Sivvy-kun old boy we have been waiting for this to come out since 1984 and they haven't posted a single update, instead they are focusing on gutting Summon Night (mediocre localization, removing ALL voice acting, dubbing over songs with terrible pop music, bugs galore...somewhat understandable though because they couldn't get rights to some of that shit)No need to bother trying to play Class of Heroes 3 in Japanese, anyway.
That's true Courtier-sama, but, they didn't say they were not working on it. You'd think they could handle a dungeon crawler but they're probably understaffed. They really need to establish a better relationship with their developers, XSEED got Falcom to work on the PC again while these guys could barely program in the PSP title. Pretty sad, to be honest.Sivvy-kun old boy we have been waiting for this to come out since 1984 and they haven't posted a single update, instead they are focusing on gutting Summon Night (mediocre localization, removing ALL voice acting, dubbing over songs with terrible pop music, bugs galore...somewhat understandable though because they couldn't get rights to some of that shit)No need to bother trying to play Class of Heroes 3 in Japanese, anyway.
after writing all that about CoH 2 I forced myself to play more of it just so I can safely say whether it is good or bad after having played enough of it and I gotta say: CoH 2 is good.
In some ways it is much better than Exp Inc / Team Muramasa games as for example the classes in CoH 2 are *great* and feature a lot of diversity and there is a lot of focus in the game's design placed upon making each class viable without being redundant. Unlike Exp Inc / Team Muramasa games they placed equal emphasis on making both random encounters and also the boss battles worth fighting and you are always being rewarded for exploration and for combat.
Those are all great things, but none of them are done to an above-average degree. For example the praise given for the classes can also be said of Etrian Odyssey and the EO classes are leagues ahead in terms of design. And the exact same things about encounters and bosses is also done better by others, like EO, as well. It goes without saying that I am also including in this "comparison" games like Wizardry series and Dark Spire or whatever.
Class of Heroes 2 has grown on me and even though I still think it's crafting system is detrimental to an enjoyable playing experience it is the very definition of a "just good enough to get a passing grade". It's a B- term paper, and depending on the player's mood/patience that B- can go down to a C+. Meanwhile something like Gen XTH: Code Hazard starts at B- and can go up to an A-.
tl;dr: The game is alright but it ain't nothing that hasn't been done better before. It's good enough however that I kept coming back to it until I eventually "got it", so that says a lot. I can actually see myself replaying CoH 2 in the future because of the character classes and the itemization (annoying crafting notwithstanding), while I will never, ever replay SoSC once I finish it. That says something.
also lol @ my weird term paper analogy
Ban Siveon. Summon Night 1 and 2 are great. Didn't play the rest. Swordcraft Story 2 is meh, though.That's true Courtier-sama, but, they didn't say they were not working on it. You'd think they could handle a dungeon crawler but they're probably understaffed. They really need to establish a better relationship with their developers, XSEED got Falcom to work on the PC again while these guys could barely program in the PSP title. Pretty sad, to be honest.Sivvy-kun old boy we have been waiting for this to come out since 1984 and they haven't posted a single update, instead they are focusing on gutting Summon Night (mediocre localization, removing ALL voice acting, dubbing over songs with terrible pop music, bugs galore...somewhat understandable though because they couldn't get rights to some of that shit)No need to bother trying to play Class of Heroes 3 in Japanese, anyway.
Who cares, anyway. Swordcraft Story >>> Any main line Summon Night.
that's all true but my point is that none of what you mentioned is good.
- having to constantly check creature types in an menu is bad design. that stuff should be visually or otherwise obvious to the player just from the encounter.
- having to always cast the same skills/abilities in order to be able to damage enemies (magic/holy weapon) is bad design. it takes the strategy out of the player's hands and leaves the player without any tactical choices to make. if you don't use them you are not playing correctly; i.e. there is no thinking involved.
- it is boring, tedious and completely unnecessary to divide every single enemy between a damage-type and every single weapon to target a different damage-type. Instead of enjoying combat the player is forced to spend half of the play time sorting through menus.
