DE II - Drunk sequel

[spenoza]

Yes, you read the subject correctly, drunk sequel. I started playing Dungeon Explorer II today and found that the control is a lot looser than the original. I kinda feel like I'm controlling a half-full bathtub. What's up with that?

[Necromancer]

I don't know what you're talking about - are you sure that it isn't you that's drunk? 

Now, I'm on a mission to test the controls with back to back Dungeon Exploring.  Thanks for planning my evening for me. 

[nat]

I'll tell you exactly what's going on.

spenoza, in the first Dungeon Explorer as you may or may not have noticed all your characters have different stats, one of them being "agility." In the first game, your agility rating doesn't seem to have any noticable effect on how your character actually controls.

They fixed this in DE II, so your agility rating directly affects how your character controls. When you start out, obviously your agility is at it's lowest and it causes the control to feel "drunk" as you put it. As you progress through the game and your agility improves, so does your control correspondingly. At some point your character will control as well as any character from the first game, and then even beyond as you continue to become more agile.

As you may or may not know, the color of the "crystal beans" you pick up after defeating a boss (or changing characters) increase the stat of the corresponding color. If you wait a moment instead of picking up the crystals right away, they will eventually cycle through all the colors. I don't remember what color corresponds to agility offhand (light blue, maybe?) but you can increase your agility quickly this way.

[spenoza]

In the first game I think it just affected your walking speed, not your turning or stopping responsiveness.

[nat]

In the first game I think it just affected your walking speed, not your turning or stopping responsiveness.

Yeah, in DE II it affects everything. Your character will be "up to speed" before you know it.

[spenoza]

Between the early sluggishness and the waiting forever while the game seeks the CD track when you change areas, I am definitely not feeling the love for this sequel as much as I did for the original. I haven't run into anything yet that I think SuperCD capabilities were really needed for. If they'd cut the cinemas and speech and just stuck to chip tunes this game could have been a fine HuCard sequel, frankly. Maybe something later in the game will really WOW me or something.

[nat]

Between the early sluggishness and the waiting forever while the game seeks the CD track when you change areas, I am definitely not feeling the love for this sequel as much as I did for the original. I haven't run into anything yet that I think SuperCD capabilities were really needed for. If they'd cut the cinemas and speech and just stuck to chip tunes this game could have been a fine HuCard sequel, frankly. Maybe something later in the game will really WOW me or something.

I can't say for sure, but the game itself is probably too big to fit on a cartridge even if you converted all the redbook to chip tunes. Maybe if they'd done a 20 Mbit cart like SF2, but that's beside the point. If you thought the land of Dungeon Explorer is big, this one is HUGE.

The cinemas add a lot to this game though, too, and help move the story along.

But I don't think it's really fair to judge while playing the game on an emulator with f*cked up sound emulation, no?

Give the game some time and (preferably) play it on a real console before passing judgement. It's more than a worthy sequel, and an absolutely great game in it's own right.

(Between you and me however, I too prefer the first game. Although in this case nostalgic memories probably play a huge role in that.)

[ParanoiaDragon]

Love DE2 over 1, no doubt about it!  And the cinemas are vunderful!

[Emerald Rocker]

Between the early sluggishness and the waiting forever while the game seeks the CD track when you change areas, I am definitely not feeling the love for this sequel as much as I did for the original. I haven't run into anything yet that I think SuperCD capabilities were really needed for. If they'd cut the cinemas and speech and just stuck to chip tunes this game could have been a fine HuCard sequel, frankly. Maybe something later in the game will really WOW me or something.

I don't know what these mythical SuperCD "capabilities" are that you speak of, but perhaps you should just stop playing CD games in general, since you have the patience of a drunken surgeon.

[spenoza]

A good game requires not patience. As entertainment, it should hook you immediately and keep you on that hook all the way through. Sure, that's an ideal, but I think it should be the standard against which we measure all games.

[runinruder]

A good game requires not patience. As entertainment, it should hook you immediately and keep you on that hook all the way through. Sure, that's an ideal, but I think it should be the standard against which we measure all games.

I can think of plenty of games (and books, and songs, and movies) that didn't hook me right off the bat, but that ended up being great.

Of course, in a perfect situation, the game (or whatever form of entertainment) provides immediate enjoyment and never lets up from there... like DE2 did for me.   

[ParanoiaDragon]

A good game requires not patience. As entertainment, it should hook you immediately and keep you on that hook all the way through. Sure, that's an ideal, but I think it should be the standard against which we measure all games.

I can think of plenty of games (and books, and songs, and movies) that didn't hook me right off the bat, but that ended up being great.

Of course, in a perfect situation, the game (or whatever form of entertainment) provides immediate enjoyment and never lets up from there... like DE2 did for me.   

Same here!

[spenoza]

Sadly, beer is the same. Never grabs me right off the bat. It always takes time. Dammit, beer! Why do you disappoint me?

[nat]

To this day, beer has never let me down.

[Emerald Rocker]

I'm not talking about the patience required to sit through a f*cking snore-fest like Xenogears, I'm talking about the patience to wait two seconds for the next music track to load.  But hey, if you don't want to play any Turbo CD games, you don't have to.