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Tired Moritz posted:Why do people dislike Bravely Second so much? Enough that Bravely Default 2's director had to apologize apparently? Personally I thought that, much like BD2, the plot was nonsensical garbage that left a bunch of threads hanging, and I thought the world of BD1, much like BD2, was way too sparse and boring to do another adventure in that barely brings anything new to the table. I think what mostly soured me on it from the beginning was that they clearly made the AR sequel hook at the end of BD1 with absolutely no idea how they were going to follow it up, resulting in the some of the most awkward shoehorning I've ever seen.
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Mar 28, 2021 18:33
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Kin posted:I'm trying to decide whether farming the asterisk portal bosses for giant JP orbs is quicker than farming the snake world map boss. Giant JP orbs aren't the reason you fight those bosses. You want the common drops instead, as those are super powerful weapons that you will pretty much dual wield on everyone the moment you can. Unfortunately, since there's really no good way to boost common drop chance, it takes a while to get a meaningful number of them.
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Mar 28, 2021 19:28
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raditts posted:Personally I thought that, much like BD2, the plot was nonsensical garbage that left a bunch of threads hanging, and I thought the world of BD1, much like BD2, was way too sparse and boring to do another adventure in that barely brings anything new to the table. That's really interesting. I didn't feel like there was any real problem with Second's plot when I played. I actually felt it was better than Default where the entire first four chapters basically only work narratively if everyone is a complete idiot.
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Mar 28, 2021 19:30
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So I just got the Gambler job just Bad or does it have secret syngeries I don't know about. The specialty were you don't earn JP seems pretty egregious.
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Mar 28, 2021 20:32
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YggiDee posted:So I just got the Gambler job just Bad or does it have secret syngeries I don't know about. The specialty were you don't earn JP seems pretty egregious. IME you grind it up, grab the passives for farming, and never touch it again.
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Mar 28, 2021 20:34
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THE AWESOME GHOST posted:Ninefold Flurry is NUTS. It hits 9 times so it breaks damage cap, it hits 9 times so you're likely to crit a bunch in there (And can equip stuff like Crit Amp to hit for more), and it just does a lot of damage. I think by the end of the game Godspeed Strike was doing close to 9999 + followup but 9fold on Adelle was doing like.... 30k a hit? Plus Swordmaster level 12 passive with dual wield lets them sub Freelancer for a massive stat bonus so you can mimic the 99 MP skill 3 times and do like... 120k-150k for 99 MP I think I did 15-20k damage godspeed strike crits in chapter 5 (so 30-40k counting the followup). Though IDK what godspeed strike's damage ceiling is like since I don't think speed caps at 999, does it? I thought someone said (base) speed had a cap of 200 or so, which is still a lot but doesn't seem like it'll get you anywhere near 99,999 damage with godspeed strike + followup. Though at that point it's less "godspeed is the easy/only way" and more "it doesn't matter, all paths lead to their death."
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Mar 28, 2021 21:02
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YggiDee posted:So I just got the Gambler job just Bad or does it have secret syngeries I don't know about. The specialty were you don't earn JP seems pretty egregious. If you've got the luck its very strong. If you don't its useless. Gamble.
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Mar 28, 2021 21:22
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Gambler gives you an ability that increases rare item drop rate by 10% per character with it equipped, which is great. But the job itself sucks rear end and is a pain in the rear end to level up since you randomly get no JP after battles.
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Mar 28, 2021 21:39
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Blackbelt Bobman posted:Gambler gives you an ability that increases rare item drop rate by 10% per character with it equipped, which is great. But the job itself sucks rear end and is a pain in the rear end to level up since you randomly get no JP after battles. This. Use your JP orbs on it, then shelve it as an actual job.
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Mar 28, 2021 21:43
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Dirk the Average posted:Giant JP orbs aren't the reason you fight those bosses. You want the common drops instead, as those are super powerful weapons that you will pretty much dual wield on everyone the moment you can. Unfortunately, since there's really no good way to boost common drop chance, it takes a while to get a meaningful number of them. I read up on that afterwards. I've picked up a few of the weapons but i think i'm strong enough now without them to pretty much oneshot anything in the game so probably wont bother going back to get more of them. There's nothing to really use them on from what i can tell.
