Tag: metroidvania

Hentai Games Trio

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The chickens came home to roost again

The time has arrived once again to do what I do best and talk about an obscure piece of media with zero problems showing breasts and p[nyan]sy. Last year’s post about High School DxD, Shimoneta, and Monster Musume was a teaser; Valentine’s Day’s post about Scarlet Maiden was a personal introduction to AO/R18+ gaming; Spring’s post about FlipWitch – Forbidden Sex Hex was a continuation; and countless other lewd and raunchy animanga series have been showcased on this blog. This time around, I bring you a trio of hentai video games. Like Scarlet Maiden and FlipWitch, follow the Metroidvania formula in shape and art style with endless travel and backtracking, pixelated graphics, a list of bosses without a discernible order in which to defeat them, and several others. These three games are known as:

  1. Midnight Castle Succubus
  2. Tower and Sword of Succubus, and;
  3. Castle in the Clouds.

I’ll cover them in chronological order in this blog. As usual, I haven’t finished them all 100% but have spent enough time with all of them to get an idea of the least played ones to understand what was being emulated design-wise. Now onto:

The one that loves Castlevania so much that it rubs its sweaty tits all over the original video game cartridge, Midnight Castle Succubus was developed by Pixel Teishoku and Libra Heart and published under the Critical Bliss horny umbrella on September 18, 2020. Its premise is that every century, an evil succubus lays waste to the lands, slaughtering all men (presumably to add them to her army, like another video game character that I know of), and unleashing hordes of horny monsters to kidnap and molest every woman they can find.

Somewhat connected sidenote: I read further along in Redo of Healer (my soul is not safe), and the second princess Norn is shown to be a somehow worse monster than most of the others in the Jioral Kingdom; the succubus by that description makes me think of a toned down Norn.

The protagonist of this venture is a crimson-haired nameless beauty who specializes in the art of the whip. For that, I’ll call her Beatrix. Her mission is essentially defeat the succubus, save the people, rescue the rape victims, don’t get raped herself; that last one happens whenever you die so it follows the FlipWitch variant of combat, but is thankfully more generous with the saves than FlipWitch was, so I can steamroll a level and knock the teeth out of Muscle Fat Ogress, die, come back and not have to worry about losing a trinket I collected along the way because I had the foresight to save prior.

Speaking of trinkets, the game offers quite a handful. Crowns and orbs, for the most part, with throwable weapons for pickup, almost all of which seem to have been airlifted from the 2D side-scrolling Castlevania games. For the characters, Beatrix doesn’t necessarily venture alone. She can recruit a quartet ranging from the mage, the monk, the thief, and the warrior. I have yet to find the mage, and there’s a power up you can grab from a wizard that allows you to be able to summon all four of them at once as opposed to swapping them out one-by-one. Not to mention another power up that lets you use your untapped succubus powers.

I have also yet to unlock this feature in the game and at 80% completion (map traversal notwithstanding), I’m not even done with the game. Classic Castlevania lovers are sure to get a kick out of it and lewd game enjoyers will surely enjoy select loading screens of Beatrix in various scenes of undress along with a handful of the women to save being aggressively passed around by horny orges while the boss protects them in their forced breeding endeavors. If that’s two much for you, the game has a SFW version so you don’t have to worry about innocent eyes rolling out of their sockets from two cubicles over. Now onto:

This game advertises itself as a 3-in-1, but so far I’ve only ever been able to play Tower and Sword. The third game, Succubus Hunter, I haven’t been able to access due to a technical issue with the game’s coding. Maybe this is some kind of odd developer oversight or I need to contact the lord of sex in order to get to work on any one of my machines, but anyway, it came out a month later on October 30, spearheaded by Japanese dev Libra Heart on a solo venture and carried once again by Critical Bliss.

In Tower, a succubus is void of nearly all her powers and needs to traverse a skyscraper, f[squelch]ing and plucking all the way up until she can f[uoggh!]k her lovers to death as the prince of darkness intended.

Taking a page from Scarlet Maiden, the design of this succubus, whom we’ll call Matilda, is that of more pieces of abnormally thick tooth floss covering only the important bits so that I don’t have to put the censors to work (wish I had better ones to use though, since those black squares don’t get paid enough), easily removed so that when it comes to magicking the life force out of a demon’s soul (read: penis), she gets ever stronger. Wait ’til Matilda gets to Level 100 and you’re jizz causes her to grow wings so that she can engage in endless flight. That’s the kind of magic that fuels anti-masturbation propaganda. “No, honey, I wasn’t wanking to that tramp over there! the Demon Matilda stole me seed! You’ve to believe me!!” And that’s how marriages fail. – Friar Maxwell, c. 1584.

