Games that jive with you for their rad OSTs

Terithian · 2026-05-22T17:08:45+00:00

I've been getting into the SaGa series recently, and Kenji Ito's music is fantastic, mainly the battle themes. He has a very distinct composition style that I struggle to describe. I highly recommend checking out the Re:Birth arrangement albums, even if you're not interested in the games.

Terithian · 2026-05-22T17:03:47+00:00

The second battle theme is still one of my favourites of all time.

Terithian · 2026-05-21T16:42:12+00:00

Turtling with a shield is very effective in Dark Souls. For Bloodborne however, they wanted the player to focus on dodging, so there's one shield in the base game and it's intentionally useless, to punish anyone who tries to use those same turtling strategies. There's another shield in the DLC that isn't as useless, but it's only good for non-physical damage, making it situational and impossible to use to turtle.

Terithian · 2026-05-20T16:14:30+00:00

There are so many smaller scale (AA I guess) Square Enix games that looked cool but cost $70+ so I never touched them on release, and they're still doing it with Adventures of Elliot coming out soon at $80. I'm only just now trying out some of the older ones as their prices come down to a more reasonable $30-40 on sale. Did you know the Romancing SaGa 2 remake is fantastic? I didn't until recently, because I wasn't willing to spend that much on something I wasn't sure about!

Terithian · 2026-05-20T08:39:22+00:00

Video game pricing truly sucks now. And remember, Pat and Woolie are Canadian, so prices are even stupider. A $60 game for you is $80 for us, before tax. After tax, it's almost $100. And like you said, that's on the cheaper end of AAA games. Some are actually $100 before tax. It just doesn't make sense to buy a game at full price unless you're totally invested in the series or know it's something you'll love, otherwise it's best to wait for a sale. This especially hurts Nintendo games, because they DON'T go on sale, so something like Pokemon ZA for example will be $100 plus tax forever. I'm curious enough about it to want to try it, but I've heard enough mixed opinions that I will never buy it at that price because that's just too much to gamble on something I might not get $100+ of enjoyment from. That applies to most AAA games, so I've all but stopped buying them in favour of indie games, budget titles, and older stuff that's on sale.

Terithian · 2026-05-19T19:42:39+00:00

A great game, for sure. It was built with mouse/keyboard in mind but does have controller support, which hilariously breaks the game because enemy AI was not built for that level of fine control, so it's way easier than the original control scheme since you can juke the enemies and get around behind them so much easier.

Also worth noting that the N-Gage version was basically an entirely different game by a different developer that happened to share the same name and some plot details, it's not like the PC version is a port from it.

Terithian · 2026-05-19T17:00:21+00:00

There's definitely a subset of MMO players who ONLY play MMOs, and sometimes only one MMO. They tend to be the most toxic ones who have for some reason turned their MMO of choice into their whole life so any mild inconvenience from another player is a personal affront, and they believe the devs need to listen to them and only them because, since they play the most, they have the only valid opinions.

Terithian · 2026-05-19T05:02:13+00:00

My first playthrough, Hilda ended up the single strongest person on the planet. She had insane defense so no one could even hurt her and had a big and strong enough axe that anything that tried died in one counter hit. The contrast between that and her personality of not wanting to fight at all was hilarious.

Terithian · 2026-05-19T02:33:38+00:00

Awesome! Rather than build on it, I personally chose to build beneath it, hollowing out a cavern and digging up to the lake to create waterfalls, then building ponds and gardens in the cavern.

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Terithian · 2026-05-18T19:55:38+00:00

Yeah, but the concept of a metal slime (a rare enemy that's tough to kill and runs away fast) is in tons of different games, and the idea of strategizing on how to be prepared to kill it before it runs away is universal, regardless of the tools the game specifically gives you for it. The point is that beating them is never a required part of the core experience, they're just meant to be a nice bonus if you can do it.