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Mar 28, 2021 22:07
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Kin posted:I read up on that afterwards. I've picked up a few of the weapons but i think i'm strong enough now without them to pretty much oneshot anything in the game so probably wont bother going back to get more of them. True, once you can do 99,999 to the entire enemy formation at will, there's not much of a reason to have them.
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Mar 28, 2021 22:13
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Speaking of dealing 99k damage, is anyone else kinda sad that the final boss crumples so easily to even a handful of 15k GS hits? It’s got like maybe 250k HP. I remember the BD1 final boss being difficult and feeling like a real struggle even when doing 4-6 9999 hits with each party member, and I would have expected this fuckin’ boss to be super difficult. Instead, it’s wet paper.
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Mar 28, 2021 22:53
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YggiDee posted:So I just got the Gambler job just Bad or does it have secret syngeries I don't know about. The specialty were you don't earn JP seems pretty egregious. About half the jobs in this game are trash aside from one or two really good passive skills that you have to grind 8 or 9 job levels to get. Gambler is one such job. (okay, well maybe trash is a strong word but there is a clear tier of superior classes that will let you just walk through everything and laugh at the puny attacks of your foes, versus those that have a couple neat but ultimately unnecessary abilities where your enemies will mostly beat you into the ground in one hit) raditts fucked around with this message at 23:15 on Mar 28, 2021 |
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Mar 28, 2021 23:08
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Comparatively trash.
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Mar 28, 2021 23:23
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Other than winning those initial unwinnable fights, is there any point to new game+? I just don't see one given how easily you can max everything out and do everything in the first play through.
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Mar 28, 2021 23:51
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If it strikes your fancy you can use the "no EXP" accessory for a low level run. That absolutely shouldn't be a use-case, since the last two games had "no EXP" as a toggle in the menu (along with "no JP" or "no pg"), but.
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Mar 29, 2021 00:18
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Kin posted:Other than winning those initial unwinnable fights, is there any point to new game+? Back with BD1 I did a Fiesta of sorts where I started with all jobs with all skills unlocked but them limited myself to a job from each chapter. I'm not sure how viable it would be in BD2 but it could probably work. Prologue: White Mage, Black Mage, Monk, Vanguard Chapter 1: Bard, Beastmaster, Thief, Berserker Chapter 2: Red Mage, Ranger, Shieldmaster, Pictomancer Chapter 3: Dragoon, Spiritmaster, Swordmaster, Oracle Chapter 4: Arcanist, Bastion, Phantom, Hellblade. One from each chapter, at least one of each in your party until you get 5 jobs whereupon you can drop 1.
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Mar 29, 2021 00:55
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I would love a game with a job system built around the Fiesta. Imagine a relatively short initial plot that unfolds further and reveals cool plot stuff as you complete the equivalent of No 750 or Berserker Risk.
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Mar 29, 2021 01:10
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Pollyanna posted:Speaking of dealing 99k damage, is anyone else kinda sad that the final boss crumples so easily to even a handful of 15k GS hits? It’s got like maybe 250k HP. I remember the BD1 final boss being difficult and feeling like a real struggle even when doing 4-6 9999 hits with each party member, and I would have expected this fuckin’ boss to be super difficult. Instead, it’s wet paper. Eh, I remember breaking the scripting of the final boss of BD1 because Dark Knight was just so broken and did so many hits that stuff didn't seem to trigger properly.
