Random thoughts on whatever JRPG you're currently playing?

[KeighnMcDeath]

God. Wtf?!? Call the cops little girl. Shoot that dude with the gun in the locker.

 

[Carpincho Pampeano]

Parin has a literal giant drill, so she is protected against lolicons.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Is that a pokemon?

Gengar?

 

[spekkio]

To be fair, a similar thing happens in all games if the enemy ambushes you, hits a weakpoint or crits, then proceeds to wipe out your party. Ie: Encountering the giant Ghirimekhala in a random encounter in DDS2.

Yeah, but in previous games that was only true for certain strong enemies (late-game mostly). Smirk in SMT4 works in such way, that enemies ~LV10 can obliterate you even when your demons are ~LV30. It's just how the press-turn system works, when coupled with a retarded "bonus" (auto-critical).

I was spamming quicksaves like crazy, 'cuz this is the only safe way of not loosing hours of progress not by fucking sth up "tactically" but simply by being ambushed by enemy group which just "emerged" next to the protag and then killed you thanks to smirk. Game is playable mostly because you're doing the exact same thing to the enemies 99% of the time. The only slightly tactical fights, where I had to do sth more than check for enemy weaknesses, were 2-3 boss-fights. Where the tactics boiled down to adding -kaja or -kunda to your elemental attacks and quicksaving before dialogue choices (you can totally screw yourself over by choosing "wrong" dialogue option during boss battle - quality game design in its prime).

tl;dr

After playing DeSu 1&2 gameplay in SMT4 feels like a bad joke (no tactical layer, high reliance on luck). Shame, since other elements of the game feel fine. But I'm not gonna waste ~50-70 hours playing the game I don't like, when I can (re)play other games from the "franchise", which I liked much more.

 

[lightbane]

and quicksaving before dialogue choices (you can totally screw yourself over by choosing "wrong" dialogue option during boss battle - quality game design in its prime).

Wait, wasn't that a thing in Strange Journey? Don't tell me SMT 4 recycled that retarded concept again.

 

[dacencora]

Odd criticisms of SMT4, tbh. The dialogue choices mid-boss battle are dope. I thought they were fun and added a bit of flavor to them. Of course SMT4 does not have the same tactical layer as DeSu because those are SRPGs lmao. Really the main issue with SMT4 is the map. It also lacks in atmosphere and the characters are mostly forgettable. The battle system I thought was very well done and one of the most fun I’ve played.

 

[Carpincho Pampeano]

A month or so ago i talked about Bravely Default and cursed the fucking grind in the game, i got back to it recently because using the backlog randomizer from the website i got Bravely Default again (i don't really have a backlog, haven't bought a game in years), the thing is that i decided to give the game another try.

I always had a theory that for certain games you have to be in the right mindset to enjoy them, at the time i wasn't going to get Bravely Default and i think i do now, playing Bravely Default just to get over it from a checklist will make you hate the game because you will not experiment with the job system and a lot of them are from side quest so rushing through the game is a big no.

I wrote a huge text but something happened and it was all deleted, i will review the game once i finish with it.

 

[Hobo Elf]

Odd criticisms of SMT4, tbh. The dialogue choices mid-boss battle are dope. I thought they were fun and added a bit of flavor to them. Of course SMT4 does not have the same tactical layer as DeSu because those are SRPGs lmao. Really the main issue with SMT4 is the map. It also lacks in atmosphere and the characters are mostly forgettable. The battle system I thought was very well done and one of the most fun I’ve played.

>:Smile Devilishly
>:Boss freaks out and gets hit with Debilitate

The boss dialogue options were one of the highlights of the combat system. It was really funny to fuck with the bosses and see their morale plummet when you chose the cheeky options. Really lame that they didn't bring it back for SMT5.

 

[dacencora]

The boss dialogue options were one of the highlights of the combat system. It was really funny to fuck with the bosses and see their morale plummet when you chose the cheeky options. Really lame that they didn't bring it back for SMT5.

Totally agree man. I also really liked Smirk. The Magatsuhi Gauge was fun and a pretty interesting evolution, but I’m excited to play IV:A in the near future because I actually really enjoyed the Smirk system. Yes it could wipe you out, but it kept boss fights very interesting even to the end of the game. If I had one main criticism of V, it would be that boss fights didn’t feel as meaningful as Nocturne or IV.