I’m not certain if there’s a SFW version, but if there is it’d defeat the purpose of the goal of the game. Put these nun clothes on, dearie, won’t you please think of-wait, sexy nuns are thing, that’s a poor example.

For the second in this functional 2-in-1:

From stealing Alucard’s codpiece to raiding Zelda’s elf-eared panties, comes Sword of Succubus, whereby traversing the world is very dangerous without protection… and a sword. The succubus this time, Yolanda, gains the power of a holy sword by which to defeat the king of the demons. Now, succubi are only creatures, praying on mankind’s sexual temptation, so a being who robs you of your seed through her tits going on to do the same to Lucifer is a bit like Tanya from Mortal Kombat fighting Shinnok.

Hold on…

An MK X arcade run perhaps?

The layout definitely calls out more to Zelda’s first outing as opposed to the Belmonts with the pixelated succubus waving a sword and by way of lucky magical charming powers getting the sword buried deep within her enemies’ pants. That description makes me think of a female Fleece Johnson or !shock! Silvia from the KonoSuba movie.

Tall, dark, beautiful, and capable of penetrating you effortlessly…!

As a white hat succubus of sorts, Yolanda carries in her ginormous tits (also covered by easily-removable tape) life-saving milk that is the source of her immense power. It can be deposited for upgrades or traded between Yolanda and fellow succubi because real recognizes real or in this case breast recognizes breast.

Technically, I’m stuck on the first world, but the way this game is mapped out is a bit weird. It might have been the same as the original Zelda game back in 1986, but I have yet to run that through a ROM, partly because my interest in Zelda is quite limited, having only played Phantom Hourglass some 15 years ago, and Zelda had already come a long way seeing as she’s HD and thicker than a tower of king-size snickers.

The map has different teleportation points to go from one area to another with three different points in the town to a cave to a desert area and that’s the furthest I’m in so far. Different people interact with you with different reactions depending on what you’re wearing or not. The above photo shows Yolanda’s full dress and with enough hits, the thong, nipple tape and sleeves fall off. She’s clearly comfortable fighting naked (and most likely covered in c[hmph!]m after using her charm magic) and can do so quite well until her health drops to zero and you’re greeted with a “Game Over! Try Again!” with her tits in view or her giant ass taking up 40% of the screen. Do they make doors wider to accommodate?

Until I’m able to access Succubus Hunter, I’ll add it to the review list later. Finally, we’ve got:

Those aren’t boobs; those are the earth-movers that Obadiah Stane was developing in Iron Man: Armored Adventures.

Pixel Teishoku and Libra Heart teamed up once again to lead the development of Castle in the Clouds with Critical Bliss coming in clutch for a release date on October 8, 2021. The gameplay is even more fluidic than Midnight Castle Succubus where you can start off running as opposed to unlocking it in that game where Beatrix has an admittedly cute run, like when Senku cured Ruri and the first thing she did was run around:

Channel: Crunchyroll

The protagonist of Castle in the Clouds, Lily (an actual named MC this time), starts off as an agile, nimble fighter, armed again with a whip and all the purchaseable upgrades from MCS being available from the first pixel. Penelope stumbles upon a gang of bandits who molest her at the command of their boss, a coldhearted female bandit we’ll call Rachel. You do get your revenge and then some in a boss battle against her, but as you progress through the game, you gain work as a sex worker. Great! So slaying monsters by day and conquering “monsters” by night.

Lily is a bounty hunter and her main motivation is coin which she hopes to gain by slaying monsters across the world with presumably the same type of whip she uses for her clients. Not that it makes any difference since she can buy more whips from the weapons shop and not just whips (or chains). Swords, scythes, axes, staffs; she’s got access to numerous weapons though she’s still no God of War: Ascension Kratos.

A general has to know how to use all sorts of weapons, you see.

Lily’s quest for coinage explains her agreement to take on sex work on the side and is an interesting side hustle of hers, to say the least. The game apes more from the rest of the 2D Castlevanias whilst combining elements from Metroid and rounding out the whole lewd Metroidvania picture. I explored more of this game than Tower and Sword, but not to the extent of MCS.

