The Master Project gets revealed! Introducing Chrono Reviews on GWN

The backstory

It is now time to reveal one of the main uses I plan to make of this blog, which is not unlike the CRPG Addict and the Adventurer’s Guild. If you’ve followed me for some time on Youtube, you’ll know I have gotten deeper and deeper in the mine of old video games, partly as a reaction to games these days being expensive and so extremely long. After 20 or so hours the pleasure of playing a new game more or less evaporates, and I rarely if ever get back to a game I dropped. Game Pass and PlayStation Plus Extra also help this Netflix-like mentality, where you can just download a recent release, play it for a handful of hours, and feel like you got your money’s worth out of the service even if you never beat the game. 

Inevitably, the curiosity to play all games in X genre and/or for Y console arises. Besides the two blogs mentioned above, I also want to shout out Jeremy Parish’s YouTube channel, the work Jeff Gerstmann is doing ranking all NES games, and the Portable Power Podcast YouTube channel for cataloguing and reviewing Game Boy games. 

So where do I (and this blog) fit into it? I was made aware recently of the existence of the CRPG addict via the DOS Game Club podcast (another shout out), and it brought to my attention that blogging in 2025 was still a viable avenue to communicate your thoughts to a dedicated audience. My first thought was naturally to go in the point-and-click adventure route, but a deeper dive on CRPG addict’s blog revealed the link to the Adventurer’s Guild, another blog who is years deep into that precise project. At the same time, I was not relishing the idea of spending hours and hours playing text adventures/RPGs, and I am a fan of consoles too, and would have to skip on some games that were released for those platforms but not PC (Final Fantasy or Portopia Murder Case, to name a couple). So I decided to take up a similar project, but make it mine in various ways; after some workshopping I decided to call it "Chrono Reviews".

The overview

My goal is to play through a bunch of games in (mostly) chronological orders (hence the feature's name), taken from the RPG, Strategy, Graphic Adventure, and FPS genres. I have grabbed the various lists from Wikipedia, and compiled and cleaned them up in a sheets file linked below. Note that I am not interested in playing EVERY SINGLE GAME in those categories, but rather want to experience the main ones and the B-level ones, and if there are a bunch of obscure games that go by the wayside I'm ultimately ok with that, and will send you back to the CRPG addict for a more complete list, though limited to CRPGs.

The games I play need to be in a language I understand. That means essentially English; I am A-OK with fan translations, but I will not slog my way through a bunch of Japanese-only (or Russian-only) RPGs. Again, it's not about playing every single game, but using this as an excuse to play some old games and tickle some receptors in my brain.

As I make progress playing the games, I will write blog posts about my experience, and ultimately give it a score (it's a review after all!) in terms of the RELATIVE scale I developed (see below). This is meant to capture how well the game I looked at holds up under modern scrutiny, and among the other games in the genre. While I do not pretend for these ratings to be objective (there is no such thing after all), I do try to take myself out of it the best I can, and give a somewhat impartial judgment on the merits and flaws of the game.

The main differences from the projects above are the fact that I will widen my scope in terms of genre, including every kind or RPG, as well as FPS and Strategy games; the interest in discussing retroachievements for compatible games; and, most importantly, we will alternate looking at different eras (1980, 1988, 1992, 1997, 2002) according to the rules listed below. The purpose of the last choice is to ensure we're not stuck in the mid-80s for three years, and get to experience more interesting, more advanced games at the same time as old classics.

It's all RELATIVE

The goal of the project is, naturally, to review games, so let me introduce you to our rating scale, called the Rather Extensive List of Active Tests Integral to a Veracious Evaluation, or RELATIVE for short.

The RELATIVE score will be out of 100 (for convenience's sake), and be evenly split among 10 categories, listed below with descriptions explaining what each category measures/represents.

1. The game setting

• Game world has unique features that distinguish it from other games
• Creators have endowed game world with history and lore
• You understand how your character and quest fit within overall game world
• You feel like you play a role in determining the world’s status

2. The player’s Avatar

• If character customization is an option, you get a chance to really make the character your own, and different choices lead to different feeling characters
• There is a sense of progression and increased complexity as your character levels up/improves
• If the character is pre-determined, it is consistently written and well-placed in the world.

3. Interaction with the world and its characters

• NPC dialogue, cutscenes, and/or object descriptions are well-realized and entertaining to explore.
• Secret areas are hidden but not too hidden, and contain fun rewards
• NPC Interaction makes your character/party members feel fully fleshed out.
• You get attached to the NPCs as if they were your own friends.

4. Quests and Story

• Game has a "main quest" or series of missions/objectives the completion of which constitutes the narrative of the game
• There should be few plot holes or false leads in the main narrative, unless they serve as (satisfying) plot twists
• In an RPG, the Main quest has different outcomes based on player decisions. Multiple endings are not required but are a plus for other genres.
• Game features side quests that offer opportunities for character building and flesh out the world.

5. Combat and difficulty balance

• If combat is present, player has numerous options in combat, all equally valid
• Some thought is required to get out of situations, but the challenge doesn’t seem impossible to beat
• Game does not require excessive quick load, pixel hunt, and trial-and-error to be beaten.
• There are no dead-end situations that require reloading a save from hours before.
• There are no broken builds that trivialize the combat, or puzzles that can only be figured out if you already know the solution
• Negative modifiers: excessive grinding required; needed to consult walkthrough to get unstuck

6. Inventory and interface

• Commanding your units is easy to understand, makes sense on the platform’s input device, and has useful shortcuts you get used to
• Upgrade paths (if present) are easy to determine and pick following your priorities
• Item descriptions are clear and helpful as to what the items will be used for.
• Information on screen is presented in a neat, easily accessible manner
• Interface is pretty to look at/based in the universe

7. Bartering and Economy

• Gathering resources to trade for items or upgrades follows a clear process. 
• Resources can be consistently obtained in a clear manner, and are clearly highlighted in the interface.
• There is a good variety of items/upgrades you can exchange for resources, so you’re not stuck in a linear chain of choices.
• The game is neither excessively generous, neither too stingy with the amount of resources available, so you feel like you have a shot but your resources matter until the very end
• For Point-and-click adventures, this mostly revolves around item trading chains, which should not be excessively long or convoluted.