 

[Thac0]

I am almost finished with Bravely Default. It is a fucking pain in the ass.

For all of those that do not know, BD is a charming little Final Fantasy V clone for retro fags, except it drops a big twist at the end. Sadly with this twist it also makes the gameplay unbearable. Ridiculously unbearable.

You need to repeat the last chapter of the game, consisting of 5 mandatory bossfights of which you have beaten 4 already before in the mains story, 3 times. If you count all the repeats you are fighting the 4 elemental fiends protecting the crystals 5 (!) times each, and the fifth boss 4 times to unlock the final dungeon. That is 24 bossfights in a row you need to absolve, with minimal unique content inbetween, just tons of cutscenes you need to skip.

If this wasn't enough of a fucking chore, the difficulty rises each loop. To the point where turning of all random encounters and blazing through these 24 fights with the same setup is not really viable on hard difficulty.
I have written a very angry rant somewhere on this forum on how a similar chapter that has the devs overestimating how fun their combat system is in isolation ruins a neat little Steam Indie game called The Dwarf Run. It almost does the same here.

I say almost, because the game offers you some mean tricks. I didn't intend to touch the treasure trove of degenaracy that is possible with the uncountable combinations of the 20+ Jobs that has Bravely Default 1, but if this game is gonna be such a prick about letting me to the last boss all honour goes out the window.

I maximised the speed stat on a Dark Knight, set her up with Lifesteal, and then used an ability similar to Cecil's Darkside in FF4 to farm a fuckton of Job Points in an area where large enemy groups can be consistently oneshot by my Dark Knight.
Then I got to building an S tier job combo team.

Slow World means that every unit only gets a turn point on every second turn. Pretty good because halving the turns of the boss usually helps you more than having your turns halved hinders you.
It gets stupid if you can generate more turns to offset the drawback.

Be My Hero is a nice little skill where you sacrifice a bunch of your turn points to give everyone in your group (yourself included) a turn point. Mimic does what mimic always does, repeat the last action free of charge. Yes, mimicing Be My Hero is as retarded as it sounds. It is borderline turn effective on the caster (he needs to take one pause turn every 4 turns) and everyone else gets flooded in extra turns. Which are now worth twice as much because the enemy only gets to move every two turns.

Now, in this game you can usually only hit the damage cap of 9999 once per turn if you single wield, twice if you dual wield. There is however one stupid combo that can hit the damage cap five times per turn, and is as thus by far the best DPS. It is the before mentioned Dark Knight with lifesteal. Rage is a skill where you use your Darkside until either all enemies are dead, or your HP is too low to cast it, but only five times maximum. Rage with Lifedrain means you cast Darkside five times in a single turn for 5x9999≈50.000 damage. In a game where bosses usually have below 100.000 hp. Yeah, it is pretty derp.

There is another bullshit skill involved called Low Leverage from the merchant, which reduces all enemy damage to half, reduces your skillcosts to half making the Be My Hero combo give everyone 3 turn points per turn without pause, and not really lowering your dps at all because it is over the damage cap anyway.

So to sum it up, the bosses move only once every two turns, only deal half damage, and can get hit with 15-20 hits close to the damage cap per turn.
There is also a backup healer, multiple automatic ressurection failsaves and a skill that annuls one enemy attack per unit that can be cast every turn through Be My Hero and Low Leverage spam.

In short my team has become close to mathematically undefeatable through layers of bullshit that would make an onion proud, I hate this game now, and I am shredding through the most retarded design decision ever made by the Japanese in those 24 boss battles.
Am I having fun? I don't even know anymore. At least this is soon over and I can get to the sick final boss track...

 

[koyota]

Playing: Final Fantasy Pixel Remaster For Android.

Review(3/4ths done): Progress Quest with prettier graphics.

It took me about 12 hours into the game to realize that the game is stuck on EASY Mode from the PS1 version, with no way to change it.

FF1 worked as some type of D&D Darkest Dungeon, managing your resources, do you keep going deeper into the dungeon and possibly not make it out losing your progress, or do you turn around and go back to town? "Aww Hell, I made a wrong turn to a dead-end" now I have to go back and I`m just about out of spells .


