Random thoughts on whatever JRPG you're currently playing?

[Latro]

When I played Wizardry 8 it was a new release. It just felt very low budget/quality compared to what I was used to even in 2001.

good news, the biggest blobber fans (aweigh, and many others) dislike Wiz 8

 

[aweigh]

I don't dislike Wiz 8, i just don't think it's a good Wizardry game. it becomes annoying when fake fans say it's the best Wizardry.

On its own Wiz 8 is a good time, it's just not a dungeon crawler and it's not a Wizardry game. I wouldn't recommend it to someone who wanted to play Wizardry; doesn't mean I dislike it. It's depressing when so-called "fans" say japanese Wizardry games aren't "real Wizardry" because they're not like Wiz 8, that's why I started disliking the existence of the game.

It's not a Wizardry game, period. Fun game, tho.

 

[Silentstorm]

How bad was the stuff Sseth mentioned with the girls getting murdered?

Bad, i mean, it could be worse as it's not full gore, but there is one scene where what seems like a girl whose legs got torn off and is still bleeding is raped by a monster that eventually just bites her with her pleading for her life, and you get to read her thoughts about not wanting to die or how she was kidnapped after her family was murdered.

And she's only one of a number of girls that had a similar fate, but you thankfully don't get to see those...and yes, that's an actual scene, like i said, bad with the only caveat being the lack of full gore.

But wait, there is one scene of a girl raping her own dad and then eating him, with crunching sounds and then her having blood on top of her, and another female rapist cuts one guy's...you know, after raping him, and suprisingly, that one sidequest that ends with a girl being revealed to be a zombie as she falls apart and crawls thinking of her family as she finally turns a zombie doesn't have any picture, just the description.

Those are the big fucked up scenes that i found, honestly...i have a confession to make, after a while i just mostly skipped the sex scenes because most of them are generic and nothing much really happens and there is only some lines of dialogue that actually matter or are funny(mostly sticking with the wives's scenes, but mostly because all of those give you items or stat points), so i didn't look too hard, i know you could get saints for example, but at the end i just wanted to save the world and beat the bad guy rather than look for H-Scenes, so who knows, there may be some other scenes of girls being murdered i didn't find.

 

[AdamReith]

I recently gave Death End Request a shot and to my surprise I find the combination of JRPG and VN stuff very enjoyable. The combat where you bounce enemies around is very fun too.

Combined with the very nice dark writing I'm very surprised more people don't talk about this. Are there any other games similar to this out there?

Man, was so sad to ditch this after 10 hours. The tits were getting bigger and bigger but the story just stopped engaging me and the combat was extremely boring.

In retrospect I think I mostly enjoyed it because the VN portion reminded me of Phoenix Wright.

 

[cosmicray]

Dungeon and combat are just filler in modern JRPG

Sometimes the filler is very good like Noctrune, sometimes not so much.

Exception of course are Wizlike which is released every now and then.

If dungeon and combat is just a filler in Nocturne, then what's the actual meat?

 

[The Decline]

In that case I guess I don't dislike blobbers. In fact I love them. The reason I don't like games like Wizardry and Mary Skelter is because the tile based movement is so sluggish and the dungeons usually look very samey, making them boring and easy to get lost in. I also don't like first person combat in turn based RPGs because it mostly just seems like an excuse to not have to make decent combat animations. The only turn based RPG with first person combat I ever really got into was Earthbound and even then the lack of good looking combat animations really stood out and took a bit away from my enjoyment.

Hmmm, it seems like you might be on the younger side. Either way, I would urge you to try to look past the more superficial things keeping you from first person Dungeon Crawler Blobbers (which would be my more concise classification of things like Wizardry and Strange Journey, Grauken ), especially if you're a fan of challenging JRPGs. There's a whole world of excellence there to be enjoyed.

I'm 36. I grew up playing action games on PC like Quake, Interstate '76, and Mechwarrior 2. Later in my teenage years I got into jrpgs through playing Final Fantasy on emulators. Baldur's Gate 2 is what got me into PC RPGs. It's not that I didn't try those types of games in the old days. When I played Wizardry 8 it was a new release. It just felt very low budget/quality compared to what I was used to even in 2001.

