Random thoughts on whatever JRPG you're currently playing?

[Puukko]

Caligula Effect 2. Positive impression so far, I'll keep playing for sure. Some obvious weaknesses that I don't think would have taken too much effort to greatly improve. The PC port is very solid, definitely up there in terms of Japanese PC port quality. Interesting premise and good presentation that makes up for some of the technical mediocrity though I'll be honest, the character models are pretty damn piss poor. They look and are animated like an amateur's second project, in stark contrast to the character art itself. Comparing this to Monark is interesting from a budget angle, to see where each game made cuts. Monark had better models but very bland environments, like in a barebones Vita game. This game has the opposite.

The combat is turn based with a focus on positioning and timing. You can decide when your attacks go off which may result in you dodging the enemy or maybe countering them, which you'll try and follow up on with your other party members. So you'll be simulating lots of potential outcomes each turn to see which one is the best... but there's no fast forward so battles end up taking way longer than they need to. I don't think I've ever played a game that needed a fast forward function more, which just makes its omission bizarre. At least the visual flair and music are good.

The tutorial is a bit too stretched out. If you've got lots of mechanics to explain, please take the shotgun approach, I am not that mentally handicapped.

 

[Lyre Mors]

Caligula Effect 2. Positive impression so far, I'll keep playing for sure.

I'm curious if you were a fan of the first game? Would like to give 2 a try at some point, especially with your positive impressions. Wondering if the first one is even worth a play, as I've mostly only heard negative things about it.

 

[Late Bloomer]

In Elden Ring when Torrent (the mount) dies and you need to resummon him by using a flask the menu defaults to "no" then you have to press left to select yes. As if you are going to accidentally resummon him.

 

[infidel]

The transition from overworld to random encounter takes too long. Battle animations take too long. There is an input delay that makes navigating menus take way longer than they should.

I don't think I've ever played a game that needed a fast forward function more, which just makes its omission bizarre.

I did, and it's called Hitman series :D Use Cheat Engine's speedup function, bros. I've only tried it on older stuff but it should work on newer games, too.

I've completed Xanadu Next some time ago but forgot to post here. It's on sale now, too:

I've bought it just for completeness sake, not intending to play it all that much since it looked samey and dated on the screenshots. But it turned out it's an amazing game that's short enough (it says 24hrs for me but I think I've left the game running overnight once, howlongtobeat says it's ~14hrs), fun to play and with an interesting controls scheme. Action combat feels good, you don't have a dedicated dodge button but you can run out of any enemy attacks if you time the movement right. Actually, it reminds me of Diablo with player character moving by holding LMB and attacking by clicking LMB. RMB is used for skills. Each and every weapon in the game has a skill attached that only can be used when this weapon is equipped. But if you grind the weapon for some time (not that long and there's a skill that increases your weapon exp gain), the skill is unlocked to be used without it. With four skill slots (that's for passive, active and magic) and four item slots, you're always rotating to get the advantage for the current section of the dungeon.

There are also four equipment slots. It all sounds very basic but gets it just right IMO. The environments vary somewhat but it all happens on an island in the lake and you always return to the single village to listen to the beautiful music and recuperate:

I love how the game story is all "local", just like in YS games. They pick a single section of the world and detail it much higher. Which also leads to the games shorter than the globetrotting adventures that we have in other JRPG series. I'd really love if there were more games like these - short, tight and to the point.


Currently, I'm 20hrs in Tales of Zestiria (that's what the previous screenshot was for) and the main problem of the game is that they went and gave every ingame term some ridiculous made-up word name that quickly turns into salad. Every time I spend a week not playing the game I have to re-remember what half of that means. Blast gauge, spirit chain, normal artes, hidden artes, mystic artes, armatization, the game and its characters throw the salad around like no tomorrow. Thankfully, they have an encyclopedia built-in to refresh your memories, otherwise it would be even more painful. The next annoying thing is the combat camera. I'm surprised it's this bad in a big AAA Bandai production. Even worse, legacy game controls have you running "forward" and "backward" from the targeted enemy, no matter how they're positioned in relation to the camera. It worked in Tales of Phantasia years ago when the combat was 2D sidescroller but now it's just plain wrong to make it a default. Thank God, you can turn it off through the use of "combat actions". Another good thing is that the game has a 60fps mod, real-time action in 30fps is pretty stupid. It's a little bit unstable for me, alt-tab crashes it 50% of the time but it's better than nothing.