In Pixel Remaster, having to think feature was taken away!
Items / equipment are all cheaper, your stats are far higher, levels are gained quicker and enemies stats are weaker.
You can`t ever die unless you`ve never played an RPG or are purposely running from every battle. Which means you are playing for the classic 8-bit "CHAOS!!" Story

Game Includes auto-battle/fast-forward and in-game maps that show you everything including treasure chests / points of interests before you have explored, completely killing the design of maze-like dungeons.
Essentially you can press auto-battle, tap on the screen where you want to go with the map and use extremely cheap high-potions whenever your hp gets low and that is the extent of the gameplay.

It could have been improved with simply: Letting us select non-easy mode and having the in-game map be an auto-map, instead of showing you everything before you have explored it.

 

[Lincolnberry]

I am almost finished with Bravely Default. It is a fucking pain in the ass.

For all of those that do not know, BD is a charming little Final Fantasy V clone for retro fags, except it drops a big twist at the end. Sadly with this twist it also makes the gameplay unbearable. Ridiculously unbearable.

You need to repeat the last chapter of the game, consisting of 5 mandatory bossfights of which you have beaten 4 already before in the mains story, 3 times. If you count all the repeats you are fighting the 4 elemental fiends protecting the crystals 5 (!) times each, and the fifth boss 4 times to unlock the final dungeon. That is 24 bossfights in a row you need to absolve, with minimal unique content inbetween, just tons of cutscenes you need to skip.

If this wasn't enough of a fucking chore, the difficulty rises each loop. To the point where turning of all random encounters and blazing through these 24 fights with the same setup is not really viable on hard difficulty.
I have written a very angry rant somewhere on this forum on how a similar chapter that has the devs overestimating how fun their combat system is in isolation ruins a neat little Steam Indie game called The Dwarf Run. It almost does the same here.

I say almost, because the game offers you some mean tricks. I didn't intend to touch the treasure trove of degenaracy that is possible with the uncountable combinations of the 20+ Jobs that has Bravely Default 1, but if this game is gonna be such a prick about letting me to the last boss all honour goes out the window.

I maximised the speed stat on a Dark Knight, set her up with Lifesteal, and then used an ability similar to Cecil's Darkside in FF4 to farm a fuckton of Job Points in an area where large enemy groups can be consistently oneshot by my Dark Knight.
Then I got to building an S tier job combo team.

Slow World means that every unit only gets a turn point on every second turn. Pretty good because halving the turns of the boss usually helps you more than having your turns halved hinders you.
It gets stupid if you can generate more turns to offset the drawback.

Be My Hero is a nice little skill where you sacrifice a bunch of your turn points to give everyone in your group (yourself included) a turn point. Mimic does what mimic always does, repeat the last action free of charge. Yes, mimicing Be My Hero is as retarded as it sounds. It is borderline turn effective on the caster (he needs to take one pause turn every 4 turns) and everyone else gets flooded in extra turns. Which are now worth twice as much because the enemy only gets to move every two turns.

Now, in this game you can usually only hit the damage cap of 9999 once per turn if you single wield, twice if you dual wield. There is however one stupid combo that can hit the damage cap five times per turn, and is as thus by far the best DPS. It is the before mentioned Dark Knight with lifesteal. Rage is a skill where you use your Darkside until either all enemies are dead, or your HP is too low to cast it, but only five times maximum. Rage with Lifedrain means you cast Darkside five times in a single turn for 5x9999≈50.000 damage. In a game where bosses usually have below 100.000 hp. Yeah, it is pretty derp.

There is another bullshit skill involved called Low Leverage from the merchant, which reduces all enemy damage to half, reduces your skillcosts to half making the Be My Hero combo give everyone 3 turn points per turn without pause, and not really lowering your dps at all because it is over the damage cap anyway.

So to sum it up, the bosses move only once every two turns, only deal half damage, and can get hit with 15-20 hits close to the damage cap per turn.
There is also a backup healer, multiple automatic ressurection failsaves and a skill that annuls one enemy attack per unit that can be cast every turn through Be My Hero and Low Leverage spam.

In short my team has become close to mathematically undefeatable through layers of bullshit that would make an onion proud, I hate this game now, and I am shredding through the most retarded design decision ever made by the Japanese in those 24 boss battles.
Am I having fun? I don't even know anymore. At least this is soon over and I can get to the sick final boss track...

