Random thoughts on whatever JRPG you're currently playing?

[IceyD]

they gave me a diagram for this time travel shit (Fairy Tail)

 

[flyingjohn]

Decided to replay some nostalgia,digimon world 2.

It is a slow annoying jrpg. But it has it share of trolling:

-Every attack uses mp so there is no attack only to automate the combat
-Your vehicle to explore uses energy for every single step
-Grinding gives you more grinding as a reward
-Some paths are dead end
-There are invisible magnetic barriers which require a specific item to pass.If you don't have that item you have to go back.
-There are invisible mines that fuck you up or just annoy you like reverse controls.
-There are invisible bugs that can steal money or just return your digimon back to your base making the dungeon run impossible.
-Upgrading your vehicle to actually get past all of these things is expensive plus you have to buy all those removal items.

For a children's game it was pretty brutal.

 

[Rahdulan]

Decided to replay some nostalgia,digimon world 2.

That's nice and all, but I hope you made the right choice.





Which one?

 

[flyingjohn]

The only true choice for 2020:


Bats and needles fit the year.

 

[Dishonoredbr]

Just finished Devil Survivor Overclocked.

Really freaking good. 10/10.

The story is 10/10 , interesting all the way , the combat is really fun. I played on Easy , tho it's only changes money and exp recieved , because was my firsts time playing a DeSu game but fight were still hard until i got Holy Dance and Drain , then everything becomes easy until the end. But i got myself some sweet Repl phys demon with Holy dance , prayer and drain , and everything was fine. All characters are full of personality, WAY better than any one from IV , IVA and even Strange Journey.

Spoiler

I really want to make a Haru/Gin route because those two would be first option after Demon Lord. They're amazing.

The last boss is really fucking cool. The last phase was tough as nails.

Spoiler

Demon Lord/King of Bel route because fuck god and neutral didn't looked too hot outside of Gin/Haru.

Midori worst girl. Haru bests girl. Yuzu should've be

Spoiler

Abel

MC's bitch but she couldn't handle demon power i guess. Nayoa nasty and Kaido/Atsuro best bros. Now to the 8th day.

 

[IceyD]

So I discovered you can skip all battle animations in Fairy Tail and so now I can't help but do that.

Fast forward is the death of turn based.

 

[Puukko]

Fast forwarding is a double edged sword. On one hand it can greatly aid with combat heavy games and in particular when grinding, but it does harm one's attention span and can somewhat cheapen the experience and make it less memorable.

 

[IceyD]

Fast forwarding is a double edged sword. On one hand it can greatly aid with combat heavy games and in particular when grinding, but it does harm one's attention span and can somewhat cheapen the experience and make it less memorable.

Yep, that's my issue. Actually, I don't even think it's a good or bad thing, I think it's just the natural end of an era. When you play an RPG with systems with even a bit of depth, you tend to play for efficiency. If the most efficient winning method is mass skip and 'A,' well why wouldn't I do that?

Not even to mention the repetitive viewing of character animations, which I think play a huge role in what makes older games memorable. Viewing those over and over is something no sane person would do if given the option to skip and win, but that's not how those games were originally envisioned.

Not to be a downer, I just think it's super interesting.

 

[Puukko]

I played through most of FF8 without realizing I could fast foward (this was only later patched into the 2013 version and bundled with the cheat keys in the F row, so I didn't think to check) and the esper animations in that took absolutely forever... but interestingly, it didn't bother me that much. I was in the mindset this was an older game and thus everything was going to take more time.

 

[IceyD]

Yeah when it's applied to older games it's especially bizarre. That's been the story with emulation for a long time since it's typically an option.

Anyway, Fairy Tail has some cool animations when you do see them:

 

[GhostCow]

I gave Fairy Tale a shot last night and it seemed like shit. Went and checked some reviews to make sure it's not just me and the youtube reviewers said it's shit too. I think it's only enjoyable if you're a fan of the anime which I'm not. I find the art style in Fairy Tale to be pretty bad

 

[IceyD]

Yeah it’s nothing special, just your typical jrpg comfort food from Gust.