It's like looking into a cracked mirror. I guess breaking my PC RPG cherry on Fallout instead of BG made all the difference.

 

[Sigourn]

Finished Ys Book I & II (TCD). I'm really glad I played this game, as I'm sure it will stick with me for a while. It wasn't perfect, it wasn't great, but it was good and memorable.

 

[Silentstorm]

Ys Origin gives more of a backstory concerning parts of the setting and backstory revolving around those two games, different protagonist too, but it's a more recent game, after II, Adol goes on to have different adventures not related to the Ys Kingdom at all, it's just the name that sticks.

For starters, Origin happens 700 years before YS I, also, i consider the first two games to be kinda weak compared to the rest of the franchise, but they do a good enough job establishing the franchise, plus, the soundtracks are good...but it's Ys, great soundtracks are something you just assume will be in the games.

 

[Sigourn]

Ys Origin gives more of a backstory concerning parts of the setting and backstory revolving around those two games, different protagonist too, but it's a more recent game, after II, Adol goes on to have different adventures not related to the Ys Kingdom at all, it's just the name that sticks.

For starters, Origin happens 700 years before YS I, also, i consider the first two games to be kinda weak compared to the rest of the franchise, but they do a good enough job establishing the franchise, plus, the soundtracks are good...but it's Ys, great soundtracks are something you just assume will be in the games.

Interesting. I started to play Wanderers from Ys, which I've heard is one of the worst titles of the franchise, and while I'm in no position to verify that claim myself, I can say it sucks ass. The gameplay is utter crap compared to the originals. I'm debating whether to move onto something else (Warsong/Langrisser I) or go ahead and skip to the SFC and TCD releases of Ys IV.

 

[Grauken]

Finished Ys Book I & II (TCD). I'm really glad I played this game, as I'm sure it will stick with me for a while. It wasn't perfect, it wasn't great, but it was good and memorable.

When I played them a couple of years ago I thought they were some of the worst older jRPGs I've ever played. Wanderers is fine, a much better game

 

[Puukko]

Picked up Chrono Cross and I think this is the character/party driven adventure JRPG I had been looking for since Xenoblade. It's just a joy and I appreciate the small QoL things like autorun that can't be taken for granted in games of this era.

The game also works great with shaders and has that nice low poly model design.

On the SMT front, I pondered between Majin Tensei 2 and Devil Survivor 2 but didn't get far at all. I think I'll get to the former sooner than later, though. DeSu 2 meanwhile has that terrible character design/art and apparently lots of teenage chitchat... I also lost interest in Persona 3 when I was reminded it just had lame shadows for enemies. Persona Q has those as well, but maybe it'll be more bearable in a portable blobber with a more cartoony style. Some of my buddies who prefer classic SMT over modern Persoyna were calling it a return to form and better than expected, so I'm not writing it off yet.

 

[Silentstorm]

Finished Ys Book I & II (TCD). I'm really glad I played this game, as I'm sure it will stick with me for a while. It wasn't perfect, it wasn't great, but it was good and memorable.

When I played them a couple of years ago I thought they were some of the worst older jRPGs I've ever played. Wanderers is fine, a much better game

There are the remakes that keep the style of bumping into enemies, also, Ys III and the two Ys IV games?

No longer canon, they were replaced by their very remakes, as far as Ys is concerned, Oath In Felghana is the true Ys III and it changes the style a lot, going from a side scrolling platformer perspective to a top-down action RPG style and some changes in the plot itself, still, you can choose to listen to the original soundtrack or the remixed version which is pretty cool.

Also, Ys 7 changes the series by introducing party members, and Adol grunts or yells during fights...so there is a choice in the options to remove all voices, let all of them in or one option to make it so that Adol and Adol only doesn't speak or say anything at all, just for fans who like or remember him as a mute hero, and i love that's an actual option.

 

[Sigourn]

When I played them a couple of years ago I thought they were some of the worst older jRPGs I've ever played. Wanderers is fine, a much better game

I thought Ys III's combat system was awful because it expects the player to hold down the attack key whereas Ys I & II were pretty much doing it already. Those games were also already stretching the meaning of "RPG" as I said earlier, and Ys III took it one step further by basically being Castlevania with grinding, but less in the SotN sense of "you can grind if you can't beat the enemies" and more in the "you NEED to grind to beat the enemies" sense.

