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quote:Star Ocean 3 When I was younger, about 16 or 17, this game was the poo poo. I slowly came to terms with its flaws, but for awhile I thought they were worth putting up with for a good game experience. Then one day I got fed up. Mostly every element in this game feels unpolished and clumsy. The combat can be fun, but most characters are awkward to control and slow. The actual combat is, as I said, clumsy. The game has the worst map completion quest I've ever played (its optional so it's not a huge deal, it's very easy to screw up forever though). The game is supposedly a sci-fi RPG but for over half the game's plot, the characters are stuck on a generic medieval planet (and I do mean generic!). Now the story is stupid but it's engaging for a little while. The story opens great with Fayt fleeing from an alien invasion and getting trapped on a underdeveloped planet. That little chapter is nice. However, Fayt flees to another underdeveloped planet and the story gets dull. It's not up until Fayt finds out the Vendeeni are after him personally that the plot picks up again. Shortly after that the Vendeeni try to attack the planet but get stopped by an off-the-charts energy beam with an unknown origin. The plot is tense again! You soon find out that all around the universe, eldritch creatures are consuming planets and ending civilizations. This might just be me, but when I got to the moonbase, the difficulty spiked. Those angel-ladies were tough, and the difficulty only gets harsher when you get to Planet Styx, perfectly matching the tension of the story's situation. Then, you break through into 4D space, find out the universe is a video game and the game loses all tension. From there on out, the story is not only stupid but unengaging. At least Blair was cool. And the final dungeon looked nice. And I remember lots of trigger problems. Even on my second and third playthroughs I had difficulty talking to that one NPC that forwarded the plot. I haven't played it in awhile, but I know I'll try it again sometime in the future because there's still some appeal for me. I really like the music too and I'm one of those people that has to play a game to fully enjoy its soundtrack. I can't wait.  Also, I snagged 4 Heroes Of Light today. I'll get to it after playing through Final Fantasy III DS.
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Oct 19, 2012 05:16
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ZenMasterBullshit posted:Anyone know if Rogue Galaxy was any good? I know Level-5 knocked it out of the park with Dragon Quest 8 (Best DQ game in my opinion)and just never got around to Rogue Galaxy even though I wanted to. I thought DQ8 was the epitome of absolute boredom, and I enjoyed Rogue Galaxy. It's not great, but it has some solid gameplay elements, the best cel-shaded graphics on the system, and some good music. It's, in my opinion, Level 5's best game on the PS2. But that, ultimately, isn't saying much since I found both Dark Clouds pretty underwhelming (2 more than 1).
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Oct 19, 2012 09:15
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Azure_Horizon posted:I thought DQ8 was the epitome of absolute boredom Astonishing. Eggie posted:
How is 4 Heroes? I heard it has a hat based Class system which intrigues me greatly.
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Oct 19, 2012 14:51
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I never finished it or got close but I really liked 4HoL for the cute hats and interesting battle system. Also, the limited inventory space is a feature, not a bug. 
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Oct 19, 2012 14:55
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Boten Anna posted:I never finished it or got close but I really liked 4HoL for the cute hats and interesting battle system. Also, the limited inventory space is a feature, not a bug. How's the battle system different from older Final Fantasy or the ATB system(s)?
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Oct 19, 2012 14:58
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Rogue Galaxy wasn't bad, had cool parts but really poo poo dungeons early on (factory and jungle)
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Oct 19, 2012 15:04
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ZenMasterBullshit posted:How's the battle system different from older Final Fantasy or the ATB system(s)? Rather than having MP and the like there's a thing called "AP" (iirc) that stacks to 5 and you get one per battle round. Doing an attack costs you one, you can do a psych up kind of thing to wait a turn and get an extra AP, and spells and special abilities cost 2+ ap to cast. Your AP is persistent between battles. It adds a lot of strategy and even planning for future battles, while being simple and visual and easy to grasp. And the game is actually pretty challenging, too. There are long segments where you have to play solo as well, which I think bothered some people about it but I liked this aspect as well.