With multiple different locales, we probably add Mario 3 to the list of games this game owes money to.

Does this in any mean that the sex scenes are any different? Not really, it’s the same across the board, but there are a few additions that appeal to the teasing aspect so you creative minded gooners have something to look forward to. Plot-wise, it’s not all that different from a mature isekai or a hentai whose plot just so happens to be in an isekai. Lily accepts quests from the guild, takes on the quest, and gets rewarded in coin.

There’s more of the game that I’m missing, but the presentation it gives me at the first hurdle is one worth exploring once I’m done with the others or reach 90% in the others, whichever comes first… and considering the content, the players will c[ooh!]m first.

Looking at all three of these games, let’s ponder for a fact that a woman is the main character of all these games. Agree to disagree on the game over screens being some form of rape of the character by the respective enemy types, only in defeat is the woman helpless and towards the end most of the time, she’s not just in control of the situation but so overpowered, they could become some sort of evil queen with the whips and chains to boot. Let’s one up Spike Spiegel, f[araara]k women who can actually just kill you; lay down the red carpet for the woman who can enslave you.

Channel: Gianni Matragrano

All three of these on Steam are available for $13 each, which is appropriate for obvious reasons. Spend $39 now on all of them or wait for an upcoming sale to knock a few bucks off.

Roguelike NSFW II: Erect Boogaloo

Tiberius1 Comment

There’s a market for everything these days

Earlier this year in February, I wrote about an Adults Only game called Scarlet Maiden, about a scantily clad heroine on a quest to defeat the Prime Evil one lewdening at a time. Once again, under the Critical Bliss publishing flag, I’ve found another AO-rated 16-bit game about slashing mooks and exposing boobs but with an emphasis on magic. The game in question: FlipWitch – Forbidden Sex Hex:

Should’ve known there’d be a bunch of fanart when looking for the title screen for this game, short of booting it up for the screenshot…

As the Flip Witch under the tutelage of a great witch named Beatrix, you’re main objective is to defeat the Chaos Witch, an Egypt-themed triclops witch messing with you and all the creatures of the land from her very own castle behind a door with six unique pyramid-shaped locks. To get them all, you have to traverse different realms and defeat the bosses to get the keys. Depending on your level, you’ll either eat dirt and be shown a game over screen where the monsters of a specific realm have their way with you, or you’ll blaze through relatively unscathed. This time, I’m torn over whether to conclude that this game uses permadeath as a feature since it doesn’t have a lives’ system, but on the other hand, there’s designated save points where you gain everything you used during your playthrough, crystal teleporters to fast travel between places you’ve been and a health restoration-like system in the form of a peach that gets upgraded with each quest you complete.

Speaking of quests, Beatrix’s secondary focus is to partake in such quests for health and magic upgrades. Some of these are found interspersed across the game enlarging your health and magic bars so that you can use more, to include the more taxing magic items, and others are gained by completing a certain number of quests. Reaching said number adds a little notification in the form of Beatrix’s sprite in the upper righthand corner to let you know that upgrades are available.

More quests mean more upgrades until you max everything out and steamroll the monsters like a one-man army. Or more like one man and one woman, both of which are you. The “flip” in FlipWitch refers to your ability to switch genders at will, an acquired skill that factors both into the quests and the game over screens, so male or female, something is gonna rise and ain’t gonna be a shield hero.

Didn’t even have to censor this one.

Combat this time around doesn’t give you the option to sex up a monster for upgrade points like Sin in Scarlet Maiden or even to add to the bestiary. For the most part, the monsters are more or less segregated to their own designated parts of the game map. For instance, only goblins roam the woodlands, demons stay in the demon realm of Jigoku, mermaids are in Umi Umi, etc., etc. and they all have their own unique game over screens for when you die and for what gender you were when you died.

The weapon variety is also limited to just your wand as opposed to any number of swords and other fantasy weapons like in Scarlet Maiden. Not to mention, the only enemy-types that do show genitalia are the female enemy types. The males do show d[spurt!]k, but often after the game over screen. So unlike Scarlet Maiden, the BDSM term “switch” has a different context. A more literal context. Where the game lacks weapon variety, it makes up for it in magic variety, by giving you more magical powers to use against enemies. The wand is capable of firing projectiles and select characters of different types that don’t give you quests give you different magic powers to use which require short tutorials to get the hang of.

