Ep. 252: The Mud Man (Feat. Rondo of Swords)

Chase said he played Fortnite and he saw Sabrina Car- bought it immediately. It's true. No other game would Chase do that for. Maybe Death Strand But like... That's really it. Optimus video game variety show. No, you know what? I didn't like that one. variety show or two as friends talk

wonderful world of gaming. My name is Chase. My name is David. I sounded way too much like an unconfident first time host or something like that. It's not how I feel. This was like a clean, a nice warm glove that i put on weekly I feel you. I mean, we've got enough episodes for people to listen to one episode a day for like two thirds of a year. Yeah, it's a lot. Yeah, 252.

so yeah you you are a seasoned host so i respect you to to restart it again but like sure you sounded you sounded good to me baby you sounded good yeah maybe i'm just i felt it Yeah, nothing to be in your head. My identity is shifting so much from single guy to father so soon. You were still a single guy after being married for like two years?

It's odd that people used to describe themselves that way. Prior being married, they're like, I'm still a single man. Or when people go on their bachelor trip, it's my last week out as a single dude. Like, brother. You are in a loving relationship, hopefully. What's been going on up until this point? Battling, I guess. I don't know. I don't know. That's how it used to be.

Yeah. Soon I'll be with child. And so I'm just trying to figure out what my dad intro is, you know? Hmm. Your dad tro. My dad tro. I don't know. I don't know what my dad tro. You're going to have to like totally rethink. Are you rethinking like the cadence? of what you're saying? Are you rethinking like the timbre of your voice? Are you rethinking exactly like the actual words? I feel like I need to pay attention to the vibe of it more than the specifics.

you know like maybe some timbre will change maybe some tempo will change maybe the words will be totally different sure welcome to this yeah i think you need to try harder to convey the fact that you have a mustache yeah sure that's fair that's a very dad thing to have you know there you go rub my mustache on the microphone to make sure everybody knows Just five seconds of mustache rubbing and then go into the intro. Same as you've done it.

your whole entire life we're good that's just the patreon feed we don't have a patreon but if we did it would just be the five uncut minutes of mustache on microphone action It's the same episode. There's no extra content. That might get a little freaky. Who knows? Yeah, it's a horribly boring content, though, because it is going to be the same thing week over week. There you go. Make a little video game potimism ASMR channel. This game kind of sucks, but I really do like playing.

was that was that was that quiet enough welcome back to it's another episode of us playing kind of a mid racing game from the playstation one era yeah this one has sonic in it is anyone else like hideo kochima have you been playing video games I have, yes. What you got? What have you been playing? I have been playing and beating Indiana Jones and the Great Circle. Finally. Not that I was waiting on bating breath, but I was like, I feel like you must be getting close.

I've been dancing around this one for a while. It's true. It was. a very fun game. It had a great ending. I don't think a lot of games end well, but I felt like this game really ended nicely. Mechanically? Narratively? Story-wise?

environment wise i would say mechanically it was about the same game as you as you had for for the whole kid and caboodle but it was just a very fun narrative surprise of what was like the grand mystery of this game that was very really was what the circle really was or what the circle really was on i won't i'm not gonna go i'm not gonna give any spoilers but i will say it just has big boat energy big boat

Big boat energy. And anyone who listens to this podcast knows how much I like a good boat in a game. I'm a big fan of boats in video games. This one is a good boat in the end. Really classic boat in the end. And yes, Very buoyant. Buoyant.

against the test of time i will say yeah so yeah it's just a very fun discovery at the end of the game which i feel like is very in keeping with what is fun about Indiana Jones as a as an ip right it's all about okay what are we building up to and oh that's what it is okay this is kind of cool and crazy situation right where it's just kind of

it doesn't necessarily turn everything on its head but it just makes everything you've been doing leading up to it that much more grander that you have then been doing these like small little things and finding these very secluded kind of crumbling areas and they've led to you finding this amazing thing out of nowhere this like truly amazing thing that has supernatural properties as well. Which is very fun. Indiana Jones too. Very Indiana Jones.

like finding a ufo in south america is that crystal skull yeah yeah that was a weird that's not a good example but that's just the first thing that comes to comes to mind not a great not a great film not his best work mr indiana jones but i digress very fun game very fun ending really concludes nicely i think yeah it gets So close.

to actually examining Indiana Jones as a character. It dips its toes in for five or ten minutes, and then she's like, ooh, no, that's a little too spicy for me. I'm out. I'm out. So... I am curious to see if they do a sequel to this game, if this is just kind of like laying the groundwork.

for examining him more as a character yeah which i would be interested in because i mean some things that don't get resolved at all are the fact that he's like fired from his job by the end of this game and i i appreciated that he didn't sorry

minor spoilers for the game. So if you don't want to know, don't listen. He doesn't end up with the girl in the end. She's just like, yeah, she's like, no, I got things to do. You got things to do. This isn't going to work right now. I was like, okay, cool. I enjoy that. That's, that's nice.

So... keeps his character more fresh in that in that regard more human in a way right that he's not just like all right i won and now i got the girl um which is yeah i i enjoy that so yeah I'm very I'm very curious to see if they make a sequel to this game because it seems like it's been doing well sales wise and I think that

they did a really good job with it and if they had another go at it with just even the same engine and just make another one just like sand off some of the hard edges make it so that i don't have to like redo an hour and a half of the game with a bug.

that'd be cool it was it was it was a fun time and i think a a good example of how a first person action game can still be engaging and successful in the modern video game landscape which makes me very excited to see if other developers see this i'm like okay yeah first first person action adventure games let's do it let's go because there is it is different than playing like an uncharted right it's it there is something about being in the first person view that is

slightly more immersive than just like looking at Nathan Drake being a roguish scamp going around and just murdering dozens of people, right? Yeah. So...

Yeah, I'm engaged. I'm engaged with the new Indiana Jones property. I think they did a really great job. The music was on point throughout the whole game. Ending was good. I want to see them examine and... kind of take apart the character of Indiana Jones in the next one if they do it I think that would be a really interesting game at that point even if they just had the same sort of gameplay I'd be fine because the gameplay was good it was fun so yeah we'll see what they do cool nice yeah

I'm still playing Majora's Mask just a little bit this last week. Didn't play too much of it. Still swamping, making my way with the monkeys. I came my way through a new, what was like forest temple-y place. Figured out the inverted song of time because people called it the inverted song of time. I just did the song of time backwards. So I was like, okay, this is it. We did it.

so yeah i'm moving at like one third pace now which is really helpful yeah very very yeah it really changes the mindset and the grind set of the game which isn't bad at all makes it feel more like not not necessarily a typical Zelda game because there is still that overarching like you know I really gotta start speeding up a little bit here unlimited time yeah i don't have unlimited time to do this so that is

That is still fun. The time constraint of the game, the whole entire world is still a fun little puzzle, which I enjoy. But yeah, it's just making my way through that one. But that's really all I've been playing this past week, Chase. Wow, nice. I love that. What about you? What have you been playing? I got a couple things. I got two games for you, David. What you got?

The first one is this game called... Oh, I don't get a choice this week. No, I have an order that I would like to... Alright, I respect the hell out of that. You do your thing, man. Thank you. I didn't mean to rip control away from you so dramatically. No, I just wanted to point it out, that's all. I just wanted to let you know I know that. Yeah, no, you're paying attention to your presence. Yes, yeah. The first game that I'm playing is this game called The Slormancer. Slore?

The slormancer. S-L-O-R. S-L-O-R. Mancer. The hell is slorm? Yeah, it's like a soul, I think. So this is an ARPG from this company called Slormite Studios. on brand on brand yeah they put out this game kind of recently and it was uh popping on steam a little bit and uh just visually i was interested in it essentially it is This also came out really recently. This was a May release, so it's pretty hot off the press.

my understanding is this was like i think it was in early access for a while but i truly hadn't heard about it for a long time so anyway yeah so this is a arpg which i've been playing i guess a little bit more of in the past couple years like the if anybody doesn't know what that is I think the most famous example is probably Diablo. That's the biggest ARPG, at least as far as recognition goes.

