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Ammo replenishing sounds dumb, why remove that particular aspect of resource management?
Persona 5 was a very mixed bag for me. The gameplay was the strongest aspect as it was the most refined version of turn based SMT to date, but outside of that I am a Persona 2 fan, an endangered classification.
My only JRPG experience (aside from The Legend of Dragoon which I loved) is the Final Fantasy games which left me with a sour taste in my mouth when it comes to JRPGs, the most time I played them is something like 5 hours max (FFVI - 3 hours, FFVII - 1 hour, FFVIII - 3 hours, FFX - 5 hours). Yeah, I don't like Final Fantasy at all and I thought most classic JRPGs were more or less the same as those since FF is so famous (that means random battles every three steps you take with a level transition that takes 20 seconds and a linear story). Well a friend of mine gifted me Persona 4 Golden and I gotta say now that I'm 26 hours in:
- The game is great, it plays perfectly and the fact that there's so many things to do aside from combat? Well it keeps things fresh. I don't feel burned out at all (whereas I couldn't play more than 30 minutes of Final Fantasy in one sitting before being bored out of my mind).
- Comfy story that's also very engaging. The setting is also very good (I'm a sucker for media that depicts Japanese society/history/architecture but that comes with the territory I guess).
- I love monster-catching games and that's kinda what the persona-fusioning mechanics are, again changing your personas keeps combat fresh.
I've also just started Disgaea 1. I've only played like 40 minutes of it but I really like what I see so far (and everybody knows tactical RPGs are the superior genre anyway).
My only JRPG experience (aside from The Legend of Dragoon which I loved) is the Final Fantasy games which left me with a sour taste in my mouth when it comes to JRPGs, the most time I played them is something like 5 hours max (FFVI - 3 hours, FFVII - 1 hour, FFVIII - 3 hours, FFX - 5 hours). Yeah, I don't like Final Fantasy at all and I thought most classic JRPGs were more or less the same as those since FF is so famous (that means random battles every three steps you take with a level transition that takes 20 seconds and a linear story). Well a friend of mine gifted me Persona 4 Golden and I gotta say now that I'm 26 hours in:
- The game is great, it plays perfectly and the fact that there's so many things to do aside from combat? Well it keeps things fresh. I don't feel burned out at all (whereas I couldn't play more than 30 minutes of Final Fantasy in one sitting before being bored out of my mind).
- Comfy story that's also very engaging. The setting is also very good (I'm a sucker for media that depicts Japanese society/history/architecture but that comes with the territory I guess).
- I love monster-catching games and that's kinda what the persona-fusioning mechanics are, again changing your personas keeps combat fresh.
I've also just started Disgaea 1. I've only played like 40 minutes of it but I really like what I see so far (and everybody knows tactical RPGs are the superior genre anyway).
Could it be that you are really into anime? Persona and Disgaea are anime as fuck, while Final Fantasy is surprisingly less anime due to lingering western influence.
Other JRPGs which are pretty anime are the Tales of ... series and naturally the most anime of them all The Legend of Heroes Trails of Cold Steel in the Sky
Because gameplay wise there is not really anything that separates Persona and Disgaea from Final Fantasy. I'd even say that FF V has better gameplay than both games. It is mostly mood.
Death end re;Quest.
Didn't expect much from it, just tried it out because there's a Mary Skelter 2 DLC that adds some pretty neat costumes from it. The gameplay's a boatload of fun. Pinballing enemies around the battleground never gets old and having to switch characters and abilities based on enemy elements is neat too. The character animations and spell effects are tubular as well. It's quite the spectacle, especially the ultimate abilities once characters glitch out.
The story's a lot of fun too. Didn't expect it to be such a grand and interesting mystery. It does get pretty dark and edgy though, but it's alright, nothing too exaggerated or over the top.
Also, Ripuka best girl.
My only JRPG experience (aside from The Legend of Dragoon which I loved) is the Final Fantasy games which left me with a sour taste in my mouth when it comes to JRPGs, the most time I played them is something like 5 hours max (FFVI - 3 hours, FFVII - 1 hour, FFVIII - 3 hours, FFX - 5 hours). Yeah, I don't like Final Fantasy at all and I thought most classic JRPGs were more or less the same as those since FF is so famous (that means random battles every three steps you take with a level transition that takes 20 seconds and a linear story). Well a friend of mine gifted me Persona 4 Golden and I gotta say now that I'm 26 hours in:
- The game is great, it plays perfectly and the fact that there's so many things to do aside from combat? Well it keeps things fresh. I don't feel burned out at all (whereas I couldn't play more than 30 minutes of Final Fantasy in one sitting before being bored out of my mind).
