Random thoughts on whatever JRPG you're currently playing?

[Ivan]

Bug Fables

It's a cute throwback to Paper Mario. Great sense of adventure, sharp, pithy writing that doesn't bog down the pace. Having a pleasant time thus far.

 

[lightbane]

Does that one count as a JRPG though?^

 

[Dishonoredbr]

I'm replaying Devil Survivor Overclocked on Amane's Route and..

Spoiler

It's really good. Especialy the 8th day, unlike Naoya's route, it's mainly focus on showning how the world changed after you became King of Bel and sided with God to become his Messiah and now humans have a brand of the death

I think this first time in all 5 Megaten games that i played that God doesn't sound like total asshole. He's much more reasonable and even let Abel decide how Branded humans should be judge. And it's really cool because the game doesn't tell you but actually let you do it. There's a event involving a Policemen that wants to kill a woman and depending in dialogue choice you can try reason with him but he shoots and Angels stop him and kill him while scolding you because you didn't act fast enough , you can use your power as Overlord to order demons to kill him or call the angels to do it. It's a small but really cool event.

The rest of the day follows Abel and the rest bring ''The Lord's salvation'' to Branded humans and make them repent for their sins.

Oh also the Demons start to see your good deeds and start to help humanity. And we get to see a glimpse of Amane's life. This is so far my favorite route of any Megaten , it's so unique. A really nice change of pace from ''Killing or brainwashing everyone that's a sinner or unclean''
10/10 This game made me believe in God again

Spoiler

 

[Ghulgothas]

In the latter half of Final Fantasy I. It's amazing how much a change of wardrobe does for your little party. I am starting to understand the fatigue felt regarding aspects of 'Archetypical' JRPGS, but it's not a dealbreaker for me. At least not yet. Debating whether or not to do the Chaos Dungeons the PSP version added. Dunno if it's due to fudges between versions, but much of the game feels strangely easy.

Everything I hear about FF Tactics intrigues me. I think that'll be the next one I dig into for the first time after I'm done with FF I. From what I've heard it's of it's own little subset of games along with Tactics Ogre and Vagrant Story; dunno what the deal is with those games yet. Also don't know what to make of the apparent divide between Tactics and Tactics Advance, aside from a change in style that is. Gameplay looks much of the same regardless.

 

[newtmonkey]

Mother (FC)
Finished! I played the original FC version on original hardware without any hacks, etc.

This game excels in two areas:

1. The overall atmosphere (especially the soundtrack)
2. A fair but difficult level of challenge throughout the game

The atmosphere is quite unique even compared with its sequel Mother 2. Whereas Mother 2 is completely surreal and goofy, Mother instead feels whimsical and strangely touching, sort of like watching a combination of The Goonies and The Neverending Story. The soundtrack plays a large part in establishing the atmosphere—it's one of the best on the Famicom and still sounds impressive today imo.

The game has a reputation as a brutal, unbalanced, grind-heavy mess of a game, but I didn't find that to be the case at all and didn't have to grind at any point in the game. Mother regularly throws some very difficult areas with plenty of tough enemies at you, but almost always gives you the tools you need to survive. Careful use of PSIs (spells) and items is the key to sailing through the game without too much difficulty.

Although the game is mostly linear with progress gated by your typical JRPG stuff (roadblocks, doors, etc. opened after certain events), the game opens up quite a bit during the second half and you can explore and tackle areas out of order. There is also a lot of optional stuff to find, though most of it is just for fun. There are also very few "boss" enemies gating progress, which is always a good thing in my book.

---

Overall, I loved the game. It's got a great story for an 8-bit JRPG, a wonderful atmosphere, and a satisfying level of challenge in which you are rewarded for making use of the tools you're given. There are also some really great "dungeons" to explore, several of which I had to map out on paper so as to not get lost.

I finished the game at levels 28/25/22, and just barely was able to defeat the last boss. Checking FAQs and message boards after the fact, I saw most people recommending grinding until the two PSIkers gain all their PSI abilities (mid-to-high 30s!!!). This seems like a huge waste of time to me, and is definitely not necessary.