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Mar 29, 2021 01:18
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 The more I think about this game, the more I wish they did something interesting with the elements they used, cause it's absolutely possible. There are core assumptions about the story elements in BD2 that can be made interesting by identifying them and testing the opposite or "yes, and"-ing them. You can make any cliché interesting this way. Just for the hell of it, I did a little bit of dialectics for the crystals: --- Thesis: Crystals are static objects that are collected by the protagonists and aid them on their quest. The party uses the crystals. Antithesis: Crystals are active characters in their own right and don't have the party's best interests in mind. The crystals use the party. Synthesis: The common truth between the thesis and antithesis is the interaction and interplay between the party and the crystals. What if the crystals and the party have to come in conflict and negotiate on a mutually-acceptable goal? Thesis: Each type of crystal is one-of-a-kind and grants a unique power only to the protagonists. Crystals are unique and the protagonists are special. Antithesis: Each type of crystal is readily found throughout the world and grants power to anyone who holds them. Crystals are common and the protagonists are not special. If this sounds familiar, congratulations - you remember FF7 well! Synthesis: The common truth between the thesis and antithesis is the fact that the crystals give power in some fashion to a specific person. What if power and "being special" comes not from an individual's birth or from the crystal's abilities, but from how an individual chooses to use the crystal's power and how they grow from doing so? Thesis: Crystals are artifacts of power that bless the protagonists, and the protagonists' goal is to restore or free them. The party seeks to gain the crystals. Antithesis: Crystals are artifacts of doom and actively harm the protagonists, and the protagonists' goal is to destroy or seal them. The party seeks to lose the crystals. Synthesis: The common truth between the thesis and antithesis is the fact that the protagonists are affected by the crystals, both in a positive and negative manner, and that the protagonists take responsibility for them. What if the party's goal is to refine or control the crystals by coming to terms with their positives and negatives and becoming "regulators" of a sort for them? Thesis: The world and setting are intricately tied to the crystals, and their existence is required for the world to function properly. Crystals are natural. Antithesis: Crystals are foreign concepts to the setting and serve as outside-context problems that the world is not equipped to handle. Crystals are unnatural. Synthesis: The common truth between the thesis and antithesis is the fact that the crystals affect the world. What if the party's goal is to properly integrate the crystals into the setting, and to guide the world for the better as it adjusts? (I used thesis-antithesis-synthesis for this, but I'm sure abstract-negative-concrete will also be useful to help highlight the inherent problems with the cliché.) --- Like...these aren't the most compelling concepts and I'm sure they'd benefit from some iteration. But man, there's still cool stuff you can do if you just think about what you're working with a little! Even with the blandest and most overdone element of Final Fantasy! Writing a good RPG story can be hard, but it doesn't have to be. You just gotta be smart about it. Dirk the Average posted:Eh, I remember breaking the scripting of the final boss of BD1 because Dark Knight was just so broken and did so many hits that stuff didn't seem to trigger properly. That's pretty great. I didn't break BD1 quite that thoroughly, but double-Ninja was my jam.
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Mar 29, 2021 15:56
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Yeah I'm confused with my feelings on this one. While I was actively playing it I was like "drat this game is so good I love job systems why did it get 70s on metacritic" but now I'm done with it and I'm thinking about it a bit and it just didn't stick with me in a way the best JRPGs do. Even their job system which had some really fun and cool combos feels like just as you're unlocking some of the crazy poo poo you're using it to... unlock the other crazy poo poo. There's no real endgame rampup. I liked it and don't regret paying $60 for it but I'd have trouble recommending this game to a lot of people.LiefKatano posted:I feel like Final Fantasy V was at least more balanced insofar as the only really useless job was... what, Berserker? I feel like there's a lot more lackluster stuff here, at least in comparison to the Good Stuff. Berserker wasn't even really useless. Terrible skills, no real benefit to sub their skills into another job, but there are decent chunks of the game where a Berserker especially with 2 Handed will outdamage any other class. If I remember correctly you get some really good axes before you normally should. If you played FF5 on the phone with the terrible phone controls having one less character to control in battle was actually a benefit (Plus I wanna say the phone port accidentally buffed them somehow) Tired Moritz posted:Why do people dislike Bravely Second so much? Enough that Bravely Default 2's director had to apologize apparently? I personally thought it was a big improvement. Really fun jobs, cool twist, an actual second half of the game that did repeat stuff but in an interesting way, not a "Do the exact same poo poo 30 times" way. I thought it was the best of the three.