With the exception of the annoying things I've described I like it so far. Tales series have their unique identity and while they don't have anything outstanding in terms of plot or worldbuilding, you know what you're coming back for.

 

[Puukko]

Caligula Effect 2. Positive impression so far, I'll keep playing for sure.

I'm curious if you were a fan of the first game? Would like to give 2 a try at some point, especially with your positive impressions. Wondering if the first one is even worth a play, as I've mostly only heard negative things about it.

Never played it. I've seen people swear by the original version but it doesn't seem to emulate yet (I had no idea there was a functional Vita emulator until a week ago) so if I ever get to it that'll probably be the way. In any case they're niche budget JRPGs, they're not going to get great reviews but the people they appeal to will look past a lot of the faults. Just grab an evaluation copy.

 

[GhostCow]

Wait, Vita3k actually plays games now? Too bad that didn't happen until after P4G came to PC. I doubt anyone cares now.

 

[Puukko]

Wait, Vita3k actually plays games now? Too bad that didn't happen until after P4G came to PC. I doubt anyone cares now.

The compatibility list claims some 30% are playable, but I haven't tried it out myself yet.

 

[nimateb]

Where dafuq do you get roms for the switch? I've looked in the bay and other similar places to no avail. Specifically i'm after the new SMT

 

[Carpincho Pampeano]

I talked about Caligula extensively in this very same thread. The TLDR is that overdose took a shit in the combat and in the story, Caligula 2 is middle of the road between 1 and overdose.

 

[lightbane]

Where dafuq do you get roms for the switch? I've looked in the bay and other similar places to no avail. Specifically i'm after the new SMT

Google provides. Some places like RPGArchiv* and SwitchRo** would be a good start.

 

[mushaden]

Got covid. Gonna try to beat Panzer Dragoon Saga

 

[Puukko]

Played a hefty chunk of Xenoblade 2 Torna in preparation for 3. This expansion seems to be generally considered to be the best part of the game... Foolishly, I went in thinking it would be a condensed experience that would be straightforward to finish in a reasonable amount of time. As mixed as I was on the base game, I did at the very least finish it. With Torna, there were improvements and promise... and then it fell flat on its face and made me drop it, which is a rare honor.

The good bits first. The combat has been tweaked to be familiar but still different enough to be engaging. You will eventually have a pre made party of three drivers with two blades each. The difference is this time all of them can be manually controlled and switched around during battle, and they have different skills depending on whether they're active or supporting. It's a fun system with lots to learn despite there not being dozens of blades to use. Nice group dynamics with a cast of returning characters, some that were in the background in the main game, and a couple new (though Hugo is basically a carbon copy of the emperor) with no shota MC harem shenanigans or constant tone shifts. I am pretty sure they upgraded the graphics too, the shadows look better now and it can be a pretty damn nice looking game considering the system it is on. So far, so good.

So you play for 15-20 hours until you reach the capital which is where you hit the first snag. 'reach community level 2.' Essentially, it's time to do about 15 side quests. You've probably done a few on the side on the way here but this is where the pacing comes to a screeching halt. The quests obviously aren't difficult or interesting, just a waste of time where you occasionally hit a snag finding some specific material that only seems to spawn at one specific gathering spot. Lots of menial crap for nopons and those cat people. Man, have I mentioned the cat people in this game? They deserve an award for the most uninteresting fantasy race ever, it's quite astounding how boring they are. What a step down from the cats in X.

Anyway, you get that done, get some cutscenes, a boss fight you're likely overleveled for by this point (I was 44, the boss was 40 and the enemies before him were 32-33) and... Raise community level to 4. Yeah, repeat that crap twice to move on to the final boss. Now it gives a few freebies but essentially you're looking at a couple dozen "bring me X and Y meh-meh" time wasters and I can feel my interest plummeting to the bottom of the cloud sea.

So back to waiting for leaks it is.

 

[Falksi]

Sunk around 15 hours into Shining Resonance Refrain. It's a mixed bag with a ton of filler and trash to distract you, but it's combat is fun and the Waifu's sport good tits without looking too young either, which is nice.

