Press B 175: Sea of Stars

We're huge fans of The Messenger here at Press B and can't believe the time has finally arrived to play Sabotage Studios' sophomore game: Sea of Stars.

This week, Wulff and Chard rave about everything from the sound and music to the awesome sprite work and gameplay, in what could be a game of the year pick.

Just don't mind Jake; he just doesn't like good games.

Press B To Cancel now on YouTube! For updates and more episodes please visit our website www.pressbtocancel.com, or find us on Twitter @pressbtocancel

Special thanks to The Last Ancient on SoundCloud for our podcast theme.

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Read transcript

00:00 --> 00:45 I'll sleep when I'm sea of Stars today on the old standby tread true. Hello, everybody, and welcome back to another phenomenal episode of PressBy To Cancel. I am your host for this evening and this wonderful episode. Chardmunk with me, as always, is my two best friends. Yes. Well, at least the two that are here right now. Wolf, how are you doing, sir? Welcome home.
00:45 --> 00:48 I'm good. I'm happy to talk about this same.
00:48 --> 01:11 Same jake, my brother from Southeast. I'm above still. I'm still a little more Canadian than you. I am above you. That sounded very tyrannical and that's not my intentions, but no tyrannical. Not you.
01:12 --> 01:12 Me.
01:12 --> 01:13 No.
01:13 --> 01:14 That's Jake's job.
01:14 --> 01:17 Jake, how are you? How are you, boss? How you doing?
01:17 --> 01:26 I am full of nothing but love this Friday. I've been away for a few weeks and I am looking forward to talking about one of your favorite games this year.
01:27 --> 02:31 It is this game is damn near close to being a game of the year for me. I don't know if anybody else agrees with me on that statement, but it's holding its own pretty damn well. Tonight we're going to talk about a new release that I've been waiting for for probably at least three or four years that just came out at the beginning of this month called Sea of Stars. Now, Sea of Stars was created by created by sabotage, who, if you don't know who that is, are the people that created the messenger, which is a great ninja guidanceque type, retro inspired side scroller game. But this is not that way. No. This game is actually taken from the fucking anals of my own heart. An RPG is an RPG that is a love letter to about 90% of the RPGs that I grew up loving and playing off. The Super Nintendo most notable name drops you will hear while playing this game is Chrono Trigger and Super Mario RPG, which is Jake's favorite RPG of all time, as well as Cinder Stars, the.
02:31 --> 02:36 Damn fine four bars, charred. You want to talk about a Super Mario RPG? That's a good one. I like that one.
02:37 --> 03:10 Well, there's going to be a lot gino. Oh, jeez. You can't even say that with a straight face. Wow. I saw you sour up as soon as that O left your mouth. Now, there's a lot of correlations between those retro inspired games in the background, the attack method, the Is, and Wolf, I'm sure, has seen it. Wolf is the only one in the podcast who has finished the game. We're at three different levels of playing the game right now. Wolf has finished it. He's completed it. I think he did everything.
03:10 --> 03:16 Everything. All the secrets, all the whole night. I just haven't touched new Game Plus and I haven't hit the level cap.
03:16 --> 03:29 I am right at the middle. I just got to like one of the bigger, pivotal points today on stream. As a matter of fact. And Jake well, Jake just decided to take the cellophane off and put it into his computer or switch.
03:29 --> 03:37 Sorry. I've played enough to be considered infinitely qualified to discuss Sea of Stars. Stars?
03:37 --> 03:37 Wow.
03:37 --> 03:38 But I don't even know what it is.
03:38 --> 03:41 I have not called it Sea of Thieves like you have the last couple of that's true. Give me that.
03:41 --> 03:48 At least that is true. No, one letter back. It's a letter back. It's SOS not so t. Get it right.
03:48 --> 03:57 Four or 5 hours. I think I've done for this game so far. I think about four or 5 hours. I'm on the second island and we'll talk about it, but I just can't do it.
03:57 --> 04:01 Wow. I am at 20 what did I say? 24, 25 and a half hours.
04:02 --> 04:04 Yeah, you said like, 25 hours, give or take.
04:04 --> 04:11 Yeah. So right smack dab in the middle of this 50 hours gym. And then, of course, yeah, actually, my.
04:11 --> 04:14 File is at 50 hours and like, 20 minutes.
04:15 --> 04:19 Look at that. Literally right in the middle. Literally sit right in the middle.
04:19 --> 04:22 And that's 100% complete, though, right? At 50 hours.
04:22 --> 04:39 Yeah. That's doing everything there is to do in a complete first play through. I didn't touch new Game Plus, like I said, but I did all the extras and secrets that you can do your first time through, which is, I want to say everything. I just haven't hit level cap.
04:39 --> 05:43 Okay, so let's break this bad boy down. Let's talk about the retro inspiredness of the game. Obviously, it is done by Sabotage, who is known for their pixel artwork and what appears to be now playing. I haven't played a ton of the messenger. I know the messenger. I've watched it a ton. I know what it's about, and I know that we'll probably cover this later. There's some correlation between both these games that you wouldn't think about unless you were playing it, and it's actually kind of cool. But let's talk about the artwork style. The artwork style is that of 16 bit pixelated type look, but it's still smooth, it's clean, everything is bright and colorful. The enemies are different and neat looking. And the boss battles at the end of each section of the game that might be my favorite part of the game, is seeing how they designed, how they look, how the artwork looks on the creatures that they've created. Wolf, what say you, sir? What is your standout on this?
05:43 --> 06:31 Well, when I first started playing this, I didn't touch the demo. So, literally, aside from some early test art that Sabotage had shown off on Reddit and Twitter, I had not seen much of this game until I finally played. You know, you get the initial obvious chrono trigger vibes based on just the basic gameplay. And was it was very reminiscent to me of, like, Lunar and Suicoden as well, just in the format of storytelling, the characters and in defense, of my correlation to Lunar. There's a lot of the traveling from island to island. Garl reminded me a lot of Ramis at the beginning of Lunar. Just way nicer.
06:32 --> 06:32 Okay.
06:32 --> 06:39 But there's he was immediately like, oh, he's Ramis. But.
06:43 --> 06:46 Your I see your face, Jake. You put that away.
06:47 --> 07:15 Garl is my favorite character in this game okay. By a long shot. And I'm pretty sure that's by design, I don't want to delve deep know why that may be, but he sort of outshines even the main two characters, Valer and Zale. It really feels like Garl's adventure that Zale and Valer are the muscle for to. Right. Like, that's kind of how the game feels a lot of the time.
07:16 --> 07:37 Yeah. Because those two characters are boring as shit. That's one of the reasons why I don't like the game. The first two characters are boring. Garl is great. I love him. He's fun. The eye missing the eye. His origin in the beginning was really cool. I always feel bad for him because he doesn't have powers like the other two do, but he's got personality. I like him a lot. The other two are just boring.
07:37 --> 07:59 Garl gets some major redemption in the game as far as where the power really lies in the party. And it's really cool to see that unfold throughout the game. And like I said, I don't want to spoil anything major, so I'm just going to leave that there. But yeah, Garl, it's not the power.
07:59 --> 08:05 Of friendship, is it? Because if it's a power of friendship, I'm going to be pissed off. Is it the power of heart?
08:06 --> 08:10 Power of tacos? And you'd be, Ah, fucking tacos are terrible.
08:10 --> 09:42 Garl's heart is the driving force behind this game. It's not Zale's Sun power. It's not Valer's Moon. It's it really is Garl's heart. And I mean, that sounds super cheesy, I know, and that's fair. But as you progress through the game, the stakes, like, they start off telling you the stakes are big. Right? But they don't feel big. They don't off the bat, they don't. Yeah, you feel like you're just taking care of island. It feels small. You're taking care of a problem. Right. It's janitorial services, is how it kind of comes across. Given what you're told about the Solstice Warriors and what they've done within the past and how long it's been going on and all that. It feels very custodial, but the further into the game you get, it just keeps ramping and ramping and ramping, and after a certain point, it starts to feel like these characters, this party, cannot overcome what they're up against. Which, interestingly enough, the archivist in the opening moments of the game says they don't. The archivist, they don't overcome these challenges. There's a couple of times, a couple of realities where they might. Let's start with this one. They seem like they might. And he opens one of his books, and that's how the game starts is like, maybe this reality gets it right, or this reality has the best chances of getting it right, or something like that. Right?
09:42 --> 09:43 Right.
09:43 --> 10:03 So that's another thing, too. Is that's another connection right there to it feels very Chrono Trigger Chrono Cross in terms of the story they're trying to convey. And as I was telling my budy, this is a better spiritual successor, a better successor to Chrono Trigger than Chronocross was.
10:03 --> 10:04 Absolutely.
10:04 --> 10:21 And the likenesses to Chronocross are kind of absurd. It's an archipelago. It does deal with time travel and alternate realities in varying degrees. Right. So, yeah, it's Chronocross, but good. Okay.
10:21 --> 10:22 Exactly.
10:22 --> 10:24 I like chronocross, though.
10:24 --> 10:25 That's your problem.
10:28 --> 10:31 I liked Chronocross. So that should tell you right there how much I like Steve Stars.
10:32 --> 10:32 Yeah.
10:32 --> 10:33 I do not like chronocross.
10:33 --> 10:37 I didn't love chronocross, but I liked chronocross.
10:37 --> 10:51 Chronocross was a bastardized version. If they took Chrono out of the name and just called it Dimension Cross, then I'd be like, oh, okay, cool. That's fine. But I was expecting something completely different and did not get what I was anticipating.
10:51 --> 11:56 I mean, I don't want to think that's on a tangent, but we should do an episode on Chronocross. I'm not saying it's like a top ten RPG or anything, but it's a good one. You're right. It does not hold to the original material of Chrono Trigger. So I want to come on the graphics, because the graphics is one of the few things I do like about this game. I love the sprite work. I also like how it's a homage to the 2D pixel artwork of 16 bit era, but it has the modern lighting thrown on top of it with the shadows. I love how when you control time to make the day night cycle happen real time, it affects the sprite work. That's really awesome. That looks really cool. The animation, although it's not fluid, like high frame rate, it still looks really good and it kind of fits. Obviously, we didn't have that animation style on the STES era, but it feels close enough to that style and it works really well. Sabotage Studios. What they did with the messenger as taking the best parts of Ninja guidance and modernizing it, but still keeping that style. They do the same thing here with Crone Trigger and CSRs. It looks really great.
