Random thoughts on whatever JRPG you're currently playing?

[perfectslumbers]

I got the freedom ending on my first playthrough, which I honestly found pretty disappointing.

Good, now throw away your humanity and go for the True Demon ending

I can't wait to do it on my next playthrough, gonna do Strange Journey on the DS first though!

 

[Average Manatee]

Did you utilize sacrifice fusions to throw a lot of extra good skills/immunities/extra XP onto whatever you are fusing for cheap? That's the key to breaking Nocturne's difficulty in half IMO since you can down-fuse strong stuff to weak lvl 1-10 demons, put them in the compendium, then whenever you are fusing something for real you sacrifice the weak one and can easily ensure you have all your basics covered. It's especially broken when it comes to

Spoiler

fusing dark might onto all your demons then fighting during 0/8 kagatsushi for 100% crit rate against all bosses except the final ones

 

[perfectslumbers]

Did you utilize sacrifice fusions to throw a lot of extra good skills/immunities/extra XP onto whatever you are fusing for cheap? That's the key to breaking Nocturne's difficulty in half IMO since you can down-fuse strong stuff to weak lvl 1-10 demons, put them in the compendium, then whenever you are fusing something for real you sacrifice the weak one and can easily ensure you have all your basics covered. It's especially broken when it comes to

No i didn't really use sacrificial fusion much. I knew it gave more xp and more abilities, but I tended to not have enough demons to abuse it since my limited macca made it hard to buy or negotiate a lot of demons.

I did end up using mitama lategame to heavily boost the stats of my final party, which helped a TON during the last dungeon.

 

[Average Manatee]

Yeah inflated Macca costs for compendium and magatama is unfortunately one of the things I think is just unnecessary bullshit in Hard mode. The only way I know of to really have enough is to grind the coin combos in the amala dungeon shaft diving minigame where you can get like 50k in a minute.

 

[Puukko]

Hardtype fortunately scales back the costs to just double which is more reasonable.

 

[Val the Moofia Boss]

I am 20 hours into Monochrome Mobius (aka the Utawarerumono prequel JRPG). I reached the capital city a couple hours ago and acquired the fourth party member. Combat feels so much better now that I am playing with four characters rather than just two or three. Before now, I was facing either 3-4 mobs who would gang up one one or two party members and reduce their HP below 50%, or a boss who could reduce the whole party below 50% or reduce a single party member's HP to 10% (if that character wasn't oneshotted). So Shunya is almost always healing, and Munechika is alternating between healing or dealing paltry damage. Oshtor is the only one is constantly dealing damage.

Early on, I got walled by the evil fruit tree boss in the forest who was one shotting my characters. I had to level grind and invest in my defense stat. I could barely feel my characters getting more durable. I think my victory over the boss had more to do with good RNG. There is also the information the UI screen is presenting me. Each level in defense only increases it by one point, but each level in attack or spirit (healing spell effectiveness) increases it by 3 points, and I am definitely feeling more powerful whenever I invest into attack or feel like I get more healing when I invest into spirit. Dead mobs can't hurt me.

I don't know how the damage formula works, but everything is telling me that I'm getting more bang for my buck investing into offensive stats over defense. So I've turned Oshtor and Mikazuchi into pure attackers, pouring all of their points into offensive stats, and occasionally pouring points into MP if I'm running out of mana since it is also used to cast their abilities. Oshtor recently learned an AoE ability that depends upon Inteligence, so I've started investing into that to end the mob battles more quickly. For Shunya and Munechika, I've turned them into pure healers and poured all points into spirit, and occasionally MP. I am playing on hard, and maybe a more balanced stat spread is better. Don't know.

I've acquired a lot of food, but I've found that most of it isn't worthwhile to use. It is never worth for Oshtor or Mikazuchi to use a food over dealing more damage, unless they are out of MP and need to restore it so they can continue dealing damage. Shunya's and Munechika's healing spells are more effective than using food. So the only food I ever use is MP restoring food, and rarely so. There are blue save points everywhere and you can fast travel between them, and you regen all of your HP and MP in towns, so I'm only really in danger of running out of MP during extended boss battles.