- Comfy story that's also very engaging. The setting is also very good (I'm a sucker for media that depicts Japanese society/history/architecture but that comes with the territory I guess).
- I love monster-catching games and that's kinda what the persona-fusioning mechanics are, again changing your personas keeps combat fresh.
I've also just started Disgaea 1. I've only played like 40 minutes of it but I really like what I see so far (and everybody knows tactical RPGs are the superior genre anyway).
Could it be that you are really into anime? Persona and Disgaea are anime as fuck, while Final Fantasy is surprisingly less anime due to lingering western influence.
Other JRPGs which are pretty anime are the Tales of ... series and naturally the most anime of them all The Legend of Heroes Trails of Cold Steel in the Sky
Because gameplay wise there is not really anything that separates Persona and Disgaea from Final Fantasy. I'd even say that FF V has better gameplay than both games. It is mostly mood.
Death end re;Quest.
Didn't expect much from it, just tried it out because there's a Mary Skelter 2 DLC that adds some pretty neat costumes from it. The gameplay's a boatload of fun. Pinballing enemies around the battleground never gets old and having to switch characters and abilities based on enemy elements is neat too. The character animations and spell effects are tubular as well. It's quite the spectacle, especially the ultimate abilities once characters glitch out.
The story's a lot of fun too. Didn't expect it to be such a grand and interesting mystery. It does get pretty dark and edgy though, but it's alright, nothing too exaggerated or over the top.
Also, Ripuka best girl.
I get the feeling that Compile Heart/Idea Factory is a midwit filter. They have the repuation of being one of the worst JRPG studios, but Mary Skelter is straight up a quality drpg.
I have my sights on Dragon Star Varnir to go on sale, since that apparently has an evolved form of Radiant Historia's combat system, and juggling enemies in Radiant Historia is a ton of fun.
---
Currently playing Romancing Saga III and Digimon Story Cyber Sleuth the most. The rest of the games has been a bit frozen. RS III has underwhelmed a bit, I wrote a bit more about why in the SaGa thread. It has picked up however now that I kill the other Abyss Lords, as they all have good dungeons and interesting bossfights. It kinda feels like they designed the 4 abyss lords first, and then the rest of the world around them.
I might write a bit more about Digimon once I get further in, but it is a load of fun! I was starved for a decent Pokemon like, and I thought I had to wait until I grab a copy of Dragon Quest Monsters for my fix.
I was surprised how similar the optic is to the movie Summer Wars. I did a bit of digging and found out that Summer Wars is basically a Digimon movie in disguise. Cool stuff, might check out that series soon.
Been looking into Dragon Star Varnir too, but good heavens, these DLCs. They're the same as DERQ 1 and 2. Had to restart DERQ after making the mistake of leaving them all enabled. I thought the contents of those DLCs would be scattered throughout the world or appear in late game dungeons, but nope. A boatload of overpowered weapons, accessories and consumables that are given to you right at the beginning and a character that oneshots everything for quite a while.
Could it be that you are really into anime? Persona and Disgaea are anime as fuck, while Final Fantasy is surprisingly less anime due to lingering western influence.
Other JRPGs which are pretty anime are the Tales of ... series and naturally the most anime of them all The Legend of Heroes Trails of Cold Steel in the Sky
Because gameplay wise there is not really anything that separates Persona and Disgaea from Final Fantasy. I'd even say that FF V has better gameplay than both games. It is mostly mood.
Yeah, I think it mostly has to do with mood and the variety in gameplay. Like how in Persona 4 you have social sim elements to break the monotony of pressing the same buttons during fights... On the other hand it didn't feel like the FF games had different gameplay phases the more I progressed, but again I didn't play more than five hours so I'm probably wrong.
Never been into anime, I've only ever watched two (GTO and Black Lagoon) so I know nothing about anime tropes and whatnot.
On the other hand it didn't feel like the FF games had different gameplay phases the more I progressed, but again I didn't play more than five hours so I'm probably wrong.
Nah, you’re pretty much right. Final Fantasy, at least until they became action RPGs, are pseudo-DRPGs to varying degrees (combat, character builds, exploration) with a story tacked on. FFX is focused on builds and combat, earlier games on exploration and combat with some build choice, etc. Later games were more of a story with DRPG elements tacked on, but they never escaped that formula—the problem is, unlike straight DRPGs, Final Fantasy started to use the story to hook you instead of the basic gameplay loop. Part of what makes a DRPG is that the exploration and mapping is engaging outside of combat, and ideally that the combat is challenging enough and the itemization is such that finding treasure is a significant reward. Even in FFs where exploration is emphasized, the dungeon design is boring.
