Castle Magus

"This is a formal apology to anyone who knew me when I was twelve."

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(Video contains some spoilers for not just Lunar: Dragon Song but several other games as well, which are mentioned in the video's description.)

Hmm, so, as of today, I learned that Lunar: Dragon Song is a thing that exists. I loved the other Lunar games, so it's weird that I've never even heard of this one before now. And I actually had a Nintendo DS in the time frame it was released, too.

And... it seems I may have dodged a bullet there. That said, based on this video but having not played this game myself, I'm not sure I would call this the worst RPG ever made. I mean, yeah, it kind of sounds like ass, but I'm sure I've played worse.

I mean, Ultima IX: Ascension[1] exists, after all. Look, the Ultima series was great. I even sort of liked Ultima VIII: Pagan, despite the atrociously shitty platform jumping (though, to be marginally fair to myself, it was [oddly, in retrospect] the first game I ever played in the Ultima series). And the early games are still good (if super ultra dated by today's standards). But Ultima IX was barely passable at best and putrid dogshit at worst. I mostly blame Electronic Arts for this (even if it wasn't just EA's fault).

Oh, and Dragon Age II, which is the game that essentially killed the Dragon Age franchise as far as I'm concerned. (Well, that and the fact that Dragon Age Inquisition apparently has one those early bird Denuvo forever-licenses on PC, which means I'll almost assuredly never play it). I mostly blame EA for this one, too (even if, again, it wasn't solely EA's fault, I guess). The first game (and, to a lesser extent, its DLCs and expansion) was rather good, though.

And Quest 64... um... the only thing I remember about that one now is that it was called Quest 64. So... I dunno, maybe it's not as bad as Lunar: Dragon Song?

And that's not even counting the myriad RPGMaker slop games that exists on Steam and the like nowadays. Sure, there are some decent ones in there, but there are some real stinkers in there, too. And these days, I only extremely rarely feel like digging through the pile to try find any potential gold, and I usually only do so via word-of-mouth from elsewhere.

[1] - Spoony's whole Ultima Retrospective series was pretty good. Disclaimer: it's been many years since I first watched this, when it was originally made, so I'm not sure how well it may hold up today, given that Spoony's brand of humor was... pretty brash. Man, I still kind of miss Spoony, even so... even if he's sort of back (after having gone off the deep end for several years) and occasionally does videos with that Conversations with Curtis guy (i.e. Paul Morgan Stetler, the guy who played Curtis in Phantasmagoria: A Puzzle of Flesh, a game that Spoony LPed back in ye olden days).