Everyone should know this story by now, but still. English version of Ace Combat 3 should be the definition of “self fulfilling curse”. Namco developed this insanely ambitious arcade flight sim only to get scared that it won’t sell well in the west, so they literaly cut more than half of the game for the English release, and after that, it obviously didn’t sell well.
I decided that I’ll start with the English version first, and then compare it to the fan translation. And what a strange experience that is.
Maybe it’s because the Japanese version comes on two CDs, and English just on one, but there is no intro, at all. After you start your first mission, you get a bit of text on a black screen telling you that you are UPEO pilot protecting General Resource corp from Neuwork corp. There is no voiceover. It all feels like I’m playing a ripped version in the 90s.
Speaking of the game itself, though, the visual jump is incredible, considering there was one already between Ace Combat and Ace Combat 2. But now the land textures are even more detailed, sun is reflecting on the water, there are lens flares, and clouds, and explosion waves (something I don’t remember even in PS2 titles). The first mission is such a power move overall.
Most interesting mission is where you need to chase experimental bombers above the clouds. A lot of aircrafts would stall at those altitudes, so you need something like MiG-29.
In some missions you also find named pilots, like Goose alor Razorback. Downing them brings a reward to the collection.
Again, we need to fly into a base through a tunnel to blow a reactor. With a twist that a tunnel opens only after 3 minutes of real time, and closes after another minute.
The hardest mission is probably the one where you need to destroy radars with your machine gun. Not so much because of the machine gun part, despite radars placed on buyous at sea and the need to fly through inlet to locate some of them, but because the way enemy planes spawn right behind you as soon as you try to make a pass. And unlike your missiles, those planes seem to be infinite.
Last mission, I didn’t enjoy at all. You need to chase a cruise missile with a machine gun, and that target is tiny. Good luck not getting motion sickness. Not sure if playing on a real hardware would help, but on emulator, this mission is a nightmare.
And of course there is another tunnel with a reactor you need to blow at the end. Luckily this time it’s enough to hit the reactor, you don’t need to fly out for the tunnel as well.
One bit that confused me is that I never unlocked the F22, that’s why I was playing final missions on YF23. There are also more aircrafts to unlock when you play the campaign for a second time, but after that cruise missile mission, I’ll pass.
It’s genuiniley impressive how much the game has improved over the first installement. The drawing distance is now comfortable, and I don’t need to look at the radar anymore. The speed and altitude is now also shown in the 3rd person view, so there’s no need to switch to 1st person much. The afterburners are now also visible, so you can see when you are speeding up.
The game is also more colourful. It is strange statement, considering in the first game you flew purple jets.
Of course there is a ravine mission. It looks better than in Ace Combat 1, but weirdly, it plays worse, because with potato graphics of Ace Combat 1 it was very easy to see the path, whereas in Ace Combat 2 I wasn’t sure if I’m flying into a wall.
Completed Resident Evil 3.
The final episode, Factory, is obtrusive. It may sound funny, but there isn’t that much backtracking in Resident Evil 3. Unless you get confused, of course. But Factory is designed is such a way that you have to go back and forth multiple times, while game throws at you enemies in rooms you already cleared, sometimes twice. Also, there are some unskippable cutscenes before the boss fights that can get pretty annoying.
I’m not sure how environmental the final two boss fights are. In the first, Nemesis is in humanoid form, and you need to shoot acid valves when he’s near. Not sure if that’s the only way to damage him, or if it just helps. Funny how at some point he loses his head, but still goes on.
Then the final fights is against Nemesis-frog. I usually say that ammo is more important than health items in Resident Evil, because you can’t heal a boss to death, you need to shoot him. But this is another environmental fight, as far as I can tell, where you need to turn on a railgun, then lure Nemesis a couple of times so it gets smashed by it.
The entire game took me around 6 hours of game time to complete. Which isn’t bad, I thought it would be shorter. I remember that Leon’s scenario in Resident Evil 2 took me around 2:30 hours.
By the end of it, I still had plenty of healing items, but not that many bullets, I must admit. So the game is more enemy heavy than Resident Evil 2 for sure.