8. Graphics and Sound

• I generally care little about graphics as long as they’re functional, and I can easily read where I am and where I’m going and where to click/interact with things.
• Character designs are unique and well-presented, and their animations and vfx are expressive.
• Music and sound effects are pleasant and non-distracting, especially in long games.
• NPC dialogue and barks, if spoken, are fun and well-acted

9. Playing and Replaying

• The game is easy to install and play on modern machines, without requiring crazy workarounds. 
• The overall experience of playing the game is fun.
• Game controls are responsive and appropriate to the genre and modern sensibilities
• Game is highly replayable, offering different experiences for different classes/alignments/approaches, or is fun enough that replaying it in a few months is an exciting prospect despite it being linear.
• Overall pacing is good; game is not over too quickly, neither does it drag

10. The X factor

• This category looks at the game heuristically and as part of its own genre. How does it innovate? What makes it special/unique? Does it have a lasting impact? Is it still fun to play today?

As I'm sure you can tell, the GIMLET ratings from the CRPG addict were a strong inspiration, but I made the categories my own to account for the various types of games we're gonna rate. It is my desire to be somewhat stringent with the scores. Not every game can be a winner in every single category, and not unlike the CRPG addict I'll strive to make a 40 a decent score, and a 70 an excellent one.

All plans must eventually meet the enemy on the battlefield, so I expect the rating scale and descriptions to get slightly updated as I actually start reviewing games of various kinds; but I'm hoping the bones are solid enough that this plan will stand the test of time (if not of my commitment).

The Games

Let's now talk about the games we will be playing for the next couple decades. You can find the list at this link. The first page lists the games currently on the docket, and the other sheets the list of games in each genre we're considering. These are ordered, where possible, by release date; whenever a release year was the only data posted on Wikipedia, a random seed was assigned to each entry, and they were sorted randomly according to that seed. I would love to find more exact release dates, but we're looking at thousands of games, and I was not about to google each of them individually.

As mentioned above, we will be looking in parallel at five time periods: we will start with 1980, which is the earliest year in the Adventure page (so we couldn't go any lower), and it also is the year that Akalabeth came out, so it seemed serendipitous; we might recover the older RPGs at some point, but it's not a priority at this time. 1992 was a must-pick year because of the releases of Dune II and Wolfenstein 3D, the commonly-listed daddys of RTS and FPS. 1988 seemed like a good year to get into the burgeoning JRPG market, and 1997 was a landmark year with Playstation and N64 having an excellent output. Finally, 2002 was picked for symmetry, and to get a look at the PS2, GBA, and Windows XP releases.

The data still needs a lot of clearing (and updating! the RPG list only goes to 2009), but it already took a lot of work, and I seriously doubt I will get to a point where I need the 2010s RPG before a decade passes. The lists are also, naturally, incomplete and potentially incorrect, and I welcome any suggestions or additions. The one that required the most work was the RPG list, with multiple dates according to region, ports, compilations, and limited editions being listed, and an overall difficulty to parse; I will do my best to fix issues and repeated games as we go through our journey.

The rules

Last but not least, let's go over the ground rules for the project:

1. The most important rule and the one that supersedes all the others: I'm doing this because it's fun. I enjoy playing old games, I enjoy learning new things, and I enjoy coming up with weird rules and limitations to enhance the experience. If something stops being fun, I can invoke this rule to play a random game in my list (or out of it) for some comfort.
2. I must give my best attempt to beat the games I'm playing with my own resources. If at some point I end up desperately stuck over multiple session, hints/walkthroughs are allowed, but should be used in a minimal fashion.
3. If a game does not have a win condition, playing it for 6h satisfies the beat requirements (as with the CRPG addict, 6h seems like a reasonable amount of time to sink in a game before knowing what it's like). I can keep playing it if I wish or I think I need it to give a fair review, or score it and move on.
4. Dockets only update when all games listed across all genres in a single timeline are beaten. And after beating a game, I must move to either a different category or the next time period (or both). This guarantees I will make somewhat even progress across all genres (and eras).
5. I will never play a later game in a series without having cleared all previous entries (so no FF7 until I beat FF1-6, for example). If we encounter such a game in the docket because of our timey-wimey manipulations, we can push it to the stack and replace it with the oldest entry we still have to beat. We can pop a game off the stack anytime as long as we have a free slot on the appropriate docket; the previous rule reapplies if necessary.
6. To avoid spreading too thin or trying something new the moment a game feels hard/unfair, at any time only 4 games can be considered in-progress, and if more than one game is in-progress, all need to be completed before I move on.

The rules can be amended at any time, though not without deep feedback or reflection. And rule #1 always wins out.

Wrap-up

With everything being set up, it's time to get the project started with our very first game. I thought that a little mirroring would be fun, so in our next post we will venture in the (small) world of Akalabeth: World of Doom... Expect a weekly update or so (though I can't guarantee how much progress will actually be made). In the meantime, keep an eye on this space for more updates, and check out youtube.com/@Retro-GamesWithNic, where new content will be dropping regularly starting 07/01. And, as usual, let's keep retro-playing together.

-Nic