The worst thing I can say about Ys I & II's combat is that it was somewhat unengaging as enemies for the most part fought the same. Some variety would have been great.

 

[SecondAmendment]

Picked up Chrono Cross and I think this is the character/party driven adventure JRPG I had been looking for since Xenoblade. It's just a joy and I appreciate the small QoL things like autorun that can't be taken for granted in games of this era.

The game also works great with shaders and has that nice low poly model design.

On the SMT front, I pondered between Majin Tensei 2 and Devil Survivor 2 but didn't get far at all. I think I'll get to the former sooner than later, though. DeSu 2 meanwhile has that terrible character design/art and apparently lots of teenage chitchat... I also lost interest in Persona 3 when I was reminded it just had lame shadows for enemies. Persona Q has those as well, but maybe it'll be more bearable in a portable blobber with a more cartoony style. Some of my buddies who prefer classic SMT over modern Persoyna were calling it a return to form and better than expected, so I'm not writing it off yet.

Glad to hear you are enjoying it. You owe it to yourself to play through a few times with New Game + to get some of the route specific characters, specifically Glenn. He gets a huge payoff eventually.

The music is amazing, is it not? The graphics looked better on a Playstation and a CRT, but shaders and filters do a good job in an emulator.

I do wish the game had a better resolution at the end and was less ambiguous. I love the way it fits in with Chrono Trigher but wish the Radical Dreamers stuff wasn't so prominent since that's so obscure.

I'm interested in hearing your opinions of more games since your opinions are in line with mine and very well articulated. The Peraona series in particular baffles me so your views on those is appreciated.

 

[Silentstorm]

When I played them a couple of years ago I thought they were some of the worst older jRPGs I've ever played. Wanderers is fine, a much better game

I thought Ys III's combat system was awful because it expects the player to hold down the attack key whereas Ys I & II were pretty much doing it already. Those games were also already stretching the meaning of "RPG" as I said earlier, and Ys III took it one step further by basically being Castlevania with grinding, but less in the SotN sense of "you can grind if you can't beat the enemies" and more in the "you NEED to grind to beat the enemies" sense.

The worst thing I can say about Ys I & II's combat is that it was somewhat unengaging as enemies for the most part fought the same. Some variety would have been great.

Again, later games change things, it becomes more of a normal action rpg with a top down view and Adol can strike without having to bump into things, depending on the game, you also get to change weapons and abilities during a fight, or party members, but those translate into characters with different playstyles, and yes, you get to play as Dogi, sadly, you can't go around crushing walls everywhere.

It all sticks with fast combat and no menu action, also, again, cool soundtracks:

The franchise does change over time for better or worse, there is also a spin-off game that is a crossover with The Legend Of Heroes, but it seems to be some weird fighting game with Ys gameplay rather than a full blown RPG sadly, it's also japanese only.

 

[Puukko]

Picked up Chrono Cross and I think this is the character/party driven adventure JRPG I had been looking for since Xenoblade. It's just a joy and I appreciate the small QoL things like autorun that can't be taken for granted in games of this era.

The game also works great with shaders and has that nice low poly model design.

On the SMT front, I pondered between Majin Tensei 2 and Devil Survivor 2 but didn't get far at all. I think I'll get to the former sooner than later, though. DeSu 2 meanwhile has that terrible character design/art and apparently lots of teenage chitchat... I also lost interest in Persona 3 when I was reminded it just had lame shadows for enemies. Persona Q has those as well, but maybe it'll be more bearable in a portable blobber with a more cartoony style. Some of my buddies who prefer classic SMT over modern Persoyna were calling it a return to form and better than expected, so I'm not writing it off yet.

Glad to hear you are enjoying it. You owe it to yourself to play through a few times with New Game + to get some of the route specific characters, specifically Glenn. He gets a huge payoff eventually.

The music is amazing, is it not? The graphics looked better on a Playstation and a CRT, but shaders and filters do a good job in an emulator.

I do wish the game had a better resolution at the end and was less ambiguous. I love the way it fits in with Chrono Trigher but wish the Radical Dreamers stuff wasn't so prominent since that's so obscure.

I'm interested in hearing your opinions of more games since your opinions are in line with mine and very well articulated. The Peraona series in particular baffles me so your views on those is appreciated.