The trolley sequence is pretty tiring. Funnily enough, that’s the only part I remember from my playthrough those 20 years ago, the huge worm in the sewers, akin to Alone in the Dark. But you have to evade Nemesis, escape from the worm, then beat Nemesis, and he is though, taking whole Magnum, and then some.
At first, I found dogs to be pretty annoying. But then I noticed that they don’t have invincibility frames on the ground anymore:
By the time I reached the clocktower, I started combining all the gunpowder I had into Magnum ammo, and got 48 of it. That’s plenty. Also, got both part of the gun from Nemesis. Despite it’s named Eagle, it’s a 9mm gun, not a Desert Eagle. But it does has a better rate of fire than the standard gun, and allows to put any spare 9mm ammo to good use.
Nemesis shots down the chopper (that’s how I understood I played this game without videos, because I would have remembered such an epic scene), the Magnum ammo comes in handy.
Then we switch to Carlos. Playing as him is a bit tricky, as you have almost no pickups. If you run out of ammo – you’re done.
After comparing Dreamcast version with all enhancements RetroTink 4K can offer with RetroArch/SwanStation, I must admit that playing on a physical console doesn’t worth it at all.
While colors might be attributed to how my capture card processes HDR signal, it’s undeniable that models and textures rendered in x5 resolution look significantly better.
The most important parameter to get this quality of picture is PGXP CPU Mode. It is supposed to be slow, but very accurate way to represent 3D models. Something that PSX was never good at. Interestingly enough, Dreamcast has some new textures, for some reason (notice the plaque has moved a bit):
Back to the game, it is interesting how you meet Carlos at different points in the game, depending on which location you visit first. On Dreamcast, I’ve met him in the restaurant. But on my PSX playthrough, I wanted to avoid Nemesis and went to the newsroom first. And here Carlos was waiting for me again, with a different cutscene.
Speaking of cutscenes, the game has QTE events, even before Shenmue! Sometimes when Nemesis appears, you are given a choice, between fighting, running away or hiding.
After success with Ace Combat 4, I decided to check the very first installment in the series, originally called Air Combat . It is still surprisingly playable. The planes are recognizable, and fly well enough. Even the control scheme stayed the same. And you also get to buy new planes between missions.
The differences are that 3rd person view in the first game is mostly useless, while on PS2 I would use it most of the time. This is because it has no information about your speed, for example. To the point I thought my gamepad was misbehaving, as you don’t really see your plane speeding up.
The main tradeoff is the viewing distance. You can’t see shit, basically, enemy planes appear only when they are about 2km away. So you have to navigate by radar most of the time, until you are almost on them.
One notable change I have to talk about is the color palette of the planes. I’m not sure if it’s arcade legacy, or 95 style, or just an attempt for the planes not to mix up with the surroundings, but… red, purple and white? Really?! There’s a real-world term “Flying Circus” coming to mind.
Of course I had to check if this also applies to F117 Nighthawk… and yes, it does.
Wingmen are an interesting concept. Before a mission you can decide if you want to spend a significant sum to have a friendly jet. And you also can choose which jet it will be, which is of course affects the price. You also set the strategy for them: defend you, or try to complete the mission.
Some missions are also quite ambitious. There’s a night bombing run, and a mission where you have to follow pipelines in the desert to locate enemy oil refineries.
You also get to choose which missions to do. And of course there is a ravine mission. The saddest ravine mission ever, I must say, as the hardware was nowhere near. But they tried nevertheless. Actually, there are two ravine missions, although second is more of a tunnel or a cave.
The game is rather short, with 17 missions in total, but because there are some branching paths you have to complete around 14 to beat the game. But it is ambitious. At one point you have to bomb a suspension bridge, and they animated parts of the bridge crashing down into the water.
And the final boss is this flying fortress with four engines that you have to chase, and each engine falls apart separately, and then the fortress begins to tilt and raise smoke. 10 years later, they would repeat this mission in full force, but the fact they already imagined that back in ’95 is impressive.
The only bit I didn’t appreciate is the “Bingo!” exclamation every time you land a hit. Guess this is from the arcade days.