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Oct 19, 2012 17:10
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Boten Anna posted:There are long segments where you have to play solo as well, which I think bothered some people about it but I liked this aspect as well. 4 Heroes of Light is pretty cool and has a really nice storybook-esque charm to it but god drat screw that game for taking literally any excuse to split the party for the longest time. "Hey we're finally reunited and don't have to go solo anymore WHOOPS I FELL OUT OF A TREE SORRY YOU'RE GONNA HAVE TO GO WITHOUT ME" It's called Four loving Heroes of Light! LET ME PLAY WITH FOUR HEROES, GAME 
Shaezerus fucked around with this message at 17:23 on Oct 19, 2012 |
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Oct 19, 2012 17:21
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Eggie posted:SO3 I probably shouldn't start on this... but I still don't think that twist is as stupid as everyone says! They built it as a game, but it still functions as a complete universe. An evolution of the old "robots are people too" sci-fi trope, the Data trial but for a whole world, etc. Admittedly, at that point, I was just thrilled to be finally playing the game I was promised on the back of the box, with all spaceships and dimensions and poo poo. It's clumsy for sure, but I never quite understood why that one thing became the infamous "bad part", instead of the thing where absolutely nothing happens for dozens of hours. Tempo 119 fucked around with this message at 17:43 on Oct 19, 2012 |
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Oct 19, 2012 17:40
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Shaezerus posted:4 Heroes of Light is pretty cool and has a really nice storybook-esque charm to it but god drat screw that game for taking literally any excuse to split the party for the longest time. That was probably my biggest problem with the game. It has FFXIII levels of party splitting, it's that annoying.
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Oct 19, 2012 17:49
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quote:Boat Scene gently caress y'all. That scene is awesome and Lunar is awesome.
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Oct 19, 2012 21:33
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Beat The After Years now. The final dungeon was batshit insane with a ton of boss battles... but I liked it. Now I want to see a sequel: Final Fantasy IV: Golbez's Wacky Space Adventures. It'd be like a Saturday morning cartoon!
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Oct 19, 2012 21:41
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Vinchenz posted:Now I want to see a sequel: Final Fantasy IV: Golbez's Wacky Space Adventures. It'd be like a Saturday morning cartoon! 90% of the game would be flashbacks of Golbez having flashbacks about every scene he was in during FF4. The big twist would be that the entire game was a flashback.
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Oct 19, 2012 21:50
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Tempo 119 posted:I probably shouldn't start on this... but I still don't think that twist is as stupid as everyone says! It's really a stupid twist because it still functions as a game. Like you meet people who play the game or hack their characters to get stronger or alter the parameters. Instead of "We created a universe" it is "we created a pretty bitchin' game that we can alter freely."
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Oct 19, 2012 21:53
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Tempo 119 posted:I probably shouldn't start on this... but I still don't think that twist is as stupid as everyone says! SO4 was a farce that I dropped because Enix couldn't be arsed to program in a Target system and how every victory screen had lymile open her paradoxingly large gob.
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Oct 19, 2012 21:54
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I couldn't get into Lunar at all and thought it was one of the most generic RPGs I've ever played. This seems to be a minority opinion to say the least though.
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Oct 19, 2012 22:28
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Pollyanna posted:This discussion on terrible JRPG games and plots makes me glad Nier exists. Oh hey yeah Nier and Dark Souls have the best stories/storytelling of pretty much any RPGs (Japanese or otherwise) I've played this generation. Lost Odyssey could've been swell if the game was about playing through a thousand years of history with Kaim (including the events of a bunch of those dreams) rather than the actual events of the game itself.
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Oct 19, 2012 22:31
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I always figured Golbez's Wacky Space Adventures would be more like comparing regular Marvel comics with cosmic Marvel stuff. The stakes are higher, everything is escalated, everyone is stronger, threats are cosmic in scale, and nobody back home knows a loving thing about what's going on out there.
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Oct 19, 2012 22:41
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Ross posted:I couldn't get into Lunar at all and thought it was one of the most generic RPGs I've ever played. This seems to be a minority opinion to say the least though. I like Lunar a good bit, but that's more or less what I think about it. I can't really point at anything that made me go WOAH THIS IS AN AWESOME GAME, but everything was well-made and done with a lot of heart. To steal an analogy, it's like a perfectly acceptable car that I sold to a stranger. It's just about the most generically good jrpg I can think of.