 

[flyingjohn]

Yeah it’s nothing special, just your typical jrpg comfort food from Gust.

I would say the game is one of their worst outing by far.
It has the worst customization,enemy variety,locations,difficulty of any jrpg's released by gust.I have no idea what they were thinking with the combat system grid.It is never even once utilized in an meaningful form and your super duper chain attacks don't even care about positioning.

 

[Hyperion]

I had to drop Suikoden 2 after completing the first one in a few days. I remember not being blown away by this game when I first played it in the mid-2000's, but now that I'm playing again.... it's pretty goddamn bad, I'd say almost as bad as S4, if not worse. It's a massive drop in quality compared to its predecessor in all facets except for the increase to 3 runes as opposed to 1. Art style is terrible, just compare portraits of returning characters like Humphrey and Tengaar. Translation is somehow worse? Dialogue is corny, and childish, Nanami is easily the worst of the 'forced' sidekicks (Sgt. Joe is the best, change my mind). The music is grating, particularly the one used in Toto. Had to put the game on mute because the music irritated the fuck out of me. Difficulty is nonexistent. At least in the previous game there were fights like the Zombie Dragon, Neclord, or the fight against Sonya at the end that catches you off guard that can kill your already weakened party. The war battle system was my least favorite of the bunch, too much RNG involved. Also, doing random shit like going into the Sindar Ruins with Alex, or nonsensically running back home to Kyaro after you were betrayed by the Highland Army, and branded traitors pissed me off. You're wasting time while an all-out war is brewing - everything in Suikoden 1 revolved around rising tensions, the war, and you being leader of the Liberation Army. Going off on a hike with Humphrey and Futch because of a rumor of a dragon egg and some asshole is in trouble during a major war as the leader of a revolution feels cheap, and extremely typical of a jrpg. Speaking of typical jrpg nonsense, Luca Blight fucking sucks. Dude has one or two lines that make him look like a Conan the Barbarian-type who firmly believes physical and military power is strength, then he just rambles onward to generic mass murdering psychosis. No depth to his character at all.

And the worst change of all...character recruitment took a massive nosedive. Genso Suikoden had very few missable characters, and they pretty much entirely revolved around decisions related to executing the Generals, or Pahn's duel with Teo. The only really obscure, and missable character was Leon Silverberg. Characters like Crowley were well hidden, but you had the detective character to give you hints at the very least. Plus, characters like Quincy and Eikei actually told you had more characters or levels you needed before they would join you, unlike every other Suikoden. Getting all 108 Stars in this game without a guide is fucking impossible. A perfect example would be the cutscene required to recruit Clive by passing under the tunnel in Muse....on your second or third visit to Muse. The odds of you passing that way are fairly low since it's an out of the way spot, and there's no indication of something happening there.

I'm taking a break from the series, then I'll download a save file to transfer over to Suikoden 3 so I can get whatever small bonuses available. Decided to play Legend of Mana in the meantime. Speaking of needing a guide, Jesus Christ I can't believe how much content I missed in this game when I played as a kid. Don't let the cutesy (but still fantastic) art fool you, this game is an existential nightmare and a deep dive into depression and finding the meaning of life. Diddle, the wheeled, sentient Victrola has more depth, and emotional baggage than most RPG protagonists these days.

 

[Sentinel]

Playing Xenoblade Chronicles X. Up to Chapter 6.
The main quest is boring. The characters are lifeless. The models are terrible. The UI is shit. The camera is dreadful. The OST is about the worst I've ever heard. The maps are way too fucking big. The side content is dull and all fetch quests. The main quest is gated behind boring tasks like "explore x% of Y map" and other dumb shit.

Probably the worst game I've ever played.

 

[flyingjohn]

Playing Xenoblade Chronicles X. Up to Chapter 6.
The models are terrible. .

 

[jungl]

I found suikoden 2 inferior to 1. The story is a lot less focused and stupid. Xenoblade chronicles X is the kind of game people play for 20 or so hours to find disappointment and for a few more to hopefully find something good but only more disappointment.

