Cosmic Star Heroine has the best jRPG combat

[J1M]

Sounds like one could get roughly the same combat experience with superior writing by playing Penny Arcade's Rainslick 3.

From what I've seen it has completely different mechanics and is basically a Dragon Quest/FF clone with added timing mechanic so I don't know what the hell are you are talking about.

Since you like the developer, why not go try it (on hard)?

Your current position is basically to take quick-cut marketing material as your primary source over someone who read what you liked about a game and immediately recognized that you might like another for the same reasons. If that is your attitude I don't know why you are on a forum when gametrailers.com exists.

 

[taxalot]

I played Cthulhu saves the world from the same developers and that was absolutely terrible despite the funny premise.

What's so horrible about this game? The gameplay, the emptiness of the world, the writing, the characters?

Everything. It is a game that looks cute and okayish from the trailers, has been praised by some reviews as a nice throwback to classic gaming, but it's not, oh no it's fucking not. You can forgive an uninteresting story in this kind of game, but it's absolutely sickening in linearity : you move forward, forward, in a fashion quite similar to Final Fantasy XIII (for a game that was supposed to be retro !), and fight in random encounters all game through with a combat system that is not too uninteresting but definitely overstays its welcome. It was really a struggle to get through. Again, I have played RPGMaker games that were much much better than this shit.

I would have instabought Cosmic Star Heroine, but that previous experience warned me against it.

 

[baud]

I played Cthulhu saves the world from the same developers and that was absolutely terrible despite the funny premise.

What's so horrible about this game? The gameplay, the emptiness of the world, the writing, the characters?

Everything. It is a game that looks cute and okayish from the trailers, has been praised by some reviews as a nice throwback to classic gaming, but it's not, oh no it's fucking not. You can forgive an uninteresting story in this kind of game, but it's absolutely sickening in linearity : you move forward, forward, in a fashion quite similar to Final Fantasy XIII (for a game that was supposed to be retro !), and fight in random encounters all game through with a combat system that is not too uninteresting but definitely overstays its welcome.

Well, it's not all linear: half of the dungeons are optional and the dungeons themselves are a little maze-like. One good adition is that you can deplete the random encounters of a dungeon, which make exploring less of a chore. I'll agree that the combat system is not very deep.

 

[TigerKnee]

I think the "Boost every 3/4 turns" is overly centralizing and it makes a lot of battles boil down to piling as many buffs as you can on a character and then unloading on the Boost turn because of how multiplicative stacking works.

Because it's such an overbearing mechanic, the fact there's a lot of characters that they make you rotate your party with feels not as impactful as it should be for this kind of game, since you just figure out how to slot their abilities in a pre-existing strategy rather than opening up new ones most of the time.

Most JRPGs that this game is trying to ape are linear, but a difference is that the well-liked SNES era ones generally have a portion where the game opens up and becomes a bit non-linear at the end such as FF6 and Chrono Trigger, which is surprisingly not present in this game that's supposed to be CT Inspired.

Weak writing, exacerbated by trying to fit in too many characters which means very little development for each of them, if at all. It feels like a lot of characters literally just have their intro scenes and then never matter to the plot at all past that point. I'm not sure if I remember a single character arc or development for any of the characters.

It's not even an outstanding game by the company's standard - Penny Arcade episode 3 was definitely a more fun game despite a lot of the same issues mainly because it doesn't have a centralizing gimmick like CSH does.

 

[Jacob]

FTFY

 

[Grauken]

I played Cthulhu saves the world from the same developers and that was absolutely terrible despite the funny premise.

What's so horrible about this game? The gameplay, the emptiness of the world, the writing, the characters?

I tried two times to get into the game and didn't get far in either attempt. I did play through PAA:OtRSPoD3 which I enjoyed, both for the amusing writing and the monster design, then played through BoD7, which was utterly pedestrian and tepid despite the set-up, but Cthulhu, man, something about the premise and writing execution just grated on me in a very short time. I don't think many can pull off a funny Cthulhu, and Zeboyd' humor has always been rather uninspired in the first place. Also tried to play PAA:OtRSPoD4, but then saw it included a pokemon stick and noped out there ASAP

 

[baud]

I played Cthulhu saves the world from the same developers and that was absolutely terrible despite the funny premise.

What's so horrible about this game? The gameplay, the emptiness of the world, the writing, the characters?

I tried two times to get into the game and didn't get far in either attempt. I did play through PAA:OtRSPoD3 which I enjoyed, both for the amusing writing and the monster design, then played through BoD7, which was utterly pedestrian and tepid despite the set-up, but Cthulhu, man, something about the premise and writing execution just grated on me in a very short time. I don't think many can pull off a funny Cthulhu, and Zeboyd' humor has always been rather uninspired in the first place. Also tried to play PAA:OtRSPoD4, but then saw it included a pokemon stick and noped out there ASAP

I must have an higher tolerance to stupid and uninspired writting then. It must be helped by the fact that it's the second jrpg I've played, with the first being BoD7.

 

[aweigh]

oh god, your first jrpg being something modern... you deserve better man.

 

[baud]

oh god, your first jrpg being something modern... you deserve better man.

Yeah, I know. I'll play something older when I'm done with this one; I had some recommendation on my LP thread. There's also Anachronox that I've started since then.

 

[Clockwork Knight]

PAA:OtRSPoD3

what the fuck

 

[baud]

PAA:OtRSPoD3

what the fuck

Goes very well with your sig

https://store.steampowered.com/app/213030/Penny_Arcades_On_the_RainSlick_Precipice_of_Darkness_3/

I think there's a A too many at the start.

 

[Grauken]

I thought it was called Penny Arcade Adventures or something something, anyway

I actually wondered whether the Penny Arcade games were written by the PA writer guy, as the writing in the third game at least is miles above the other Zeboyd stuff, but then I read somewhere that it was actually written by the Zeboyd guys, so either they mimicked his style really well or who knows who really wrote most of the text in the game

 

[baud]

I thought it was called Penny Arcade Adventures or something something, anyway

I actually wondered whether the Penny Arcade games were written by the PA writer guy, as the writing in the third game at least is miles above the other Zeboyd stuff, but then I read somewhere that it was actually written by the Zeboyd guys, so either they mimicked his style really well or who knows who really wrote most of the text in the game

The writer of Penny Arcade, Jerry Holkins, was credited for that game:

http://www.mobygames.com/game/windo...he-rain-slick-precipice-of-darkness-3/credits

So you were right, not all the writing was from Boyd.

 

[Durandal]

Grandia-likes often get quickly crowned for having the best JRPG combat evar.
But more importantly, what's the encounter design like?