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Oct 19, 2012 22:49
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Would The Last Remnant count as a JRPG? I just got it in the Steam bundle and though I played it once before at a friend's house, I never really got too far into it. Basically what I'm asking is, is it worth a playthrough? Alternatively, anything must-know before I take the plunge?
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Oct 19, 2012 22:54
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ImpAtom posted:It's really a stupid twist because it still functions as a game. Like you meet people who play the game or hack their characters to get stronger or alter the parameters. Instead of "We created a universe" it is "we created a pretty bitchin' game that we can alter freely." That's what shithead gods and devils do in every other fantasy story, just bust into our realm of existence to gently caress with us. All SO3 does differently is show them at home, in a form we understand. Creation myths like "we were made as an experiment" or "we were made for entertainment" have been around forever, but they tend to stop short of exploring the creator's perspective. If you unpack those ideas at all, then yeah of course we're in a computer or a petri dish or something. I actually think FF13/FNC suffers much more by going the opposite route. Nothing is allowed to be mundane; everything important is totally vague and abstract. That's a huge problem when you're writing for a video game because it's impossible to convey ideas like "Etro the bumbling goddess that no living person has heard of" or "the Unseen World where chaos is recycled" without just up and turning into a book.
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Oct 20, 2012 00:30
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Ross posted:I couldn't get into Lunar at all and thought it was one of the most generic RPGs I've ever played. This seems to be a minority opinion to say the least though. Lunar is extremely generic, but for the time it was released it has pretty high production values. It has fully animated cutscenes in an era when a lot of people were still wowed by sprites moving.
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Oct 20, 2012 00:35
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Tempo 119 posted:Creation myths like "we were made as an experiment" or "we were made for entertainment" have been around forever, but they tend to stop short of exploring the creator's perspective. I think the problem with that was the hamfisted way in which they delivered it. Okay guys your mods appeared to your AI as angels, I get it. I think secretly, a lot of us disliked it because we're all thinking, since it's a setting based on the universe rather than on a fantastic plane, "gently caress this game for belittling my sense of existence." Now some of you might say, "BUT DOESN'T IT MAKE YOU THINK" but no, it really doesn't, it just feels a bit insulting. Of Mice and Men makes you think; SO3 is basically on the level of getting really high and saying, "ohhhh, but dude, what if we're, like, just SOMEONE ELSE'S DREAM," except it's that one rear end in a top hat who says this stuff when he isn't.
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Oct 20, 2012 00:39
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Star Ocean 3's plot twist is pretty cool because Maria even says that it sounds like something out of a retarded scifi novel. And by "cool" I mean "annoying" because acknowledging your product has a problem and winking at the player is not actually the same as fixing the problem.
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Oct 20, 2012 00:43
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Azran posted:I tried to give you a chance, Final Fantasy 1. But you are so grindy. Some sections of the cave have 100% encounter rates. Also I never go to the second floor there until after I can walk down and back up the Giant Hall. With a team consisting of a Fighter, Black Belt, and maybe Red Mage, it doesn't take long and the handful of levels cuts away most/all need for grinding. ConanThe3rd posted:I think it probably has more to do on how it paints the rest of the SO franchise, including a game that DeJap bust their balls to translate (and get working on emulators) than anything else. SO4 was a bad attempt at copying the good combat system from the Tales games while intentionally removing one of the best aspects of it (co-op). I was able to tolerate the game up until the encounter with the phantoms where you fight them over and over and need to critical to make any progress, while they stunlock you easily and often). I don't know if the game un-fucks itself after that but between that and the annoying shout-out to a previous SO game I can only hope there won't be a SO5 because 3 and 4 managed to murder it pretty hard. fount of knowledge posted:Would The Last Remnant count as a JRPG? I just got it in the Steam bundle and though I played it once before at a friend's house, I never really got too far into it. It's not worth it. The AI combat stuff makes it exceptionally easy to get hosed through no fault of your own and Curse is the most bullshit aliment you'll ever see. If you play it anyways, use a guide the entire time, especially for when characters mention swapping weapons/learning new skills. Some characters can get extremely powerful by training the right thing(s) while you can ruin others by training stuff like your sister being an insanely powerful mage with certain types of spells, while the 4-armed cat guy is only harmed by having him learn magic since his melee is strong as hell and his magic sucks. The rank system affects the game's difficulty in some ways that I'm drawing a blank on other than certain enemies getting higher ranked versions of their skills, doing more damage (an increase likely greater than your HP gains). It did have some pretty nice graphics (which load horrifically slow on the 360, might be ok on PC) when it came out at least. 