---

Helpful hints:

Spoiler

• Learn which enemies are not worth fighting and either run from them (early on) or cast Time Slip (later on).
• When you get the chance to purchase defensive equipment in Magicant, get Water Drop Pendants for everyone. These halve fire-based damage, and the vast majority of enemies that use special attacks are fire-based.
• Bread can be "used" (not "eaten"!) to leave bread trails, allowing you to warp back instantly to the start of the trail. Each character can leave their own bread trail, so you can use this to quickly warp back to town for healing then warp back to where you left off exploring. A HUGE time saver later in the game.
• Buffing/debuffing PSIs are very powerful. They seem to always be effective, and will stick until the end of combat (unless negated by another PSI, etc.).
• The last few areas of the game are full of enemies that use PSI abilities. This is actually for your benefit! As far as I could tell, any enemy that uses PSI abilities is also susceptible to the "Pyscho Block" PSI (stops them from using PSIs for the entire battle) and the "PSI Magnet" PSI (steals 10 PSI points each turn used).

 

[Carpincho Pampeano]

Re-playing dungeon travelers 2 right now, i think is the only dungeon crawler than can go toe to toe with Etrian Odyssey, speaking of which Atlus said yesterday that there will be news on the new game "soon". Dungeon Crawlers are my weakness, it doesn't help that unlike most jrpgs the actual gameplay is fun so i can just grind for hours, so i try to play them only on weekends, let's all hope that Sting at least ports the series to Switch like they have been doing with so many of their games, but i think the license is actually from Aqua Plus, and everybody knows that they only care about underwater ray romano.

 

[deuxhero]

Dragon Quest Builders 2
Core gameplay is fun, but a lot of little things bring this down. For 99% of the game, you have a fixed ally following you and he is more powerful than you (plot point). Problems with this are many: For one, the game is heavily dependent on context sensitive buttons, and you will wind up talking to him on accident a lot. Since the game is balanced with him following you in mind, enemies are very damage spongy since they were balanced around two characters whacking them, but you have no control over him so the AI is picking the first enemy you fight unless you want to spend twice as long killing a different one. It's also way, way to slow about unlocking new abilities (you don't get a critical movement option till almost the end of the first chapter of three) and too hand-holdy. The demo is very lengthy (includes the full first chapter), so it's worth playing if you're curious.

Edit: The one place you don't have this ally (very late in the game) the enemies are far less HP Spongey and combat is way more fun.

 

[Fluent]

Playing Wizardry: Labyrinth Of Lost Souls and having a blast. I can't put the game down to be honest. Dangerous dungeons, tough as nails combat at times, decent enough itemization and loot system, cool race/class balance (i.e. a Dwarf Bishop will be more hearty yet slightly less intelligent than a Gnome Bishop, etc.). Good stuff. I'm about a dozen hours deep in it and looking forward to playing more. It's not quite Elminage but it's very playable with just enough quality of life features to not be as punishing as say, Elminage Gothic. But if you play it straight and don't savescum it's quite hard after the first few hours. Hope u guys enjoy if u play it!

 

[lightbane]

I'm replaying Devil Survivor Overclocked on Amane's Route and..

Sounds more interesting than DS 2, which I try to play but get turned off by the shit writing every time. Is the expansion worth it if you completed the vanilla game?

 

[Dishonoredbr]

Sounds more interesting than DS 2, which I try to play but get turned off by the shit writing every time. Is the expansion worth it if you completed the vanilla game?

Devil Survivor Overclocked's story is better in every single way compared to D2. Also

By expansion you mean Record breaker's Triangulum arc ? I find pretty good gameplay wise and the story is just alright. If you're talking about Overclocked's 8th day, 100%. I played Naoya and Amane's route and the 8th day of both are great.

 

[Sreggin Etah I]

Finished! A massive improvement over the dull BOF1 in every way.

My biggest problems with BOF1 were:

1. Too easy: You can safely auto combat through much of the game
2. Too simple: Dungeons and towns are all very similar without any interesting gimmicks
3. Too annoying: Constant random battles against easy enemies and no "safe" means of overworld transportation until the very end of the game ruined the one thing I liked about BOF1—exploring the world for high powered gear

.

I'm playing the GBA version right now, with the "Breath of Fire Improved" hack and the "sound restoration" hack. Miles better than the original SNES version just for the fact that i can "run" now, you get the WARP spell pretty early too. However, the game still has atrocious encounter rate, fortunately i'm using the fast forward function from mGBA emulator to speed up the battles animations.

I'll never play a JRPG without a fast forward fuction again, it's just so much more enjoyable ! skipping those repetitive long animations and loading times, for the first time ever i feel like i'm playing more than watching in a JRPG, it makes BOF1 from a unplayable slog to a okayish 7/10 game. Just imagining me skipping the long enemy turns in Shinning Force 1 and 2 give me boners to replay those games, i can also play Wild Arms 2 and Final Fantasy 9 without falling asleep now. It does not affect the gameplay in any way, it does speed up the grinding but it does not matter imo, time is not skill.

