On the Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness, Episode 3

The Penny Arcade Adventure games have been quite enjoyable in the past. While some small-scale, indie games tied to a niche audience sometimes come up a bit flat (much as most tie-in video games, with notable exceptions like GoldenEye or a large number of Star Wars games, do,) the Penny Arcade games are actually fun, which one would hope for given that they're based on a web comic that has a profound influence on the gaming community.

The first two games were plenty of fun, with a lot of that wonderfully off-kilter Penny Arcade humor and gameplay that was simple but with enough depth and skill to require a bit of thought. But after a few years of development hell, Episode 3 finally came out with a different studio and an utterly different style.

PAA: OtRSPoD 3 is a grand homage to the JRPGs of the Super Nintendo era - a golden age of SquareSoft that gave us such epic titles as Final Fantasy VI (or III, or whatever,) Secret of Mana, and Chrono Trigger. This era appeals particularly to someone of my age (upper 20s) as those were the games that I was playing when I was first discovering the wonders of gaming (ok, in fairness, I actually hadn't played Chrono Trigger until college, but still.)

So for me, this is a nostalgia-fest like whoa. It features 16-bit-style graphics and turn-based combat (with a little meter at the top to show the order of when people are moving and see how speed will affect things,) but a few more modern innovations to speed up the flow (health and items reset after each battle and you gain 1 MP per turn, though you start with zero by default.)

Episode 3 looks and plays just like a Final Fantasy game of this era, and even though it may be a little on the short side, it's five bucks, and thus well worth the download. There's plenty of depth, between switching out equipment, balancing tons of abilities, and switching out the several "class pins," that you can give to each of your four party members to give them a number of new abilities. Of course, these all have the Penny Arcade sensibility to them, like the Crabomancer, which gives you various defensive spells and attacks based on your own defense level, to the Hobo, who can inflict Hoboism on your foes (which deals damage-over-time.) Like Final Fantasy classes, the class pins have their own special feels to them, and likewise, each character's permanent class (Gabe is a Brute, Tycho a Scholar, Jim, the skull in a jar, is a Necromaster, while newcomer Moira is a Gumshoe.)

So if you want to feel like a little kid again, I highly recommend checking this out. Plus: because of its primitive graphics, pretty much anyone will be able to play this without worrying about lag, even if you have a weak computer.