Play This Set June 2024 - RetroAchievements/RANews GitHub Wiki

Play This Set is a showcase for our passionate community members to write about the games and achievement sets they love. Whether you're an achievement developer looking to promote your work or a player wanting to spread the word about your favorite hidden gem, we're always looking for new Play This Set submissions. If interested, submit your write-up as a private message to {% rauserpic RANews %}.

Game	Console	Genre
Shatterhand	NES/Famicom	2D Platforming, Action

• Set by: {% rauserpic MeCKooLL %}, {% rauserpic Shmelyoff %}
• Write-up by: {% rauserpic Whynot15 %}

Shatterhand is a reskin of Tokkyuu Shirei Solbrain (Super Rescue Solbrain), a Tokusatsu show about detectives who transform into Power Ranger-like heroes. To appeal to the American audience, they did the obvious thing and changed the robot-like protagonist into a buff Brooklyn detective with a cutoff vest...and robot arms. There's also a change to the excuse plot the game has where you're stopping a general from world domination.

The game itself plays like a slimmed down, melee-focused Mega Man. You traverse some platforming levels that each end with a boss. After stage 1, you pick what order to play the next 5 stages before making your way to a lengthy final stage, complete with a few boss refights and a battle against the general himself. Rather than gaining new weapons permanently after each stage, you'll find a couple powerups, most notably "A" (Alpha) and "B" (Beta) letters which give you a robot helper based on the order & combination you pick them up. These sidekicks have abilities ranging from highly situational to extraordinarily helpful and borderline broken and are virtually required if you want to beat some of the bosses damageless. They also help you unlock your super mode, which makes you temporarily invincible and able to dish out ridiculous damage.

The set itself is fairly robust and well-designed. Beyond progression and progression-adjacent achievements, you'll have some typical damageless boss fights, finding hidden powerups, and a few unique challenges scattered here and there (such as reaching the final boss with no money and full health). While beating the game deathless may seem like the biggest barrier to mastery, beating some of the harder levels (especially the final level) deathless with no upgrades may take the cake. Your damage and range will be heavily defanged and sections that are fairly trivial with the appropriate bot will turn harrowing when all you have is your fists. Good luck!

Game	Console	Genre
Star Parodier	PC Engine CD/TurboGrafx-CD	Shoot 'em Up

• Set by: {% rauserpic hardt %}
• Write-up by: {% rauserpic PaddyW %}

Besides all the hard shoot 'em ups (or "shmups" like the cool kids say), there also exist the fun ones which are less challenging and less frustrating. One of them is Star Parodier by Hudson Soft for PC Engine CD. It's a vertical shmup with colorful graphics, great music, and three playable characters that kinda spoofs other games in a charming way. Unlike the famous Parodius games by Konami, this one has a slightly elevated difficulty curve. Just the last of the eight stages has its challenging moments. Everything is manageable for shmup beginners or advanced players. Each level is filled with creative enemies and vibrant backgrounds that keeps the experience visually stimulating and enjoyable, so even experts can have fun with it. It's fast, it's fun, and it's really worth playing. Another plus is the caravan mode to beat high scores in a short stage within a time limit.

So, why should someone play the achievement set? The set is fair and covers the game difficulty. Beating each stage is absolutely possible with unlimited continues. The obligatory "no-death" achievements are doable for the same reason. Surpassing the high scores in the time attack mode is manageable with a bit of concentration and without excessive precision.

Overall, it's a good shooter and set, even for beginners.

Game	Console	Genre
Tengai Makyou: Ziria	PC Engine CD/TurboGrafx-CD	Turn-based RPG

• Set and write-up by: {% rauserpic ladynadiad %}

Tengai Makyou is one of the most well known JRPG series that western gamers have never heard of. Until recently, most of the games were Japanese only with no fan translations, and even now there are still only a few games translated. Still, it is a series very worth playing for any JRPG fan. Tengai Makyou: Ziria is the first game in the series, and recently got a very good quality fan translation and a set. The game actually was the first RPG released on CD-ROM and PC Engine CD in general. However, unlike most release games, this one actually is really well made and shows off the capabilities of the PC Engine CD quite well.

While playing the game, it is very easy to forget this game was released in 1989 with its gorgeous pixel art, voice acted cutscenes, and animated enemies. The game is chock full of content and the overall quality of it makes it amazing to consider this game fit on a single CD-ROM. Tengai Makyou: Ziria easily can hold its own with some of the classics on SNES that came out after it, even to a degree with quality of graphics. The gameplay is simple, but fun. It's turn based and you start off with a single character and eventually grow to a party of 3. A few NPCs also can join up and help the heroes out in battle. You've got skills called jutsu that have a various range of effects along with consumables.