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Oct 20, 2012 01:09
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Evil Fluffy posted:Also I never go to the second floor there until after I can walk down and back up the Giant Hall. With a team consisting of a Fighter, Black Belt, and maybe Red Mage, it doesn't take long and the handful of levels cuts away most/all need for grinding. quote:It did have some pretty nice graphics (which load horrifically slow on the 360, might be ok on PC) when it came out at least.
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Oct 20, 2012 01:15
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Zombies' Downfall posted:Oh hey yeah Gotta agree with you there. Although at times during Nier I did feel like the game didn't give the players enough credit. Then again at times I appreciate the very subtle hints at stuff like Kaine being a hermaphrodite that really... add a lot to their character. Dark Souls and Demon's Souls I really like too because they put a lot of effort in showing you the story through the game's world, rather than throwing a 10 minute cutscene/dialogue box at you. It really lets your imagination fly as a player, and takes the medium to a whole new level. I'm sure a lot of that sounded pretentious, but it's why I really dig those games. I've been playing through Final Fantasy VII and IX, and they both kind of fall flat on both of their storytelling aspects. IX I feel started out really strong, but I'm midway through disc 3 at this point and everything feels... homogenized. Like they didn't want to conclude the character arcs for Freya/Steiner and just had them chill in the party because... what else are they going to do? I feel like it would be beneficial if they included more stuff for them to do or cut them out of your party completely. FF VII on the other hand feels very... schizophrenic. I'm midway through Disc 2, and it's strange seeing Cloud spend the majority of disc 1 as a dude that is so apathetic about everything beeline straight to "OH MY GOD SHE'S DEAD MY LIFE IS OVER." I understand that the scenes that I got with Tifa could have been with Aeris, and that had I included Aeris in the party more, there could have been more development between the two characters- however, if they would give me the option to omit her, then why not omit Cloud's dramatic response as well? I remember a friend of mine in high school once said that Final Fantasy VII's story changed his life. I hope it gets better than this.
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Oct 20, 2012 01:21
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Arrrthritis posted:FF VII on the other hand feels very... schizophrenic. Funny you should say that, because so's Cloud. I'll let myself out.
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Oct 20, 2012 01:28
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Arrrthritis posted:Gotta agree with you there. Although at times during Nier I did feel like the game didn't give the players enough credit. Then again at times I appreciate the very subtle hints at stuff like Kaine being a hermaphrodite that really... add a lot to their character. That's exactly the feeling FFVII tries to elicit. One of the reasons people really like Cloud is because of his character development in that game. I actually found FFVII much more diverting after reading the plot synopsis before actually playing the game. There's a lot of subtle stuff that you'd otherwise miss until multiple playthroughs about what's going on; for instance, I had no idea that during early flashbacks, when your screen flashes white for a second, it's actually supposed to indicate that Cloud has no real memories of that, and is instead using both Zack's memories and his own mental version of his ideal self to fill gaps.
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Oct 20, 2012 01:29
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NTT posted:That's exactly the feeling FFVII tries to elicit. One of the reasons people really like Cloud is because of his character development in that game. I actually found FFVII much more diverting after reading the plot synopsis before actually playing the game. There's a lot of subtle stuff that you'd otherwise miss until multiple playthroughs about what's going on; for instance, I had no idea that during early flashbacks, when your screen flashes white for a second, it's actually supposed to indicate that Cloud has no real memories of that, and is instead using both Zack's memories and his own mental version of his ideal self to fill gaps. This is probably the best description of why clouds development is favored so much. Most of the characters in the final fantasy games don't really have a whole lot of background that it takes a 2nd playthrough to really notice just whats going on, particularly in his head. For years I used to think it was Sephiroth sticking his proverbial hands in clouds head. On the other hand squall has 0 development, zidane only has a temporary bsod, tidus is still just as annoying he just gets over his father issues...kind of. xSousuke fucked around with this message at 06:13 on Oct 20, 2012 |
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Oct 20, 2012 06:10
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xSousuke posted:This is probably the best description of why clouds development is favored so much. Most of the characters in the final fantasy games don't really have a whole lot of background that it takes a 2nd playthrough to really notice just whats going on, particularly in his head. For years I used to think it was Sephiroth sticking his proverbial hands in clouds head. And back to the first hand, The Compilation basically hosed all that up and showed why pandering to fanficcers is The Worst Idea. I used to hate Cloud because of his every other appearance in SE's games meaning "Angst for no reason time", and then I played FF7 and got confused with how he wasn't moaning and groaning every four seconds.