Anything that forces a DRPG player to spend more time organizing their inventory and sorting through weapons and writing down on a piece of paper which enemies are what elements because that information is not available to the player during actual combat... is bad design.
An example of good design using the very same type of creature-type immunization is Elminage and the ghost and undead types. You cannot damage them without proper weapons or alternatively you can cast Cleric spells that allow you to damage them.
Oh, and not only that but in Elminage there are also CHARACTER CLASSES (!) that come built-in with anti-type abilities as well. That's called: giving the player strategic options to play with so he or she can play the game SMARTLY instead of always having to use the same commands.
You can also easily enchant weapons with the ability to damage any creature-type. Now, the difference between the implementation here and the implementation in SoSC is that in SoSC every single fight features different immunity-types, whereas in Elminage it is only every once in a while.
Quality of content over quantity. Imagine for a second if you had to have a Cleric cast the Blessing spell in Elminage every single fight. Doesn't sound fun, does it?
Not like I'd know, considering I don't speak in moon runes. But 5 was meh. Swordcraft Story 1 & 2 were at least fun.Ban Siveon. Summon Night 1 and 2 are great. Didn't play the rest. Swordcraft Story 2 is meh, though.
5 is not by the same dev as the others, so I can't say anything here.Not like I'd know, considering I don't speak in moon runes. But 5 was meh. Swordcraft Story 1 & 2 were at least fun.Ban Siveon. Summon Night 1 and 2 are great. Didn't play the rest. Swordcraft Story 2 is meh, though.
Dorarnae
The more I play CoH 2 the more I agree with you. It is quite possibly the RPG game I have most flip-flopped about simply because you can see the promise in the game, you can clearly see the potential that ZeroDiv has a DRPG developer but over and over again the game manages to stay completely average.
Like I already posted I am currently enjoying my CoH 2 playthrough but you are correct that it is a "mess". The fact that the Sorcerer class has both healing and damage and buffs and debuffs makes the class unbelievably OP, and you can kill everything by throwing magic at it.
When you level up your hit points and magic points replenish instantly. But anyway I'm done talking about CoH 2; like you I would also rather replay Generation XTH: Code Hazard on PC, or pick up my Wizardry XTH 2: Unlimited Students playthrough on the PS2 emulator. The only reason I stopped the Wizardry XTH 2 playthrough was because I wanted to see if I could translate it (and yes, it can be translated, however it would require probably 2 years of work for one person to do it).
I've never played a game like Class of Heroes 2 and I don't mean that as praise. I mean that in the sense that I have never played an RPG that is so, so close to being good yet at the same time impossibly far away from the goal.
I can also imagine how unbelievably OP having 2 Sorcerers in the party would be: having just 1 in my party plus the Samurai who also gets access to a similar range of firepower is already ridiculously powerful, and when you run into trouble you have to use the Team Skills.
I only played the beginning of CoH 1 but simply could not stomach the horribly designed 'randomly generated' dungeons, and I've yet to play the japanese-language CoH 3 and 4 (and doubt I ever will unless they get officially translated).
BTW, the CoH developers are the ones who did Wizardry: Labyrinth of Lost Souls for PS3, which Courtier owns and has played. This was ZeroDiv's chance to prove once and for all that they have the balls to make a true, hard-core Wizardry dungeon crawler.
How'd they do Courtier?
This sums up a good deal of what is wrong with some modern Wiz clones.The spells are also much more magical and a single spell can turn the tide of battle, which is why they're Vancian and therefore you only get a limited amount of them; whereas in CoH and SoSC (or Gen XTH: CH) you have a ton of MP and are almost never without spells but they are very basic stuff that is only for dealing damage (which follows the same rock/paper/scissor system as the weapons) or for buff/debuff/healing.
Perhaps it's just a 2 hours long game, I am only at the beginning so I don't know but it has some cool skill system, you're stealing enemy skill "patterns" which you can use to modify yours :