The story itself is simple. An evil cult called the Cult of Daimon is seeking to resurrect the big bad that was sealed years ago, and Ziria, being a descendant of one of the heroes that sealed it away in the past, is tasked to prevent it from destroying the world. What makes it neat is that the world is a fictional version of Japan called Jipang. The locations visited are based on real world locations, but there is a mix of folklore, Japanese mythology, and outright fiction from old books thrown into the mix to build an interesting world. As you progress further in the story and defeat members of the cult, you bring peace to various areas and get rewarded with treasures, experience, a lack of random encounters in an area, and so on. As you gain experience and become more powerful you also get rewarded with an increased chance to do multiple hits with an attack and to dodge enemy attacks, including powerful magic and skills.

Overall, this game is definitely a hidden gem and absolutely worth it for any JRPG fan to play. The set is well made and covers all the content with some fair challenges to show off some interesting mechanics around the bosses that could have been missed otherwise. Overall the set does a great job of showing off this game without frustrating the player and requiring anything that a little grinding can't solve if it comes down to it.

Game	Console	Genre
Etrian Odyssey II: Heroes of Lagaard	Nintendo DS	Turn-based RPG, Dungeon Crawl

• Set by: {% rauserpic KevinCarbonara %}
• Write-up by: {% rauserpic Olafur %}

Come down to the city of High Lagaard! In the Grand Duchy, they say that the Duke is descended from inhabitants of a castle that resides high up in the sky, within a dangerous Labyrinth. Draw your own map and mark it with various tools to help guide you on your way, fight monsters, and form your own guild! But beware, the beginning is going to be brutal on you. It might get easier as time goes on, but do not drop your guard. You have no idea what sort of traps and dangers you might face. The Duke is gravely ill and needs your help to retrieve the legendary Grail of Kings from the castle!

Form a party of up to 5 with 12 classes to choose from, each with 4 portraits! Mix and match and find the combination that suits you best! Name them after yourself, your friends, your family, heck, maybe even your dog! With each trip to the Labyrinth, you'll be slightly stronger and have a bit more of the map filled in to help you on your way. Good luck, the Duke is counting on you!

Game	Console	Genre
Startling Odyssey II: Maryuu Sensou	PC Engine CD/TurboGrafx-CD	Turn-based RPG

• Set by: {% rauserpic Snow %}
• Write-up by: {% rauserpic AmazingBaha %}

Over the last month or two, thanks to the PlayJam event, I have really been digging into the PC Engine CD library - mostly RPGs. It was a system I ignored mostly as a kid, and it wasn't until the Virtual Console hit that I got my paws on Dungeon Explorer and was blown away. Native 5-player support was crazy – the N64 and GameCube didn't even go past four controller ports. And while it was similar in appearance to games you would see on maybe the Famicom, it also had a distinct sound chip and I loved it. Not long after that, Ys I & II also hit Virtual Console and I was blown away again with the high-quality CD audio.

This was also the first of many times playing through the first two Ys games. To this day when I think of the dungeon that I would argue is the best in the series, Solomon Shrine, the PCECD iteration is the one I have in mind. Over time I found out that there was a translation for my first Ys game which was 3, a version of the fourth and a crapload of other RPGs with translations trickling in. You can imagine the feast I was ready for when seeing the PlayJam lineup.

I came for the first-person dungeon crawling (and maybe the nudity) in Lady Sword, and went on to finish the incredible Tengai Makyou: Ziria. When I saw the mature tag on Startling Odyssey II my first thought was a perfect middle ground, a massive naughty sci-fi globe-trotting adventure. I was kind of right; that world, most of it shown on the title screen is large. The first thing they show you is that there's a lot of ground to cover.

I'll knock out the bad first. The encounter rate sucks. Thankfully you get warp magic so you don't have to backtrack after clearing many dungeons. The translation isn't great either, but that might be a silver lining - more on that later. There isn't as much NSFW stuff as I'd hoped. Also, expect to use a guide constantly unless you want a bad time; this set does have treasure collection achievements, but some of the dungeons are no longer available after finishing them so they're totally missable. With 181 chests in total, not counting key items and enemy chests, it's a scary run when you're hoping whoever did the one guide on GameFAQs didn't miss anything along the way.

Thankfully they didn't, and using that guide and a very helpful post on the official forum topic you should be fine. Another annoying thing I noticed is the way gear stat changes are displayed. They use an 8-bit value, so eventually you'll get to a point where you start finding gear in chests and shops that are mechanically better but the increase stops showing at 255 so you're stuck looking at armor or weapon tables to figure out what the better gear is.

