Ephemeral Enigmas

You bet, wouldn't be a real list without it on there 🤝

My 9 games are: Shin Megami Tensei: Nocturne Earthbound Metal Gear Rising: Revengeance Devil May Cry 3: Dante's Awakening Romancing SaGa (supposed to be the PS2 one but it wasn't on there for some reason) Disgaea: Hour of Darkness Phantasy Star Online Bomberman Generation Super Smash Bros. For Wii U

Am I too late to the 9 games thing

You definitely should at some point, it's a delight and you'll definitely enjoy it! Yeah, I'm glad it lives up to the hype because I would have honestly been a bit heartbroken if I ended up not liking it

That's true, it's basically like a TLDR for Final Fantasy II, which is kinda neat! I really enjoy the mechanics of FF2, so having a quick fix like SoR feels made for me

A battle against a "Spider Man" (a guy wearing armor with a spider on it, not the superhero lol) and a "Flying Pig", which is a weird multi-armed monstrosity

A character says "Please, never give up. See you soon. Boyoyoing!"

A Clockwork Soldier (a big robot with golden samurai armor and arm cannon) launches a flame attack

Ziria, the protagonist, stares up towards the sunset while laying back with a twig in his mouth

15. Tengai Makyou: Ziria

After years of pining for this game, I'm so glad it lived up to my expectations! It's essentially the best possible take on Dragon Quest II, offering similar mechanics while using the CD format for a presentation so exceptionally ahead of its time. An utterly joyous game!

It's been an extremely good few months for fans of Milestone/RS34 games.

Save 35% on Radirgy Swag on Steam Dodge, slash, and shoot your way through waves of enemies while collecting items. Blast off on a quick trip toward the Moon in Radio-allergic Shoot ’Em Up!

Now that it's out, it may not surprise you to know that I was part of the team to localise this game, just like with Karous! I was on FIRE when translating some of the lines here - hope you enjoy the new English version!

store.steampowered.com/app/3179820/...

#RadirgySwag

No worries, this is exactly the kind of stuff I was hoping to find when I was writing this, so thank you! I could see myself going back to try these tips, I gotta try the 3DS Karous too

If you're willing sometime, updating the shmups wiki page sounds great to have this information easily available

Nice, that's good news for me!

Thank you! I wanted to be as fair as possible since there's so little on the game out there and the series has such a good track record, there had to be something cool about it!

The music was good but I found it hard to hear over all the noise lol, I gotta give it a listen outside of the game

Radirgy de Gojaru! Radirgy de Gojaru is such an interesting game to me. It’s often misunderstood in the wider English sector of the gaming landscape, but not by that much. It’s a genuine, workable concept that could …

New blog post time!

This week's game is Radirgy de Gojaru!, the bite-sized Japan-only 3DS entry that's based on a mode from the Xbox 360-exclusive Radirgy Noa Massive. Such an odd approach didn't earn it any favors at the time, but I found some fun in visiting it now and laying out all the details:

Radirgy de Gojaru! Radirgy de Gojaru is such an interesting game to me. It’s often misunderstood in the wider English sector of the gaming landscape, but not by that much. It’s a genuine, workable concept that could …

New blog post time!

This week's game is Radirgy de Gojaru!, the bite-sized Japan-only 3DS entry that's based on a mode from the Xbox 360-exclusive Radirgy Noa Massive. Such an odd approach didn't earn it any favors at the time, but I found some fun in visiting it now and laying out all the details:

Yeah wow, I'm no game dev but I would think such a thing would be pretty hard to miss in testing! Then again, I bought armor the whole game without noticing a problem lol, so maybe it's a trickier fix than it looks

I guess some bugs are the price of all that ambition and style it's packing! Some of the bugs are kinda rough though, like I found at least one site that claims armor doesn't actually work right lol

Yeah, the endgame encounters give such high experience for how easy most of them become that this trick isn't as life-changing as it sounds, but I was definitely surprised to see the game not only lets you drop the sword but rewards you for it lol

Obtaining the Sword of the Divine from a spirit that looks like a white dragon

You receive 15,808 experience (called Virtue in this game) each time you get the sword. That's a lot, but the exp curve at this point gives you large amounts of experience from every battle anyway, so this isn't as gamebreaking as it sounds (unless you're very patient)

In Tengai Makyou: Ziria, you get a large EXP bonus when you're given the Sword of the Divine. If you decide to drop the sword, you can talk to the spirit that gave it to you to get another one as well as the same experience bonus again.

