Seiken Densetsu 3 Thoughts / etc.

Checking Facebook now is the equivalent of scraping the bottom of the barrel for content...I feel like there are just so many better places I can go now if I'm looking for something to consume.  It's starting to feel like a lost cause.

After some experience with the rollback netcode on Slippi, I feel like I'm in this interesting place where yeah, it's just fine, but honestly even though it emulates the amount of lag on a CRT, it's MORE laggy than I'm used to since I've been on the "Faster Melee is the wave of the future, let's play with as little latency as possible" train since day one.  So I'm actually having to get used to the increased lag.  I suppose this is, ironically, perhaps why Melee is so uniquely positioned as a fighting game, to be adapted to netplay -- because the entire playerbase has been used to playing with latency from the get-go, so having that supported via netplay is arguably a lot easier.  Funny how these things work...

Lots of writing to catch up on this weekend.  I haven't even started on the Letters to Strangers project -- we'll see if I manage to get to that, but I have a bunch of other stuff to take care of first.  Besides writing, there's a bunch of other stuff to get done -- I need to put out a 64-bit apk for Watch for Falling Rocks (which unfortunately needs to be published under a different app ID), and then get the Spanish localization for Goodnight Meowmie out, among other things.

Finally got to the final boss in Dark Souls 1 -- seems like it'll be a hard fight (?) that will take a bunch of practice and getting used to, but that is perhaps fitting to cap off the Dark Souls experience.  I haven't attempted it that much, so we'll see how it goes.

ALTTPR weekly runs continue -- I felt pretty bad about my routing last week but somehow ended up with the 5th fastest time.  Guess I got bailed out by luck.  Will probably do my weekly run for this week tomorrow?

Been doing a lot of self-reflection lately.  It's been a struggle to not just identify things that I'm dissatisfied with in my life but also to identify ways in which I can start to change them yet still remain comfortable with myself as a person.

We finished up Seiken Densetsu 3 (modded with the Sin of Mana mod, on "Normal" difficulty).  Mod or not, I honestly feel like SD3 was somehow a worse game than SD2/SoM.

There's a ton more content for sure.  The graphics in particular are really defining of what can be achieved with the SNES style in certain areas.  Just look at how much detail is crammed into the background here:

To top that off there's even a night/day cycle, so you get changing palettes on the map.  But like a lot of other elements in SD3, this ends up being "cool" without really....actually adding much to the experience.  Someone had to put in all the effort to program this day/night cycle, spawn different enemies on each map depending on the time of day, and then make the light/dark elements stronger or weaker as well as implement different dialogue for the inn, and...in the end if you took out that element completely, I don't really think it makes that much of a difference?

I feel like that pattern really occurs again and again in SD3, where there are a ton of things that felt like they just got added to the game without thinking about how they would result in an actual cohesive and fun experience.  Sometimes enemies drop "item seeds" that you can plant at flowerpot in an inn in order to receive a consumable of the corresponding class.  There's even a little animation that plays when the seed "sprouts".  But...this is functionally equivalent to having the enemy just drop the corresponding item directly, except you have some minor inconvenience of having to wait for this animation...?

And you see this time and time again in SD3, I feel like.  When you enter battle, the characters have a special animation for "taking out their weapons".  Which looks kind of cool the first time it happens, but after a while it gets really old having a half-second delay on each screen.  Why was this necessary?  Combat got slow-paced compared to in SoM and even the spells all feel less satisfying to use.  Certainly the animations are a lot more impressive, but...they also simply take longer, which makes them less enjoyable to sit through, especially after the billionth time.  Again, more content, less enjoyment.

SD3 does do SOME things right, though.  Getting to pick a set of 3 characters and choose their "class progression" means that you can essentially pick your own formation of 3 character classes, each with their own tradeoffs and synergies.  (Of course, you have to basically look up all of the class info online ahead of time if you want to actually make any meaningful decisions...)  This kind of customization is great in an RPG.

The author of the Sin of Mana patch did their best to at least add some sort of interesting gameplay into the mix as well (sidegraded equipment with varying effects instead of strict upgrades, boss battle "gimmicks"), but in the end there I think there are too many core issues to really be redeemed.  You might think that it's a good thing that you can carry up to 20 of each type of consumable now (up from 4) but that just now means that all of the boss fights now need to be balanced with that in mind, which is...problematic, at best.

To make matters worse a lot of the fun aspects of SoM were thrown out the window.  Charge attacks in battle?  Gone.  Wide selection of weapons to use?  Gone.  In the end a whole bunch was added but the important things seem to have been left by the wayside.  Even the music isn't as recognizable and memorable, though I admit that I appreciate the attempt at weaving in themes from SoM into the soundtrack.  But whereas many of the tracks from SoM are very strongly recognizable and make a strong impression ("A Wish" is an outstanding example of this), I don't really remember a single track from SD3.

It does look like the Trials of Mana remake of this game looks a bit better, adding some actual skill to the battle system (you have to dodge attacks in the 3d world) and some added character customization that seems like a more rewarding experience, though multiplayer isn't available for that remake.

But yeah, it definitely didn't live up to the hype.  Perhaps playing with the Sin of Mana patch was a mistake as maybe this game would just be more enjoyable as a dumb "just attack things and kill them" game without as much strategy, but even then I feel like SoM would probably do a better job?