Tobe’s Vertical Adventure (TVA) is a retro, 16-bit, 2D platformer, developed by Secret Base. It was released in 2011, capitalizing on the nostalgia of thirty-year-olds. Playing it ten years later, still evokes fond memories of the SNES, however the market for retro sprites and game mechanics has become saturated with so many indie studios doing ...
Darn, I was kind of hoping my experience with the game was the result of using an Xbox 360 controller with the horrible mushroom-style d-pad. Looks like it IS actually a problem with the game's implementation of input, and not the input device at fault.
The problem with dialog in Japanese games is the fact that Weebs demand LITERAL translations, instead of idiomatic localizations, like we got in the glory days of Ted Woolsey. The stilted exchanges we see in modern Japanese games are the way they are because that's how Japanese people speak. We should be glad that the original Japanese character names were Nipponized Western names, otherwise we'd be stuck with (more) Europan characters with Japanese names.
You choose various responses to make on the walkie-talkie to your fellow lookout lady, which then leads you to various areas on the map to explore, and which triggers various events. You explore areas and search for items, investigating and discovering various things. There really aren't any puzzles per se. But I am hesitant to label it a Visual Novel, seems more involved to me.
I'm kind of fuzzy on the gameplay section here. Do you do anything besides walk around and talk on the walkie-talkie? Are there any puzzles? We might have to reclassify this thing as a Visual Novel.
Looking at your backlog, I recommend you try Legend of Grimrock next. It's a different type of RPG than the ones you've been playing a lot lately, plus you need a change of pace from all the action games you're playing right now.
