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Question! Say I'm interested in playing a game in the Atelier series, but I don't want to be skeeved out by lots of weird anime fanservice. What would be the best game in the series for me to play? And don't say Recettear; I already played, beat, and loved that game
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Jul 15, 2014 23:30
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Rasamune posted:Question! Escha and Logy is pretty great. I hadn't played an Atelier game since Iris 2 and I picked it up on the PSN sale a month or so ago. It looks great! It's silly at times, but not weirdly fanservice-y or anything.
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Jul 15, 2014 23:31
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Rasamune posted:Question! Escha & Logy without a doubt. None of the games are like Ar Tonelico or whatever level. They're all (at least the ones I've played) significantly tamer than Persona, but E&L is basically free of that stuff almost entirely. I think there's like one conversation in the game where one character is talking about height and another character thinks they're talking about boob size and that is it. ImpAtom fucked around with this message at 23:34 on Jul 15, 2014 |
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Jul 15, 2014 23:31
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Phantasium posted:Did they change anything in the iOS port of Secret of Mana? quote:- Original character names are now default choices.
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Jul 15, 2014 23:33
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I've been replaying Secret of Mana lately and dang, all those hitboxes are terrible. Music is still great but man, the early parts of the game before you get magic are just as brutally hard as I remember. Though really even with the huge hitboxes on your dudes, it would be bearable were it not for the x4 item restriction, that is just too low!
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Jul 15, 2014 23:35
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Levantine posted:Escha and Logy is pretty great. I hadn't played an Atelier game since Iris 2 and I picked it up on the PSN sale a month or so ago. It looks great! It's silly at times, but not weirdly fanservice-y or anything. ImpAtom posted:Escha & Logy without a doubt. I'll have to look into that one then; thanks!
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Jul 15, 2014 23:39
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Rasamune posted:Question! I'll third the Escha and Logy recommendation, but I'll also add Ayesha on top of it, due to being the most beginner friendly of the PS3 Atelier games, and due to it being the start of the Dusk trilogy that E&L are a part of, so you can catch some of the (minor) references to it in E&L.
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Jul 15, 2014 23:40
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Authorman posted:The one thing that makes Secret of Evermore better than Mana is that Alchemy is a much more dynamic magic system than the one in Mana. Since going into menus to cast magic takes up about half the game (the other half is charging up attacks and whiffing for no reason) this alone makes it better.  Charged attacks in SoE might bypass evasion but all non-magic attacks have a chance to miss, so you can still miss stationary enemies with 0 eva, like those wall-mounted speakers in Omnitopia 
Fur20 fucked around with this message at 23:57 on Jul 15, 2014 |
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Jul 15, 2014 23:54
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BloodWulfe posted:Is this before or after the giant chessboard? Because I feel like it was right around there that the game fell flat. The pyramid dungeon was sort of frustrating, but the atmosphere of that era, and the awesome bazaar, made up for bad dungeon design. Most of the stuff before that had a similarly great atmosphere. Yeah it falls apart in the chessboard area, maybe even before then with the castle vents maze, which was really bad, followed up almost immediately by the dark forest maze, which was intensely bad. It's not just the mazes in this area which stunk, the third and fourth areas have numerous game breaking bugs and really half assed bosses, some which only attack by casting the same spell over and over. This is all capped off with having to backtrack through all the worlds before you can get to the fourth one and fighting palette swaps of previous bosses. The game feels like it was intended to be longer, but they ran out of time and quickly threw together what they had. I mean some random guy standing next to one of the backtrack McGuffins gives you two of the most important spells for the endgame with no rhyme or reason. ed vv I had the exact opposite approach, where I just bought 99 ingredients for hard ball/crush/lance and never used any weapon until I got the bazooka. I think I leveled up the first spear one notch and never any of the other weapons. Makes the game super easy until the final boss which is resistant to most alchemy. Authorman fucked around with this message at 00:20 on Jul 16, 2014 |
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Jul 15, 2014 23:59
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Uh, excuse me, but the most important spell in the endgame is the dog with a lv. 3 charge attack  My only real problem with the alchemy system is that the spells are either really good or really poo poo, and with the exception of Crush and Heal, prohibitively expensive no matter where you are in the game. Feathers cost 1000 fuckin' gold coins for five when most enemies drop cash in the double-digits. The alchemy system would be much better if ingredients were really plentiful--like you got them from every monster the same way you get money plentiful--but it's the backwards of Secret of Mana: by the time you get enough money to use the spells, you're better off just chucking your spear at enemies. Fur20 fucked around with this message at 00:14 on Jul 16, 2014 |
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Jul 16, 2014 00:08
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Authorman posted:Yeah it falls apart in the chessboard area, maybe even before then with the castle vents maze, which was really bad, followed up almost immediately by the dark forest maze, which was intensely bad. It's not just the mazes in this area which stunk, the third and fourth areas have numerous game breaking bugs and really half assed bosses, some which only attack by casting the same spell over and over. This is all capped off with having to backtrack through all the worlds before you can get to the fourth one and fighting palette swaps of previous bosses. Oh. Oohhh. I forgot all about the backtracking. That was some really egregious padding. It could've been cool to revisit some past areas and characters briefly, but it was just a slog. Come to think of it, the sewer pipe maze early on is pretty bad too. Evermore just really loved mazes for some reason. The White Dragon posted:Uh, excuse me, but the most important spell in the endgame is the dog with a lv. 3 charge attack The best spell in the game is idle toasterdog. He'll pop out toast. 
