Random thoughts on whatever JRPG you're currently playing?

[Val the Moofia Boss]

I try to avoid combat as much as possible but otherwise i'm playing it blind because people always say that you need a guide to play this game and i want to defy that conception.

I personally found that combat generally wasn't the problem. There were only like three battles I really struggled on (Gates of Hell near the beginning of the game, a story battle against two of the bad guy's lieutenants in the middle, and the last fight). You don't need to avoiding literally every battle. If you intend to tackle the harder content, then you do need to have been raising a party member in a certain way right from the get go so he learns Cachexia, a powerful spell near the end of the game, and there was a certain level grind area and technique you had to use to get (if you start training him by the half way point, it's way too late). But again, if you're just doing a casual playthrough then you probably don't need to worry.

The main problem I found was the walkthroughitis of the quests. 90% of the game is optional side content and most of the quests are timed and have obscure requirements. Progress the story too far and quests become unavailable, which prevents you from getting certain rewards and from doing other quests later in the game. You have to be following a thick walkthrough to understand where to go, who to talk to, what quests to do in what order, when to do the quests, etc.

 

[Carpincho Pampeano]

I try to avoid combat as much as possible but otherwise i'm playing it blind because people always say that you need a guide to play this game and i want to defy that conception.

I personally found that combat generally wasn't the problem. There were only like three battles I really struggled on (Gates of Hell near the beginning of the game, a story battle against two of the bad guy's lieutenants in the middle, and the last fight). You don't need to avoiding literally every battle. If you intend to tackle the harder content, then you do need to have been raising a party member in a certain way right from the get go so he learns Cachexia, a powerful spell near the end of the game, and there was a certain level grind area and technique you had to use to get (if you start training him by the half way point, it's way too late). But again, if you're just doing a casual playthrough then you probably don't need to worry.

The main problem I found was the walkthroughitis of the quests. 90% of the game is optional side content and most of the quests are timed and have obscure requirements. Progress the story too far and quests become unavailable, which prevents you from getting certain rewards and from doing other quests later in the game. You have to be following a thick walkthrough to understand where to go, who to talk to, what quests to do in what order, when to do the quests, etc.

I always take my time with these games so i always talk with every single NPC after story events, got too used to it when playing Trails games, but i honestly don't care about 100% the game i just do it because i like learning about the game's world and the remnants stuff is interesting.

 

[Abu Antar]

There are some really challenging optional bosses that are really challenging, but fun. You need to have more than a decent composition of units and unions if you want to survive said fights.

 

[7h30n]

Last Remnant is on my "to play" list as well, and as I've been playing SaGa Scarlet Grace for the past week, I've stumbled upon the info that there is some overlap between the teams that did LR and SaGa. That definitely makes me more interested in LR.

W.r.t. Scarlet Grace, though the 3d art is a bit silly, the game has been a blast to play. I love the cardboard pop-up look of the overworld, and the game definitely evokes memories of me running my D&D campaign. The main plot is really similar to what I had at the table, and the humorous characters are getting sidetracked by fun byte-sized quests. It needs no saying, but combat is top-notch! How did I not play any game in this series before is beyond me!?

 

[Carpincho Pampeano]

Yooo Dragon Quest 2 is lit FR FR no cap!

Spoiler

 

[j2alg]

I remember having to deal with some absolutely mindboggling glitches in the fan translation of DQ 2 SFC, like two cannock princes
I did beat the GBC version though, was a wild ride

 

[Miner 2049er]

Last Remnant is on my "to play" list as well, and as I've been playing SaGa Scarlet Grace for the past week, I've stumbled upon the info that there is some overlap between the teams that did LR and SaGa. That definitely makes me more interested in LR.

W.r.t. Scarlet Grace, though the 3d art is a bit silly, the game has been a blast to play. I love the cardboard pop-up look of the overworld, and the game definitely evokes memories of me running my D&D campaign. The main plot is really similar to what I had at the table, and the humorous characters are getting sidetracked by fun byte-sized quests. It needs no saying, but combat is top-notch! How did I not play any game in this series before is beyond me!?

Once you go SaGa...

For me TLR is definitly a SaGa game. There is a battle rank / no level scaling mod if you're into that kind of stuff.
If you should be running out of SaGa games and still feel addicted, there are another three SaGa games, I can recommend: The Alliance Alive, Legend of Legacy and Minstel Song for the PS2.

 

[reGZ]

im probably going to replay gundam Target in Sight when i have spare time and try to unlock all.... and all the pilots.

 

[Late Bloomer]

Picked a PSX rpg at random and ended up getting into Rhapsody: A Musical Adventure.