11:56 --> 13:55 Retro modernization is kind of like the term that we look at when we see these kinds of artwork. I mean, it reminds you of days of your, but still keeps you seated in the now. So it's smooth, it's clean, but it still brings you back. It takes you back to booting up, popping the cartridge in, flipping the button up on your sness and hearing the music kick on and keep going. I love the artwork in this game. It is so cool. I like big bosses. I like big sprite bosses that take up half the screen that you have to fight because it looks intimidating. It makes you feel like, oh, can I overcome this challenge? And every boss that I have fought up to this point has looked just like that, where I'm like, oh, what's this guy going to drop? We just ran into one of the dwellers, and they are cool. Like, the way they have created them and designed them, they are so cool and creepy and mentally dominating and, can I take these things on? Can I actually fight this thing? So the scale of everything just kind of fits perfectly with how grandiose I feel like the game should be. Everything else is pretty standard grandiose. But the layers, when you're on the second island and it's up above the sky and you're going down to try and get to the ocean floor and you could see the layers behind the island, like the distancing, the perspective looks awesome. It looks so cool. I played the demo when it was released and I just kept watching videos of it. And the first video you see is one of the Zoltol, I believe, the ball catching statue, catching your characters and putting them down on the ground, and I was like, that's just a transportation thing. Like, what is everything else going to look like?
13:55 --> 13:57 That whole sequence is amazing.
13:58 --> 14:16 So the artwork behind this game, I can't imagine anybody not appreciating what has come out of this. Secondly, unless anybody else has something about the artwork they want to continue, I'd say we're going to drop into the music next.
14:16 --> 14:30 Just to say the character designs of the monsters feels a lot like grown trigger. There's a hint of humor in a lot of them. What's the name of the one Boulder Douche is? The Golem DJ.
14:30 --> 14:32 Well, I mean, he was in the messenger.
14:33 --> 14:34 Was he?
14:34 --> 14:41 He was. He was the rock golem dude in The Messenger, and he looked like he was DJing in that.
14:41 --> 14:44 Did he? I had to go back and look at that. Okay.
14:45 --> 15:23 There's a lot of subtle connections between the messenger where the story actually exists within this dimension. It's pretty cool. It's subtle enough that if you haven't played the messenger, you're kind of like, whatever, those guys look familiar. But going back and replaying the messenger on top of playing C Stars, you're like, yeah, okay, these guys are hanging in the same place. There is a lot of correlation between the two, and it's really neat how they're totally different genres of game style, but they're still set within the same kind of universe. But it's not like it's forced. It's kind of like, hey, we're going to drop these homages.
15:25 --> 15:30 I just dropped and I have something to say. He constantly looks like he's doing this in The Messenger.
15:30 --> 15:31 He's holding his can.
15:33 --> 15:43 Holding one of his cans and bouncing around. That's what he does in the game. So it looked like that's what he was doing. So the fact that they sort of leaned into that and made it look like he was actually DJing.
15:44 --> 16:07 That's awesome. There's really an island where you come across a creature, one of the guys you've been one of the monsters you're fighting just randomly, and he's looking out over the view. And if you talk to him, it's the same line that it gives you in Chrono Trigger. When you talk to one of the creatures up there, it says Views.
16:07 --> 16:08 Nice.
16:08 --> 16:42 And if you keep talking to him, yeah, if you keep talking, he'll give you a tent. And then this one, he gives you a health item. It's the same series of lines, it's the same number of talking. And he goes, God, you're annoying. Here, take this, go away. Or it's a power tab, I think you get from the first one. But that was one of the one things in the game where I was like, you got me, you got me. I remember that.
16:42 --> 16:43 That's cool.
16:44 --> 16:57 A lot of callbacks. But speaking of Callbacks and Chrono Trigger, let's talk about the music that is connected with this particular game. Now, we know that what's the guy's name that did the music for The Messenger?
16:57 --> 18:02 Okay, so Rainbow Dragon Eyes, or as he's credited in this, Eric W. Brown did the music for The Messenger and did most of the music for Sea of Stars. They did get Yasinori Matsuda to do ten tracks for Sea of Stars. And there were a couple that I was very like sometimes I'd stop and I'd listen. I'd be like, okay, this one's got to be Mitsuda, because I will say they both have very distinct sounds. And so it's cool that the fact that they don't feel like they clash in the game, it doesn't feel like you're a completely different style. But you can definitely tell what's Matsuda if you're trying to and what's Rainbow Dragon Eyes or Eric Brown if you're trying. Rainbow Dragon Eyes was like, one of my top three listened to in Spotify last year.
18:05 --> 18:08 And Mitsuda for the last, like, two.
18:11 --> 18:27 What what helps with that is that if you've played the messenger, then there's a lot of hints or callbacks to the messenger soundtrack in Sea of Stars. Like, when I'm listening to a lot of the tracks, you can hear the hints of music for the messenger in it. And I love it. It feels great.
18:27 --> 19:02 Well, yeah, and we'll come back to this, but basically there's whole chunks of Sea of Stars that connect with the messenger. So early on through the first half of the game, it feels like it's just ramping up. You're getting bits and bits, like larger and larger chunks of connection to the messenger until a point, and then it kind of seemingly drops off. And then for the rest of the game, there are still connections. They're just not as dramatic and sometimes not nearly as noticeable. But there were a couple that I was like, I got you.
19:02 --> 19:44 Yeah, there's a lot of swelling in the music too as the game continues because it seems very like you said, it seems very choresy, very we're just going to go take out the trash kind of thing. This is our job, we're going to go do it. But as the story itself and this is also going back to the gar thing of him being the heart of the team, which makes this less cheesy, is that, yeah, you expect, yeah, it's power, French, blah blah blah. But what's going on and what's happening is so not obviously like that's what it is, you know what I mean? It's not like we're friends so we're going to deal with this together now. He says that kind of stuff but you're not like, god, I want to hit this guy with a pan. You're kind of like, no.
19:44 --> 19:55 For some reason he's so lovable. He's not obnoxious about it. He's just such a likable character. It's great, right? They did it to just the right.
19:55 --> 21:02 Amount that as it keeps on going throughout the game, the music becomes more epic and less sceney like. Less like, oh, we're just in the next area. It swells and it gets bigger and it gets more grandiose and more anxiety ridden parts. Like the whole part that I'm in right now, I'm like losing my crap for everything because it's the big turn. It's like the big pivot point of where you've hit, you're going to the climax and the conflict is coming together and you're just like, what is happening? And I hated that I had to stop it today. And you can tell the Mitsuda parts of that are the swelling is the epic, the building on top of it and having Rainbow Dragon Eyes and him kind of mix. Like you said, it doesn't clash because they are very different styles and music in their respective ways. But they've made such a good job of combining their styles together to make this epic but cool know, this is going to be a very much widely listened to album on my Spotify.
21:02 --> 21:07 I keep waiting for it to hit Spotify because right now there's only the three tracks, right?
21:07 --> 21:14 I wonder if it's licensing issues because they went outsourced. Maybe the guy from Chrono Trigger to do some of the tracks.
21:14 --> 21:21 I admits on Spotify he's got work on there already. Yeah, I listened to Chrono Trigger religiously on there.
21:21 --> 21:31 I think it's supposed to hit Spotify soonish but maybe they're just waiting for soundtrack sales to go hit a certain amount before they do it or something. I don't know.
21:31 --> 22:10 Oh, soundtrack was probably part of the deluxe edition of the game or something. Probably that makes sense. But Clashing music styles can totally work. One of my favorite soundtracks of all time and it keeps getting better is Final Fantasy XIV and there's what, half a dozen different genres represented in Final Fantasy 14. Every raid or every boss battle is like different genre music from rock to freaking classical. It's awesome. So I dig the classical. I dig the conflict of styles, the mix of styles in this game, it's really good. The soundtrack is also something I love about Sea of Stars, which sucks because I love the graphics and I love the soundtrack. There's a lot to like here.
22:11 --> 23:12 Yeah. Let's talk about the combat real quick. The combat in Sea of Stars, it's very much like a mashup of on the surface, it looks like Chrono Trigger. It feels a lot like Chrono Trigger, but it's got that timed hit mechanic that you get from Super Mario RPG or the Mario and Luigi RPGs. For handheld game. For handheld dragoon. Yeah. And to a degree, I like it. Sometimes it's hard to figure out when to time what, especially when different enemies telegraph different ways and you have to time your blocks different times and all that. This was one of my small frustrations with the game, actually, is early on in the game, when you're being taught about the mechanics, it straight up tells you, oh, don't worry. If you time things right, it's not a big deal. Right. It straight up tells you it's not a big deal. Just think of it as a bonus when you get it right.
23:12 --> 23:13 Totally is a big deal.
23:13 --> 23:15 It's a big fucking deal.
23:15 --> 23:32 When you time it right and blocks 25% of incoming damage right. That's a big deal. To me, that's enough to warrant wanting to get it right as often as possible. So the fact that they play it off like, don't worry about it, but you kind of got to worry about it most of the time.
23:32 --> 23:34 Don't worry about it.
23:34 --> 23:35 Kind of worry about it.
23:36 --> 23:41 Yeah. There were some cases, I think it shaved off like, 50% or more damage if I defended at the right time.
23:41 --> 23:58 But not only that, but also the other part of the combat, the lock system, which you guys can explain more than me, but in that it's critical that you hit more than once with the same element type, and you do that by timing your attack correctly. If you don't time an attack, you're only hitting once instead of twice.
23:59 --> 24:13 Right. And there are ways to do that. There's a character. I don't think you have the character yet. You get them pretty sure early on. Should I mention them by name?
24:13 --> 24:14 Chard if you want to.
24:14 --> 24:14 Yeah.
24:14 --> 24:17 I mean, I think I have them all. I don't think there's anyone I miss.
24:17 --> 24:24 Yeah, she's pretty early on. You get her on the third island. Her name is Sarai. She's a ninja character.
24:25 --> 24:29 She's my favorite. And a better edge, if I might.
24:31 --> 24:32 Know about that one.
24:32 --> 24:34 Just you wait, it gets better still.
24:34 --> 24:36 She's not a glass cannon like edges.
24:41 --> 24:46 She has an ability that can actually knock back the timer by two.
24:48 --> 24:48 Okay.
24:49 --> 25:11 So that becomes an element of part of the strategy. Right. By the end of the game, you've got so many different types of abilities. You're swapping characters on the fly, which you totally can do without getting punished for. It's not like Pokemon where it takes a turn to swap a character. You can just swap them whenever and it doesn't take a turn away from you. I love that.
25:12 --> 25:12 Absolutely.
25:12 --> 25:18 Lets you seamlessly use all of your characters that you have almost whenever you want.
25:21 --> 25:36 If you got a combo tech, too, and that character is not out in your party, it will automatically still allow you to select that tech and put that member in your party instantaneously so you could do the attack. So it's not like people around.
25:36 --> 25:36 Yeah.
25:36 --> 26:17 Even if your other two characters have already spent their turns, you can still swap one of them out in the tech menu. It'll let you swap the other character and like, which one do you want to trade out? And then after that character's turn, it resets the turn order. And now all three are available for taking their turns again. So there's no punishment in swapping at all. And I love that that's another thing to mention, actually, is leveling in this game. It's constantly even. So, if you have a character who's dead at the end of combat, they're not losing out an experience. You could argue that that simplifies it a little bit. I think it reduces a headache that's present in a lot of RPGs.
