Smash Nostalgia, Classic Games

This post is a little out-of-date, because I started it late September but didn't finish. I finished the Game Boy Kid Icarus paragraph mid November.

One consequence of playing a lot of Super Smash Bros. lately is that I have felt inspired to go back and play a variety of the games represented by it. It's a natural result of the nostalgia that gets evoked. I mentioned a few posts ago that I felt inspired to replay the NES Castlevania games, largely as a result of Simon Belmont's inclusion in Smash Bros. Ultimate. Lately I've decided to sample quite a few others.

A few weeks ago I asked myself the question, "What Smash-related games could I go back and revisit, or possibly visit for the first time?" One of the choices I decided to investigate was Kid Icarus, which has two characters represented in it. I was surprised to learn that since Pit's inclusion in Smash Bros., there has only been one Kid Icarus game made, making a total of only three games in his series. For some reason I thought there had been at least one more.

Well, I've played through the original Kid Icarus a few times in my life and have fond memories of it. A few years ago I purchased the Game Boy sequel, but have never actually got around to playing it. I decided it was the perfect time to revisit it.

First I played through Kid Icarus again. I played it on the Switch, as one of the many NES games available through the Switch Online service. It was a good way to do it, because I didn't need to use any passwords and I could easily play it in short segments as I had time. It's been a few years and because of the game's level diversity it was good to have a refresher.

I enjoyed playing through Kid Icarus of Myths and Monsters on the Game Boy. In truth, it's a very similar experience to the NES version. It's what you might call a cookie-cutter sequel. I've often seen that term used in a derogatory manner, but I don't mean it that way. It's a pretty faithful recreation of the overall experience of the NES game, with some improvements here and there. I think if one enjoyed the NES game, as I always did, they would enjoy the Game Boy Game.

Another game I've tried out is Punch-Out! Playing on the switch is a stark reminder of how brutally difficult this game was when I was younger. I finally got to and beat Mike Tyson when I was a teenager, but I think I only ever did it once. After a few weeks of practice, I finally got to Mr. Dream on this version (the white Mike Tyson that remained after Nintendo's licensing deal expired). But I ran out of steam before I managed to finish him. I'll have to pick it up again soon.

It's been quite fun to have friends and family over for Smash Bros. game nights in recent times. It really is a fun game to play, especially with friends and family. And it really drives home just the right kind of nostalgia.

Ultimate Gaming with Friends

I couldn't settle on what to play during my lunch break. I decided maybe it would be a good time to write a blog entry instead.

I go through frequent periods of not writing here. I've said before that when it comes to dividing my time between playing a game and writing about a game, I will usually choose playing the game. But there's a certain, almost therapeutic aspect to sharing my experiences. When I was younger I shared my gaming experiences with my brothers and the few friends I had. But there aren't many people in my current regular social circles who have a large overlap in video game interests. So I'll share with the Internet and imagine that somewhere, sometime, someone will read this and enjoy it.

Lately, I've been devoting most of my gaming attention to different incarnations of Super Smash Bros. Over the last few months I've had numerous opportunities to visit with both of my brothers and other family members who I've been able to play the game with. I even hosted a Smash Bros. Ultimate game night at my house last month, and plan to host another one in two weeks.

Playing games with friends is something I always enjoyed immensely in my youth, but since becoming an adult and moving out on my own, my opportunities for doing so have been very sporadic. But, due to shifting life conditions, I see my both of my brothers a lot more frequently these days than I used to. I see some of my cousins and other extended family fairly often. I'm trying to reach out to old friends online more than I did. I think I'm realizing just how much I miss having people around to play games with.

Super Smash Bros. was one of our go-to staples for multiplayer gaming in our house on the Nintendo 64. Before we all moved out on our own, Super Smash Bros. Melee was the game we played most out of all concurrent multiplayer games. And during the rare times we got together or played online in the following decade, Smash Bros. Brawl was our go-to. But one brother didn't have internet and the other one I gradually lost touch with for a while despite technology. And the one without internet eventually sold his Wii to get an XBox 360. (Not something I would have done, but to each his own.)

I'm the only one of my brothers to ever get the Wii U and 3DS versions. I'm pretty sure neither of my brothers ever played the latter, and only my youngest brother ever played the former on my console. I got the game late in the Wii U's short life cycle, and none of us had much experience together with it.

We're having something of a renaissance with the Switch version. I've reconnected considerably with both of my brothers considerably in the past couple of years. And in the times we've visited, we've been able to put a good amount of time playing Super Smash Bros. Ultimate. together, like old times. Due to the game's large success, I also have more friends and family who have and play the game. So I've been having a lot of opportunities to play non-solo in recent months.

Plus, the game is just plain fantastic anyway. I remember in days gone by regarding Melee as a Nintendo nostalgic's dream game. Super Smash Bros. Ultimate is similarly wonderful at evoking nostalgia in someone who has been a video game fan as long as myself. I recently completed the Adventure Mode. It's amazing how much care they take in making the Spirit battles remind you of aspects in past games, by using combinations of characters and/or conditions to approximate some character or event in a game from years ago.

It's been fun to get some of those obscure references. But at the same time, the series has grown so large that there are many represented games and series that I never played, and many references I don't get. So not only do I now want to go back and replay a lot of games, there are now a lot of games and series I want to try for the first time.

It all evokes a lot of emotion in me. It makes me want to share that emotion more. I really enjoy playing games, but I like sharing them too. This blog provides a great outlet to do so. So if I can find the time, I'm gonna try again to write here more often.

Dragon Quest Post-Game Stuff

Over the last few months I've been chipping away at Dragon Quest IV for the Nintendo DS. I decided to go ahead and play it ahead of Dragon Quest IV challenge quests I had, reasoning that if I wanted to do a similar comparison to what I did on the first three games I could do it with the Smartphone version, which I assume uses the same translation.