I have a complaint about the camera positioning. It likes to position my character towards the top 1/3rd of the screen. I don't get to see much of the road ahead or look at gorgeous skies or treelines or mountains. Instead, 2/3rds of my screen is taken up by the ground. I can't zoom the camera out either, so I'm staring at the rear of my mount.

The environments look very samey and it is easy to become confused as to where you are, and you uncover the map in a very short distance around you. So I am constantly zigzagging back and forth and opening the map screen trying to uncover the whole map. It feels arbitrary. Combined with the odd camera positioning, I don't feel like I'm really getting to look at the the scenery very much.

The lack of a classical JRPG world map/overworld really harms the immersion. Yamato is supposed to be a huge empire the size of China. You start in a peripheral province, Ennakamy. In the visual novel, it takes days for messengers to ride across Yamato. But in this game, the Imperial Capital in the center of the empire is just a 10 minute ride down the trail from Ennakamuy. The presentation makes Yamato seem really small.

Story wise...

Spoilers up to Imperial Capital

The story was getting really interesting earlier. I got to briefly explore a hidden fantasy India to the West... but then the story takes you back into Yamato, which we already had two visual novels set in. New stuff interests me more than old stuff.

I have a strong sense of foreboding that these people will be wiped out by the end of the game, given that they aren't mentioned in the VN duology. Cities and entire races have been wiped out in the visual novels so the writers have the balls to do it. Hopefully the bridge is just severed and they're still alive, unbeknownst to the rest of the world.

I'm guessing the masked man who was chasing after Shunya is a pureblooded human, though I wonder how he survived Iceman turning humanity into red goo without using the experimental drug that the Mikado developed.

Oshtor's predecessor was just introduced and has become a major character, so I'm kinda curious to find out more about him.

 

[Goth Girl]

I tried playing Mystic Ark, a late SuperFami release by Enix and the guys who made The 7th Saga. To my surprise the game has a heavy mix of adventure elements in there, with puzzles and item interactions. I wasn't in the mood for the adventure elements and after failing to advance past the initial area I dropped it. The sound effect for the text box was extremely annoying.

 

[Puukko]

I did the prologue, or first few missions in Three Hopes and I am very much positively surprised. It shows great promise. I've generally been dismissive of musous which I don't think is an uncommon stance but this game seems to have actual depth to it. The moment to moment gameplay is mash buttons -> cool moves happen, yes, but there's a lot to take into consideration at the same time since you've got a whole battlefield to manage.

I'm not going to go over all the gameplay elements since I'm still wrapping my head around them, but they've basically done a faithful recreation of Three Houses' mechanics in action format. You've got the weapon triangle and weapon weaknesses, abilities and skills, adjutants, battalions (didn't unlock these yet) and so forth. Pick a house and manage their equipment and classes. I'm right at home.

The setting is a bit odd, it seems to be a what if scenario of Three Houses where things went differently. It moves the story at a breakneck pace and gives you familiar plot points but at different times and places than you'd expect, and then a time skip happens almost immediately, but this time it's by two years instead of five. Consequently everyone gets new designs.

Visually it's actually an upgrade over Three Houses. I can't quite place it, but I think it either runs at a higher resolution (upscaled here, and with Reshade), or they've done something else to clean it up. Textures also appear better. Overall they've done an admirable job for a Switch game. They've gone all out with the animations and they're a treat to watch in all their ridiculous glory. The UI meanwhile looks oddly cheap at times and I don't care for the font they used. It emulates quite well in Ryujinx, though a stable 60 is ways off with my setup. Definitely up there in terms of most demanding Switch games which isn't very surprising. Some audio crackling remains and I managed to get it to freeze between cutscenes once.

Another standout is the soundtrack. They did perhaps the most natural thing and added a lethal dose of riffs which fits perfectly with this type of game. I really dig these new versions of familiar themes. Went so far as to get a mod that adds them to Three Houses.

 

[samuraigaiden]

Started replaying Final Fantasy 4 (SNES), which was one of my first videogame RPG experiences as a kid. I began a vanilla playthrough and quickly decided to try one of the retranslation patches. The original script really hasn't aged well. I restarted using the Namingway Edition patch and played a couple of hours. My last save was in Mt. Ordeals.

The gameplay is way better than I remembered. Maybe the bugfixes included in the patch are helping. So far I'm surprised how all the classes feel like they have a point. As a kid I probably just spammed normal attacks for most of it. I distinctly remember thinking the bard was shit back then.

