|
Man the best lp I ever read was the Chrono Cross one Because drat, I've never hated the plot of a video game more
|
#
?
Jul 11, 2020 04:09
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 25, 2024 14:00 |
|
|
Sweetgrass posted:the new trials of mana is superior in every way unless you just can't live without sprites; even the mediocre new postgame dungeon is alright if only by virtue of being optional If true then this is surprising since the original was hailed as one of the best JRPGs ever, especially during the 90s.
|
|
#
?
Jul 11, 2020 04:25
|
|
|
it was an unlocalized sequel to a fan favorite snes jrpg, of course people blew its reputation higher than its actual quality the actual game is interesting in an experimental way and really nice aesthetically but its writing is lopsided as a result of how the party functions and the original game's combat sucks. the combat in the remake isn't incredible either but it's at least fairly gratifying which fixes the biggest issue the game has the english dub for the remake is like unbelievably bad though, like holy poo poo how did they put out a dub that bad right next to ff7r everything from the performances to the sound mixing are awful and even the performances that are actually kind of okay are let down by nonexistent direction The Colonel fucked around with this message at 04:34 on Jul 11, 2020 |
|
#
?
Jul 11, 2020 04:32
|
|
|
The Colonel posted:xenogears didn't so much run out of money as it did run behind schedule, the actual reason it is the way it is is cause square's usual deadline for making a game was two years and making disc 2 as a full thing would've taken like another two years since they were working mostly with new staff Really? The reason given in the LP was that money for the project got redistributed into finishing Final Fantasy 8 halfway through, so they had to scale back drastically for Disc 2. That explanation makes sense, though. As said at the end of the LP, "The game was a bit too bloated in places and anemic in others for its own good. Its pacing and tone were all over the drat place. Disc 2 was mostly a barely held together with duct-tape mess due to its slashed budget." Come to think of it, wasn't that an issue with Xenosaga as well? I remember reading that Xenosaga was originally suppose to span across six games, but it was scaled back to three. I also remember that the anime series had the same issue, where it was supposed to have more episodes. I dunno, I guess I could get a copy of it and try it and see how I like it. Arzaac posted:Man the best lp I ever read was the Chrono Cross one I've also read the Chrono Cross LP, and I'd have to go back and re-read it again, but I remember coming away from it thinking that the game was pretty interesting. I admit, I'm probably not the best judge, since I've never played Chrono Trigger (been meaning to, though), and my only experience with it was through the LP, so I probably wasn't as incensed by it as people who are fans of Chrono Trigger. One of the things I remember reading a long time ago (before the LP) was that while the consensus was that it was a bad sequel to Chrono Trigger, taken on its own, it's a pretty solid game. One of the most surprising things I learned was that it was technically a remake. The impression I got (or the idea I like to entertain) is that after FF7 was a smash hit, Square basically greenlit everything to try and replicate the success, and so you got games like Xenogears or Chrono Cross, or even FF8, where the stories were full of weird, crazy poo poo. That probably wasn't really the case, but it seems like there was a lot more creative freedom give for those projects.
|
|
#
?
Jul 11, 2020 04:52
|
|
|
Max Wilco posted:Really? The reason given in the LP was that money for the project got redistributed into finishing Final Fantasy 8 halfway through, so they had to scale back drastically for Disc 2. That explanation makes sense, though. As said at the end of the LP, "The game was a bit too bloated in places and anemic in others for its own good. Its pacing and tone were all over the drat place. Disc 2 was mostly a barely held together with duct-tape mess due to its slashed budget." that entire thing is a bullshit theory that got passed around gaming circles, when the devs were asked about it in interviews they confirmed there wasn't any kind of redistribution of budget, the game was just too big of an undertaking and they took the option that would let them fit in the rest of the story while still releasing on schedule. the dark id's lp is old and probably predated that interview getting translated--there's lots of old jrpg staff interviews from around the psx era that have only started getting tled in the past few years The Colonel fucked around with this message at 04:57 on Jul 11, 2020 |
|
#
?