It's bloody good, some or the finest pixel art I've ever come across.

I haven't thought about that game in a very long time. Its a fine adventure. So much cuteness. And I suppose expectantly, it has some sugary sweet music.

 

[ghostdog]

I've started playing Phantasy Star II, and I'm really getting annoyed by the dungeons. Maze-like, everything looks exactly the same and on top of that, usually you have some pipes or other shit --supposedly from the ceiling-- obstructing your view. I suppose they did that to make it look cool, but it's just bad design. Add to that the constant random battles where you basically let it play on "Auto" and it's a fucking boring grind. Oh and if you want to actually give commands to your party members, you can't do it easily, you need to slog through the same tedious series of menus for each member... Generally the UI is pretty unintuitive since in order to see the character/party information that could fit in a single screen, you have to look at 4 different menus.

I really can't see why this game is one of the most celebrated jrpgs of the 16-bit era, apart from the fact that it had anime plot/presentation and cool combat graphics --for its time at least, but the slow animations still get tedious from the constant battles--. Also, maybe because at that time Genesis had few rpgs worth mentioning.

 

[Cromwell]

Still playing DQ11. I finished The Game yesterday and got the credits and my star for draconian monsters. When I tried to look things up like enemy stats or something every guide seems to have played normal so that never was any help and everyone who complained the game is to easy is probably an idiot. Starting with act 2 the bosses got harder and especially the final one took me a while until I could take him down, I even had to grind to about level 60 (tried the first time with the hero 51 and the others under 50). I will play the postgame for a bit to see how it is but probably deactivate harder monsters now that I finished the game with it.

 

[Tse Tse Fly]

Tried playing some Rogue Galaxy on pcsx2 today, and it was terrible. The way the character controls irritates the hell out of me, it's slow, clunky, and broken, I feel like some damned cripple when trying to move around. It gets especially bad when I try to move in the diagonal directions -- for some reason the character switches to walking instead of running (this might actually have to do with my particular gamepad, or input settings in pcsx2) and it becomes even more painful, even turbo mode does not help, it's still excruciatingly slow. The first boss is clunky as hell, and when I lost the battle with him, I closed the game immediately because by that time I had got fed up with the unbearable controls. Maybe I'll give this game another go some other time and try to get used to the controls, but for now I'm going to look for something else.

 

[newtmonkey]

Super Mario RPG: Legend of the Seven Stars (SNES)

I'm glad to finally complete this one. It's a bit of a "lost" game for me as this was the only major SNES RPG I never got into back in the day, even though I was a huge fan of RPGs (specifically those from Square) and Mario. I remember renting it once shortly after it was released, but I felt like it was a step back from both Final Fantasy III (VI) and Chrono Trigger.

It's a charming little game, but a bit too simple for my tastes, and I'd still rank it below the FF games and CT. It's got a snappy combat engine, but the timed hits don't really add anything to the game and once you learn the timing (which is very generous) it just seems like extra work. I do like that each character really has his/her own unique abilities, and I could see how combat could be quite different based on which characters are in the party... for example, I completely ignored Mallow (really the only character with element-based spells) so relied mostly on physical attacks.

The platforming wasn't so bad for most of the game, but became somewhat infuriating toward the end. Luckily, there wasn't too much of this in the game. I did like how each "dungeon" has its own gimmick. You'll never simply be solving a maze in this game, as there's always some fun little twist involved. Enemies mostly don't respawn unless you leave the area, and it's nice not to get constantly interrupted while exploring.

I must admit, I was pretty disappointed with the graphics in this game. Donkey Kong Country still looks great to this day, and I was expecting something on that level. The sprites and battle backgrounds all look great, but most of the areas you explore are tiny and built from just a handful of very simple tiles.

 

[flyingjohn]

it just seems like extra work

That is the thing that killed the entire series for me.It just adds more time to the generic trash mobs and the payout is nonexistent in terms of either difficulty or rpg systems.
I think the entire series would benefit from a small amount of fixed encounters that are actually interesting.

 

[Val the Moofia Boss]

I think timed hits/QTE attacks/deathblows don't feel like tedious busy work as long as there is an extra level of decision making to it. Ie, in the Trails of Cold Steel games where where when the timed hit window comes up, you can choose whether or not to perform a link attack that builds up 1 point (or if you are capped you just hold on to your points), spend 3 points on a combo for a little extra damage, or spend all 5 points on a heavy hitting team attack. Also helps that the link attack window has fancy presentation to it.

 

[Lincolnberry]

Playing Fire Emblem 3 Houses, 8 chapters in on Hard. Incredibly engrossing against my expectations so far, I've barely done anything else besides eat, sleep and exercise in 2 days.