The new script, which as I understand it is largely adapted from the GBA release, is good.

Not hot takes yet, unfortunately.

 

[Lyre Mors]

Started replaying Final Fantasy 4 (SNES), which was one of my first videogame RPG experiences as a kid. I began a vanilla playthrough and quickly decided to try one of the retranslation patches. The original script really hasn't aged well. I restarted using the Namingway Edition patch and played a couple of hours. My last save was in Mt. Ordeals.

The gameplay is way better than I remembered. Maybe the bugfixes included in the patch are helping. So far I'm surprised how all the classes feel like they have a point. As a kid I probably just spammed normal attacks for most of it. I distinctly remember thinking the bard was shit back then.

The new script, which as I understand it is largely adapted from the GBA release, is good.

Not hot takes yet, unfortunately.

Namingway Edition not only vastly improves the script, but also brings the game very close to the original Japanese release in terms of gameplay. The USA release was watered down and made piss easy for stupid American kids. Namingway is THE way to play the game, and it's fucking awesome. Just did a replay a couple months ago myself. Enjoy!

 

[spekkio]

BROs, finished Vestaria Saga 1 - War Of The Scions.

If you wanted something very close to "Kaga's Fire Emblems"... You may be disappointed. But if you wanted Tear Ring Saga 3... You may be disappointed as well.

VS on one hand "goes back to the FE roots", decreasing amount of mechanics from TRS and using "simple" 2D graphics. But on the other hand it heavily leans into a "new" direction - by extensive use of puzzles and gameplay-affecting story.

Good:

• Fantastic simplicity, esp. when going from FE-3H & Berwick Saga. Stats, equipment & skills (can be tied to characters, weapons or items). No fucking "jobs" - you can advance to "2nd tier job" after Lv10 (Lv20 = no more exp). And that's it. Just like God intended.
• Some other shit also got simplified. Ability to use a weapon depends only on one stat (PROF), so for example you no longer have to "train" Swords & Axes separately. No "direct" weapon triangle, character and weapon stats dictate combat's outcome.
• Very good writing (translation too), interesting characters. Compared to "recent" FE games, it's like fucking Faulkner or shit.
• Complex map & missions: often big areas + plenty of events changing the "course" of the mission.
• Almost everything you need to do is hinted either by characters (allies' / enemies' banter) or by the civilians (when you visit houses / towns).
• New way of fixing weapons: expensive item, which can easily be obtained via shops (as long you have the money), instead of Hammerne Staffs with couple of uses.
• High number of units deployed during missions (from more than 10 to more than 20). Too bad some of them should / must be used to block reinforcements.
  
  
  
  
  
• Occasionally p. funny (sex jokes, etc.) - not sure if it originates from the original, or it was added by the translator. But nice.
  
  
  
  
  
  

Bad:

• Made in SRPG Maker, so there are some engine-related quirks. Like pressing "Esc" in full screen immediately exits the game. Can be fixed by using AutoHotKey script:
  

  Esc::return

• You can either accept the "try, get owned, reload, find the one and only way to win" gameplay, or give up. There's no other way of playing this game (except twerking it using cheats, like I did - save after every turn, increase growths, move units around the map quickly).
• After Mission #15 your "big" team gets divided into 2 "smaller" teams. Forcibly. You can't choose who goes where. Which is fucking retarded. You've decided not to use some fag due to some reasons (fragile, low growths?). Well sorry BRO, Team A got 12 strong units you've been using, but Team B only got 4 such units. Sorry, use ALL units during next playthrough, 'K? Well fuck you. Seriously, I've finished mission 17 & 19 using only 4 units: Cyltan (archer-rider) Dune (archer), Urven (cavalry), Hilde (axedyke) & Lyttia (domina). And cheats, ofc. The rest of Team B was usless due to me not using them before. Fuck this shit, and I've heard VS2 is even worse in this regard ("gaiden" = forced unit deployment every mission).
• You can save only before every 5th turn (1, 5, 10, etc.). And by pure total fucking accident, there's a lot of bad shit (reinforcements, sudden change of objectives) happening just before you can save (starting from turn 5 or 10). So, you feel safe at the end of turn 4, press "End turn" waiting to save the game, WHEN SUDDENLY something happens, you loose couple units / get GAME OVER and have to go back to Turn 1. Happens way too often to be an accident. Again, fuck this kind of "difficulty" and fuck such devs.
  