Standard combat is piss-easy, but boss fights offer some resistance so that you actually have to think about what your doing. It's still no Dark Souls of course, but it's adequate for an action-JRPG. The world building is good, and some of the humour is cool too.

Nothing spectacular and I don't think I'll finish it, but if you're a fan of the Tales series and fancy a budget version you could do worse.

 

[Sentinel]

Not sure if this is the correct thread but any thoughts on Grandia (1 or 2)? Are they worth playing? The battle system seems fairly interesting.

 

[Abu Antar]

Not sure if this is the correct thread but any thoughts on Grandia (1 or 2)? Are they worth playing? The battle system seems fairly interesting.

While they are on the easy side, I liked both games. Combat system is good in both. G1 is my favorite game in the series.

 

[Puukko]

Not sure if this is the correct thread but any thoughts on Grandia (1 or 2)? Are they worth playing? The battle system seems fairly interesting.

While they are on the easy side, I liked both games. Combat system is good in both. G1 is my favorite game in the series.

There's always the Redux hack.

 

[Val the Moofia Boss]

I am playing Valkyria Chronicles 4 again. I dropped it when I first tried it because I was turned off by how utterly juvenile it was. Yeah, VC1 wasn't super serious either but it didn't feel like a trashy seasonal anime like VC4. Minerva and Riley are the worst offenders, not to mention the gratuitous swearing. But once I reached the imperial village I began warming up more to the game.

The game has been rebalanced. In VC1, the optimal strategy in the vast majority of battles was to simply use one scout, use an order to beef up their defense and evasion to protect them from interception fire, and then just use all of your CP moving them towards the last enemy base and capping it. Use Ragnaid to heal as needed. In VC4 now, there is so much interception fire from grenadiers and pillboxes that scouts will likely die. You also get an APV and the ability to move multiple characters at once, so the short range of shocktroopers doesn't hinder them anywhere near as much anymore. You also get accessories that increase accuracy/range so your shocktroopers can also shoot a lot farther now.

Encountered an amusing bug that softlocked my game where the enemy tank's turn never ended.

 

[Falksi]

I am playing Valkyria Chronicles 4 again. I dropped it when I first tried it because I was turned off by how utterly juvenile it was. Yeah, VC1 wasn't super serious either but it didn't feel like a trashy seasonal anime like VC4. Minerva and Riley are the worst offenders, not to mention the gratuitous swearing. But once I reached the imperial village I began warming up more to the game.

The game has been rebalanced. In VC1, the optimal strategy in the vast majority of battles was to simply use one scout, use an order to beef up their defense and evasion to protect them from interception fire, and then just use all of your CP moving them towards the last enemy base and capping it. Use Ragnaid to heal as needed. In VC4 now, there is so much interception fire from grenadiers and pillboxes that scouts will likely die. You also get an APV and the ability to move multiple characters at once, so the short range of shocktroopers doesn't hinder them anywhere near as much anymore. You also get accessories that increase accuracy/range so your shocktroopers can also shoot a lot farther now.

Encountered an amusing bug that softlocked my game where the enemy tank's turn never ended.

Nice coincidence, I just started this game for the first time yesterday.

There's a ton of great components, I really enjoyed VC1 and this adds to that setup nicely.

I hear you regards the juvenile stuff, but I do like how they sexualize/talk down to the women a fair bit.

The kicker for me so far is that I'm only on Chapter 4, but fuck me is this game easy. I'm gutted that the only 2 initial difficulties are Easy & Normal, as it's crying out to be turned up to a harder setting.

 

[Carpincho Pampeano]

Started FE 6 just now and cleared the first map. First map was fucking weird, the game expected you to know the game BUT it's fucking weird because it's the first GBA game. I have a couple games from the series under my belt but i can't imagine someone starting with this one as their first game, the next one is much newbie friendlier.

 

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Valkyria Chronicles 4 - Chapter 16

Spoiler

 

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Finished Valkyria Chronicles 4. Very good game. 8/10. Not much else to say that I didn't already say earlier this week. I wish I hadn't dropped it. Aside from the wonky first few hours, it's an overall improvement over the original in terms of story and gameplay. There is a lot of map and objective variety that makes the gameplay more interesting.

I only have two complaints. One story wise and one gameplay wise.

Story complaint

It may have been a good idea to have the beginning of the game showcase the burning of Hafen. That way when Claude nearly commits mass murder at the climax, his decision to calm down and not detonate the nuke because he doesn't want to make other people endure what he suffered would have been more powerful.

Gameplay wise, the upgrade micromanagement was pretty tedious. Every time you go to the command room or R&D, you have to sit through a 3 second cutscene, and then every time you buy an upgrade (and there are hundreds of upgrades), you have to watch a 2 second cutscene of Miles saying "woah". Worst part is the 20 second long cutscene each time you level up a unit in the training room. That time adds up I'm sure like 5-10 hours of my playtime was spent just sitting through that.

Also, the hitboxes for the radiators in the final mission were wonky. I had to save scum/reload several times before I could finally hit it, even though I was shooting at point blank range. Didn't recall having this problem with the Batomys in VC1.


VC4 also expanded the possibilities for the setting:

VC4 ending spoilers/premise of VC5, perhaps?

It's nice that the war ended and we can finally move beyond the Europan conflict. The franchise no longer has to be fantasy WW1 SRPGs. A sequel set many years later about an underground railroad movement to thwart the Valkyria hunts in the United States of Vinland and exposing the truth seems obvious. It could be a stealth or an action game (or more SRPGs).

 

[Late Bloomer]

Been playing some Blacksmith of the Sand Kingdom.

Its actually been quite fun. For me its more of a wind down game rather than something to play with a feverish pitch. The characters are quircky enough to get a chuckle out of on occasion. It's mindless fun in short spurts. You go out to the various map area and get resources to bring back to your shop, create items and then offer them up for sale. There is a decent amount of classes to choose form for you and your party members. Its turn based but not very challenging at all.

Not worth the regular price. Sale only. Its on all systems. The game when its not on sale is much cheaper on mobile but has in app purchases according to some Steam posts. The pc and console release is the full game.

 

[AdamReith]

Giving Final Fantasy 9 another go. Emulating it instead of using the pc port and feels a lot better, it's like the port fuzzed up things that were sharp (the backgrounds) and sharpened things that should have remained fuzzy (the super deformed characters).

The sound is also a lot better, have to stop bothering with ports. The only real upshot to it was not having to swop discs.

 

[Carpincho Pampeano]

Xenoblade 3 right now, played like 10 hours since last night. They fixed my issues that the combat had on XB 2 even minor stuff like having to kite sea monsters to shore to actually fight them and combat is open from the begining, you don't have to wait 20 hs anymore to do everything. It's one of those games i think about even when i'm not playing them, it's been almost a whole year since that happen.

 

[Maxie]

I've beaten the Mysterious Atelier Trilogy DX on the Switch, and I'd gladly share my two cents. I'm playing the series ass-backwards, starting from Ryza 1&2, so understandably the move to Mysterious games was a surprise, often a welcome one, if only because of TB combat. But then again, these games are in constant flux design-wise, so it's never wise to take anything for granted for too long.

- Sophie 1 - story-wise, it's probably the tightest and Sophie is the cutest Mysterious girl, I'm not so sold on her squad though. I liked that the plot was so unassuming and limited, and even the confrontation in the Library is hardly a save the world scenario, maybe on a similar note Ryza 1 will eventually be, that is - the saving the world that nobody asked for, and nobody will thank for. I definitely do not like that the maps are so small, with only a handful being more dungeon-ish (the upside-down cathedral being probably the most fun to move through, followed by fairy forest). Sophie 1 boasts a very neat board game style overmap to tie these smal locations together, and all the resource management takes place here. TB here is definitely my fav from all Mysterious games - I will use it as the standard to which others should aspire to. Alchemy is, understandably, bit of a shocker after the no-frills Ryza 1 model (not so happy with Ryza 2's slight revamp tho), but even the disposable bombs eventually become a non-factor upon striking a deal with Corneria. I do not like the Ideas system, it's slightly off-balance and slows down gear progression. Tech-wise, Sophie 1 suffers from weird UI scaling? Every menu (and particularly text boxes) look so squished it's uncanny. Very nice visuals, very nice music (Plachta rebuild song lol). I kinda missed the heroic trumpets that Ryza revels in, but got some more euro instruments instead. Overall, Sophie 1 is a cool game.

