This Old Neon Forum

Welcome to the #BGE2020 Elimination Round Lower Bracket!

Each game in the lower bracket is still seeded based on its performance in the two opening rounds of pools! Every game in the lower bracket has already been defeated by another game in a 1-on-1 poll to get to this point. This is their chance to claw their way back into the main event... but the stakes are high. The games that lose in these polls are out of the tournament for good! The games that survive will face the next crop of upper bracket losers in the next round.

Polls are updated weekly, typically on Saturday... or 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!

I beat SMT Strange Journey Redux late last year - after attempting the original Strange Journey at least six times and falling off somewhere in the Bootes/Carina range I made beating Redux my New Years resolution last year. I absolutely love the sci-fi "explorers in a strange land" vibe but man it is still a slog, and that's with the Redux version adding encounter rate changes, removing the "protag death" game overs partway through, and generally making things much easier. Fusing/Sources especially are a pain point, but The Schwarzwelt is just too spread-out. It was interesting to finally beat a game that had been on my radar for years, and if they made a condensed version I would totally replay it. But the original version is just too slow for me. I liked the Etrian Odysseys in part because of the way the party develops through the game, but SJ doesn't really have that, and between the 6-skill limit on demons and the equipment limitations on the protagonist it makes things that much more boring.

More power to those who have the time for games like SJ - I just don't anymore, and my tastes have changed for it. FWIW, Jiminez and Zelenin are way better than most SMT characters... shame about SMT5.

I've not played much of Terranigma (I'm picky about playing emulated), but I've played enough to know it is paced better, has an interesting plot, and my heart holds a special place for its predecessor, the weird and wild Illusion of Gaia.

So this is a case where I'm pretty sure the game I know less is better.

Maybe Terranigma will get an oddly overdue Western release a la Trials of Mana and Live a Live before this Project is over lol.