space on XBL so they can advertise things to their paying subscribers, like nauseous AXE body spray, romantic comedies with nobody you've ever heard of, and beef jerky

I've been wanting them for a long time but don't have American XBLA, so I'm happy that they are on steam now.

Skeletons don't poo.

get it? he boned himself, that's funny cause he's a skeleton...

Game looks good, but the jokes do nothing for me.

I dunno whether it gets mentioned, but these two sold more in their first day on Steam than the entire year of being on xbox live.

Looks pretty decent for that price.

Don't know why people are saying 7-10 hours for BoD, Steam tells me I finished it in 3. The best thing is that refilling health means random encounters are either tough as hell to get through without draining your MP (which will screw you over if you run out before you can refill it or level to the enemies), or easy enough to blast through in 5 seconds. Also there's a cap on random battles per area, so if you are tooling around trying to figure out how to get to that chest you normally hit that before they become annoying. For tough areas, you can also grind out the random battles by sitting on an MP refill and hitting Fight in the menu over and over. You can clear most areas in ~5 minutes at worst, and you get leveled to heck to boot.

As a DQ fan, this type of RPG is right up my alley. 

Great ql, had heard of this games but never played them but will defo pick them up if they are as cheap as Ryan says they are

I was really curious about these games, thanks for showing them off.

Well I went and bought the 1st one with left over points I had and when I have more left over points I will buy the second one.

"Phantastic?" Is that a reference to a similar shot in PS IV? I've played a lot of these but the references are zinging past me.

They changed the victory music in BOD. I liked it better before. They also changed some status portraits.. which is good because some of them were pretty janky.

SWEET! I loves it when Giant Bomb covers interesting games, instead of mainstream "everyone covers this" sh** like Call of Duty. Bring on the indie QLs!

I tried both and honestly, I couldn't handle the groan-inducing humor. Don't get me wrong, I like some good, cheesy humor (love me some Telltale) but these game's attempts at comedy just seems like they're trying too hard. Might try them again sometime in the future, though.

Didn't know much on Breath of Death but bought Cthulhu Saves the World on Xbox Live a while back & loved the hell out of it. Humorous plus full of some great Lovecraftian mythos & interesting characters. Thought that it's was well worth the price on seeing the deadleaders (dead zombie cheerleaders), friendly zombies & all kinds of crazy monsters.

It is cool to see what these games are like.  When I get time to buy and play Cthulhu Saves the World, I am going to make all the enemies insane. 

Breath of Death? More like BORED TO Death. I feel sorry for me that I played through games like this.

Warning: do not remove the hard drive while saving, lol

I really wanted to like Breath of Death but it just can't hang with the games it's imitating. And lots of flat jokes. Cthulhu seems a lot better though...

"So I think my first order of business is to make that cleric crazy" 
 
That line really cracked me up.

@beard_of_zeus: I was already kinda into the Cthulhu game, but you telling me that it's short enough for me to not burn out on it offically sold me!

I played Cthulhu Saves The World on XBLIG and really enjoyed it, and decided to double-dip and get the 2-pack on Steam, and I'm now currently playing through Breath of Death. It's also enjoyable, but I'm with Ryan and definitely enjoyed Cthulhu better. I like that character better, and the "insanity" status effect layered on top of everything else is neat.
 
These games are a great value, and definitely enjoyable enough. Plus, honestly my favorite thing about them is that they are on the shorter side! There aren't enough short RPGs out there - I like the genre, but have trouble actually finishing any of the games when I get burned out or distracted after like 30 hours. Cthulhu took me about 10-12 hours to finish, and Breath of Death looks like it might only be around 6 hours or so. Good stuff.

Both are great fun. Bought them on 360 a while ago and had to double dip when the PC-versions were released. Highly recomended.

Looks alright, unfortunately I don't have patience for random encounters anymore.

Looks a lot like A Link to the Past in some ways.

EDIT: Well, the very, very beginning did. And nothing else so far. Also, all I can think when DEM's name appears onscreen is "DEM BONES DEM BONES DEM BONES."