Quick Look: Wayward Souls

The developers site says that the game is coming soon to Android and PC as well.

Loved hearing Vinny quote this during the Quick Look, though Brad seemed very confused:

Small Business Man (Giant Bomb Remixed)

yah vita please!

I really love the fact that the people saying things like "Oh, so it's 2D Dark Souls!" are unintentionally outing themselves as people who have not played enough classic RPGs (like Secret of Mana) to have an actual frame of reference for this type of game.

The predictions about iOS like three years ago were true, it is a better platform than the Vita (and I'm a Vita owner)! Sony need to get a ton of old style indies on that thing as they'd be cheap to develop and people would buy them.

I played this game at PAX East and enjoyed. I'd get it now if I had an iOS device. As it stands I'll just wait for it to come to the PC. The controls work well enough but there's still a lot of room for improvement.

Final Fantasy Adventure was the first thing I ever bought on Ebay, back in like 1999 or so. Only bought it because I'd found out it was Seiken Densetsu 1. It's an ok game. Instead of charging your sword, a meter is always filling up and depletes when you strike, and you do more damage when the meter is full. There were also no party members.

Edit: Reading up, apparently the followers in Final Fantasy Adventure could attack? I thought they just opened doors or something. It's been a really long time.

would be an alright Vita game

not really interested in playing it on a phone or the PC though

Maybe I'm missing something, but it feels like people are comparing this to every "rogue-like" EXCEPT Rogue Legacy, which it seems the most similar too (just top-down). Seems like it might scratch a similar itch, so I might have to pick it up when it comes to PC.

Edit: Spoke too soon, Vinny brings it up near the end!

Vinny totally references the Small Business Man song from youtube.

This looks pretty all right. The only problem is, it just makes me want to bust out the SNES for some Mana/Evermore action, more than anything. And I'd probably replay those before I do this.

I've played through Seiken Densetsu 3 with the fan translation and it is pretty damn awesome if you like that style of game. I'm pretty sure there has never been an official translation thought. The fan made one is very well done in my opinion (if I my memory does not deceive me).

This game is alright, but its difficulty often feels cheap.

This looks pretty neat, waiting for the PC version.

I'd check this out on PC. Good public transit talk too.

Old Man @brad and Old Man @vinny on public transportation. It crazy how me and friends have the same talks about commuting on a bus.

One mistake I've noticed a lot of people make regarding the controls is with activating the secondary abilities. It's not a direct up or down swipe but a slightly diagonal upward/downward swipe. Since I figured that out the controls have felt good. (This is on iPad)

Overall I'm very satisfied with this game, have sunk a lot of hours into it. Adventurer's my favorite.

Seiken Densetsu 3 kind of blows my mind now that I think of it. 6 playable characters with different backstories (although they end up kind of not meaning much) with branching class decisions is so complex for a Super Nintendo game. I was a kid when I played the fan patch (complete with weird pervy subplot) so I didn't really think about it, but it's really a pretty impressive game.

I think we need a Seiken Densetsu 3 endurance run.

@agemyth: This. I have enough action games that control poorly on my apple devices already.

Like @pocketroid said, Seiken Densetsu came out in the U.S. as Final Fantasy Adventure on the Game Boy.

I freakin' loved Sieken Densetsu 3. 6 characters, several overlapping storylines, and some great combat and exploration. It's a damn shame that it never came to the U.S.

Yuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuup.

Iʼm not sure that I see why @brad keeps comparing this to Spelunky.

I donʼt see any similarities, unless heʼs using “Spelunky” as a way of avoiding “Roguelike-like-like…” or comparing it to Dark Souls.

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If you donʼt want to deal with anyone else on public transit, do yourself a favor and pick up some Bose QC20i. Theyʼre basically magic. (and a lot better than the older Bose over-ear headphones, if you have used them)

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Sealed on-ear or over-ear headphones are fine in a reasonably quiet office, but on public transport, you want active noise cancellation.

I donʼt think that problem is specific to iOS…

I like Secret of Mana about as much as Jeff likes Yoshi's Island. The gameplay was total garbage, with the unavoidable magic attacks, enemies that stunlock you to death and way more grinding than many mainstream JRPGs of the time.

Seiken Densetsu 3, though, now THAT's an amazing game.

I have a "fun" story about people using their phone as a shitty boombox. After a party we went for a late night food run and ended up at a 24/7 gas station that served like hotdogs and burgers and stuff. They have two standing tables and the people at the other table were playing some sort of rap music very loudly and totally blowing out the speaker on the phone making it sound really crappy.

"Someone" in our party (ie. probably me but I was very drunk so don't quite remember) made a comment, quite loudly so they'd hear, that it sounded like shit. One of them started "stepping to me" as they say. I don't remember exactly the details but the police was called and they ran off. The day after I learned he was one of the local thugs and he had apparently kept bragging about going back to jail after the weekend so what difference would a little extra time make. I'm amazed my big mouth hasn't gotten me in bigger trouble. =P

Secret of Evermore was rad, best dog companion in video games.

I'll wait on a discounted PC version to give this a whirl.

Brad, please, please, PLEASE play Secret of Mana or Seiken Densetsu 3, preferably with Vinnie and Jeff. Secret of Mana is my favourite game of all time and would love to watch you guys play through the series.

@y2ken: I think they really are trying to do something good with this one, which is refreshing when it comes to phone games. The controls are really good for what they are. This is the first game with virtual dpad that I'm actually playing. Anywhere you touch within the left side of the screen becomes the center point. It's strange at first, but it works.

The music reminds me of FTL

Yo, Vinny, I've totally made the mistake of obliviously playing music too loudly off my phone before, and I am the opposite of someone who would want a public confrontation. I can only imagine it's something that'll happen more often as younger and younger kids get their hands on multimedia devices and become too accustomed to their ubiquity.

I'll consider caring about this when it's on a gaming platform.

At this point I think the generic warrior archetype is almost always the least interesting class in any video game that offers it. Mages and Rogues? Those guys are alright with me.

Wow, I can't wait for the pc version to come. Looks like another game on iphone that will suck because of the touch controls.

It's purple Vinny. Purple and glowy.

It's purple Vinny. Purple and glowy.

It's purple Vinny. Purple and glowy.

It's purple Vinny. Purple and glowy.

@winternet: To be fair, the rogue-likes are almost entirely coming from indie developers, where the WWII FPSes were coming from AAA developers. Don't forget that a lot of indie developers make a lot of games in the same genre, e.g. platformers are very popular among indie developers.