As for the quests, the standard format they use is go to place, get quest, deliver thing to X, get sexy rewards. Like so:

The one twist these types of quests use is that specific costumes need to be bought with the coins you acquire through gameplay. Different costumes unlock different quests for different variations of a similar reward (sexy times), which ties into the whole Metroidvania aspect the game advertises. Nonlinear gameplay allowing for backtracking to important locations with new knowledge and more rewards and potential upgrades to finally defeat the Chao Witch…!

…which I’m very close to doing as of this writing. I’m so close!!

Recommendations? Give it a go. There’s keyboard controls like in Scarlet Maiden, but unless you’ve got the fingers for it, plug in a controller. Do what I did and program a PS3 controller to read like an Xbox controller; it’ll work the same. The fact that I’m very close to 100% completion and very close to defeating the Chaos Witch should all the recommendation needed for this game. The controls will feel slightly more sluggish at the beginning, but once you get used to it, especially after Scarlet Maiden’s fluidity and — for lack of a better term — bounciness, it’s pretty much a breeze. Currently on sale for the Summer Steam sales, but even not, $15 is a pretty good deal.

16-Bit NSFW Roguelike Metroidvania

Tiberius3 Comments

Guess it was only a matter of time

By now, dear reader, you are well aware of my tastes. I played coy in the early days of this blog, but with time comes growth, exploration, and experience. Many forms of media have been covered on this blog, but even two years after starting, I’ve a few blind spots here and there.

My marriage proposal masquerading as a blog about three lewd and pivotal anime series many moons ago was arguably the loudest I’ve been of my tastes and while I admit it was a gateway to the horny, it’s mostly stopped there…

…until in late December when I added an Adults Only game to my Steam library. For the longest time, I was under the impression that these types of games couldn’t be bought or accessed normally. And in the context of brick and mortar game stores, I was kinda right. They wouldn’t be on the shelves next to Pokémon or Kirby or even Mortal Kombat and Grand Theft Auto, but there were (and are) developers who continually release envelope-pushing games for maturer audiences beyond the M-17+ rating. Games that, if put in a RockStar game, would easily get it the legendary AO rating.

The game I’m playing that has this rating is known as Scarlet Maiden by Otterside Games, a developer whose stated purpose is to make pornographic hentai games alongside publisher Critical Bliss. Scarlet Maiden is one of several fielded by this dev and by its nature leaves nothing to the imagination. It starts out with the titular character Scarlet, the last of a group of Maidens of the Flame on a quest to defeat an enemy known as the Prime Evil, previously sealed away by the First Maiden. On the way, you meet a smorgasbord of the typical RPG characters during your runs who can equip you with all the weapons necessary to navigate the dungeon. Melee weapons, magics, enhancing trinkets et al; you discover more with each run you take along with different enemy types that also come from just about any other RPG from orcs to fairies to slimes, etc.

As for the lewd content… actually, lewd suggests that there’s teasing and nothing is teasing in this game. Every character and enemy type either has but one inch of fabric over their genitalia or nothing over their genitalia, they’re just hiding a massive dong in between their legs. Or stickers are covering their nipples. Or… they’re either designed to be comfortable enough to leave their bits out in the open for all to see (something something exhibitionism kink), or they have a d[ding]k so big that they need to wheel it around…

I told you I wasn’t making it up.

Scarlet herself is covered by an abnormally thick piece of tooth floss that’s easily removed over the course of the game. In combat, sometimes when an enemy is downed she can remove the necessary parts of her outfit to f[anh]k the enemy (which is how you add them to the game’s Castlevania-like bestiary) or whenever you come across a chest or weapon/item swap/upgrade, the guardian/being resting in the room can simply be sexually pleasured to get to the shinies through the in-game currency called Sin. More sin = more upgrades. Sounds like pornstars when I put it that way…

Credit: ⎛⎝𝖘𝖍𝖆𝖗𝖕⎠⎞ (on Steam)

There’s a subsect of anime fans (read: tourists) who’ve sworn off all lewd and pornographic or porn-lite content, a legacy of the old GamerGate controversy that espouses the consequences of a generations of objectifying women in video gaming, and truth be told the number of games that still do this would only be found in Mature and up rated games and other media. For my take, if it’s plot essential, I welcome it, hence my shrine to Lady Rias…

IF I HAD ONE!!!!

Fanservice, however, is a broader brush to stroke. I can make the argument that a series like Black Lagoon has it in spades in the English dub in the form of anything coming out of Revy’s mouth.

For those who’re apprehensive of even fanservice or scantily clad women in media, rest assured that this game takes what I call the JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure approach to character design. When I say, every character has only about an inch of fabric covering their bodies, I don’t just mean the women. At the Maiden of the Flame house, there’s a thinly covered nun, a blacksmith with bulging muscles, a wizard who’s wearing nothing beneath the robe (except probably a c[rooster call]k ring), and others.

As you explore the dungeon, one of the maidens will ask you to recover ten of something which unlocks a sexy minigame, and as you may have picked up earlier in this post, there’s a wide appeal to many a kink/fetish most commonly found in hentai, though thankfully not so many that would put off a newcomer. Futanari, huge tits, giant d[bells]k, masquerade, naughty nun; from what I’ve seen, BDSM is an umbrella term that more than accurately describes the sexual content in Scarlet Maiden. And to build on that observation, using BDSM terms, I can safely deduce that Scarlet is a switch. She f[kcuf]ks and gets f[gasp!]ked by roughly all manner of creature and character that the game will allow.

As for the gameplay, there’s one attack button, there’s a double jump, you can use a magic spell, and you can dash to avoid the traps inside on your way to pleasure the traps and get some new stuff to help you conquer the dungeon. See what I did there?

The last thing to mention is the permadeath feature. The game doesn’t have lives or save points, but it does save your Sin points for upgrades and displays your progress each time you die or if you complete a successful run–the latter of which I haven’t done yet as of this writing.

Do I recommend this game? Abso-f[horse neighs]king-lutely.

This “Lewdtroidvania” (that’ll never stick) is but one of several in the Otterside/Critical Bliss library in particular and one of several I’ve seen on that side of Steam as a whole. Full disclosure, it’s more than just one of those sex games hiding behind the skin of a visual novel or even a puzzle game (the latter of which has more gameplay interaction than a bog-standard VN), the types you might see in any one of those s[horse dung]tty ads on the porn sites. On a whim, I tried one of those and I can’t deny there’s an audience for that type of porn game, but all things considered, you might as well just read hentai, or better yet, play Scarlet Maiden. You’ll get your money’s worth and you’ll get the same level of entertainment you would from booting up the old 2D Castlevania or Metroid games.

Also, don’t let the abundance of milkers distract from the fact that everything in this game is f[plastic wrap]kable. I may or may not play more of these types of games in the future.

Games I Haven’t Played Yet

Tiberius1 Comment

A part two to anime I haven’t watched.

Last week, I talked about different anime series that have crossed my radar. Popular series that everyone but me has seen. Some of them I was avoiding due to the reputation of their fandoms or a disinterest in the content of the show.

Source*: Anigamme on Facebook

I don’t know if the person who posted this is the same person who made the meme format. Exaggerated or not, I never had an interest in idol culture. I find it too poisonous an industry to support or even look into. No industry is perfect (and anime and video games both have their controversies), but East Asian idol culture (Japan and Korea especially) is the only industry I’ve heard of where the idol has been lambasted for having a normal life or worse driven to suicide or been the victim of assault, deadly or sexually. I admit, these are cherry-picked but my point still stands.

Back to gaming, I’ve been around long enough to recall gaming’s most pivotal moments. The release of GTA: San Andreas 20 years ago (if you didn’t feel old already, here you go); Sonic steadily one-upping the Hindenburg as a 3D series; Lara Croft’s second return in a more grounded approach (as grounded as a series about a British archaeologist can get when thrown against the supernatural); and the first of two Mortal Kombat reboots where smashing together the first three arcade games worked surprisingly well.

But there’s still a few gaps in my library that I haven’t filled yet. Gaps I’ll be sharing in this post. Like last time, the list is not exhaustive; and there are more I’d like to talk about, but won’t be able to for brevity’s sake.

  1. The rest of the Castlevania series (1986-2014)
  2. Metal Gear franchise (1987-)
  3. More RPGs and JRPGs
  4. Metroid series (1986-)
  5. Metroidvanias

Castlevania series (1986-2014)

A series of reputations, one negative one that it managed to break, thanks in no small part to the Netflix series, but another one that it traded in return through no fault of its own. If Konami was in the hands of better people, the series would either have a better send-off or at least a more recent reboot that honors its legacy while roping in new players… like MK9.