Path of Exile is a more recent one, and Reality Break was one that I played earlier in the year that was a sci-fi ARPG. But I think just visually, it will look a little bit like vampire survivories. Yeah. You can see the influence for sure. And I think that it feels like there is an intentionality with how many enemies are on screen at any given point, which...

Vampire Survivors is similar in that sense of sometimes it's supposed to look overwhelming with how much stuff is there. My guess is that I don't know that this game would have been able to be influenced like that. because it seems like it's been in development for a little while so I'm like I don't know if it possibly could have like totally turned on its head like the influence from Vampire Survivors but maybe I'm wrong regardless like

Even if it wasn't influenced, it reminds me of that. There's a similar amount of stuff on screen. going on. Essentially, the pitch of the game is you're in this town and you choose one of three characters that eventually you can play as any of them, but you just gotta pick one initially. It's like an archer or a warrior or a wizard or something, so very almost gauntlet-esque.

classes at the start yeah and essentially the whole town gets like abducted by i guess the slormancer and it's really dirty yeah like i think that's partially on purpose okay um the game is a little crass every now and then and like not in a way that's horrible but like i think if you are allergic to like I guess kind of like online humor and maybe even like

outdated online humor. There's a lot of it in this game. So you're saying there's a lot of millennial cringe in this game. Yes, in fewer words, yes. That is true. Millennials are here, baby. We're here to stay. Let's go. Yeah. So whether you like it or not. I think like... yeah some of the writing every now and then I'm like yeah that's fun or that's fine it's like it's very irreverent like the tone of the game is that like this is all not that big of a deal it's very tongue in cheek

Sure. Despite the fact like, you know, you are wandering around like graveyards with undead enemies and shit like that constantly. And like the town is gone for all intents and purposes. But like whenever you find someone, they're like, oh, that was weird. Okay, I'll see you back in town. and that's part of it right like that is what the game is setting out to do is to make this kind of like not low stakes but

I guess, humorous, lighthearted, in a way, adventure. And not to mention that, like, from what I understand the story is not particularly long and similar to most other ARPGs like the thing that you're in it for is the end game is like getting better weapons and you know better gear and shit like that like that's yeah To me, that is what a lot of these games end up being, and so the writing doesn't necessarily need to be the thing about it for very long.

Just because you're gonna be so mechanically focused on this which I will say that is the part of the game that I really really like the thing that's working for me the most? Is that like...

There are so many systems and I think they do a pretty good job of introducing them to you very slowly because the first couple of levels, essentially the way the actual game game works is that you will be going from these bespoke levels one into another, and then going back to town and re-equipping and re-gearing and shit like that.

and so it's not the kind of open world Diablo style it's like much more like alright let's go to this one and then that one and then come back and then go to this series of levels and then go back but whenever you get in there like the first couple are very simple like it's just like get to the end you have

a few attacks maybe you'll unlock another one and that's really it right like it's very simple and initially I was like oh man like I hope this gets more interesting and I think the reason they're doing that is because like the systems are so dense and so deep, but they don't want to overwhelm them with you all at once, because if they did, I think I would have been like, no, absolutely not. There's way too much shit in here.

but like eventually it's like okay your character gets upgraded they've got stats that you need to manage your you have like a

skill tree that you can constantly change if you want to. There's no issue with you changing out what skills you have. There's no... cost to it you can just rotate through like what your build is whenever there are like specializations that each of those characters have so like the mage has three different kinds of mage that you can build there sure um which are all very interesting there's a ton of different skills and you can spend slorm to

to upgrade any of those skills. Again, those upgrades you can undo and change all the time. So it's like, if you don't like the skills that you've got equipped, just do something different. It's very forgiving with

how you can build these characters and then from there it's like okay now your skills level up too and then your weapon starts leveling up and there are tons of like Unique weapons, not just random drops, but ones that are pre-programmed into the game and all have different ways that they play.

yeah and once you hit certain level caps like they'll transform a little bit so you got a little bit of that like Ratchet and Clank I was about to say it sounds a little bit like Ratchet and Clank to me yes yeah exactly which I love I know that's about to say you're a big rationing client guy so you're into that I love when just something visually changes when you use it a lot like that's very cool to me it is it is nice

So, yeah, and like, I am sure that I have not seen all the systems that they've got in here. To me, that like, again I think I like how easy that transition into each of these systems has been because again like you look at one of the panels of like the skill tree and you're like oh my god i

can't do this but because they give you so few choices at the beginning and then just kind of slowly drip feed them to you over time i feel pretty ready whenever it's like hey you unlocked a new thing i'm like all right great like i can go check that out and i know what build i'm working with right now

And so I think it just all fits together really well. All that said, it feels a little bit more casual compared to other ARPGs, but I think that that's more of a problem with the Overton window of ARPGs being so far to the complicated side. sure like there are very few of these games that are just like dead simple you know

Diablo is maybe a little bit simpler and it is so complicated. Path of Exile, I feel like you need to learn calculus before you can do everything in that game. It's just so dense. And so this one I think is at least visually communicates to me like this is a little bit, or the on-ramp at the very least is a little bit easier. And so I do wonder if eventually in like the end game that this will become.

very complicated game or it will require me to become very invested in like every single system but for now like I'm having a great time just kind of enjoying it for what it is i will say the level of polish on the art is also really really good like it's this kind of like pixelarty look to it and just like all the characters look really good and like the environments look great the town like the hometown looks really nice

the characters and just like all the sprites have a nice animation to them too they feel very bouncy yeah yeah for sure it uh it almost reminds me of rogue legacy in the way that the characters are kind of built and it's just good like it all looks very good I uh I will say like I the the

controls of it are a little bit befuddling to me because I very badly want to play it with a controller. And it seems like it's kind of not meant for that. It has, like, controller settings. Like, you can change it in the game, so they... know that that's an option but very frequently i'll run into a skill that's like it it needs you to point like an area around the character like where do you want to use this area of effect attack

and the controller it's like you just have a default range it's just gonna plop it somewhere over there whereas with the mouse you have like much finer control over where to actually shoot it yeah And really the only reason I want to use a controller is because this is almost like an enter the gungeon thing where I need to be running one direction but looking another direction and shooting that way. And to me, just on controller, the twin stick of it all just works way better for that.

sure and even just like the control setup like a lot of your skills are on A and I'm like I can't do the twin stick thing if I'm also having to hit A so I like remap them all to like the triggers and stuff like that but it's yeah I'm just not really sure like Am I missing how to play this game in a way? There's some amount of auto-aim that the game will turn on when you use a controller. It's like you can kind of designate which target you want to hit, but...

But I find that there's very often, I just kind of want to be aiming in like an area rather than at a specific dude. Sure. and so like yeah just I would go into it with eyes wide open about like if you're a controller head then like you may be like not super comfortable in this one because it does seem like it is perhaps intended for a mouse like that's that's

kind of how you're supposed to play it. But even still, I'm having a good time. I think each of the classes are also very distinct. The mage and the archer and the warrior, they all play really different. I'm definitely having the best time with the mage.

just because there are so many wild spells that you can do. And it could be because I'm just like, so I played so much enter the gungeon that I want to play these kind of games with a ranged character because like the warrior i'm like i don't i don't get it it doesn't feel good to me to play like not because the game feels bad but just like my play style i want to be running away and shooting at them whereas the warrior requires you to be like much closer to them yeah

Exactly, yeah. So I definitely reach for the archer and the mage in those cases. But yeah, it's great. I'm really enjoying it. a hesitant recommendation if you are okay with the kind of humor that's in there, at least for the first little while. If those mechanics are anything that you're interested in, it is really good. I think that's the part of the game that they just totally nailed. Yeah. Which is cool. I always want to really like an ARPG. I feel like a lot of times like

I never make it to the end game, you know? Yeah. They're usually pretty long, though, too, aren't they? It depends on which one. And I think that typically the majority or the bulk of the playtime is in the endgame, where you're just grinding through specific runs, or in, I guess, Diablo, you're playing through the whole campaign.

over and over and over again. But I've never gotten to the point where I felt really compelled to go back and do a ton of it. I will usually play through a Diablo campaign once or Torchlight, I think was one of those games. I played through Torchlight once, and that was cool. I didn't really go back to it. And so I'm always kind of hunting for like, is there one that will land for me really well and like keep me around?

and this feels good so far so like i'm hoping that that's possible but but we will see i think currently i feel good while i'm playing it so you know hopefully i can hang out and do a little bit longer the halloween town ask music isn't gonna do it enough for you yeah absolutely it's totally halloween town like

I will say the music is pretty good in this game. The music was fun. I watched some of the trailers and it's good music. Yeah, the soundtrack is good. I will say, speaking of a very good soundtrack, let me talk to you about the other game that I've been playing. Oh, yeah. Let's hear it. This is a game called Super Mario Mon, David. Super... What?