I dropped it after beating the 4th elemental boss/continent. You've convinced me to pick it back up, especially the music bit. Thank you.

 

[KeighnMcDeath]

Now i'm wondering, are all the FF/DQ games on ios/android just easier versions? That blows chunks.

 

[deuxhero]

DQ2's hardest version was the original Famicom version because it was unfinished garbage where the pacing/grinding was fucked up because they didn't have time to fix it before release except the very early game, and full of trash like how one of the characters just stops growing not too long into the game. Even the US NES version had to make massive balance changes, let alone the DQ1+2 releases on SFC and GBC. All versions of DQ3 are going to be easier than the Famicom version because, while that one is good, SFC onward has QoL improvements and a powerful new class (thief is supposed to be squishy glass cannon going by its equips, but its in a game where agility determines defense so it's actually a strong all-around character with useful utility abilities) that make it easier naturally (the mobile version of DQ3 is trash for its own reasons though, failing to implement all the bonus content from the SFC release). Otherwise no idea.

 

[Carpincho Pampeano]

Got filtered by the first No Heroes Allowed game five minutes ago.

 

[Nifft Batuff]

Odd criticisms of SMT4, tbh. The dialogue choices mid-boss battle are dope. I thought they were fun and added a bit of flavor to them. Of course SMT4 does not have the same tactical layer as DeSu because those are SRPGs lmao. Really the main issue with SMT4 is the map. It also lacks in atmosphere and the characters are mostly forgettable. The battle system I thought was very well done and one of the most fun I’ve played.

I loved the setting and atmosphere of SMTIV and SMTIVA.

 

[Reinhardt]

Almost finished SRW X. Too many isekai. And even isekai within isekai. Wataru is surprisingly ok, probably because he's from kid cartoons. Buddy Complex fag i hated from the first meeting, so except sending him along with Tusk from Cross Ange naked to be buttraped by enemies few times never bothered with it. Good thing that with huge cast you can field only people you like. Mostly using Cross Ange girls, Mazingers, Gurren Lagann, Brave Express, Daitarn 3, Katherine tank and some smol robots.
Oh, and Megafauna, because i like its music and kaptin looks like Kalin.

 

[Reinhardt]

Almost finished SRW X.

Finished. Great games but now i will play something else, because just like with Trails in the Sky marathon last year i'm slightly tired. 150+ hours total between V and X in 1,5 months. Probably closer to 200. Having war, curfew and no internet for days from time to time really helps with clearing games.
Probably coin toss between Evenicle 2 and Atelier Sophie 2.

 

[Carpincho Pampeano]

Turns out there's a gochiuusa game for the vita, i remember they being in maracle girls festival! Which is a rhythm game full of anime ops, if you are a turbo weeb you should check it out.

Also obligatory song.

 

[dacencora]

I loved the setting and atmosphere of SMTIV and SMTIVA.

To each their own. I found the atmosphere and setting of practically every other SMT game I’ve booted up to be more to my taste (SJR, DeSu, Nocturne, V, even the first few minutes of SMT 1). That’s not to say that I didn’t like IV, because I really really did. It’s one of my favorite games, but the atmosphere was not one of the reasons it became a favorite of mine.

 

[d1r]

Odd criticisms of SMT4, tbh. The dialogue choices mid-boss battle are dope. I thought they were fun and added a bit of flavor to them. Of course SMT4 does not have the same tactical layer as DeSu because those are SRPGs lmao. Really the main issue with SMT4 is the map. It also lacks in atmosphere and the characters are mostly forgettable. The battle system I thought was very well done and one of the most fun I’ve played.

I loved the setting and atmosphere of SMTIV and SMTIVA.

I can't believe that someone who loved the atmosphere of SMTIV, can also love the atmosphere of SMTIVA. SMTIVA from the beginning to almost the end has a completely different tone than SMTIV, which first brings down the atmosphere quite a lot.

 

[Nifft Batuff]

Odd criticisms of SMT4, tbh. The dialogue choices mid-boss battle are dope. I thought they were fun and added a bit of flavor to them. Of course SMT4 does not have the same tactical layer as DeSu because those are SRPGs lmao. Really the main issue with SMT4 is the map. It also lacks in atmosphere and the characters are mostly forgettable. The battle system I thought was very well done and one of the most fun I’ve played.

