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Blue Dragon steamrolls the gently caress out of Lost Odyssey, though Lost Odyssey is great too.
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Sep 3, 2012 23:01
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Bovineicide posted:Right? Speaking of gorgeous, despite the money spent in the graphics engine, the areas in Final Fantasy XIII(-2) don't really strike me as being "oh, this is really pretty". They don't look bad, but I think the only time I ever went "oh!" at an area was Noel's dreamworld during XIII-2. That crimson sky is pretty striking, unlike most of the game.
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Sep 3, 2012 23:03
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Bovineicide posted:fake edit for Final Fantasy: Is Dimensions supposed to feel incredibly soulless, or is it just me? I downloaded the prologue to give it a chance, but everything about it just rubs me the wrong way so far. The prologue is the least interesting part, but while the gameplay gets better the plot is still spinning its wheels. I'm ten hours in and the characters are still in the "wander about" stage. There's plenty of mystery but nothing's been answered and there's been no concrete goal besides "find our friends." The motivations bad-guys are equally as vague. So yeah the story is kinda poo poo, but the gameplay does get better. V  V
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Sep 3, 2012 23:34
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Speaking of Final Fantasy games released as episodic content, is The After Years actually worth playing? I've hear bad things about it.Himuro posted:Blue Dragon steamrolls the gently caress out of Lost Odyssey, though Lost Odyssey is great too. I just don't get the appeal of Blue Dragon. Every single character in the game are completely annoying children. If this game had existed while I was younger I may have liked it, but the gameplay is not nearly good enough to carry the game.
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Sep 4, 2012 00:42
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Donnor posted:Speaking of Final Fantasy games released as episodic content, is The After Years actually worth playing?
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Sep 4, 2012 00:52
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Donnor posted:Speaking of Final Fantasy games released as episodic content, is The After Years actually worth playing? I've hear bad things about it. TAY bad, but you might be able to enjoy it anyway. It's that kind of game. Repetitive content and storyline, half-baked characters all being inconveniently incompetent, recycled dungeons and plot points from FFIV without any balance changes. The biggest problem with it was that they decided to make a sequel; everything proceeds from that fact.
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Sep 4, 2012 00:53
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TAY isn't really that bad. It's repetitive and the storyline is dumb, but it has some fun ideas. If you get it cheap or as part of a collection it's worth playing, but it isn't worth $30 or whatever TAY was total. "Half-baked" is the best way to sum it up. It's like a cheap reunion show designed to appeal to nostalgia more than anything.
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Sep 4, 2012 01:06
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Pesky Splinter posted:I like the first bit, it's up until after the Dancing Mad-esque guitar section, with the rap that it becomes so hilarious that it can't be taken seriously. Donnor posted:I just don't get the appeal of Blue Dragon. Every single character in the game are completely annoying children. If this game had existed while I was younger I may have liked it, but the gameplay is not nearly good enough to carry the game.
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Sep 4, 2012 01:13
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The first half of TAY, the individual chapters, isn't that great. But in terms of pure gameplay the second half, which is basically several hours of Final Dungeon, is really fun. Get the PSP version.
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Sep 4, 2012 01:19
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Donnor posted:Speaking of Final Fantasy games released as episodic content, is The After Years actually worth playing? I've hear bad things about it. It depends. The After Years has a really lovely story that dumbs down a lot of characters. It's not totally bad, as a few characters are actually pretty awesome, but there are a lot more that are plain useless. Also, the villain has literally no personality and the game recycles 75% of the plot points of the original game, and I'm not loving exaggerating on that point. The game recycles almost everything from FF4. That said, if you like FF4's gameplay, TAY's gameplay is a nice improvement on it. There's new abilities and stuff, and the game actually tries to be challenging by giving you set parties of usually two for the smaller tales. The end game's actually well-designed gameplay-wise, as the final dungeon's incredibly huge, but it also has a ton of boss fights (probably around forty or so) and gives you a great excuse to play around with parties involving the up-to-22 characters you have available at the end, all the while giving tons of checkpoints where you can heal, buy items, and switch your party around. There's also two new additions to gameplay. There's the Lunar Phases, which strengthen one aspect of battle by a third and weaken another between physical attacks, special attacks (Jump, Ninjutsu, etc.), Black Magic, and White Magic. Then there's Bands, which are Double/Triple Techs from Chrono Trigger, except you can have up to all five characters use one and they can be a pain in the rear end to find without a walkthrough. That said, the game still suffers from a sometimes-ridiculously high encounter rate, and there's a ton of bullshit in places, especially those loving Challenge Dungeons which I hate so much. If you're willing to overlook the horrible story and want to play TAY for the gameplay, I'd actually recommend it. If you want a game with a strong story, stay the hell away. If you do get it, I highly recommend the Complete Collection version on PSP. It's not only cheaper than the WiiWare equivalent, but it looks better and fixes a ton of stuff like making rare drops easier to get and requiring less bullshit to get the good Challenge Dungeon loot. It also fixes the organization of the game a bit, as the WiiWare version combines a tale that happens late in the game with the first tale, leading to the game inadvertently spoiling some stuff. And as a bonus, it comes with a great game.