Does Shakira Miyamoto want to know your location right now? Yeah, he's thinking about it for sure, just uttering that phrase. This is a ROM hack of Pokemon Emerald, but... It has been completely replaced, essentially, with just Pokemon stuff, or just Mario stuff. Just Mario? Oh, they have a cappy for both Mario and Luigi. It's nutty. this video game, David. I had heard about this first from Brendan over on Into the Aether, and I think I had seen, like,

On Backlog.com, I saw that he had played it, and I clicked through it, and my initial instinct was like, this is not going to be good. Just looking at it, I'm like, no fucking way, man. I think part of that is that... There was an era on Newgrounds.com and E-Bombs World where they would put up games that were definitely just sprites from Mario that they're like, we gave him a gun in this one and that is the draw of those games. None of them were good. They were all very, very bad.

And so I think just my mind connected to that, and I was like, I just don't think that that's going to be all that compelling. and I listened to the episode of End of the Aether where Brendan was talking about it and I was like man this sounds pretty fucking good like the the description of this game has sort of got me going and i got it and was like oh my god i was so wrong about this video game i was so very wrong about it yeah

So essentially, and Brendan had mentioned this, that there is this YouTuber called Alpha Rad that as an April Fool's joke dropped this game of like, hey, we replaced everything with Mario. And it's like really ridiculous and over the top, but like you can play it too. wow it was a joke yes yeah yeah it was sort of a little a little a jape and they had said like okay so this developer Cabasco is I think it's who made this

They have put together this game and like, you know, check it out. Go play it. And I sure have. David, this is a really good video game. Do you think you like it? I am really into this game. I am so surprised just at the level of quality that they have built this game with is so good. So, like, let's Let's start at the top. The reason that any of this is happening is that Princess Peach was like, hey, I have this.

game that I'm going to start participating in in the Mushroom Kingdom, and you're supposed to just go capture some creatures out there, some monsters, and we're going to fight them against each other. That's the deal. And I have nominated eight of our friends to be like, The holders of the stars, that if you go and challenge them and beat them, you'll get a star. And that's it. And then once you get all eight, your wish will come true. Classic Mario.

Yes, yeah, exactly. And they handed out, essentially, Cappy is how you capture these creatures. You will throw Cappys at them. Sure, yeah. And they'll fight for you all of a sudden. And so they're like, all right, come through. Come talk to the princess. She's the first.

Like, one who has a star and, yeah, play the game. It's, like, it's familiar. If you've played a Pokemon game, it's definitely familiar in kind of the structure of it. But that's really it. Like, the battle mechanics and how, like, the architecture of the game works. It's like, yeah, you catch these monsters and you fight with them, but all of them are so different. They're all from Mario games, essentially. Mostly from Mario games, I should say. Yes, yeah.

It is that kind of game. You definitely get a starter. You can either choose between a piranha plant, a bomb-omb, or a blooper. Those little, like, squid creatures. Yeah. So, like, the piranha plant. Grass, fire, water. Exactly. Yes. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

they do have evolutions which i was very curious about like do these things change at some point the answer is yes which i was just like thrilled about and yeah sure enough you can get a team of six and go and like fight these bosses and stuff it is incredible like The sprite work is unreal. If you're looking at just videos of it, it looks perspective-wise like a Pokemon game, but everything else is like, this looks like a Nintendo game. It's unbelievable.

the battle arenas are all like Mario Kingdom specific the sprites for all the enemies are like that is so so high quality and so good i and not to mention like there is so much humor in this game that is it It feels like its own thing, but I will say playing through it, I'm like, this doesn't feel unreasonable for a Nintendo game. It is that kind of funny humor that's like it could be...

kid stuff, and there are exceptions, right? Every now and then I'll make an internet meme joke or something like that, but it's kind of self-referential. to just like mario games at large like i'll uh i'll spoil just a little bit of part of this game. So if you really don't want to hear it, skip ahead. But I'm just going to mention who is the fourth boss. and kind of what their deal is, but the fourth gym leader is Wario, and...

essentially you roll into like what is essentially the WarioWare city and you have to go around and like beat like Jimmy T and all the characters from WarioWare games who are like little mini bosses and then... Love it. because Wario is trying to make a knockoff Pokemon game, which is just very funny given the context of this game. But he's using everybody else to do it. He says at some point, I copy-pasted all the code. What could go wrong here?

I will say the boss battle right before him is hilarious and something that like really only truly a ROM hack could do but it's just like so good there are just like characters from the Mario world littered around this game in a way that is so much fun. Professor E. Gadd is one of the professors as if it was Professor Oak or something. Mm-hmm.

that's great there's a ton of music from other Mario games that's like you know obviously the legality of it is all very questionable but like yes essentially they have taken a bunch of other Mario games soundtracks and converted them to what it sounds like is just like the chipset for the emerald.

soundtrack and so all of them are they sound like a pokemon game because they're using the same instruments essentially but it's you know stuff that is very familiar even the songs that are like originals are like this sounds perfect like it sounds exactly like what this soundtrack should sound like

A lot of it is from the Mario and Luigi Partners in Time game. Sure. Like the battle theme is lifted from that one. But obviously, it sounds like they reorchestrated it through the chipset of Emerald. Put it in here. So like, it's... so much fun. I'm having such a good time, and part of it is the thrill of being like, who have they got in the Pokedex?

you know like there's so many there's 151 of them so like they got a lot that's crazy it's insane it really feels like they almost recreated the the thrill of like the original pokemon by doing this That's kind of what I've been feeling as I was playing through more of it is like, this

feels the most original a pokemon game quote-unquote has felt in such a long time because like you kind of know what you're gonna get a lot of the time with a pokemon game and like that's not necessarily a bad thing but yeah it does feel like there is sometimes a lack of like real risks being taken in those games. and obviously because this game is just a ROM hack like

It's kind of all risks as far as would this work as a Pokemon game? Who knows? What I mean there is would this work sales-wise as a Pokemon game? But it works extremely well as a Pokemon game to play. It all fits. It all works. the starter of it all is like that's perfect you guys picked exactly the characters that work here just the fact that like there are so many friendly faces from different Mario worlds and that like the game is genuinely funny like truly truly funny in a way that like

It feels like old Mario RPGs are funny or like the Mario and Luigi Superstar saga, that those are funny. Mm-hmm. it's like it just seems hard to do but somehow they've managed to do that in a way that like feels very Nintendo but obviously like I said it's It's their own thing too. I love, I don't know if these are randomly generated or not, but like

Your rival is essentially Luigi. He's the dude who will run around and every now and then you'll run into him and he's like, bro, we gotta fight. And the names that he comes up with for his captures are so funny to me. Because they... He doesn't just name them the regular things. He gives all of them nicknames. Of course. He has a bomb-omb named The Chief and then Jeffrey or something like that. It's so, so funny to me.