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Mar 30, 2021 12:46
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Octopath is on Gamepass and I'm gonna give that a try although I understand it's very much not a FF5 clone. But Triangle Strategy looks awesome in an FF Tactics/ Tactics Ogre kind of way. Maybe the SHAPE LONGWORD team will make a good 2D ff5 clone next
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Mar 30, 2021 12:51
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THE AWESOME GHOST posted:Berserker wasn't even really useless. Terrible skills, no real benefit to sub their skills into another job, but there are decent chunks of the game where a Berserker especially with 2 Handed will outdamage any other class. If I remember correctly you get some really good axes before you normally should. Yea in the first world you can get an axe as a drop from some enemies on Crescent Island that has a chance of casting doom on hit , and not only does it have higher attack power than most weapons you can get at that point, but because it gives you the doom spell before you're expected to have it you can get a lot of use out of it as there are some bosses that are vulnerable to doom.
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Mar 30, 2021 12:59
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THE AWESOME GHOST posted:Yeah I'm confused with my feelings on this one. While I was actively playing it I was like "drat this game is so good I love job systems why did it get 70s on metacritic" but now I'm done with it and I'm thinking about it a bit and it just didn't stick with me in a way the best JRPGs do. Same thing happened to me. Hours 1~10: This is great, why are people complaining? Hours 10~25: Okay, these dungeons are pretty boring, the Job system is kinda unintuitive and unbalanced, my magic fighters are pretty useless compared to my physical fighters, and I don’t like the weight system, but the bosses are cool and I can’t wait to see what the story has for me! Hours 25~40: Well, the dungeons have only gotten worse, battle has devolved into either Godspeed Strike spam or TPKs, the Job system’s gotten pretty bloated and aimless and I miss being able to use whatever I want, and now the bosses have no strategy but spamming counters for everything I do including physical i.e. the only viable damage option. But hey, I still gotta see what cool twists and turns the story takes! Hours 40~65: There are no cool twists and turns, are there? Hours 65~70: At least the music’s great. quote:Even their job system which had some really fun and cool combos feels like just as you're unlocking some of the crazy poo poo you're using it to... unlock the other crazy poo poo. There's no real endgame rampup. I liked it and don't regret paying $60 for it but I'd have trouble recommending this game to a lot of people. The game expects you to find the First Order Optimal Strategy given your current choice of Jobs and passives, rather than ensuring you have the freedom to compose a party you find interesting. Which is to say, the game outright expects you to build one or two characters for GS spam, one character to heal, and one character to tank. This is boring. I recall switching jobs constantly in BD1 and BS, just because I liked to switch it up, and I was effective no matter what. Hell, just look at FF5’s Fiesta and it becomes immediately obvious that you can kick rear end with anything (unless you run Berserker Risk, and even then it’s just a matter of RNG rather than being outright impossible). That’s cool and really well balanced. In BD2, there’s no reason to use anything other than two Thieves, a Vanguard or Shieldmaster, and a White Mage, and the game knows it. Late-game, you have the option of applying status ailments too, but because of how the chance of applying them scales with Magic Attack, you basically need to use Phantom’s second specialty to be reliable. That sucks and is totally imbalanced. It’s a lot like the difference between Doom 2016 and Doom Eternal. Doom 2016 gives you your choice of weapons and play style to gently caress up your enemies. Doom Eternal expects you to either play in a very specific way and use specific weaponry, or slam your head against a wall of meat. Guess which one I like more? If you want to have fun, go play FF5 or the other two BD games. If you want to figure out the exact setup and solution for 60 hours of content, go play Picross. quote:I personally thought it was a big improvement. Really fun jobs, cool twist, an actual second half of the game that did repeat stuff but in an interesting way, not a "Do the exact same poo poo 30 times" way. I thought it was the best of the three. Yeah, I liked BS. It’s not BD1 level for me, but hell, at least it tried!
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Mar 30, 2021 14:08
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Oh, big spoiler thing:Polderjoch posted:you can actually translate the save file itself as well using the letters you've obtained from the Asterisks, and it shows who was in the save file I’m a dumbass and I thought this was a Kingdom Hearts reference, cuz Terra Aqua etc.  But it’s actually the cardinal elements, one for each Crystal, and it matches up with the party!