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Sep 4, 2012 01:19
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The White Dragon posted:poo poo, the rap part's my favorite. It's largely incomprehensible, but the parts you can both pick out and manage to understand, the rap is basically Gongora talking poo poo to your party, it's great. Oh, so that's the gist of what it's saying.  I've always wondered if it meant anything; I tried to look for a translation but come up empty handed. I've never really clicked with Akira Toriyama's stuff either. Even his work on Chrono Trigger. Pesky Splinter fucked around with this message at 01:35 on Sep 4, 2012 |
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Sep 4, 2012 01:32
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Donnor posted:Speaking of Final Fantasy games released as episodic content, is The After Years actually worth playing? I've hear bad things about it. The appeal of Blue Dragon is to have a gung-ho group of kids kicking rear end. It's very simplistic, but so are games like Final Fantasy V. It's refreshing to have a main character who is about hauling rear end and taking no poo poo, even if he's a kid. I'd rather have that than another brooding main character. The only character that's actually annoying is Marumaro, which I'll give you, but the rest of the cast fit into their archetypes nicely. As for the gameplay, I find it more inventive than say, Lost Odyssey. The world map system in particular is great. I like getting new abilities like being able to sneak while undetected, or using the ball that instantly kills all weaker enemies upon touching them without having to go through battle, making grinding pain free. The game also features nice atmosphere (the clay town, the hospital), cool quests (nothings!), fantastic dungeons (the dungeon at the end of disc 1 has you fighting like 6-8 bosses in this one badass boss rush), a unique world full of color and interesting designs,(I love Toriyama designs, especially his monster designs), and is the last jrpg on consoles I've played where I felt like I was actually going on an adventure. The appeal of Blue Dragon is the same appeal of older jrpgs. Lost Odyssey is great, but it lacks what made Blue Dragon special. It doesn't help that the writing is atrocious whereas Blue Dragon is merely charming. Blue Dragon is basically a modern Final Fantasy V. You even have a pirate in your party. Jupiter Jazz fucked around with this message at 01:57 on Sep 4, 2012 |
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Sep 4, 2012 01:43
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The White Dragon posted:I just personally can't stand Akira Toriyama's character designs, so Blue Dragon, no matter how good it might actually be, is an automatic pass for me. It's worse than Tetsuya Nomura, and coming from me, that means a lot. Thank you. I thought I was alone with that opinion. Yeah, I agree with you, not only do I not like the way he draws stuff, but it also always looks exactly the same. It's like he has three characters that he just re-draws over and over. Anyway, while we're talking about Sakaguchi stuff, if I got like an hour into The Last Story (basically did the intro sequence until I got to the first town) and don't really care about the game at this point, should I go on or just drop it?
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Sep 4, 2012 02:01
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Admiral H. Curtiss posted:Thank you. I thought I was alone with that opinion. Yeah, I agree with you, not only do I not like the way he draws stuff, but it also always looks exactly the same. It's like he has three characters that he just re-draws over and over. Are you kidding? More people seem to agree than disagree with you, and say the same arguments even. Honestly, saying Toriyama has the same three characters is like saying Amano draws the same characters because most of them tend to be blonde. It's ignorant, at best. Especially if we're talking about his monster designs.
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Sep 4, 2012 02:09
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Himuro posted:It's refreshing to have a main character who is about hauling rear end and taking no poo poo, even if he's a kid. I thought Blue Dragon was all about fighting poo poo monsters and stuffing your pockets full of poo poo.
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Sep 4, 2012 02:09
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Himuro posted:Honestly, saying Toriyama has the same three characters is like saying Amano draws the same characters because most of them tend to be blonde. It's ignorant, at best.  quote:Especially if we're talking about his monster designs. I think like or dislike of those two artists in particular hinges on a person's innate ability to recognize faces. If you're good at it, their characters stick out like a sore thumb.
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Sep 4, 2012 02:12
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I would give anything for a party of Krillin's.