This can be done for infinite experience, which is very funny

The party faces a series of pirates wearing blue on a ship

The famous "Guy speak beaver." quote

Minwu (a white mage) casts Teleport to instantly kill an enemy

Soul of Rebirth culminates with a light version of the Emperor sitting atop a crystalline throne

14. Final Fantasy II: Dawn of Souls (replay)

FF2 is still one of my favorites! I love all the ways you can mess with the game and I think this version is my most preferred take on it

Soul of Rebirth is a cool thing too, though I'm a guy who likes Persona 3's The Answer, so your mileage may vary

An encounter against Lucifer shows Ricard doing 6,250 damage with the Blood Sword. This is far more than anything else will do and is enough to defeat anything in 2-3 hits, including the final boss of SoR.

If you bring the Blood Sword over to Final Fantasy II's Soul of Rebirth via Ricard, you can easily steamroll the enemies and bosses in a few hits at most

Grind up your evasion levels in advance as well and you can really turn this scenario into a joke! One of many examples of what makes FF2 peak

I look forward to seeing what you'll be playing, I love PC-CD stuff of all kinds! Between my weekly blog and my personal tastes, I'm extremely all over the place, so I should have plenty of weird and/or interesting stuff to offer!

I've had my eye on Anearth to play eventually, it looks really nice! There are so many PCCD RPGs I'd love to see in English, the Legend of Xanadu games especially

I study Japanese very casually and while I don't know how far I'll get with it, knowing kana and some kanji has actually really helped

I've wanted to play these games for so long that finally getting to play one feels like Christmas! It's living up to its reputation too, it's seriously incredible how good this game still looks and sounds!

The other Tengai Makyou games are easily the games I want translated into English the most

Gecqua, a blue water gecko Pokemon

I'm not usually a guy who uses the starters honestly, but I'm a big fan of Gecqua so far, that's a good gecko

Wolves fall quickly to flames!

He must be a big fan of wolves because there's a lot of them running around here!

An enemy encounter in Tengai Makyou: Ziria with an Ushi-oni and two "Lone Wolf" enemies. The Ushi-oni is a red demon and the Lone Wolves are blue. The encounter takes place in a forest.

You call yourself a Lone Wolf but you fight in a group? Curious! I am very intelligent.

How to Support Trans People in All 50 States A curated list of 100 organizations supporting trans rights and livelihood to which you can donate.

I just found this. Maybe it can be helpful.

Kid Dracula watches a TV with Galamoth (a spiky demon guy) looking at him.

On a roller coaster, a demon throws thunderbolts at Kid Dracula

A rock paper scissors minigame has Kid Dracula exchanging club strikes with an opponent

The lava level has one of those fire arches Konami loves to put in games like Gradius

13. Kid Dracula (Game Boy, replay)

This cute Konami game is both easier and more sluggish than I remember. It's a fine enough platformer, but the minigames effectively give you infinite lives and the weapon switching is way too clumsy for the limited buttons available. Very charming, at least!

Sega Genesis Look - Twin Hawk

Tonight's Mega Drive review is for Twin Hawk.
pepsimanvsjoe.blogspot.com/2026/02/sega...
Sega gave the obscure Toaplan shmup a solid port.
#retrogaming #genesis

Past meets present: WiZman's World Re;Try The 2009 Japanese DS exclusive made its way in a rebuilt form to international audiences on Nintendo Switch and Playstation 5.

I reviewed the revamped RPG WizMan's World, known now as WizMan's World Re;Try. The monster fusions at the heart of the game's battle system and strategy are a good time, the revamped soundtrack is full of quality riffs, and it all works out to a perfectly cromulent RPG experience.