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Jul 16, 2014 00:20
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ImpAtom posted:Escha & Logy without a doubt. As someone who had never played an Atelier game before it, I'm Nthing the recommendation for E&L. The alchemy system didn't take me long to understand and is really in-depth and cool without being super restrictive (though it seems really easy to break it over your knee and make super bombs constantly, though I just now finished the third term so who knows how that holds up), and while there's lots of anime moments they don't get overwhelming. My only big gripe about the game is that certain animations are really crude, namely when NPCs are walking to/from a conversation.
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Jul 16, 2014 00:29
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Bussamove posted:As someone who had never played an Atelier game before it, I'm Nthing the recommendation for E&L. The alchemy system didn't take me long to understand and is really in-depth and cool without being super restrictive (though it seems really easy to break it over your knee and make super bombs constantly, though I just now finished the third term so who knows how that holds up), and while there's lots of anime moments they don't get overwhelming. My only big gripe about the game is that certain animations are really crude, namely when NPCs are walking to/from a conversation. Generally the super-bombs will carry you a long time but if you want to do the late-term optional bosses you really need to sit down and do some serious crafting of equipment and good items or you'll get wrecked. Fortunately crafting good items is both fun and relatively painless! That's kind of the deal with most of the Atelier games I've played, although crafting god equipment in Ayesha is kind of excessively easy due to certain abilities stacking in a weird way. ImpAtom fucked around with this message at 00:43 on Jul 16, 2014 |
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Jul 16, 2014 00:37
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ImpAtom posted:Generally the super-bombs will carry you a long time but if you want to do the late-term optional bosses you really need to sit down and do some serious crafting of equipment and good items or you'll get wrecked. Fortunately crafting good items is both fun and relatively painless! I'll keep that in mind then. Is there any big point I should be keeping in mind where time and/or materials will become an issue? So far I've had to go actively searching for a type of material maybe once or twice to get everything finished up, although of course rarer ingredients with better stuff on them are another issue entirely. I don't want to get stuck in a situation where I have no time left to get what I need before my term is up. Which I suppose is what multiple save slots is for.  The fact the game will remember if you've done something in the past for optional objectives is nice too. Being rewarded for being ahead of the curve is nice.
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Jul 16, 2014 01:25
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Bussamove posted:I'll keep that in mind then. Is there any big point I should be keeping in mind where time and/or materials will become an issue? So far I've had to go actively searching for a type of material maybe once or twice to get everything finished up, although of course rarer ingredients with better stuff on them are another issue entirely. I don't want to get stuck in a situation where I have no time left to get what I need before my term is up. Which I suppose is what multiple save slots is for. Once you hit the last year you'll have a straight-up year to do any previous quests you missed as well as any new sidequests or optional superbosses, so don't stress about time. Material quality generally scales up with plot advancement so there isn't a lot to stress out about. Generally equipment crafting is going to require Relic Farming though as there are certain Relics which have really really powerful skills and abilities and are relatively easy to craft into other items to pass along to equipment. The Herb Garden at the Lab of Eternity is a great place to farm Natural Extracts, especially if you use both the Relic Up field ability and the Dowsing Rod. The last few dungeons in general are good for finding powerful Relics though. High-quality crafting materials in general become a lot more available later on. You'll get tons of things which can hit x5 bars on multiple element trees so it is pretty trivial to use a lot of high-level alchemy skills. edit: I wonder if it'd be worth having an Atelier thread or if it'd just kinda fade quickly and/or get Senran Kagura'd. ImpAtom fucked around with this message at 01:39 on Jul 16, 2014 |
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Jul 16, 2014 01:35
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ImpAtom posted:edit: I wonder if it'd be worth having an Atelier thread or if it'd just kinda fade quickly and/or get Senran Kagura'd. There was one. Pretty sure it hit archives. Does that answer your hypothetical?
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Jul 16, 2014 01:44
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OddObserver posted:There was one. Pretty sure it hit archives. Does that answer your hypothetical? Pretty much!