Seriously, that fucking dungeon between Auria and Bleak in BOF1 has the worst encounter rate i've ever seen, would take like 2 hours if i was playing the original SNES version. It reminded me why i rage quit the game on my first playthrough, 3 years ago.

 

[newtmonkey]

Megami Ibunroku Persona (PSX)
I've decided to play through this series (well, P1 and the two P2 games anyway) as I have fond memories of playing the somewhat incoherent but still charming US release of this game back in the day. I don't care what anyone says, "MARK DANCED CRAZY" is a fine translation.

I remember back this game got a lot of flack for its graphics (LOL IT LOOKS LIKE A SNES GAME), but I was surprised by how great it actually looks. The sprites are drawn and animate well, and the 2D backgrounds are impressively detailed. The 3D mazes don't look great, but they aren't an eyesore either. And the flat-shaded polygon town map now has a bit of a retro cool aesthetic going on.

I really like the combat in this, especially after playing a bunch of JRPGs with very simple combat. Positioning is quite Wizardry-like and you have to take both melee and firearm weapon ranges into account. The conversation system works really well too. It seems much less random that the system used in the first couple of SMT games, as it gives you some key words describing each enemy's personality, from which you can infer which approaches might work. The manual also describes which conversation options are more likely to get certain results (joy, anger, interest, fear), so you feel like you have plenty of information to go on.

Complaints so far:
- This is one SLOW game. Loading is not so bad, but combats can take a while to get through and random encounters appear to happen regularly every 10 seconds or so.
- The dungeons don't really have anything interesting to do or find in them. Just an excuse to have more battles, really.
- I do not like how spells are named. I know they have a naming system and that you'd eventually learn what all these spells do by heart, but there are so many of them that I have to constantly look up what they do. The manual lists spells by type, so you sort of have to know what the spells do to actually look them up, which is retarded.

Anyway, I am about 8 hours in and liking it so far.

 

[lightbane]

By expansion you mean Record breaker's Triangulum arc ? I find pretty good gameplay wise and the story is just alright. If you're talking about Overclocked's 8th day, 100%. I played Naoya and Amane's route and the 8th day of both are great.

I meant the expansion for the first game. I guess I'll finally give it a try and put DS2 aside, watch a LP at most and that's it. The writing is just too bad.

 

[Sreggin Etah I]

Megami Ibunroku Persona (PSX)

I like Persona 1 first half, but the game went downhill on the second half (after the Sebec Building), the dungeons becomes a long slog and are all empty mazes(no chests, nothing), encounter rate goes through the roof and the story becomes nonsense. Also, the difficulty in Persona 1 is really weird, the game for the most part is super easy, but then there are some enemies that straight up one-shot your party, like that toilet demon.

Also, i couldn't fight the true Final Boss(Pandora) because i got the bad ending for some pointless builshit, but i heard Pandora is a huge difficulty spike, needing some MMORPG levels of grinding. i recommend you look for info about the bad/good ending, because you get the bad ending in this game for some really pointless bullshit.

Sebec Building was the peak of Persona 1 for me, great dungeon that rewards exploration, great music, great atmosphere.

Spoiler

 

[Sreggin Etah I]

Quoting someone from Reddit about the endings in Persona 1:

Spoiler

Yeah, you actually got the bad ending. Which ending you get is determined by your answers to Mai's questions in the Lost Forest. If you have a save that's around that point of the game, just reload it and answer with the following:

1. Stop hiding
   
   
2. For everyone's sake
   
   
3. To find my reason
   

Seriously, who the fuck thought this was a good idea ?

 

[DDZ]

I am about 20 hours into Legend of Heroes: Trails in the Sky and I am not sure. I am playing on hard and combat is fine. Nothing special but also not too easy.

But the game just feels like it's on rails. Just doing the main story and the Bracer tasks, but is there any point? Are there any secrets? Fun of the beaten path? Am I missing something? Are the other games the same or do they at least branch out a little?

 

[Miner 2049er]

Fire Emblem Three Houses. Such a deep quality game. The stunning presentation, top battle system, the interlinking mechanics and fleshed out characters. One question: I'm not keen on running through the academy for hours trying to find the right receiver for gifts and lost items. Do I miss much when I'm neclecting that part ? I mean i can raise the motivation by sharing the meals, singing and tea time.

