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Random thoughts on whatever JRPG you're currently playing?

spekkio

Arcane
Joined
Sep 16, 2009
Messages
8,288
lightbane said:
bad writing
:cry:

Main quest is really unforigving this time... :obviously:

Let's start with the Hot Neesan:

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:roll:

Allrighty, how about the Shy Bookworm?

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:roll:

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It looks like the Short Angry One is our only hope...

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:(

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;)

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:incline:

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Verdict: Best writing since Torment. :obviously:
 
Unwanted
Dumbfuck
Joined
Dec 14, 2020
Messages
803
Best way to push a woman around is to tell her that if she doesn't do it, other woman will do it in her place, we can't have writing that red pilled this days.
 

Malamert

Arcane
Edgy
Joined
Oct 19, 2018
Messages
2,466
Finished Dawn of Mana. Didn't quite enjoy the game at first, but the more I played it, the more I started to get it and it ended up being quite fun. A nice and charming adventure in the world of Mana. Very short, only took me 14 hours to beat.
It isn't an RPG, it's an action adventure game, so that can turn a lot of people off from it. Give it a chance though and eventually you'll find it to be an entertaining game. It uses Havok physics and a big part of the gameplay is throwing objects at enemies and causing them to panic. Panicked enemies either run around or stand still and can drop gold, consumables and attack/health/mana increasing items. You can also grab and hurl enemies towards their allies and cause them both panic that way too. It's pretty cool, but at times the physics are rather silly. The protagonist can launch boulders and logs at sonic speed from time to time and enemies can panic from simply brushing against an object, hell they sometimes even spawn panicked because an object was in the way. There's a fairy called Faye that can cast magic spells, but they're nothing interesting, just heals and buffs. You have a slingshot that can use magic ammo from the spirits. That magic ammo is pretty strong and probably best saved for boss encounters. I've been complaining constantly that these Mana games don't have any challenging encounters and I'm glad to say that this game gets it. It has some spectacular and superb boss fights that can pose quite a challenge at times. The penultimate boss especially is the real deal that I accidentally made even harder by using low level weapons. I do have three issues with the game, unfortunately. First one is that damage, health, mana, weapon and magic levels all reset between levels. Got some pretty tubular stats by the end of a level? Yea, well, fuck you, they're reset next level. Second issue is that certain levels overstay their welcome and tend to drag on for way too long. Finally, it's about the respawning enemies... You'll defeat an enemy and then another one of the same type will instantly respawn. At times it seems as if enemies respawn infinitely, but nope, there's an end, it's just a boatload of them. It's quite ridiculous at times.
It's an action game, so there's no room for any entertaining events and all that. The characters designs are cool enough though and the animations are good, so at least there's that. Also, Faye, the fairy, is so lovely and heartwarming, but I do have an issue with her.
For a PS2 game, the graphics are pretty great. Lively and colorful environments, neat character designs and some pretty radical environments are what await in this game. PCSX2 is a horrible emulator and I unironically wish death upon the "people" behind it, but it does its job well enough when it comes to this game. It looks superb upscaled to 5K and runs smoothly enough. Wanted to use a 60FPS patch for it, but that broke quite a few things left and right, so that was a no go.
You know the drill, it's a Mana game so the soundtrack's automatically good.
The story, while nothing amazing or interesting, is quite a tad darker than the other Mana games. I think it works and it leads to some pretty tubular scenarios. This game also has quite a decent amount of cinematics that all look great and are quite bitchin. The normal cutscenes are radical too and the finale is quite a show.
So, yea, ended up really enjoying this game. Read that it's one of the weakest games in the series, but if you look past the fact that it isn't an RPG and endure the first two or three slow levels then you're in for some fun.

Right, so my issues with Faye... She's a very lovely and charming fairy. I want to protect her smile, but the game keeps making a point to show her amazing fairy ass constantly in cutscenes. Seriously, for a fairy she's got the real deal. I want multiple Fayes on my face, but she's too wholesome for that.
 