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Jul 16, 2014 01:44
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To be fair, Sylphid managed to LP the entire series without anyone being weird or 'lol anime' about it, so sure. I don't think the fanservice in the series is any worse than, say, Persona, to be honest - the worst it gets is those 'lol im drunk and gonna fall all over a girl' gags. That said, I'm not sure how much traffic it'd get. Maybe if you combined it with Ar Tonelico to celebrate the upcoming translation of Nosurge?
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Jul 16, 2014 01:46
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BloodWulfe posted:Oh. Oohhh. I forgot all about the backtracking. That was some really egregious padding. It could've been cool to revisit some past areas and characters briefly, but it was just a slog. Reason being that making up a maze is a great way to add a lot of playtime for less work than designing an actual decent dungeon.
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Jul 16, 2014 01:47
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What's the general opinion of Knell of Ar Ciel and Alchemist of Dusk? I picked them up for my stack of cheap PS3 JRPGs, but I know very little of either of them.
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Jul 16, 2014 01:49
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Knell of Ar Ciel is, uh, a video game. It has some amazing music. It sure does exist. If you can laugh off weird fanservicey anime poo poo you might enjoy it but if that bothers you then just leave it on the shelf forevermore, and maybe look up the OST. Even as an Ar Tonelico apologist - I don't think the first two are that bad - you need to have a stomach for that to get through Qoga.
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Jul 16, 2014 01:53
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hubris.height posted:What's the general opinion of Knell of Ar Ciel and Alchemist of Dusk? I picked them up for my stack of cheap PS3 JRPGs, but I know very little of either of them. The Alchemist of Dusk games are good games, and pretty much the best place to jump into the Atelier series. Knell of Ar Ciel has a very dumb mechanic that doesn't need to be discussed in any detail and is pretty much the worst of the Ar Tonelico games. It should only be played in order to see the end of the series-long arc if you have any attachment to the world at all.
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Jul 16, 2014 01:53
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Oh.... That's a shame, about the Knell. What was the first hubris.height fucked around with this message at 01:59 on Jul 16, 2014 |
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Jul 16, 2014 01:55
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There's a sequel called Atelier Escha & Logy, Alchemists of the Dusk Sky. A few characters from Ayesha show up in it, but it's mostly its own thing, since these games are fairly light on plot. It's pretty much better in every way than Ayesha, but Ayesha is still a fine game - not to mention Escha & Logy is still full price at this point, I'm pretty sure. Also, Atelier and Ar Tonelico are made by the same company, Gust, but they're different series. The first Ar Tonelico game was Melody of Elemia, and if you're talking about 'the first Atelier, on PS2', you're probably talking about Atelier Iris, though there's a ton of other Atelier games that never left Japan.
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Jul 16, 2014 02:00
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hubris.height posted:Oh.... That's a shame, about the Knell. There's Atelier Ayesha and Atelier Escha & Logy. E&L is a 'sequel' in that it takes place chronologically after Ayesha and has some of the same characters but its core plot is self-contained. The first (english-released) Atelier game was Atelier Iris. We got 3 Atelier Iris games and Mana Khemia 1 and 2 for the PS2, Atelier Annie for the DS, and Atelier Rorona, Totori and Meruru for the PS3 and Vita in addition to the dusk games.
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Jul 16, 2014 02:02
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hubris.height posted:Oh.... That's a shame, about the Knell. There's Ayesha(Alchemist of Dusk) and Escha and Logy(Alchemists of the Dusk Skies). E&L is the new one, and is one of Gust's best games to date, but I'd say Ayesha is slightly more beginner friendly of the two, and it's the one I'd say to pick up first only because it's the start of the trilogy, so you can get some of the minor references. But it's just minor references, and you can very realistically jump into E&L not having played Ayesha without skipping a beat. I like Ayesha's alchemy system slightly better overall, but that's just personal preference and they both have pretty solid systems behind it's item creation mechanics. Also, there's Shallie (Dusk Seas) coming out in Japan this week, but we'll probably get word on a US release sometime early next year. For more US released games, there's the Arland trilogy for the PS3, which can be a bit rocky especially in the beginning, the Iris games for the PS2 that are more traditional JRPGs that are a bit hit or miss, Annie for the DS which is pretty much a portable version of the very old style games, and the Mana Khemia games(PS2) which are high-school antics with a big emphasis on item crafting due to the grow book. Forest Thief Pud fucked around with this message at 02:11 on Jul 16, 2014 |
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Jul 16, 2014 02:04
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One thing I don't care for regarding VC3's (and VC2's I guess) small maps are how boss enemies are sometimes handled. I was on this one map that required me to capture one last enemy camp, with only one camp entrance usable for the map it was in. I sent out a single unit and the boss "activated" and made his way down to that only entrance. He then camped out there, re-taking it every round and killing any unit I sent through instantly. But since it was the only way through, I had no choice. I wound up using a very convoluted system where I would save up a lot of CP and then call in my tank to see if could box the boss in and prevent him from firing on my units. Then just hope that they can survive the trek across the map to take the last camp. It wouldn't have taken much for it to all fall apart, and since you can't save mid-battle that could've been an hour+ of work down the drain.