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Oct 20, 2012 06:44
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Nier is good with hitting you with emotional gutpunches. However if you try to actually analyze the story you soon realize that very little of it makes any logical sense.
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Oct 20, 2012 06:49
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All the good stuff in Nier must be after ending A, because I played the game through to ending A and it seemed pretty mediocre.
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Oct 20, 2012 06:58
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Conduit for Sale! posted:All the good stuff in Nier must be after ending A, because I played the game through to ending A and it seemed pretty mediocre. You haven't beaten Nier until you've at least seen Ending B.
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Oct 20, 2012 07:55
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Rasamune posted:You haven't beaten Nier until you've at least seen Ending B. In my opinion, the full experience comes from getting the last ending. As for the game "not making logical sense", Grimoire NIER dispelled that pretty handily.
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Oct 20, 2012 08:24
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Of course, that's a Japan-only supplemental book (it's been translated, but full of spoilers obviously), and it's not hard to miss what exactly's going on since they never explicitly talk about the backstory of the game. That said, the Ending B playthrough is pretty drat interesting, as there's a lot of stuff that's different, so I'd highly recommend giving it a try. You even start a bit over 50% into the game, so you'd really only be replaying most of the second half of the game. You could probably get away with just watching Endings C and D on Youtube though, as the actual playthroughs don't change on those runs.
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Oct 20, 2012 13:53
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Evil Fluffy posted:Last Remnant 360 The PC version made a ton of changes, and most of them make it much harder to gently caress yourself. The in-battle speed can be increased to like double speed, which helps a lot. They also removed the leader limit, which means you can now have parties entirely made of leaders without generics. Which is much more fun! Also, you can manually disable arts, so even if your characters learn stuff you may not want, you can just turn that off instead of being stuck with it. http://lastremnant.wikia.com/wiki/Differences_between_Xbox_360_and_PC_versions
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Oct 20, 2012 14:01
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xSousuke posted:This is probably the best description of why clouds development is favored so much. Most of the characters in the final fantasy games don't really have a whole lot of background that it takes a 2nd playthrough to really notice just whats going on, particularly in his head. For years I used to think it was Sephiroth sticking his proverbial hands in clouds head. Exactly. Cloud starts off as just a regular dude who is in it for nothing but money, but there are several subtle hints that something's not quite right; the white screens and the accompianing creepy ZHZHZHHZHZ sound that goes with it, his occasional headaches causing him to collapse. When Aeris dies his memories of when he failed to protect Tifa as a kid come back to haunt him, which is where he starts really coming mentally unstable. Later on Hojo (falsely) tells him that he's a failed clone experiment, which basically causes Cloud to break down completely, having no self esteem already and feeling very unworthy to live. There's an interesting juxtaposition here because ANOTHER very similar person also took information the wrong way; Sephiroth in the Shinra Manor basement. Both, after hearing/reading the information, basically lose their loving minds. It's really a very deep game, and it's a shame that Cloud is basically so multi-faceted that it's impossible to characterize him as any more than 1 of his states during a game like Dissidia. This makes the more modern versions of Cloud seem empty and shallow; of course he is! You're only seeing 1 side of the several step process he goes through during FFVII.
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Oct 20, 2012 14:58
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Azran posted:I tried to give you a chance, Final Fantasy 1. But you are so grindy. Are you playing the original NES version? If so, the way to success is running from every encounter on the way to the boss, snagging key loot when you can. It's a little like Dark Souls when you think about it.
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Oct 20, 2012 14:59
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Fister Roboto posted:Are you playing the original NES version? If so, the way to success is running from every encounter on the way to the boss, snagging key loot when you can. It's a little like Dark Souls when you think about it. Nah, the GBA remake. I guess I chose poorly - I don't think there is any other game in the franchise as grindy as this one.
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