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Sep 4, 2012 02:19
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Monster designs are pretty important, especially in the earlier Dragon Warrior games where you couldn't see your characters during battle at all, and Toriyama's really good at making charming monsters, but I probably just think that because I have autism and can't recognize faces, or something. The declining quality in Final Fantasy monster designs since, like FF7 is way worse to me than "oh no Nomura made someone else with belts." Bonaventure fucked around with this message at 02:26 on Sep 4, 2012 |
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Sep 4, 2012 02:23
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Toriyama has the ability to vary his designs but has reached the point where he's so popular he's asked not to from what I recall. The end result is the parties of Goku, Goku, Goku and Goku in anything he draws.
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Sep 4, 2012 02:25
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Iunno, Yangus doesn't really look like Goku. Like, yeah, it's a problem definitely, but there's at least some variety in his designs.
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Sep 4, 2012 02:26
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Pasteurized Milk posted:I would give anything for a party of Krillin's. Pretty sure Dragon Quest IX lets you put Krillin Eyes on every character.
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Sep 4, 2012 02:59
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I named the MC in DQ8 Goku because, well, you can tell why.  Speaking of bad character designers, I like Nomura's monsters a lot, but his characters leave a lot to be desired. A lot.
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Sep 4, 2012 03:05
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Krad posted:I named the MC in DQ8 Goku because, well, you can tell why. Yeah well you done goofed, buddy. DQ8's MC is Gohan.
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Sep 4, 2012 03:15
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I've named every main character in every Dragon Quest I've played Goku. This was confusing in IX when they all were Krillin and named Goku, gOku, goKu, and gokU. Each Krillin had a different skin tone because why not.
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Sep 4, 2012 03:36
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Hit or miss Clitoris posted:I've named every main character in every Dragon Quest I've played Goku. This was confusing in IX when they all were Krillin and named Goku, gOku, goKu, and gokU. Which makes sense since, as far as DQ IX's storyline goes, the hero IS alone. In fact it's a massive plothole there's a party at all. Mister Roboto fucked around with this message at 07:10 on Sep 4, 2012 |
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Sep 4, 2012 03:37
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I beat FF9 disc 1 in like 6 hours, it really is short. Must be all those FMVs taking up disc space. Also stealing rare stuff makes the game so much easier, Zidane and Freya are hitting for 300 while Vivi got blizzara early from stealing and has an ice boosting cap I found and he does 800+. There is a bit more min-maxing than I remember, you also have to pay attention to what you're crafting to get all the skills. The only problem is I forgot the game basically won't let you choose a party until pretty late and even then it forces you to use everyone sometimes, so you don't have so much freedom on that end.
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Sep 4, 2012 07:00
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Stealing from early enemies helps a lot, but stealing from Beatrix at the end of Disc 1 is absolutely awful, I've tried well around five times now and cannot get the Mythril Sword off of her. I've opted to just buy the thing later and make do with the Chain Plate at this point, because it seems like the steal rate for it is ridiculously low.
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Sep 4, 2012 07:03
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I only have like ten slots left for new materia but I'm too lazy to leave the North Crater to sell my Alls or combine Master Materias and poo poo. firstworldproblems.txt
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Sep 4, 2012 07:05
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Yeah, trying to steal the Mythril Sword was driving me nuts, but you get it really really soon with Steiner and co. so it isn't that big of an advantage. There's a forest outside Treno that's perfect for grinding. Mandragoras that use a weak blizzard spell and a special enemy skill that only does damage that's the difference between max HP and current HP. You can most likely kill them in two hits from Steiner and Marcus. When they die, they give about 1500 gil and are easy as anything to farm. I had enough money to get all the special items off the auction house and to buy multiples of stuff you need for synthesis later.
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Sep 4, 2012 07:08
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Harlock posted:Yeah, trying to steal the Mythril Sword was driving me nuts, but you get it really really soon with Steiner and co. so it isn't that big of an advantage.
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Sep 4, 2012 08:34
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I've had the same stealing annoyances with Hilgigars and the Fairy Flute. After about 20 minutes of no luck, it got to the point where Vivi was left floating on Trance after the other three used theirs up sitting doing nothing. It may be pointless but I had to teach that smiling gently caress a lesson and take that flute. Still a fun game for me, though, after the nth playthrough. And reading The White Dragon's LP at the same time adds to it all.