Jul 11, 2020 04:54
|
|
|
punk rebel ecks posted:If true then this is surprising since the original was hailed as one of the best JRPGs ever, especially during the 90s. i would say it had one of the most ambitious frameworks of any 90s jrpg, but in practice there is a lot of broken poo poo and missed opportunities. and i say this as someone who really loves the original. i'm not sure i would say that the remake is universally an improvement (i still prefer the overhead view, sprites, and the fan translation's place/people names - also, multiplayer) but it is definitely better overall
|
|
#
?
Jul 11, 2020 04:59
|
|
|
punk rebel ecks posted:Now that the release has cooled, how's Trials of Mana? Is the original SNES version superior to it? punk rebel ecks posted:If true then this is surprising since the original was hailed as one of the best JRPGs ever, especially during the 90s.
|
|
#
?
Jul 11, 2020 05:15
|
|
|
Max Wilco posted:The impression I got (or the idea I like to entertain) is that after FF7 was a smash hit, Square basically greenlit everything to try and replicate the success, and so you got games like Xenogears or Chrono Cross, or even FF8, where the stories were full of weird, crazy poo poo. That probably wasn't really the case, but it seems like there was a lot more creative freedom give for those projects. It's more that in the PS1 era (and PS1, if to a lesser extent) Square had enough money to Gil Toss and Dethrone God so they could fund a billion games at once, and the AA market was alive and healthy. So we get Threads of Fate, SaGa Frontier, Brace Fencer Musashi, Parasite Eve, the list goes on forever.
|
|
#
?
Jul 11, 2020 05:18
|
|
|
tbf while the official tl is fine on the whole the way they handle charlotte is kind of a grating mark against it. it's a decision that... i guess i could see the logic behind. but god it is the most grating possible way to translate her speech pattern
|
|
#
?
Jul 11, 2020 05:21
|
|
|
Sweetgrass posted:the new trials of mana is superior in every way Yeah, this. It's fantastic and the game I've played the most this year. Revisiting the original game in the middle of playing the 3 routes in the remake, it reminded me why I so quickly forgot playing the original like a decade or so ago, because the end game just straight up sucks. The Colonel posted:tbf while the official tl is fine on the whole the way they handle charlotte is kind of a grating mark against it. it's a decision that... i guess i could see the logic behind. but god it is the most grating possible way to translate her speech pattern It comes across better voice acted, imo, and since the remake seems to share a lot of the same dialog as the version they put in the collection, that might be the culprit. She just comes across as having a heavy Boston accent with dialog. Phantasium fucked around with this message at 05:26 on Jul 11, 2020 |
|
#
?
Jul 11, 2020 05:23
|
|
|
The Colonel posted:the english dub for the remake is like unbelievably bad though, like holy poo poo how did they put out a dub that bad right next to ff7r everything from the performances to the sound mixing are awful and even the performances that are actually kind of okay are let down by nonexistent direction Angela and the Crimson Wizard are good, at least. The former nails how the character should be, and the latter overacts the correct amount. For real though, it's a lovely remake that I really enjoyed, and Angela is disgustingly overpowered.
|
|
#
?
Jul 11, 2020 05:34
|
|
|
The Colonel posted:it was an unlocalized sequel to a fan favorite snes jrpg, of course people blew its reputation higher than its actual quality Not gonna lie, this post has all but unsold me on the game. If it isn't "great" I don't want to bother.
|
|
#
?
Jul 11, 2020 05:38
|
|
|
The Colonel posted:it was an unlocalized sequel to a fan favorite snes jrpg, of course people blew its reputation higher than its actual quality I don’t think it’s just that. At the time it came out SD3 really did seem to be that good. I was actually living in Japan around the time it came out and it was a standout title then. And that’s in Japan, where they had a much bigger selection of RPGs to choose from (though the majority were shoveleware crap). It’s certainly the RPG I spent the most time on from around that period—the fact that you could not just customize who your party was (and further customize that with the class change system) but that it would affect the plot and end boss/dungeon gave it a lot of replayability. It has plenty of problems and games of its type have progressed a lot since then, but I think it’s definitely one of the best games from around that time period.
|
|
#
?
Jul 11, 2020 05:42
|
|
|
The battle system always felt a bit clunky, but I loved the game when the translation patch first hit. And really, it's not like there were any perfect games then.
|
|
#
?
Jul 11, 2020 05:44
|
|
|
punk rebel ecks posted:Not gonna lie, this post has all but unsold me on the game. If it isn't "great" I don't want to bother. Good news you can kind of skip the whole mana franchise then. Possible exception of Legend of Mana cause that one is at least just so weird it's interesting.
|
|
#
?
Jul 11, 2020 05:47
|
|
|
punk rebel ecks posted:Not gonna lie, this post has all but unsold me on the game. If it isn't "great" I don't want to bother. not to be a downer but I wouldn't call it great, myself. I bought it on sale and put maybe 10 hours in it, I just didn't find it compelling enough to go on. things were happening, but not in a way that I cared all that much. not bad, but (and this is something I don't usually say, because I'm old) but there was a kind of childishness to the whole proceedings which I found a little off-putting (not in a charming way, in a way I found dumb. not like a mario-game, but just very simplistic, I guess.)
|
|
#
?
Jul 11, 2020 06:01
|
|
|
punk rebel ecks posted:Not gonna lie, this post has all but unsold me on the game. If it isn't "great" I don't want to bother. if your only standard for playing games is that they meet some unanimous vague idea of "greatness" why do you even bother interacting with media, half of the most interesting and significant games ever aren't really "great" play trials of mana if it seems interesting to you, it's janky and flawed and i don't think its writing stacks up amazingly to games from its own time but it's also a hugely unique game and you won't find anything else like it
|
|
#
?
Jul 11, 2020 06:08
|
|
|
ZenMasterBullshit posted:Good news you can kind of skip the whole mana franchise then. Possible exception of Legend of Mana cause that one is at least just so weird it's interesting. I mean it's such a slam dunk idea. Final Fantasy's story heavy gameplay meets Zelda's overworld adventuring and combat meets Gautlet multi-player interaction. It has so much potential but they always fumble it. The Colonel posted:if your only standard for playing games is that they meet some unanimous vague idea of "greatness" why do you even bother interacting with media, half of the most interesting and significant games ever aren't really "great" You're right. I may try it out still.
|
|
#
?
Jul 11, 2020 06:19
|
|
|
one of the most interestingly written games i've played is a neo geo pocket color submarine rpg where all player interaction consists of trying to slowly angle your blue triangle to shoot enemy red triangles and the mechanics of the game are such that it's simultaneously too slow to ever be engaging and too fast for the menuing you have to do constantly in every battle to not be annoying, it has like four music tracks total and no music for cutscenes and the entire game would be an hour long if it didn't make you grind to make the later missions physically possible to win without insane luck it's also a video game with a surprisingly dark sci-fi story where the main plot twist is you being manipulated by an ai hamster and the ending is a self-insert of the game's producer suicide bombing a giant ai mother computer while heroically shouting his own name the studio that developed it later went on to make shadow hearts, a game where the main character laughs at the villain when he possesses a dog to speak to him because he thinks the villain is literally a tiny talking dog The Colonel fucked around with this message at 06:24 on Jul 11, 2020 |
|
#
?
Jul 11, 2020 06:22
|
|
|
hell i love wild arms, i think wild arms 1 is a cool game about a trio of people who feel outcast from regular society being put on a long journey together where they ultimately let go of their pasts and the need to be accepted into any specific community because they've already accepted and become extremely close with each other and it's also a game with generally simple and unengaging combat mechanics that looks and feels like a low-budget pc engine game mashed up with ffvii's leftovers  cool games be heavily flawed sometimes
|
|
#
?
Jul 11, 2020 06:35
|
|
|
The Colonel posted:hell i love wild arms, i think wild arms 1 is a cool game about a trio of people who feel outcast from regular society being put on a long journey together where they ultimately let go of their pasts and the need to be accepted into any specific community because they've already accepted and become extremely close with each other Is this the Diamond Weapon
|
|
#
?
Jul 11, 2020 06:37
|
|
|
Araxxor posted:VFD isn't really that much like EO. The level design is super straightforward and doesn't exactly demand much from you since it's mostly a straight path a lot of the time with some side paths occasionally. Dragons being like FOEs is also a pretty superficial comparison, as FOEs in EO are meant to be living hazards that keep you on your toes and you have to avoid (and you go back to kill them later once you're strong enough.) In the 7th Dragon series, you're meant to kill the dragons when you encounter them. The game also doesn't demand you map make, as there's an auto map that fills out as you progress through the dungeons. I really wouldn't call it a dungeon crawler, as it's really more of a slightly less than traditional JRPG. Thanks, this was the validation i needed. Gonna nab it soon! 
|
|
#
?
Jul 11, 2020 06:37
|
|
|
WaltherFeng posted:Is this the Diamond Weapon it's the wild arms series big final superboss. for comparison, in all later games he looks like this 
|
|
#
?
Jul 11, 2020 06:39
|
|
|
really wild arms is like. the poster child for insanely goofy, janky jrpgs that are also kind of awesome. wild arms 1 is a short game made on a super low budget that people pretty much just treated as a curious stopover until ffvii came out, wild arms 2 is an insanely ambitious trigun video game with a party that includes a vampire girl and a guy who can turn into a kamen rider that's much better put together but has an english translation so incoherently bad that it's literally unplayable in english and it's still not quite as tight as a lot of other psx jrpgs, wild arms 3 is a three season + ova anime series in jrpg form with an insanely drawn out and barely functional sidequest about fighting aliens, and wild arms 4&5 are just wonky and divisive in every possible way, wild arms xf is an srpg that's so strict with its mission design the entire class change system still basically only gives you a specific setup that works for each given map. they're also games that really really like making references to the fact that their developers made a wonky gunstar heroes clone once
|
|
#
?
Jul 11, 2020 06:45
|
|
|
I'm not sure if Wild Arms 1 looks the way it does because of budget or because the developers literally did not know how to work in 3D. That opening tho
|
|
#
?
Jul 11, 2020 06:48
|
|
|
No early 3d game looked good.
|
|
#
?
Jul 11, 2020 07:01
|
|
|
mycot posted:I'm not sure if Wild Arms 1 looks the way it does because of budget or because the developers literally did not know how to work in 3D. yes
|
|
#
?
Jul 11, 2020 07:16
|
|
|
early 3d games look loving badass
|
|
#
?
Jul 11, 2020 08:21
|
|
|
people who don't like lovely early lowpoly 3d have no rights. it's a really cool aesthetic
|
|
#
?
Jul 11, 2020 08:22
|
|
|
a game only looks bad if looking at it isn't fun
|
|
#
?
Jul 11, 2020 08:24
|
|
|
The Colonel posted:a game only looks bad if looking at it isn't fun Yeah WA1's bad 3D has charm and the 2D stuff is pretty good honestly
|
|
#
?
Jul 11, 2020 08:26
|
|
|
The problem with WA1 isn't the graphical fidelity so much as how long it takes to go through an action. It's just really slow, which admittedly is a common problem in many early 3D games. And also in many modern 3D games.
|
|
#
?
Jul 11, 2020 08:32
|
|
|
Funnily enough when you switch the camera angle in battles to be static it moves a lot faster and doesn't linger on camera shots (like critical hits just playing once).
|
|
#
?
Jul 11, 2020 08:40
|
|
|
The Breakfast Sampler posted:not to be a downer but I wouldn't call it great, myself. I bought it on sale and put maybe 10 hours in it, I just didn't find it compelling enough to go on. things were happening, but not in a way that I cared all that much. not bad, but (and this is something I don't usually say, because I'm old) but there was a kind of childishness to the whole proceedings which I found a little off-putting (not in a charming way, in a way I found dumb. not like a mario-game, but just very simplistic, I guess.) I would call it great, I feel like it's the best remake of anything I've ever played honestly. They've managed to totally overhaul the look of the game and the combat but still keep the spirit of the game. However that spirit does come across a little strange nowadays. It's simple in the way that a lot of SNES rpgs were. While it felt normal to me at the time (or in like....2003 when I got the fan translation I guess) it definitely doesn't feel like that now. I really want them to do the same with Secret of Evermore. Oooh or bahamut lagoon if they're going the route of "popular games that never got translated".
|
|
#
?
Jul 11, 2020 08:56
|
|
|
yeah i agree they should remake racing lagoon and by remake i mean keep literally everything the same except now the driving looks like gran turismo 5 but the cutscenes are still awkward pre-rendered gifs
|
|
#
?
Jul 11, 2020 08:59
|
|
|
Far too much effort involved making Evermore not a giant pile of poo poo
|
|
#
?
Jul 11, 2020 09:17
|
|
|
Taear posted:I would call it great, I feel like it's the best remake of anything I've ever played honestly. They've managed to totally overhaul the look of the game and the combat but still keep the spirit of the game. fair take. I really wanted to love it from nostalgia but maybe I shouldn't have gone with Kevin and Charlotte (who I both found grating in their own ways/VAs.) or perhaps joy cannot live in my heart. but good points, maybe I'll revisit it when things are a little brighter in the world. not trying to discourage anyone from it, on a technical level it seemed fine. The Breakfast Sampler fucked around with this message at 09:38 on Jul 11, 2020 |
|
#
?
Jul 11, 2020 09:33
|
|
|
Is Mary Skelter 2 any good/worth purchasing?
|
|
#
?
Jul 11, 2020 10:08
|
|
|
I beat Ys 8. I was pretty down with the sudden threat of a global apocalypse via dinosaur assaults and I was cool with the random revelation that aliens existed and at one point colonised the planet. But they maybe reached too far when an hour before the game ended it suddenly revealed that the world is just the dream of a goddess (who is our parrot) and in preventing the apocalypse we woke her up thus destroying the world until Dana suddenly became a god herself and remade it. Still a great game though. Before playing this game I didn't know anything about it or about the series but I think i'm an Ys fan now. The combat is pretty straightforward but I really liked it. It has a really nice sense of progression, even towards the very end of the game I was unlocking and using new moves and once you start finding accessories that lessen SP usage it's fun to just be spamming skills that used to have only one or two uses. The exploration is pretty great too. I actually collected every chest in the game which I don't think i've ever done in an rpg before, I certainly never tried to. And it's just fun moving around the island, occasionally finding whole mini-dungeons or getting into fights with dinosaurs almost twice my level. The characters are simple but fun. The party are all cool and the npcs are charming. Dana's the only character who's really that important to the plot and she and Laxia are the only ones with an arc but the game seems to understand that and it uses the cast appropriately. It was also one of the rare games where I wasn't bothered by the silent protagonist, probably because Dana's the real main character, but still. The story's fairly barebones but it does the job it needs to and it only really falters towards the last hour or so. Every element of the game is just really solid and it comes together well. I kinda get the feeling Ys 8 is a bit of an odd duck amongst the series. The crafting system, the village and the island exploration kinda feel like potential one-off gimmicks but if the general quality of the games remains similar I think i'm going to really enjoy exploring this franchise. I think i'm moving onto Ys 4 next, hopefully I enjoy it just as much!
|
|
#
?
Jul 11, 2020 11:05
|
|
|
|
| # ? May 25, 2024 14:00 |
|
|
Uh which Ys 4, the 16-bit ones are going to be a shock after 8 lol I'm assuming you mean Celceta though.
|
|
#
?
Jul 11, 2020 11:13
|
|