Phantasy Star: Fringes of Algo

So, after a solid week of playing absolutely nothing but, I finished up the Falcom action RPG Zwei: The Ilvard Insurrection, very recently localized by XSeeD. My first full playthrough clocked in at around 17 hours, but I wasn't entirely thorough in my exploration, plus there's a bunch of New Game+ content that I haven't even touched.

I'll have a whole lot more to say about it sometime soon, but it does a bunch of really cool things, and the general attitude of the game feels like someone at Falcom played Mega Man Legends once and was like "Hey, let's do this thing, but the way that we like to do things."

Ah now I can tell about another game I've just finished this morning on my beloved 3DS !
It's Phoenix Wright Spirit of Justice !
And like all the other ones, this was so great ! More than 90 hours of play and I'm so happy to ha=ve played it (and a bit sad about being at the end but...).
Hope there will be another one soon !

I beat Pokemon Moon's story mode and also caught all the post-game legendaries. Now I'm just doing some breeding on and off between other games...both for filling my living dex in a bit but also for getting perfect versions of various fire types. At this point I think I roleplay as a fire-type breeder, lol. The legendaries list for US/UM also came out and no question now, I'm going to keep US for myself when I receive those in the mail.

Just going back and clearing out my old, old backlog.

I've never heard of this game before ! Seems to be great ! Is it ?

myau56 wrote:I've never heard of this game before ! Seems to be great ! Is it ?

Okay, history lesson! Appropriate, since this is an educational game.

While edutainment games do not have the best reputation, there are a few which actually hold up as games, and those are usually from the mid-'80s through early '90s. There's the Oregon Trail, the Castle of Dr. Brain, and the Carmen Sandiego series, starting with Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego, pictured above (I originally had the 1985 Apple II version- the one up there is the enhanced re-release of the original game). WitW originally shipped in this huge box which had two full-sized reference books, a World Almanac and the Facts Book.

The reason it worked was that the education was well-integrated into the framing device. The core gameplay loop is quite simple- you're informed that there has been a heist of some valuable national treasure from some country or another, which is where you start the case, and so you need to talk to witnesses in order to get the clues you need to successfully trail whichever member of Carmen Sandiego's gang of international thieves as well as get identifying information that will get you a warrant for their arrest. The reason the game comes with a World Almanac is that you need to reference it to properly interpret the clues, because the clues to the next country you need to go to are basic real-world facts about the next country's currency, geography, culture, or history (i.e. "A suspicious person came here and exchanged his money for Francs", "She said she wanted to take pictures of some Magyar artifacts"). Successfully follow the thief through enough countries, and you get to corner them and have a chance to make the arrest, which succeeds if you got the correct warrant. This continues until you've solved enough cases (usually around 25-30 or so) to force Carmen Sandiego into the open, which gives you the chance to pursue and arrest her directly.

Granted, I don't have the World Almanac anymore, but Wikipedia works just as well.

Thank you so much for this fantastic history lesson !
I've already heard about the Carmen Sandiego serie but I've never played it ! Maybe one day ?

I forgot the thread I created (facepalm). I finished some games, but a while ago. Later I post (not at a computer). Recently I haven't played much, since I am trying to make a VN.

Anyway, Carmen Sandiego was very good. I played it a lot when young, and recently played it again. It was a very interesting game that attempted to mix education and gaming without forcing too much. That is why it managed to be fun.

A lot of players have tested or played the Carmen Sandiego serie ! It's impressive and I'm ashamed to not have tested it yet ! Maybe one day I'll on my console !

Well, I just beat Super Mario Odyssey's story. But who knows how many moons I have left I could collect!