26:17 --> 27:30 Yes, I agree. Because how many times have we had to go into another area where Final Fantasy Six, where you have to split the team up at the very end and like, oh, I haven't used Gao since, I don't know, the world of freaking balance. So he's level, I don't know, 13 when he should be within at least the so it allows you. But we have a joke. Jake has a running joke where he'll come into my stream and say, hey, why aren't you using the best party? Well, guess what? I have the best party because they're all there. I can move around and however want to, and they're all the same level, so there's none of that stuff. The challenge is still in the battle. It's not like it scales to you. A lot of the fights are, I think, adequately difficult. I have not hit any spikes yet. There's been some times where I've made poor decisions and I've suffered from it, but I think I've only really died in this game maybe four or five times in the 25 hours I played it. And that's just because poor timing. I messed something up. And when I came back and did it again, I was like, oh, I'll just get the timing right. And it's still a learning curve, which we'll talk about some of the puzzly parts of the combat here in a minute.
27:30 --> 28:25 I think I only died like six times going through the game, so I don't feel like it's too hard there's. Also gosh. Okay, so the locking system, right? Let's talk about that because like Chard was saying, at certain points, it's kind of a puzzle within combat. So it gets to a point where sometimes you're given a set of locks that you just can't accomplish. Right? Right. That's because I feel like it's sort of dangling a carrot in front of the player that they can't get right. I think it's by design, it can seem frustrating, but really what it is is it's letting you know something really big is about to happen. Prepare yourself. If you've got characters with low health, heal them or swap them out because this is going to hurt really bad. That's what that's telling you.
28:25 --> 29:32 But with that you can't prepare yourself because I know. Okay. Later on, sure. You get a character that can turn back the clock. So here's the battle that kind of pissed me off and tipped me off. In this game, there's three of the same enemy and their spell that they cast. And it gives you a lock to chance to break. It is bombs. There's three of them. They all charge in their spell. Fuck it immediately in the first round and you have two turns and you're going to try and attempt to take down the lock of each of those characters or not. You can try to prepare yourself, but if you don't take down the locks, that bomb attack did a crap ton of damage and you get hit with three of them unless you take some of them down. And the locks I got, I don't know if they're random or they're predetermined, but I did one just barely, but it meant I couldn't heal anybody and I ended up dying there. And I realize later on there's stuff that you can get to make that easier. But in the beginning of the game, that was kind of brutal. They give you like enemies that are all casting spells, all have locks. You can't reliably take down any of them. And that was kind of frustrating. I know this better.
29:32 --> 31:38 I'm the sadomasochist, I think, of the group when it comes to difficulty in playing games. So those things to me, I thought were cool additions to the fight system. I like the puzzley aspect to mean there's there's definitely times where you start up and I've looked at it, I've stared at it, I've stared at a lock going, damn it, I can't do can't. How do I get through that? And then it takes you time to kind of figure out that same area that you're talking about. Jake was like my first death and I think I died there twice trying to get through that area because it is tough. But even just like kind of looking it over, going, oh, all right, we can do this. Instead, I can move this around. You just got to. Think a little bit more in kind of a tactical sense when it comes to because some of those things there are times when there's I think that the choices are predetermined and I think those predeterminations tell you what attack it's going to be. Because sometimes it'll be an attack or another time, an all heal or something. And you can usually see when it puts up that lock key up there, you can go, okay, that's the attack. So Wolf's right, you can determine this lock key I know is going to be a group heal for the other team. So I'm going to take that opportunity to heal my team because they're going to do the same thing if I don't have enough magic or enough time to get at it to unlock that thing. The lock system in this is so cool. I love this part. It makes fighting interesting. And it's not just like Mario RPG where I'm just trying to find the timing on things. It's added level of challenge to the game. That's fun and it can be brutal. I'm not going to take that away from anybody or make anybody feel bad about it. But it's still like, oh, this is a neat system. Okay, who do I need to attack first? And sometimes you don't know. Sometimes the attack is going to be four damage and sometimes the attack is going to wipe out half your party. But you don't know until you see it. And it's a learning curve. As you continue, you die and you go back and try it again.
31:39 --> 32:35 It is neat and I do like it. But what kind of wore on me is that it's not just reserved for hard encounters or bosses. It's every damn fight. And there's a lot of fights. I mean, it's an RPG. That's what you get with an RPG is the battles. But there's a lot of fights in this game and they all have that mechanic and they all use that lock mechanic heavily. And I feel like you can't just face roll your way through combat like you could in Chrome Trigger or Final Fantasy maybe. That's my issue. We'll get to it later on. There are things that you can turn on in the game to make combat easier and end up doing that. And it made the game better for me. But there's just so many battles and having to face the locks every few minutes for another battle, it just wore out quickly. I didn't mind the time button presses, although you're right, Wolf, there are some attacks that kind of hard to judge, but I like the Mario RPG aspect of the combat. But the lock system in every goddamn.
32:35 --> 34:07 Fight was a bit I early on. I will agree with you that that's the case. But something to consider in this game is you might feel like you're maybe under leveled level is not hugely important in this game. It can be but even if you skip some fights, which kind of is possible, you're not going to be hurting at the end of the game as long as you're keeping your characters geared up. Gear accounts for so many more stats in this game, so many more stat points, I should say, than levels do say for maybe a couple of things. It's kind of hard to get MP from Gear. Like, there's a couple of pieces that will give you a few MP, but for the most part, MP is sort of occasionally rewarded. On level ups. You'll get an MP and sometimes you can choose it as your stat bonus when you get a level up, which sometimes I was like, I want at least this much, so I'm going to take it until I'm at that. As soon as I get a level up, I'm going to take it until I hit that tier and then I'll start focusing on other things. But for the most part, it's really about finding the equipment. So you do want to do the deep exploration and find the equipment. Because if your level I'm going to spoil something small here. And it's about progression. So the level cap in this game is 30.
34:09 --> 34:11 I doesn't seem very high.
34:11 --> 34:15 No, Mario was the same level cap.
34:15 --> 34:32 As a matter of fact, Mario RPG was 35, actually. And I was frustrated with that being the level cap because I easily hit it in Mario RPG right in this. I was level 22 at the end.
34:33 --> 34:36 So the experience curve slow down that much.
34:36 --> 34:41 It feels like it, but as you're.
34:41 --> 35:02 Progressing, it's not a super curve. It's just like new enemies give you this much next. New enemies give you this much next. New enemies give you this much. And so you're making up for anything you might have missed very quickly. And it scales you kind of to where you need to be at that point very fast.
35:03 --> 35:55 There's been no point in this playthrough that I have ever stopped. And you know, me grinding is like it's the goddamn channel theme is to go and grind shit. We got a fucking video about it. I have not once throughout this entire game gone. I should not be here. I need to go back and grind some a little bit more. And I'm used to that. This game has progressed so smoothly in its difficulty that it's always felt like I'm here and it's like, right here. And I just keep bumping it up and it kind of tails with me. So it doesn't feel like, I can't be in this area, I got to get out of here or this boss is kicking my ass. We need to go get some levels. It doesn't feel that way at all. It feels like and there's a joke, there's actually a joke within the game where it's like you go into of town and you buy some new equipment, you sell the old shit you don't want. There's a whole, like, fourth wall breaking.
35:57 --> 36:00 Progressively better blacksmiths as you travel around the world.
36:00 --> 36:02 Yeah, I fucking love that shit.
36:02 --> 36:18 So Yoland one of the pirates that you meet very early in the game. She's the one who doles out the very meta humor that you get from the messenger's shopkeeper. Yoland gives you that sort of humor in this. I love that Yoland was my favorite pirate.
36:19 --> 36:27 She's everything is her middle name. Every time it's a different say, well, if that wouldn't be my middle name or some shit like that, you're like.
36:28 --> 36:32 In fact, I think at one point she's actually like, that's not my middle name.
36:36 --> 37:15 Yeah, the scaling is great. There's no grinding in it. And it has not felt like I needed to find ultimate weapons. I have just casually, because Wolf is a hardcore, he dives in, he goes for everything he can find. I'm casually drifting through this and I am stumbling across armor that's better our weaponry. All that stuff is just kind of coming to me without there being like, god, I've spent 40 minutes trying to get RNG to drop for this stupid sword. It's literally been like, oh, we're in a new area. Oh, this sword just appeared. Cool. I'm going to take it back.
37:15 --> 37:33 There was a point where there was a spot that was very easy that you could have missed that. I was like, you need to go there so that you could get that sword because otherwise there's also a rainbow conch there. There's a sword and a rainbow conch. So one is something you're going to have to come back for later, and the other is disappointing if you find out you missed out on it.
37:33 --> 37:34 Right?
37:34 --> 37:39 So I was like, go there. This is not a spoiler, but you're going to want that.
37:40 --> 37:44 It's hard to see. The map was really hard to see. Yeah.
37:44 --> 38:05 I even communicated that spot to my buddy because he was playing through and I was like, how do I tell him without spoiling any of the story for him? I was like, okay, when you get to the point with Turquoise Pond or Turquoise Lake, whatever it's called, right? I was like, go directly east from there. There's an entrance there that you won't notice.
38:05 --> 38:05 Right?
38:05 --> 38:11 Go in there. You'll find some stuff that'll help. It's just a one room screen, right? Okay.
38:11 --> 38:33 I know a lot of the areas have something hidden that you can find if you just explore a little bit. And I like that because usually an accessory or something, which is cool. But I got to ask though, I'm so sick of fishing. Minigames. Are you required to do the fishing in this game? Because it feels like there's a lot of fishing in it.
38:33 --> 38:38 It helps, but really you only have to catch one of each type of fish in the game.
38:40 --> 38:42 And it's not hard. Yeah.
38:45 --> 38:51 Sometimes. I fished the first couple of ponds. And then I think I got to the third pond and it was like, you've already caught all these fish.
38:51 --> 38:52 I was like, all right, yeah, you just take off.
38:52 --> 38:53 No big deal.
38:53 --> 38:54 Yeah, you don't have to hit every.
38:54 --> 38:59 Single there's only 23 types of fish in the game. That's it.
39:00 --> 39:03 It's fun. Fishing is actually fun.
39:03 --> 39:04 Honestly.
39:04 --> 39:05 Clearing is not hard.
39:06 --> 39:13 No. You clear out a pond in less than five minutes, you've caught all the fish that are there, and you've got cooking materials. You're good. Yeah.
39:13 --> 40:00 And that's the other thing, is the food. Getting ingredients throughout the map to cook stuff, which I think is an awesome I love this game. There's an awesome attribute to the game where you're not buying potions and you're not buying elixirs. You're getting stuff to make food. And as soon as you get to a campfire, you just cook whatever. You get different recipes as the game progresses because Gar learns new things, and you can make food that do different things, and it's literally hold the button down, cool little animation about the cooking, and then you're done. You don't have to grab and pick or anything like that. The customization is just nil, and you just make stuff, and then you're like, oh, God, I've got all this food. And you can hold up to ten different items of food throughout the playthrough. So every time you get there go ahead.
40:01 --> 40:03 You can hold ten pieces of food, period.
40:03 --> 40:03 Right.
