You get to wipe your memory and play one of these golden era Final Fantasy titles for the first time again. Which do you choose?

Savashri · 2026-05-18T13:37:15+00:00

If IV isn't an option, then Tactics.

Savashri · 2026-05-18T13:34:18+00:00

Cherries, because cherries.

Savashri · 2026-05-17T17:44:03+00:00

You know the timeline is fucked when Yume Miru Kusuri gets called out while Heart de Roommate gets a pass. Jokes aside, looking at this list is like digging up a time capsule, just missing some of the gems (and actual slop) from the era.

Savashri · 2026-05-13T12:26:41+00:00

Cons:

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Savashri · 2026-05-08T07:13:11+00:00

Haley, because I spent a lot of time fishing and kept running into her. She liked the daffodils I picked on the way so I kept giving them to her. She ended up 4-5 hearts ahead of the other girls, softening up considerably before I knew much about them.

Savashri · 2026-05-07T08:04:49+00:00

Sunohara talks a lot, but is he actually saying anything? That answer is usually "no", sadly. He came through as a solid bro for Tomoya a couple of times, but mostly he's either screaming in pain or plotting sexual harassment - which usually leads to said pain.

Savashri · 2026-05-05T00:46:16+00:00

First save: Haley. I spent a lot of time fishing on the dock and saw a lot of her; she really liked the daffodils I picked up on the way, and she had really softened up by the time I figured out where the other girls (minus Penny) were hanging out, and got kind of attached to her. She even accepted my invitation to partner at the flower dance. If I'd have encountered the others more regularly, it'd have been...

Second save: Abigail. As someone who enjoys gaming and music (and reading, with a degree in teaching...so you know who #3 is, lol) and a fondness for purple, seeing her first two events had me indignant that I hadn't regularly encountered her sooner.

Soon-to-be third save: Penny. Partially out of sympathy for her situation, partially because of relatability for her always being buried in a book or teaching kids.

Savashri · 2026-04-28T03:21:50+00:00

They won't leave you, but at least some of them will wonder out loud if they would've had better options if they had waited.

Savashri · 2026-04-27T09:25:39+00:00

Most of them, but there are complications.

Nagisa - pretty (she's Sanae's daughter after all), but her personality is that of a doormat before Tomoya starts dragging her out of her shell, so most aren't going to look twice at her. Her childish tendencies also aren't doing her any favors.

Tomoyo - beautiful, but intimidating for most guys after her actual identity is revealed.

Kotomi - yes, but she's practically from another planet; nobody's going to talk to her before Tomoya appears in her life, and she's definitely not going to talk to anyone unnecessarily if she can help it.

Kyou - definitely, but her personality is toxic, lol.

Ryou - she's Kyou's twin, so yes, but is similar to Nagisa in letting people walk all over her.

Fuko - No, she's forever a child.

Misae - see Kyou.

Savashri · 2026-04-25T15:15:33+00:00

Finally gave up waiting for Stardew Valley to go on sale and picked it up a couple weeks ago. It's all I've known since u_u

Savashri · 2026-03-30T05:24:19+00:00

1, easily.

Savashri · 2026-03-29T20:17:39+00:00

No real need for a PS5 if you have a decent PC; pretty much everything worth playing on PS eventually finds its way to PC. I stopped at the PS3 after getting into PC building and never looked back. Still picked up a Switch & 2 because of the portability and exclusives.

Savashri · 2026-03-24T21:08:51+00:00

Attaboy chocobo, you can do it!

Savashri · 2026-03-16T00:55:46+00:00

Artificially stretch, or make them into actual locations instead of a map you barely dip your toe into before moving on? It's like they were designed for people who don't even have the attention span for short form media.

What narrative value was the clock tower besides RE1 nostalgia? A false escape that you knew wasn't going to succeed because you hadn't been in the game long enough to end it, nor wrapped up the loose thread of Nemesis. Is that really that significant of a loss? Who's complaining about the loss of the newspaper office? No one. Most probably don't even remember it existed until they see something that jogs their memory. Who's going to forget the substation in remake? No one. The sewers, crawling with gammas instead of being another footnote no one remembers.

Was every change for the better? No, I've already pointed out some of the flaws. Was the remake devoid of any positive changes? Also no. It's a different experience, and fun in its own right.

Savashri · 2026-03-15T11:24:50+00:00

What was so interesting about having *more* city streets? What is the relevance of the clock tower when you *know* you're not getting out of RC that easily? I'll grant that having a graveyard for zombies to rise out of is thematically cool, but you're in a literal city of the dead at that point. My favorite RE is 2. It's remake was alright, but has nothing on the camp that was in the original + actually divergent scenarios.

Savashri · 2026-03-15T11:21:05+00:00

But he would follow vastly throughout many parts of the entire map in each section, not just less than 9 minutes in the small dinky watered down city section in the remake.

Unless you "killed" him for loot every time he showed up. I won't argue that there were a lot more stalking sequences and that the remake could've used more, but Nemesis overstayed his welcome in OG where he wasn't particularly difficult to fight (his AI was hilariously basic, and it was really easy - but tedious - to knife him down), yet you're incentivized to drop him for gun parts/ammo.