Haven't played FE since Awakening on 3DS which I did not like, and before that whichever one was with Lynn/Eliwood way back in the day. In general, I dislike permadeath in these sorts of games because it meaningfully limits your tactical options (and forced resets for minor mistakes are just straight irritating, especially when maps on Hard often expect or require some prior knowledge about even spawns).

Awakening was particularly annoying in that it added the pairing mechanic. By late game I was just straight having one or two powerful tanks just take every single hit from hoards of enemies with zero challenge whatsoever. And then the Maddening/Hardest mode in that game was just straight dumb, frustrating RNG to even get off the ground. F that.

Which brings me to 3 Houses - again, given the above, kind of shocked how much it's grabbed me. I like Persona ok but don't particularly enjoy slice of life, the overall battling is still FE (with less/no of the pairing bullshit this time, at least so far), I like how they give you options on the House stuff and the story seems potentially interesting so far, but nothing incredible.

Somehow it all combines really well for me, though. I think the characters (I went Blue Lions) and writing are keeping me engaged, and tweaks on the RPG mechanics around stats etc are speaking to me. Don't know what I'll think when I'm done as I'm probably still earlyish (I thought Awakening was okish for awhile, then hated it the later it got). Also helps I'm unapologetically playing on Hard but with Casual - if someone dies before the end of the battle because I forgot to move them or something, I don't need to replay the whole thing unless I want to. Makes the experience much less frustrating, even if I know I'm not getting the Pure (TM) FE experience.

 

[Carpincho Pampeano]

It's interesting how in the west having dating sim elements in a video game is synonymous with Persona franchise, someone probably did a video essay about that, if not there's a lot of money to be doing there. Same thing as when a game uses a school setting, people go "Oh it's a Persona clone".

 

[Mojobeard]

Tales of Xillia on RPSC3. Runs mostly well, there's been some crashes and I can't get the swimsuit DLCs to work, and can't find updates. And for audio you need to change PPU threads to 1 from the config, it will still sometimes crap out but that's a problem with RPSC3 in general.
There's also this baffling design decision to make the game "grayer", even the intro videos don't have pure white. This is present on the original version too, not a fault of the emulator. Fix for this is to use ReShade and change levels from 0-255 to 0-190 or thereabouts, or boost exposure by +0.4, or a little bit of both which is what I did.

Tales games have changed their battle systems slightly since forever, with some hits and misses. I generally think this has a pretty good one, but it does feel a little clunky because it actually wants you to use backsteps and etc. that have never felt natural with the controls. Gimmick of this one is a buddy system, and no it's not like Zestiria's shit one. Here you link up with a buddy, flank and hit the same enemy and then do big finishers with the buddy meter. When the buddy meter goes high enough you get something akin to the usual overlimit. There's also AC, which is just a counter on how many things you can combo, just something you level and ignore.
Leveling is done with a grid thing, and after 15 hours or whatever I'm starting to feel like hitting the "Auto Level" button would be as effective as what I'm doing now, since there's rarely any interesting choices.

The characters and story are... alright? Your main character is either a basic JRPG good natured emo boy, or a skinny big breasted chick. Internet told me to choose the boy, "so the story makes more sense", but to be honest I don't see what I would be missing. And I've been playing as the chick anyway, since the boy has healer artes, which I'd rather relegate to an NPC. The story also revolves mostly around her.
The chick is Maxwell, which should ring some bells for people who have played other games in the series. Lord of the four elements, usually a powerful boss, and depicted as an old man. He for some reason decided to turn into a human (a hot female to get men to do his bidding), and we're basically doing what she wants. That's the story so far, straightforward with a decent amount of character stuff.
An almost major complaint I have, is that her voice actress has a shittier quality audio than anyone else in the game, it's really weird.
The other characters are very standard, a roguish mercenary who's 100% betraying us at some point (VA is Matt Mercer doing his Eder voice), a mysterious loli healer with an irritating mascot creature, and a run of the mill tomboy. The surprising one is the party wizard, who is an actual bearded old man, instead of a quirky teenager.

So far I would put it in the "very good" Tales pile.

 

[Carpincho Pampeano]

Another NG+ of Dragon's Dogma, the never ending cycle continues.