Completed Ace Combat 4.
The game is short. 18 missions and about 2 hours of actual gameplay.
The problem with the game is the rather tedious mission structure. You’re often just given 15 minutes to score enough points in any way you see fit. And while the idea of picking your targets in any order is interesting, nothing is more frustrating than running out of time.
The contrast is most obvious between Mission 10, where you have to try to hit an enemy submarine dock, and Mission 11, where you escort friendly transport planes.
New planes become available as the game progresses, and you’re supposed to buy them with the money you earn from completing missions. But after you get the EF-2000 midway through the game, there’s not much point in buying anything else.
Also, maybe because of the point system, but friendly units don’t actually shoot anything, as far as I can tell.
You get some cool jets at the end: the F-22, F-15 ACTIVE, and for the final mission, the Su-47.
It’s impossible to call Thirteen a nemesis, because Mobius 1, the protagonist, is ever silent, and they meet only twice throughout the game. The first time, you just need to escape; the second time, you shoot him down.
Of course, the final mission has you flying through multiple corridors. But either because I was playing with an analog controller, or because I was prepared, or maybe simply because it’s easier than later installments, I managed it on the first try.
The hardest part was figuring out what the game wanted from you, because the two corridors you have to fly through are parallel, but the third one is perpendicular to the first two, so you have to circle the island to find the entrance.
Still, it’s a cool mission, with cruise missiles launching and lasers sweeping the sky.
Ace Combat is one of my all time favorite series. Enough to say that I got myself a PS2 only to play that game, because emulators, despite all their advantages, can’t deal with its analog controls properly.
But I also have to admit that Ace Combat 4, Ace Combat 5 and Zero are kind of the same game. You fly the same jets, you have just a couple of weapons, and you mostly just shoot missiles at everything.
What varries is how the story is presented. Ace Combat 4 uses anime stills. And the story is not about you, but about your adversary, called Yellow 13. He is viewed through the eyes of a boy, whom he orphaned by accident. The boy works in a pub where the occupier pilots gather. Bartender and his dauther are part of the Resistance, though, and wait for the occupation to end. Despite the dauther being secretly in love with Yellow 13. It is a nice way to tell a story. Contrast this with “in your face” storytelling of Assault Horizon.
One problem I have with the game, though, is that a lot of mission are “earn X points before time ends”. Which means that instead of engaging with mission objectives, you are just caught up in an endless foxfight. That also means you have to resupply once or even twice through the mission.
There are some signature missions, though. When I saw a ravine in Mission 7, I imediattely knew where this was going. And right on queue, and orbital cannon starts to fire at you, and the only way to dodge it is of course to navigate through the ravine.
One of my best purchases ever was Playstation 2 with an Infinity chip that allowed to play burned games. But burning is a hassle, despite the fact I still have a DVD burner and some blank DVDs.
So when I heard that now you can run games directly from a memory card I had to try it. Turns out this isn’t such a new thing. You could run games from memory card for a few years, using MX4SIO. But the newer cards combine both functions of memory card, storing saves, and DVD emulator.
I got the Bitfunx card which is readily available from AliExpress.
It boots fine into Free McBoot. But would get stuck while trying to boot into OPL MMCE, which is how you run games from the SD card.
After some trial and error, I figured out that I need to actually disabled my Infinite chip (hold Start while booting, then restart once).
As I wrote at least once already, Saturn version of Virtua Figher 2 was inferior to the arcade original. And that’s the version that was ported to PS2 as part of Sega Ages Collection series.
But from this video I discovered that PS3 and Xbox360 actually had a proper arcade version. I don’t own Xbox360 anymore, but still have PS3, so I gave it a try. And they aren’t wrong. It is indeed the arcade version, with bridges in Shun’s stage and all that.
Interestingly, PC version, which was the first I played, is a mix of the stages from the Saturn version and models from the arcade version. So I was right to remember that PC version somehow looked better.
The main benefit of that version is that there’s a movelist in the pause menu.
Of course there is another Xibalba golden temple, called here Torifune. I’m not sure if it’s more annoying than the one in Innocent Sin or slightly less. There are unavoidable traps, which I consider a bad design choice, but the dungeon is slightly shorter.