  
  
  
  
  This one is p. easy compared to other retarded "MWAHAHAHA, you didn't expect this!!!" moments.
  
• Final mission is pure fucking retardation (constant reinforcements, which was never the case before).

Ogly:

• "Try, get owned, reload, find the one and only way to win" gameplay. You will constantly face new events, threats and irritating shit happening during missions. It's neither FE or TRS. It's something different, borrowing elements (tactical combat) from previous Kaga's games. Deal with it or GTFO.
• Reliance on "superunits" (godlike stats) was toned down. But we got "superweapons" instead:
  
  
  
  
  
  So final mission is a constant "100% berserk / sleep / mute" from 20 mages half the map away". Fun? Not fucking really. And "statuses" can only be removed by mages using special, rare staffz (and self-use items, but unit can't use these if itz berserked or asleep).

Verdict:

Great elements (base combat system, characters, writing, complex mission design) brought down by autistic development (see above for examples).

 

[AdamReith]

Floor 4 of the labyrinth of Shining in the Darkness. This is definitely the wizardry lite I never knew I needed.

It's somewhere between a proper wizardry and dragon quest. Story has been great and Darksol has been taunting the shit out of me when I've returned to town which I love.

Can't wait to find the fucker and poke him full of holes.

EDIT: Finished it. Very nice game, would recommend it to anybody familiar with JRPGs looking to try an old fashioned dungeon crawl.

My crappy mapping did make me miss out on one pretty important item, well that and I got tired of being exhaustive because the chests in the lower levels dispense absolute garbage. But overall pretty forgiving and pleasant for the genre and a nice story too.

 

[newtmonkey]

Star Ocean (SFC)

I completed this just now. It took just under 20 hours, but I didn't do any of the optional stuff.

It's a great looking and sounding game. The intro is fully voiced (this must have been amazing back in the day), the music sounds great, and there's a ton of variety in the tiles making up the maps, making each area look unique. I also must praise the dungeons in this game, as they are large, mazelike, and full of awesome stuff to find.

Also good is the unique skill/talent system. You can spend points on skills each level, and these skills give you bonuses to stats, new combat abilities, and even stuff to do outside of combat (such as drawing pictures and forging equipment). Unfortunately, all of that is pretty much wasted on this game, as I completely ignored any skills not related to stats or combat, and still the game was ridiculously easy. The skill system would probably be fun to play with during a replay; I looked up some FAQs after I completed the game, and you can really break this game if you take advantage of the equipment forging and upgrading skills.

Unfortunately, that's basically where the good ends for me. The combat is in real-time, and it's honestly a giant mess. Moving characters around during combat is annoying, but that's okay, because you don't need to move. When you attack an enemy, the character runs over to them, so this means that 99% of battles involve just hammering the attack button using the main character, while the other characters are driven by some very retarded AI. The only time I needed to actually do anything during combat was to use some items to regain magic points during the fight against the last boss; otherwise, I just mashed A to attack throughout the entire game.

I didn't like how the world is structured. The "world map" consists of a handful of towns and caves connected by roads, which are basically corridors funneling you from one location to the next. There is really no exploration at all. The game takes place on just a few tiny islands, and the only way to get from one to another is to tediously hike to a port town and take a boat. There is a lot of backtracking in this game, and it's pretty annoying.

Finally, although the characters are interesting and I ended up growing attached to a few of them, the story is pretty bad. It starts out really interesting and you think you might be playing a sci-fi rpg, but that all goes out the window once you get into the game. The way the last boss is introduced/handled in this game is just absurd.

---

The "The End" screen is just a black screen with a tiny "FIN" on the bottom right corner, so here's my extreme closeup on that.

 

[newtmonkey]

Lennus (SFC)
This was released as "Paladin's Quest" outside Japan. It's a very traditional 16-bit JRPG in many ways, but it also has some interesting quirks.

It's a weird blend of sci-fi and fantasy (mostly fantasy), perhaps most similar to the first Phantasy Star game. The graphics are certainly unique, with a lot of pastels and bright colors all over the place.