I was surprised how similar the optic is to the movie Summer Wars. I did a bit of digging and found out that Summer Wars is basically a Digimon movie in disguise. Cool stuff, might check out that series soon.
Yes, it's a deliberate callback to Digimon Adventure: Bokura no War Game, which was also directed by Hosoda Mamoru; think of it as Summer Wars 1.0. The 1999 Digimon Adventure movie had him as a director as well and is quite charming. Watch both if you can.
Man, hearing good stuff about Death end re;quest makes me feel bad about dropping it after an hour, might pick it up again after i finish...
Trails of cold steel 3
I'm 43 hours in, i always enjoyed the combat in the series but dropped it many years ago after finishing Cold Steel 2, Rean posting made me pick up the series again and even if i hate Rean the worldbuilding is something that i enjoyed a lot and the trails series is probably the best at that, having 7 games at it's back and a lot of memorable NPCs i'm having a blast, i'm the kind of guy that talk to every npc multiple times and comes back after an event to see if they have new dialogue, if you don't have the same kind of autism as i, i wouldn't reccommend the series. If you enjoy worldbuilding start with Trails in the sky, even if it doesn't hold up in the combat department, the worldbuilding was amazing from the begining.
Death end re;Quest.
Didn't expect much from it, just tried it out because there's a Mary Skelter 2 DLC that adds some pretty neat costumes from it. The gameplay's a boatload of fun. Pinballing enemies around the battleground never gets old and having to switch characters and abilities based on enemy elements is neat too. The character animations and spell effects are tubular as well. It's quite the spectacle, especially the ultimate abilities once characters glitch out.
The story's a lot of fun too. Didn't expect it to be such a grand and interesting mystery. It does get pretty dark and edgy though, but it's alright, nothing too exaggerated or over the top.
Also, Ripuka best girl.
Based. Yes, DER;Q is one of those sleeper amazing stories that not many know about. The sequel is unfortunately not on the same level, but you can still get some enjoyment out of it, if you can handle the massive drop in writing quality (despite what was promised, it wasn't the cream of the crop in narrative design and gameplay was watered down too).
But Lucil is best girl.
Man, hearing good stuff about Death end re;quest makes me feel bad about dropping it after an hour, might pick it up again after i finish...
Trails of cold steel 3
I'm 43 hours in, i always enjoyed the combat in the series but dropped it many years ago after finishing Cold Steel 2, Rean posting made me pick up the series again and even if i hate Rean the worldbuilding is something that i enjoyed a lot and the trails series is probably the best at that, having 7 games at it's back and a lot of memorable NPCs i'm having a blast, i'm the kind of guy that talk to every npc multiple times and comes back after an event to see if they have new dialogue, if you don't have the same kind of autism as i, i wouldn't reccommend the series. If you enjoy worldbuilding start with Trails in the sky, even if it doesn't hold up in the combat department, the worldbuilding was amazing from the begining.
Good. The Cold Steel series has the best combat in the genre (play at max difficulty) and with years of massive worldbuilding already behind it, it has a narrative scope and storytelling other games could only dream about. We're talking about the most complex, grounded world in any game ever made, period. And ultimately, as with any good tale, it's all about the people and their wants and struggles, so interacting with the NPCs is absolutely vital. More people seeing the light is good.
Yes, Rean can be annoying at times, but he's not nearly as bad as the average JRPG/male anime protagonist. And you get to play so many of the other characters too, so it's not even a problem.
Let's be honest, Cold Steel rapes every single western attempt at RPGs out there. I feel fucking sorry for anyone who has not played the series.
Based. Yes, DER;Q is one of those sleeper amazing stories that not many know about. The sequel is unfortunately not on the same level, but you can still get some enjoyment out of it, if you can handle the massive drop in writing quality (despite what was promised, it wasn't the cream of the crop in narrative design and gameplay was watered down too).
But Lucil is best girl.
Not looking forward to playing DERQ2 that much now. Reading the 1.5 novel for it and I ain't feeling it so far. Reads like torture/despair porn in some places. What a shame.
Finished Dragon Quest I on SNES in about 6 hours.
Overall, i'm really surprised how good this little game is.
Despire being the first console RPG, it manages to have clever design choices and nice attention to detail that make it relevant to play today
-It's fully open world ! Instead of having a world map with gated, semi open areas, this game opted to a single continent that you can fully explore barring the final dungeon (though encounter design serves as soft gates but i think it's more interesting than having a dude saying you can't pass). The game even has an optional dungeon
that give you an unique accessory the only one that increase you attack
-The final castle is visible right from the start, right when you access the world map you see it blocked by a river. You can guess it's a particulary important place because of the poisoned purple tiles surrounding it as a visual clue. which is a very smart environmental storytelling.