The nice thing about Eternal Punishment is there are some unique abilities to the character-specific personas, with dedicated animations, that makes them feel special, and really burn through enemies.
There is a system of registering and duplicating spell cards in this game. In later games, this will be replaced with registering and resummoning personas.
Despite beating the final boss on my second try, I still consider it quite ridiculous. I had to resurect characters 40 times, as he continuously smashes all characters for 3/4 of their life.
But hey, my characters were level 69-71, while a guide I read later suggest them to be 80-90 😆
Overall, I think it’s a shame they decided to split the game into two parts. Innocent Sin had a compeling story that ended with a cliffhanger, but the sequel is mostly the same ideas, with more dungeon grinding on top.
The game tries very hard to tie-in the first Persona, something Innocent Sin never attempted to do. I never played Persona 1, so all those Guido and The Boy With an Earing don’t mean anything to me.
After the Underwater Temple, Ellen leaves the party (no big loss, although that could be said about most characters in this game), and Tatsuya joins. Now we have Katsuya and Tatsuya, great! Tatsuya explains that he’s the conciense of Tatsuya from The Other Side in a body of Tatsuya from This Side. Although technically This Side is the Other Side 😆
At least he arrives leveled enough, while all my other characters seem to be constantly underleveled, as no matter how much I grind, it still doesn’t seem to be enough.
Finally discovered what the different metals are for: summoning unique personas. And those are used automatically, when you reach around level 50.
The Sea Cruiser and Underwater Temple sequence is… punishing. I’m glad Innocent Sin taught me to always stock on HP and MP items to the max. Still, the Underwater Temple is full of trapped floors that make you repeat the same sequence over and over again. And unlike trapped floors in Innocent Sin, those are only visible on the minimap.
During fight with Chizuru in the temple, I simply got lucky. Persona 2 loves the “shell game” mechanic. Boss summons 4 clones, then swaps places with one. Clones have some reflective properties, either a particular element or like in this case all of them. You need to guess which is the real one, and once you do, clones disappear, then the process repeats itself. Chizuru also casts Rage, which doubles the physical damage, but makes character attack at random. Which is usually deadly, as 4 out of 5 enemies would reflect the double damage right back. But this time, it simply worked in my favour, finishing the boss off.
They tought that the burning museum episode was great, apparently, so you have to do it again. Yes, PSX version also has the heatwave effect, although it’s not that good. Don’t know if they made it easier, or I simply knew the trick, but I did manage to complete this without a problem in 10 minutes instead of 30.
The game makes very little sense without Innocent Sin, as at one point Maya asks if anyone could hear a girl: as she rescued the Cosplayer in the Other World there. And then Tatsuya flies the zeppelin, saying “he seen how it’s done once”. It’s Maya from the Other World that showed him.
This game takes place in an alternative version of the world known as The Other Side, and the main protagonist is now Maya. In this world Jun’s father is alive, so Jun is not the Joker, and Joker is much simpler – just killing the people you wish would be dead.
Contact system was slightly reworked, now each character has just one phrase, so there’s less guesswork. But the PSX version doesn’t have the mood tracker PSP version had, so you have to remember how many times the persona has already reacted.
Another thing PSX version doesn’t have is the persona compatibility indicator, so you have to remember how many MP persona usually costs, and how many MP is required when you equip it on a character.
In this world, King Leo is not just an arsonist, but a serial murderer. He’s also the son of a minister, so he’s admitted to an asylum, until becoming Joker and getting superpowers.
Completed Persona 2 Innocent Sin.
I haven’t mentioned the dungeons in Persona 2, and that’s because they are horrible. They are ugly mazes that lack any logic and made to be annoying with invisible traps that often impossible to avoid. Xibalba, the final dungeon / alien spaceship, is the epytomy of everything wrong with them. It’s 8 floors of annoyance.
Storywise, it’s a fun concept, though, were all the fears come true. So when one character says that there might be laser traps, and another is afraid to be locked in an oven room: both things happen. And Michele has to face metalic version of his father, because that’s what he’s afraid of.