To be fair though, this is like Tengai Makyou: Ziria, in that it really seems to try pushing the amount of content that they could fit into the CD format at the time. Even though the encounter rate can get bad, dungeons are generally not too lengthy. There are a lot, so it's good being able to get in and out fairly quickly.

The translation was something else, and I loved it. From what I was able to google, it was machine translated with a little bit of correction. The delivery of most lines is awkward, often hilariously so. Probably not intentional, but it was the most fun I had all game.

There's a bunch of CG cutscenes that look nice. The only thing that stinks is that they couldn't be translated like the text dialogue. But I get that injecting subs to vocal audio tracks is a lot harder than translating text when it already exists so I can live without it.

Outside CG everything looks good too. Late in the game, you have access to an airship resembling a bee, and some of the environments and colors almost remind me of elements you could see in Paladin's Quest.

It's a shame a third in the series was cancelled. It was meant to be in a reverse chronology like how Lufia II is a direct prequel to 1. The good news is that we can play the sequel whenever Startling Odyssey I gets its own translation, it's just a shame the story wasn't able to go further back because dialogue in this game points to a lot of interesting backstories that could have been.

Anyhow, you should check out Startling Odyssey II. It's a nice looking game where if you can handle a few of the annoyances common in older RPGs, you're rewarded with the whole spectrum of feelings this game puts you through. Strap yourself in because it's a rollercoaster once things pick up.

Game	Console	Genre
Final Fantasy Adventure | Mystic Quest	Game Boy	Action RPG

• Set by: {% rauserpic Umaro137 %}
• Write-up by: {% rauserpic scatter %}

What do you know about Gemma Knights? No, that isn't my grandma, it's a powerful order of protectors to the great Mana Tree. With its future in jeopardy thanks to the evildoing of the Dark Lord and a man named Julius, can you prove your strength and defend the source of eternal life?

Final Fantasy Adventure is, confusingly, the first entry in the Mana series (Secret of Mana, Trials of Mana, etc.) and was later rereleased/remade under a few different names. This version is the first, and while I haven't played the remakes, I thought this was pretty fun. Imagine an early Zelda, but instead of having to get good, you could just grind levels until you can't lose. That's fun!

Unless you're a certain type of person - and you'll know if you are - I really wouldn't recommend playing this without a guide at hand. It's pretty hard to know where you're going at any given time, the map is pretty big and samey, and the dungeons even more so. And until about halfway through the game it's fully possible to softlock yourself out of progressing without starting all over, so that'll be something to watch out for.

The game isn't too incredibly dense with secrets, but it's fun to pick up all the optional gear upgrades, and there are a couple easter eggs to look out for in the set. It's a very solid game, a bit rough around the edges, but you'll have a good time.

One last thing: buy keys and mattocks.

Game	Console	Genre
Final Fantasy	PlayStation Portable	Turn-based RPG

• Set by: {% rauserpic Snow %}
• Write-up by: {% rauserpic crrool %}

Final Fantasy. A classic JRPG known the world over. If you've played JRPGs you've probably at least heard of this series. I am here today recommending the original, but in my opinion the most well-designed and well balanced version of the original (both for game and set), Final Fantasy 1 for the PSP.

A brief introduction. Final Fantasy 1 is a game where you play as the 4 warriors of light, each carrying an darkened Orb. Over the course of the past several centuries the light has slowly faded from the world. The power of the four elements faded and the world has slowly faded with it. Your task is to find a way to bring light back to the world and save the world from this darkness.

At the start of the game you get to pick your characters from 6 classes. While no class is mandatory, you'll want a White Mage to help you heal. Besides the White Mage the game is doable regardless of what you pick. I went with a Warrior, Thief, Thief, White Mage setup, but depending on your play style there are plenty of options. The game is very doable regardless of your choice (see also the Solo Class subset), though the healing is nice to have for the stronger versions of Chronodia (the hardest boss in the game).

The nice thing about this set is it covers everything about the game without anything being missable. Going through the set you'll be seeing every corner of the map, every encounter possible, getting every chest and even mastering the secret minigame. To me this set is much of what makes RA fun. Getting to see every corner of the game and truly getting to 100% the game, without anything feeling overly tedious. Even beating the 8 versions of Chronodia is quite doable in my opinion, although it doesn't hurt to have a guide open for this particular part.

If you're a fan of RPGs, or just getting started with them and want to dip your toes into a classic, Final Fantasy for the PSP is a fantastic game to start.