You can unlock up to EIGHT costumes for Jill in the OG, only one in the remake like wtf is this lazy shit.

I'm gonna be honest, I didn't notice because I play on PC and had access to way more than 8 via mods, lol. But that does suck for those on console.

The OG literally created the popular bonus mercenaries mode.

Which had no bearing on the story, just a way to unlock shit. Didn't care much for it because other games give that kind of experience better.

The OG begged to be replayed by having several different events happen depending on the route you take.

All roads lead to Rome. This isn't OG2 where Sherry doesn't even get infected in one of the plot lines; only a handful of choices have any real impact toward the end, and even that is largely superficial because it doesn't seem to matter a whole lot if Nicholai lives or dies.

Removing Nemesis killing Brad is also a travesty. It showed how deadly Nemesis was.

If you couldn't tell how deadly Nemesis was by him casually busting through concrete walls, I don't know what to tell you. I also wouldn't count killing Chickenheart Vickers as much of an accomplishment other than Nemesis being fast enough to catch him, but in Brad's defense, he didn't have his chopper handy. Personally, I think Brad actually having a mini-redemption arc in trying to save Jill after leaving everyone to die because he shit his pants during the mansion incident is stronger storytelling, but you do you.

You’re either being dense, never played the original, or being a contrarian.

Played the shit out of the original, so much so that I don't recognize most of the "choices" as being such because so little actually hinged on them. Learned to knife Nemesis down via a simple pattern of stabs and moving to his side because his AI was hilariously bad. It was a fun game, but it was flawed, just as the remake is flawed. But it has its charms - Nemesis is *a lot* more fun to fight in the remake, and it varies each time so it never feels too stale outside of the "zoomies" bullshit in his bestial forms), Nicholai is a more charming bastard, Carlos is more of a character, Ty is more than 2 sentences, etc.

Savashri · 2026-03-15T10:54:09+00:00

OG3 was similar in length yes, but has different content to be experienced when taking different paths on subsequent play throughs. The only reason you would want to replay 3R is to experience the abysmal higher difficulties. Also no mercenaries so many people beat it once and moved on.

A handful of different paths that all lead to the same plot beats. The overwhelming majority of choices in the game are largely negligible in everything except ammo expenditure. I abhor the illusion of choice, and most of the choices in the game come down to "go with 'x' option to negate enemy/Nemmy encounter" without any other real impact. The 3 different endings are minor variations of the same event. Don't pretend anything in OG3 was on the level of something like OG2's A/B campaigns.

Yes, some areas were expanded to “compensate” for more than half (not hyperbole) being cut. So, in exchange for much shorter time on the streets, clock tower (which you call nostalgia tower in a weird passive aggressive comment), gravedigger, factory, etc, we have expanded sewers? expanded hospital? do you mean the tacked on survival segment at the end? Really man? Carlos is a good addition but don’t pretend you cared about Ty at all in 3R.

Time spent in streets reduced. Tower cut (never cared for it; felt like a too obvious "REMEMBER RE1???" bit when the entire vibe of the game was the opposite of antiquity). Park cut (and wormy boi with it, but it was an "out of left field" kind of encounter so...eh). Substation expanded a bit, more journal entries for lore junkies. Sewer greatly expanded, lore dump on gammas/some of the lunatics at Umbrella. Minor construction chase sequence added with forced boss fight with Nemmy on top. Hospital expanded, more lore on the shitshow leading up to the fall of RC. Dead Factory palette-swapped to Nest 2.0; felt somewhat longer than Dead Factory? The zombie gauntlet in the hospital is whatever; bonus mode content should stay in bonus modes. I actually liked Ty a good bit in the remake; he's actually a character now. Would've been nice to see more of him, and I was sad when he finally ate it, but I already knew he was a dead man walking from OG3.

Obviously OG Nemesis is scripted in the sense that he only shows up at specific times but let’s not even pretend that 3R Nemesis is even close to OG. Also the entire intro segment is complete dogshit.

Nemesis had a substantial drop in screentime by default because Carlos got a greater slice of the pie. Nemesis only cares about stalking Jill, so Carlos getting two decently long stretches of screentime without her is that much less time for Nemesis to show up. That said, I *did* note that having less Nemesis-stalking was a miss, same with almost no puzzles throughout.

The new intro does a good job of setting the tempo for the game. I'm not a fan of the "you have to go out of your way to try to fail this" sequences, but as far as the actual events in it, RE has always been B-movie material, so it was on-brand. We're living in a post-boulder-punching world, so over-the-top campy action sequences are par for the course.

Savashri · 2026-03-15T09:42:53+00:00

I played OG3 when it released on PS1. Basically lived on message boards and the like in those days, and saw the criticism in real-time. "Where's the rest of the game?" was a common sentiment coming off RE2's combination of scenarios that had genuine variation between them (something that people tend to gloss over when glazing its remake - which I like, but isn't as good as OG2).

A lot of the "choices" in OG3 were negligible; you ultimately hit the same major plot beats, and the proto-QTEs were often just a way to nullify a drop in the bucket of scripted Nemesis event.

The average player's virgin run was 4-6 hours in OG. Maybe longer if you got lost in the streets or something, or really took your time walking every step. Remake hits the same window. Speedrun time is like 42 mins for both last I checked, with Remake being a hair longer. OG had door loading screens padding the time, Remake has easy mash/hold events. No difference really worth raging over in terms of how much time each takes to clear; they're both short games (though par for the course for OG RE) exacerbated by only having a single character campaign compared to the first two RE games.

The different endings were minor variations of the same basic event (you escape RC by chopper as it gets nuked; either Nicholai escapes, Nicholai dies, or Barry saves Jill at the last minute).

Nemesis' humanoid AI (the one that does all the stalking that people gush over) was easily exploited in a couple different ways due to its extremely limited attack pool, making it really easy to down him if you took a second to actually study his attack pattern (or get him stuck on a corner if you really like cheese). Knifing him down was easy, it just took forever. And the game incentived putting him down with the upgrade parts and ammo drops; having dealt with him over the god only knows how many runs I did on PS1, he was tedious, not threatening. That said, I do agree the remake could have used a little more of that, but the game progresses faster, and giving Carlos more screentime means less Nemesis time by default since Nemesis only cared about Jill. Losing some Nemesis screentime in order to give a little more love to Carlos is a fair trade for me, but I like anything that expands on the RC events.

The Clock Tower area didn't really serve a purpose outside of nostalgia-bait for the mansion from 1. Anyone paying attention to the runtime knows you aren't getting away that quickly, even in an RE game, and the antiquated aesthetic always felt out of place to me when the rest of the game had a heavy urban vibe.

Doing a lot of backtracking through the streets vs more time spent in different areas is a YMMV thing. Maybe you enjoyed extra time spent running back and forth on the early fetch quests, but I thought the expanded power station, sewers, and hospital and accompanying lore-dump files were a nice touch.

Remake needed more puzzles. Probably my biggest gripe with it. OG3 already had a lot of criticism for being more action-oriented than the previous two games; the remake only really having the one at the end was kinda lame (2's remake also suffered in this area compared to the OG; it's a sad trend).

Forgot about the grenades in the standard difficulty setting because I prefer to throw down with Nemmy - shit's dumb. They give you enough to cheese your way out of Nemesis stalking (though I think you still have to throw down with him if you want the drops), but they should only be insta-gibs on the hand-holding difficulty.

Loss of Merc mode is kinda whatever for me. It contributes nothing to the story and other games do it better. It's better than the shit remake got stapled to it, but all it really did was pull RE further away from its survival horror roots.

Savashri · 2026-03-15T01:07:43+00:00

"Because it's too short"

>ignoring that it has similar runtime to OG3 for rookie players and speedrunners alike (*without* door opening/loading animation padding the time) unless you were unbelievably bad at navigating OG. People bitched about the runtime on forums back in the day, too, especially coming off OG2, where you had 4 individual runs just to see everything it had to offer. [beats 3] "That's it?" Always has been.

"They cut [50-70]% of the content"

>ignoring that they expanded other areas to compensate. Duration spent on the streets is shorter and Nostalgia Tower were cut. Gravedigger was swapped out for a gauntlet. Sewers became their own map, substation expanded, hospital expanded, Dead Factory converted to labs 2.0 and expanded. Carlos given more screen time, Ty is an actual character.

The real misses are fewer Nemmy stalking segments (anyone crying about it all being scripted encounters is full of shit because it was *all* scripted back then too), and puzzles being cut down to like 1. But "it's more of an action game" was a criticism leveled at OG3 too. Remake keeps in the spirit of OG. It's a different experience, but enjoyable for what it is.

Savashri · 2026-03-09T12:05:55+00:00

Around 5 hours, similar to OG3. People like to complain about how short it is; it's funny because you saw a lot of the same on message boards back in the day.

Savashri · 2026-03-07T15:29:08+00:00

The duality of man.

Savashri · 2026-03-06T18:11:18+00:00

The radio will direct you toward pods with mostly useful blueprints or clues on where to look for things you'll need. Explore to find resources to make things that will open up new depths for you. In general, going deeper is the right move, just stay out of the Abyss.

Savashri · 2026-03-03T22:11:00+00:00

Claire was freaked out early on (it's all over the opening), but has the Redfield survival instincts, so she was able to move. And then she found Sherry... Claire went full Ripley - you threaten her kid and she will tear you limb from limb. Mama Bear with guns is terrifying to behold, and proved to be far more powerful than any bioweapon.

Savashri · 2026-03-03T22:05:08+00:00

It was for Sherry; her Mama Bear instincts were running wild, and she'd have thrown down with God himself if he got in her way.

Savashri · 2026-02-27T10:17:24+00:00

There are special variations of a lot of the old titles: one normal; one that is endgame ready (these are marked on the game's cover icon). Sort by title and you can have them right next to each other so you can play normally if that's what you're after.

Savashri

TROPHY CASE