I managed to beat the final boss with the default personas, and my characters were only around level 57 or so. So I honestly thought there will be another dungeon after that.
The ending is disappointing, and it feels to me that they just decided to split the game in two. After beating Niarhalotep, Crazy Teacher appears and stabs Maya with Longinus spear, so she cannot be healed. Nia says something along the lines, “what did you expect, to beat a god and defy a profecy?” and Philimone offers to “try another time”. This is a common theme in Shin Megami Tensei games, where at the end heroes are offered to either forget everything or continue suffering: Persona 3 and Devil Summoner 2 are two examples I remember, and I didn’t play that many games in the series.
I went to the Aquarius temple first, so I didn’t understand why Longinus said to Jun “you don’t know who this seat is intended for”. The second temple I did was Scorpio, and its boss is Shadow Michele. Turns out Persona 4 just repeats the concept of shadows from Persona 2.
Michele’s plotline is quite touching, though, albeit simple: he was a fat kid, so he liked the only girl that threated him well.
When they grew up, he became fit, and she got fat, so she hid her identity (they are all using nicknames anyway, Michele is Ekichi’s nickname), then sold her soul to Joker in order to be beautiful.
Because the rumors are coming true, we meet the ghost of Maia in the temple, despite her never dying there.
After Nazis appear and all characters (except Yukki, because she’s from the previous game) get upgraded personas, there’s a difficulty spike. But nothing that can’t be resolved by grinding. Tatsuya’s Vulcanus Prime also gets an amazing Fiery Fury skill. As I mentioned, skills in Persona 2 have three target types: single, group and “all”, with “all” being the best. Why wouldn’t you like to hit all your enemies after all? Well, one reason is that some enemies are resistant to fire attacks. But here the second part of this skill comes into play: it doubles as physical attack as well. So it’s basically effective against everything.
Yukki gets a new persona too, but only for a short while, as she leaves the party after her boyfriend is killed by the Nazis. We manage to rescue Jun/Joker from Niarlotep (never expected so much Lovecraft influence). Turns out it’s Jun’s father who has been leading the Masked Circle, not Jun. Jun replaces Yukki as a party member, and all the party members get new personas once again. This time really new, instead of adding “Prime” to the name of the persona.
Now party need to beat 4 temples, one for each element. At the end of the first temple Jun gets persona mutation, first time in the game.
I think this game is easier than most other games in the series, because money solves everything. Items are cheap and you can stock tons of them, so you never run out of SP. And your SP also recovers with every step. Compare that to the stingy mechanics from Persona 4, where SP regen was one of the later skills, and SP recovery items were limited.
It is surprisingly easy to paint yourself into a corner in this game, since you can switch personas for all characters, not just the protagonist, you can end up with no healing personas at all. And you can switch personas back only in Velvet Room outside of the dungeon.
In the Aerospace museum, there’s an interesting heatwave effect from all the fire in the building. Other than that, though, it’s an annoying dungeon with a real-time timer and a goal to find kids in a maze, interrupted by fights. I’m just glad it’s over.
Before the museum, you need to guess 2 out of 4 buildings Leo planted bombs in. If you guess wrong, there’s a video showing a building being blown, but you can still continue the game, unlike of the timer in the museum runs out. I was wondering how they would reconcile that. Turns out, Leo just blows the buildings still, just later.
After the museum, the game dumps a lot of story on you. Tatsuya, Ekichi and Lisa all played together as kids, but they never seen each other faces, because they were wearing Power Rangers bird masks. They called themselves Masked Circle, same as the terrorist organisation, and the fourth kid is the leader of that organisation. They also met Maia while they were playing, although she is a few years their senior. Maia is the one that thaight them the Persona game, and that’s why all four can use personas.
When Maia told them she has to leave with her family, the kids locked her up in a temple for a night, hoping that she would stay. Tatsuya got locked up as well for objecting the plan. But at night, King Leo stabbed Tatsuya and burned the temple. Kids assumed that Maia died in the fire, and that’s the eponimial Innocent Sin the game refers to.
