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After replaying it recently, I have to remind everyone that the SNES Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals is still one of the greatest RPGs ever made. By some miracle, the developers who have a long history of making terrible games including the prequel (which storywise is actually the sequel) came out with this absolute gem of a game. The music is great (if a tiny bit repetitive), the characters are one-dimensional but in a mostly charming way and the story bits are short enough that they stay out of the way. It's a little predictable but not overlong. The battling is above average and dungeons have enemies that are visible (random encounters are only on the world map). However the puzzles are really where the game shines. They're some of the best puzzles I've seen in a videogame, they incorporate your environment without being stupid box puzzles (there are a few, though they are usually more clever variations on the standard Zelda variety). You get tools that can both stun enemies and strategically destroy/move blocks. If you gently caress up, you can cast "Reset" and the room is back to the way it was. There's also the Gruberik Dungeon which is unlocked about halfway through the game which is a pseudo-randomly generated dungeon with 99 floors. You start off at level 1 with basically no equipment but get to keep everything you find in blue chests for outside the dungeon and these treasures can be brought back in for future visits. Blue chests are some of the best items in the game (I got a sword that lasted one guy about 3/4 of the game on my first run in). In fact the developers understood people's contempt for JRPG grinding and kept it to a minimum, outside of say one or two areas with tough enemies (seriously gently caress the ninjas). If you beat the game, you can play the game earning 4x experience and money, making the grinding not only non existent but makes you a god without even trying. If you beat the game again you get to play the Gruberik Dungeon as a separate mode with any of the characters that were in your party at any point in the game. A remake is coming out on DS in about a week and as long as the puzzles are solid, I'm there. Snyderman fucked around with this message at 04:15 on Oct 6, 2010 |
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Oct 6, 2010 04:10
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Here's an analogy for you: Barkley 1 is a game making fun of the community of people that obsess over SNES/Genesis RPGs. Despite looking the part, it has some great dialogue, a fairly original story and incorporates some pretty modern design decisions. Pier Solar is the community of people they're making fun of making a game in earnest that wishes it was Lunar (graphics and combat), with mid 90s Working Design dialogue and slavishly recreates most of the era's bad design. Snyderman fucked around with this message at 01:00 on Dec 22, 2014 |
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Dec 22, 2014 00:55
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Cake Attack posted:a good idea, except instead of playing them in order, you should start at Exit Fate, then also stop at Exit Fate OFF is neat and Space Funeral is short enough that it's worth a play. I've heard Yume Nikki is good but I've never played it.
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Dec 27, 2014 01:08
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Better catch the Lufia 2 chat before it rolls around again in a few months. If anyone is interested in playing it (again or for the first time) there's a bug fix patch that knocks out the game's more egregious bugs (level zero/config/equip/garbage data on maps and some text boxes). No more wondering what level 99 of the Gruberik dungeon looks like!
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Jan 3, 2015 05:24
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hubris.height posted:oooh link please http://www.romhacking.net/hacks/229/ Here you go. I've played using it with no problems. It even uses the harder Gades fight and Erim casts a few of more of the harder hitting spells so it's a bit more challenging in the last dungeon. Snyderman fucked around with this message at 05:43 on Jan 3, 2015 |
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Jan 3, 2015 05:35
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CaptainScraps posted:Has anyone played PierSolar? How is it? Go to page 361, a few posts above mine. Short answer: no. Long answer: there was a discussion about it, verdict says no.
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Jan 5, 2015 19:18
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I just played through Ys III recently (the genesis version) and despite being janky and broken with a wildly uneven difficulty curve it's actually a lot of fun. Even if the side scrolling thing didn't suit the series it had some good points like the lack of back tracking and all of the items and equipment were basically easy to reach, so no weird hidden alcoves and such. That said I died probably 20 times getting overconfident just in the first dungeon to trash enemies until I gained a few levels because you take so much damage and leveling takes a while in the very beginning. Great music though. It's a shame there aren't more games like it, even by Falcom these days. Ys Seven was fun but a bit too drawn out. I really enjoyed the pace of the series since it's basically "okay I've got a little bit of story, let's kill a bunch of stuff". Older entries rarely overdid it with exposition and puzzles, even if a few had some really confusing dungeons in the late game. Snyderman fucked around with this message at 17:58 on Jan 8, 2015 |
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Jan 8, 2015 17:51
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punk rebel ecks posted:So I brought a better sword and leveled once just to be sure. I felt the same way you did when i played it HOWEVER i strongly suggest you use a guide in the last dungeon of Ys II. It's a rather confusing place and very easy to lose momentum since the way you make progress is ping-ponging between two nearly symmetrical sides of a maze/palace/dungeon.