My exposure to the series comes from Castlevania: Lords of Shadow on the PS3 and a pirated version of Aria of Sorrow for the PAL region on a bootleg PSP. That’s it, so far. Based on my observations, there’s an old love for the 2D games compared to 3D. Yahtzee Croshaw and the Angry Video Game Nerd both tackled Castlevania games with both wondering what went wrong with the series. Aria of Sorrow and Symphony of the Night get praise compared to something as ridiculous as Castlevania 64, and at least by that time we had over 15 years to iron out good games from bad.

To give credit to Castlevania’s 3D/HD ventures, it’s not like all of them are bad. Enough can be said about the 2D games, but from what I recall of Lords of Shadow, it’s a solid 6/10 game. To pull from Yahtzee Croshaw’s 2010 review of the game, it combines elements of God of War, Shadow of the Colossus, and Dante’s Inferno from weapons to enemies to character design. Hell, it starts off with the main character Gabriel Belmont, a holy knight in the 11th century, who goes on a journey to rid the world of all evil in search of a way to return his wife to the land of the living. Servant of a god fights monsters with a chained weapon as penance for the death of loved ones — God of War comparison made. Some of the bosses are huge hulking monsters you have to climb on whilst pecking away at glowing weakspots — Shadow of the Colossus. And Satan’s appearance draws comparison to his appearance in the Dante’s Inferno games.

Channel: The Escapist

But the main draw of the series back in the 1980s was Dracula as well as open-ended level designs and exploration encouraging multiple runs of the same levels and therefore birthing the concept of the Metroidvania (more on that later). As such, my desire to look into the Castlevania series will have to go to the older games. Symphony of the Night may get all the praise for being one of the best games of all time, but to this end, I’d rather judge it by itself than where it stands in the series or with its contemporaries.

Metal Gear (1987-)

Another historic series getting f[bombs]ked by its Konami Overlords because pachinko and claw machines make a lot of money, as a certain Welsh monkey can attest.

Playlist by: Kim Kalliope, Videos by: CDawgVA, ConnorDawg

Still, Metal Gear is still releasing games to this day with another entry set for release later this year, tarnished as the series may be, thanks to Konami. A strategic stealth game that lampoons the s[blyat]t out of the Cold War, long after the joke died. Though, considering Metal Gear is still doing that, is the joke really dead or is it just on life support?

The best excuse I have for why I never played Metal Gear would probably be due to lack of interest. Sort of like what kept me away from Yu-Gi-Oh! or Pokémon for so many years. What ties these three together for me is that there wasn’t anything physically keeping me from collecting a few of the games. Metal Gear Solid was on the PS2, which I had; Pokémon Red or Green were on the GameBoy, of which I had several (they were fragile or we kept losing them amongst our other stuff in the house); and Yu-Gi-Oh! is a card game. Cards are inexpensive, and they have been for years. But leave it to me to stand out and not get lost in the shuffle back then. Average oddball behavior.

But of course, Metal Gear is neither Pokémon nor Yu-Gi-Oh! It didn’t begin with collectible cards (but might have them as part of a collector’s edition of sorts) and I didn’t know a lot of people playing the games growing up, though I wouldn’t be surprised if I was friends with a long time Metal Gear fan but didn’t know it at the time. Pokémon and Yu-Gi-Oh! were just more visible at school by the nature of the games. With my experiences in games like Outlast, or Sekiro, or the hackneyed stealth sections in numerous action-games, I want to say that it’s in my corner, but I know different games do stealth differently. Sekiro’s stealth isn’t Outlasts and neither compare to the sometimes stealth of Max Payne 3. Metal Gear is a legacy series ripe for the emulating; PCSX2 still works for me and I’ve been getting remarkably lucky with the likes of RPCS3 on another machine that I own (though I’ve still got a bit to learn about extracting games on it).

RPGs and JRPGs

As far as genres go, I have a decent amount of exposure to some RPGs and JRPGs, more so the latter, but largely due to some western games having semi-RPG elements in them. GTA: San Andreas has more of it with the ability to let CJ’s waist expand or shrink; same thing with his muscles which was the approach I took the last time I played it two years ago. It’s more muted in GTA V, but still there even in GTA Online. JRPGs, on the other hand, are another blind spot I hope to fill. How I achieve that will need to be more finely detailed, but for the most part a look through of time-honored series as well as more recent releases can help me out. Octopath Traveler, for instance, is one that’s currently on my radar.

During Army AIT, a few of my classmates played around a bit in a Final Fantasy 14 RPG (and stopped after making a dedicated Minecraft server). I played some of the Naruto turn-based RPGs as a kid as well as a Dragon Ball-themed one. Fun fact, my exposure to Dragon Ball started with the PS2 games. The anime (specifically the Kai dub) came way later. And I feel like I’m selling myself short experience-wise without more JRPGs to call from. I’m starting to rectify this by way of some of the Souls’ games, which are developed by a Japanese studio, but Japan liking medieval Europe for a fantasy setting undercuts the experience aesthetics-wise. Dark Souls is still enjoyable, I’ll never debate that, but I don’t think it’s enough to fill the void. I’d like more to experience, Soulslike or not be damned.

Metroid series (1986-)

The first-half of the Metroidvania genre, the fact that major elements from both Metroid and Castlevania combined to form a new genre is remarkable. It was a groundbreaking game when it debuted in the mid-1980s, and is still going strong with its star character, the tall, beautiful, kick-ass Samus Aran.

Practically, Ellen Ripley’s disciple, both women are space adventurers blasting away at evil aliens. Couple that concept with a Mega Man-esque arm-blaster, the core of Metroid has been a blend of its contemporaries with a few things to make it stand out. Early example of female video game character (though probably not the grandmother of female protagonists in games), sci-fi setting, nonlinear game structure and retraversable levels, different weapons; it’s a great game series that I have limited exposure to.

All my knowledge comes from Wikipedia and I’d rather not have to go to a third party for my education. My s[splash]tbag college days allowed for this absolutely, but I’m not in college anymore. I may not be guaranteed more time to do it, but whatever excuse there is to keep avoiding it is no longer valid. Emulators for the older games (because no one is crazy enough to track down a still working NES/Famicom in 2025) and I can get a Nintendo Switch or wait for the Switch 2 to release and hook it up to my monitor, if that’s allowed.

Metroidvanias

Interestingly, I’m hard at work fixing this gap with a series of Adults Only roguelike Metroidvanias made possible through Steam. Especially one I’ve discovered with permadeath elements in it. But before I cross it off the list, I do still have more to say about these types of games. I really love my narrative driven Max Paynes, Mafias, Spec Ops, CoDs, etc., etc., BUT! A huge but.

Sometimes, I just want to push buttons and make the enemy collapse into a puff of smoke. You don’t need to convince me to boot up a game of Kirby; that itself is the oil. Need I any reason to play it? If it can be accessed by any means necessary, there’s no need for me to avoid it. As for Metroidvanias themselves, never mind games that make you think through their narrative; games that make you think through their gameplay are another favorite of mine. Puzzle games used to get lambasted for being “girl games,” but I still like them as well as physical jigsaw puzzles for helping to prepare me for visual puzzles. Nonlinear gameplay structures meanwhile have their place and depending on the Metroidvania in question, the puzzle elements and level design can be really innovative and creative or boring and uninspired. Or worse, convoluted. But I’ve seen a separate category of randomly generated levels with each separate run. Sometimes this leads to perpetual recycling, but it can still feel fresh if the enemies themselves are varied, especially within the level itself.

Well, now that I’m rereading this before publishing, I think this could apply to any old adventure puzzle platformer, but the distinction between those and Metroidvanias relates to going back with new abilities to get more items, powerful items especially. So while your first run will be predictably terrible (unless you’re a based Metroidvania titan), a few more runs and experience points later, you should be able to get through to the final boss largely unassisted, like a true gamer.

That’s an admittedly short list of all the games and game types I’d like to get into more in the future. Not exhaustive, certainly and not the end, as there are more games I could mention, some of which are on my Steam library for example but I haven’t touched yet (I’m a damn hoarder). The Senran Kagura games, more of the Yakuza series (GOATed series by the way), unconventional shooters (The Suffering is a start even though its a hybrid), horror games, Resident Evil, and even more to follow. F[slurp]k me, my Discord description is too profound when I said my anime and gaming list was an expanding castle…

I might make another list about those games in the future. I filled up the list in my notes for half of this year, but not the rest so I have a backlog of free space to fill. Maybe I’ll bring back the YouTube channel recs, but I’ve been watching mostly Vtubers and I don’t want to only recommend those.

It’s only January, I can make it work.