There's no need for countless dialogue, by simply watching the scenery you understand everything you need to.
-The battle system is very simple but manage to convey the DQ trademark sense of progression, that "number awareness" that few other games manages to replicate . In other words, it's a game where you understand exactly what the number displayed means relative to the game be it damage, stats, prices etc... It sounds banal but too often you see a very wide display of numbers that doesn't feel very believable (for exemple in FF 7, you suddenly go from 2000 ish to 7000+ damage at mid-late game and you always have enough money without any grind to buy everything you need once you enter a new city making the shop a simple upgrade station instead of a choice affair).
But, in this game, you only control ONE character and only face ONE monster per battle, which makes it much more simple than later installments even through ailments are somewhat useful. One boss is weak to sleep, another to silence.
Not to mention that in DQ I you start a complete shit with 120 gold and no equipments at all, barely able to kill slimes and end up a walking god who regain all his hp simply by walking some steps.
-Another thing the game is good for its time is world building. One of the biggest trademark in DQ comes from the NPC: every single one has unique dialogue and the dialogue can evolve depending on your advancement.
When you kill the final boss, instead of instantly watching ending sequence and credits, you can still move around, enter all cities and see that every single NPC dialogue has been updated matching the events..
-And last but not least, it boasts one of the most significant choice in JRPG
you can actually join the Evil Lord ! In fact, the choice cursor is even pointed to "yes" by default ! (generally, when the player is presented a choice with serious consequence, it's pointed to "no")
Overall I would say it's a 8/10. I didn't expect to enjoy it so much. It's a bit like the first Ys to me, a little game which surprisingly holds up by having a charming world, decent combat and rewarding exploration.
I 'm playing right now DQ II, the last non MMO mainline game i haven't finished yet.
Finished Dragon Quest II on SNES on about 14 hours.
I can safely say it's the worst mainline game in the series
Basically, this game is to DQ III what DQ VI was to DQ VII
A game that introduces a new type of game design but that ends up completely outclassed by it's sequel
In DQ II and III it's about the Linear then non linear structure. For those who played FF VI, it's the same concept.
In DQ VI and VII it's about evolutive classes and multiple world maps.
The difference is that, at least DQ VI has party chat on DS, the dream world gimmick and Underwater.
Not to mention that, there's an insane, mandatory grind between the last cave and the final boss's castle thanks to a completely retarded difficulty spike
I have nothing against difficulty spikes as long as a smart player can pass through it by using everything in his arsenal. This is not possible in this game.
And whoever finish this game without a guide deserves a medal.
I will give a 4/10. Everywhere i read that this game is a "vast improvement" to the first. That's complete bullshit.
The first is a glorious little open world that was only followed by Metal Max series (which is coincidentally made by a former DQ dev).
The second is just a broken mess.
I guess journos only read the manual and saw that the world map was larger and you control a party of three instead of one. So they wrote it's better without even considering the importance of execution.
I don't have many thoughts on it. It felt more like a collection of short stories than a cohesive game. I liked some of the villages but most of them were forgettable. I found the main cast to be pretty weak, and the 2 best characters just leave your party for huge chunks of the game (one forever). I ended up getting fucked by this because one of those who left was the one I specced into healing.
I wish there was more variety in the soundtrack. Hearing the same songs for 90 hours wasn't fun.
The 3 dimensional cube dungeon near the end was really good though. Definitely a highlight that'll stick in my memory.
Just finished Romancing SaGa 3Remaster (Switch).
It was all around a downgrade compared to Romancing SaGa 2, but especially in the second half it was still fun.
Compared to the predecessor there are quite a few changes. Instead of playing a dozen different emperors spread out over decades, you play only a singular adventuring party. You can choose from up to 8 characters your main character, but the choice really does not matter that much, as most characters can be recruited into the 5 man team of someone else anyway. With your choice of a number of those 8 main characters and a large cast of side characters you explore the world, find out what you even have to do here, and kill god in the end. Fairly classical as far as JRPGs go.
Now what I did like compared to Romancing SaGa 2:
Some weapon types which were prior neglected got some really nice skills.
The cast of side characters is even larger than the classes in RS 2, and many of them have gimmicks with a lot of impact (like the undead being unable to heal normally)
Weapon Mastery is a more convenient system than the Dojo system.
Equipment descriptions made sense and didn't withhold critical information about what items and weapons do like in RS2.
The places you visited were more crazy and imaginative.