 

[IceyD]

alright yeah Fairy Tail is awful. just completed at 15 hours.

and there's like $347 of DLC lol

what a disaster

 

[Puukko]

Xenoblade X has perhaps my favorite open world and I loved flying around it. The OST can definitely be divisive but I personally liked it. The human models are like play doh, but that allowed them to put more focus on the open world which was the game's strength, so it was the right call in my opinion. I will entirely agree about the main story, it was a major step down compared to 1. I rank the two games about even but for very different reasons.

 

[Dramart]

Decided to replay some nostalgia,digimon world 2.

It is a slow annoying jrpg. But it has it share of trolling:

-Every attack uses mp so there is no attack only to automate the combat
-Your vehicle to explore uses energy for every single step
-Grinding gives you more grinding as a reward
-Some paths are dead end
-There are invisible magnetic barriers which require a specific item to pass.If you don't have that item you have to go back.
-There are invisible mines that fuck you up or just annoy you like reverse controls.
-There are invisible bugs that can steal money or just return your digimon back to your base making the dungeon run impossible.
-Upgrading your vehicle to actually get past all of these things is expensive plus you have to buy all those removal items.

For a children's game it was pretty brutal.

I remember it was fun, but yeah a lot of tries in some "Domains" because of all the things you mention. But these things also make it interesting, the items you need for the barriers of enery, blocks, and the mines and bugs you can find add stress and fear which I personally liked, you had to prepare and be cautious in some places. You'll have to use the auto-pilot to save money and enter again to the Domains, but only at the start until you have enough packs of energy for you Digi-Beetle and some upgrades in that too, then you're set. You could recover mp with "guard" and items. Upgrading your Digi-Bettle felt good. The DNA digivolve was something weird, though. It bothered me back in the day but I now appreciate that feature. The only bad thing is that the enemies are easy. I finished it twice, one as a kid and other a few years back. The first time the difficulty was okay but the second time I thought it was a piece of cake.

 

[Zyondyne]

I had to drop Suikoden 2 after completing the first one in a few days. I remember not being blown away by this game when I first played it in the mid-2000's, but now that I'm playing again.... it's pretty goddamn bad, I'd say almost as bad as S4, if not worse. It's a massive drop in quality compared to its predecessor in all facets except for the increase to 3 runes as opposed to 1. Art style is terrible, just compare portraits of returning characters like Humphrey and Tengaar. Translation is somehow worse? Dialogue is corny, and childish, Nanami is easily the worst of the 'forced' sidekicks (Sgt. Joe is the best, change my mind). The music is grating, particularly the one used in Toto. Had to put the game on mute because the music irritated the fuck out of me. Difficulty is nonexistent. At least in the previous game there were fights like the Zombie Dragon, Neclord, or the fight against Sonya at the end that catches you off guard that can kill your already weakened party. The war battle system was my least favorite of the bunch, too much RNG involved. Also, doing random shit like going into the Sindar Ruins with Alex, or nonsensically running back home to Kyaro after you were betrayed by the Highland Army, and branded traitors pissed me off. You're wasting time while an all-out war is brewing - everything in Suikoden 1 revolved around rising tensions, the war, and you being leader of the Liberation Army. Going off on a hike with Humphrey and Futch because of a rumor of a dragon egg and some asshole is in trouble during a major war as the leader of a revolution feels cheap, and extremely typical of a jrpg. Speaking of typical jrpg nonsense, Luca Blight fucking sucks. Dude has one or two lines that make him look like a Conan the Barbarian-type who firmly believes physical and military power is strength, then he just rambles onward to generic mass murdering psychosis. No depth to his character at all.

And the worst change of all...character recruitment took a massive nosedive. Genso Suikoden had very few missable characters, and they pretty much entirely revolved around decisions related to executing the Generals, or Pahn's duel with Teo. The only really obscure, and missable character was Leon Silverberg. Characters like Crowley were well hidden, but you had the detective character to give you hints at the very least. Plus, characters like Quincy and Eikei actually told you had more characters or levels you needed before they would join you, unlike every other Suikoden. Getting all 108 Stars in this game without a guide is fucking impossible. A perfect example would be the cutscene required to recruit Clive by passing under the tunnel in Muse....on your second or third visit to Muse. The odds of you passing that way are fairly low since it's an out of the way spot, and there's no indication of something happening there.

