Tales of Vesperia is my favorite Tales game ever. After more than a decade without making a serious run through the game, I decided to give it another try last week. Basically, playing older JRPGs is difficult for me these days, because if I already know how the story ends, I quickly lose interest in…
Throwback Bit Thursday
Throwback Bit Thursday is a weekly Thursday feature on Never Ending Realm. Read all of NER’s #TBT articles here!
Throwback Bit Thursday: Alundra is a Grown Up’s Zelda Game
This week as I continued to play Elden Ring, I began to look back at what games were tough, or tougher than Japan’s newest poster boy. Some of the 2-D Castlevania games were very difficult. Even Castlevania 64 was quite challenging if you went for the good ending. Castlevania 64 in particular did not…
Throwback Bit Thursday: A Brief 1997 Nintendo 64 Memoir
Ah! 1997! To be 13 years old again! To have a crush on Ginger Spice again! So many memories, but perhaps none dearer than my time as a new Nintendo 64 owner and the hours I spent playing Turok, Golden Eye, and Star Fox 64. Truth be told, I probably played more of Super Mario…
Throwback Bit Thursday: Metal Gear Solid 2
Before I write anything else, I must confess that I was never a big fan of the original Metal Gear Solid game on the PlayStation. It is not that I didn’t like the game or appreciate what it did for the stealth and action adventure genres on Sony’s little gray machine. My issue with it…
Throwback Bit Thursday: Dead or Alive 3
The original Xbox was an amazing machine for its era. At times, the system truly felt like a generational leap over the PlayStation 2. The reason for this? Microsoft’s hardware was multiple times more powerful than Sony’s most successful machine. The Xbox Flexed its Muscles at Launch Halo: Combat Evolved alone was enough to…
Throwback Bit Thursday: Summoner
Before I get started, I want to state that playing 2000’s Summoner over the past few days reminded me of two things: How subpar the PS2’s launch lineup was, and how far away Western RPG developers were behind their Japanese counterparts 20 years ago. How times have changed. Role-Playing Games were Essential to Console…
Throwback Bit Thursday: Super Mario Odyssey a Homage to the Mario Saga
This week, I reached the Super Mario Odyssey credits for the second time since 2018. The first time around, I mainly rushed through the game trying to get just enough moons to reach the finish line. It was a fun experience, and I greatly enjoyed Nintendo’s technical mastery of the Switch hardware at the time….
Throwback Bit Thursday: Resident Evil 5
To be honest, Resident Evil 5 had tough shoes to fill. Resident Evil 4 was seen as a watershed moment for the series, and its unprecedented critical and commercial success paved the way for the massive wave of hype surrounding the franchise’s 5th entry. Resident Evil 4 shook the very foundations of the 3rd…
Throwback Bit Thursday: Castlevania: Lords of Shadow
Castlevania: Lords of Shadow is my favorite Castlevania game of all time. Yes, I know, blasphemy! But keep in mind that I have always preferred 3-D over 2-D gaming, and that Castlevania 64, despite all its flaws, has been the Castlevania game that I have played the most. Castlevania is a series that never quite got…
Throwback Bit Thursday: The Lunar 3 Dream Ends
The dream is over…for Lunar fans who awaited a 3rd entry in the beloved 16-bit era series which earned worldwide renown when it was ported to the PlayStation in the late 1990s. Sean Lowe, the man behind the efforts to revitalize the series received (reportedly) a message from Game Arts earlier this month confirming that…