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Random thoughts on whatever JRPG you're currently playing?

CryptRat

Arcane
Developer
Joined
Sep 10, 2014
Messages
3,548
I just completed Weird and Unfortunate - Things are happening. The game is good, I recommend it, especially considering it's free it is several steps above what I expected.

The game is some kind of modern day/occult/surreal/weird thing. Not exactly Earthbound since you play as adults, but like with all games of this kind it's one of the obvious inspiration for sure anyway (main character even use baseball bats). The characters are bearable, which is a praise, it's not a given, and the story works. What does matter in this kind of games is meeting weird things and visiting weird environments, and the game does deliver in this aspect. I won't spoil more. The screenshots are from early to middle parts of the game.
fNLpV4d.png
m2OyXs1.png

Some of the characters from other worlds speak their own language, that technically you can translate on your own (or so they say, I did not try). Finishing the game will give a way to unlock translation including for new games.

The game was bigger that what I thought ar first, especially after playing only a bit. It's a dungeon crawler first and foremost and a story game second, if you don't like dungeons then you won't like it. Exploration starts meh, while visiting the town the available part is always small, but the more you advances the bigger the dungeons get, and they are eventually the meat of the game.


There is a post-ending dungeon, that I didn't do yet, and very likely some secrets especially at the very end I didn't get either.


The portraits look bad but the monsters look OK and they are generally as weird as you would expect and the sprites and environments look good. The game took some time to make and it's visible, the environments are much more than plain walls, it's not evident at first because during the first parts consist in the towns, samey red dungeons and samey houses but eventually you'll roam through a lot of different environments. I won't go into details but the encounter rate is low and you'll spend a lot of time just exploring cool maps, more than once they took the time to build several weird maps with an inedite tileset you'll travel through without any encounter and just for you to find some item at the end, these parts shows the best how polished the game is in my opinion, no area ever feels lazy.


Not sure about the music, I think there are a lot of different tunes from which only a few of which are original, I played a lot without music (not because I did not like it), and when I played with music sometimes I thought it was cool, sometimes a bit less.

On hardest difficutlty, which I recommend, and taking my sweet time, I died a few times. The flow of the combat feels just right. Your characters as well as monsters have just enough hps, managing your PSI points is just one of the important aspects you'll think about when upgrading your characters, resistance to elements is a big thing (quite original elements, by the way), there's no way you'll simply win by pressing the attack button and status change effects and skills feel right.

Equipment is banal, nothing shameful nor impressive, items providing even slightly original passives are the exception rather than the norm, and the difference in power mean you will always just equip the last weapon.

The character system is good. Each character has his or her own skill tree where he can buy passives and active skills, but the two reasons it's good is that these trees are flat enough and that the coins use to buy skills is shared among the characters. Overall I'd say buying a new skill does not make previous skills obsolete, the skills, if nothing outstanding, are fun enough and the cost and power of passives especially feels just right.

You can save everywhere.


It's like an above average SNES JRPG, and it's free so it's cool.
 

lightbane

Arcane
Joined
Dec 27, 2008
Messages
10,158
Wow, these characters are really ugly, uglier than some of the monsters. Almost Cal-Arts tier.

You can save everywhere.

That should be mandatory, NOT a feature. I would accept a Suspend save though.

It's like an above average SNES JRPG, and it's free so

IbmZRam.png

SNES games looked better than that.
I suppose there's some gamepaly at least, compared to other games in Earthbound style with little interactivity.
 

deuxhero

Arcane
Joined
Jul 30, 2007
Messages
11,328
Location
Flowery Land
Isn't the fight against the trio on disc 1? That's not an easy fight.

I recalled it was at the very start of disc 2 and part of why its so hard is you can't backtrack to prepare further. I'd have to check to be sure though.

A few hours into Baten Kaitos, this game seems very promising. Beautiful prerendered areas, good music, unique card based battle system. Also seems to have a good difficulty level - I don't need every game to be a hell crawl, but whenever I get into these 5th/6th gen RPGs, I can't help but worry that they'll be too easy and thus fail to be as engaging as they could be.

