imunbeatable80

@snaketelegraph: Thanks for reading! Im glad im not alone in that feeling. The game looked great, and i feel that was probably the top of their vision board when desinging this game. The problem is combat and everything else was far to low on the list.

@theonewhoplays: thanks for reading.. 100% agree! I'm still in shock that the game took so long getting "started." Depending on how fast you were, getting that 3rd character was probably 15-20 hours into the game.

@broshmosh: Thanks for checking out the blog! The combat is the most damning thing for me. If they made a slight tweak (or maybe its not seen as slight) by either making the computer a better A.I. Partner, or not tieing the Creatures HP and MP into the main characters. I probably would have found this game more enjoyable. Like any RPG, so much is based around the combat and story, that if one is not worth it, the game becomes a slog.

@morningstar: Thanks for reading! Perhaps I went into the game with the wrong expectation.. I either wanted it to be Pokemon (which it wasn't) or a Tales/Final Fantasy RPG.. What is your favorite aspect of the game?

@peritus: Thanks for reading! Yeah, I heard that the DS version ends at Shadar which makes the game have a more complete ending (you beat the evil, your mom talks to you as a ghost, world saved).. However, the PS3 and later version has the game continue for maybe another 5-10 hours after the perfect stopping point where the ending resonates less and is more about a quickly shoehorned "save the world" trope.

@sparky_buzzsaw: That's fair. I felt that while the character designs were great, they essentially had no motivation and barely a personality outside of one trait for each of them. I think if this game has "Heart" it is how it looks, but not how it acts. However, I am but one voice and probably in the minority for this game.

I appreciate you reading the article, and if you do pick it up again, I would be curious how you feel 10 hours in. While I can't say that playing it on easy would have made the game more enjoyable for me (while i hated the combat, I didn't find it difficult) It might have taken the grind off of the game and probably saved me some hours.

To me, this whole thread reads as "i pre-ordered a console, and i need validation from GB that im doing the right thing" and let me tell you it doesnt matter their "enthusiasm." It shouldnt matter, buy and play the consoles/computer you want. If you enjoy it, does it matter if Jeff likes something else better? You will basically be playing the same games.

I love the monkey island series and old school adventure games, but sadly i think they are of a certain time and place.

When monkey island came out people were more likely to only buy 1 game every so often to play rather than always have a million games a click away. You could afford to get stuck at a puzzle for days, take time to stop and digest the ask, and "try everything on everything." Now that is not a defense of some of the puzzles but an adventure game like monkey island was supposed to last someone a week or a month and the padding was time spent thinking on the puzzle.

While i can now finish a monkey island game in hours rather then days, that was probably not the intention of the developers, and you certainly would have felt cheated in beating a game with very minor replayability in hours for $60.

The problem with adventure games now, are actually because of the availabilty to look up puzzles after 10 minutes of frustration, so puzzles are either designed archaic that you need to look them up, or a game has so many mediocre puzzles.

To replay these games now and enjoy them, i almost feel you have to enter that same mindset and prevent yourself from looking at a walkthrough as long as possible.

@pezen: agreed, it is a blast and the soundtrack is suprisingly great if slightly limited. As for never beating it, i feel ya.. even despite getting up to the navy team(one before ussr) multiple times, its easy to get discouraged and quit when the computer is clearly overpowered.

While maybe this was said somewhere that i missed.. i believe the limited release is just the physical version of this 3 pack, and that might be because covid is kinda decimating manufacturing. I highly doubt that they would remove a digital sale of this game post march unless they wanted to sell them as individual $20 games.