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Jul 16, 2014 03:22
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How is Suikoden Tierkeriss as a game? I don't care if it's a true suikoden game or not, just as a game on it's own merit.
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Jul 16, 2014 04:48
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Tae posted:How is Suikoden Tierkeriss as a game? I don't care if it's a true suikoden game or not, just as a game on it's own merit. It's not very good. The combat is boring, the dungeon design is awful, the plot is dumb and the character collection aspect is really neutered and weak.
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Jul 16, 2014 04:50
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The main character also speaks really fast for some reason. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rNCbEtB1YU
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Jul 16, 2014 05:14
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Tae posted:How is Suikoden Tierkeriss as a game? I don't care if it's a true suikoden game or not, just as a game on it's own merit. It's not bad, but it's not great either. I mean, I know that's a pretty bad description, but it really is just an average JRPG. The plot is a goofy save the universe sort of deal. There are some pretty cool characters and races, but plenty of terrible ones to fill out your You absolutely have to disconnect from it's namesake though. If you can't do that then skip it. You'll just end up playing through it groaning and rolling your eyes at everything they butchered with regards to Suikoden. Basically, it's one of those games I'll recommend if you're in a huge JRPG mood and have nothing else to play, but otherwise it's skippable. On the plus side, you can enjoy Clash with the Librarians with or without playing the game.
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Jul 16, 2014 05:43
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Mill Village posted:The main character also speaks really fast for some reason. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-rNCbEtB1YU They sped all the voices up so they could fit the game in a lower ROM-size and save a bit on cartridge costs.
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Jul 16, 2014 08:15
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kirbysuperstar posted:They sped all the voices up so they could fit the game in a lower ROM-size and save a bit on cartridge costs. I'm not saying that didn't happen, but why wouldn't you put in a routine that plays them back slower if you did that? Not to mention, just dropping the sample rate would have done the exact same without the speedup.
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Jul 16, 2014 15:01
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Admiral H. Curtiss posted:I'm not saying that didn't happen, but why wouldn't you put in a routine that plays them back slower if you did that? I'd say because they didn't have anyone with common sense on staff.
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Jul 16, 2014 15:56
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I think Tierkreis is the only time ever where I couldn't force myself to play through it because the voice acting was so bad. Suikoden 1 and 2 are some of my favourite games of all time and I couldn't do it. Holy poo poo.
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Jul 17, 2014 16:41
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Hakkesshu posted:I think Tierkreis is the only time ever where I couldn't force myself to play through it because the voice acting was so bad. Suikoden 1 and 2 are some of my favourite games of all time and I couldn't do it. Holy poo poo. Huh, I guess deafness can be a blessing.
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Jul 17, 2014 17:43
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Does anyone know much about the new Atelier game that's following E&L? I really liked the dynamic E&L had going with its two main characters, but the new cast just seems worse off when I just glance at the preview materials.
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Jul 17, 2014 18:08
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Rascyc posted:Does anyone know much about the new Atelier game that's following E&L? I really liked the dynamic E&L had going with its two main characters, but the new cast just seems worse off when I just glance at the preview materials. From the preview videos I've seen, a lot of the systems have been changed around in some ways. They seem to have changed the assist system again, having members in the back swap out with the character that just attacked and getting a quick strike in the process, but people that swap into the back have a rest period before they can come back in again. You also have a party special mode when your Burst meter reaches 100%, where you probably do slightly more damage, and all your attacks in this mode will count as a combo, even if an enemy gets a turn while it's up. If you get 110/120/130% when you start the mode, your back members can give party-wide buffs that last for the duration of the mode. Other new/changed stuff includes alchemists are getting super moves along with the rest of the cast, combining Meruru's kingdom building simulator and Ayesha's dream journal as your main character growth mechanic, and changing up the alchemy system to have some chain system. But most importantly, Ayesha's Wilbell and Keith are coming back as playable characters and it will be glorious along-side playable homunculus Homura.
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Jul 17, 2014 23:17
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I also heard that they were forgoing the time mechanic too?
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Jul 17, 2014 23:27
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Forest Thief Pud posted:Other new/changed stuff includes alchemists are getting super moves along with the rest of the cast, combining Meruru's kingdom building simulator and Ayesha's dream journal as your main character growth mechanic, and changing up the alchemy system to have some chain system. But most importantly, Ayesha's Wilbell and Keith are coming back as playable characters and it will be glorious along-side playable homunculus Homura. Hopefully this time we get Keith in our party before the rear end-end of the game. He's the best part about Atelier Ayesha, to me, and I'm disgusted he wasn't even DLC in E&L.
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Jul 18, 2014 00:00
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