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Mar 30, 2021 14:23
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Pollyanna posted:In BD2, there’s no reason to use anything other than two Thieves, a Vanguard or Shieldmaster, and a White Mage, and the game knows it. Late-game, you have the option of applying status ailments too, but because of how the chance of applying them scales with Magic Attack, you basically need to use Phantom’s second specialty to be reliable. That sucks and is totally imbalanced. Gotta disagree with you here. Yes, having a character to take hits, a healer, and two damage dealers is a pretty good setup, but I swapped out classes pretty regularly in my playthrough. Yes, godspeed strike is really, really, really strong, but that doesn't mean that it is the only choice. The biggest sin the game commits is that magic classes only work once you have all the synergies, and the synergies don't come quickly (I guess the secondary sin is that melee characters also get access to "elements" that the enemy can be weak to, which is usually reserved for magic for a reason). Monk and Freelancer were also staples for me, lots of people got a lot of mileage out of Berserker (and I got a ton of mileage out of its passives), and Swordmaster more or less replaced Thief for me as the physical damage dealer, swapping around the secondary class as and when I felt like it. My support characters varied a lot, and I didn't always use a tank character, and even the tank character varied quite a bit over the course of the game, or was replaced entirely with a second support or a third damage dealer depending on what I was doing and what synergies were useful. As an example, a lot of people aren't a big fan of Spiritmaster because it dispels buffs. However, if you run two of them, as I did several times, the extra support they offer more than outweighs the loss of buffing power. That all being said, it's not the best job system, far from it. I did prefer BD1 and Bravely Second's jobs, but this had some neat charms to it, especially the buffs you could do to the attack command where you could attack all targets twice, steal from them, and steal MP for the cost of one action. I also very much enjoyed 2016, but Eternal's gameplay is, to me, much stronger. You are given a suite of powerful tools, each of which has its niches, and are expected to swap them on the fly to deal with what you're up against. You also have to consciously choose what enemies to prioritize when, and it's sometimes worth it to snap off a quick grenade to neuter an enemy's weakpoint and move on rather than spend time killing them outright. The constant switching of tactics, awareness of the fight, and need to change out what you are doing on a moment by moment basis is a hell of a lot of fun, and the weapons are really good about being good at multiple things (for instance, plasma beat shields, but you can go around shields with a meathook, blow up a rocket over the shield, use a grenade, etc.), especially with the ability to swap out their modes on the fly.
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Mar 30, 2021 14:41
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Partway through Chapter 2, man the Ranger dungeon sucks. Oh boy a maze @_@ So did the Sewers for Red Mage. I had been over grinding and was still under level for it oddly enough. The magic institute itself was really cool and they should've made that the entire dungeon, what a wasted opportunity. So far my magic casters basically do no loving damage unless they hit an elemental weakness and even then its usually less than my beastmaster/berserker. I've got a Monk/Thief with godspeed strike hitting for around 2.5k, I assume this gets even more nuts later? I farmed speed buns for 10 minutes but gave up out of boredom. It's hitting much harder than anything else I can do right now but it's not the instant boss destroyer people made it out to be. Perhaps I am just early and it scales up to bonkers. Or should I be doing Thief/Monk with GSS? Right now I've been running Monk/Thief, Beastmaster/Berserker, White Mage/Red Mage and Bard/Red Mage. I'm thinking of subbing out the bard entirely, I don't know if the buffs are worth it vs just getting another attacker and I obviously don't need a magic attacker because this game doesn't seem to give a poo poo about magic.
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Mar 30, 2021 15:38
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Did I miss a big chunk of something? I ended up with all classes and saw all the endings after 50 hours. Everyone keeps mentioning 70 hours for their play through.