This is an interesting specimen as it was developed by both tri-ace (Star Ocean/Valkyrie Profile) and Monolith (Xeno series). I haven't played those first two series - VP is on my list but the combat will require some adjustment. I like TB combat with RT elements which this has and there's a lot of potential depth to it with 1000 unique cards and a lot of combos. The biggest pitfall so far is that it picks random cards from your deck regardless of whether you're attacking or defending (the RT part of the combat, as you need to quickly choose the right defensive cards to use) which means it is entirely possible to get 4 cards that perform the wrong function and are thus useless for that turn. The depth comes from using cards of specific value in order, or specific types to create combos, and using correct elemental cards when defending. I can't claim to have anything more than the most rudimentary knowledge of it yet though.

The plot is in its baby shoes so far but to my understanding it should have apocalyptic themes and political intrigue which is right up my alley. The protag is also surprisingly grounded and with... loose morals (looting fresh corpses when their friend hasn't even had time to begin mourning) which is a nice change of pace from mute protags and goody two-shoes.
The dub is universally considered bad so picking the undub was a no brainer, though it had some issues with syncing where the audio and character would be mismatched. Hope that was a one-off. Annoyingly, photo cards of enemies are buggy and prone to crashing Dolphin, yet you need to loot and sell them for cash. They also went with the stylistic choice of having dialogue have a tinny and distant quality to it (you technically play from the perspective of an immaterial spirit)... it does not work and just makes you think the audio quality is low or that it's an emulation issue.



Edit: got that wrong, it's tri-Crescendo, made Eternal Sonata and such.


1: Turn on surround sound. It disables the tinny audio.
2: The undubs synch issues are due to some bits of dialog being multiple boxes in English but one in Nipponese

Honestly the main characters are largely acceptable in dub quality (not good, but OK). It's the side characters and one-offs who are absolutely terrible.
 

Vyadhis

Learned
Joined
Aug 7, 2020
Messages
179
ISbSrxi.jpg

Fired up citra again and got the undub of SMTIV running well. I hadn't played the game since it came out and that year was a shitty part of my life so I wasn't able to properly enjoy it. I no longer have a 3ds now and much prefer gaming on my computer so I was really happy at how well it ran. Only bug (one that people warned me about) was a weird black square appearing after enemies died but it doesn't bother me at all. Its worth the trade off of being able to play at my desk.


At first I started because I wanted a quick break from the other game I was playing, Sekiro, needed a little change of pace but after an hour I was suddenly addicted to grinding my demons and getting more skills for my MC. Going to make him a caster with points distributed into MA and some agility. Really want to beat this game and try SMTIV:Apocalypse. Soundtrack is tits too.
 

Puukko

Arcane
Joined
Jul 23, 2015
Messages
3,862
Location
The Khanate
Fired up citra again and got the undub of SMTIV running well.


Where'd you source the undub? Back when I looked for one the only one I could find was one with dead links that apparently would've required a real 3DS anyway so I gave up on it.
 

Vyadhis

Learned
Joined
Aug 7, 2020
Messages
179
Fired up citra again and got the undub of SMTIV running well.


Where'd you source the undub? Back when I looked for one the only one I could find was one with dead links that apparently would've required a real 3DS anyway so I gave up on it.
Google "shin megami tensei iv undub" and go to the 4th or 5th link, the one with "ziper" in the address. Site is kind of sketchy though and splits up download though. Maybe I could upload it for you to gdrive or something?
 

Puukko

Arcane
Joined
Jul 23, 2015
Messages
3,862
Location
The Khanate
Fired up citra again and got the undub of SMTIV running well.

Where'd you source the undub? Back when I looked for one the only one I could find was one with dead links that apparently would've required a real 3DS anyway so I gave up on it.
Google "shin megami tensei iv undub" and go to the 4th or 5th link, the one with "ziper" in the address. Site is kind of sketchy though and splits up download though. Maybe I could upload it for you to gdrive or something?
Nah I know the site.
 

lightbane

Arcane
Joined
Dec 27, 2008
Messages
10,158
Superstar Saga and Bowser's Inside Story are also pretty damn good on their own right. Brothers in Time and Dream Team I have mixed impressions on but they too have their fans. Shame about the company closing down, but when they tried to do inferior remakes after Dream Team didn't do so hot - it pretty much sealed their deal and for some reason Ninty wasn't going to bail them out.

I finally tried the remake of the 1st Superstar saga game for the 3DS. The graphics are not that great, it lost the charm of 2D, but that was to be expected. What annoys me though is how slow combat is. I get it's a Mario game, but having to constantly jump around in random battles that take too long, and barely give any EXP was likely the reason why I dropped the GBA game the first time I played it long ago. Bowser's Inside Story and the Dreamteam one are considered the best of the series, do they have similar issues too?