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Sep 4, 2012 11:18
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Thoughts/advice re: FF5 Ancient Cave hack! 1) I kinda expected this, but Geomancer is a really awesome early find if you've had bum luck with weapons. !Gaia provides a free, infinite-use attack that often times is less random than it seems like it'd be and might have some weirdness going on in the cave specifically (like there's a Lonka Ruin tileset floor where you can only use whirlwind and not the single-target wind attack or anything). It's a great crutch until you can get some good stuff going, and isn't the worst thing for your casters to lean on even pretty deep in. Conserving MP for white magic seems pretty important. 2) Not all the lava is actually damage floors. Give it a one step test, even if you don't have Geomancer. There's a pretty common floor (I think the tileset is the volcano from World 3) with like 10 chests you can only get by walking through lava that doesn't actually hurt you. 3) It's been said before, but remember that you can't change back into a Traveler (I think Bare is what this hack uses) until you actually find that job in the cave. This is important not just re: endgame, but becomes a pretty interesting tactical choice early on. If you find a powerful weapon before you have the appropriate class, it becomes a serious decision whether you want to waste ABP staying Bare or change that character into a Thief or Monk (the only jobs you've found) and give up that World 2 katana you got on the second floor. 4) Some of the "trick floors" and random stuff the designer put in are interesting, others are total bullshit. The 3 Chimera special battle formation on floor 44 is an especially big "gently caress you" if you haven't found a Coral Ring; it's very easy to die before you can even really act and there's no way to know this is coming the first time you get there.
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Sep 4, 2012 21:21
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Polite Tim posted:People go on and on about Xenoblade being the greatest JRPG in a long time and yes it is a great game full of stunning vistas, good music, really cool little game mechanics that you wonder why they weren't in other games before.No one ever seems to mention the fact that the combat system is a ham-fisted cluster-gently caress at the best of times. Dear lord if there is one thing that is preventing me from playing the game it's that combat system. I had no issues with the combat using a pro controller. Maybe it's bad using a wiimote and nunchuck but even moving Shulk and seven around for positioning while swapping between skills is pretty simple but you can't just hammer away at skills. unless you're using Reyn, Shulk, and Sharla to just tank through it all. But in doing so you miss out on using the best characters and utterly breaking enemies in half at times. Riki Sneaky
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Sep 4, 2012 23:31
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Here's a bunch of new Lightning Returns details. Despite taking place hundreds of years in the future or whatever, everyone who was in FFXIII-2 are still alive and at the same age because no one ages or dies anymore. Which is great, because it means that Hope can make a triumphant return in a support role: quote:Hope will give guidance to Lightning via wireless com.
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Sep 5, 2012 04:48
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TurnipFritter posted:Despite taking place hundreds of years in the future or whatever, everyone who was in FFXIII-2 are still alive and at the same age because no one ages or dies anymore. That is both the stupidest and best thing I've heard. I was afraid they were going to leave XIII-2 plot threads hanging by throwing the storyline into the future, but god damnit there's better ways to go about it than this. In fact a lot of the points on the list read to me as "wow, that sounds like a cool idea, but I didn't really want XIII-3 to have that". Especially this: quote:The game is meant to be played and cleared multiple times. The volume is not such that it will take many tens of hours to clear once. Yeah sure I can dig that in other games. Not sure if I want it in this one.
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Sep 5, 2012 04:56
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If it only has one ending... why would I want to play it again? Still the rest sounds cool (and the reason they ginned up for having everyone alive probably makes the most sense considering the ending of 13-2).
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Sep 5, 2012 04:57
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Moldy Taxes posted:That is both the stupidest and best thing I've heard. I was afraid they were going to leave XIII-2 plot threads hanging by throwing the storyline into the future, but god damnit there's better ways to go about it than this. Why is it weird? We knew this was a consequence of Valhalla merging with reality.
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Sep 5, 2012 05:02
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Cityinthesea posted:If it only has one ending... why would I want to play it again? Maybe it's like Dragon Quarter and you have to constantly restart the game if you want to actually finish it. Or maybe a lot of the quests are mutually exclusive so to see all/more than half of the content you'll have to play it again. Or maybe new quests/bosses/events/costumes/whatever are unlocked in new game plus.
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Sep 5, 2012 05:54
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I'm doing my yearly playthrough of IX. I'm trying to make a point to steal with more regularity, I've never done much of it before and I really want to max out Thievery as quickly as I can. Funny thing happened, though: I've been playing it with my eleven year old sister, meaning she does all the town/storyline stuff while I do all the fighting. We're still early in the game, and we just got through the sequence on the airship where you fight the Black Waltz. As we're watching the frantic chase to get through the closing gate, the kid asks me a great question I never thought of: "Why don't they just fly over the gate?".
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Sep 5, 2012 07:17
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TL posted:I'm doing my yearly playthrough of IX. I'm trying to make a point to steal with more regularity, I've never done much of it before and I really want to max out Thievery as quickly as I can. Because that EPIC AS gently caress BEST CUTSCENE IN THE SERIES wouldn't happen.  And it's most likely that ships running on Mist have an altitude limit, since we see no other ships going higher than the Gates pre-Disc 3.
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Sep 5, 2012 07:24
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