- Firis - it's such a weirdo entry - half of it is very much about piecing together a sensible roadmap to reach Reisenberg, preferably having got the required recs from other alchemists on the way, then the game opens up and all the high lvl options are finally available. Fighting against scarcity of resources is the biggest obstacle in the first part, fighting against the mind-boggling drag that moving between locations is was the biggest one in the latter part, lol. Firis is the first game to include multiple quest hubs, often demanding you trek between them a lot, and even handy cheats like the flying broom or the teleport to campfires is unable to mask that. Firis also has the weirdest time flow I've seen so far - days pass so frickin fast! Story-wise, it's very quaint, although young Firis isn't as cute as I'd like her to be (she gets better with age). It's very much a handful of stories after you graduate, which may be nice to some, I guess. Personally, I don't like that they're this disjointed, it'd be much nicer if they overlapped a little, though the world is LARGE enough to warrant plausible disjointment between storylines. It's really frickin big, maps are gargantuan, and some of them even have stages, the underwater lake map first and foremost lol, but also the flying island, the big tree - Firis has it all, it's a really big game which tests your patience a lot. Fights are similar as in Sophie 1, but with one less party member and only three skills per character, with more to unlock through equipment - gating these behind equipment is linear, better made gear will simply have more skills. Which is absurd in Firis, because alchemy advancement works per item group here - you have to make an item 3-4 times to unlock the ability to move traits between them. Since you do not outsource weapon & armor creation in this entry, unlike in Sophie 1 and L&S, making gear is a giant bother. Can't say that the new attack link is as readable and directly translating into strong attacks as in Sophie 1. There's a much larger variety of strong enemies to test yourself against, but, as usual - crafted consumables are far more important than good timing on your skills. In this regard Ryzas 1&2 are much different, though brought down by their RT combat. Firis also includes a dumb revamp of the Ideas system, with you being simply unaware what is there to unlock until you randomly stumble upon a trigger, which won'y unlock the item anyway - you will have to farm items/enemies to do that, lol. It's horrible. Overall, Firis is a nice enough concept game, though not a strong entry.

- Lydie & Suelle - this one assumes a chapter-based structure, which will be the case in Ryzas, but there they're not accounced outright - you really have to check the quest log to know that you're in the next chapter in Ryzas. In L&S, you get vignetted chapter cards, very neatly cutting the story into segments, which kinda slows down the whole experience in my opinion. It's logically required, as the whole gimmick of L&S is to advance your third rate atelier to stardom, and this happens by passing a series of exams, one per chapter - only one of them is timed, though. Time is a non-factor though, contrary to Firis - here days pass very, very slowly. L&S fully graduated from cauldron-based alchemy of Sophie 1, using catalysts to modify the alchemy tetris typical of Mysterious games, but these got a bit fancier than in Firis, with the ability to swap colours using finite resources and such. It's rather OK, though we're back to relying on outsourced weapon and armor creation. There's no longer the absurd concept of advancing item groups to access traits, it's tied to your alchemy level thankfully. The Ideas system returns, though now it's back to the Sophie 1 model - you're aware at all times if there's something to unlock, and since the ideas are grouped chapter-wise, you do not have to stress over not being able to access item X early enough. I did not like the combat, we're back to three characters party, but with three more as support cast, intervening if you trigger them - with a spell, or item. Oftentimes a character is simply stronger as a supporter than they would be in party proper, also there's no attack chain anymore, instead you have to unlock individual duo attack gauges between just a handful of characters. Duo attacks take forever to cast due to an unskippable animation and feel like such a bother, you unlock them super late anyway. Locations typically operate on a 3-5 map dungeon format, not Firis-sized thankfully, and with teleport anytime. L&S suffers the most from its cast, in my opinion - let's start from the party proper, being just six characters, including twin protagonists, with two more tacked on in DLCs. It's mostly a bunch of boomer alchemists from earlier entries, and most of their interactions are boomer reminiscing, or wink-nudges aimed at people who played previous entries. The two new party members are criminally underexposed. Maybe in their best interest, because Lydie & Suelle are really, really mean characters, always having something rude to say to everyone - the fact that they come as a pair only adds to it, as they simply gang on others. They're NOT cute. Overall, L&S is a nice-ish entry.

I will play Sophie 2 eventually, since I have it bought already, but I need a break for now.