I'm taking a break from the series, then I'll download a save file to transfer over to Suikoden 3 so I can get whatever small bonuses available. Decided to play Legend of Mana in the meantime. Speaking of needing a guide, Jesus Christ I can't believe how much content I missed in this game when I played as a kid. Don't let the cutesy (but still fantastic) art fool you, this game is an existential nightmare and a deep dive into depression and finding the meaning of life. Diddle, the wheeled, sentient Victrola has more depth, and emotional baggage than most RPG protagonists these days.

My advice is to take a break between games. It's never a good idea to play the sequel of a game immediately after, especially if the sequel is mechanically and graphically pretty much the same as its predecessor.

I finished Fallout 3, got burned out and decided to play New Vegas too one day later. Needless to say, I dropped it after 3 hours or so because it was basically the same game. Came back one year later, played it and it's now my favorite modern Fallout game. It's just hard to like a game that feels "more of the same" 20 or 30 hours after you just finished a game. No matter how much you loved the experience, too much is too much.

The same goes for other games such as Yakuza 0 & Yakuza Kiwami and many, many others.

Sure, there is a chance you simply won't like the sequel anyway, but I honestly recommend you to take a big break and then come back to give it another chance.

 

[GhostCow]

I played one of the Digimon games. It was cyber sleuth. I had no idea wtf I was doing and most of the game mechanics didn't make sense to me. That's another game where you probably have to be a fan of the anime. It was also weird how the game encouraged you to not play it with a certain game mechanic. The female MC and Nokia were both hot af though

 

[Sentinel]

Xenoblade X has perhaps my favorite open world and I loved flying around it. The OST can definitely be divisive but I personally liked it. The human models are like play doh, but that allowed them to put more focus on the open world which was the game's strength, so it was the right call in my opinion. I will entirely agree about the main story, it was a major step down compared to 1. I rank the two games about even but for very different reasons.

What's good about the open world? I'm just sprinting and auto walking through everything on the way to quest objectives. The treasures spread about give you mining/research probes and maybe some credits. The credits are 100% worthless because the shop gear is shit, and the mining/research probes gives you those special funds that are also worthless except for a quest requirement (one of the worst quests in the game btw). Then you have tyrants, 99% of which you can't kill until you're level ~40. What else is there? I'm not seeing what's so great.

 

[MpuMngwana]

I played one of the Digimon games. It was cyber sleuth. I had no idea wtf I was doing and most of the game mechanics didn't make sense to me. That's another game where you probably have to be a fan of the anime. It was also weird how the game encouraged you to not play it with a certain game mechanic. The female MC and Nokia were both hot af though

Understandable. I enjoyed the game and completed it, but I wouldn't recommend it to anyone who isn't a fan of the source material. The difficulty is fucked whatever you pick, normal is pathetically easy while hard heavily favors Digimon with a specific ability, making a large chunk of the available pool of monsters worthless, especially late in the game. The dungeons are also really bland. Unless you are nostalgic for the anime and want to collect your childhood favorites, there isn't much point to playing this.

 

[jungl]

I played one of the Digimon games. It was cyber sleuth. I had no idea wtf I was doing and most of the game mechanics didn't make sense to me. That's another game where you probably have to be a fan of the anime. It was also weird how the game encouraged you to not play it with a certain game mechanic. The female MC and Nokia were both hot af though

That game takes FOREVER to pick up. I quit it after playing for 1 plus hour because there so much stupid anime trope storyline shit and little digimon action. Idk maybe its decent after the game actually decides to start. Digimon world 1 and the world game for psp are the digimon games I enjoyed.

Its not hard to make a good digimon game. Worlds formula already superior to what pokemon games have going for them they need to just take that formula and up the quality a lot and boom awesome game born but bandai keeps fucking up.