 

[Machocruz]

Tried playing some Rogue Galaxy on pcsx2 today, and it was terrible. The way the character controls irritates the hell out of me, it's slow, clunky, and broken, I feel like some damned cripple when trying to move around. It gets especially bad when I try to move in the diagonal directions -- for some reason the character switches to walking instead of running (this might actually have to do with my particular gamepad, or input settings in pcsx2) and it becomes even more painful, even turbo mode does not help, it's still excruciatingly slow. The first boss is clunky as hell, and when I lost the battle with him, I closed the game immediately because by that time I had got fed up with the unbearable controls. Maybe I'll give this game another go some other time and try to get used to the controls, but for now I'm going to look for something else.

Game was big disappointment. Was it just me, or were your NPC companions fragile as eggs and lacking any sense of self preservation? They would get smacked down repeatedly in combat, quickly. Completely useless in most encounters.

 

[Tse Tse Fly]

Tried playing some Rogue Galaxy on pcsx2 today, and it was terrible. The way the character controls irritates the hell out of me, it's slow, clunky, and broken, I feel like some damned cripple when trying to move around. It gets especially bad when I try to move in the diagonal directions -- for some reason the character switches to walking instead of running (this might actually have to do with my particular gamepad, or input settings in pcsx2) and it becomes even more painful, even turbo mode does not help, it's still excruciatingly slow. The first boss is clunky as hell, and when I lost the battle with him, I closed the game immediately because by that time I had got fed up with the unbearable controls. Maybe I'll give this game another go some other time and try to get used to the controls, but for now I'm going to look for something else.

Game was big disappointment. Was it just me, or were your NPC companions fragile as eggs and lacking any sense of self preservation? They would get smacked down repeatedly in combat, quickly. Completely useless in most encounters.

I haven't played for long enough to confirm this, but the two robots that join you before the first boss weren't helpful indeed, I was wasting my healing potions on these morons and they still died. It reminded me of the party-based Ys games which are essentially single-character games, so useless are your companions when controlled by the AI.

 

[Hobo Elf]

Tried playing some Rogue Galaxy on pcsx2 today, and it was terrible. The way the character controls irritates the hell out of me, it's slow, clunky, and broken, I feel like some damned cripple when trying to move around. It gets especially bad when I try to move in the diagonal directions -- for some reason the character switches to walking instead of running (this might actually have to do with my particular gamepad, or input settings in pcsx2) and it becomes even more painful, even turbo mode does not help, it's still excruciatingly slow. The first boss is clunky as hell, and when I lost the battle with him, I closed the game immediately because by that time I had got fed up with the unbearable controls. Maybe I'll give this game another go some other time and try to get used to the controls, but for now I'm going to look for something else.

Game was big disappointment. Was it just me, or were your NPC companions fragile as eggs and lacking any sense of self preservation? They would get smacked down repeatedly in combat, quickly. Completely useless in most encounters.

It isn't just your party members. The entire game is like that for you as well. Enemies whack the shit out of you everywhere and it's just extremely unpleasant to play because of it.

 

[Darth Canoli]

I tried to play Berwick Saga and went through the first battle.
The combat is decent but everything is so slow I had to check min and max text speed to see which was what.

Combat animation are quite slow as well, even if you can skip some, the regular map animation take way too long.

So, no, I'm not playing this.

Also tried to play Valkyria 2.
The combat view is bad enough but the TB/RT mix and movement system is terrible, add the checkpoint to the formula to make it worse and you get one of the worse TB hybrid combat system ever created if not the very worse.

I stopped after two fights.

The academia visual novel shit similar to the Trails series is of course absolutely retarded so the combat was the best part.
Absolute garbage.

 

[Carpincho Pampeano]

I tried to play Berwick Saga and went through the first battle.
The combat is decent but everything is so slow I had to check min and max text speed to see which was what.

Combat animation are quite slow as well, even if you can skip some, the regular map animation take way too long.

So, no, I'm not playing this.

Also tried to play Valkyria 2.
The combat view is bad enough but the TB/RT mix and movement system is terrible, add the checkpoint to the formula to make it worse and you get one of the worse TB hybrid combat system ever created if not the very worse.

I stopped after two fights.

The academia visual novel shit similar to the Trails series is of course absolutely retarded so the combat was the best part.
Absolute garbage.

Seems to me like you need to take a break.

 

[spekkio]

BROs, I've finished Ys9 - The Clone Wars

Sadly, it looks like it's gonna be the last Ys game imma play. That is, until I learn that Falcom decided to tone down their newshit and go back to the oldshit change the direction in which the series is going. Which ATM is fucking WRONG.

Good:

• Oldshit action-rpg hidden underneath 20 hrs of cutscenes and VN crap.
• Titties.
• City looked like a nice change of pace. On paper (see below).
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Shitload things to do, collect and get 100% of.
• Fantastic performance, plenty of GFX / SND / Control options.
• Fast-travel galore.