Yeah, because it feels like Luigi is playing a video game and naming the characters after that. So the person who did Luigi's dialogue is role-playing as Luigi. Yeah, Luigi playing a video game, which is just so funny. It's great. I'm really, really enjoying it. I'm like halfway through right now. I just got to, I think, the fifth.

boss the fifth like gym essentially which is really fun I don't want to give away too many of who the gym leaders are because I think it's very fun to like go to their areas which are all very unique to them like the cities and the spots that in which they like hang out are all like oh my god this is perfect for this character or whatever

which is all really really fun the the game is is structured a little bit differently which i find interesting you there's like the main hub town of like the the mushroom kingdom that you go to and fight peach for the first time but you'll essentially jump into all of these different like tubes the pipes.

that will lead you to like World 1-2 or World 2-1 or something like that which is you just go down there and then kind of wander through these areas until you get to the city that you want to go to. and from there once you like get to the end of the city get the get the star then you just come back to that main hub area and go to another zone which to me is just like fun it makes going into those new areas just kind of a thrill because I'm like what am I about to get like

Like, who is the person here? What is the vibe going to be like? What's the music that they've decided to grab here? And it's great. So I'm really, really enjoying it. It is a shocking game that it is this good. It also, like, the thing I'm the thing I'm thinking when I'm playing it is like how have we not done this yet like how is this a fan project because like it feels like such a

slam dunk of a Nintendo game to just like, why is specifically the Pokemon game the only one that we've applied this formula to? Like, Nintendo Game Freak. they have a very good, well, I don't know if good, but, like, a close relationship. You know, like, Pokemon games don't come out on PlayStation 5. Okay. And so, like, why hasn't this happened? Zelda Pokemon game. Yeah, like, why not? F-Zero.

game anything you know like I think the point that this game has made to me so far is that like this formula is fun really no matter what that like the capturing and battling like it works in many different places and the Mario of it all is just like such a fun flavor of it.

in a way that it feels like it fits right in. I know this is a fan project, but if Nintendo came out with this and said, this is the game we're doing, I'd be like, yeah, totally. This feels right at home. There haven't been really many games that kind of challenge Pokemons thrown for this type of style of game. There have been games, like all the Digimon games, I see those, right? Yeah. But it's a sparse landscape.

Yeah, I feel like you've seen a handful of games sort of come for the throne a little bit in recent years. Like Nexomon came out a while ago. Temtem was another one that like, I like Temtem a fair bit. I think that was pretty good. Or Coromon was another one. And then obviously fucking Pow World. Like so much so that they got sued about it. Yeah. But none of them to me have totally nailed it. You know, like I think that there is just some...

special sauce that hasn't quite been captured. And I'm not even sure that hasn't been captured. And to be frank, I don't know if Nintendo or Game Freak has it anymore. That they also may have lost sight of, like, where the magic is there. But, yeah, I don't know. I'm just so curious about the state of Pokemon ROM hacking like this. Because I think I...

I read it as a yearning for more creativity in the Pokemon space. Yes. You see constantly these like these ROM hacks that are like hey to be clear like there are so many fucking ROM hacks of Pokemon games like thousands of these games if you look up like best Pokemon ROM hacks there's like lists that are hundreds

of games in there. Uh-huh. And, like, I would say a lot of them are pretty fucking good. Like, there are at least 10 absolutely solid ROM hacks of Pokemon games, and looking at kind of the common themes, I think a lot of them, you know, sometimes they'll lean into, like, difficulty or the, like, being prepared for, like, uh, like Nuzlocke challenges and stuff like that just that they're embracing the things that the community has leaned on for years and years and one of the most

The features I see most often is you can catch all of them in this game, which does feel like a very outdated model for Pokemon that you've got to buy two of them.

you know like it just feels so it sure does in a way that like doesn't match anymore and like you know it's a bummer of a financial decision but like killing anybody if you just made one you know again i think why pokemon like rcs was was so interesting because it was just one and like you could catch them all in there if you wanted to yeah and so like yeah it just feels like an expression of

the desire for more interesting stuff, despite the fact that people still clearly love this formula. It still really, really works. so yeah Super Mario Mon I am like truly really really loving it it is extremely worth and like just skyrocketed up to like if you're interested in ROM hacks of games like this like

Like, you gotta play this one. It's just, like, kind of top-tier ROM hack for me at this point. Awesome. Obviously, it's not gonna come with, like, you can't get a Pikachu in here, but maybe you can. I don't know. I haven't caught all 151. Yeah. but if you're a fan of Mario, it feels perfect.

to me yeah okay so yeah that's uh that's super mario mon yeah do you think anything could stop game freak if they finally realize that adults yearn for pokemon as well that it's not just a thing that children love adults who loved it as children still love it and want more mature and complex stories, and gameplay mechanics.

Yeah, I don't know. Like, to me, like, Arceus kind of feels like a leaning in that direction for them to say, like, could we make one of these that is more compelled for people who aren't just kids? But I also, like, I think it's okay if these games are just for kids. But... Like, Emerald is still really good.

and like a lot of those games from that era are still really good despite the fact like those are meant for kids too like I didn't really play X or Y when those came out I played them pretty far after the fact like didn't really have a lot of nostalgia for them but was like these are fucking great like these are really good games and and so to me that reads is like i feel like they can still make games that are like intended for a younger audience but have like the depth if you want it

To me, it doesn't feel like they have to be mutually exclusive because I don't know that I need dark and gritty Pokemon. Sure. It kind of feels to me like I would love it if there was an approach to kind of what Andor is to Star Wars. The mainline stuff is for the vast majority of people. Sure. I kind of hope that the mainline Pokemon games would be a little bit better than the mainline Star Wars movies these days.

Sure. Andor is exploring very different things in the Star Wars universe. It feels like maybe Arceus was kind of a shot in that direction, but I would like to see them try stuff like that more. Come on, Game Freak. You can do it. Yeah. Or make Super Mario Mon 2 and make it your own. Hire this developer and let them make a game because it's so good. It's so much fun. Why not? Why not? Yeah. It's, again, going back to that weird quote when...

Super, or was it Paper Mario Origami King came out, and that whole thing where they were like, yeah, we need to be more precious with our IP, so you can't put a hat on a bomb bomb. That's too much. like it just feels so bizarre like why would you do this to yourself you know like not that not that I like Super Mario Mom for the crossover of it all but just like I love a lot of these characters and like

They are in the same universe. Egad is in the Mario universe. It's not like we're really coming to us here. I don't know. I feel like there has been a change in Nintendo since old Bowser has become president. There's been a change. i think you can see that with the switch too as well just as a system you can see that with it and that i feel like they are they're trying to be more mainstream a little bit instead of just being like the quirky not also ran but alternative

to Sony and Microsoft. They had the success of the Switch, and they're like, okay, now we're the big boys in charge again. And it's... it's hard to reconcile that a little bit yeah you know yeah yeah it seems like their hardware is kind of going more mainstream and i i hope that most of their software doesn't do that they're still able to retain the sort of charm that nintendo has yeah

But we'll see. I don't know. That's not a guarantee. Just because they have made games like that is not a guarantee that they won't. or that they will continue to do that anything's a possibility with Bowser at the helm yeah man I hope that they can see this stuff because like it does feel like the industry is just currently run by so many people who don't know what they're doing. It feels like it's run by a bunch of MBAs.

Yeah, it's business people running the bigger companies, and because there are increasingly fewer of those companies run by fewer and fewer people, I feel like you're kind of getting away from who knows what's what. I'm not making a gamers are right argument, but just, like, I would prefer it if there were, like, a lot of money. Are you making a gamers rise up argument? Oh my god. No, just, like, I wish that there was more money put into riskier projects.

that wasn't just kind of chasing trends and stuff not everything has to be games as a service guys no they really you're not gonna you're not gonna take down fortnite that just not gonna happen the only person that's gonna take down fortnite is fortnite they're gonna have to stumble and then you can like

Try to come at them and cannibalize them and whatever you want. Take their market share. But you ain't going to take them down. It's not going to happen. I don't know. The industry is in such a weird spot right now. Chase said he played Fortnite and he saw Sabrina Carpenter's skin and bought it immediately. That's true. No other game would Chase do that for. I can tell you that for sure. No, I don't think so. Maybe Death Stranding 2, but like... That's really it.

Is she Norman Reedus or is she the baby? Or is she someone else? She's Sabrina Carpenter. She's Sabrina Carpenter in Death Stranding. She just completely replaces Norman Reedus is the main character and she's just Sabrina Carpenter being Sabrina Carpenter in Desperate. You know, I'd be interested. That's what I'm saying. I think I might pay for that. What is Kojima's take on Sabrina Carpenter in his world?

Or what is Sabrina's take on Kojima? Mmm. Yeah. Who's the boss here? The boss? Boss? Big boss? This will bring me to my podimistic thing of the week, David. I just had a vision of Sabrina Carpenter murdering Hideo Kojima in a field full of white flowers. And that's all I'm going to pass down to the next generation. This will bring me to my Podmystic thing of the week, David. Cheers.

It is. I recently had a friend express some interest to me in Seattle of playing The Last of Us. She's been watching the show. And she was like, I wish I could play the games. And I was like, my PlayStation 4 is just collecting dust. Like, do you want to use this and play that? What a guy.

what a guy it's just sitting there and like what a guy don't be humble about it what a guy truly no skin off my back and to the point here what is so nice about it is that like this is a person who she was like yeah I played games when I was like younger and you know played like sports games and baseball and like shit with that with my brothers and stuff but you know haven't been super plugged into it and like does play fortnite oddly oddly enough but uh

is just like not like somebody who pays super close attention to like what is going on in the industry all the time or like what the hottest new game is this year yeah and so I was like well you should check it out like it's It's an interesting game. I know that like...

I think to people who are into games, there's a lot of criticisms of the game and just like Neil Druckmann himself. But I think for anybody who's not super following that world, I think it's... still reads as a very impressive video game you know like yeah it's very visually wild the story is brutal as it is like is interesting and i think like yeah you kind of being in the driver's seat is at the very least provocative and so essentially like she just like

slammed through this video game and texted me through the process. She already made it. beat it yeah dang that's a long that's kind of a long game it was pretty long yeah and like it was interesting to see the kind of like the spurts that she would go through of like texting me like oh my god this just fucking happened like i can't believe this is going on and then like you know

silence for a couple of days and then like holy shit I just did this that was crazy did you prepare her for the brutality of it all yes I was like okay you need to know that not all games are like this all the time and like Like, it is rough, you know? But she likes the show, and so I was like, well, if you're okay with that, like, it is more of that. But, yeah, so my optimistic thing is just, like, watching somebody enjoy video games for the first time, I feel like it usually doesn't happen.

yeah like people by the time they get to our age are pretty settled on like I do or don't like them Fair enough.

rather than just like an issue of like i don't know never tried or like you know i didn't know the games could be this or whatever and so that was just like such a joy because she's like oh yeah that was like really cool i really liked all that and immediately i was like all right come on i gotta figure out what's next like what's next on the docket you know yeah yeah yeah uncharted 4 is a pretty easy

jump from there absolutely yeah just like story driven games in general yeah yeah would probably be a good call yeah She was like, well, what was your favorite game last year? And I was like, I don't know if I want to recommend a thousand times resist right now. It's going to be a lot. How much time do you have to talk about eternity and feelings and mother-daughter relationships?

yeah like it's a it's a miraculous video game but like i feel like as the second video game right out of the gate is like kind of a nutty turn yeah it's like recommending death grips to someone who just listened to the beatles yeah i'm just getting into music what do you think i might like The money store, let's go. Get noited, baby. Just unbelievable, yeah. It would be a lot, so I'm thinking maybe a slow ramp up to that one. Yes.

yeah but again I've been thinking about this a lot just because like you know dad stuff and I would just like love it if at some point my kid and I we could like play a game together that'd be cool and I'm so agnostic about which one. I don't give a solitary shit which video game it is. I'm there for pretty much whatever. Keep the train going with Doom or Parasite Eve or something, right?

unsettling shit for a child. Kid, are you into body horror? You ready for Parasite Eve? My child, are you into body horror? And so I've just been like thinking about like how, like how I can introduce it to another person without it being like, that's dad's thing. That's his weird hobby or whatever, but we will see. keen on it. Obviously, that's a problem that I won't be solving for a long time because a baby can't play Super Mario.

Five lower skills aren't there. Yeah. But yeah, that's my potumistic thing is watching a burgeoning love of video games. Oh, hell yeah. Love it. Do you have something fueling your sense of potumism, David? I do. It's a good ending. Mm. Mm-hmm.

I feel like oftentimes with any with any sort of media really it's really easy to whiff the landing yeah right so just whiff the end it doesn't build up in the way you want it to it's a little disappointing it doesn't get to a place that you thought was satisfying but when it when it hit and it just feels good and it feels natural and earned but also grandiose in a really nice and surprising way it just hits differently and it feels good when that happens

And I think Indiana Jones and the Great Circle really had a fun, unexpected, but understandable ending that I really enjoyed and was very striking and memorable and enjoyable. because of that yeah and i think it made the whole game more interesting as a result which you can't say for a lot of video game endings where it just makes everything you did throughout the rest of the game feel more important.

even if it feels small at the time, right? So hats off to you, Machine Games, Indiana Jones, The Great Circle, wonderful game, really good ending. Nailed it, really nailed it. Yeah, I feel like most video games video game endings are like bad to okay like I agree yeah you know like most of them are like that was an ending you know that's fine and like having having done the sort of like education that I did and like like game studies and stuff

making a game is very hard and it's also like if you don't plan exactly how the game is going to end it can feel just like a mad dash like let's just get something on the page you know yeah absolutely Because, like,

so much of a game's development is like we're playing the first like five levels over and over and over again it's like the the later parts even just like the the idea that like somebody would play the whole game like most people don't and so like you know it kind of makes sense to put your best foot forward But yeah, it's really nice when the whole thing is considered and when they're like, yeah, we're really going to put a fine point on this.

yeah and i think that what you're saying there is true too and something i noticed and like each level felt considered and interesting and like people put a lot of care and attention into them it wasn't like like where it is how in modern games or like the first couple levels you're like wow wow like a lot of very jaw-dropping moments big things happen really interesting narrative stuff and then the rest of the game is kind of just pedestrian right um but it really just kept

ramping up with this game it was just like one of the more refreshing games I've played in a while from a narrative point of view from a gameplay point of view and from just a quality point of view as in like the quality stuff stayed consistent throughout the game barring a weird glitch that i had which was not fun but the fact that i'm still talking about this game relatively glowingly even after that is a testament to just how much i enjoyed it and how well i think it was made

yeah yeah so good on you machine games well done hats off yeah i wish this was the story i could tell of tales of arise because like that is exactly the description you were talking about of like it was so good out of the game and I was like this game has fucking sauce like it is really really good at the beginning and I was like each new town you went to I'm like are each one of these gonna be like

some capitalist critique and each one is a little bit different of power structures and stuff. I'm like, this is fucking good. Uh-huh. And then just... stumbled over the finish line. I was like, oh, man. It's so rare that a game stumbles that badly at the end that the rest of it, I'm like, I don't know.

it made the rest of it feel kind of rough which like again because video game endings are usually fine I'm like okay so it wasn't quite as good at the end that's common but like it was so rough that I'm like oh man do I even like still go to bat for this one? Yeah. Yeah, because it makes you re-examine things. That's why I think it is noteworthy that with this one, I'm rethinking everything I did in this game because of how cool this ending was for me, at least.

It puts things in perspective in a very... fun way yeah and yeah like what other game kind of stumbled like what the new final fantasy game i heard it started so good like i was really into it drops right yeah it just never really like cumulated accumulated Cumulated. Anyways, let's materialize a new future for us right now. Yeah, let's move on to our main thing. Yeah, let's do it.

Welcome to Good Games. It's a segment where we talk about the OKS games of yesteryear and gosh all the things that we love about them. I'm coming back home. My goodness. I almost did a spit take. I've rearranged my furniture and I'm in my lounging chair. Chase is comfy AF right now. It's so nice. I feel so relaxed. The man looks visibly relaxed. It feels great. We got suggested to play a game called Rondo of Swords. Yes. We got suggested by listener Domino.

to play this one. Thank you, Domino. Thank you, Domino. On the topic of this game, I had to say, Rondo feels like the most good games kind of good kind of game I've ever played. It's a tactical RPG like Fire Emblem or Final Fantasy, but the twist is that attacking works by moving through your opponent's space. This allows you to attack multiple opponents at once.

It is a separate tutorial that I recommend playing through as a game. It is really bizarre if you're too used to the more standard tactical RPGs. and the main story doesn't ease you in too well. There's a whole side quest mechanic that kind of sucks. but the main gameplay is spectacular and worth a peek in for a few levels. even if you don't get invested to finish it.

Also, in the mid-game, you can recruit some characters from other DS-era Atlus games, and I find those cameos delightful as hell. I finish by saying, it's not the best SRPG I've ever played, but it certainly is the most inventive, and it will live forever rotating in my head.

Thank you, Domino. Thank you. Had you heard of Rondo of Swords, David? I had not, no. Me neither. Not even close. Definitely not, yeah. I feel like the DS is an era that has a lot of games like this that I'm like, I totally missed it. Just not even close. I feel like just as a system, the DS had an incentive. insane amount of games on it. Just an insane amount of games.

Too many, truly, to ever really, like, grok completely. Yeah, that's the thing is that, like, I feel like I'm still, like, this game learning about releases that I'm like, I didn't hear anything about this. yeah like uh lost in the in the stream yeah i was Even with the 3DS, the game Attack of the Friday Monsters was a game that Into the Aether was really fond of when they talked about their DS stuff. And that was another game that I was like, what is this?

this? I literally had never heard of this before. I had never heard of that either. Wow. That's the first I've heard about it as being a game. Yeah, yeah. And Rondo of Sorts kind of feels like that. I wonder if I was just like not as plugged in for DS stuff specifically. I was just so focused on like console games at the time that like like, DS felt like not a step back, but just, like, something I wasn't as focused on.

sure yeah that's fair because i'm thinking about 2008 as like that was like very core like 360 wii era and like i was just playing so many console games at the time you were too probably too busy playing like rock band Yes. Yeah, truly. They're like, what's the DS anymore? I'm sure that's not true. I'm sure that's some shit I was playing, but still. A lot of Viva Pinata. Oh my god. I was just talking to somebody about Viva Pinata and they were like, that's one of my top three games.

Talk to me. Damn. Yeah. I mean, live your life with a pinata. I love it. Yeah. She's a person who loves to garden. So she's like, this was like my shit. Makes sense. Yeah. Yeah. Anyway, can I hit you with some hot stats about Rondo of Swords, David? Let's hear it. Hot stats. Hot stats. Okay, so Ron... God, I'm so comfortable. My goodness, this is... indulgent. I feel like I've taken a nice sip of a warm liqueur.

just like laying in this vibe right now it's so good love it I love that for you this game came out April 28th of 2008 for the Nintendo DS as we suggested this was made by the company Success and they are most, I think most commonly known for their Cotton series. which is like, I think a side-scrolling shoot-em-up. It's not a series that I was super familiar with, but there's a lot of games in that series, and so I think that they are kind of known for that specifically.

They have also made Metal Saga or Operation Darkness, which is apparently an Atlus-style World War II tactics game, which I was like, excuse me. Whoa. Operation Darkness? Yes, yeah. Wow. That's intense. And they also helped develop Kingdom Hearts Key. Chee. Whatever it is. Is that the phone one? I think so yeah that's the like deep backstory Kingdom Hearts game I mean you're saying that like

Others are not the deep backstory Kingdom Hearts games. Yeah, that's true. They all are. Yeah. But yeah, so those are the games they made. I do have a review, David, from the game outlet Gameki. Formerly, Zintendo is their title. Okay. I took their review and I ran it through Google Translate a number of times one language into another and spat it back out in English to get an artist's interpretation, which I'm going to read for you right now. How many languages do you go through?

It's variable. It depends on how fucked up it comes out. because sometimes i'll go through and i'm like that's way too coherent like there's no there's no funny in there back into the pit yeah yeah i kind of just do it until it's it's bad do you have like a common number of or like a common sect of languages you put it through.

Yeah, I'll try to hit simplified Chinese because I feel like that doesn't translate well specifically into Latin like those just the concepts I think between the two languages are really not they don't play well together I'll usually try to get some like Zulu and Japanese more than often just trying to go from one language to another one that doesn't have what is it homonyms is that the word of like it sounds like one thing in one language in another sure yeah

yeah just that they don't have those where it's like a language that like develops in like a different part of the world yeah it wouldn't make sense translating to the five romance languages right Exactly, yeah. It's not German to French to English or whatever. It's just shit that isn't very compatible with one another. Gotcha. And of course, Esperanto. Can't miss the Esperanto. Gotta do it. I'll read you the review now. Let's hear it. It cannot rely.

on the weight of the user because small mistakes can cause major conflicts. They need to have all the information they need to make a decision. The game requires certain skills to play, so even if players get help in the first round, I don't think everyone will win. It is possible to try on jewelry before buying it. But the creators of Sword Rondo spent a lot of time honing their characters, leading to a lot of scenes that could have worked but did. And then they gave that a 6 out of 10.

They could have worked, but they did as well. But they did also work, yeah. It's because they tried on the jewelry. Yeah, true. You can do it before you buy it. Yeah, that's huge. It's a really big part of it. That's the trick to making a scene work.

try on the jewelry first can you tell me what this game is yeah this is a tactics rpg you know top down in the style of like a final fantasy tactics or a fire emblem it is is set in a fantasy realm where you are playing what you believe to be the prince of this realm and you're trying to escape from another country

attacking your home capital at the very beginning of the game and you must escape and the big thing that you alluded to before that's different about this game is that instead of it being just like get up close to a character and then attack them or if you're like a ranged character be far away and attack them. You have to run through the characters with your move.

to attack them. Which makes a lot of sense for the DS, right? Where you're kind of like tracing a path for your character to run through, right? Yeah. That was on the bottom screen, right? Or was that on the top screen? I don't know, because I played it emulated, and I'm constantly switching between the two screens. Same. It made no sense to me either. But it would make sense if it was on the bottom screen. It might be on the top screen, too. Who knows?

but yeah you you have like x number of moves for turn of course the the whole entire battlefield is in a grid so you just like decide where you are going for each of those moves along the grid and you can get through like make a little snake pattern through a bunch of different enemies for a big effective turn for a character yes yeah yeah yeah i mean that's it i think as domino and as you have said like the thing is

how you fight. That's the big twist on this game. I did not play through the tutorial initially, which Domino is correct. Neither did I. I was so confused. I'm like, how the fuck do I attack? You must play through the tutorial. It is critical for the game. Because, yeah, it's not super obvious how any of that works.

or like what skills do and shit like that like you really do need to do it yes because yeah I like my first round they put you into this the first level where it's like you're essentially just supposed to run from the enemies that are pursuing you and I died like three times like totally lost I died a lot at first level too I'm like I don't know what I'm doing at all yes

yeah but eventually it does make sense and you are able to like get it but yeah i i think that's that's sort of the twist is is the the attack system and it really does force you to think about the game really differently like you can't play it like Fire Emblem that's just like not the right way to play this game it feels oddly more kinetic because of the way that they do it which is

interesting and i think that that also the way that they visualize it makes it feel a lot more kinetic because it's just like your character running straight through and then like you're just going along a background and then an enemy pops up and you hit them or not hit them, right? Because sometimes they dodge. And then maybe you run through one of your allies and that gives you a boost of some sort of heals you or it gives you a better critical hit chance.

and they go through another enemy. And it just has this very good sense of momentum to it, which is fun. Yeah, I feel like I had to think about positioning a lot more than I do or maybe differently differently differently because like

like you're saying i feel like you need to know like all right just being close to a bunch of enemies that i can run through isn't the end all be all like it might also be really important to make sure that there's an ally right next to me because like i am low on health so i need to heal a little bit or to up your crit chance or whatever if you go past another one of them. That all really makes a lot of sense, but it...

It is a mind shift from run up to somebody, put your big boys in front in Fire Emblem, and just make sure that a trickle of enemies are coming to fight you at once rather than diving straight into the fray. Yeah. How'd you feel about this game? I enjoyed it. I thought it was a very interesting take on this style of game, on this formula. That was engaging to me. I thought it tickled a different part of my brain than those other tactics games do.

feels a little bit more i don't i don't know i don't know if the if the word is less tactical or more like artistic in a way but it feels like both of those at the same time i don't feel like i have to like i was worrying as much about my rote positioning but i was kind of like intuiting more where i was positioning people and then running through them in a way that i did not i don't get from like a fire emblem or an advanced wars

or Final Fantasy Tactics, right? It's very free-flowing and freeing in a way that is different than those games. Yeah. I wouldn't say looser, but I feel like there is a little bit of leeway sometimes in a way that I don't feel that there is in Fire Emblem very often. Yeah. There's usually a good way to do something.

In the positions that you get into, it's almost kind of a puzzle that you will see of like, all right, here's the layout. How do I make this work for me the best? Rather than like, can I even do it? It's like, no, there's probably a good route through here. Yes. I just need to see it. which is cool because yeah then it turns it into like almost a puzzle game which is very cool the weirdest connection in my brain is that this felt like puzzles and dragons I, yeah.

i was gonna say the same thing like i was seeing like the whole grid of the screen and then each grid of of the battlefield becomes like either does nothing for me or does something for me right and you have to figure out okay the best combination of ups, downs, lefts, rights, whatever to make it effective. But yeah, I was thinking this...

I was thinking of the same thing. It's so weird. Shout out to Garen of Legend, Puzzle of Dragons. Here we go. Yeah. Yeah. He's the best of us at that game. But yeah.

Because in Puzzles and Dragons, you essentially have to position the board to your favor. Drag one of the little balls on the screen, and then to make all of them move, you have to learn, all right, if I want... like one of these like green orbs to shift to the right I need to kind of like go past it a couple of times with the one that I'm controlling to shift it enough to get it over to the other screen and like just making runs like that with your mind because in Puzzles and Dragons

you have like a limited amount of time to do it yeah So you have to just constantly be thinking really quickly, how do I get all these pieces in the right spot? But it felt like that, of like, I need to go buy a certain number of these characters in an optimal spot. Yeah. Which seems so silly, and like...

It shouldn't work for a tactics game, but it is very fun. It does work very well. Exactly, and I think it takes some of the i don't know some of the more intense planning of a tactics game out where you're not worrying about like how far away you're positioned from something at least not where where i was in the game i didn't get any arranged characters yet but it's it's

there is more of like a artistic brain component to this game in a way that i enjoyed a more creative part of your brain gets activated than in a typical tactics game for me at least Yeah. No, I see that. I really enjoy Fire Emblem, and so it's not really a dig at that game, but I do agree that different parts of my brain are engaging when I'm playing those different games. Yes. This and Fire Emblem. They're just kind of different.

despite the fact like a lot of the rest of the game is so fire emblem yeah yeah your your guys sort of leveling up as you as you go along and like the visuals of it are very fire emblem just the story of this kind of like kingdom drama going on in the background is like this reminds me very much of like the sacred stones and stuff like that the fire emblem on just some some real good high fantasy stuff going on

Yeah, I can't say that I really followed much of it. No. The first text crawl, for whatever reason, it just went by so fast. It was really fast, right? I was trying to read. I'm like, I don't know if I can keep up with this. and then the last paragraph was gone. Yeah, they were throwing so many proper nouns at you at once that I'm like, can you just give me a second to think about how does that kingdom relate to this one?

And so I just was like, I'm going to pretend like I know these and just keep reading to see if I can get something out of this. I was trying to see if I could slow down the text crawl, but then it just made it go faster. And I'm like, well, now I'm done. It's over.

I don't know anything that's going on. Mercifully, the game knows that you're going to lose the first level, probably. You do have to see the text crawl again if you start to flip something. I'll catch it the second time. Yeah, the second time was better.

Yeah, I don't think it's necessarily bad that the game is hard up front, because I think it is asking you, like, you should learn the mechanics of this quickly. But it's... A rough way to start the game, I will say, because it's like the... I think it's pretty hard for a player to lose a game all at once and then have to continue with it. What did I say? You said hard up front. Oh, sure. Sorry. Anyways. No, it's okay. I was just like, I don't remember saying anything crass.

I feel like yes it is it is difficult in the beginning but it's not overwhelmingly difficult no no it is it is a little oppressive in that you are just completely surrounded on all sides by enemies and like very powerful enemies who will some of them just like one shot some of your most powerful characters but i feel like it's all for a purpose of just like teaching you what to do it almost reminded me of like that but the uh the tree sentinel in elden ring of like

Sometimes you just have to listen to what the mission objective is. Don't worry about fighting people. Just get out of dodge. Just leave. Do what it says and then you'll continue on with the story. Don't worry about anything else. And that does and it does I think do a pretty effective job of teaching you just like the very basic ways of playing the game of running through people right because that

That is very, that's actually a very easy objective if you know that you can just run through people, damage them, and then get behind them and still be making good progress, right? So it's actually kind of an easy objective, but not necessarily at first blush.

Yeah, because the lineup of In Fire Emblem games, you have to really crack through someone's defenses if you want to get better positioning next to their enemies, but you just run right past people on this one if you want to, so you can kind of get wherever you need to be on the map.

it's true yeah so I think I was just trying to teach you that motion is good yeah motion is good it's cool I it's again we were kind of talking about the rom hacking thing earlier but like it is odd to me that, I don't know, I'm trying not to come off as negative about this, but I think inherently to ROM hacking is you have to use the mechanics of a game that already exists.

like that's a common thing yeah but even in games that are attempting to go after Fire Emblem like they're really lifting pretty directly those mechanics a lot of the time yeah and I like play those games and I like a lot of them but it's it's really interesting to see just how a small shift like Rondo of Swords is doing here that like it's a totally different game all of a sudden like you would be of course like hard pressed to not say like yeah this is definitely Fire Emblem-y but like the

the running through people as a way to attack like I think about this game totally differently than I do Fire Emblem absolutely it just it doesn't feel like the same thing at all And, like, you know, I've played the, like, Final Fantasy Tactics, and what's the other one? The, like, big game? And that, like, kind of isometric tactics ogre is what I'm thinking of. Yeah, we played that. Yes.

any of those games i think that they're in line with each other enough that like and to be frank like usually they don't work very well for me at the isometric games because i think that they ask you to hit a lot more than fire emblem games do like i feel like it takes a lot to take down enemies

sure um but even that feels like distinct unto itself and so just like it feels like there are such small shifts that could be done to try totally different things but i don't know i i'm trying to figure out where all those thoughts lead me to with the rom hacking and this one and just the experience of like these tiny little tweaks

adding up to such significant feeling changes. I think that we're kind of going through an odd era where there is a reassessment of games that big companies aren't really doing very much with right now. Nintendo is not making 2D tactics games. right now.

They're kind of making Fire Emblem, and that is top-down, but just the kind of pixel-arty approach to it is like, they're really doing that right now, and so I'm not surprised that a lot of companies are doing that, or maybe even Advance Wars is a better comparison, because they really aren't doing that, other than like...

the kind of re-release that they did. And so I'm not surprised to see a bunch of companies be like, or a bunch of indie devs essentially be like, can we try and take a crack at it? And that it does seem like there's a pretty intense adherence to those base mechanics. again not that I think there's anything wrong with that because like that's how you get something like Stardew Valley right is sure it's

It's taking a lot of stuff from Harvest Moon, but I think that Stardew Valley rightfully is also like, here's a bunch of other shit that's very specific to our game. And that's kind of where the magic is for me a lot of the time, is if you can synthesize some old kind of maybe abandoned genre I'm sure there's plenty of people who would be like there are plenty of Harvest Moon games coming out and like Rune Factory was happening but still like

They weren't nearly as popular as Stardew was when it kind of popped off. But yeah, when you're able to take something that isn't maybe the flavor of the week, and do something like really cool and new with it like that's obviously when you I think hit gold yeah but uh yeah I don't know it's it's I feel like it's an odd position we're in and this game just kind of made me consider all of that of like what's the next evolution of

tactics games that somebody could do that isn't so adherent to the Fire Emblem formula. Because it feels like it still very much is. for a lot of these like not Fire Emblem video games. Yeah, how can we think outside the box a little bit with this?

right yeah which is what this felt this game felt like oh my god it would just take a little bit to try something else yeah no it felt very refreshing honestly the uh i will say the art style was very bizarre It looks like a lot of the character portraits were deviant art.

stuff like it sure it feels like somebody like took their tumblr drawings and put them on here and i i don't mean that disparaging there is a style of that era of drawings that it feels like that it's of the era yeah yeah yeah yeah which isn't a bad thing but it was just like this is definitely this is not your mama's fire emblem ot's anime

yeah pretty much I think that's kind of what I'm getting at it's like yeah it's cool I had a good time I do wonder if the story adds up to anything because I didn't know what was going on really I was kind of just there for the mechanics there were already a lot of like twists and turns and trauma going on in the story in like the hour or so that I played. I'm like, this is a lot already going on here. How can this actually, you know...

culminate into something interesting at this point if it's just like giving me so much up front. Yeah. But I don't know. Atlas has a way of making things just wild. Who knows? They do, yeah. I didn't get to the part where you could recruit other Atlas characters, and I took a peek. I'm pretty sure these are all characters from games that I really didn't play. Sure. I think Azuna is one of the main ones.

but like apparently the Azuna series and I don't really know I didn't fuck with it too much but I I feel like that would be such a hit if Atlas was like, we're putting out Rondo of Swords 2 and you can get Joker in this one or something. Or, I don't know, Chie from Persona 4 or something. Sure, sure, sure. Yeah.

it's cool i would love to yeah you can get holkenberg in this god that'd be cool i love holkenberg such a cool character good character yeah anything else about this game anything else you want to mention but it was just i thought it was well made it's a good it's a good swing for a different style of fire emblem game and i'm a little sad that more developers don't do something different like this with that style of game because i'm not always into just like the standard tactics experience

right yeah it's fun to do something different and i think that they did well with this one yeah yeah i agree i had a really good time with it yeah i think it's totally fair to make more fire emblem games and games that look and feel like Chase is like, don't stop my firearm on Pipeline, guys. Let's keep it coming. Yeah, let's keep that one going if we could. Daddy must consume.

but i i did really appreciate the the kind of novel twist that they put on this one yeah yeah it was fun thank you domino for this suggestion thank you domino And I'm still so comfy. I feel like I've got so much room to move in the couch. It really felt like you were welcoming people very sincerely to the outro that time. And I think it's because you're so comfortable.

I think it is. I think it's the chair. It's just it makes me feel welcoming. Hello. Hey, come on in. We saved you a spot over here. Do you want anything to drink? Do you want maybe a blanket when you sit down? Not cold in here, but just in case you run cold. We got one of those. Is it fleece? Is it fuzzy? It's soft, yeah. I got a couple of those, like, Costco blankets that are, like, oversized. They're just fucking gigantic. I'm a big man. I like a big blanket.

I do too. I usually will pull, when I'm laying down, I'll pull my feet up so a little bit of the blanket kind of goes under my feet. That just really sets me off to the next sleepy zone, which is real nice. Nice.

sleepy zone if you want if you want if you want to interact with the podcast you can go to bottomism.com there are links to a whole bunch of stuff like our email and that's on there we usually don't mention that but you can email us you can also join the discord which is a we live in the worst garbage

discord which is also a podcast network hey we're part of that and you can come hang out we got a little corner over there if you just want to talk optimism but there's a bunch of friendly people there and they talk about all sorts of shit so do that if you want to what channel should i shout out today channel of the week frog of the week maybe i'm a big fan of irl photo mode where people post

pictures that they have taken. A lot of them are really good. Every now and then somebody will post in there and I'm like, this is some fucking professional shit. Some really good stuff. But yeah, it's a good channel. But yeah, there's a bunch of other podcasts in there. Like, you got stuff.

like can't let it go you got you got your dot zips which i'm also on if you want to check that out yep oh and speaking of that we actually did just put out our anniversary episode or our year episode one year dot zip yeah the first game we talked about on there was this game called Birth and it was by the developer Madison Carr and we liked it a lot and we asked

her if she wanted to come on the episode for the first anniversary and she did and it was amazing. Wow. We talked about the game Everything which I had not played before but it was really good. It's a very bizarre video game. It also influenced Everything Everywhere all at once which is That was neat. Oh, that's cool. So yeah, check that out if you want to. But there's also, you know, you got your Frog of the Weeks, you got your Girl Mods,

obviously into the Aether and Paws and Claws and us as well. There's a bunch of podcasts. They're all very good. What else? Scott Wilkinson, thank you for this podcast art. It's good. I like to look at it and you've done a great job. If you want to help other shows, a couple of things you can do. One of them is telling a friend and being like, hey, here is a podcast. about a really comfy guy. Just so, so comfortable. Halfway through, he gets comfy.

You have to wait until the comfy part. The rest of it, he's sitting in his regular working chair, and he's got a working man attitude. You can hear the discomfort of his soul in his working chair. And then the soft relief of sitting in a comfy... cozy chair. I'd love to see it. But you can do that or you can rate it on one of the podcatchers of your choice. We take Spotify. We take Apple Podcasts. We take your reviews from Pocket Cast. Any of them count?

And thank you to anybody who did that. But hey, more so, thank you for listening to this podcast. It's a great service. You do us listening to it week over week. And yeah, we don't take you for granted. So thanks for showing up and hanging out and vibing and keeping it tight, you know? Gotta keep it tight. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's hard out there. It's hard out there.

And so you gotta keep it tight, keep it right. As the yin-yang twins said, get it right, get it tight. Truly the poets of our time. That was the yin-yang twins, right? I think so. Mr. Yin and Mr. Yang? No, sorry, that was Bubba Sparks in Miss New Booty. That's my mistake. Bubba Sparks. ying and twings was the whisper song yeah yeah ying and twings have quite the catalog ying and queens the ying and queens ying and queens That means nothing. That's for sure an Elden Ring lore. The Yin Yang Gwin.

The Yingying Queens came. Turned the world into 10,000 years of perpetual darkness. Everyone only talked in whispers. Was that it? Was I done with the thing? I think so. Thank the listeners. I think so. Yeah. Yeah. David, do you have any gaming wisdom? Oh, yeah. You know... If you don't know how to fight, just run through them. Just run. Just run right through your enemy. just don't stop yeah Yeah, just sort of like astral project through your problems. Yes.

Yeah, yeah. If you can't actually fight, just run through it. Get to the other side, baby. We went to an elementary school. They made us learn songs pretty regularly, and one of them was called Mud and... the uh the the solution that they said or there was really not even a problem in the first place but it was mud mud i love mud can't go around it gotta go through it was the uh the lyrics for that wow

I think you do need to go through it. You have unearthed something within me. That one stuck around in my brain. I'm not really sure what about it was... so sticky i forgot mud yeah i forgot mud thank you thank you for thank you for wait can you sing it for me mud mud i love mud i absolutely positively wild about mud can't go around i gotta go through it mud mud i love mud whoa wow that was that was lurking inside of me for a decade

nascent. Waiting for the trigger phrase to activate it once again. The Manchurian candidate of elementary school songs. I'm about to go make some mud. I feel like it was kind of them to embrace the fact that children can be messy and that's like a fun thing for them to do. Yeah. I will say as a kid, I was like, y'all got this so fucking backwards. I am absolutely going around mud. I hate mud. Mud's the worst.

yeah I was like no man I want to stay clean I'm not going in the mud you were a pretty pristine child you were never very dirty no I didn't like to get dirty that was not a thing that I loved doing even as a child there was a there was a stint in like second grade i think where a lot of the other boys were digging holes and and next to our classroom. Sure. They got these like, they all picked out like their preferred stick.

with which to dig a hole. And every day they came in just, like, fucking filthy, and I was like, guys, like, learn the lesson. Don't dig the hole. You don't have to. because then you don't get dirty and that's like really cool wow that is very young boycoded right there a bunch of dudes found a they found their own personal stick and started digging holes

The teachers had to tell them to stop digging because the holes were becoming a problem. They got kind of deep, and so somebody could not see the hole and break their leg or something. I don't remember I don't think I was one of these boys digging holes oh no no no we were not hole digging holes yeah I don't think so I don't think I was a hole digger no I don't think so not me I was in the gaga pit but I wasn't digging holes

yeah for sure man good lord what a strange time truly you gotta go don't go around it you gotta go through it absolutely like mud and enemies gotta go through it like mud and enemies absolutely positively well about mud that is a tune that has been in my soul for a long time and it's always just kind of lurking back there somewhere and you've brought it to the surface again.

Honestly, this is kind of a fun role reversal. You are usually the keeper of knowledge. Yeah. Of like ancient tomes and secrets from her childhood. You're the keeper of the mud. You're the mud man. Yeah, I'm the Chase the mud man all heart