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Mar 30, 2021 15:48
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The Gunslinger posted:Partway through Chapter 2, man the Ranger dungeon sucks. Oh boy a maze @_@ So did the Sewers for Red Mage. I had been over grinding and was still under level for it oddly enough. The magic institute itself was really cool and they should've made that the entire dungeon, what a wasted opportunity. Are you playing on hard? If so please please drop the difficulty. It throttles experience gain and doesn't do anything to increase encounter difficulty apart from increasing ATB fill for your enemies. 90% of the time if you're underleveled that's the cause. Hard difficulty in this game is a complete joke because it makes the game harder by making it significantly more tedious. Ragequit posted:Did I miss a big chunk of something? I ended up with all classes and saw all the endings after 50 hours. Everyone keeps mentioning 70 hours for their play through. It'll vary completely based on whether people are playing on hard and whether they chose to grind. A playthrough on hard without skipping encounters will hit the 60-70 hour mark. A playthrough on normal with grinding will be done in like 40 because you don't need to fight anything in the dungeons and your experience gain is much more efficient as a result. Natural 20 fucked around with this message at 16:17 on Mar 30, 2021 |
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Mar 30, 2021 15:53
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Dirk the Average posted:Monk and Freelancer were also staples for me, lots of people got a lot of mileage out of Berserker (and I got a ton of mileage out of its passives), and Swordmaster more or less replaced Thief for me as the physical damage dealer, Same here, I think I only ended up using GS a couple of times. I got a lot of mileage out of body slam and pressure point early on. Later I gave my physical attackers Berserker as a sub-class and that carried me for most of the game.
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Mar 30, 2021 16:28
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I played on Hard without skipping encounters (except for the final dungeon, since while they drop good loot it sure isn't worth it to fight all of them!) and cleared it in about 50 hours, although I probably would have finished under 40 hours if I didn't play a lot of B&D.
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Mar 30, 2021 16:32
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THE AWESOME GHOST posted:Octopath is on Gamepass and I'm gonna give that a try although I understand it's very much not a FF5 clone. It seems a bunch of people bounced off Octopath because of Chapter 1, so my advice is to get a team of 4 as early as you can and keep an eye out for the job Shrines on the path between towns which will let you swap classes. Once you can start mixing and matching the game opens up a lot. I really liked it, spent all of April on it last year during the pandemic. My other bit of advice for enjoying the game is that there ARE intraparty character interactions, but they're a pain to get because they rely on specific characters being in your party at specific times in each chapter. What I did was just play the chapter normally and then after the chapter go to Youtube and watch the party interactions for that particular chapter -- there's a bunch of compilation videos.
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Mar 30, 2021 17:15
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THE AWESOME GHOST posted:Yeah I'm confused with my feelings on this one. While I was actively playing it I was like "drat this game is so good I love job systems why did it get 70s on metacritic" but now I'm done with it and I'm thinking about it a bit and it just didn't stick with me in a way the best JRPGs do. Even their job system which had some really fun and cool combos feels like just as you're unlocking some of the crazy poo poo you're using it to... unlock the other crazy poo poo. There's no real endgame rampup. I liked it and don't regret paying $60 for it but I'd have trouble recommending this game to a lot of people. I'd probably agree with this. I think the midgame is perfect for unlocking fun stuff and mashing it together to create broken stuff, but eventually it feels like it stagnates into "make it so your enemies don't act so they don't crush you and instead crush them" which... isn't really fun. (Or maybe I just suck at JRPGs, who knows.) quote:If you played FF5 on the phone with the terrible phone controls having one less character to control in battle was actually a benefit (Plus I wanna say the phone port accidentally buffed them somehow) I think it's a mix of intentional (they redid the ATB system a bit and fixed the kinda-wonky Berserker ATB) and possibly unintentional, possibly intentional, either way a game mechanic tweak (Berserkers now target the "default" target, which means they'll typically hit front-row enemies (and possibly avoid dummy targets?). Maybe I'm giving them too much of the benefit of the doubt, though 
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Mar 30, 2021 18:02
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Pollyanna posted:Hours 25~40: Well, the dungeons have only gotten worse, battle has devolved into either Godspeed Strike spam or TPKs, Again this is more a you issue than a problem with the game. Especially when you say thing like status effects are viable late game only.
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Mar 30, 2021 18:13
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That post was specifically about my experience.
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Mar 30, 2021 18:25
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Pollyanna posted:
Will you believe I spend a good chunk of the game actively thinking that "the heroes are being used by the crystals for nefarious purposes" was going to be the mid-game twist? It's kind of telling what my expectations for a Bravely game were when "I bet we're going to go back in time and not accept the wind crystal's blessing" is a guess I both thought reasonable and was hoping would come true. Anyway, I think almost every part of the game is perfectly salvageable. You know, I actually think a lot of the story could be improved by changing two admittedly rather major elements: First, cut Adam out of the story. He's almost completely superfluous and has no interesting story of his own. Second, have Edna do all the stuff Adam did. Have her be actively searching for the crystals rather than being the one who gave them to people in the first place. Have her show up and kill Sloan at the beginning, revealing her fairy wings in the process - Adelle has an incentive to shut up about clearly recognizing her anyway, especially if Elvis and Gloria start explaining to Seth (who has never heard of fairies before) that fairies are all evil monsters that hate humans or something. By doing this, we give Edna an opportunity to become a recurring villain rather than someone who just stands around doing nothing, and a reason for her to actively pursue the party herself. (As an added bonus, we also set up the icetown events to hit all that much harder.) Many of the local villains like Castor, Bernard, Folie etc. work completely independently of Adam's invasion, or would with a little rewriting - and I bet they would be better that way! Imagine this. The crystals are a powerful (but not entirely benevolent) force that used to be allied with the fairies in the past, created the asterisks and fought against the Nexus, but in its final moments the Nexus ate humanity and fairykind's knowledge of the crystals itself. Everyone has forgotten how the crystals work and that fairies and humans used to be allies. Edna was present at the incident at Musa 50 years ago when Sloan, Godric, Emma and the fairy queen fought the Nexus, except in this version the same thing happened again and the Nexus ate everyone's knowledge of Musa itself and the crystals were lost. When Gloria and Sloan show up with the wind crystal, nobody else recognizes that a place called Musa even exists and maybe even Sloan only hazily remembers it. Now the story becomes this two-sided tale of the crystals reappearing and trying to reassert their power over the world on one hand, and the Nexus having corrupted Edna - who has spent the last 50 years trapped in Musa and having that thing whisper in her ears - seeking to collect the missing crystals and destroy them so she can be free. The heroes are chosen by the crystals, but is it really in their best interest to empower them? It beats having the world get eaten by the Nexus, but would a world ruled by the crystals be all that much better? Now, for example, Castor works fine entirely on his own without any of Edna's influence. He's being corrupted by the crystals from someone who desperately wants to help his people into a power-mad despot in the making. Helio and Domenic are framing people as being fairies and killing them because the crystal doesn't want to compete with the dragon religion over worshippers. And so on. In the end, the heroes have to reach some kind of end state where the world not only does not get eaten by the Nexus, but also does not fall under a horrible crystal hegemony. Hyper Crab Tank fucked around with this message at 22:08 on Mar 30, 2021 |
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Mar 30, 2021 21:44
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Literally everything there is more interesting than what we actually got, and I don’t really understand why we got the story we did. The series has had at the very least more creative writing up until this point, so clearly Square-Enix is capable of- oh. Right. Square-Enix.Hyper Crab Tank posted:Will you believe I spend a good chunk of the game actively thinking that "the heroes are being used by the crystals for nefarious purposes" was going to be the mid-game twist? I thought this too. I think it’s because I’m coming from Shadowbringers, which had far better writing and did a far better job at both twisting a core assumption (“light is good”) and exploring the fallout of it. It’s also because when you’re reading a story, you want to discover something unexpected, especially for a genre with such a major blandness problem. Otherwise, reading the story won’t tell you anything you don’t already know, and in that case, why read it? So of course, I was going to be in the state of mind where I go “can I really trust this weird Crystal thing?”.
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Mar 30, 2021 22:28
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Honestly I thought that we'd eventually go back in time and fix everything just because a lot of stuff in this game is so over-the-top pointlessly tragic that I thought they couldn't just leave it at that. And then they did.
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Mar 30, 2021 23:43
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Iunno, man. At this point I’d really rather just move to better games. I hear Gnosia is good.
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Mar 31, 2021 02:34
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| # ? May 16, 2024 09:33 |
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It is!
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Mar 31, 2021 02:44
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