Bad:

• It looks like Falcom decided to go the Atlus way (Personification of everything), adding Legend of Heroes levels of text / FMVs to all their franchises. Result: 9 was the first Ys game, that I've struggled to finish and seriously considered dropping after ~20 hours. It was Ys 8 that started this trend, but it was never unbearable in it, while in 9 it IMO is.
• Game is too long, way too wordy and filled with instantly recognizable "inflated" writing, where every line is as complex as bland and every character just can't shut up even about totally trivial matters. Instead of simple statement, you get 4-5 screens of flowery nonse every fucking time.
• 5 minutes-long cutscene after every event, character interaction, etc. GTFO with this shit / go make anime instead.
• Constant interruptions to the gameplay. You happily slay some monsters, when bam - let's watch another boring cutscene. Jesus, not in Ys, FFS!
  
  
  
  
  
  
• 10000 invisible barriers and "let's no go in this direction now!" messages. Again - it feels especially jarring in a Ys game.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• All the shit from previous games is back: materials gathering, crafting, raids, 99000 collectibles. Only this time all this feels like a fucking chore.
• IMO the worst offender is crafting: you can craft better weapons and armor after each chapter, there are > 9000 accessories... Yet making them is boring, and it looks like even the devs recognized this problem, since you have like 3 different ways of getting materials (killing enemies, "raid points", money).
• Obligatory raids that can take up to 10 minutes to complete and consist of braindead button mashing (normal/hard) or more involved button mashing (higher difficulty modes). This is why people prefer tactical games over modern "action-rpgs".
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Shit like over the top gay character and a "wheelchair hero" feel forced / like devs catering to modern trends.
• Segments in the prison are 100% pointless and feel totally out of place (invisble barriers, forced path from point A to B). Dana's parts from 8 were much better.
• Story is the single most retarded one in any Ys ever.
• There's a "fake villain" for like 80% of the game, then you meet a "real villain" who is just some random dude to your team ("but he's behind all of this, OMG!!!" - who cares?), then you fight final bosses, who are again some dudes whom you just met like 5 minutes before killing them. Peak writing.

Ugly:

• Devs failed at making a good "game taking place in a city". I mean either go Thief / Deus Ex / Dishonored route (smaller, but detailed locations where almost every building can be accessed), or GTFO. Adding elements borrowed from metroidvanias (monstrum skills) & assassin's creed (roof exploration) didn't work that great - Celceta is IMO still peak "modern Ys".
• Gameplay / area design has some nice ideas (verticality, use of monstrums skills adding some light metroidvania aspects), but the "whole gameplay package" feels inferior to older games, which had simpler gameplay. Another fail.
• All the nice things in gameplay are negated by too much combat. I mean, fuck - "encounter rate" was never this bad before:
  
  
  
  
  
  I will take less but dangerous enemies over more but boring ones any day.
  
  
• You can't navigate properly with markers off. I mean sometimes you get some hints about desired location in the dialogue, but most of the time your goal is almost impossible to find without markers. Sadly, I remember grandpa Thief / Desu Ex, which worked fine without map markers. And previous Ys games were much easier to navigate (less "quests", no big cities).
• Didn't like characters at all. Only Krysha-Adol relation feels organic and is handled nicely (but it's just another "young girl with a crush on her onii-chan" trope). Other playable characters are less interesting.
• Way too many supporting characters. In 8 all the survivors were useful and finding them on the island was a "fuck yes!" moment. In 9 they're just "lines spawners / quest givers". Ehh.
• Fucking post-game epilogue, who needs this shit in Ys?
• The juvenile writing and characters weren't a problem in older Ys games, which were 95% action and 5% character interaction / "dialogue". But in never games this became a problem. I can waste time reading something decently "mature" in my game, but if 50% of gameplay is VN-like, and writing is shit / juvenile - well, count me out.
• Took me over 40 hrs to finish the game, and it felt much longer and boring than 8. Fail.
  
  
  
  
  
  
• "Baroque" character design (esp. of titular monstrums) look inferior to old "simpler" one.
  
  
  
  
  

Waifus:

"Old" girls had less polygons, but looked sexier. I mean:

a) Krysha has this weird pedo-feel going on:

b) Saradi is a sandnigger not playable, so she doesn't count. Points for the effort, though.

c) so Yufa is like the only character with a proper "sexy" design:

...As long as you're into cowgirls...

Verdict: - the first Ys game that I considered dropping midway + the first I'm not gonna replay + the last one in the series that I plan to play, unless devs change series' direction (ATM they're making Ys as text-heavy as LoH + way too complex).



Cheevos:

Well, for now: