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Ugly In The Morning posted:Try killing everyone in an arena except the war crier, it’s hilarious. first thing i did 
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Aug 16, 2018 04:20
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biosterous posted:You know how sometimes you read about a feature in a game and think "that's such a better way of doing it, everything should do it this way from now on"? This is one of those times for me. Octopath Traveler works the same way. All status effects work on bosses, its not even a reduced effect. Poison can actually bw a useful bit of extra damage.
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Aug 16, 2018 05:28
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I want to try a Persona game, only its 20 hours long instead of 80 because the developers don't like grinding.
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Aug 16, 2018 09:43
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Inspector Gesicht posted:I want to try a Persona game, only its 20 hours long instead of 80 because the developers don't like grinding. See, I never felt Persona games were long because of grinding; I don't think I've ever actually had to grind in them, although there have been times when I did anyway for paranoia reasons. I think Persona games are just legitimately long. They're difficult enough to mean you can't rush through combat (or sometimes cause you to think you have to grind even though you never do), are fine with taking their sweet-rear end time telling their stories, and their structure means there aren't a lot of shortcuts you can take; Social Links are essentially fairly large sidequests, and you have to DO Social Links. I'd love to be able to recommend a 'shorter Persona game', though, largely because I want more games like those myself, but I think it comes down to what you actually want from them. I could legitimately say that my Persona itch is scratched by Pokemon, Fire Emblem, Yakuza and even Undertale, and they all do in different ways.
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Aug 16, 2018 10:23
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Leavemywife posted:Tales of Berseria has wonderful costume attachments you can slap on your characters, and I'm loving it. I just got a pirate guy, and with his slicked back hairstyle and the sunglasses, I have a magic using Wesker on my team. I put the Top Hat on Eizen and it's hard to remember that's not his default look. It just looks so drat good with his coat.
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Aug 16, 2018 13:33
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Inspector Gesicht posted:I want to try a Persona game, only its 20 hours long instead of 80 because the developers don't like grinding. Persona is anti-grinding, you're supposed to finish the dungeons as quickly as you can. The long playthrough is all social/VN stuff.
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Aug 16, 2018 14:00
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Inspector Gesicht posted:I want to try a Persona game, only its 20 hours long instead of 80 because the developers don't like grinding. Cleretic posted:See, I never felt Persona games were long because of grinding; I don't think I've ever actually had to grind in them, although there have been times when I did anyway for paranoia reasons. Persona and Persona 2 didn't have the social link things, and most of the other SMT games still have demon fusion, which is identical to persona fusion, but don't have social link stuff either. Shorter is hard to recommend because JRPGs, but if you're looking for a more action oriented one the PS2 Devil Summoner games were pretty fun. There's also Digital Devil Saga which, while also an SMT game, doesn't have the devil fusing which cuts out a lot of the grind time.
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Aug 16, 2018 14:08
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Samuringa posted:Persona is anti-grinding, you're supposed to finish the dungeons as quickly as you can. The long playthrough is all social/VN stuff. More importantly, the benchmark for being able to face the boss is "can I stomp on the end-dungeon mobs with impunity?" Which the answer is guaranteed to be a firm yes if you're not running from fights. There's zero grinding required, and that average 80-100+ hour runtime is just from a casual playthrough. The game really is just that loving big.
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Aug 16, 2018 14:20
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Honestly, I can't remember the last JRPG I played that actually required grinding. Maybe one of the really old Dragon Quests? The vast majority of the time you can win just by using a better strategy.
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Aug 16, 2018 14:48
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Snake Maze posted:Honestly, I can't remember the last JRPG I played that actually required grinding. Maybe one of the really old Dragon Quests? The vast majority of the time you can win just by using a better strategy. FrankZ is doing Let's Plays of DW 1-3 (he's on DW3 right now), and aside from the notoriously-bullshit DW2 endgame, all of his grinding has consisted of having to make multiple dives into dungeons (or in DW1, multiple attempts to reach the next town) because he ran out of resources before finishing the place. Whether that counts as grinding, I don't know, but it's definitely different from wandering in circles outside of town.
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Aug 16, 2018 15:34
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Neddy Seagoon posted:More importantly, the benchmark for being able to face the boss is "can I stomp on the end-dungeon mobs with impunity?" Which the answer is guaranteed to be a firm yes if you're not running from fights. There's zero grinding required, and that average 80-100+ hour runtime is just from a casual playthrough. The problem is that the game gives no shits about giving you giant stretches of nothing but dialogue. If it broke that up with some more stretches where you worked on social links, that would rule. I gave up for a while because the game was just “hit x for a while” after the fourth dungeon.
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Aug 16, 2018 16:02
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Snake Maze posted:Honestly, I can't remember the last JRPG I played that actually required grinding. Maybe one of the really old Dragon Quests? The vast majority of the time you can win just by using a better strategy. Octopath Traveller can get grindy, because it leans just a little too hard on being an "HD" 16-bit-era JRPG and your benched party members don't gain XP. When you've got eight party members in all, you're gonna have some lagging behind and some of the dungeon bosses can be brutally-hard wake-up calls.
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Aug 16, 2018 16:50
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Neddy Seagoon posted:Octopath Traveller can get grindy, because it leans just a little too hard on being an "HD" 16-bit-era JRPG and your benched party members don't gain XP. When you've got eight party members in all, you're gonna have some lagging behind and some of the dungeon bosses can be brutally-hard wake-up calls. No, Octopath is a great example of just needing to change up your strategy. Lots of tools to play with and plenty of customization. I've beaten the optional level 50 bosses at level 35, and you could probably push that even lower. Plus, with the way the exp curve works and how much gear counts for your stats, other party members catch up in usefulness really fast. I haven't gotten to the postgame stuff yet so maybe there's a grind there, but honestly I doubt it.
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Aug 16, 2018 17:11
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Snake Maze posted:No, Octopath is a great example of just needing to change up your strategy. Lots of tools to play with and plenty of customization. I've beaten the optional level 50 bosses at level 35, and you could probably push that even lower. Plus, with the way the exp curve works and how much gear counts for your stats, other party members catch up in usefulness really fast. The post game is absolutely a grind. With some clever strategy you can probably shave off some levels but since its a 10 boss gauntlet with no gear changing allowed and requiring you to use all 8 of your characters and the final boss dishing out some real nasty damage and effects most people recommend grinding well into the 70s when you can beat most story bosses of the chapter 4 in the 40s
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Aug 16, 2018 17:13
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The holy grail of JRPG grinding is still Lost Odyssey. When you get to a new area, you earn tons of XP until you're at the level the game wants you to be. Then it drops off to almost nothing. There is an optional island that does not have this limit but the enemies are really weird/difficult to fight. Really, it just wants to move you along through the story and give you another NPC story to cry about. Poor cobbler. You were too good for this world. 
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Aug 16, 2018 17:13
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The interracial marriage one makes me bawl like a loving child to this day. The novelist should have written the games story too.
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Aug 16, 2018 17:15
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Snake Maze posted:No, Octopath is a great example of just needing to change up your strategy. Lots of tools to play with and plenty of customization. I've beaten the optional level 50 bosses at level 35, and you could probably push that even lower. Plus, with the way the exp curve works and how much gear counts for your stats, other party members catch up in usefulness really fast. I've been playing without grinding and there's no loving way my party would be at the level requirements if I wasn't running a consistent three-man team and cycling out the fourth.
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Aug 16, 2018 17:27
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Neddy Seagoon posted:I've been playing without grinding and there's no loving way my party would be at the level requirements if I wasn't running a consistent three-man team and cycling out the fourth.  It's not hard to beat chapters under the recommended level, with the way the exp curve works you'll probably be near or even above the recommended level by the time you reach the boss, and characters who haven't been used much can get a pretty significant boost just by giving them current gear.
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Aug 16, 2018 17:56
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Ugly In The Morning posted:I dunno, praising Monster Hunter for adding these is like having a party for a 30 year old man not making GBS threads his pants. Like, it’s great that it’s there but that kind of thing should be (and by and large has been for years) the standard.
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Aug 16, 2018 20:12
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Inzombiac posted:The holy grail of JRPG grinding is still Lost Odyssey. That was an all around great game. Some of those stories with the background noises and hownthey were presented really hit hard. If only there was a way to play it on pc since my Xbox is across the drat ocean.
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Aug 16, 2018 21:33
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Ugly In The Morning posted:The problem is that the game gives no shits about giving you giant stretches of nothing but dialogue. If it broke that up with some more stretches where you worked on social links, that would rule. I gave up for a while because the game was just “hit x for a while” after the fourth dungeon. Persona is not an RPG with a dating sim attached, it is a dating sim with an RPG attached. And the reason it's so bloody long is that you go through like 80% of a year, day by day.
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Aug 16, 2018 21:40
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In Dragons Crown, killing the titular dragon on one difficulty boosts all future characters to a starting level of 15, unlocks every level for every character, and allows you to skip quests - gaining the skill point rewards, but not the cash bonus. While this doesn't strip out the grind it goes a long way to speeding it up.
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Aug 16, 2018 22:27
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What puts me off Persona, aside from not being on PC, is that its structure demands a lot of time from the player, and you can't put off content to the side for later. In Yakuza there's no penalty for pulling off disco moves while you're a wanted man, and there's no deadline for bowling a turkey (or chicken). I only got X hours into Persona 4 when I died to what is definitely not a gay-metaphor and dropped the game, a decade ago. Inspector Gesicht has a new favorite as of 23:08 on Aug 16, 2018 |
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Aug 16, 2018 23:01
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Inzombiac posted:The holy grail of JRPG grinding is still Lost Odyssey. It drives me nuts that the game was only released on the 360! It's a good game.  Inspector Gesicht posted:What puts me off Persona, aside from not being on PC, is that its structure demands a lot of time from the player, and you can't put off content to the side for later. In Yakuza there's no penalty for pulling off disco moves while you're a wanted man, and there's no deadline for bowling a turkey (or chicken). I'm just going to once more recommend playing one of the non-Persona 3-5 SMT games. Same poo poo, no tedious timed social aspect. In Digital Devil Saga you can take a break in the middle of an important, climactic plot event to just go eat a million fairies to learn more skills if you want.
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Aug 17, 2018 00:42
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Snake Maze posted:Honestly, I can't remember the last JRPG I played that actually required grinding. Maybe one of the really old Dragon Quests? The vast majority of the time you can win just by using a better strategy. Xenoblade Chronicles had an end boss that was literally untouchable by your weapons/spells unless you were a certain level, due to the game's mechanics. You could get to the endgame section at a level about ~10 below what was necessary to land a hit on him. Which was weird because the rest of the game had no issues re grinding, really.
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Aug 17, 2018 01:13
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Ladykiller in a Bind is a visual novel game that features barely-adult lesbian sex and that's not for everyone. But I wish more games would copy its structure and the way it sets up choices and conversations because it's genuinely good and innovative. The game is on a morning/afternoon/night schedule with events happening in those - if you've played a game like Persona or other VNs with time management then you know the drill. You're incentivised to do the following things in the game, mechanically: - Get to the end of the scenes with the characters you like best - Don't let your suspicion meter raise too high - Get 'votes' from other character which are basically points. Additionally, the game's conversation system works with 'interruptions'. Basically when you're in a conversation, your possible responses will pop up, and so you can either let the conversation keep going or use the interruption. Interruptions will fade away (it's clear when this is about to happen) and new ones might pop up as the conversation continues. That in itself is a good mechanic, but here's the real bit that ties everything together: The game tells you what every choice will give you and you never have to guess. Like, in the morning when you're choosing who to hang out with? The game will tell you that, say, hanging out with the Athlete will progress his story, and might give you character information, but won't affect any meters or scores. It'll tell you that hanging out with the Swimmer instead will get you somewhere between 0 and 4 votes, and is guaranteed to get at least 1 Suspicion, and up to 3. And additionally, with those interruption choices? They tell you what they lead to! If there's two interruptions on screen, and one will get you two votes and another is bad and just gives you a point of suspicion? The game will tell you exactly which choice is the right one and which one is the wrong one. It means that you see the suspicious scene because you wanted to see it (which you might - plenty of the wrong choices can be pretty funny). This sort of system really makes the game more replayable and I'd love to see it in other short VNs.
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Aug 17, 2018 03:10
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I think a system like that would benefit more than just visual novels. Am I right in understanding that the player choices aren't totally explicit about the mechanical outcomes? Partial but not complete obfuscation is such a cool concept I'm surprised more story oriented games haven't tried it.
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Aug 17, 2018 06:37
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I think that's a great system for replayability, but I would want it as a toggle option. Turn it on and you get full transparency (Making this choice gets you +2/+3/-1, the other choice is +0/+1/-2). Leave it off and it plays more traditional, and you can either go new school (Agree/Disagree/Sarcasm vagueness) or old school ("Yes, Mary, let's go eat cake" specifics) I think leaving it off by default would allow for a more organic playthrough where there's no logical reason you should guess that Rita hates pizza and is offended that you would invite her to join you. But as you say, for replays where you want to know the optimal path through to get the best endings, it sounds like a great tool.
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Aug 17, 2018 16:21
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Just do Alpha Protocol without the guns, with the exception being the pistol that can fire six simultaneous headshots. A neat little game that does C&C is One Night Stand on Steam. You wake up next to a girl with no memory of last night, and you have a limited number of turns to find out her name, her hobbies etc. There are a dozen endings that spiral out from the choices made, like running out of her house in the buff. Inspector Gesicht has a new favorite as of 16:30 on Aug 17, 2018 |
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Aug 17, 2018 16:26
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Meat circus wasn’t bad but I’m in my 20s and only played it in recent years
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Aug 17, 2018 16:55
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EmmyOk posted:Meat circus wasn’t bad but I’m in my 20s and only played it in recent years If you played it on anything other than the original Xbox/PS2 releases it's been changed to be way more forgiving.
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Aug 17, 2018 17:14
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CzarChasm posted:I think that's a great system for replayability, but I would want it as a toggle option. Turn it on and you get full transparency (Making this choice gets you +2/+3/-1, the other choice is +0/+1/-2). Leave it off and it plays more traditional, and you can either go new school (Agree/Disagree/Sarcasm vagueness) or old school ("Yes, Mary, let's go eat cake" specifics) Tyranny does exactly this. There's an option that will show you how different speech options will affect the different NPCs involved.
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Aug 17, 2018 17:34
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Guy Mann posted:If you played it on anything other than the original Xbox/PS2 releases it's been changed to be way more forgiving. Was the pc release that much different? I had a store bought copy not long after it came out and the meat circus wasn't too bad. Not that good either really but not painful.
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Aug 17, 2018 19:06
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OutOfPrint posted:Tyranny does exactly this. There's an option that will show you how different speech options will affect the different NPCs involved. Yeah I loved this a lot. There was no penalty to having it active but if you like the more traditional dialogue choices, it’s there for you. It didn’t feel like a cheat to me since in my head, the Fatebinder would probably know what result she’d get by saying this or that thing.
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Aug 17, 2018 19:17
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I believe they patched it when they obtained the publishing rights to the game. That patch also added Steam achievements.
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Aug 17, 2018 19:19
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RyokoTK posted:Yeah I loved this a lot. There was no penalty to having it active but if you like the more traditional dialogue choices, it’s there for you. It didn’t feel like a cheat to me since in my head, the Fatebinder would probably know what result she’d get by saying this or that thing. You can get both Favor and Wrath from interacting with characters and their factions and both of them give you a bonus, in a very Alpha Protocol way.
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Aug 17, 2018 20:25
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I have almost Platinumed Return To Arkham City and I think one of my favorite things about it is how 90% of the time when performing the Ground Pound finishing move Batman will plant himself crotch-first on a dude’s head and then deliver a devastating dick or rear end punch that knocks them unconscious. I went back to Arkham Origins to try out the combat arenas and noticed that they fixed this and Batman will reverse himself midair to land properly and punch dudes in the head. Extremely hosed up.
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Aug 17, 2018 22:41
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ToxicSlurpee posted:Was the pc release that much different? I had a store bought copy not long after it came out and the meat circus wasn't too bad. Not that good either really but not painful. I think only the digital releases were the patched one, so you might have had the old meat circus.
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Aug 18, 2018 02:41
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Samuringa posted:You can get both Favor and Wrath from interacting with characters and their factions and both of them give you a bonus, in a very Alpha Protocol way. The only downside to Tyranny's conversations is that you got like 80% of someone's total dialogue in your first meeting with them and you were incentivised to pick every choice. So you meet Verse right at the start of the game proper and if you decide to go through her entire dialog tree right then and there, you're already pretty much up to level-3 Loyalty and level-2 Feared. Especially since once you've gone most of the way down the tree, a choice that might have been locked off because "you need level 2 loyalty!" is now open because clicking all the other options got you that loyalty that you needed.
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Aug 18, 2018 03:35
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the downside of Tyranny is the whole back third of the game feels rushed and you need the DLC to get the game's companion quests but you only get quests for 3 companuons so youre left wondering what the heck happened and feeling slightly disappointed. fantastic game otherwise. highly recommend.
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Aug 18, 2018 03:49
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