Game	Console	Genre
Ganpuru: Gunman's Proof	SNES/Super Famicom	Role-Playing Game

• Set by: {% rauserpic Alena %}
• Write-up by: {% rauserpic Nepiki %}

What do you get if you grab The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, throw it into the wild west, and give it a bunch of guns? You get Ganpuru: Gunman's Proof! Man, I've known about this title for a while now but I only played it recently on RetroAchievements and it was such a fun experience. And my funny description isn't even that inaccurate either! You play as a boy whose body gets taken over by a space sheriff, hunting down an evil space villain taking refuge on Earth and releasing monsters around the wild west in the process. With his body now controlled by the sheriff, he suddenly becomes a master marksman and goes through eight dungeons with a boss at the end to claim a bounty and make progress through the story. These dungeons don't have too much of a focus on puzzles as its counterpart does, but the structure and layouts are definitely what you would expect from a game like this. After each dungeon, the kid also gains access to more weapons, which are dropped by enemies randomly and certainly have an impact on the gameplay.

But what is perhaps most interesting about this game specifically, is the ranking system it has. I have never really seen anything like this before in a game within this genre, but it's as follows: whenever you beat a boss, a timer starts. You are expected to make it to the next boss and beat it within 8 minutes to get the highest rank, meaning you are quite literally speedrunning through the world, to the next dungeon, through the dungeon, and then defeating the boss at a semi-high pace. I really, really love this idea and that's why I can also highly recommend checking out this game. And don't worry, aside from one dungeon being quite tight, most ranks are quite generous upon having a bit of experience with the game. Play through it normally first, have fun, and then get back for those. What also helps is that the set is handled very well by developer {% rauserpic Alena %}, having leaderboards present at all times to let you know exactly how much time you have left to get the S rank. Really good set for a really fun game!

Oh, and the game has a horse randomly transforming into Sailor Moon. If I haven't convinced you yet, now I certainly have.

Game	Console	Genre
Final Fantasy X: International	PlayStation 2	Turn-based RPG

• Set by: {% rauserpic Snow %}
• Write-up by: {% rauserpic Sutarion %}

Final Fantasy X is a game that I have enjoyed for many years now. The world of Spira, its inhabitants, and the stellar cast of characters you travel with make it one of the best narratives in the series. The international version was a Japanese exclusive release that included lots of new content that would not be made available to other markets until the HD remasters. This new content includes a whole bunch of superbosses to push your strategy and party composition to its limit. Even with max stats, some of the bosses require careful planning in order to successfully defeat them.

The set, made by {% rauserpic Snow %}, covers nearly all the content in the game. Each boss has its own challenge, side quests are fully covered, and nearly every item/treasure chest is tracked by an achievement (use the spreadsheet guide linked on the game wall for this one, as many are easy to miss!). There are cheap tactics that can be used on the superbosses, but the achievements prevent them from being used, requiring you to defeat the boss in the way the developers intended. To me, this set is the gold standard for what an RPG set should include and it makes me excited to see how a Final Fantasy X-2 set may look in the future.

If you are new to Final Fantasy altogether, haven't played Final Fantasy X, or are itching to explore the world of Spira again, this is the best way to explore everything the game has to offer.

Game	Console	Genre
~Hack~ Mario Party 64	Nintendo 64	3D Platforming, Collect-a-thon

• Set by: {% rauserpic Delmaru %}
• Write-up by: {% rauserpic MeloDeathAtmoBlack %}

Super Mario 64 ROM hacks are some of the most interesting out there, and it's always fun to look around and see what concepts people have used to create a brand new world in its engine. But in this one, it's hardly a new world at all - this hack recreates every board from the first Mario Party as if it were a level in SM64, and the result is one of my favorite hacks. The creativity in adapting each board is highly commendable, with most prominent landmarks being home to a star or two. And some minigames were made into mini star levels as well. Instead of blistering your hand in a vain attempt to pull Bowser into a pit, now you need to sprint across the rope to reach the end while it shifts and flips underneath you. Or jumping over hot ropes or mixing up mushrooms in the SM64 engine. Not every minigame got such a makeover, but those that did are the highlights of the overall hack, and I was always looking forward to the next one. And altogether, this is one of the easier SM64 hacks that I've played - and that's great! A lot of hacks can be intimidating since they're usually made by a community who are already highly skilled and want to seek even further challenges. In this one, with the exception of a few individual stars, most coming from Eternal Star, you won't need to have this sort of surgical mastery over Mario's moveset, usually because the world and platform geometry are mostly lifted from its inspiration game, so there aren't many daunting obstacle courses. It might push you a little bit, but anyone who can beat the original SM64 is already good enough to beat this hack too. There are dozens of SM64 hacks with achievement sets, so if you're not sure which one to start with, I'd highly recommend Mario Party 64.