More interestingly, all magic is cast using the character's HPs (there are no spell points). Combat is generally pretty difficult, with even random battles easily capable of wiping your party out unless you make good use of spells, so spellcasting is a necessity here. Each character that can cast spells has a proficiency rating for each school of magic, and the only way to increase this (except for some rare items) is to cast spells.

Healing spells would make no sense in this kind of system, so the game instead gives you medicine bottles. These can each be used nine times, but you can refill them at item shops. It's basically the Estus Flask from Dark Souls. The two main characters start off with their own bottles, but you can find more throughout the game.

Party composition is also interesting. Your third and fourth slots are generally open, and you can hire mercenaries in towns to fill them. Each mercenary is a unique character with their own strengths and weaknesses, and it's always a lot of fun to arrive at a new town and see what mercenaries are available. Mercs will level up, but you cannot change their equipment, so it pays to replace them from time to time.

I'm roughly 10-15 hours in, and I really like it so far! I'm glad I gave the game a chance.

 

[samuraigaiden]

Lennus (SFC)
This was released as "Paladin's Quest" outside Japan. It's a very traditional 16-bit JRPG in many ways, but it also has some interesting quirks.

It's a weird blend of sci-fi and fantasy (mostly fantasy), perhaps most similar to the first Phantasy Star game. The graphics are certainly unique, with a lot of pastels and bright colors all over the place.

More interestingly, all magic is cast using the character's HPs (there are no spell points). Combat is generally pretty difficult, with even random battles easily capable of wiping your party out unless you make good use of spells, so spellcasting is a necessity here. Each character that can cast spells has a proficiency rating for each school of magic, and the only way to increase this (except for some rare items) is to cast spells.

Healing spells would make no sense in this kind of system, so the game instead gives you medicine bottles. These can each be used nine times, but you can refill them at item shops. It's basically the Estus Flask from Dark Souls. The two main characters start off with their own bottles, but you can find more throughout the game.

Party composition is also interesting. Your third and fourth slots are generally open, and you can hire mercenaries in towns to fill them. Each mercenary is a unique character with their own strengths and weaknesses, and it's always a lot of fun to arrive at a new town and see what mercenaries are available. Mercs will level up, but you cannot change their equipment, so it pays to replace them from time to time.

I'm roughly 10-15 hours in, and I really like it so far! I'm glad I gave the game a chance.

I played it for ten hours or so. Got to a cave town place before quitting.

The enemy design is wonderfully unbalanced in crazy ways. At some point you fight these teams of sorceress ladies who can easily put you on a sleep status loop that can go on for dozens of turns. At some point I literally put down the controller and just watched and waited.

 

[Val the Moofia Boss]

I have finished Monochrome Mobius, aka the prequel JRPG to Utawarerumono: Mask of Deception.

Gameplay: it's a basic turn based JRPG. If you've played any other turn based JRPG, you've played this game. The only unique mechanic to write home about is the action ring. There are three rings and which ring a character is on determines how often they get turns. Only three characters can fit into the middle ring, and only party member or enemy can fit into the innermost ring. Buffs and debuffs apply to one of the three rings, so there is some decision making involved as to whether or not you want to ascend to the higher rings so you get more turns, or stay below so everyone can benefit from buffs. This only really matters on boss battles. I played on hard difficulty, and throughout the whole game bosses would take away 90% of my character's HP in one hit, or even one shot them, so I found that the optimal strategy was to keep my low HP characters on the second ring, apply speed, attack, and defense buffs to that ring, and keep my AoE healer Munechika on the innermost ring and have her constantly the party to full.

You only have 4 party members in this game. One of them, Shunya, is presented as a mage/healer with two dozen magical abilities, but I found that there was pretty much no reason to ever use them. Shunya has to spend at least two turns to charge up soulgems before she can use a powerful magic attack or a powerful heal. Shunya is fragile and is likely to die before she completes that 2 or 3 turn process, and she has to start the charging process all over again after she gets rezzed. Oshtor and Mikazuchi deal far more DPS than her anyway. I found that Shunya was only really useful for getting off the essential damage mitigation buff and using items to refilling the MP of the other three characters.