Money matters a lot more, you get very little of it and you need to spend it well.
Dungeon Designs were a lot better. Hidden treasures, forks in the path, traps, gimmicks galore. Also visually very pretty environments.
The 4 elemental castles are an absolute treat. To beat the game you need to kill 4 elemental lords, Wind/Fire/Water/Earth. Their dungeons are the peak of the level design of the game, and their bossfights occassionally even surpass the very good bossfights from Romancing SaGa 2.
What I disliked:
Some other weapon types were made much worse, and the skills are spread unevenly. Some weapons are absolute shit in the early game only to get really good in the late game, and vice versa. It leads to unsatisfying stages where you don't spark jackshit for hours. The sparking felt more consistently spread out in RS2.
Split enemy rankings. This is very technical, but to sum it up, when you fight a random encounter it can be one of dozens of enemy types, like Fairys, Slimes or Skeletons. In Romancing SaGa 2, if you fight many enemies, all enemy types get stronger. In Romancing SaGa 3 only the specific type you fight gets stronger. So if you fight a lot of plant type monsters you will be facing ferocious killer flowers, but if you run into an enemy you have mostly avoided, lets say a fish, you oneshot a puny carp made for the first 5 hours of play in the last dungeon. Utterly stupid, and leads to a lot of small problems, like the uneven spark spread. If you enter a dungeon centered around water, and you have avoided water enemies up to now, the dungeon will be a yawn fest until the final boss.
Magic is crippled. The game wants you to use 4 physical only characters, who maybe learn the strongest dark magic spell for the final boss. The crown system is a bit weird, but it highly disencourages hybrid characters. And even if you make full mages they are weaker in magic than even the hybrids from RS2.
Quest scripting is retarded. Quite a few quests give you very bad directions, lock you into dungeons, or are generally solved in really exotic ways.
Now how does all of this cumulate?
Overall this game is worse. You make less meaningfull decisions in story and character development, you get less dopamine hits of sparks in tight fights, you see less cool enemy designs (since you won't max out all enemy types on a normal playthrough). You even make less meaningfull decisions in combat, as most of your units will not have spells.
You see more cool places and navigate more cool dungeons and recruit more cool characters as a tradeoff, but that really isn't worth it. Most of the time.
Where this game shines are the four elemental castles. In those the strengths of the game are enhanced. As they only present you a narrow range of random encounters, and are quite long, you will face hard random encounters by the end of them, which leads you to sparking a lot of cool skills in them. They also host the best bossfights against the Abyss Lords, which have stupidly high spark rankings, so you will always learn new skills when fighting them.
TL DR:
Game is a good bit worse than the predecessor overall, but at its peak in the four castles it is better.
Still a top shelf SNES game and as thus a wonderfull JRPG, but I rank it low among the SaGa games I played yet.
Playing through Okage - Shadow King and loving it. Coming across a gem like this is what it's all about.
Love the characters, it looks fantastic (once you get the settings right) and the music is amazing.
Some notes if it takes anybody else's interest:
Hardware acceleration doesn't work. Needs a software renderer or will randomly slow down and suck in general.
If you leave it too long it will crash the emulator, good to restart the emulator state every so often or it will go down in the middle of a big boss fight.
Finished Dragon Quest VIII (3DS) for the first time despite attempting playthroughs of it many times before dating back to the original PS2 release.
I overall dislike this game. It has a beautiful aesthetic and character design, among the best in the series imo, but the difficulty is just retarded. The dungeons are straight corridors with a lever to unlock a door somewhere else, and it is the grindiest game outside of the original trilogy. Almost every major boss requires grinding.
The tension system is shit. Being rewarded for skipping turns doesn't feel good, it's not engaging. And every fucking boss spams moves that remove tension and buffs every 2 turns, it's incredibly annoying.
On another note, VII is growing on me now that it's been ~1 week after I played it. I think I might like it more than I originally thought.
Blue forest:
20 minutes of walking and cutscenes with a slow first battle.It has some weird selection of which type of attack you want to(high/low).
Too slow and too boring to continue past the tutorial.
Lucienne quest:
Happy jrpg with a "interesting" combat.
You select your character lanes and then the actions.Terrain can block you from attacking.
Unfortunately it is all meaningless because you can magically move across the battlefield with ease as long as there isn't something in front of you.
So a guy in front of a enemy will have a harder time reaching then a guy across because of a single tree.I had a situation where there was a congo line of slimes hitting a tree for 10 minutes.
Will continue playing for curiosity sake.
All 3DO games also suffer from shit early 3d and slowdowns.That is with upscaling and overclocking the emulated cpu.