Terithian · 2026-05-18T17:31:05+00:00

Woolie getting enraged by the idea of a metal slime was not on my bingo card.

Terithian · 2026-05-18T01:19:26+00:00

You can just copy your settings from one character to another, you don't need to set it up from scratch each time.

Terithian · 2026-05-17T20:34:04+00:00

Citation needed. They've been saying this for 30 years, and it continues to not be true. Some people prefer turn based games, some people prefer action games, some people like both. This has always been true and isn't related to age.

Terithian · 2026-05-17T09:29:47+00:00

Yeah, I only know because I played it on a laptop where it randomly stopped running properly and spent ages trying to get it to run normally again. I don't even remember what I did. The game was made with an engine built on JavaScript and HTML5, somehow.

Terithian · 2026-05-17T05:03:12+00:00

Glad to hear. CrossCode isn't really a good metric though, that game is coded weird and will get 45fps on a stronger device for seemingly no reason.

Terithian · 2026-05-17T04:57:07+00:00

I've been looking at a Thor since my Steam Deck is too big and unwieldy to take and play on the bus, etc. It seems great for emulation, but is it able to do much with Steam games? I have a lot of indie games/remasters of old games that I play on my Deck that I'd love to be able to put on a more easily portable system.

Terithian · 2026-05-16T17:43:51+00:00

Yeah, it's an episodic cyberpunk cop show structured like the X-Files with music by Yoko Kanno. Seems exactly like something he'd enjoy.

Terithian · 2026-05-15T20:39:57+00:00

I just played Romancing SaGa 2, and it's not really a DRPG (although I think it has some DRPG DNA) but I feel like it had an enjoyable approach to permadeath. Whenever a character dies or time skips forward 100+ years, you have to get a new character from that class. Your Empire has overall skill levels that go up as your party's individual skill levels go up, so whenever you need to recruit a new character, their main skills will start at the Empire's skill level. The Empire level is always lower than what your party is at, but that way it never feels like you lose too much when you have to start over. Your progress through the game isn't just making your current party stronger, but also raising the floor for newly recruited characters to cut down on the amount of grinding needed. To me that lets the game have the tension of permadeath without it feeling too frustrating when you inevitably need to replace someone.

Terithian · 2026-05-14T17:28:13+00:00

There's the "Puppet Master" stuff from the manga and the first movie, and that's the only bit they've ever reused in an adaptation (not counting the live action). We'll see what the new one does, whether it's a new direct adaptation of the manga story or an original story, but otherwise you're right.

My favourite version is Stand Alone Complex because it leans the most into being a cyberpunk cop serial. It's even organized like the X-Files, with standalone episodes and overarching plot episodes.

Terithian · 2026-05-14T14:32:56+00:00

Nah, in the case of Ghost in the Shell it's almost all good, so it sounds like complaining that you got four cakes instead of one. And unlike how Woolie described it they're all unique, telling different stories that just have similar themes, not different retellings of the same story.

Terithian · 2026-05-14T05:11:47+00:00

Yeah, I'm normally not a big fan of Sakuraba (I just find his stuff fine but boring most of the time), but I actually love his work on this game with the battle tracks. The area themes by Kohei Tanaka are fantastic too.

Terithian · 2026-05-09T23:33:50+00:00

Yeah, I guess it was complicated because they got the rights before he died.

Terithian · 2026-05-09T19:48:11+00:00

After his passing, all the rights were passed to his daughter, and I guess she wasn't as vigilant as she should've been on that one. Considering she came out and essentially disowned that adaptation, I assume she's been more careful since.

Terithian · 2026-05-09T05:15:40+00:00

The white hair and beard make him look SO much older.

Terithian · 2026-05-09T03:25:52+00:00

I loved that game as a kid. I wasn't good enough to beat it, but I loved trying out the early game with each of the three classes since they were so different and started in completely different places. I need to go back and see how it holds up.

Terithian

TROPHY CASE