40:03 --> 40:11 So you can hold ten of the same thing or nine of something and one of something else. Whatever. It doesn't matter. You just got ten food slots.
40:11 --> 40:44 And I have yet to find a time where I've run out of food. I've gotten to maybe, like, three left, and then I'm like, oh, I found a campfire. Perfect. I'll start whipping stuff together. It's never been to a point where I'm like, I have no items. There's nothing I could do to heal. I am totally up against it. Here it is. Just so far. I think if Cindestar played the game, he would be very pleased with there not being a huge hockey stick in difficulty throughout this game. It feels very plateauy, like a gradual glide the whole time.
40:44 --> 40:54 That's something worth mentioning, too, for Jake's frustration with how many enemies there are in the game. As long as you don't leave the location, they don't respond, right?
40:54 --> 40:56 Yeah. You can clear out an entire not.
40:56 --> 41:36 Leaving the screen, it's leaving the location. So some locations are five, six, maybe seven screens or more. As long as you don't leave that location and go back to the world map, those enemies you've defeated are gone still. So if you feel like you need to, you can run back to a campfire, do some cooking, heal up, save, and then continue back on. And, yeah, it's a bit of backtracking, but it's better than finding yourself up against a brick wall with enemies. And so I actually found myself like, I'd go beat a fight right after a campfire, and I'd be like, man, those guys hit hard. And I need to heal back to the campfire and rest real quick and.
41:36 --> 42:31 Then continue on and save. So the problem I had was when I died, it was at the end of an area and you lose all your progress. And I'm like I'm like, all right, okay, fine, JRPG. This is how it used to be. I get it. It was still frustrating. And I get that doesn't happen very often. I do want to say I love the food system. The cooking is actually really cool because one of the problems with JRPGs final Fantasy especially is notoriously bad for this. You get hundreds of items and you'll get like a few dozen good ones, like Megalixers, and you have to defeat the urge to hoard. You don't want to hoard items in Final Fantasy, but you feel like you have to because they're finite in this game. Literally doesn't matter. In fact, you just use the ten items and you make more. You don't have to hoard anything or feel like you're going to hoard something because that was my biggest thing with Crow Trigger and Final Fantasy Six is never hoard your items. Use the damn things. So I like that about this game. Yeah. Do you like this game?
42:31 --> 42:48 Yeah. You sound like 26 recipes, I think in the game, too, so it's not a massive recipe list. And they scale hard, right? The first thing you get is like, it Heals 30 HP or it Heals Basic Salad five MP or something, right?
42:48 --> 42:50 Which is the name of it.
42:50 --> 42:54 I love that you need a fire to cook a salad. It's a basic salad.
42:54 --> 42:57 Fire roasted lettuce, man, come on. Perfect with you.
42:57 --> 43:33 But I mean, by the end of the game, the recipes you learn at the end of the game are like, heals one person for 100% of their HP and 100% of their MP. And then I think there was like, some items you find that you can cook. They heal the party for a bunch of hit points or a decent amount of hit points and some MP. So you get really somewhat varied healing items by the end of the game that lets you sort of tailor what foods you keep in your pack for your style of play, right?
43:34 --> 44:21 There's even stuff that bring characters out of ko and things like that. But even in a fight, like, your character will drop and it has stars around its head, like the old cartoon spinning stars, and each time one of those stars drops off, you're like one round closer to that person just getting back up and fighting again. So your characters, we've all know this, when you die, everybody's dead. Then it's over. But if you got two people KO'd and you can keep yourself going for a little bit longer. You just got to wait until they get out of it so you don't have to be like, crap, I don't have any Phoenix Downs or I don't have any life potions or any of that shit. It'll pop itself up if I can just hold on a little longer. So it kind of gives you a little bit more like, I got to stay alive just a little bit longer.
44:22 --> 44:50 And there's relics that make the game fairly and I'm not talking about the things that you switch on and off. There's party relics. So the game has sort of like two types of accessories. I should not say relic, I should say accessory, because that's what they're called in this. So there's two types of accessories. There's accessories that equip and affect your character, and there's accessories that you equip and affect the whole party. So even if they're not actively in the party in combat, the accessory they have on still affects the people that.
44:50 --> 44:53 Are there's like an on offset. The gold ones go into the options.
44:53 --> 44:55 Yeah, the gold ones affect everybody.
44:56 --> 44:57 Okay.
44:57 --> 45:07 As long as the silver one is just a character I should mention. There's one point and chard you're about there actually where the party gets sent in different directions.
45:08 --> 45:08 Okay.
45:08 --> 45:56 And so now you've got like a couple of people here and a couple of people here, and the couple people here, their gold relics only affect them. The other gold relics don't affect anybody here. So that was something I was a little bit bummed about to a degree. I was like, but there's definitely some customization there that lets you sort of plan out how you're tackling things, what kind of stuff your characters are capable of, what their survivability is like, things like that. Now, the relics that you were talking about that you could turn on and off, they're all over the board as to what they accomplish. One is just like it gives you a 10% off at stores. Okay, cool. I love that.
45:57 --> 46:01 Some of them says you can see enemy love points, weaknesses and stuff.
46:01 --> 46:46 Yeah, there's see enemies hit points and weaknesses. There's show a star fly out of your character when you time a thing correctly. Super useful. And then there's stuff, what I assume the one you're talking about, Jake, for accessibility. There's accessibility relics. So you turn that one on and after every battle, your characters all heal all their hit points, MP so that you're not struggling to get through the game. This game is very entry. I always claim that Chrono Trigger is very entry level RPG like. Anybody can get into it with relative ease. I feel like this is even easier, honestly.
46:46 --> 46:48 Way easier. Agreed.
46:48 --> 47:11 Absolutely. There's also relics for the people who want a really hardcore experience. There's stuff you can turn on that basically makes it so everything hits. You take 95% extra damage or something like that, and you do less damage and things like that. So there's some people who are like, yeah, I'm going to turn these all on and make it as hard as hell. Right, good for you. I'm not doing that, that's not fun for me.
47:11 --> 47:15 But maybe that's a new game plus feature. I don't know about that for the first place.
47:15 --> 47:37 So there's one that actually takes away the timing mechanic where it doesn't do as much damage, doesn't save against as much damage, but it automatically does the time to hit for you. I turned that on because I just got fed up pushing the button because I got hand pain trying to play on the switches. Little joy cons is really frustrating for the timing mechanic. It'd be easier on a PCI. I should have played this on Steam. Honestly.
47:37 --> 48:10 And honestly though, turning that on, your success rate is probably depending on how hardcore you are about it, you're never going to hit 100% success rate unless you're like super. I am ultimate perfectionist type of person. Most of the time your success rate is probably going to be somewhere from like 50% to 70%. So making it a success constantly, but you're not doing as much extra or blocking or damage. It kind of works out to about even probably. So it's fair.
48:10 --> 48:20 Right, I want to ask then. So there's like a surprising amount of relics that you can just, it feels like you can turn on without any penalty. Is there any penalty using relics?
48:20 --> 48:21 No.
48:21 --> 48:24 Is there any reason to not use them?
48:24 --> 48:25 That's totally up to your preference.
48:25 --> 48:28 No, it's all about your personal experience.
48:29 --> 48:30 That's awesome.
48:31 --> 48:39 So anything that you feel like you want to turn on to make your experience more playable for you, absolutely do it. There's no reason not to.
48:39 --> 48:40 That's good.
48:40 --> 48:44 If you're playing on a platform that has achievements, it's not going to hinder achievements.
48:44 --> 49:38 No. Let's point out in the combat too that it is like Corona Trigger where the sprites are visible. So there are opportunities because there's some places where the creatures are moving in a pattern and you can actually run past them and get away from them. Oh yeah, some of them do have chase, but if you're like, I don't want to fight these fuckers, I think I can get around them. Then you can maneuver yourself out of it. And again, like Wolf said, not fighting every single fight will not change the outcome of your game. It's not going to make a huge difference if you're like, man, I missed like three battles, I'm not going to be able to take on this next thing. Yes, you are. You're going to be just fine. You just got to learn your timings and learn the stuff and you'll be good to go. Like, the battling system itself is good for experience, but it's also really good to train you on how to approach each battle with the lock systems, with the timing attacks and the timing defense.
49:39 --> 50:13 I like that you can avoid the battles, but just like in Crone Trigger, I never did because it feels like they're there and you kind of want to see it. Because sometimes in Crow and Trigger, the way the enemies call their friends into the combat was neat or funny or interesting or you got items or something that was worth, made it worthwhile, or you got tech points or something. I felt like that was the same in CS Stars. Yes, I could skip if I really, really wanted to, and maybe I would if it was new game plus. But for the first playthrough, I feel like you want to do each combat, whether it's beneficial or not. It's there. You want to kill it, I guess, right? That's the difference for me.
50:13 --> 50:15 You exist, you must die.
50:15 --> 51:51 Yeah, slight disclaimer, very late game. There are some battles that you just can't avoid, and you don't necessarily see them coming. You just wander into an area and all of a sudden ambush, which it becomes more prevalent at the very end of the game. And so I ended up not relying on my party accessory. That gives you extra live mana at the start of combat because I wasn't able to instigate the combat. So I was like, this is a wasted relic. So I traded out for something else that was more useful for that moment. But you've got the early on, you can walk up to an enemy and try to get a strike in before battle. There's live mana on the ground, and you've done a couple of hit points of damage. OOH, big whoop. But damage is damage as you progress in the game. You get what's, like a little grappling hook, the grapple, or if you're familiar with messenger, it's the rope dart, essentially the hook shot, which they use as the rope dart. And I want to come back to that in a few minutes. But if you use that to engage with an enemy, you throw the rope dart at the grapple, at them. You come in hot, do damage to them, and then the fight starts. So that's cool. And then apparently my budy told me about this. I went through the entire game without knowing this. That little air move that you get where you just wish some air out of, you usually use it to activate a fan or something. You can use that on the enemies that are running toward you and push them back.
51:52 --> 52:15 Yes. You can reposition things. If something's coming to charge you, you can push them away and reposition yourself better. I have yet to be able to actually escape the fight because I usually push them in the direction I'm trying to go, which doesn't help me. But yeah, I found that out today. I was like, oh, look, I'm pushing these basils around. And they were leaf characters, so I was like, I just thought it was because they were leaf characters that it was working on.
52:16 --> 52:25 Apparently it's any of them. I still haven't tested it personally because by the time I found out I had 100% of the game, I was like, that's cool, but I'm not going to go back and check it.
52:25 --> 52:27 I can confirm you can do that.
52:28 --> 52:38 So I want to talk a little bit about the connection to the messenger. So Messenger, Jake, and I have done an episode where we gushed on that game for like, an hour and a half.
52:39 --> 52:42 It's still a great game. I play it all the time.