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Jan 15, 2015 20:48
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Nellistos posted:Took my time with this one ( Shining in the Darkness ), finally finished it. What a nice little game. Shining Force 1 was one of the first games I played when I was a wee lad, so long post incoming! Here is a "hidden item/character FAQ" http://www.gamefaqs.com/genesis/563340-shining-force/faqs/63031 It's essentially a quick reference to making sure you don't miss characters, but watch out for a few generic 90s fantasy plot spoilers. You don't need to check it that often and it's not a big deal if you miss a few, but there's some really awesome characters you can get. There's even the amazingly terrible novelty character Jogurt (a helmeted hamster), with all stats at 1 (can't level up past 1), does 1 damage, but killing enemies with him drops Jogurt Rings that makes other party members look like him. The GBA version is quite a bit easier, and despite some quality of life improvements, it's not strictly better. The pace of the GBA version is a touch faster, some 'battle challenges' for bonus items, there's some redone art (opinions vary, and even though I prefer the original I don't hate the new one), a few new characters, a run button in town, some tweaked stats, etc. The music is worse IMO, but I love that crappy FM chip in the Genesis. It also adds in a card collecting mechanic and a related card collecting character, but it doesn't add much. The game gets harder on future New Game+ playthroughs, but it's a long enough game and the change is incremental enough that's it hard to tell until you beat it a few times, which is unlikely unless you love it. I prefer the Genesis version, but I don't have a personal issue with remakes. There's a post here by Phexar about it about 2/3 down the page discussing it in full detail: http://www.sega-16.com/forum/showthread.php?12198-Shining-Force-Genesis-vs-GBA The original Genesis game (the one I've played the most) isn't that hard, and the AI is still kind of single minded (dogpile the hero!). Still, there's one or two bottleneck battles, the most notable of which is the circus battle somewhat early on which contains a lot of hard hitting enemies relative to your force and can be a pain if you aren't prepared for it. There's really not much need to grind in general though, despite a few tough battles here and there. If you're intent on grinding though, you can always Egress out and restart the battle for more easy EXP. Another thing, negative status effects aren't particularly useful or common on either side, but the positive ones are pretty good. Like Shining in the Darkness, the stats here are fairly straightforward so it tends to turn into a damage war more than anything. The RNG for level ups in Shining Force 1 is weird in that it's very possible to get nominal level ups where you gain no stats whatsoever or maybe 1HP and nothing else. If you're an autist you can reset (or use save states just before the level gain), but in general don't bother unless the level up is truly terrible. You can start promoting your characters at level 10, but you can also wait until level 20 so their base stats grow before transitioning back to level 1 in the new promoted class. It's debatable how necessary this is, so my suggestion is just to start promoting when you get to towns that have better gear that you can't equip or you're running into a roadblock. It does matter a tiny bit for speeding up the acquisition of spells for spellcasters though. Swiped this from a guide, your first spell caster Tao's spell list: Tao BLAZE <> L4 L12 L20 BOOST L27 DISPEL L16 SLEEP L8 Note that "level 27" means if you promote at 10, you have to wait until 17 promoted until you get it, versus waiting until 20 means level 7 promoted. Battles are also a lot more forgiving than say Fire Emblem (up until Awakening). Characters that die in battle are available the next battle, so there's relatively little consequence. Your main character dying is the Dragon Quest model IIRC, you lose half your gold but retain your equipment/levels and start back in town rather than a Game Over. I know that the Shining series has lost a lot of goodwill over the years, what with the entire series post Shining Force III: Episode 1 turning into some combination of obtuse, Japanese only, or mediocre games. A lot of people retroactively say that the Shining Force games were only good because there wasn't anything like them at the time and aren't that good now that Fire Emblem is popular in the states. But they certainly had a good thing going in the Genesis days. The cohesive music/art/UI/mechanics, the emphasis on simplicity through the icons menus, reduced emphasis on stats and smaller inventories really streamlined them compared to other games in the genre. I find it strange that so many people dismissed the story mode in Etrian Odyssey Untold (despite it containing classic mode), I really liked having a pre-determined party in Shining in the Darkness to cut out some of the guesswork and to play a game that was designed with a particular party composition in mind. It made a fairly gentle entry into the dungeon crawler genre for me anyway. Even now, 20 odd years later I can't think of very many games outside of Shining Force I/II that combine tradition town exploration with strategy RPG battles. I also like that the games can provide a decent challenge, but the odds never feel too unfairly stacked against the player, and the game mechanics can also be broken wide open if you know what you're doing. Snyderman fucked around with this message at 19:55 on Feb 24, 2015 |
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Feb 24, 2015 19:13
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Nellistos posted:wow. I think the guide avoids mentioning anyone by name until they're recruitable, just number, but I meant spoilers like "joins after your castle is attacked". Jogurt sucks certainly and is a fun novelty character but he has a few small steps towards recruitment that are easily missable. That said you can bench him and anyone else instantly and just have him in the force to chat with occasionally. You can recruit everyone with no concerns about your roster size. I forgot to mention: there's a few late bloomers on the team (Ken and Khris come to mind, start kind of bad but get super good.), but in general use who seems cool or helpful rather than worrying about min maxing. Also don't promote everyone at once, space it out a tiny bit. The hit in stats can make that promoted battle a pain. Or at least that's how I remember it. I hope you get around to Shining Force II. But keep in mind there's a lot more missable things in that game (namely mithril for forging late game weapons) and that game gives you at least two near TG Cid levels of broken characters on the force that join by default without any extra steps, not including Slade who is definitely awesome but a real late bloomer. SFII is pretty easy on Normal and the difficulty in order goes: Normal, Hard, Ouch, Super. On the menu ouch/super are reversed but in reality Super is hardest. Snyderman fucked around with this message at 19:14 on Feb 25, 2015 |
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Feb 25, 2015 19:03
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Colgate posted:I want to start playing through the Shining Force series again. Should I play the Steam version of 1 (which is essentially the Genesis version), or the GBA remake (which is uglier and sounds worse, but has a few extra characters, dialogue and some weird card-collecting thing) Genesis (Steam). I made a post about it earlier but Genesis all the way. If you're hankering for more, don't forget Shining Force CD and its finale on Game Gear, Final Conflict (which is translated), and I believe all the Shining Force III games are playable in English too.
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Feb 28, 2015 17:17
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Colgate posted:I just picked it up on steam along with Shining Force 2 and Phantasy Star 2 and 4. I can't get over how bad the graphics of the remake looked. Not only did they pretty much drain the color from the game, I just about lost it when the characters in the gathering hall just tells me their life story out of nowhere. It's like Shining Force: Fanfiction Edition. Just to be clear: Shining Force Gaiden 1-3 on Game Gear is a shorter trilogy of games, each at roughly 20-25 battles each (no JRPG towns other than a basic shop menu). Shining Force Gaiden 1-2 was remade as Shining Force CD (CD has some exclusive extra content as Book 3/4). SFG1 is only available in English as Book 1 of SFCD. SFG2 is also available in English as "The Sword of Hajya" on GG, as well as Book 2 of SFCD. SFG3 a.k.a. "Final Conflict" was fan translated a few years ago, but it's GG only. I can't vouch for shining force 3's translation or stability since I've never played it(might have visual bugs or crashes). However it's my understanding that it's worth seeking out the entire trilogy translation since SFIII:Scenario 1 had its ending modified for the original Saturn US release to cut implications of a trilogy, which the retranslation restores. Snyderman fucked around with this message at 01:25 on Mar 1, 2015 |
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Feb 28, 2015 22:26
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