And here we are. After a trilogy of titles we have reached the original ending of the Deponia Saga. I will not lie to you and tell you I was a big fan of this, but this is one of those rare cases where the story alone is enough to want to see how it ends... and.. wow... yeah... step inside.
Hello everyone and welcome again as we take a moment to stop and look at what is going on in the realm of Extra Life! For those of you new here, welcome aboard! If you don't know what Extra Life is, it's a charity event where gamers come together to use our hobby to help sick kids in our local hospitals. If the idea of playing video games to help sick kids sounds like the perfect win-win to you, well, you're not alone. (Hint, I'm here with you.) So how does it work? Well it's very simple:
I know so many players who the moment this was announced were already ready to throw money at the screen. Maybe too many as I honestly expected to be playing just about nothing else for months between everyone I know who wants to play. But at the same time, my only real concern was being trapped in a single game for far longer then I would like as I do love my variety. The game itself already looked great. In fact my only real delay was that as a rule I wait a month to play anything with a major publisher behind it. (Don't blame me, blame how many games release as broken messes.) However, once I decided the game had enough time to bake I was in.... and for once, the AAA world made something I shouldn't have even waited that long on.
BROTHERS! TO BATTLE!
And we finally have reached a point where in order to show off something new for Extra Life over the weekend, I had to roll the dice over my backlog. It has been a while, but the dice were kind and offered an handful of titles that looked pretty good for the most part. And when this one came up, I was intrigued. After all, I do still have to play the main games, so a little window into what's to ultimately come sounded pretty good. Well the window was certainly small... but through it I can see some real potential.
We have come full circle with the first Phantasy Star game I ever played. I did not play this on the Sega Genesis like so many others, however. Back in that day, I was much more of an SNES fan, so I missed this game until I had left consoles for PC entirely for a streak. Back then, I had stumbled on a CD-ROM called the Sega Smash pack which I picked up with the intention to play with Altered Beast more then anything else. But this game was also on the disc, and I fell in love with it the moment I started playing. So is it everything I remember it to be? Well, it's still pretty good, but... let's talk on it.
After the first game (and it's Christmas shareware episode) I can not say this is a franchise that started on the right foot with me. Between being way too zoomed in to run at the speeds the game wants you to and "clever" level design that served more either bounce the player around to take damage or send them a ways backwards, it just did not feel like a good game. However, it seems Epic Megagames learned from their mistakes the first time and released something that, while not spectacular, is certainly MUCH better this time around. Come on in.