I liked how the remake included a fast-forward button for cutscenes, which is always welcome in a JRPG, but not for regular combat.
 

Siveon

Bot
Joined
Jul 13, 2013
Messages
4,509
Shadorwun: Hong Kong
Superstar Saga and Bowser's Inside Story are also pretty damn good on their own right. Brothers in Time and Dream Team I have mixed impressions on but they too have their fans. Shame about the company closing down, but when they tried to do inferior remakes after Dream Team didn't do so hot - it pretty much sealed their deal and for some reason Ninty wasn't going to bail them out.

I finally tried the remake of the 1st Superstar saga game for the 3DS. The graphics are not that great, it lost the charm of 2D, but that was to be expected. What annoys me though is how slow combat is. I get it's a Mario game, but having to constantly jump around in random battles that take too long, and barely give any EXP was likely the reason why I dropped the GBA game the first time I played it long ago. Bowser's Inside Story and the Dreamteam one are considered the best of the series, do they have similar issues too?

I liked how the remake included a fast-forward button for cutscenes, which is always welcome in a JRPG, but not for regular combat.
Never really felt that issue, so I couldn't tell you. The pace of the games don't radically change, although what you do sort of gets bigger and more bombastic. How would you even implement fast forward, it's an active combat game?
 

deuxhero

Arcane
Joined
Jul 30, 2007
Messages
11,328
Location
Flowery Land
Superstar Saga and Bowser's Inside Story are also pretty damn good on their own right. Brothers in Time and Dream Team I have mixed impressions on but they too have their fans. Shame about the company closing down, but when they tried to do inferior remakes after Dream Team didn't do so hot - it pretty much sealed their deal and for some reason Ninty wasn't going to bail them out.

I finally tried the remake of the 1st Superstar saga game for the 3DS. The graphics are not that great, it lost the charm of 2D, but that was to be expected. What annoys me though is how slow combat is. I get it's a Mario game, but having to constantly jump around in random battles that take too long, and barely give any EXP was likely the reason why I dropped the GBA game the first time I played it long ago. Bowser's Inside Story and the Dreamteam one are considered the best of the series, do they have similar issues too?

I liked how the remake included a fast-forward button for cutscenes, which is always welcome in a JRPG, but not for regular combat.

The remake is widly considered far, far inferior to the original for many reasons, among them slower gameplay and bad rebalancing of combat: Stats level up way faster and to compensate they removed or nerfed the best attack increases and increased enemy HP across the board with comparatively small changes to attack. The boss in the university that ends the first arc has 300 HP in the original, but 420 in the remake while your attacks are slower with more generous timing. They also removed loads of little details that gave the game its charm.

All they had to do was let change moves with the touch screen and assign a second move to X/Y, but no, they fucked it up.
 

lightbane

Arcane
Joined
Dec 27, 2008
Messages
10,158
among them slower gameplay
Welp, that explains why it felt slower than I remember. Perhaps I'll have to check the GBA game then. What about the Bowser's Minions minigame? That one is new.
Also, what about the remake of the 3rd game (Bowser Inside Job)? Is it as bad? That one is considered the best of the series.

EDIT:

Is the Parners in Time sequel worth it? From what I read, it is considered the worst, and from what I read apparently it involves a stupid plot with babies of the Jumping Duo.
 
Last edited:

deuxhero

Arcane
Joined
Jul 30, 2007
Messages
11,328
Location
Flowery Land
No idea on the Bowser's Minons minigame. PiT is widely considered inferior to the original, but I haven't heard any opinions about it since the series really went downhill so it may very well be better than some of the stuff that followed. Original BiS is definitely good, though nowhere near the level of classic the original was.
 

lightbane

Arcane
Joined
Dec 27, 2008
Messages
10,158
Original BiS is definitely good, though nowhere near the level of classic the original was.

I read it was considered the best after the first game. I'm not sure about the remake, but it was the last game the company made. :cry:
I would prefer the remake to use the 3DS capacities to the fullest rather than the DS title, but we'll see. I still have to finish the first game.
 

IceyD

Scholar
Joined
Feb 1, 2017
Messages
137
Location
Chicago
Just completed the Demon's Souls remake and thoroughly enjoyed it, although it's a bit short IMO. Looked fantastic in cinematic mode at a locked 30 fps, which I think is plenty for a slow game like this.