52:43 --> 53:31 I dove hardcore into that game, into the lore, even. Like, I went heavy into it, right? And I'm sure there are people out there who've gone much heavier than me. So I'm not a font of knowledge for this game whatsoever, but the connections that I saw to the messenger in this, I absolutely loved. Now, Jake, you're far enough to where I can mention this. I ended up looking at a character listing on Wikipedia or whatever, like the messenger wiki of the characters, and I saw stuff that I was like, oh, my gosh, I'm dumb. I didn't even make that connection. The sleeper. Manfred do you remember Manfred from the messenger?
53:32 --> 53:33 I don't think so.
53:33 --> 53:36 There was a Dragon boss in the yeah.
53:36 --> 53:37 Oh, okay.
53:37 --> 53:38 Yeah.
53:38 --> 53:45 And then he ends up you beat him and you do away with his brainwashing, and he's like, oh, yeah, I'm a Butler Dragon.
53:46 --> 53:47 Right.
53:48 --> 54:16 So there is a connection there between the Sleeper and Manfred. I won't say what, but there's a connection. But as you progress through the game, you start seeing these things that are, like, bigger and deeper, and you're like, oh, man. So at a point where Chard's at now, actually, he just finished this island. So I guess we're delving into some spoilers, but not like Sea of Stars specific spoilers. We're talking more connect between the two.
54:16 --> 54:17 Right, right.
54:19 --> 55:06 So charges finished. What was called Mesa island. Now, I think that's a play on Messenger Island because it is Messenger Island. That's where Glacial Peak and the Crags are. You can see them on the map. They send you to Glacial Peak before you even get to Mesa Island. And then once at Mesa Island, you do the mountain hike, and then you're straight into Autumn Hills, first level from the messenger, and it is pretty much the first level of the messenger just done in Sea of Stars style. So there's points where you're climbing trees and going back and forth. If you look at the messenger level, it's straight up the same level. They just interpreted it for Sea of Stars.
55:06 --> 55:09 It's more of an overhang cool third person down camera.
55:09 --> 55:26 So you're using the rope dart thing, the grapple thing, constantly to move over to places to reach new areas. The part where you go underwater and swim back and forth is in there. It's very obviously the same area.
55:26 --> 56:00 So the story in The Messenger was I remember there's a sun and a moon spirit which is obviously plays in A Sea of Stars. You have a sun and moon character. But wasn't the messenger right? Numerous times there was like an island or something where they fled and that's where they all became ninjas or something. There's something about that in the messenger story and I was wondering if that has anything to do with Sea of the Stars. They're not the same world. Right. Like, you were saying something about a multiverse. So is The Messenger a different universe in the multiverse or is it actually in this world?
56:01 --> 56:06 This particular reality, I think it's safe to say, is The Messenger reality.
56:06 --> 56:07 Okay.
56:08 --> 56:36 I cannot say for certain because there's still a DLC for this game coming out next year. And that DLC is supposed to have even more to do with the messenger, like the setup for how you get to what the Messenger's world is. But Chart even saw some things today that are very much okay. There's implications here that are massive for the messenger. So it's sort of some origin stories for the Messenger's overall story, which is really neat.
56:36 --> 56:38 The whole mushroom forest was a big.
56:38 --> 57:06 Cross call out song and it's the same song. It just doesn't sound like the same song because in Sea of Stars, it's upbeat, it's song shroom marsh. Right, right. And then in The Messenger, it's poisonous spiked mushrooms, it's quill shroom forest or marsh or whatever. So it's the same song, but it sounds a lot more sinister in The Messenger than it does in Sea of Stars.
57:06 --> 57:14 Yeah, I love that. The remix music is really good in this. You can feel it's, The Messenger, but I love how it's different. It's his.
57:14 --> 57:24 Yeah. And like, you get other areas. There's a lot of areas in this game that are in The Messenger and it's cool to make those connections. Chard still has yet to see some.
57:25 --> 57:30 I need to play a little bit more of The Messenger, too, so I could actually get the connection.
57:30 --> 57:36 Yeah, you might. I don't know if you ever saw the 16 bit section of The Messenger, did you?
57:36 --> 57:38 I don't know if I got that part.
57:38 --> 57:41 Really? You got to play the messenger. It's not that much.
57:41 --> 57:44 I know. It's tough then.
57:44 --> 58:18 Yeah. You're about to hit an area that you're not too far from, an area where it's super cool to see it represented in Sea of Stars. Sea of stars. Not only does the story stakes just gradually ramp and feel more epic as you progress, but the areas kind of feel cooler as you progress too early on. Yeah, it feels a little bit dull on the first two islands, I got to say, for the most part, like climbing down with the waterfalls and the ponds and everything. It's neat, but it's not super exciting.
58:19 --> 58:19 Right.
58:19 --> 58:37 And then when you. Get to the next island, and it's always night. Okay. It's eerie here, but I thought that's more interesting than it was. But yeah, that's where the game's scope and scale and grandioseness started to actually feel like something.
58:38 --> 58:38 Right.
58:38 --> 58:41 Which I think is what Jake's issue is, is he's not there yet.
58:41 --> 58:42 Right.
58:42 --> 58:54 And then as you progress and you get further, it just gets bigger and bigger. And my favorite area is still probably a good ten to 15 hours off for Chard.
58:57 --> 58:58 I'm excited.
59:00 --> 59:13 What's really cool is they're going to reset you a little bit in how you perceive the world, and all the music you're super familiar with is going to get changed up and sound super fucking cool.
59:13 --> 59:17 Oh, my God, I love this. I love this game. This game is so good.
59:17 --> 59:20 You're going to be like, that's the song, but it's not the song.
59:22 --> 59:27 Is it like a world of balance, world of ruin thing in Final Fantasy Six type of change, or is it.
59:27 --> 59:53 More subtle than it's I don't want to say what it is, but it's super fucking cool. And Chard's going to be like, he's going to be the one ranting about Sea of Stars in a couple of weeks in MP. Okay, I already did that a bunch. I gushed, like, crazy about it at the Marco Polos. Chard's going to be the one doing it next. Like, holy shit, jimmy was not kidding.
59:53 --> 01:00:34 I'm already gushing about it's. It's so good. I mean, it really is so freaking good. And I really hope that we can get you over the same we'll call it the Golem Hunt Hump. We'll just call it the Golem Hump because it's the roadblock. It's the wall we hit. And we just need to help usher you over a little bit so that when you get to when the things start kind of kicking off, you're like, okay, yeah, I'm there. I'm with you. Or you could say, nah, man, I'm just not feeling it. And that's fine because he's right. Once you get to the island, that's always dark, and you have to go take on your first major, like, this is the major plotline, the first half.
01:00:34 --> 01:00:36 Of the story, those things you're hunting.
01:00:36 --> 01:01:31 Yeah. And the shit just does what it does. Then if you're not hooked by that, I can't do nothing for you. There's nothing we can do. Because that's where it kind of like I was already in. Like, I already committed to it. But once you fight with one of the first dwellers, you're like, all right, I'm hooked. I'm in. I'm done. I'm not letting go. And then I just kept on wanting to play it to the point of I hate that I'm trying to do things consistently on Twitch because I'll just sit down and play this shit on my steam deck happily. But we've already kind of committed to playing it for everybody, and I feel bad not playing it for the viewers. But it's hard, man. It's an itch I'm trying not to scratch while I'm sitting in bed going, looking at the title screen of See a Stars going, no, we'll play Binding of Isaac tonight. I can't get into like, I got.
01:01:31 --> 01:02:56 To say, this is a game that I felt, like I said before, offline as we started this episode, I felt guilty not liking this game because I fucking love The Messenger. It's one of my favorite games of all time. I love that game. And I know it's not a platforming game. I know CF Stars, they're doing something different, which I totally respect for a company, a brand new indie developer who makes a smash hit. Instead of making recycling it and doing another one, they do a completely 180 and do something completely different. Absolutely respect that. But just it didn't grab me. And I can't say instantly it's not instantly. It didn't grab me after several hours. And I look at games I played this year, like, Ball is Gate Three, where I was in fucking hour one, half hour one I was in, right? Or I look at even Cyberpunk, the update came out. I've beaten Cyberpunk, but I played that update, and I was in. I was hooked instantly. I didn't have that feeling with this game at all. Like, even Starfield, I played a little bit of Starfield this year. I gave that one, I think, eight or 10 hours. Did not grab me whatsoever. So it's just something about the game is not hooking me, and I wish it would have because I want to like this game. There's so much to like about this game. The music, the graphics, the company's other game. Like, this is fantastic, but it's just not doing it for and Sinister. Hold on.
01:02:56 --> 01:02:57 Sinister.
01:02:57 --> 01:03:05 And Chad is saying crow trigger is a slow start. You, sir, can fuck right off because it does not. Crow Trigger is exciting from the I don't understand. I love crow triggers. Open.
01:03:05 --> 01:03:15 I mean, the fair, I don't know, because he doesn't like no, the fair is cool as hell. You and I are very few things you and I are on the same page on.
01:03:15 --> 01:03:16 It was okay.
01:03:16 --> 01:05:24 We'll agree to disagree. It's getting comfortable with the world and understanding it. But there's things that happen in the fair. We're going to go to Chrono Trigger, raid Sinister, finish the fucking game so we can do this goddamn episode, because I want to talk Chrono Trigger. Jesus Christ. But as soon as you do the time travel, you're in. You're in shit's going real, but it's time travel. You're going through time, and you're seeing what the world looked like way back when. I feel to me that time travel, you're still within the same area. It just looks different because of time, which I always thought is a cool concept in video games. This is not like that. You're traversing the world. You're exploring and you're going out there and things are changing. Yeah, the islands are changing and stuff, but you're still within the same dimension. You're still within the same time. I was so into this game before it even was released that it already had my first born child. I was already set. Like, this game could do nothing wrong from the beginning. And as soon as I fired the game up and we started playing the demo, it just hooked me in even more. So I am such a homer for this game and totally biased about how much I like and was expecting this game to be exactly what it's ended up to be. I am not a good judge of character for not understanding why not. From the first go, people aren't getting hooked, but, like, reviewing it and hearing Wolf talk about it from kind of a neutral standpoint and then hearing your dislike of it, there's a vision that I can see of, like, yes, the two characters are not exactly thrilling. They're the hero types, they're blah, blah, blah. But you have Gar or Garl, and he's kind of the heart. He's your personality, he's your guy. Everybody likes Garl because he's the heart, he's the personality, while the other two are just the stoic, solstice warrior heroes that have gone through this rigorous training for years. And they're just trying to do their jobs. They're just out there trying to do their jobs, and they don't have a lot of personality. But as we're progressing through the story, you're starting to see more of it come out because of what's happening.
01:05:25 --> 01:05:53 People don't like cloud. This game has two clouds. Nobody wants two clouds. It's like having Squall and Cloud in the same game. That's what it feels like. The third wheel is the more exciting character in this game, and I wish I could unlock the other characters to see what they're like, but they already sound way more interesting than the two main protagonists. Crono was spying because he didn't say anything. He's a silent protagonist, but I wouldn't want two of them in my party, especially when it's a three person party. That's rough.
01:05:53 --> 01:06:01 Well, I wish there was like valer and Zale are far more interesting than Cloud.