 

[Puukko]

Fire Emblem Three Houses. Such a deep quality game. The stunning presentation, top battle system, the interlinking mechanics and fleshed out characters. One question: I'm not keen on running through the academy for hours trying to find the right receiver for gifts and lost items. Do I miss much when I'm neclecting that part ? I mean i can raise the motivation by sharing the meals, singing and tea time.

I didn't bother with lost items much but you want to give the right gifts (sometimes pretty obvious, other times not) during tea time. This also increases both of your CHA if you do it well. It helps increase support ranks which in return improves several things in combat. Also, if you're going to recruit from other houses (recommended to bolster your roster) then you can lower the stat requirements by achieving higher support ranks, which is where gifts help. B rank makes them almost negligible.

Protip, assuming you have the side story DLC (as you should since you're emulating) then while it is necessary to complete it before Ch 12 to be able to recruit the new characters, in practice I recommend getting it done well before that as you want to achieve C rank with the new recruits, as well as everyone else too, because to my knowledge none of the C rank support conversations are available afterwards which means you will be locked out of increasing supports with those characters completely.

 

[Thac0]

Thanks for the recommendation AdamReith , I have started Okage, Shadow King today.
The game really oozes with charm. The writing is hilarious, the character design really grows on you and the titular Shadow King is amazing in both.
The gameplay isn't half bad either, combat is fast, at least decently tactical and not a complete snoozefest either.
This game tip toes between being a genre parody and being plain weird, and it does it really well.

Also the OST is genuinly amazing.

Those BELLS man.

A true hidden gem, shame it flew so deeply under the radar. Highly recommended for the 10€ they ask for it.
I don't think the development staff did any other games of note, a cursory google search shows only Digimon World Championship by the same producer and director.

 

[AdamReith]

Thanks for the recommendation AdamReith , I have started Okage, Shadow King today.
The game really oozes with charm. The writing is hilarious, the character design really grows on you and the titular Shadow King is amazing in both.
The gameplay isn't half bad either, combat is fast, at least decently tactical and not a complete snoozefest either.
This game tip toes between being a genre parody and being plain weird, and it does it really well.

Also the OST is genuinly amazing.

Those BELLS man.

A true hidden gem, shame it flew so deeply under the radar. Highly recommended for the 10€ they ask for it.
I don't think the development staff did any other games of note, a cursory google search shows only Digimon World Championship by the same producer and director.

Glad you're enjoying it! It's a great game.

There are a few quirks to the combat system that once you figure out make a huge difference, I didn't need them until the latter part of the game though so lots of time to figure them out.

Spoiler

I often think back to the part where you literally stop existing because nobody pays any attention to you.

Any game that manages to throw a curve ball like that one and make zero attempt to explain it is an all time great in my book.

 

[Deflowerer]

Quoting someone from Reddit about the endings in Persona 1:

Spoiler

Yeah, you actually got the bad ending. Which ending you get is determined by your answers to Mai's questions in the Lost Forest. If you have a save that's around that point of the game, just reload it and answer with the following:

1. Stop hiding
   
   
2. For everyone's sake
   
   
3. To find my reason

Seriously, who the fuck thought this was a good idea ?

Not that hard if you pay attention to the story. Plus, great game to replay anyway.

 

[deuxhero]

Breath of Fire II (SFC)

Finished! A massive improvement over the dull BOF1 in every way.

My biggest problems with BOF1 were:

1. Too easy: You can safely auto combat through much of the game
2. Too simple: Dungeons and towns are all very similar without any interesting gimmicks
3. Too annoying: Constant random battles against easy enemies and no "safe" means of overworld transportation until the very end of the game ruined the one thing I liked about BOF1—exploring the world for high powered gear

BOF2 improves on all of this. It maintains a decent level of challenge for most of the game, but in a fair way that rewards careful use of battle formations, spells, abilities, and consumables. The dungeons and towns are far more complex and interesting than in BOF1, with some interesting gimmicks and scenarios keeping things fresh. Finally, you get access to overworld transportation that heavily reduces or outright eliminates random encounters fairly early into the game, making it a lot easier to backtrack and find treasures.

I really enjoyed the final dungeon, which is massive and full of awesome treasure. The encounter rate is through the roof here, and I was getting into fights every 3-5 steps. I found that running from battle hardly ever works, so the better option is to use smoke bombs (or the rare Holy Scarf) to reduce the encounter rate. The second to last boss was brutal, and I really had to eke out every advantage possible including using common healing items. The last boss was comparatively easy.