There is a fifth character, Halu, who can be temporarily summoned and replaces the party for a few turns, like Aeons from Final Fantasy X or Valimar from Trails of Cold Steel. However, you have to use materials to upgrade his stats and abilities. These materials are harvested from nodes in the open world, and you are at the mercy of RNG for drops from monsters. Gathering materials is very tedious and a pain in the ass, and you need to use materials to upgrade the blacksmith. I wound up maxxing out the blacksmith but couldn't be bothered to farm to upgrade Halu, so I only ever used him to tank the final boss' one shot ability that took two turns charge up.

I would not recommend playing the game on hard like I did. There were 4 or 5 boss battles I got walled on for hours, retrying over and over, because there was nothing else I could do. The vast majority of EXP comes from boss fights, and if a character is dead when a battle ends (as was often the case), they don't get any EXP. Level grinding is very tedious and only gives you a marginal increase in performance. Some of the battles come down to just getting lucky with the boss not spamming one shot attacks repeatedly. My clear save says 57 hours, but Steam says I have 67 hours. That was 10 hours spent walled on boss fights.

This game could have benefitted from QoL features, like being able to give up a battle, or being able to skip battle animations. You can retry after you a lose a battle, but you don't get back any items you consumed during the battle, meaning you have to reload. I found that if I botched a boss battle attempt, it was faster to ALT+F4 and restart the game than to continue inputting commands and watching animations so I could eventually die and reload.

The soundtrack is okay. There are a couple tracks I really liked, enough to add to my favorite's playlist. Almost the entire game is fully voice acted. The only stuff that isn't voice acted are the sidequests (which is just "kill random hard monster" stuff), and the half dozen skits at Dikotoma's house.

Story: I have mixed opinions. At no point was the story infuriating like Mask of Truth was, so that's a plus. There are a couple of stupid shounen anime moments that made me roll my eyes, but that was it. Most of the cast is likeable but no one who aggravated me like Kuon.

The real issue boils down the the game being a prequel to MoD. The story wasn't really what I expected from a prequel about how Oshtor became the right hand of the Mikado. In the VN duology, we are presented with a Yamato that is living in an uneventful time until the end of MoD. The only things really happening are bandits and some small scale political intrigue on a provincial level. A prequel could have been about how Ougi's father was ousted, and Oshtor taking in Ougi and going around exposing corruption and that is how he became an Imperial Guard. And we'd get to see Vurai's hatred of Oshtor build up. But we already had spent 100 hours in Yamato over the course of the two visual novels, so Yamato is rather boring. It's also hard to have tension when you know that everyone lives until the VNs.

Early on, it looked like the game was going to get around that by having Oshtor become a secret agent and infiltrate a hidden country to the far West of Yamato, Arva Shulan. The player would get to discover a new country, new lore, meet a new cast of characters who could die without interrupting the continuity of the VN, and so on. But you only spend a few hours there and the story goes back to Yamato. Worse, is the game then proceeds to have highly visible, massive events take place in Yamato. Cities are destroyed and the capital is invaded. These are events that cannot be covered up, and it is difficult to reconcile the dramatic events of this prequel with the uneventful backstory we get in the VN duology. So as a prequel, the game fails to fit itself into canon.

This could be reconciled by the sequel-bait ending, which implies that there are some sort of time shenagains going on. If in the next game, Shunya, Arva Shulan, and the destruction in Yamato are erased from the timeline, that would explain why people recall living in a peaceful, uneventful time in the VN, but then the devs are risking audience alienation by rendering the journey the audience was invested in for two JRPGs meaningless. This is a really convoluted way of making a prequel, and better ways were available. Ie, setting the game in Arva Shulan, or following the small scale adventures of Oshtor in Yamato like fighting bandits. Or setting the game further back than living memory and showing those destructive wars that Miko reminisced about in MoD.

There are also some wonky retcons that undermines the story of the visual novels.

Spoilers for the VN duology

I was not a fan of Raiko being "revealed" to be a physically strong combatant. I preferred when he was appointed as a Pillar General for his cunning, and commanded physically strong warriors like Mikazuchi, making him a foil to the physically weak Haku in the Masks duology. They're both supposed to be the chessmasters of the war.

