UBON'S PROFILE

I have kind of the opposite feeling, tbh? Dawn of Sorrow's use of the touchscreen felt pretty obligatory, and I was happy they got rid of it. Ecclesia is super good and glyphs are a lot of fun, but it had waaay too many areas that were just a straight line.

but then, Portrait had its own problems with the pointless and unrewarding quests so I guess what I'm saying here is that I hate everything and love dracula

author=slash
well alright thenIt's on the original Playstation? I can probably figure that out...

there's also a PSP release of it, hidden in the PSP release of Rondo of Blood! it's on PSN if you're interested, and contains secret bonuses

(like new voice acting and Maria Mode, finally)

I'm kind of curious when it comes to colourized games like LA (that is, things that enjoyed a release on both the GBC and the original GB) whether being amphibious limited their colour design

the GBC had the same palette limitations as the NES, but had a possible colour depth identical to the SNES -- which means that when savvy people are at work (like they were in Star Ocean: Blue Sphere, that thing I can't stop talking about) you get things that are ridiculously beautiful for the relative simplicity of the graphics. things like contrast and value don't exist when you're dealing with a strictly monochrome palette, though, so the same techniques would just look muddy.

(that said, there have been some four-colour palettes that are absolutely beautiful for their purpose, and use highlight to gorgeous effect. the palette used in Akropolis and Safety: Life is a Maze is one of my favourites for this.)

AND SINCE YOU POSTED SOMETHING ABOUT HOW A GAME BOY GAME LOOKS, I have an excuse to post this incredibly thorough set of articles about the Super Game Boy, the weirdest bunch of palette challenges you'll get this side of the MSX. its tech has very little to do with the GBC, which had the luxury of drawing in colour instead of just colourizing monochrome input after the fact, but it's a wonderful read and I hope you enjoy it as much as I did

yeah, quicksaves are a very good way to deal with that while still disincentivizing savescumming. I've heard other examples that have fixed saves, but allow you resume from the start of a failed battle. Mother 3 has maybe the kindest method -- you resume from the last save point you saw (not used) with everything you had before the failed battle. that's the sort of thing that has a slightly larger footprint, though, since you'd have to make sure the player can't take things 'back in time' with them.

it's the kind of balance that's gonna be different for each person's project, more or less. it seems like a decent starting point to make saves available in some form should the player need them, but at the same time design the game so that they're not strictly needed for smooth progress.

someone once described saving to me as just a necessary means of respecting your player's time, and it's stuck with me as a basic design rule. having limited save points can be stylish, but it's also good to expect that your player is going to be pulled away suddenly at some point. it's a basic quality of life thing, not an answer to issues of difficulty or unclear consequences.

that said, I guess a lot of people see some appeal to the kind of game that necessitates a lot of saving and reloading, so who knows? games are broad enough that I try to stay flexible with what my own 'rules' are.

it's kind of interesting seeing how basic services on the internet have been trying to monetize things

I used to store all my things on xieke, ohsk, or webgel -- but fire-and-forget bitbuckets like that have a habit of vanishing, and there's no way to get a good list of things you've already uploaded anyway. in terms of basic function, imgur is probably best, though iirc they have a habit of lowering the quality of your images if you don't have a registered account.