I tried playing Harvest Moon on the SNES today and having played Stardew Valley for hours, I thought I’d try and see how tolerable the original Harvest Moon was in comparison. I know and understand it is unfair because there’s a 20 year gap between Harvest Moon and Stardew Valley, while also discrediting Harvest Moon’s later entries since there’s more than one.
Harvest Moon to me is a bit hard to revisit. Having to get used to only carrying two tools at the same time, your farm doesn’t seem as big, you don’t have a way to know that you’re tired as readily, you just have to watch for the signs and the village you visit doesn’t seem as characteristic. It’s a basic farming sim, it has to start somewhere.
But Stardew Valley does so many things that it is easier to revisit.
I recently finished playing Breath of the Wild and declared it as one of my favorite games ever played. I just started Tears of the Kingdom, and it feels like I may not go back to BOTW, which is crazy that I could consider it one the best experiences ever, and also feel like I may never play it again so shortly after beating it. TotK seems to have everything in BotW and more, with quality of life changes on top of it all.
Totk is… more of an expansion/dlc than a sequel. Even the intro has near identical beats. The map is literally re used.
Fun game still.
Mount and Blade. Warband is just the better version all around. It works in reverse too cause Warband is better than Bannerlord.
Add Floris and it’s basically the only game in that sphere worth playing at all!
Prophecy of Pendor is legendary. I might get bannerlord if they release a Pendor mod for it.
What do Pendor do so well?
Everything. Map, factions, units, weapons, companions, knighthood orders, horde armies. Its just the biggest and highest quality conversion mod I’ve played.
Super Mario Bros 3 after playing the all stars version.
Probably nostalgia, but I prefer the original graphics…
The All-Stars versions of all the NES classic mario games do it for me better than the originals.
I can’t see myself going back to the original Half-Life after playing Black Mesa. The changes to Xen alone are massive improvements.
Just started a playthrough of Black Mesa the other week after having played HL1 like fuck idk, 18 years ago? Barely remember it, but going through the levels I’m like “Oh yeah I remember this part, with the mine cart/train thingies”
Looked at screenshots of HL1 the other day and laughed that I will never play it ever again
Black Mesa
OK, maybe a slight twist, but Left 4 Dead absolutely sucks vs. Left 4 Dead 2. Want L4D? Fine. Play it inside L4D2 with better guns and zombies.
There’s something different between the two that I can’t put my finger on. Like everything feels a lot more solid?
I personally have a lot more memories of L4D and it’s cast of characters over L4D2.
Oof, can not agree. I found the first one being much easier to palate, not having any of those sections where you have to collect a bunch of items into another item. Like fueling the car in the mall. Absolutely frustrating trash.
I would love to experience X-COM UFO Defense, but the only X-COMs I’ve played to any extent are the two “modern” Firaxis games. Going back to the originals is a real effort, especially without having the manual to hand.
OpenXcom is a fantastic reimplementation of the original, and has some even more fantastic mods. I agree if you’ve never played it before and aren’t too familiar with old school “Nintendo-hard” games, it can be extremely challenging even on the lowest difficulty. Fun fact, the original had a broken difficulty selection and reset to the “easiest” difficulty after reloading any save game, so most people never truly experienced a full run at any difficulty above “easiest”, so that’s just naturally perceived as the way the game was meant to be balanced. Don’t be ashamed of playing on the easiest difficulty or using “cheat” mods if that’s what makes it playable for you. There’s nobody to judge you but yourself and what matters is that you’re having fun. And it is a ridiculously fun and replayable game, to me at least.
If the originals are too difficult to sink your teeth it, you can start with Xenonauts.
OG XCOM has a really rough learning curve for sure. It is easy to understand the fundamentals of but it takes a lot longer to get it well enough to really enjoy. Once you do learn it I feel like it is different enough from new XCOM that you can enjoy both. I love new and old xcoms a ton.
Old XCOM also likes to bend you over and fuck you over a lot. And that’s the way we liked it!