Now I'm going back to some PS4 titles I missed. I'm about 8 hours in 13 Sentinels: Aegis Rim and it's blowing me away. I hate visual novels so I was surprised to find this so easy to get into. It has just enough interaction to not be considered a VN, and the story is great so far.

The battles are like some new age tactical RPG where it's turnbased but units and missiles move in between cooldowns. It kind of solves the issue of unnecessary attack animations, which I didn't like in Fire Emblem.

Obligatory Yuki slav squat:
yuki-squak-13-sentinels.gif
 

Siveon

Bot
Joined
Jul 13, 2013
Messages
4,509
Shadorwun: Hong Kong
Original BiS is definitely good, though nowhere near the level of classic the original was.

I read it was considered the best after the first game. I'm not sure about the remake, but it was the last game the company made. :cry:
I would prefer the remake to use the 3DS capacities to the fullest rather than the DS title, but we'll see. I still have to finish the first game.
It is considered the best, I would say their opinion is a fringe one. As for the 3DS remake, the music is a lot worse so I'd say you want the original no matter what. The remakes don't really add or do much in its benefit, stick to the original versions.

Looked fantastic in cinematic mode at a locked 30 fps, which I think is plenty for a slow game like this
It's the bare minimum, anything less would be incredibly bad for modern games. Speedy or not.

Also ya know most FE lets you turn off animations entirely.
 

IceyD

Scholar
Joined
Feb 1, 2017
Messages
137
Location
Chicago
Yeah 30 is definitely the min I'd play something at. Anything open world or faster paced I need at least 60. But DeS is all enclosed corridors and just stomping around, so I'll take the 4K.

My issue with FE is that I skip all the animations lol. So it's like nothing is happening on screen at any point, just skipping.
 

lightbane

Arcane
Joined
Dec 27, 2008
Messages
10,158
The remakes don't really add or do much in its benefit, stick to the original versions.

Hmm, I'll have that in mind. Especially because I updated the GBA emulator and tried a copy of the OG ML1. Boy, how does everything change. Graphics are simplier, but WAAY better, with everything being more cartoonish and expressive. Combat is also indeed way faster.
If the 3rd game keeps this art style, the NDS original version might be worth it (although I don't like having to use the microphone).

anything less would be incredibly bad for modern games. Speedy or not.
*laughs in Watch Doges*
 

Vorark

Erudite
Joined
Mar 2, 2017
Messages
1,394
Where'd you source the undub? Back when I looked for one the only one I could find was one with dead links that apparently would've required a real 3DS anyway so I gave up on it.

Go to nyaa and search for "3ds undub", anything by Canzah is guaranteed quality. There are undubs for other platforms too.
 

Removal

Scholar
Joined
Jun 23, 2017
Messages
204
Attempting Tales of Vesperia, despite all the game's praise at 4-5 hours in the combat feels super sluggish. I'm not sure if it's a matter of not having enough tools to play around with yet or I need to git gud. Story seems pretty standard so far, world background is interesting but the personal level story hooks really aren't grabbing me.
 

flyingjohn

Arcane
Joined
May 14, 2012
Messages
2,945
Paper mario color splash,Nintendo has done it.

They have managed to make one of the worst combat systems in any rpg game ever.It is slow because you have to select cards,then either paint them or skip that and then you get to use them.And this is all done as slow as possible.It is boring because you can play the blindfolded and still win any encounter(minus some bosses). It is insulting because you get jack shit from said battles.It is easier to just run away.
And there are battles everywhere.

I do not remember the last i was dreadful of a combat encounter in any game so much.
 

Vyadhis

Learned
Joined
Aug 7, 2020
Messages
179
Replaying pokemon games lately, working on firered and while the game is pretty easy (its a kid's game after all) I'm having a lot of fun. Its far more of an enjoyable game than Sword and Shield. I just beat Giovanni and my team is Venusaur, Dodrio, Nidoking, Kangaskan, Alakazam and Vaporeon. I'm going to get to post E4 and then breed up a team of late game pokemon (like Lapras) to bring over to my leafgreen file. Use to love doing shit like that as a kid.
 

Maxie

Guest
Stella Glow has p solid production values for a game this dreadfully dull, no wonder the studio went under right after the release
I'm two chapters in and the fights put me to sleep - they take 30min at minimum with next to nothing going on
 

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