Also not fond of Honoka insistence that she is incapable of betraying the Mikado. Takes the tension out of the Masks duology when you wondered if she murdered him, and also undermines her last words when she said that she resented the Mikado for cloning her as a replacement for his dead wife, but she also genuinely loved him anyway.

The story is unfinished. It's not a self-contained JRPG. It sets up a lot of stuff that has yet to be resolved. We might have to wait a few years to find out what happens, or find out how Vurai's beef with Oshtor got started.


Overall, the game was fine. I had fun, but after the story returned to Yamato, I wasn't super motivated to play it every day. Looking forward to the sequel.

 

[perfectslumbers]

After SMT:3 I decided to play SMT: Strange Journey. I've gotten about halfway through sector Fornax and I'm finding it hard to continue. The story is alright, Zelenin and Jiminez are both interesting characters and I feel like they represent their alignments well (although I heard they go off the deep end later,) and the idea of demons invading as a sort of punishment for the degeneracy of humanity is a great setup for the story. But I honestly can't say it's better than SMT:3, sure there's more of it but SMT:3's insane atmosphere and amazing music and art style elevates everything. Meanwhile Strange Journeys atmosphere is pretty limp. The combat and fusion is a downgrade from Nocturne as well. Demon co-op is a much less interesting and rewarding system, and it also heavily limits your party setup. I get that demon co-op and the fusion system is meant to limit you, but I don't think the limitation adds anything to the game. SMT is ultimately a series where you collect and customise monsters and imo the game suffers when you limit that opportunity. The dungeons are also generally quite mediocre. SMT seems to prefer maze like dungeons with limited interactivity that focus on combat, and navigational challenges like pit traps or invisible teleport tiles. I don't like this approach to dungeon design, but Nocturne did it as well as I think any game could, with dungeons often having unique challenges that force you to consider the environment in unusual ways. Strange Journey on the other hand focuses on the most boring navigational challenges, and ones that are usually trial and error like one way doors, pit traps, and teleporter mazes. I don't expect anything on the level of Grimoire but it's disappointing for a first person dungeon crawler to have such bland dungeons.

 

[jungl]

Finally got done playing growlanser 6. No wonder it never was released in the west after you beat it you unlock a appendix and one of the options lists all the characters with voiced dialogue and the 24 voice actors that played them. You can click each one and they talk about growlanser 6 and their character I'm assuming.

Growlanser 5 and 6 are very similar RTwP rpgs they both share the same story. Its like icewind dale 1 and icewind dale 1.5 if it were such a thing. First game has good dub voice actors but the story itself is whatever. You can tell they created all the pre rendered graphics the game has first and then the scenario writers had to make a good plot using them. Though its not as shit like tales of zestiria and low budget as trails of trannys in this regard.
The second game 6 does everything tighter and better. Gameplay and story are both slightly more interesting. The gem crafting system in 6 and the refined skill system from 5 make the gameplay and character customization very fun and do a good job at supporting the improved story. There are a lot of missables in both 5 and 6 obtaining the protagonists best weapons and armor is final fantasy 10 in Difficulty but with more obscurity. There are Missables and choices that affect ending slides too just like old crpgs. Difficulty of both games is easy so you do not have to get all the best optimal loadout for your guys.
All in all these games prove josh soywer was wrong. You can make games that appease combat and story fags.

 

[Brimruk]

Started playing the SMT III remake on Switch, reached the Specter boss early on (when you first go into the Amala Network).

First time through I didn't buff/debuff and he absolutely demolished me; I was doing pitiful damage and struggling to stay alive (had a full party wipe about 10-15 rounds in).

Second time through I debuffed the fuck out of him and it was over in about 5 rounds. I realize that's the name of the game for the SMT series (make sure you use buffs/debuffs) but goddamn that was a satisfying feeling!

