Top 512 — Week 4 — Poll 9

[This Old Neon]

Welcome to the #BGE2020 Elimination Round of 512!

Each game is seeded based on its performance in the two opening rounds of pools. Every game in the Upper Bracket has defeated multiple other games in 1-on-1 polls to get to this point. These are still the best of the best.

Polls are updated weekly, typically on Sunday or Monday. Check back throughout the week to make sure you don't miss a vote!

HOW TO VOTE

This is easy. You only get one vote per poll. The game with the most votes wins. In the event of a tie, the higher seed advances, so don't get complacent!

[Kong Wen]

Two more fantastic games here. I've got to give it to Destiny of an Emperor here for a few reasons.

For Dark Souls III's side, it's not quite as good as the pinnacle games that came before it in the series (namely Demon's Souls and Dark Souls).

For Destiny of an Emperor's own merits, it has a fantastic '80s Capcom soundtrack. And it is a very unique and ambitious approach to RPG gameplay that still tells the story of the Three Kingdoms period and incorporates some of the defining features of that story (HP is soldiers, magic spells are tactics, you can recruit and use hundreds of generals in your party (although there are obviously main intended heroes), etc.). But despite that scope, it remains coherent and simple and legible to anyone familiar with RPG mechanics. Fantastic game that has flown under many radars for whatever reason. People who are interested in retro RPGs need to go beyond just Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy and give it a shot.

[Niahak]

I'm still kind of flabbergasted that Destiny of an Emperor got localized. It's hard to translate as a Japanese retelling of a Chinese story, especially throwing the manga it's based on into the works (leading to weird one-off characters like Huo Hu).
I think it flows a lot better than its sequel, since DOAE 1 is more story-light and has a much faster walking speed. It's very snappy for an NES RPG, and although the tactic names take some getting used to it's pretty balanced up until the end.
And even if it takes many liberties with Three Kingdoms, many of them are forgivable as the characters and personalities involved shine through the skewed events. DOAE got me interested in Three Kingdoms well before many materials were available in English. The Moss Roberts translation came out in '91, but I wasn't able to get it until probably around 2000.

DOAE also includes a great inversion of "But thou must!", in which assuming you must make the wrong decision early means an extra general in a boss fight later. After your initial fight against him, Yuan Shu asks to be released multiple times, and you must say "No" three times to successfully execute him.

I didn't get particularly far in Dark Souls III. I liked the first two games well enough, but Dark Souls III was a weird mix of "this is familiar and boring" and "this is so chaotic that it is actually impossible for me to judge what the enemy is doing" - the shadow tentacle enemies in particular were incredibly frustrating, even the first boss of the game was difficult to get past when I tried to get back into it recently.

The tone and flavor were good (especially liked the "turtle priest" guy, and where his story seemed to be heading) but it felt like a chore to play.

[Kong Wen]