Jeremy Parish
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Metroidvania Works #12: The all-singing, all-Falcom episode
🕑 Added 2020-07-22 12:00:03 +0000 UTCThis chapter of Metroidvania Works goes a bit out of chronological order to bundle together four games by Nihon Falcom, who did a lot of heavy lifting for the action-RPG genre in the mid ’80s. We'll see a couple of these games down the road on NES Works (and another of them elsewhere), so I didn't go into exhaustive detail on any of them. But these are pretty interesting and diverse takes on the genre—and Faxanadu is arguably the most refined and polished metroidvania we've yet seen.
Given next episode's topic, I'm probably not going to put it together until October. You know, to continue the Castlevania/Halloween thing I've got going.
Comments
Asai Moonsault
Unsubbing from this Patreon, feel really bait & switched because the ebooks are not available to Patrons as part of the subscription tier.
Jucksalbe
Ys 1&2 are great games, though I would recommend to play the newest version ("Ys I & II Chronicles") instead of any of the older ones. You just have to get used to the bump combat. I've played Faxanadu for the first time when it was released on the WiiU VC and liked it quite a lot. It takes a bit of patience, but that's okay.
Colbin Erdahl
I’m looking forward to Simon’s Quest, and what comes beyond. SQ has always felt like the first “true” Metroidvania to me (not through any definitions, just the way it feels). Zelda 2 and SQ have always felt like a pair to me, and if Z2 didn’t have the overworlds, maybe I would think of that as the first “true” MV. Looking back, I think SQ was the first game where you had towns, world, and dungeons all seamlessly integrated into a 2D-platforming perspective. It also has some of the strongest world-building of any platformer on the NES. I am biased, owned this as my first Castlevania as a kid and loved all the Nintendo Power content. It’s definitely half-baked though, with obtuse puzzles, and I think the 3 “bosses” take about 7 seconds each. Definitely ends with a whimper. Simon’s Quest is like the lungfish of Metroidvanias, the first game capable of setting foot on this new land of game design. It may be impressive to be the first entity to function as something new, but boy am I glad we’ve evolved beyond lungfish. As to Falcon, I haven’t played much of any of these. Do people recommend going back to Ys 1&2 or Faxandu?