 

[Bohrain]

Played through Digimon Survive, now doing the second run for the true route.
It's basically a visual novel with TRPG combat slapped onto it. Visual novel portion is pretty mediocre, more or less a Persona plot except that they are stranded in another world. Some cast members can die, but they are written to be so unsympathetic that you don't really end up caring unless you are enough of a completionist to want to see the true route. I think they could've done a better job writing them to be poorly functional group members without making them insufferable, as you have to go your way to interact with the least likeable characters. As a sidenote, the game has an interesting VN mechanic where you occasionally get a set amount of actions in a scene so you got to choose who you talk to and the scenario changes a little after using some of the actions. So you might have like 5 actions, persons A, B, C and D are initially available, but after talking to two they move out and different people or conversations happen. It's a neat way to break away the linearity and I'd like to see it used in more games.
As for the TRPG portion, it feels like it needed more iteration. The map pool is small and the designs are very basic. Elevation is basically the only environmental interaction, no chokepoints, no environmental hazards and no interactable objects beyond treasure chests. Striking from higher ground gives extra crit chance, but for some reason most attacks can't target if the elevation difference is more than 2, so it feels like a nonfactor. If you don't use attack or item action in a turn you guard from frontal attacks. This effectively makes attacking units that are closing in without attacking invulnerable until you get to flanking range. But once you can hit from side or back, pretty much anything evaporates that doesn't happen to have double resists from element and affinity. Triangle Strategy got the map design and flanking mechanics done so well that this feels substandard. Also equipment slots are limited to one per digimon, which is utterly retarded. The digimon only get autoattack + one monster specific ability and in most situations either a high range high damage ability item or a flat stat booster is better than any other item. There are a lot of utility item options (heal, (de)buff, ailment skills etc.) and elemental resist items, but they are basically never worth using over the alternatives. It's a real shame because if they had tweaked the elevation on the maps, given like 3 inventory slots per character and changed the flanking so that it's more about surrounding than just not hitting from the front, the combat could be pretty good.
It does have a shitton of recruitable digimon, which is neat if you are fan of the franchise. They did a decent job making them feel unique, everyone has a passive and monster specific skill. Not all of the passives or skills are mechanically unique, but they feel distinct enough. However, the battle sprites are pretty low effort and remind me of something I'd see on a mobile game. Wish there was a mechanical reason to use lower evolves further into the game, generic mons stay in their form so they don't have to be digivolved within combat, but it's kinda sad that much of the roster becomes obsolete lategame. All in all I wouldn't recommend it unless you like Digimon enough to go through an average VN.

 

[Duraframe300]

Played through Digimon Survive, now doing the second run for the true route.
It's basically a visual novel with TRPG combat slapped onto it. Visual novel portion is pretty mediocre, more or less a Persona plot except that they are stranded in another world. Some cast members can die, but they are written to be so unsympathetic that you don't really end up caring unless you are enough of a completionist to want to see the true route. I think they could've done a better job writing them to be poorly functional group members without making them insufferable, as you have to go your way to interact with the least likeable characters.

Everyone can die except Takuma and Minoru (Yes, the kid too). There's 4 routes total.

The two you mean die in every route except true route. You probably got the standard good ending which has only them dying. Having them unsympathetic is also kind of the point here. Takuma ignoring and not getting through to them is the whole point of why they die. If they were just poorly functional group members they'd have at least somewhat grasp in the group and reality and not lose it the way they do. It's the whole point of the Tamer/Digimon dynamic and they're meant to showcase it. It's a physical and mental connection.

Edit: Morality is kind of the shittiest route to be fair.

 

[Bigg Boss]

Tactics Ogre Reborn class system is the drizzling shits. They can shove these marks up their ass. No random battles but hey this one forest has NOTHING BUT THE SAME RANDOM BATTLES. YAY. Still a great game but I am burning out due to this nonsense.

 

[GhostCow]

Tactics Ogre Reborn class system is the drizzling shits. They can shove these marks up their ass. No random battles but hey this one forest has NOTHING BUT THE SAME RANDOM BATTLES. YAY. Still a great game but I am burning out due to this nonsense.

This is one of those games where I said fuck it and used cheat engine to skip the parts I don't like. Mostly just giving myself all the classmarks off the bat so I could just play as the lord class from the start. Still got burned out and quit near the end like I did with the psp version. The game is just too long to the point where it overstays it's welcome.

 

[Bigg Boss]

I...cannot do that. I am halfway through I think.

 

[somerandomdude]

I...cannot do that. I am halfway through I think.

I set the speed hack multiplier to x3-x5 on cheat engine on top of having the game's speed boost option enabled. Some battles took as long as 20-30 minutes, you could cut those down to 5-10 with speed hacks. You spend more time watching units move into place, and watching their animations than anything else.