I loved the setting and atmosphere of SMTIV and SMTIVA.

I can't believe that someone who loved the atmosphere of SMTIV, can also love the atmosphere of SMTIVA. SMTIVA from the beginning to almost the end has a completely different tone than SMTIV, which first brings down the atmosphere quite a lot.

In apocalypse some of the new characters are cringe, but the setting is the same and so most of the atmosphere. I still felt the dread of exploring a nocturnal Tokyo infested by demons.

 

[Bohrain]

Finished Evenicle 2. I liked how the main villain was written, the protagonist just accepts that he would do the same thing if he were in the same circumstances in the final confrontation. And also hannies have way more character than any other standard shit enemies in any franchise.

 

[Nutmeg]

I have been playing Busin: Wizardry Alternative, or Tale of the Forsaken Land. Got to floor 5, but will be pausing and moving on to a few other dungeon crawlers as I attempt to get a better feel of some titles I've had my eye on for a while.

Excellent presentation and art. It feels like a love letter to Wizardry from people for who played Wizardry when it was fresh and in whose imagination it represented a much greater adventure than the primitive technology of the time could depict directly.

Flows well and can be played through intuition rather than careful planning and number crunching. This means that dungeon exploration takes the center stage over combat and party management, although there's plenty of that too. The floors consist of a few building blocks beyond simple grid cells. Namely, you have curving hallways and staircases as well as diagonal corridors, much like in Shining the Holy Ark. This makes the dungeon more understandable as a series of actual locales rather than just a bunch of abstract mazes strung together. Some dungeon floors are random. The dungeon is littered with NPC encounters, five or more a floor, that spring up on you and add surprisingly welcome reading breaks to all the exploration and combat.

Random encounters are replaced with visible "ghosts" of enemies, telling you a bit about what you can expect should you occupy the same position and combat begin. Combat is much more predictable than in the classic Western Wizardries, which functioned as slot machines more than anything. This is, IMO, a big improvement. Like the dungeons, the combat has also evolved from its primitive forebearers through the addition of "allied actions", basically a team playbook menu that lets you use the turns of two or more characters for the round towards various tactical effects.

Spells are gained through an exceedingly simple crafting system that does not irritate me, and I hate crafting. There's a bit of calendar based spice here that's also welcome. Classes are the same as in the classic Western Wizardries (1-5), although I think stat growths and level caps have been changed, as has the MP system. My memory is fuzzy here so please verify this yourself if it's important for you. There are recruitable NPCs as well as character creation (unlocked after the first floor boss). The recruitables have better stats but you can't change their class except with special items.

An important note here is that the game eases you in to its systems. Firstly, you simply create one character to begin with, and are immediately dropped in the town, where you can recruit just 2 more companions at the bar. Better yet, IMO, there is no rolling in character creation. I found this very welcome because it reduced the amount of planning and research I had to do before I started playing. The game is very well "paced" to use an ambiguous term, which to me is really all to do with the balance between learning and play.

My complaints are that the encounters are all quite easy beyond the short amount of thinking it takes to come up with a winning set of moves when you come across a new composition of enemies, and there's no macro (Why did no one copy this from Phantasy Star 4?) system or animation skip feature to breeze through them. Speaking of animation skip, this is my main complaint. The animations are very long. Everywhere. The game really does waste your time in many ways, from slow text speed, to an annoying pause when identifying items, to a stupid little graphic animation when crafting spell stones. Since I'm emulating, I just turn off the frame limiter, and the game becomes playable. It would not be playable at all without this feature and I would have dropped it long ago. Other crawlers are much better in this regard. I think Diablo1_reborn mentioned in some post in some other thread that this is fixed in the sequel? I don't know yet.

tl;dr if you play it in an emulator and can fast forward, it's more enjoyable IMO than at least the first 2 classic Wizardries, in no small part due to the geometrically complex, 3D, only loosely grid based dungeon, and much more sensible combat. That said you're not going to get gold standard blob combat or party management. For that, the best I have experienced is still Labyrinth of Touhou 2.

Anyway, moving on to Kyuyaku Megami Tensei.

 

[d1r]

Licorice
It's still kinda slow in Busin0. Just not as painfully as in Forsaken Lands.