Ah yes. Land Skyranger, open door, sectoid throws grenade into Skyranger. Evac with one survivor. Good times.
I will say that new XCOM can be good at that too. It really is the most important part and I’m glad they didn’t leave it out of the remake!
Dark Souls: Prepare to Die Edition is basically worthless if you have Dark Souls: Remastered.
60fps, better graphics, better performance, QOL enhancements, and even better multiplayer features (up to 6 total players instead of 4, just like DS3).
Probably true of most remasters/remakes, outside of speed running. I do know that PTDE is still a popular version to speedrun due to certain glitches that aren’t present in Remastered.
Dark Souls never even needed a remaster. The original could be released today and probably still be the best game of this year. The improved performance is the only thing worth noting, and even that only really matters in Blighttown, which everyone skips after their first playthrough anyway.
The Battlefield franchise. I went back and played 1942, and disregarding the graphics, omg it’s so slow and clunky. It was the shit for the day, but man…compared to 2042 it’s super-dated.
I still do it from time to time because I like playing them on original hardware, but Sonic 1&2 on Genesis/Mega Drive. The Origins Plus versions may not be 100% accurate gameplay with regards to movement/moveset, but anniversary mode’s retry special stages is real nice when half of the time I get screwed in those. Especially 2’s special stages where I feel I feel like I’m constantly getting screwed over by my favorite character/sidekick being incompetent at the special stages.
Just recently got the 3rd game (still need & Knuckles to complete the set) and while not being able to retry special stages is an issue, I can at least reset the game without having to worry about needing to replay the whole entire game over from the start. So it gets a pass because all I gotta do is replay a stage.
2’s special stages genuinely got my nerves when i played the OG cartridge. It felt like Tails was more of a nuisance then an aid sometimes lol
Do the original version of Doom and Doom 2 count? The relatively recent, re-released duology is objectively superior. Also, OpenRCT2 makes classic RCT and RCT2 feel incomplete at best, and outright horrible to play at worst.
re-released duology is objectively superior
do you mean the “doom 1 + doom 2” on steam? because if so, oh boy are you gonna love gzdoom
https://zdoom.org/downloadsI’ve known of gzdoom for ages but haven’t gotten around to trying it. I just really like how that duology Steam release because it’s just “pick up and go” with modern resolutions, tweaks and that incredible soundtrack remake.
They aren’t even similar
things like dsda improve the game so much. It’s hard to go back to the original game files.
I actually really like OG Dooms just as much as the new ones. I didn’t play either until just a few years ago so no nostalgia. They are very different and so I don’t feel like they step on each other’s toes too much.
Also OG doom is good if you get bored while opening your fridge because if your fridge door has a screen, it can handle playing OG doom and pass the time it takes waiting for the door to finish opening.
I love that there’s 30 years of free mods to play as well. People just basically never stopped playing doom, which I think is a beautiful thing.
I agree. Doom 1 and doom 2 are like exactly the same fun level as Doom Eternal, just in a different way.
Tbh I didn’t like “Doom (2016)” that much. I’m sure when it came out it was amazing considering doom 3 was the most recent thing, but I played Doom Eternal first and compared to the FUN of eternal, it just doesn’t stand up to the “rip that guy in half then latch on that demon with a flaming chain on my double barreled shotgun so I can use a Lazer balista to shoot that other demons head off while in midair to go chainsaw the flying meatballs eyesocket” of Doom EternalWow yeah, I can say that going from Eternal to 2016 is the “wrong order” since the sequel really _ really_ ups the tempo and ferocity of its predecessor.
I think I prefer 2016 overall, because I’m just like mentally too slow to fully enjoy Eternal. I don’t have those reflexes anymore lol
This will be controversial but Hitman blood money.
I have put hundreds of hours into the Hitman trilogy, but no matter what I can’t get past the first guard of blood money, that is if I can get past the clunkynes to even get to him in the first place.
I would like to try it as I have heard a lot of good about it, big portion of the fan base think it is the best game ever, but no matter how many time I trow that god dame coin the guard refuses to move and I can’t progress and that combined with general age and clunkynes of the controls don’t make it an enjoyable experience to try.
In the trilogy and Absultion if I got stuck it was at least enjoyable trying to get around it, this is just frustrating.
I am an absolute die hard Hitman fan. I’ve played all of them. Replayed the whole series last year. Blood money was a better sandbox by far than the previous games. And it’s still a blast to go back and play just for the nostalgia and the vibes. But the people who insist today that it’s better than the World of Assassination trilogy are smoking crack. Not only that, but in some ways Blood Money was a big downgrade from the previous games. Hitman 3 in its current state today incorporates all the best things about Blood Money, the games that came before it, the game came after it, while cutting out the negatives.
The biggest problem with Blood Money for me was that it trivialized all challenge the game could have had by making disguises perfect and infallible. In the games that came before, having the right disguise only working from a distance, and get this: you actually had to act natural. You could just sprint between two armed guards, brushing both of their shoulders with a huge machine gun out as you passed by. In Blood Money disguises were simply an indicator of which rooms you were allowed to be in, and if you got a good enough disguise you could just be in all of them.
In WoA they fixed this without making you have to walk everywhere via the enforcer system, and better level design with tiered guards. Finding a disguise for the highest level guards let you go anywhere you want, but there would be more enforcers for you to have to avoid. Where’s more niche disguises that would reasonably make sense for nobody to recognize you were much better for moving around unabated.
That’s curious because I remember Blood Money feeling really good, especially if I compare it to my memories of the original (don’t bump the banners in front of the building - the physics cause my PC to seize up!).
I’ll have to check it out again so I can ruin my memories.
The original Neverwinter Nights after Baldur’s Gate 3.
NWN was fantastic for it’s time, loved the DM mode and online mods, but the clunky movement and walls of text without voiceovers just can’t compare.
I got through the original NWN multiple times, as well as various mods.
I got bored partway through BG3, never finished. Barely touched NWN 2.
I had started The Aielund Saga a couple of weeks ago. I never did finish the first time.
NWN is something I like to go back to, same with Titan Quest Because they are my comfort games. Meanwhile, I have so many newer games piling up
I’m trying to see some stuff in BG1 and 2 that I missed as I take another lap through the entire series, and I remember BG1 being a fairly easy, straight-forward game, but now that I’m replaying it, I remember that’s only the tail end of the game. Early in the game, when you’re stuck at level 1 for hours, lots of attacks just one-shot you, and it takes so long to get level 2. In Baldur’s Gate 3, you’re barely out of the tutorial area before you get level 2, so you just don’t have that problem with low HP.
If you’re revisiting BG1 via the Enhanced Edition it’s actually been changed a lot from the original game. One of the biggest differences is that summoning spells don’t scale in the number of minions you get the way they did in the original. I remember summoning great big walls of skeletons with Animate Dead and just having my entire party pelt the enemy with slings and arrows from relative safety. Can’t do that anymore!
I think BG3 also does max HP for 5e classws which is higher than the edition(s) used for 1 & 2. Did 1 & 2 use random HP for first level as well?
I don’t have an encyclopedic knowledge of 2e, but I think first level HP might be set in stone by class, and the Enhanced Editions of BG1 and 2 give you a max HP per level option, which doesn’t really help at level 1. Dynaheir keeps getting smoked with her mere 6HP, and she can’t get to level 2 fast enough.
Yeah, 2nd edition d&d was far, far more brutal than 5e.
I tried playing Baldur’s Gate 2 after a few full plays of BG3, and it was nearly unplayable.
I actually prefer walls of text these days. I find myself too impatient to sit through long, voice-acted diatribes. I can read 10 times faster than the voice actor can speak, so I just end up turning on subtitles and skipping most of the voice acting anyway.
I also just find that voice acting tends to compromise the amount of writing. They just won’t have the VA read a wall of text and instead they’ll cut it right down, removing tons of nuance. Voice also similarly compromises the amount of dialogue options available to the character. I have yet to see a voice acted game with the sheer breadth and depth of dialogue option choices as games like Planescape Torment or Fallout 2.
While I agree with you on how mediocre voice acting drags down most games, BG3 is one of the very few where the voice acting elevated the dialogue for me and the dialogue felt a lot less rambling than in NWN and other similar games. In BG3 the player character dialogue options are pretty robust, sometimes having six or more options to choose from, since the character doesn’t speak. I haven’t played Planescape Torment or Fallout 2 to compare, so I’ll take your word on them.
On a side note, BG3 was one of the games where the dialogue choices do matter. The worst are games where there are only a few poorly described choices and they have zero impact on what happens after! While I live Battletech (2019) the dialoge choices were completely pointless other than microfosing information. They would have been better off just having the NPCs banter after a single choice.
Personal preferences of course, which is why I love how many games there are to choose from.
Special shoutout to Astarion. His voice actor adds a LOT to the character, more than any of the others.
I don’t normally like that kind of character but he really grew on me fast. Astarian, Gale, and Karlach are my absolute favorites but the cast as a whole is solid.
Love Karlach, but I couldn’t stand Gale.
That’s what I am glad they included enough for personal preference and included the ability to respec them so they weren’t locked into their starting classes.
While I didn’t like his class much, it was his personality that really got me. I saw he can become a literal god in some endings. Sure didn’t happen in mine!
I grew up playing King’s Quest 5, 6, and 7. I was curious about the earlier ones and eventually found them on an abandonware site a while back and they didn’t age very well. Turns out 5 was the first one that was all point and click based. Prior to that, they were text based and you needed to know the exact wording or alternatives that they had thought of or you couldn’t do anything. I’m sure they were great games for their time but I just couldn’t get into them.
More recently, I bought the collection on steam. I’m not sure how well someone who has never played them before would enjoy them, but I found 5 and 6 still stood up, despite being like 30 years old. Though it might also help that I could still remember a bunch of the puzzles, as they could be pretty unforgiving of mistakes. Save often because you could die at any moment, and hope you don’t miss picking up an item you’ll need later on or you might get eaten by a yeti or something.
God, I still remember struggling for hours, days because I didn’t specifically type “Get out from boat”, in Kings Quest II.
You’d think “Get out of boat” would suffice, but nooooo.
I cut my teeth on Space Quest 1 and Kings Quest 3. Not only was the very spefic vocabulary a pain but so many solutions were a dead end trap.
I remember in Space Quest if you typed use [item] it would give you a message about not being a simple 2 word game and tell you to say use [item] on [thing]. It required that format.
Then halfway through the game the solution to one puzzle is use glass. Not use glass on laser. I has figured out the puzzle right away but it took me days to get the right wording.
Those games have not aged well.
Old Sierra games do suck as actual games. But the satisfaction of beating them is unrivaled, I’d put them above any Souls like.
They played best when you had other people to commiserate with. Hot seat multi-player getting more and more frustrated until someone realized you have to walk completely around the police car to check it before driving… 🤬
KQ6 was great though. You’d go through and beat the game but notice that you’re many points short of the maximum and there were a bunch of loose threads that never got solved. It was the first game I ever played with two paths to the end and finding that second path was so good. Especially getting to play during one scene that was seen many times before as a cut scene, along with a puzzle whose solution completely changed the tone of the scene (figuratively and literally lol).
Though I don’t think I have the patience to do all of that again. I think I originally played that game over a period of months with no progress at all in many sessions. But I kept coming back to it as a kid.
Check out The Crimson Diamond for a modern indie game that uses the keyword thing like in early King’s Quest, but it actually works well. The graphics are pretty endearing too.
The Witcher, I hope the remake we’ll be good
The Witcher 2 is more than fine
The first is getting remade?! Thank heavens! The combat system was absolutely atrocious!