01:06:01 --> 01:06:09 Oh, fuck. Yeah. My bag of eaten Taco Bell is more interesting than Cloud. Thank you very much.
01:06:09 --> 01:07:10 While they're not the most interesting heroes to ever grace a video game, they're also by no means the worst. They're very middle of the road early on. But, yeah, as characters, you see that they have a purpose that they truly believe in from their childhood. From the very beginning, they have this purpose. They believe in it. That's kind of their character at the beginning, right as they go through the game and on this adventure with their best childhood friend Garl, who is the heart of this game, their passions and emotions become released more and more as you progress because of Garl. They have drive, the things they experience, because you have to remember, how interesting is a person going to be if from, like, eight to 18 years old, you've trained, they deal with three other people just training day in and day out. How interesting is that person going to be?
01:07:10 --> 01:07:15 It's not. They give you that stupid montage in the beginning, and it's just like, oh, okay. I guess 15 years have passed.
01:07:16 --> 01:07:23 Now you try weaving a blanket for 18 years and you tell me how interesting you become, sir.
01:07:23 --> 01:07:27 They could have cut out a lot of that montage was ass.
01:07:27 --> 01:07:39 Yeah. The beginning takes it feels very slow, but it really shows you it goes hard on explaining the Solstice Warriors and their role in this.
01:07:39 --> 01:07:40 Right, right.
01:07:40 --> 01:07:55 And for better or worse, that's how they handled the know. It's it's unfortunate. Know, on the one hand, I'm like, Jake, you got to play this game. It's fucking amazing. Once you get to that third island, it's great.
01:07:55 --> 01:07:58 It really opens up after 247 hours.
01:07:58 --> 01:08:07 Yeah. On the other hand, I myself have a hard rule. If I'm not invested in the game at all, after 2 hours, I'm out. That's my cut off.
01:08:07 --> 01:08:07 Right.
01:08:07 --> 01:08:29 But the thing is, while the story felt slow and not super interesting at the get go, Garl was great. I was invested in Garl right off the bat. Poor kid loses his eye going on an adventure with his superpowered friends, and you're like, Fuck, this is awful. And he's still like, I love you guys. You're my best friends. This wasn't your fault. It was mine.
01:08:31 --> 01:09:09 He throws himself in front of so much danger, and he is just a standard human. He's nothing special about him except for he is a special person just because of who he is. And he throws himself in front of these things to stop them from hurting his friends, who could easily resist and take on whatever the fuck he's throwing himself in front of. That's where you're like, this fucking guy. He's too good. He's too good. He doesn't deserve him. He's like a dog. We don't deserve dogs. They're too good. We don't deserve garl. He's too good.
01:09:09 --> 01:09:11 Garl a dog. I like, he's a good dog.
01:09:12 --> 01:09:13 No, he's one of the characters that.
01:09:13 --> 01:09:15 You like in The Bad Thing, just.
01:09:15 --> 01:09:18 Saying, okay, we don't deserve dogs.
01:09:19 --> 01:09:36 His love and his loyalty for those he cares about is just off the charts. And again, I know this sounds super cheesy, but that's what makes him such a likable character. And that really is the driving force for most of this story.
01:09:37 --> 01:09:51 There's very few moments in the game where he stands up and says something in a dire situation where you're like, Shut up. I don't care. I don't care what you have to say. No, you're like, you know what?
01:09:51 --> 01:09:52 Fuck yeah.
01:09:53 --> 01:10:19 Fuck, yeah. Then you get inspired and you're like, yeah, I'm going to keep playing. It's funny because characters like Garl in all purposes positive, upbeat, supportive. I fucking hate as side characters. I can't stand them. And for some reason, I don't want to see this guy pushed off a cliff. And I actually get upset when things happen to him. I get upset about it. This guy's a good.
01:10:21 --> 01:10:35 Text. One of my first texts to my buddy after I started playing this was like, I fucking love Garl and I'm going to be pissed if something happens to right? Like, that was one of the first things I said. I was like an hour and a half into the game. That's where I was.
01:10:36 --> 01:10:40 It's just too good. It's such a good game.
01:10:40 --> 01:10:50 Got a question then. So the big bad in this game is called The Fleshmancer. That name just wasn't doing it for me.
01:10:50 --> 01:10:50 You know what?
01:10:50 --> 01:11:03 When I hear fleshmancer, I'm thinking of the messenger. The Necromancer. That's who I'm thinking of. That short little comic relief guy. I can't remember his name is in The Messenger, but that's who I picture when I hear the Flesh Man talking.
01:11:03 --> 01:11:05 About no, nothing like him.
01:11:05 --> 01:11:09 No, he's actually kind of scary when you actually meet him.
01:11:09 --> 01:11:29 The Fleshmancer. It's a weird name. The character has a real name that some of the characters later in the game refer to him as. It's not really a spoiler. I think if I use his real name, it's a he has it's not a spoiler.
01:11:29 --> 01:11:29 No.
01:11:29 --> 01:11:32 You're told about the Flesh Mancer from the outset, right?
01:11:33 --> 01:11:42 They have real names. Like, they're nicknames of these people. They have real names. So you'll learn them and then you'll learn where they connect and everything, and.
01:11:42 --> 01:12:49 You'Re like I kind of stopped referring to him as the Fleshmancer after a point when I would talk to my budy about the game. But I waited until he got to that point because he was really hardcore about not wanting spoilers. He backed the game when Kickstarter was doing the thing, and he's really hardcore about wanting to avoid spoilers, which I totally respect. And so with this specifically, I was really trying to watch my step as to what I was saying. But he's called the Flesh Mancer. That's not his name. That's just what they call him because he makes grotesque beasts. He uses flesh as his medium, right? So that's why he's called the Flesh Mancer. It's like the necromancers. Their medium is the Dead, right? This guy's. Medium is flesh. And when you make things out of flesh, be they monsters, dwellers, whatever, have you, to honestly his fucking hideout, right? He made it out of flesh.
01:12:49 --> 01:13:27 When you see the stuff that he's created, the creatures he's created, and you start getting closer to like I said, I just kind of got to where he's at finally, and you start seeing all that stuff. Then you're like, ah, okay. It makes sense. It's a cheesy. Like, I don't know, it's calling like Bobby Big Nose, the fucking gangster in New York because he's got a big fucking nose. It's a dumb goddamn name, but he's a scary motherfucker because he's Bobby Big Nose. Don't fuck with Bobby Big Nose. He's a big fucking scary dude. You know what I mean? So it's like the flesh mancer. You're like, that's a fucking name. But you see him and you're like, yeah, okay. I could see why Bobby's got a big fucking nose. That's why they call Bobby Big Nose. But he's still scary.
01:13:27 --> 01:13:31 Dr. Doom, right? Doom is a dumb name, but he's a scary character.
01:13:31 --> 01:13:39 He's a scary dude. Dr. Doom carries more weight than Flesh Mancer, though, honestly, it does sound like a Cinnastar high school nickname.
01:13:42 --> 01:14:44 But by the end of the game, you do get to see why the Flesh Mancer is as terrifying as he is. Honestly, this game only had two nitpicks for me. I'll come back to that. But, yeah, you get to see that. You get to see the scale of what he's capable of, and that's not just, like, as a villain, but where his morals lie and where that started to waver. So you come to learn at a point that he was once mortal. And as they sort of cross that bridge and explore the characters deeper, you get some actual serious exploration of the Big Bad in this game, and I kind of appreciate that. It's not just like Sephiroth angry tantrum.
01:14:44 --> 01:14:50 Yeah. Not mommy's boy, not real dad stab.
01:14:53 --> 01:15:07 There are aspects of him that are not completely bad, and there are aspects of him that are absolutely fucking awful, right? And the game explores that, and it's really neat. There's one word a lot about this.
01:15:07 --> 01:15:48 There's one word, one word that we can use to get Jake to buy in, one simple press B to cancel Trope that we can use, and it's lore. Jake. It is lore. There is so much lore in this game, and it's good lore, and it's not on the weapons. It's in your face. They're telling you about it, and you're watching the story unfold as you're a part of it and realizing, oh, fuck. What the fuck have we gotten ourselves into? What have we been training all these years to do shit? This might be out of our league, I don't know, but we're going to do it anyways because we can, and we have Garl, and we love him.
01:15:48 --> 01:16:33 So you know what, though about that? So lore. I do love Loring games, and that's one of the reasons why when I was playing Starfield, it bored the crap out of me, but I was interested in what they might be going story wise. So it was a game where I played enough, where I'm like, I have no interest in playing this game. I'll check it out in a couple years with Mods and DLC, but I have to know what the end game was, and I read spoilers in the story and it was interesting and I'm glad I didn't play through it to get there because I would have been pissed off. But I enjoyed reading the story of Starfield. I feel like CS stars might be the same to me because of how much I love the messenger, but I wish the messenger had more lore and story to it. There's some there. I wish there was more because in.
01:16:33 --> 01:16:34 The beginning it's a game that doesn't.
01:16:35 --> 01:16:50 Take itself seriously, it's more humor, but by the end of the game you're like, oh, fuck, it goes places. And I feel like CSRs is going to do the same thing and I want to know that. I just don't want to spend 40 fucking hours to get there in the same combat system again and again.
01:16:50 --> 01:17:11 It's such an enjoyable ride for the 45 hours to drive there. Listen, if I had to be in a car for 45 hours or a plane and all I had was see a stars to get me there, I would drive it there and back. Baby, I'd take the round trip on this thing. It is so good. It is so good.
01:17:11 --> 01:17:13 It might be a game, honestly, now.
01:17:13 --> 01:17:14 That I've seen, because I just started.
01:17:14 --> 01:17:34 Getting the relics when I stopped playing and knowing how much they can make the game easier and knowing that there's no penalty to use them. It's like a Tunic situation. I love Tunic, but that Stamina bar really turned me the hell off. But then I realized, you just turn it off, it's probably going to be the same thing for me in Sea of Stars where I'm just like, you know what, maybe I want to heal after every battle just so I just.
01:17:34 --> 01:17:38 Have fun doing the battle puzles of it, dying every nothing wrong with it.
01:17:38 --> 01:18:06 Yeah, absolutely. Do that if that's what it takes for you to enjoy the game. Sinistars mentioned this and I'm a firm believer in the same thing. There's no way to play a game wrong exactly as long as you're enjoying and and especially when the game does not penalize you for using the accessibility options. If the accessibility options make it a pleasurable experience when it otherwise might not be, do it.
01:18:07 --> 01:18:59 Imagine playing Tunic, which we all agreed, which a little bingo here, little bingo. I got the Tunic tune thing right back here. Had to throw that in there if the game is offered. And imagine not playing Tunic, which we all gush about because the stupid Stamina bar only because of the stupid Stamina. Can you imagine what you're missing out on knowing what you know now about Tunic because the Stamina bar would have been your roadblock through that. Use the shit out of anything that gets you through that game happily and comfortably. The game offers it, you're not penalized for it. Play it to your content however the fuck you deem necessary. That goes for everybody out there in video game land. If you want to play a goddamn game and somebody's giving you shit because you're not playing it on fucking hard mode, tell them to shut up their ass. Because you're there for the story, not for the difficulty.
01:19:00 --> 01:21:04 That's one of the relics. That's the relic that Jake we're telling Jake to just turn on to make the game enjoyable. Is it's called the storytelling relic or something like all about it makes the game more about the story? Yeah, that might make some of the battles feel a little trivial, but honestly, the exploration of the world and the story that unfolds as you go, there's not a whole lot of points that are really content dry. And Mesa Island probably has the longest treks of not a whole lot happening. And I think part of know my theory behind that is because they're letting the messenger fans sort of take it in as it is instead of tainting that experience with more story. So they gave you Autumn Hills. They're like. Here you go, messenger fans. You get Autumn Hills. Have at it. And I loved, like, even so much as they even put the shopkeeper that's in that area in the same spot where you first meet the shopkeeper in the like that's how down to the nose they were with. I cut some chunks out because it would have been too repetitive, but all the iconic places are there. Then you get to Shroom marsh. Okay. It's still a long section before you get to some more story, but I feel like it's sort of petering off from now. The messenger fans have had their moment. Now we're getting back to the Sea of Stars. And then they give you the woman in the marsh, and then you move on to the next area and so forth. And it's heavily back into story really quick. Again, there's a lot of dungeons in this game where you go through a chunk of dungeon and then it's like, here's a little bit of dialogue. Here's a change up to our plan. Then you go through a little more and you're like, oh, fuck, we can't do that. We got to do something different. Then you go through a little more. Sometimes it's just a couple of boxes. Sometimes it's like a whole cutscene you would not have expected. But they try not to keep it content dry as you go, right?
01:21:04 --> 01:21:43 And they have animated movies that show up. I don't know if you've seen any of those yet, but they have actual animated movies that when they're introducing other characters or when they're showing you something cool, and it's like a little fucking cartoon that shows up there and it's awesome. They're freaking amazing. So, I mean, if there's a way we can lead you to trying to get back onto that tunic horse and try see of Stars a little bit more because you're talking about how much you love The Messenger and how much you wish there was more lore. Think of Sea of Stars as the bedrock for that lore that will eventually combine the two together. And then you'll have your storage of.
01:21:43 --> 01:22:13 What you want, especially once the DLC comes out. I have my theories as to what the DLC will be about because of what I saw from the game, what was left not necessarily open ended, but not closed off, knowing that it's going to connect higher, more heavily to the messenger. So I've got my theories as to what the DLC will be about. I'm excited to see how that comes into play. I'm excited to see where that goes because I've got like five little push pins on the wall like, this will happen, this will happen, this will happen, this will happen.
01:22:13 --> 01:22:18 It looks like, yeah, he's got the stretch. He's got the cigarette in his hand.
01:22:21 --> 01:22:42 But yeah, I absolutely love this game. This is a game I'm thinking of going back and playing with the kiddo because he saw parts of it and he was like, this looks really cool. But I didn't want to start over. I was 40 hours deep. I was like, it is really cool. If you'd like to play it after I beat it, we could play through it again together. And he was like, yeah, let's do that.
01:22:43 --> 01:22:50 Do you know what new Game Plus does? Is it like the messenger where there's like a hard mechanic to it makes it more difficult.
01:22:51 --> 01:22:58 Let me see what it does. Actually, I can return to title right now and check that Curious.
01:22:58 --> 01:23:26 I feel like even in this day and age when we talk New Game Plus, I'm going to throw Elden Ring out there because Elden Ring has a New Game Plus series. I walked in and started wrecking house. So I don't know if it's because I was over prepared from the last playthrough that we had, but it didn't feel like there was anything other than you're just going to keep going with the same shit you had. And to me it was more like this is all revenge for the fucking bullshit I had to go through to get through the first time. So now I'm going to murder everything. Early on in the.
01:23:29 --> 01:23:45 Curious because Chrono Trigger had New Game Plus and for mean they did it in a way like near automata. Reminds me of Crone Trigger and how you're replaying it but from a different angle. And you're getting an ending, a different ending at different points of the game to see what happens.
01:23:45 --> 01:23:45 Right.
01:23:45 --> 01:23:48 So I'm wondering if it's like that by chance.
01:23:49 --> 01:23:50 I got a plan here.
01:23:52 --> 01:25:53 Well, it doesn't tell me right off the bat in the game. Okay. So certain things carry over pretty much everything. Recipes, key items. Well, most key items. Food, fish, ingredients, previously caught fish, weapons, armor, accessories, blah, blah, blah. You also retain your party members levels and money. What doesn't carry over. Okay, a couple of items don't carry over the music sheets. There's a way to get some bonus stats that I won't talk about, but those bonus stats don't carry over no valuables. So, like turquoise, ore, things like that, those apparently don't carry over. And a certain item you don't get right off the bat if you didn't acquire it the first time, but you'll get it as soon as you meet the character who would give it to you in the second play. Okay, so my only real nitpick about this game was there was a certain character that character's timeline doesn't match up with another character's timeline in the game. To me, I've thought about it. It doesn't really make sense to me. So that's one of my nitpicks, and I don't want to talk about it because that's big spoilers, even for Chard. Still. My other one was, there are four key items you can obtain through the game. The game never explicitly or implicitly tells you where to use them.
01:25:53 --> 01:25:56 I have picked up some stuff that I have no idea what to do with.
01:25:56 --> 01:26:23 And the problem is, I looked everywhere. I was like, okay, do any NPCs tell you anything? No. No NPCs tell you anything about this? Apparently when reviewers were playing through this, they couldn't find anything. They had to reach out to Sabotage, and Sabotage sent them a cryptic email in response as to how those items work.
01:26:23 --> 01:26:24 Okay.
01:26:24 --> 01:27:16 Knowing what those items do, I understand why there's nothing in game that tells you and why it took an email from Sabotage to sort of clue in people. And by clue, I'm being generous. They were very vague about it, but ultimately the Internet has figured out where to use it. So I ended up looking it up. And the reward was pretty interesting because I love both games and not just The Messenger, not just Sea of Stars. So there was stuff there that sort of like I don't want to say it had implications from the messenger, but there were some nice callbacks and some interesting stuff going on. It was it was a nice reward. Let's say that I think it's funny.
01:27:16 --> 01:27:46 Because we're thinking about it. Right? Jake. You love the messenger. You say it's one of your all time favorite games. Sea of Stars, for me, is up there. Right? I know it's still new, it's still fresh, but I haven't touched a lot of the messenger. You haven't touched a lot of Sea of Stars. Wolf is the embodiment of both of those things. So he's, like, guiding you. And I, he's like, we're trying to get you to play Sea of Stars. You guys are trying to get me to finish the messenger, and now I want to finish the messenger because now I want to see where that story is all coming together.
01:27:47 --> 01:27:50 I think this is much wolf is our Captain planet.
01:27:51 --> 01:28:12 These games. Tick my storytelling boxes. Like, I love stories about time travel when I was a kid, Back to the Future, and then a little older sliders came out. Parallel reality. Love the messenger sea of Stars They're just like, yes, thank you. Give more of this.
01:28:13 --> 01:28:15 I feed upon your lore.
01:28:15 --> 01:28:26 Yes, these are the kinds of things I absolutely love. So I'm all in. I look forward to what their next game will be, and honestly, I kind of have theories about where they'll go with that too.
01:28:26 --> 01:28:33 So I kind of want to join sports simulation time. That's the only logical direction. They've done platforms, they've done JRPGs.
01:28:33 --> 01:28:58 Now it's time for sports sabotage. Pulls out Quidditch fucking game that mixes with Sea of Stars and the fucking messenger. But they do such a great goddamn job that it all makes sense. And I'm playing fucking quidditch for Hogwarts. But for some reason, I know about Luna and I know about The Messenger and we're playing Quidditch in the fucking mushroom gloom forest. What in the hell is going on?
01:28:58 --> 01:29:04 It's not going to be Quidditch. It's going to be wheels. That's not going to be their next major release. Oh, man.
01:29:04 --> 01:29:06 I'd play their Shit out of Wheels.
01:29:06 --> 01:29:08 Game before their next mere.
01:29:08 --> 01:29:09 I love that game. Put that on my phone.
01:29:09 --> 01:29:10 I like wheels.
01:29:10 --> 01:29:13 Let's play Wheels on my phone. Let's fucking do it.
01:29:13 --> 01:29:20 I'd be down. Wheels is something like if they sell it for $510, I'd put that on my phone. No fucking it's fun.
01:29:20 --> 01:29:29 Hell yeah. Wheels is cool. So, moral of the story, Jake play CSARS and I'll play the message.
01:29:29 --> 01:29:42 Yeah, I'll put it in the queue. I mean, I got balls gate to three to play and finish up and then fucking Cyberpunk. The 2023 has been a ridiculous year for games. Ridiculous in a great way. For gamers.
01:29:42 --> 01:29:59 Quarter of 2023 has been absolutely asinine with all the good games that have been coming out the last well, maybe not good games, but the amount of games in general that have been released. My backlog is stupid. Stupid. And that's why we started the backlog segue.
01:29:59 --> 01:30:33 Mine too. I bought Final Fantasy Twelve for the switch in the end of July because I was like, oh yeah, I want to finally play that. I'm never going to play it on PS Two. So I bought it for the switch while I was working on Tears of the Kingdom, and then I finished Tears of the Kingdom, like, two days before Sea of Stars came out. So I was like, well, that's not enough time to get into twelve. So then Sea of Stars, and then now that Sea of Stars is done, I'm like, okay, I should probably play Balder's Gate Three. So I've been playing a little bit of that here and there. Well, we know started twelve yet. Twelve.
01:30:33 --> 01:30:38 I know what Wolf Sisafian game for next year sounds like it's going to.
01:30:38 --> 01:30:41 Be probably it very well may be final.
01:30:41 --> 01:30:44 It's going to be me and fucking Cyberpunk next year. Jesus God.
01:30:45 --> 01:30:47 Six this year. Next year doubles.
01:30:50 --> 01:30:52 Shit. Is that how that works?
01:30:52 --> 01:30:52 Perfect.
01:30:52 --> 01:30:53 Okay.
01:30:53 --> 01:30:59 All right, guys, is there anything else that we want to cover? We're sitting at about an hour and a half here, so I think it.
01:30:59 --> 01:31:02 Might we got some business to clean up.
01:31:02 --> 01:31:03 Yeah, exactly.
01:31:04 --> 01:31:32 Segue into our business that needs to be addressed. So everybody knows that have been following along with the program that we're doing a top 100 list, and we're getting towards the end of the year here, guys. We're looking down the barrel of October here real goddamn quick. Let's go ahead and pull out our top 100 for today. I'm sure we are all perfectly and well prepared to announce today's top 100 games that we want to put on the list there.
01:31:32 --> 01:31:35 You don't like the sound of your tone, sir? I've got mine.
01:31:37 --> 01:31:39 I have mine. I've had mine for two weeks. Thank you very much.
01:31:39 --> 01:31:45 All right, I'll go last. Since I have two options, I want to make sure I don't step on anybody's toes.
01:31:45 --> 01:32:09 I'll go first. Fuck it. Because I don't need anybody to make me quit the podcast today. As discussed earlier today, guys, I'm going way back, way back in time to sinister's era where things were played on a little black screen box and you had to use your keyboards to move things around. And it made beeping, booping and brewing sounds. It's not pong. It's not pong. Although Pong should be on there.
01:32:09 --> 01:32:10 Not a bad pick.
01:32:10 --> 01:32:11 Not a bad pick.
01:32:11 --> 01:32:11 No.
01:32:11 --> 01:32:20 I am going to go with the classic Ghostbusters game for Jesus Christ, for like, the Omega. It's for fucking every.
01:32:20 --> 01:32:23 You got to pick one because some ports games suck.
01:32:23 --> 01:32:24 Okay, yeah.
01:32:24 --> 01:32:27 Which is the best version? What's one that you played as a kid?
01:32:27 --> 01:33:30 I'm trying to remember what PC it was on. It's not Apple, but was it Commodore? It could have been Commodore. It could have easily been Commodore. We'll go with that one. That's fine. Whichever one is the one where you have the overhead. It could have been C 64 too. It was at my father's work, and I played it on his work inverter. So yeah, we'll go with Commodore 64. It's the overhead view of you start out with the Beetle and you're trying to grab all the equipment to put on the car, and the ghosts are going down the street, and you got to try and tackle them. And you're getting called into houses, and it's the side to side trying to shoot the ghosts from almost like a first person view. It is classic. It is old. But I love that game growing up. That's a hidden gem. I might have to go on the limb and say that that game might be a hidden gem because it is one of my favorite classic, classic games. You guys can veto it off. I don't give a shit. But Ghostbusters for the C 64 is going to be my pick for the top 100. This thing.
01:33:30 --> 01:33:45 We do a hidden gem episode. Again, you should bring that one up because there's some interesting cool stuff with how they do passwords in some ports of that game that are really interesting. The only thing of that game I don't like is the stupid stair climbing at the end. And depending on the version you play, some of them are just awful for that.
01:33:45 --> 01:34:02 The state puff. I never got past the State Puff marshmallow man part because we didn't know you had to sneak your ass in there. Like when he moved out of the way or whatever, and we just sat there and shot him and couldn't do anything. We had no idea what that we were going, bro, we were like six and seven. We had no fucking idea what we were doing back then.
01:34:02 --> 01:34:04 Call nintendo power.
01:34:04 --> 01:34:12 Yeah. No, I couldn't call Nintendo Power. I didn't have the power. But yeah, I'm going to go with the Commodore 64. Ghostbusters is going on my top.
01:34:12 --> 01:36:08 Good one. Yeah. All right. Me. As I prepared thoroughly for today's episode and I thought really long and hard about this one, I scrolled through many of our entries on our spreadsheet. We're actually at like 72, I think now for the top 100. So we've almost got a complete list. So we have to really get to the good meat of the list. And we've spoken about this game in the past several times before, and it should be here. And that is soul caliber on the dreamcast. Give me reasons why. First off, the Dreamcast is a very underrated system. And unfortunately, it did not last as nearly as long as it should have. For the hardware in that machine, it was really amazing. Soul Caliber is a great example of a game that was better at home than in the arcades, which was unheard of in that time period. It's just unbelievable that the arcade version, Soul Caliber, had 2D backgrounds, and the Dreamcast version had 3D backgrounds, plus much better looking textures and models. Like, the game on the Dreamcast is a showpiece. I remember showing friends this game, and this was like a system seller to my friends, like Fuck Shamu and Sonic Avenger. This game looked amazing and it played really well. I'm not even a huge Soul Caliber fan. But that Dreamcast version plays so fluid, so fast. It's so easy to pick up. There's a character for anybody. They're easy to learn, really awesome. But also the modes. So I used to play team Battle Mode, where you and a friend go head to head, but you each pick like I think it's like eight characters, and it just matches them up as you're playing through it's just bonkers fun. It doesn't matter who wins because the matches are so fast and you're each picking eight different characters. It's really cool. Adventure mode. There's unlockable stuff. When we talk about fighting games today, a lot of them don't have the same amount of unlockable stuff or secrets or hidden stuff that Soul Caliber had a decade before. So for me, Soul Caliber and the Dreamcast is definitely a top 100 pick as far as I'm concerned.
01:36:09 --> 01:36:56 I love Soul Caliber as a fighting series. I think that's a great series that I don't think it's a lot of love as it should. I love how they introduced. Like, I bought the GameCube version. I think it was so Caliber Three that had it, and they had, like, link in there that you can play at. Yes. All the different special characters that would show up later on in the series was cool. And I like picking the demon looking characters all the time. So anyone with, like, a cool weapon, I was always bought for, and I was like, now I've got, like, a smorgasborg of people with cool weapons to select and try out Asteroth. Yeah, I always thought Nightmare with the eye on the sword. I fucking love that guy. I think Soul Caliber is a great series, and I completely agree with the Dreamcast pick on that one. So good.
01:36:56 --> 01:37:06 Yeah. I love soul caliber. As soon as I got a dreamcast, that was one of the first games I got for it. So, yeah, on board with that pick. That's a good pick.
01:37:07 --> 01:37:10 All right, round out the bottom, baby.
01:37:10 --> 01:37:23 I'm glad you guys didn't pick mine because apparently my other one was October 2005. I didn't realize it was that new. So the one that got crossed off the list is Shadow of the Colossus. I figured it was PS Two. I thought it was earlier than that game was not.
01:37:23 --> 01:37:25 Oh, man, that nochami, that one does.
01:37:25 --> 01:37:30 Not qualify to really great artistic 2005.
01:37:31 --> 01:37:33 October of 2005.
01:37:34 --> 01:37:35 That's a good game.
01:37:35 --> 01:37:39 God, I love that game. It came as Shanky as fuck. God, do I love it.
01:37:39 --> 01:37:42 Dead. We got to go with secret Amana.
01:37:43 --> 01:37:45 Jake won't agree, but I completely agree.
01:37:45 --> 01:38:31 I'm 100% thought Secret Amana was really cool action RPG at the time. It's got its issues, I agree, but it did a lot of really cool stuff. First off, it was an action RPG that was not just two players, but three players. If you had a multitap, which is cool. Game was massive. Made excellent use of the Super Nintendo's mode. Seven storytelling was on par with the Final Fantasy franchise at the time. It was up there. It was good. It had compelling characters and storylines going on. Like your main character, you find out that his connection to the overall story is so much deeper than you ever would have thought at the beginning when he just gets yelled at by the village elder and kicked out of his village.
01:38:31 --> 01:38:32 Kicked out of his own town, who.
01:38:32 --> 01:38:59 Was his adopted father. What a fuck exile. By the end of the game, you learn that this world is more dystopian than you realize it is, because it doesn't look like your traditional Dystopian world, but as you come across what actually happened in the past, you're like, oh, shit. Things hit the fan in a bad way here.
01:38:59 --> 01:39:03 This place is too green to be dystopian and depressing.
01:39:03 --> 01:39:14 Yeah. And then all the music in this game is absolutely gorgeous. It's one of the best soundtracks on the Super Nintendo in my eyes. I'm pretty sure I have it on CD.
01:39:15 --> 01:39:16 No doubt.
01:39:17 --> 01:39:18 Yeah.
01:39:18 --> 01:39:54 Secret of man is a great action RPG. I finally, just recently, about maybe last year, year before, finally got to knock that guy out of the ballpark. I actually badged it on retro achievements. It is, from top to bottom, a really strong entry to the action RPG title. I mean, it put the Mana series on the map, even though Final Fantasy Adventure was over there in the Game Boy doing the same thing, being badass. I love Final Fantasy Adventures. It's a great action RPG and then just completely taking the Mana series into a whole nother level. So I sit with you on that and agree.
01:39:54 --> 01:40:08 I will say the bosses in Mana are definitely unique and really awesome set pieces. They did boss fights really well, and it goes well with the three characters set up and the various spells and whatnot. So I do like a lot of that game.
01:40:08 --> 01:40:12 The only downside to Boss fights in that game is it's that same song.
01:40:14 --> 01:40:15 But it's good.
01:40:18 --> 01:40:21 It's four bars. Like all that music you love in Mario RPG.
01:40:21 --> 01:40:22 That's why I like it.
01:40:22 --> 01:40:24 That's why it's his favorite part.
01:40:26 --> 01:40:30 I only need four bars. In my country, that's a game played.
01:40:30 --> 01:40:37 Through front to back probably three or four times on the sness. Never could beat the final boss. Couldn't figure it out. I don't know why.
01:40:37 --> 01:40:38 Got to get that.
01:40:38 --> 01:40:40 I finally beat it on the PS Four.
01:40:42 --> 01:40:44 Oh, the remake. That's right. The remaster came out.
01:40:44 --> 01:40:53 I played through the remaster too. Well, the remake, because it's not just a remaster. But yeah, that's how I ended up beating it. But yeah, I love secret amana.
01:40:53 --> 01:41:43 That game tickles my boss. That's the boss sprite that takes up the whole goddamn screen. Fancy to the nth degree with that fucking Ooze monster that you fight later on. I love all the boss sprites in that game. That game is awesome. So one up. Hell yeah. Awesome. All right, guys. Well, we'll go ahead and do the last minute. Since our house cleaning is finished. We'll go ahead and sign off and let you guys know where we can find each and every one of us. There's been some improvements added to the PressBy to cancel Channel, if you guys haven't noticed already. Jake, though he has been in the middle of moving into his beautiful new house, he also has been getting his best efforts to put out some great content. Controller. What would you call a controller review or whatever you're working on?
01:41:44 --> 01:41:47 I guess if it does Neogeoctoller.
01:41:47 --> 01:41:47 Yeah.
01:41:47 --> 01:41:52 It's surprisingly doing well for us. I did not expect that one. So I'll be doing more of those Jake's killing.
01:41:52 --> 01:41:52 Yeah.
01:41:53 --> 01:41:59 I also want to call it what you guys have been doing. You guys have been doing a lot more than I have lately. And it's been great to see you've been moving, man.
01:41:59 --> 01:42:01 You've been fucking moving into a house.
01:42:01 --> 01:42:04 Don't feel bad. Don't feel bad doing something.
01:42:04 --> 01:42:06 You just got a home. You've been displayed.
01:42:06 --> 01:42:10 I got a phone. I could be recording Artari playthroughs right now.
01:42:10 --> 01:42:11 Phones, don't you?
01:42:11 --> 01:42:13 Yeah. What's wrong with you?
01:42:13 --> 01:42:13 Slacker?
01:42:14 --> 01:42:17 All the phones. Not enough outlets run out of battery.
01:42:17 --> 01:42:24 That's right. He's got one whole new outlet in his house, so he's now up to two killing it. He's living the luxury life.
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