deuxhero

Arcane
Joined
Jul 30, 2007
Messages
11,387
Location
Flowery Land
Speaking of Mana
Trials of Mana:
A very solid remake, but some issues that could easily have been fixed.
1: Even on hard it's way too easy. The only difficult thing is the attrition since early game MP pools are so low (5 MP to heal, but a total pool of less than 60 and heal value is low enough you need more than one heal spell to get to make), and that disappears a few hours in since healing items are so cheap and can be used infinitely outside of battle. Also in many areas you can abuse the free healing from golden statues to clear a path, heal, and continue since most enemies only respawn when the in-game day changes from day to night.
2: The AI allies are way, way below your level. I don't expect them to dodge everything, but I regularly see them just stand in front of enemies making big, telegraphed, attacks and make no effort to dodge.
3: Related to this, while you can set ally tactics, you can only set a single fixed tactic. This is a problem since you can see an enemy's level at all times you really should be able to set tactics based on relative level of the enemy since half the tactics screen is how freely they use MP and super meter. During a boss battle you either have to go through the menu and set them to use their resources freely, or manually command them to use their spells (which slows things down).
4: The dodge is OP, but also kinda mandatory. It has crazy i-frame and can cancel just about anything, but it's also the only thing that can cancel anything besides jumping (and jump physics mean you can really only go straight up this way) in a game where most things have significant lag.
5: There's lots of hidden items around, but almost all of them are just consumables or money (I only found one piece of equipment so far, a weapon for the main character hidden in a maze). Problem is the money from these chests actually is useful (giving several times what monsters drop) you can't just ignore them as useless even though the vast majority of items aren't at all worth it.
6: Everyone sleeps fully clothed. Decline from the original.
Despite these issues, I still think it's the right kind of game. Runs smooth, good enough graphics, no SJW shit, good enough gameplay, not up its own ass pretension.
 

Silentstorm

Learned
Joined
Apr 29, 2019
Messages
885
Playing Nier Replicant, finally going to get the canal, meaning Fast Travel, like Weiss says, it was annoying running back and forth, also thank God Nier grew up, i accept anime designs much better than many people, but Nier's design just bothered me for some reason, it just felt a bit too fancy in a way and those shorts...damn, Kaine looks ridiculous too but at least the game calls her out on her fashion choices.

Teen Nier still is very much an anime character, but a lot better than his basically kid self.
 

Malamert

Arcane
Edgy
Joined
Oct 19, 2018
Messages
2,466
Finished Adventures of Mana, the 3D PS Vita and phone remake of Final Fantasy Adventure. Very short game, only took me 10 hours to beat.
There's really not much to say about the gameplay since it's a phone and Vita game. It's very simple and not that interesting. Wallop your enemies until they keel over. There is quite a lot of weapon switching involved since certain enemies are immune to some weapons and that can get rather tiresome at times. Boss fights are an absolute joke in this game. They go down in less than 30 seconds most of the time and I even face tanked a good deal of them and completely ignored their mechanics. Also I didn't like how when you enter some rooms, the mobs can spawn right next to the character and instantly deal damage.
No neat events or anything like that unfortunately. The character designs are alright at least.
Since Vita3K isn't at a stage where it can be called a working emulator yet, I was forced to use Bluestacks and play the phone version of the game. It's pretty cancerous to emulate this phone nonsense and I wish only the worst upon "people" that frequently use such nonsense. Anyway, the game looks pretty good with some AA forced.
The soundtrack's good and there's even an option to switch to the original game's tracks.
Story's barebones and pretty much worthless. It's the eternal tale of a knight getting cucked out of his waifu by the Mana tree.
Yea, not much to say about this game. It works and there are worse ways to waste your time.

And that's it, I'm done with the Mana series for now. I know there's another phone/PS Vita game out there called Rise of Mana, but unfortunately it's Jap only. These games are all nice, lovely and charming, they have pretty good soundtracks and neat visuals but almost all of them fell short when it came to the gameplay for me. Legend of Mana is the only game in this series that I'm going to remember and replay later on. Now that game is the real deal. Everything else? Not so much.
 

VonMiskov

Educated
Joined
Feb 20, 2021
Messages
122
Playing Ni No Kuni Wrath of the White Witch. "Playing" I mean like hating myself trudging through it. It was all cool and dandy until the grind and realization hit me.
The story is pretty good and full of heart but that gameplay... It can just fuck off. The grind is relentless. That semi real-time, semi turn based combat with dead AI, bad controls, animation cancelling animations and given orders. How anyone could say: 'yeah that's great design'. So finishing it with cheat engine table just to enjoy the story without getting grinded to dust by the grind. Awful, awful combat design. That's probably why they skipped all that pokemon shit in the sequel.
 

lightbane

Arcane
Joined
Dec 27, 2008
Messages
10,200
I recommend playing the translated NDS version if you can, there's proper turn-based combat and no postgame bullshit with the shoehorned white witch storyline that will make you rage, as it takes all of the game's faults and ramp them to 11.
 

Malamert

Arcane
Edgy
Joined
Oct 19, 2018
Messages
2,466
Finished Actraiser Reinaissance and good heavens was it amazing. Figuratively and possibly literally divine. Superb game from start to finish. Unfortunately it's quite short, only took me around 30 hours to beat.
Gameplay's great fun. Radical action combat when it's time to smite down monsters and demons and some neat god gameplay when judging the damned is over. I even enjoyed the tower defense sieges, especially near the end when they become pretty nuclear and you can combine hero bonuses to have some pretty insane standoffs against hordes of monsters. Boss fights are quite spectacular and a real show, but you'll want to play the game on hard otherwise you'll finish most fights in no time if your character is all powered up. My only complaint is that at the beginning there are way too many tutorials and the game constantly has event after event popping up to explain everything.
Events are good fun and the characters are tubular enough. The angel is a bundle of joy and is definitely the star of the game. The game doesn't use Live2D, so at times events can be rather stiff, but at least characters have a decent number of different expressions and poses to make up for it.
The game's internal resolution is locked at 720p regardless of what you set it to run at. I can see why many people would be turned off by that, but I think the game looks amazing in motion when fighting against enemies. The character and monster designs are all bitchin work perfectly and environments are the real deal. Rather disappointed that the post game chapter doesn't have unique buildings, forts and settlers and just reuses assets from previous chapters, but ah well, it's still alright.
Man, now this soundtrack is the real deal. It's grand, outstanding and sounds absolutely divine. Love it.
The story's simple, you're the Lord of Light and alongside your trusty right hand angel must defeat the Lord of Dark, but some of the events along the way are pretty cool and the writing is good fun.
So, yea, this is the good stuff. Fuckin' A. Play it, you hellbound heretics.

Oh and, surprisingly, not even for a second did I confuse the angel boy for a flat angel girl. I happen to be very proud of myself.
 
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Unwanted
Dumbfuck
Joined
Dec 14, 2020
Messages
803
Got the kung flu so i just deleted everything from my drive, don't think they know how to turn on a hacked switch so i'm safe, Vita games and 3ds ones are safe too because they are all in nihongo. I don't think i'll die but there's always the 0,000000008% chance of that. Last game i played was Atelier Rorona, play it, reminds me of Recettear. I die playing cunny bros, hope everyone else could say the same.
:dealwithit:
 

Malamert

Arcane
Edgy
Joined
Oct 19, 2018
Messages
2,466
Got the kung flu so i just deleted everything from my drive, don't think they know how to turn on a hacked switch so i'm safe, Vita games and 3ds ones are safe too because they are all in nihongo. I don't think i'll die but there's always the 0,000000008% chance of that. Last game i played was Atelier Rorona, play it, reminds me of Recettear. I die playing cunny bros, hope everyone else could say the same.
:dealwithit:
Stay strong, noble cunnysseur. You're gonna make it! We're all gonna make it!

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jrpglover

Novice
Joined
Dec 9, 2021
Messages
20
God Eater 3 (5/10) - A mediocre game with weak gameplay (especially compared to the Monster Hunter series) and an average storyline. It's just a low-budget Monster Hunter clone, with short sessions (monsters have low health).

Labyrinth of Refrain: Coven of Dusk (8/10) - The second DRPG I've played. Well written characters, very dark story, good humor, good overall plot. The gameplay is very good in some places, and very annoying in others. The game has enough interesting mechanics (coven, witch petition etc), some of which are annoying (gore hits). Lots of backtracking, especially in the last dungeons. Skills are tied to covenants, not characters, which is a minus for me personally, this has a bad effect on diversity (most covenants have the same skills). The game had the potential of 10 out of 10, if not for the cons I listed. They say that in the sequel (Labyrinth of Galleria: Coven of Dusk) they fixed all the minuses, it remains now to wait for the localization and play it yourself.
 

jrpglover

Novice
Joined
Dec 9, 2021
Messages
20
Did you finish the post game to see the true ending? Too much grinding, even with that covenant that multiplies exp.
Nope, I watched the true ending on YouTube. Like you said, there is a lot of grinding in post-game, which I don't really like. In the whole game, I never grinded until I got to the final boss, which turned out to be very difficult and killed my entire group in a few turns, that's when I had to grind and find a special covenant that weakens the final boss. To be honest, I got a little tired of the game towards the end. Somewhere in the middle of the game, I replaced my entire party with Marginal Mazes, which, up to the final boss, destroyed all the monsters on the first turns (especially the Red Goat Pact).
 
Unwanted
Dumbfuck
Joined
Dec 14, 2020
Messages
803
Did you finish the post game to see the true ending? Too much grinding, even with that covenant that multiplies exp.
Nope, I watched the true ending on YouTube. Like you said, there is a lot of grinding in post-game, which I don't really like. In the whole game, I never grinded until I got to the final boss, which turned out to be very difficult and killed my entire group in a few turns, that's when I had to grind and find a special covenant that weakens the final boss. To be honest, I got a little tired of the game towards the end. Somewhere in the middle of the game, I replaced my entire party with Marginal Mazes, which, up to the final boss, destroyed all the monsters on the first turns (especially the Red Goat Pact).
Oh boy, if you though that the game had too much grinding for the post game, you should play Labyrinth of Galleria, literally thousands of floors in the post game to see the true ending, the good thing is that there's elevators to skip floors, but i don't want to spoil much.
 

Malamert

Arcane
Edgy
Joined
Oct 19, 2018
Messages
2,466
Literally nothing wrong with grinding through thousands of floors in your dungeon crawlers. Now if only the game would be translated already. All I want to do is crawl about the place with an army of loli puppets.

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Unwanted
Dumbfuck
Joined
Dec 14, 2020
Messages
803
Literally nothing wrong with grinding through thousands of floors in your dungeon crawlers. Now if only the game would be translated already. All I want to do is crawl about the place with an army of loli puppets.

coven-and-labyrinth-of-galleria_2019-04-04_007.png
Isn't that one the trap puppet? There were a couple in galleria, can't remember in refrain, might replay it soon, wanna check out NISA translation because i heard that they didn't butchered anything which is weird.
 

Malamert

Arcane
Edgy
Joined
Oct 19, 2018
Messages
2,466
Isn't that one the trap puppet? There were a couple in galleria, can't remember in refrain, might replay it soon, wanna check out NISA translation because i heard that they didn't butchered anything which is weird.
That's just Galleria's version of the shinobushi puppet. Gothic Coppelia is the trap puppet in Refrain.

Gothic_Copperia.jpg
 

lametta

Educated
Joined
Feb 4, 2021
Messages
144
just curious what didnt you like about pcsx 2? Malamert ?

Ontopic: Bought Alliance Alive HD Remaster on steam sale. Kinda a bummer that it is only playable with a controller. Like the combat and story
 

Malamert

Arcane
Edgy
Joined
Oct 19, 2018
Messages
2,466
just curious what didnt you like about pcsx 2? Malamert ?
Not a fan of PCSX2 due to its usage of hacks to run a good deal of games, even on the nightly builds, rubbish sound, no way to quickly and easily set up game profiles without using other programs, stubbornness to implement features like DX12/Vulkan and giving the same old excuses that they won't make a difference at all (I know there's a vulkan build, but good heavens did it take them a long while to get it going) and so on.

Ontopic: Bought Alliance Alive HD Remaster on steam sale. Kinda a bummer that it is only playable with a controller. Like the combat and story
The GOG version of Alliance Alive HD Remaster has mouse and keyboard support.

HHAaJlG.png
 

flyingjohn

Arcane
Joined
May 14, 2012
Messages
2,961
Can't believe i am gonna defend hackcsx2.
Not a fan of PCSX2 due to its usage of hacks to run a good deal of games
Most emulators are like this.They are just integrated into the emu's.Even the god of purity mednafen dev is figuring out you need hacks for more obscure hardware.
And ps2 is as exotic as ign fanboy on the codex.
rubbish sound
Never had a problem.
no way to quickly and easily set up game profiles
Most emu's dont have that feature. Front ends do.
stubbornness to implement features like DX12/Vulkan and giving the same old excuses that they won't make a difference at all (I know there's a vulkan build, but good heavens did it take them a long while to get it going)
And the result of implementing Vulkan was jack shit.Small gains and no real graphical fixes.Exactly what the old team said.
The entire vulkan thing was Sten the shizo pet project which he decided to do when off his meds. Expect the vulkan renderer to have random progress.
Dx 12 is atrocious garbage that wouldn't do anything and would create more problems.
 

Duraframe300

Arcane
Joined
Dec 21, 2010
Messages
6,395
just curious what didnt you like about pcsx 2? Malamert ?
Not a fan of PCSX2 due to its usage of hacks to run a good deal of games, even on the nightly builds, rubbish sound, no way to quickly and easily set up game profiles without using other programs, stubbornness to implement features like DX12/Vulkan and giving the same old excuses that they won't make a difference at all (I know there's a vulkan build, but good heavens did it take them a long while to get it going) and so on.

- They have removed a shitload of hacks already. And for what's left there have many specific and valid reasons why PCSX2 needs them (for now and certain ones that won't ever go away).
- Sound has been good for years now . There's even a cubeb backend now.
- Game specific settings are coming with the new UI. Before that, the code clean-up over the last 5-6 years took priority over a new UI. And its not like the third party (I'm assuming you're referring to Spectrabis) hasn't been supported by the PCSX2 team.
- That same old excuse has been mainly used when Vulkan was new and a lot of scepticism revolved around its benefits for emulation. Not to mention the OpenGL backend made a huge jump just a bit prior and they were still focusing on that. Since then they had planned and discussed Vulkan for a while now before Stenzek came to do it.

I mean its not perfect and the emulator had pretty bad project management for the first decade+ of its existence. But there's a lot of mitigating circumstances and its going the right way for a while now. Can't hate forever man.

Even the Dolphin team recommends to play certain games on PCSX2 rather than the Gamecube version of Dolphin. Far cry from the manufactured rivalry that once was.

Is it possible to beat True Crime: New York City in Dolphin? Yes. One brave developer 100%ed the game in Dolphin, unlocked both endings, and beat the bonus mission. At some point it was less about completionism and more about proving it was even possible given some of the issues in the game, including the fact that one segment of the city will usually crash on the GameCube version. If you have fond memories of this game, you're probably remembering the superior PS2 version, which is buggy in some pretty funny ways while still being playable. Again, if you want to play this game, the PS2 version of the game is cheaper to buy, compatible with PCSX2 and is a much better game in almost every way. There's no reason to go out of your way to play the GameCube version...

Funny, but insightful, quote from the same report

One of the reasons that our friends working on PCSX2 have so much trouble emulating Floating Point Math on modern computers is because it's just not possible to emulate it quickly and correctly at the same time. We asked for a quote regarding their thoughts on Floating Point Math on the PS2, unfortunately due to the mostly worksafe nature of the Dolphin Progress Report, we didn't see it fit to broadcast such harsh language and we do not approve of insulting one's mother, even if it is the mother of a mathematical concept.
 
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jrpglover

Novice
Joined
Dec 9, 2021
Messages
20
Did you finish the post game to see the true ending? Too much grinding, even with that covenant that multiplies exp.
Nope, I watched the true ending on YouTube. Like you said, there is a lot of grinding in post-game, which I don't really like. In the whole game, I never grinded until I got to the final boss, which turned out to be very difficult and killed my entire group in a few turns, that's when I had to grind and find a special covenant that weakens the final boss. To be honest, I got a little tired of the game towards the end. Somewhere in the middle of the game, I replaced my entire party with Marginal Mazes, which, up to the final boss, destroyed all the monsters on the first turns (especially the Red Goat Pact).
Oh boy, if you though that the game had too much grinding for the post game, you should play Labyrinth of Galleria, literally thousands of floors in the post game to see the true ending, the good thing is that there's elevators to skip floors, but i don't want to spoil much.
I'm not against grinding in general, it just depends on the game. There are games where, because of the great polished gameplay, I enjoy grinding. Labyrinth of Refrain: Coven of Dusk is not included in the list of these games, as the game has enough annoying moments that prevent me from enjoying the grind. The game really lacks some QoL, which could have a very positive impact on the gameplay. For example, I really miss auto-travel (as in Undernauts: Labyrinth of Yomi - my first DRPG), speed up battle (one of the most annoying), automatic repetition of the last turn (auto repeat skills), I am also annoyed by the too dense arrangement of monsters and their very fast respawn (just go a few steps forward and they respawn), etc.
 
Self-Ejected

aweigh

Self-Ejected
Joined
Aug 23, 2005
Messages
17,978
Location
Florida
Playing Ni No Kuni Wrath of the White Witch. "Playing" I mean like hating myself trudging through it. It was all cool and dandy until the grind and realization hit me.
The story is pretty good and full of heart but that gameplay... It can just fuck off. The grind is relentless. That semi real-time, semi turn based combat with dead AI, bad controls, animation cancelling animations and given orders. How anyone could say: 'yeah that's great design'. So finishing it with cheat engine table just to enjoy the story without getting grinded to dust by the grind. Awful, awful combat design. That's probably why they skipped all that pokemon shit in the sequel.

...what the hell are you talking about? NNK1 is ridiculously easy. You never have to repeat a single battle, unless you want to. You even had to use Cheat Engine? The sequel is even easier, by the way.

Lack of difficulty and no need to level up was NNK1's main problem. I remember my 5 year old cousin grabbed the controller one time and beat some random encounters by mashing X, and I was severely underleveled. It's a ridiculously easy game, and the sequel is even worse in that regard.
 

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