Although it's a clear improvement over BOF1, there were still some annoying things that could have been improved. The random encounter rate is still way too high, but you can use a cheap consumable to reduce the rate somewhat if it really gets annoying. More annoyingly, I found that debuffing spells were completely useless as they hardly ever work on bosses—you are much better off buffing your own characters instead, which reduces the effectiveness of some of the spellcaster characters.

Other than that, I really enjoyed playing through this one. It's balanced quite well as I was able to complete it without having to stop to grind EXP or GP at all.

I did enjoy BoF2 with the retranslation, but among BoF2's biggest (non-translation) issues is how horrible the gameplay balance is. Ryu, Nina, cat girl, armadillo dude/crossbow dog (who are identical in most cases) and the secret snake chick are so clearly better than the other characters (Frog guy, plant man, monkey) who are just useless, and the lack of XP cut for inactive party members really makes it worse. Mason patch really helps with this, and it's worth using for anyone replaying the game with the new translation (though be advised you need to create a save after applying the translation but before applying Mason patch to bypass the translations integrity check).

 

[newtmonkey]

Shin Megami Tensei (PSX)
I decided to pick this back up. I had reached Kongo Shinkai and got to the point where the game takes your companions away and you need to fight a somewhat difficult boss just with the demons you've gathered, and I hadn't really spent much time fusing/upgrading them. I also had almost no money so couldn't even summon anything lol. Anyway, I spent a few minutes exploring and gathering enough money to summon my three strongest demons, and was able to defeat the boss and get my companions back.

I had been playing Persona earlier, and it's quite refreshing to come back to SMT with its lighting-fast battles.

 

[GhostCow]

I've been playing a lot of Bravely Default II lately. I can't quite decide how I feel about it. When I played the original game I eventually got bored and quit somewhere near the final boss. I think I might make it to the end of this one so I guess it's an improvement over the first game.

I don't remember how challenging the first game was but I've noticed this game is certainly harder than the older Final Fantasy titles that this game is basically a love letter to. There have been a few bosses that I either needed a certain strategy to defeat or had to grind a bit to get strong enough to beat.

Grinding can be a bit addictive if you find a good enough spot to do it. I like the chaining system where you can a big JP bonus for herding monsters together before engaging. I found a spot right outside the first city where you can easily herd 8 monsters together and as near as I can tell that's the best grinding spot in the entire game unless you use very specific strategies in a couple of other spots. Not really worth the trouble when this spot works so well. I'm in chapter 2 and have mastered about 7 jobs on each character so far.

That's both a good and a bad thing as I've basically made the game way too easy for myself but herding all those monsters and doing chain battles is fun enough that I guess I don't really care.

 

[newtmonkey]

Spent some quality time this weekend making progress in a couple of games:

Final Fantasy V (SFC)
I reached the third "world." I normally don't mind a bare-bones story just there to get you from one place to another, but geez the world, characters, and story are all dull as dishwater. The job system is fun, but it just seems like the game has this great system in place, but it means nothing for 99% of the game (the random encounters) and then requires specific abilities when you get to bosses. In that respect, it really does remind me of FFIII, though it does provide a lot more leeway than that game.

It's also strange how it feels like a bit of a step back in visuals and audio from FFIV. Enemy sprites are generally more detailed than in FFIV, but tiles/combat backgrounds seem really simplified. The soundtrack is pretty dull overall, and is a far cry from the amazing soundtrack of FFIV.

I definitely don't dislike this game, but it doesn't really excite me either. I feel like Final Fantasy Tactics took the job system and put it into a game that actually takes advantage of it.

I expect I still have a long way to go, so it will be interesting to see if my opinion changes. So far, it's definitely above mediocre stuff like Estpolis Denki and Breath of Fire, but my least favorite of the SFC FF trilogy.

Star Ocean (SFC)
I'm about 4 hours in, and I really don't care for this one. The game promises a sci-fi story but almost immediately sticks you on a typical fantasy planet (I know other games in the series also tend to do this). The combat is total garbage, just button mashing with very very very occasional use of special attacks (bosses, mainly). The whole game is on the same scale (i.e. no world map with town icons), but the world is completely linear so far, with you traveling basically in corridors between towns and dungeons akin to FF13. Playing this after completing Mother (FC) was quite a shock, as Mother does the same single scale thing, but has an actual extensive world to explore.

The skill system is pretty fun. Honestly, I am just gonna blast through this (it's apparently very short) so I can get back to Star Ocean 2, which as far as I'm concerned is among the top 3 "traditional" JRPGs of the 32-bit generation.