Cheers! And yeah, by the time I'm done with Chrono Cross I assume I will have spent several hours just listening to the overworld theme. I have played a bit of Trigger and while I won't say I disliked it, I did much prefer Cross' early impression - it has that small hometown feel but with some clearly dark twists looming in the background that'll eventually break that idyllic facade. Also, I get the impression it'll be more difficult and the combat system seems to have more depth.

I'm far from an authority on Persona but I would say I am knowledgeable on SMT, with the PS2 games being my primary choice. I've played Persona 2 IS+EP and 5 and out of those, while I am generally critical of 5, it had the best gameplay, difficulty (something Atlus definitely got better at after the 90s) and fusion mechanics. I liked EP's cast and setting the most since it didn't focus on highschool drama. IS, ironically, was the most forgettable due to the lack of difficulty which is why I'd probably recommend the PSX version over the PSP one - if it weren't for the improved soundtrack and general improvements. Not graphics mind you - this is personal preference, but PSX aesthetics win over cleaner PSP ones for me, every time.

3 and 4 have been on my radar forever but as it stands I think they're getting pushed down the list again. I considered PQ a potential starting point into Etrian Odyssey style dungeon crawling (same devs) but I think I'll rather play EO proper first. I already made a EOIII party named after the P2 cast.

 

[flyingjohn]

Picked up Chrono Cross and I think this is the character/party driven adventure JRPG I had been looking for since Xenoblade. It's just a joy and I appreciate the small QoL things like autorun that can't be taken for granted in games of this era.

The game also works great with shaders and has that nice low poly model design.

Chrono cross enjoyment tips:

-Never grind,the game is already piss easy and the star system will make sure everybody is at the correct lvl.
-Don't bother with summons/traps except for seeing them one/two times,they are a pain to setup.But i do recommend using the saint summon at the beginning of dis2 since the robot boss makes it way too easy to setup.
-Don't try to game or min/max the color system,just use whatever elements you want.
-Don't bother buying a huge number of weapons,just buy a couple of weapons for your favorite characters.The only gear worth buying is the rainbow end gear and that a long way off for you.And even the mc main weapon upgrade is good enough o carry you.
-Use different menu frames
-Treat the story as a comedy,that way you won't be disappointed.
-Soak in the backgrounds and music,the best parts of the game by far.
-Randomly exploring is not useless when you get the boat.You won't find much,but new locales offer nice stuff.
-Try switching characters often,they do have somewhat unique stats and elements worth seeing.
-Try finishing up the side stories of your party member if you can,they are worth it.
-2 times is the charm when it comes to replaying the game.You can replay the game some more times in the coming years if you really enjoy it.

Edit:Oh,i forgot about pip.
He is bugged,don't recommend using him whatsoever.

 

[Silentstorm]

All i remember from Chrono Cross is that it had a nature minded message where some humans and everything that isn't human constantly talks about how much humans suck and deserve to die for killing everything and destroying the world, and it mostly comes off as a lie, as there is a lot of green to go around and the other races seem to be doing okay even if you help some of them, and i remember the dwarves coming across as huge assholes but you are supposed to think they are sympathetic while they and everyone else complain about humans.

Basically, i remember it feeling like the writer forgot the game doesn't occur on Earth or some apparently apocalyptic world full of deserts where nothing grows and humans go around acting like mad berserker serial killers at quite a few times, i think there was even a point where it says that the planet itself only wants humanity to die while the other races are good to go, even the dwarves that went on a genocidal campaign.

So yeah, treat it like a comedy, or at least laugh at the way the story calls out humanity while making a terrible job of presenting that case in the world itself.

 

[SecondAmendment]

I would go about getting the summons in CC. Using them to kill shit results in shiny materials which are used for endgame things.

The humans bad message is pretty strong, but ai guess I wasn't offended because it's a bunch of ridiculous creatures saying it. I think you as re supposed to sympathize more with the aliens/dragons/weirdos once the Big Rwist happens but even child me didn't succumb.

Cool story: I wanted to play this so bad I imported a japanese version and actually finished it. Used a bare bones walkthrough and message boards but made it. Also imported the soundtrack.

