Ringlorn Saga

Now this is proper oldschool. Simple and charming, features a variation of bump combat which is always welcome, great if you like grinding monsters and exploring the world without much, if any, handholding.

It's a charming game, and looks great, but the sudden anachronistic dialogue from npcs broke my immersion. It felt like finding a long curly hair in my food.

Simple, slow, and satisfying bump battler with a few extra options I love bump combat (where you just run right into foes), which is why I enjoy the early Ys games so much, but those are a little more frenetic than Ringlorn -- here there is no offset, but a simple movement grid, and you are constantly trying to maneuver around so you can strike the sides and rear of your enemies. It's a lot more like Hydlide than Ys, it seems -- but I've never played Hydlide! I know AVGN railed against it. I know that when I was in High School, a dude named B.J. -- an enormous boy with natural ogre strength who could literally lift my six-foot frame with one arm, and casually at that -- was known for his burning hatred of the NES game. Watching people play Hydlide on Youtube now . . . it does seem a trifle sloggish, yet I can tell the heart was there! I can! But Ringlorn, I can vouch from my experience playing just now (and from research and hearsay regarding classic Hydlide), is like a perfected version of that old game! It's a super-fun time if you like to bump 'n' grind -- and I certainly do, because there's something so approachable about a short game with a simple control scheme, but a woolly little stretch of world to tramp around in, where it doesn't hold your hand and it doesn't need to, because your curiosity is crowned king. So go explore! There's an input reminder screen if you need it, but really, all you need is to go to and experiment. There's a defense mode that lowers damage and increases Gerhard's durability (like Hydlide), and there are three types of physical attacks to cycle through -- because in classic Dungeons and Dragons style, certain attacks do certain levels of damage to certain kinds of monster hide. It's fairy tale-basic, in terms of narrative. You enter a cursed, inescapable land (shades of Ys Book I) to look for your father, and it's all very simple, and encompassable -- and so you strike out to see what you find under every flat rock. Here I am, sipping my gritty matcha, perfectly at ease but intrigued all the same, grid-weavin' around a field of slow enemies trying sort of hard not to get pincered while bump-bashing spiders and bump-stabbing vampires. And Ah, here's a girlie ghost! She gives me a name! Who is this man, and how can he help her pass over to the other side? Let's go find him! I liked this, and I'll immediately play the prequel. I truly believe a lot can be done with the simplest action RPG format ever, and it's good to see there are developers who feel the same. Would B.J. approve? I kind of think he might.