Over the weekend I finally finished the main game. I liked it, but as far as a remake goes it didn't feel as engaging overall as the Dragon Quest III remakes. The new town was in interesting mechanic, and the expansion of the mini-medals. I liked the Thief abilities added to Torneko and Bray. And it certainly feels nice to have manual control over all characters in Chapter 5.

On the other hand, I beat this several levels sooner than previous NES/Famicom playthroughs. I didn't even finish out my Hero's spell list before winning. Dragon Quest IV's original versions were already among the easiest in the whole series. It didn't really need to be made easier still. Several of the boss fights were made harder, but that didn't do a whole lot to make things more interesting.

The last few days I've been exploring the post-game content. I had gathered from stray comments and headlines on message boards and Google searches on the NES game that there was a Chapter 6. It involves a new dungeon and at least two new boss fights, similar to post-game content of other Dragon Quest games. It also involves unlocking a new player character, which I did today, but losing the dragon NPC that is with you at the end of the regular game (Sparkie is his name on the DS; I believe it was Doran on NES). It also adds some new story elements.

It's been a lengthier process than other DQ games where I've finished or nearly finished the post game content, which makes it more interesting. But, unlike other Dragon Quest games, the post-game content appears to eventually close off the game's normal final boss and ending, making them unavailable after a point. I'm not 100% sure of this, but that's the appearance as of where I am. I'll test it on my next play session.

My interest in the post-game content of the various Dragon Quest games has been reignited lately. All of the main games from V onward have such content, and the remakes of III and IV have some added in. I've finished the dungeons and bosses of Dragon Quest V and VI, and finished just the dungeons of III and (I believe) IV. I didn't find all of the map shards to unlock new content in VII, but I'll get back to that search someday. I had gone through the content in VIII up to the home of the Dragovians. This last week I was inspired to go further. My characters in this game have a harder time making it through regular enemies in this dungeon than in other games. I got all of the chests in the first two areas, and I think I'll try pushing further tonight.

I'm really intrigued again into trying to figure out more on Dragon Quest IX, which I plan to dive back into very soon after at least attempting the boss on IV. I've always felt that there was more to unlock story-wise in the game's post-game, but I've failed to figure out how. There's a plethora of gameplay content in that game after the "end", but aside from unlocking the Starflight Express, none of it seems to affect the rest of the game. I know there must be something, for example, to do in the Tower of Nod, but I've failed to discover just what can be done there.

Well, I'm inching away at my quest to discover all things Dragon Quest related. I'll get there eventually.

Meandering through Multiple Games

I met with a spot of catastrophe in my Dragon Quest III no-equipment challenge a couple of weeks ago. As I loaded to the opening menu, I must have somehow hit the down button twice before making my first selection, because instead of starting my game file, I deleted it instead. Having been about 40 hours into it, I was pretty devastated by it.

Since then, I haven't found the motivation to pick it back up again, but have instead been trying to figure out what I feel most motivated to play. I think I've settled into Dragon Quest XI as my current main game. I played several hours into it after I bought when it came out last year for PS4, but I kind of burnt myself out on Dragon Quest in general late last year and put it down for a bit. I'm getting back into it, but it's a hard game to play in 10-20 minute game sessions because there's just so much you can do. With my schedule it's really hard to get into a groove on the game. Should have held out for the Switch version, perhaps.

I just got the ship in the game last night. I didn't have time to do much with it, but it looks like it just opens up the possibilities even wider. It may take a while before I start feeling like I've made any headway.

In the shorter moments, I've also been playing my old NES Castlevania games. Last year they released a Netflix original show, which I tried out the first few episodes of, based on the third game in this series, and also put Simon Belmont in Super Smash Bros. I experienced a wave of nostalgia and started playing the first one not long ago, beating it through after a week or so. I started both of the next two games and have passwords on my phone for both of them.

By the way, modern phone cameras make the perfect solution to the onerous task of jotting down NES game passwords. You can do it in an instant with no chance of transcription errors (although you do have to check that you didn't take a blurry picture), and you don't have to worry about losing the paper you wrote it down on (but be careful you don't delete it by mistake). Would that these had existed in my youth to circumvent endless frustration with NES passwords.

Another interesting aside: not long after I started replaying these old Castlevania games, Konami announced an anniversary package for modern systems, including the Switch, that has all of these games as well as the SNES, Game Boy, and Genesis Castlevania games, for around twenty bucks. I've put it on my birthday list and hope to be able to enjoy me some more classic Castlevania next month.

I've also been playing Dragon Quest IV for the DS. I just got to the area formerly known as Gardenbur Castle, now called Femiscyra. I'm cruising along and I think that when I finish it I'll also finally do my first full replay of Dragon Quest V for the Super Famicom.

Aside from that, I've booted up my Smash Bros. Ultimate a couple of times (partly to play as Simon after beating Castlevania). I also play a few games of Tetris 99 most days, as I have for the past few months. It's my latest bout of Tetris addiction that has grabbed me stronger than any other version since the original Game Boy. I win about one in six games on average.

Leaving Aliahan with no Thieves' Key

For the last few weeks I have been chipping away at my last challenge quest for Dragon Quest III. I will attempt to finish this game with no items or equipment, save for 18 items that you cannot finish the game without getting.

I did this previously in Dragon Quest I and II. Like Dragon Quest II, this game has a spell which allows you to bypass keys. However, unlike Dragon Quest II, there are doors you need to open very early in the game. To accomplish this objective, you need to get a Wizard to level 35 fighting enemy groups that average less than 50 experience points per battle.

As daunting as that seems, I've determined that it can be done in approximately 100 hours of game time. That's less time, for example, than it took me to play Dragon Quest VII through for the first time. It's also considerably less time than it took me to finish my 100% items, max-levels-on-all-classes-playthrough of Dragon Quest III a few years ago.

It was a bit slow starting out, due to the struggle of fighting enemies without equipment. I started with my expected end-game party, two Goof-Offs to turn into Sages later. That was a mistake. I underestimated how much time it would take till my Wizard could survive with less than a full party. I could have breezed through that faster with two Fighters instead. But by the time I realized that, there wasn't much to be gained by switching.

At level 7, when my wizard learned Firebal, I was able to drop my two extra people and fight with my Wizard and Hero. This is advantageous because of the way experience is distributed. You get twice as much experience per person in a two-person setup as you do with a four-person setup. You get twice as much again if you have a single-person party. But the wizard just can't survive solo until around level 12 or 13. Learning the spell Bang is when I was able to go solo, but it was still tenuous for a level or two because at that point you don't always go first, or second or third.

But the Agility gains of the Wizard also picked up around that time, which increases both your speed and your defense, and I've only rarely died since. My Wizard is now level 20, and hasn't died in a few levels. At this point she usually goes first or near first, and has enough agility and HP that a couple of hits don't bother her. The only time she's ever in danger is when a Spiked Hare enemy group hits her with a sleep spell. But even then they usually run away before dealing enough damage to be truly threatening. This was still pretty dangerous a few levels ago, but I've mostly graduated past any real threat level.

That's good, because dying is inconvenient in this challenge. To get the full experience from the battle for my Wizard, my Hero needs to be dead. Otherwise each member gets only half. But if my Wizard, fighting solo, dies, it's the Hero who gets automatically resurrected. So I have to spend time having the Hero attack himself to kill himself off again, which is a minor annoyance. But it's been some time since I've had to do that.

I have a spreadsheet to keep track of my progress. I have around 11% of the experience points I need to get to level 35. It takes nearly two hours at this point to gain a level, so it's pretty monotonous and slow-going. I watch TV while I'm playing to keep from getting too bored. Last night I also took a break to play some Dragon Quest V for a short bit. I've been spending a lot of time thinking about Dragon Quest in general, and the challenge isn't going to fill all my Dragon Quest appetite for the time it takes to finish it. So I may play a bit here and there on some other games.

Unfortunately, my conservative estimate, based on the time I have available to play, puts getting the open spell as late as mid-August, assuming I keep up on it that long. We'll see if I have the stomach to keep going that long.

Challenge Complete, New Challenge Started

I beat Dragon Warrior III with just the Hero. It took me till the following Monday to work my way through Alefgard, with no particular difficulty. On Tuesday the 2nd I faced Zoma for the first time...and the second, and the third, and the sixth time.

I had a nice niche of time that evening where I got home from work a little early but my family was doing something else out of the house. So I got to try the fight several times. The first fight was actually that morning, but didn't count for much because I accidentally triggered the fight before I finished healing, and actually forgot to bring the Sphere of Light, so I died in two rounds. The first three fights of the evening were meant to get a feel for what I could and couldn't do, trying out different strategies to see what would be most effective.

Here are some things I learned:

First, the encounter with Zoma seems to automatically trigger if you step on any square adjacent or immediately diagonal to him. Since I was trying to step on every square, I accidentally triggered this fight twice before I was ready, before I deduced the full zone of triggering the fight.

Second, it is likely not viable to kill Zoma with physical attacks at 196 Strength. Here's an interesting fact that I had learned some time ago when testing out a no-equipment fight against Zoma: his freezing waves nullifies his own negative status effects in addition to your party's beneficial ones. As a consequence of this, using the Orochi Sword is not an effective strategy. But without it, I don't think it's possible to overcome Zoma's regeneration in the long term. There might be a statistical non-zero chance, but I suspect it's rather low. I tested both the Falcon Sword and the Sword of Kings. At that strength score, the Sword of Kings appears to do better against Zoma, but still not good enough.

Third, at someone's suggestion, I tried using herbs against him. I wasn't expecting this to turn out the best option, and it didn't, but it was better than I thought. This is probably a relatively obscure fact: both Medical Herbs and healing spells will damage Zoma after you use the Sphere of Light on him. And herbs can do anywhere from single digits to over 200 damage against Zoma. Someone pointed out that as little as four herbs followed by a lucky Lightning spell is theoretically enough to beat him if you're lucky enough to get max damage each time. But I doubt that the chances of that happening are any better than beating him using just Healall against him.

I actually got over 100 damage each with all four Herbs, the last one doing over 200. But the total damage for all four rounds was less than Healall does in four rounds. Furthermore, you can't take 4 herbs with you without leaving most of your armor behind. On that try I definitely had to heal more often than other tries, which has a huge impact on the battle.

Another thing I definitely learned is that the battle does rely a large degree on chance. Whereas Baramos' attack pattern is scripted and therefore completely predictable, Zoma's (after using the Sphere of Light) is anything but. He uses a pretty strong physical attack, a comparatively tamer breath attack, and his freezing waves attack, at least. I don't remember if there's at least one more, but those are the ones I do remember. Furthermore, it's random whether he attacks once or twice in one round. Because of this, you can't predict effectively how many rounds you can go without healing yourself. This makes it difficult to predict effectively whether a given strategy can work.

But, my experience in a few rounds of trying pretty much confirmed what I had read in numerous places: the most effective strategy is to cast Healall on Zoma every round, except for the rounds you cast it on yourself.

Healall does a surprising amount of damage on him. I think it's over 75% of the damage Lightning does on him, typically somewhere between 140 and 180, but at less than 25% of the MP cost of Lightning. It's plenty to wear him down, as long as you don't run out of MP. But that's where it gets difficult. This relies on Zoma's attack pattern, which is random. I had hugely different results between my last two tries using the same strategy. (I can infer from my experience combined with what I've read that this battle's difficulty likely drops considerably if you have higher max MP--every 7 points would likely make a notable difference.)

One caveat I discovered: it's extremely easy to accidentally heal yourself when you meant to use the spell on Zoma. But it's also a devastating mistake to make; doing it even once can decide the fight. Just one unnecessary round of free regeneration for Zoma is way too much.

On my last try of the night (it was going to be my last try anyway because I needed to get to sleep) I got very lucky. Zoma started using almost nothing but freezing waves on me for several rounds straight, with his low-damage breath a couple of times in between. I went eight entire rounds without healing, and my tracking had over 700 damage against him before I finally did heal.

But even with that lucky streak, it came down to the wire. After a few more cycles, I found myself out of MP. My tracking had him pretty close to 900 HP down after regeneration. With no other choice I did a physical attack. I was using the Falcon Sword and, the two hits totalled 111 damage. It was enough. Zoma went down.

I felt quite lucky. Even the last attack was on the very high end of what I had tested the Falcon Sword with. And Zoma's regeneration was likely a little on the low end, since he has 1024 HP. If I had known I would have to rely on at least one physical attack, I probably would have equipped the Sword of Kings instead. But the Falcon Sword works much better against the King Hydra and Baramos Gonus, so I chose it as my weapon since I was using magic on Zoma. The weapon came through for me in the end.

The solo challenge ended up being difficult, but still not as difficult as I expected given everything I read. I think I got lucky on my natural Strength, which is probably a big part of it. But I also think that the documentation available for this challenge is far too spotty and incomplete. I hope that anyone who tries this challenge in the future and searches for information will find what I've written either here or on Gamefaqs.com message boards.

Anyway, having completed this challenge, I have finally started my "minimalist" challenge, to mirror my efforts on Dragon Quest I and II. I'm only at level 5 and feeling the struggle already. More about that to come.

No Feasting on Innards Here...Baramos is Dead

I'm still a bit stunned by this, in a good way. Last night, I hit level 99, and began what was to be my last benchmark fight before seed farming. At 196 strength, I figured, based on my data from my level 90 fight, that I might possibly be able to overcome his regeneration. I figured this battle would give me a feel for how much more I'd have to raise my strength to finish off his HP before I ran out of MP.

I used the Dragon Mail, which gave me the best overall results in my previous fights. I successfully cast Stopspell and got off four successful Orochi Sword uses in a relatively short period of time. Because I wanted to start attacking at the beginning of a healing cycle, I ended up using the Orochi Sword twice more before healing, and both attempts were successful.

Tracking my damage, I saw after a few healing cycles that I was indeed overcoming his regeneration, at a rate larger than I expected. In fact, after three rounds of attack and one round of heal, I was ended up ahead in damage somewhat more often than not. Despite the bulk of the existing documentation of this fight being against the possibility, I began to wonder if this wasn't possible.

I was consistently able to go three attack rounds before healing. There were a few, and only a few, times where I knew that taking the third round was a gamble, because my HP was lower than the max damage he could do in a round. But each time I took that gamble, I ended up alive, although in the single digit HP range. (There's always a slight gamble anyway healing every four rounds, because there's always a slim chance Baramos will go before you even at max agility.) I figured if I wanted to beat this without excessive seed grinding, I would have to rely at least a little bit on good fortune in the fight.

About 100 rounds in (measured from when I began attacking) I saw that my MP likely wasn't going to last, but I was doing far better than I thought, having dealt on the net over 500 damage. Then on round 102, I finally got a critical hit for 260 damage. Now my tracking showed 668 damage net. His remaining health, then, would be around 232, give or take, depending on his actual regeneration compared to the average I was estimating. If his regeneration was on the low end, he might be in the damage range for the Lightning spell! Even if that wasn't quite enough, I would still be able to get one more attack off. It might just be enough.

I had around 160 HP and exactly 31 MP left. After thinking about it for a minute, trying to decide if I should go for it, I decided to. I cast the spell of Lightning, doing 211 damage. And watched Baramos's sprite vanish, as the game declared me victorious.

I couldn't believe I'd pulled it off. All of the internet's decades' long history of comments about this game suggested that a solo fight against Baramos without the Noh Mask and/or excessive seed farming was impossible, yet here I was, on my very first attempt at level 99, standing over Baramos' corpse. And whereas I'm sure I did get a few seeds dropped from enemies while I was travelling the world in my stepping on each map square, I never did any actual seed farming.

Now, I am fairly confident that I had somewhat above average luck on my level-up Strength gains. I was consistently getting gains all through the 70, 80, and 90 level range. It seems, in the end, that was all that was needed.

I had 473 Max HP, and 233 Max MP, typical amounts for max level, I think. Agility was capped with the Meteorite Armband.

I think that there is a dearth of useful information posted online about how to approach this fight. Since it used to be regarded as impossible, no one bothered to try enough to develop useful strategies. Accounts like Gamefaqs user joaquintall were very useful to me in helping me figure this out. I hope that this account (which I've also posted on Gamefaqs message boards) will similarly help anyone out who wants to try this in the future.

Of course, it's not over. I still have the Zoma fight, which according to my research is no cakewalk. It seems that the Baramos fight is generally regarded as harder, but a lot of people still get hung up at the very end. I expect I'll be ready to try Zoma by the end of next week at the latest, though I'll try to get it much sooner if I can.

Leading up to Baramos

Over the weekend I've made some great progress on my Dragon Warrior III solo hero challenge. I have made it to level 93, with an impressive 192 strength score. From the reading I've done, I think that I've been lucky to get a score that high without any manipulation. It looks increasingly like the seed farming portion of my quest might not take as long as I'd feared.

I've done several trial runs against Baramos with different equipment options and strategies. I've also been monitoring the effect of my strength score on the battle. My last attempt appeared to be finally approaching or maybe even slightly past a break-even point in damage output, but the fight didn't last long enough to be sure if that would hold in the long term. Once I hit level 99 I'll do one last benchmark fight to estimate how much more I need to do stat-wise to ensure the possibility of victory.

It seems to me that the most effective overall strategy is to equip the Dragon Mail and cast Stopspell on Baramos. His resulting attack pattern consistently does in the ballpark of 110 per round, just low enough to consistently go three attack rounds before healing on the fourth.

I also tried using Magic Armor without casting Stopspell, which is the strategy used by one other person who successfully did this. I found that it was slightly more favorable, up until the point that the Chaos spell took effect. After that point, Baramos stopped casting that spell and the strategy lost whatever small edge it had over the other.

I also most recently tried using the Cloak of Evasion with Stopspell, which had been suggested by someone at one point. Something that has been well shared on Gamefaqs.com, which isn't obvious on a casual playthrough, is that there is a hidden evasion bonus granted by this armor which makes it a better armor than you would think. It's one of the most, if not the most, effective armors in the game against physical attacks because of the increased chance of missing outright. And once you cast Stopspell on Baramos, two-thirds of his attack pattern consists of physical attacks.

Unfortunately, the physical evasion bonus doesn't compensate for the bonus you lose by not having breath reduction. My performance with this strategy was notably worse than either of the other two strategies.

I know it might potentially take several weeks yet to beat Baramos, depending on just how high my strength score needs to be and how long it takes to get the seeds. But it feels so close that I have a hard time thinking about anything else during the day when I'm away. I see Baramos standing before me, taunting me throughout the day. It's constantly at or near the front of my mind.

I expect to be able to reach level 99 by the end of tomorrow at the latest. We'll see just how things go from there.

Dragon Quest III from Last Year

My mind has been consumed with thoughts of finishing my solo challenge on Dragon Warrior III, but there's not much more to say on the topic. But there's plenty more to say about Dragon Quest III in general, so I thought I might take a diversion.

Before my lear-long hiatus, I gave a list of projects I was excited to start. One of those was attempting a run of the game without using magic. Another was trying out the various remake versions of Dragon Quest III. I ended up doing all of those side by side, similar to how I played the remakes of Dragon Quest II while doing one of my challenges. In fact, I played so much Dragon Quest III that I burned myself out on Dragon Quest for a bit, just recently recovering from it somewhat.

It turns out, there's not that much to say about a no-magic "challenge" on Dragon Warrior III. To prepare for the challenge, based on what I'd read online and my own experience leveling each of the different character classes, I decided the best party for the quest was a Hero with three Fighters.

Well, it turns out, this party actually decreases the overall difficulty of the game over the party I'm used to using. There were a few parts where not using the Hero's magic presented some extra difficulty, but I'm not sure it was enough to offset how easily I plowed through everything else with this party. This game actually is easier if you use Fighters over magic-using classes. Most of the game's non-healing spells are just not necessary with the raw power and speed you get from this party. Even healing spells are less necessary, as most of the enemies drop before they significantly damage you. Most dungeons I did not use all of the herbs I brought.

The only real issues I had were: longer dungeons, since I wasn't using Outside to escape (this mostly wasn't a difficulty issue; just a tedium issue); a longer run through the Navel of the Earth (partly because I still insisted on killing the Mimics without dying and going down every corridor); and several runs to make it through the Necrogond cave (again insisting on "exploring" every corridor rather than going straight through, this was one of the only dungeons where I typically used all of the herbs I brought, and still found it not enough). None of the bosses presented any difficulty whatsoever. I might have had one of my characters die on Baramos or one of the Orochi fights (I can't quite remember), but it didn't stop me from beating them within a few rounds regardless.

Playing the remakes was pretty interesting. The Super Famicom remake, and its derivatives for Game Boy Color and Smartphones, are more extensively overhauled than the previous two games in some respects. Although the actual game mechanics seem more similar, the equipment lists have been completely changed. All of the original equipment is still there, but it is not always available at the same places in the game, with certain items being delayed to later shops, while many new pieces of equipment were added in. Additionally, like in the previous two games, many items that were only available as rare item drops in the original have been added to treasure chests or are otherwise obtainable. They added quite a bit of new content as well, with a mini-medal NPC and corresponding medals hidden throughout the world and prizes to trade them for, a board game minigame with many prizes to collect (this is absent in the Smartphone version, with its prizes relocated to the mini-medal NPC or sometimes to new treasure chests), and a new dungeon with a dragon-god super-boss at the end, available only after completing the game once. There's a new Thief job that adds a bit to the overall party mix, with abilities from Dragon Quest VI's thief job that help locate treasure (useful for finding the new mini-medals). The Merchant and Goof-Off have some new abilities added to them. The Game Boy Color version also adds monster medals associated with each monster in the game for the player to collect, and supposedly another dungeon associated with that (though I did not get far enough to unlock that).

It was a lot of fun to dive into all of that and digest it. I can see why the Game Boy Color version of this game was so popular, being the only version available in the U.S. until recently. It really seems overall to add to, and not detract from, the original experience, which was one of the best RPG's of its era.

Unfortunately, since I didn't keep up on my blog, most of what I might have noticed comparing and contrasting the translations has been forgotten. I don't know that there was too much notable. One thing I remember that was significant was that the smartphone version completely redid the village of Soo. The village name was always meant to reference the Sioux Native American Indians, and in the Super Famicom version (I think the Game Boy as well) the character sprites of the villagers were actually drawn to resemble Native Americans. I imagine the more recent Smartphone translation redid them to stay in the politically correct realm and avoid any potentially offensive caricatures. They are now modeled after the Puritan settlers and the village is renamed "Persistence."

I was a little surprised to see that the newer versions named the optional post-final boss Xenlon (whose name is Shin-Ryu in romanji), mostly because I'd already encountered this name in Dragon Quest IX. I hadn't realized it was a reference to this game.

I was more than a little disappointed that I didn't get to finish my Game Boy Color game. Something happened that caused my cartridge to start glitching out. The game file seems to be intact, but the graphics won't display correctly and the game freezes when you select the game file (but once and only once I got it to load normally). I don't know if I'll be able to get it repaired without losing my game file, or even repaired at all.

I never beat Shin-Ryu/Xenlon, but from time to time I've been plugging away at the version on my phone to move closer to that goal. At some point I'll revisit the game on Super Famicom, too, but I'm focused to heavy on my NES game challenge to consider that strongly now.

After I beat my solo challenge I hope to finally start my Minimalist Challenge, which I am currently quite excited for.

Planning to Fight Baramos with Just the Hero

Most of my gaming energy right now is directed towards completing Dragon Warrior III only using the Hero. I've made it to the defining part of the solo challenge, which is the showdown against Baramos.

I've reviewed every bit of information I can find regarding how to proceed here. The problem with fighting Baramos solo is that it is difficult to consistently deal enough damage to overcome his natural regeneration. The game never explicitly lets the player know this, but Baramos naturally heals anywhere from 90 to 110 HP every round. That means, for example, that if you heal every third round, you have to average 150 damage on every non-healing round just to break even. Even at Level 99, a Hero with normal stats doesn't have a chance with physical attacks. But with normal stats, he also doesn't have enough MP to do it with magic attacks, either.

Everything I've read suggests that Baramos generally can't be beaten solo without at least one of the following things:

1. Using the Noh Mask. This dramatically increases your defense, allowing you to go longer without healing. The problem with this is that it's impossible to leave Baramos' castle without removing it after the fight, but since it's cursed it can't be removed normally without leaving the castle. However, a well documented bug lets you ditch the mask if you open an uopened treasure chest in the castle while your inventory is full.

2. Manipulating MP gains at level-up. Your MP gains at level up are random. A simple and widely-used strategy by Solo runners is to save the game before level-up, then reset if the MP gain is not suitably high. Employing this strategy can result in maximum MP levels well above what you're likely to see without doing this. This gives you more overall endurance in the fight (in general you don't lose until you run out of MP) but in particular, it can give you high enough MP to spam Baramos with Lightning every non-healing round until he falls. 

3. Obtaining Strength Seeds and/or Acorns of Life from random enemy drops and using them. The higher strength, the more physical damage you can do to overcome Baramos' regeneration. The more HP you have, the less frequently you have to stop and heal.

My research hasn't been enough to confirm positively that any of these methods can be employed by itself without one of the other two. It appears that most people who have done this challenge have used a combination of the first two strategies. The message boards for this game on Gamefaqs.com have posts from a user, Joaquintall, who did it without the Noh Mask, using the Strength Seeds (whose run and message board discussions have provided an extremely useful template). I think he didn't start out with MP manipulation, but may have used it a little bit in his later levels. Another user responded to his posts saying he had done it with MP manipulation and extensive use of Acorns of Life.

I generally don't use glitches or bugs in my runs, so using the Noh Mask against Baramos, which can't be done successfully without abusing the bug to remove it, was never going to be on the table for me if another way could be demonstrated.

I'm on the fence about MP manipulation. I'm not sure it's fundamentally different from strategies I have used on games in the past involving the Reset button, particularly in casinos on Dragon Quest games. It's also in principle not too different from my approach to death in the Dragon Quest games. When I was young I thought it wasn't fair to have infinite lives, so I developed a habit that I've always found hard to break of resetting whenever I die, no matter what I lose in the process. But I've only realized in my most recent challenge playthroughs how resetting can give an unfair advantage by not halving my gold, particularly in Dragon Quest II.

However, when I started this file years ago, not knowing what challenges the run presented, I was not manipulating stat gains. I'm too stubborn to change fundamental strategies this late into it, and was already at level 30, having squandered most of the range it would have been useful. So I decided not to use the MP manipulation strategy.

That leaves me to rely on Strength Seeds and Acorns of Life. The problem is, it seems that there is no monster that drops either one at a rate higher than 1/64. Given that I will likely need a large number of seeds, it seems it will take me a considerable amount of time to get all the seeds I need. I believe that, for the time required to get them, the Strength Seeds will have a greater value, so I will concentrate on them. But it's going to take a while.

I am currently at level 60. I think I'll max out my level before going for the seeds, so I have a better idea of just how many I need. That may mean wasted EXP later on, but the EXP grind is small compared to the effort for Strength Seeds anyway. I "wasted" many an experience point trying to get the Staff of Reflection when I did that, but I found it much easier to concentrate on that goal when I wasn't dividing my attention toward level-ups.

EDIT: After posting this yesterday, when I got home and had a minute I decided to try fighting Baramos with the Noh Mask, to use the fight as a bit of a benchmark and better understand everything I've read. Using the Noh Mask (as well as a suit of Dragon Mail and the Orochi Sword Sap effect) I was able to beat Baramos without particular difficulty at level 60. This can definitely be done without any stat manipulation with the Noh Mask, as long as you approach the fight properly.

Baramos is susceptible, albeit somewhat resistant, to both Sap and Stopspell. Stopspell dramatically changes his attack pattern because he skips his magic attacks, repeating the pattern of two physical attacks and his breath attack. I'm not sure this is necessarily better under normal circumstances, but wearing the Noh Mask and Dragon Mail, this severely limits the damage he does to you. The breath attack, used two of every three rounds, does a little more than 60 damage, but the physical attacks frequently hit for less than 10 each, so every third round has minimal damage. Under these circumstances, I only healed every six or seven rounds. Having hit him twice with Sap before starting my attacks, it was enough to deal more damage than he regenerated, even if it wasn't that much. I tracked the damage I was doing each round. After all status effects were set and I committed to the attack, it took me 126 turns to finish him off. I cast Healall a total of 16 times after starting to attack. (I cast that spell a few times more times while working on Sap and Stopspell, but I didn't record that.) I got two critical hits, which is quite reasonable for a 126-turn fight (odds for each hit are 1/64, or 2/128). I ended the fight with thirty-something MP left.

My strength stat is one-hundred-sixty-something and my Max MP is 177, neither one adjusted beyond the seeds you find in game or that have dropped without actively trying for a drop.

So it is definitely possible to beat Baramos with the Noh Mask strategy without using MP manipulation or excessive seed gathering.

(Naturally, I did not save my file as I don't intend to use the Noh Mask, but trying with it served to be educational.)

Games of Last Year

It'll take me a couple of days to get through the Necrogond Cave. It seems like a good time to reflect on the last year.

At the beginning of last year I was getting ready to do three challenges on Dragon Quest III. I actually did do a no-magic playthrough. I did that playthrough while simultaneously playing through the Super Famicom, Game Boy Color, and Android versions of the game, like I did with Dragon Quest I and II. But Dragon Quest III is a bigger game, and by the end of it I had burned myself out a bit on Dragon Quest. After being away from it a few months, I'm starting to dive back in to my Solo Challenge. 

I've played some other amazing games this last year. Perhaps most notable was playing The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild through to completion. That is a truly remarkable game. At some point I'll jump back in to resume the daunting task of trying to find everything in the game. But this game is at least a magnitude of order larger than any previous Zelda game in terms of the size of the game world and the things you can do inside it. And I don't have the Switch version, so I can only work on it at home.

Another game I finally decided to play through which has been on my list a very long time is Super Mario Galaxy. I had been wanting to finish 100% on its predecessor, Super Mario Sunshine, but I finally decided, to heck with it. I have 118 Shine Sprites on Sunshine, and it seems obvious to me that the other two Shine Sprites are tied up in 15 blue coins that I haven't found. But it's incredibly difficult to summon the energy to play through the levels yet again to look for them. It's the hardest of the Mario-64-style 3D Mario games for me to get into by far. It has the least interesting level environments of any Mario game, and you have to revisit those same bland levels over and over and over again. It just gets very tedious. 

I only recently realized that this was my real complaint about Mario Sunshine. I had a hard time driving myself through it both times I played it through and couldn't quite put my finger on why I didn't find the game as enjoyable as Mario 64. (I always knew it wasn't Fludd, who works really well as a game design element, even if he doesn't work well as a character.) It took playing through Mario Galaxy to really emphasize to me just what was different about Mario Sunshine.

Super Mario Galaxy, by contrast, has even more variety in its environments than Mario 64 did. And a lot of them are very enjoyable. I never felt I was working overtime in any given level, and didn't get overly tired of any particular part of the game. It was quite a delight to open each new galaxy and try every new level that I unlocked. 

The story of the game is also the best story of any Mario game that's not an RPG. Rosalina's storybook actually made me cry when I finally got to the end of it. I couldn't put this game down until I got all 120 Power Stars.

Super Mario Galaxy reinvigorated a many years dormant love of the Mario series and spurred me onward to play more. This last Christmas I got Super Mario Galaxy 2 and played it through to the end and got 120 stars in this game too, though I set it down before going after the green stars.

I finally started Super Mario Odyssey, but have temporarily put that game back on hold while other games have called me.

In between Super Mario Galaxy 1 and 2, I started replaying Super Mario 3-D Land and finished it to 100% completion, and finally played through Super Mario 3-D World to the end. I'm still working on that bit by bit, having beat every level with all four of the starting characters and the first three worlds with Rosalina. I'm kind of holding back a bit while trying to help my wife finish her file, which has all the levels completed with everyone except for the Crown world levels. The mystery box on her file still needs Rosalina and the Champion's Road still needs a single character to finish it. But she doesn't have much patience to sit down more than a few tries on either of those levels. But she'll be sad if I finish my file out and hers gets passed over, I think.

I also did a replay of 100% completion on Super Mario World, which I have on my Wii.

Lots of great games. I've had fun despite a challenging year. And I hope to complete many more good games in this coming year.

Dragon Warrior III Solo

So, rather than start out trying to play catch-up, I think I'll just write a little bit about the now.

Just recently, I resumed a years-old game file on Dragon Warrior III. It was the first "challenge quest" I ever started: a solo Hero on Dragon Warrior III. When I started it, I had gotten up to Baharata, just before the second Kandar fight, but I stalled out. A year or so ago, I picked it up again and beat Kandar, but didn't go any further. I've decided it's time for me to finish this attempt off.

Now I'm going to tell a story that probably just shows how strange and weird my approach to some games can sometimes get. It starts off when Dragon Warrior was a brand new game, and I was about nine years old trying to finish it. I got stuck searching for the Stones of Sunlight, which were rumored to be in Tantegel Castle. Nintendo Power didn't cover that game that far, as I recall, and so I was left to my own devices to figure it out. I used the Search command on every single square in that castle, and still hadn't found it. I had a friend over who decided he wanted to look. I told him he wouldn't find them, not after I'd gone through that painstaking effort without any results. It turns out, I was only half right. When he gave up looking, he exited the castle to the right. I looked up just as he did, and I noticed what I hadn't before, that he didn't exit the map until several steps after he left the apparent edge. So even though he didn't find them per se, his effort led to my discovery of the item.

I always remembered that effort of searching for them. It may have been at least part of my inspiration for an odd playthrough I did many years later. When I replayed that game the first time as an adult, I decided I was going to step on every tile in the game.

It's a little quirky, I realize, but I did it nevertheless. And that was the playthrough where I first discovered the game's level cap, which I had never previously reached or looked up. But stepping on every square, I hit it naturally before getting to the end, without any other dedicated grinding.

Inspired by my level cap discovery, I decided to try the same thing in Dragon Warrior II. It was a much more involved effort, but I also hit and discovered that game's level caps for the first time in like manner. I have mused a few times since, that it would almost require a strategy like this to find the Thunder Sword without a guide or a lucky drop from an enemy.

Soon after that, I did that for Dragon Warrior III as well. But I was disappointed, because I finished the game without hitting any level or experience cap. I was in the mid forties for my character levels, which I later learned was less than half of the max level in the game.

But when I started my solo challenge some years after that, I reasoned that with just one character, I might well hit, or at least come much closer to, that level cap with this strategy. So I started my file with that in mind.

Well, as I've noted here before, I've hit the level cap on this game on a different cartridge for the hero and all other job classes. But even though I started this file years ago and circumstances have changed, I find myself unable to convince myself to not finish it in the same way I started it. So I've been bravely trudging along, stepping on every tile in the game.

It makes it take longer, but I've been making steady progress the last two weeks. Last night I got the Sword of Gaia. I've completed everything else in the game possible without doing the Necrogond Cave, which I plan to start tonight. If all goes well, I hope to be able to attempt Baramos's Castle before the weekend is over.

Has it Been That Long?

Wow. I knew it had been a while since I'd posted anything on my blog, but I didn't actually realize it had been more than a year. The old blog has been coming into my mind a few times lately, and I finally decided to load it up. I'm not sure I'm fully ready to write much now, but there were two posts I began on 2/15 of last year still saved as drafts, so I thought I'd post what I started writing but never finished:

Post 1:

I'll take a quick tangent, since it came up, and since I never got around to blogging about it last year. My mother-in-law bought our family a Nintendo Switch for Christmas, partly because my daughter is her only granddaughter and her only grandkid that's under 20 years old, and she likes to spoil her. But she also knew I'd been dying for once since well before it came out

I'm a die-hard Nintendo fan. I was disappointed somewhat with the Wii U, a system that I always felt should have been better than it actually was. I don't think the core idea was a bad one at all, but I don't think Nintendo themselves ever quite figured out what they actually wanted to do with it. And they really seemed to be taking a step away from the amazing innovations that the Wii brought to the table. This generation marked the first time I really began to wonder if Nintendo's days as a console maker were numbered.

I followed whatever news, or lack thereof, I could about "Nintendo NX" for a long time before they finally unveiled the system with its official name and first trailer near the end of 2016. I was floored, and very intrigued. It was exactly everything that had been speculated for some time, but it was somehow also completely different from anything I'd imagined. I found myself getting very excited, and was checking daily for any further information clear until they had their full unveiling.

When they came out with the full reveal, detailing all of the features of the system and Joy-cons, I was ecstatic. I knew right away that I had to have one, something I never really felt with the Wii U (at least beyond my own desire to collect Nintendo systems). When I really understood how versatile and capable this system actually was, I was overwhelmed with an excitement that paralleled the excitement I felt when the Wii was first unveiled to the public. This, I thought, was the true successor to the Wii, as well as an appropriate successor to the Wii U. 

I finally have one now and am quite happy with it. The only down side is that I still have no money for games, and the hit games currently on it are too far out on my play queue (like Super Mario Odyssey) or difficult to justify buying because I already own it on the Wii U (like Breath of the Wild). But I've enjoyed playing the games we do have with my family, like Mario Kart and Pokken Tournament. We also got 1-2-Switch, which has been fun when we've had company over, and really helped my wife stay awake on New Year's Eve.

Post 2:

Since completing 100% on Dragon Quest III, I have been devoting time here and there to several different games. But truthfully, most of those games are also Dragon Quest III. I intend to do everything with this game that I did with Dragon Quest I and II, which includes playing through the remake versions and comparing them to the originals, and playing three challenge quests: a no-magic challenge, a solo challenge, and a minimalist challenge, all with the same parameters I used in these challenges on DQI and II. I'm also trying to take a few hours each weekend to advance my Hero Mode file on Skyward Sword, and I've been playing around a little bit with the Nintendo Switch demo of Dragon Quest Builders, which is very intriguing to me. My five year old daughter found that demo and has been playing quite a bit more of it than I have. It seems to be her new favorite game.

End Old Drafts.

I wanted to write about Dragon Quest III and the Switch, but apparently didn't find time to finish my thoughts on either one. I think I just had so much more I wanted to write than I had time and energy for, and I got tired of feeling behind on my thoughts, and life started pushing down hard around that time and for some while after, so I just kind of crashed and burned.

I think I really would like to start writing a bit more, but the time situation hasn't changed much. When I'm home, I'd rather play games than write about them, and I just don't have much other time besides my lunch break at work, when I usually end up napping and/or browsing Facebook.

But I feel like I'm coming out of a haze I've been in during yet another stressful year, and I want to start trying and doing more things, so I might just come back here a few times.