 

[Sigourn]

I ended up picking Ys III back again and finished it today. It's a really short game, not longer than 6 hours if you don't suck. Sadly my game crashed on the credits screen so I'm booting it up again and loading my save after the final boss to see if there's something special during the credits, as Ys Book I & II had very charming animations (complete with bosses dancing!).

I rate it 4/10, right along with Dragon Quest IV: there are good things at times, but sadly the bad things are ever present. I'm thinking I'll skip Warsong for now and move onto Ys IV: Mask of the Sun. The bump-based combat was simply faster and required nearly no memorization of the stages.

 

[ebPD8PePfC]

Dark Cloud 2 – got to the start of the second chapter.

- Standard big bad plot, with a juvenile tone that feels like the game talks down to the player. Childish, rather than child friendly. The cutscenes are too long. I started skipping it early on.
- So much jank. Opening chests has an animation, and there are ten chests per level. Getting monster loot / xp takes time so you have to stand on them for a while after they die. Opening a door requires opening the inventory, navigating between +30 items, and then picking the key. Taking photos and managing all them is a huge cumbersome mess.
- Music is very repetitive, with no way to mute it without muting the rest of the game.
- combat is very basic, with not much to it. The procedurally generated dungeons create a series of huge flat rooms that make all encounters feel similar, and are also usually 1v1.
- Graphic wise the game is fine, but I wish it was 2d. It would lose nothing gameplay wise, and it would have probably had better combat.
- I wonder why there’s no portable version of this game. It’s very suitable for it with dungeons that take five minutes to clear, and with plenty of things to grind and improve. The short gameplay loop is perfect for mobile play. It looks like the perfect candidate for a modern 2d remake.

Right now it reminds me of Atalier games with none of the charm, and with mediocre real time combat. I can see the appeal of the game, and devs can mine it for ideas, but playing is quite boring. The game could be good without all the time wasting and jankiness. The core is solid, I just don’t have the patience for all the bad stuff it’s coupled with.

 

[Latro]

All i remember from Chrono Cross

is that the writer's personal waifu is Schala, so he decided to make all of Chrono Cross about this one character while simultaneously disregarding both Trigger and Magus (who is still present as an amnesiac with zero unique lines).

the alternate dimension gimmick is poorly done

that mermaid/pirate ship sidequest is some serious cringe

 

[ebPD8PePfC]

Nier – Got to the end of the game, or the first ending, but RPCS3 keeps crashing. I heard so much bad things about the combat and the backtracking, but those didn’t really bother me. I really enjoyed the game. There are some problems though.

- Multiple boss fights in a row with no saving, following a long section with no saving. Why?
- Changing the players items without their input. WHY?
- Both Kaine and Emil have some horrible power of friendship dialogues.
- The ANIME moments are much more common here than the sequal. And not the fun kind, but rather the terribly long and sad monolouges with sad music. It’s horrible.
- The game has poor color coding when it comes to shields.
- Game gives two options. I pick the second - “Goddamit, we don’t have a choice.” Game makes you pick again.
- unnamed NPCs are sometimes really interesting, and sometimes they feel like they were lifted from some other random game. Wish there was some way to know if they had anything new to say, because they add a lot of color to the world.
- The music is great.

It crashed on the last fight, so I decided to watch the ending on Youtube. Maybe I’ll return to the game in the future when the emulator stabilizes for the new game+.

 

[Viata]

- Game gives two options. I pick the second - “Goddamit, we don’t have a choice.” Game makes you pick again.

This is some stupid shit every JRPG does.

"Would you help me?"
Yes >No
"Ha ha ha nice joke, man. Now would you help me?"
Yes >No
"Ha ha ha nice joke, man. Now would you help me?"
....
"Ha ha ha nice joke, man. Now would you help me?"
>Yes No
"Nice!"

 

[flyingjohn]

- Game gives two options. I pick the second - “Goddamit, we don’t have a choice.” Game makes you pick again.

This is some stupid shit every JRPG does.

"Would you help me?"
Yes >No
"Ha ha ha nice joke, man. Now would you help me?"
Yes >No
"Ha ha ha nice joke, man. Now would you help me?"
....
"Ha ha ha nice joke, man. Now would you help me?"
>Yes No
"Nice!"

Xenoblade does it the best: