Random thoughts on whatever JRPG you're currently playing?

[newtmonkey]

Breath of Fire II (SFC)
Really a massive improvement over the first game, even if it doesn't seem like it at first. The worst things about BoF1 are: constant and mindless trash combat against damage sponge enemies that are basically incapable of killing you, boring dungeons that use the same handful of tilemaps throughout the entire game, a large world that is a pain to travel since you don't get a means of travel that avoids random encounters until nearly the end of the game, several completely useless characters you'd never want in your party, towns that all look and function the same, and a story that's bad but the developers still thought was worth being told.

BoF2 improves on a lot of this.

The combat is not anything amazing, but both you and the enemy both typically do more damage per attack, so battles are much quicker and slightly more deadly. Enemies also tend to have more unique attacks that apply status effects than in BoF1. Bosses tend to go down a lot quicker than in BOF1 (thank God), but are also a lot more deadly. Finally, dragon transformations have been toned waaaay down in BOF2 (though you can definitely cheese the game by using AP restoration items on Ryu).

You get access to some decent travel options midway through the game that allow you to avoid some or all random encounters, and this is great because there is a LOT to explore and find once the game opens up. This makes backtracking also much less of a pain.

The locations you visit are also much better designed with interesting themes, so exploring dungeons can be a lot of fun (even though the encounter rate is still way too high). It's always interesting to see what weird situation you'll end up in next time. The towns are also a lot more unique this time around, and even better—you can build and customize your own town by inviting people to open up stores there.

Finally, all the characters you can choose to have in your party are interesting in one way or another—and it's not as simple as a bunch of strong fighters and weak magic users. I have been trying to switch characters in and out frequently to keep everyone leveled up to some degree, and have enjoyed using some of the characters that seemed completely worthless at first glance (btw, I definitely recommend doing this as the game somewhat often forces certain characters into your party as the story dictates).

All in all, a massive improvement over BoF1 so far and I'll definitely be seeing this one to the end.

 

[e-mailio estevez]

BOF2 is my favorite game in the series. People love BOF3 but I've never cared for it all that much. BOF2 has one trait that I really appreciate in a JRPG, and that's 'snapiness'. The animation has weight and is bombastic, but is also straight the point. The art style and animation really appeal to me- Nina's spellcasting animations look cool and even Ryu's plain old sword swing is great. Battles are over and done with quickly- in a lot of JRPGs there is too much down time, too much time spent on transitions or overly long spell animations for me to really enjoy without a turbo function. Not the case with BOF2. Nocturne is another game in this vein where you can be in and out of combat within the span of a minute, but with battles that are challenging and enemies that will put you in your place.

Plus I really like BOF2's roster. Best Nina by far.

The game's biggest flaw is its English script (fishing lures 'be for fishing') but the retranslation patch for the game is actually quite nice and has some QOL improvements, such as dashing, as well.

 

[Doktor Best]

Does the story of BOF2 continue where BOF1 ended or are those stories independent from another?

 

[lightbane]

Does the story of BOF2 continue where BOF1 ended or are those stories independent from another?

Yes and No. There are some references here and there, some characters show up again and so on. You can still play them separately without missing much though. There are LPs of every game in the LPArchive webpage as well.

Story-wise the order goes: BOFIV>BOFI>BOFII>BOFIII>BOF: Dragon Quarter.
The last one is a bit odd since it might as well be a separate timeline due how different it is from the others, but it might be set in the far, far future of the series.

 

[Thac0]

I just finished World of Final Fantasy, base version.
I bought this relatively close to release, and played up to the beginning of the crystal tower. In my good FF III memories I assumed this to be the final dungeon of the game, but I didn't bother to push on. Good decision, I would have burned out on the game forever if I did.

Spoiler

The game still has about 10 hours of content and a fake ending before the true ending left at that point.

Well now it is done, final playtime 34 hours.

Overall the thread we have about that game is accurate. Surprisingly deep gameplay, and playing Pokemon with Final Fantasy classic monsters is fun. But the game is way too easy to ever truly force you to make use of its deep mechanics. I died maybe twice or so, which is better than modern mainline Squeenix , but only barely.(I died a collective 2 times in FF XIII, XIII-2, XV, didn't play enough FFXIII-3 to count it but it was easy aswell)

So I will muse about some stuff yet unsaid in that thread:
This game has heavy Nomura influence. The character design is distincly his, and the NPC who gets the most character development is dedicated to a "literally who?" NPC from Dirge of Cerberus in Shelke Rui because he has a hard on for her.
Also the story is way too convoluted for a monster catching spinoff, with multiple dimensions, a "definitly not the Organisation XIII" Exknight secret circle, and guest entrances from other games which are quite WTF aswell. And important NPC for the true ending is a guest appearance from a 2008 NDS exclusive called Sigma Harmonics I genuinly never heard about.

It also has a lot of missed potential. You stack your little captured monsters, and you always have three units in each of your two stacks. The units have to be small, medium and large in size. But you always need to include the two main characters, and they can only be small or large. So you can never have a large and a medium mirages in the same stack, even if it would be cool. Also you always need to run two small mirages, and only two combined medium and large mirages. This limits your freedom a lot and is quite annoying. But to add insult to injury this restriction gets lifted as soon as you get the true ending. Now you can stack all three mirages, an upgrade that should have been unlocked about 20 hours into the game to spice things up, not literally after the final boss.

But still, the game has heart. This feels like it was used as a creative outlet by burned out/bored staff and as a way to train young staff, and it heavily overdelivers for such a project. It is genuinly soulfull, if heavily flawed and I am happy it had the success it received.
So if you like Final Fantasy, do not hold a burning hatred of Nomura in your heart after VII Re and are generally not opposed to a mutated lovechild between Pokemon, FF and Kingdom Hearts I'd say it is worth its asking price when reduced.
Odd game, but not awfull. generally comparable to that surprisingly strong mobile exclusive Final Fantasy Dimensions game.
7/10 without Maxima, I do not know if that adds enough to bring it to 8/10. Man, Square really likes to deliver quality and talent in the strangest places.

 

[IceyD]

I failed my XIII-3 playthrough, I thought it was kinda complicated lol. Still need to attempt it again.

Started The Last Remnant. Unique battle system so far, bad tutorials and all. Pretty terrible cutscenes and texture pop ins.

 

[Nutmeg]

So, I've been playing a bit of Xanadu Next, but I will probably drop it. I just beat the second boss.

It's a bit light on the action -- all about getting the enemies to whiff and then sneaking up behind them for backstab damage. There's not much variance to it at all, with goblins being the same as skeletons being the same as lizardmen and slimes repeating everywhere. Quadruped or flying enemies have been a bit more varied with some projectile users, teleporters, and hard to hit harassers. You have a basic combo and up to 4 (out of 6) quickly accessible skills which are melee attacks (although you're not likely to have all 4 slots devoted to melee skills) and a bunch of spells which are all projectiles AFAIK and live in the same quick slots. The special moves are mostly for crowd control I found, and you have a limited number of uses each dungeon expedition.

The hard limit on how far you can go is keys, which you purchase with gold. The price inflates the more you buy, but you can keep it down by selling a common monster drop (bones). You can open up shortcuts so when you do go back to crawling, you start near where you left off. So the goal is I guess to open up the next shortcut before you run out of resources, be it health or healing, skill points (if you were relying on those), or keys.

The way the world connects via shortcuts is all very clever, but seemingly has its limits because where I am now they introduced teleporters. It does feel a little like Dark Souls, with the exception that the only "bonfires" (so far) are before a boss.

Also, it's not a Diablo-like at all despite first impressions with inventory Tetris and whatnot. The approach to loot is entirely different, and the action is not as simplified and still suits a gamepad better than a mouse (as I learned after I encountered the first boss and tried fighting it with a mouse only to constantly attack grass). Also the map is not random etc. It really doesn't have much in common except superficially.

The reason I'm thinking of dropping it is pace and density. It's very plodding, and quite sparse. Also, in comparison, Ys has much better action, IMO, and the Brandish remake (not yet played, but on my radar) seems to be a better overhead Dungeon Master (or CSB), with denser dungeons and brisker pace.

Another reason is I don't like the music. Well, I do in this new forest area, but that Harry Potter movie outtake track in the Eternal Maze is infuriating, and I have a feeling I'll be spending more time in there.

The writing, or I should say translation is OK. A bit cringe. They tried to make it all very late 19th century London. I guess because it seems to be inspired by Coleridge's eponymous poem. A bit weird they stuck with Kublai Khan as a figure in the game's fictional Xanadu. I wish it either didn't do that or instead actually went down the historical fiction / alternate history route, instead of a completely fictional world using names from the real world. Minor, but personally serves to disengage me.

If only I enjoyed the music and the world building as much as the environmental visuals, I might be more inclined to stick with it. Seems it could be fun to work out an optimal path through by building cleverly, but would require you going through the game once and then planning it all out.

 

[newtmonkey]

Breath of Fire II (SFC)
I'd reckon I'm at the halfway point by now. I just cleared Highfort and it was a huge pain. The game does not allow you to save to multiple slots, so saving here is dangerous as you cannot leave until you beat the bosses. It also sticks you with a single character (Sten) that I think most people barely use (he's very weak until you unlock fusions), so if you are careless you could get yourself stuck in a very bad situation with a weak, low-leveled character and no way to escape. I had been swapping characters in and out as I played, so Sten was of decent level, thankfully.

The biggest headache for me in Highfort was the part after Sten rejoins the rest of your party. You're faced with an absolutely HUGE dungeon with lots of mazey paths ending with two possibly difficult boss battles, and no save points whatsoever. The game throws you a bone by resurrecting your party if you die with full HP/AP at the last save point, with all your progress saved. A combination of luck and careful item usage allowed me to get through this area without dying, thankfully.

Overall, I am very pleased with this one so far. It's so good that it makes BoF1 seem like a protoype that was mistakenly released instead of this game.

 

[Dishonoredbr]

• Most characters are fucking useless (low MA, low move, you get them too late in the game).

Quite late but whatever
That's something that Devil Survivor 2 fixes. All characters have same movement and by mid game you have 10 character to play around (all with different stats)and you have 3 different type of builds (Agility phys, HP phys or Mag) , in general the gameplay is much better than 1 while the story is slighty worse.


Anyways.

I Finished Xenoblade Chronicles Definitive Editon. Good Shit. 10/10, that game was adcting as fuck, story was hyped , Shulk is fucking great and legit can't wait to play Xenoblade Chronicles 2 : Waifu Edition.

 

[Bohrain]

Got one month of Xbox Gamepass to try out Dragon Quest XI. I knew the game was going to be very by the book JRPG since it's well, Dragon Quest. But the dullness of the combat feels a bit overbearing. I've played several RPG Maker porn games with more engaging combat.

 

[Puukko]

I failed my XIII-3 playthrough, I thought it was kinda complicated lol. Still need to attempt it again.

Started The Last Remnant. Unique battle system so far, bad tutorials and all. Pretty terrible cutscenes and texture pop ins.

That game was clearly made while they were still learning UE, the cutscene animations sre straight up amateurish a lot of the time. I put the game to the side when it once again restricted my party to just two which just isn't fun to play. The game is generally very opaque - gauging enemy strength is difficult for one, beyond how deep in the red your morale is. It's easy to find yourself wondering if you're doing something wrong.

I went back to SMT if... and man, it took a bit to get back into the swing of things. Compared to 2, this game turns the level design a couple notches towards the abstract. This fits the theme, but also means that the dungeons don't have to feel like real places with real world logic applied to their design. I can't even tell what these areas are supposed to be made out of.

During the later dungeons, enemy levels start creeping ahead of you, and now in the school area I'm racking in the EXP. I did run out of bullets maybe a third of the way in, and the last vendor is midway through the previous dungeon... Time to backtrack a million teleporter tiles, but at least I have the levels to recruit some of those demons now, for fusion in preparation for the final boss. Did I mention that in one of the worlds you lose your partner, and she rejoins at the level she left at, meaning there's still a hefty level difference between her and the MC? Cardinal sin of JRPGs right there.

 

[Falksi]

Breath of Fire II (SFC)
I'd reckon I'm at the halfway point by now. I just cleared Highfort and it was a huge pain. The game does not allow you to save to multiple slots, so saving here is dangerous as you cannot leave until you beat the bosses. It also sticks you with a single character (Sten) that I think most people barely use (he's very weak until you unlock fusions), so if you are careless you could get yourself stuck in a very bad situation with a weak, low-leveled character and no way to escape. I had been swapping characters in and out as I played, so Sten was of decent level, thankfully.

The biggest headache for me in Highfort was the part after Sten rejoins the rest of your party. You're faced with an absolutely HUGE dungeon with lots of mazey paths ending with two possibly difficult boss battles, and no save points whatsoever. The game throws you a bone by resurrecting your party if you die with full HP/AP at the last save point, with all your progress saved. A combination of luck and careful item usage allowed me to get through this area without dying, thankfully.

Overall, I am very pleased with this one so far. It's so good that it makes BoF1 seem like a protoype that was mistakenly released instead of this game.

I really couldn't get on with it at all.

Combat encounters take way too long to complete, and their occurrence is far to regular to be anything other than an annoyance throughout to me.

If it had a decent story I think it'd be forgivable, but it's just bog standard stuff, so didn't keep me interested at all.

 

[AdamReith]

I tried to get into Trails in the Sky SC again, I kind of just forced myself through the first one as people often say that it picks up in SC but really it just feels like more of the same and it's just so bland.

Picked up a retranslated version of BoF2 and I've really gotten into it. The slow levelling and high enemy lethality keep things feeling tense and the story is just getting better and better. Excited to see where the town building aspect will go too.

 

[Thac0]

Started The Last Remnant. Unique battle system so far, bad tutorials and all. Pretty terrible cutscenes and texture pop ins.

I really like TLR. I had it sitting in my backlog for ages with 30 mins played, that crept up to 15 hours in two weeks or so.
As soon as you get enough units to fill three formations the battles become quite strategic.
I like how the game encourages you to only fight 3-5 times per dungeon, when you chain a ton of random encounters into one huge mega battle.
Those can become dangerous, I am getting killed quite often.
Apparently the 1.0 version on the XBOX had really botched level scaling, that actually discouraged you from chain levelling because it raised your Battle Rank too fast, and that scaled enemies too aggressively. But that is different on the PC.

For me The Last Remnant is the better FFXII.
Due to the very close development history the games have a very similar feel. Rush and Vaan are basically the same character, and the assets could be changed from one game to the other without confusing anybody. The desert areas could straight up be swapped between the two games, and the guild and hunt system feels similar aswell. Also both are very gameplay and customisation driven. The Last Remnant is even more hacky and half finished than FFXII, but when you get into the mechanics they are much deeper than FFXII.

As I like FFXII decently well I love this game. Highly underrated due to the awfull first hour of gameplay.

Also some fun stuff about the antagonist

Spoiler

The Conqueror was designed to appeal to western fans, and at first was planned to be a playable hero. But then they decided to make him the final boss.
I wish they put him on the cover contrasted with Rush or something like that, because his design is rad and much stronger than that of Rush.
It is not even like that would be a huge spoiler, since he starts appearing 10 hours in or so and doing shady stuff.

 

[Falksi]

Started The Last Remnant. Unique battle system so far, bad tutorials and all. Pretty terrible cutscenes and texture pop ins.

I really like TLR. I had it sitting in my backlog for ages with 30 mins played, that crept up to 15 hours in two weeks or so.
As soon as you get enough units to fill three formations the battles become quite strategic.
I like how the game encourages you to only fight 3-5 times per dungeon, when you chain a ton of random encounters into one huge mega battle.
Those can become dangerous, I am getting killed quite often.
Apparently the 1.0 version on the XBOX had really botched level scaling, that actually discouraged you from chain levelling because it raised your Battle Rank too fast, and that scaled enemies too aggressively. But that is different on the PC.

For me The Last Remnant is the better FFXII.
Due to the very close development history the games have a very similar feel. Rush and Vaan are basically the same character, and the assets could be changed from one game to the other without confusing anybody. The desert areas could straight up be swapped between the two games, and the guild and hunt system feels similar aswell. Also both are very gameplay and customisation driven. The Last Remnant is even more hacky and half finished than FFXII, but when you get into the mechanics they are much deeper than FFXII.

As I like FFXII decently well I love this game. Highly underrated due to the awfull first hour of gameplay.

Also some fun stuff about the antagonist

Spoiler

The Conqueror was designed to appeal to western fans, and at first was planned to be a playable hero. But then they decided to make him the final boss.
I wish they put him on the cover contrasted with Rush or something like that, because his design is rad and much stronger than that of Rush.
It is not even like that would be a huge spoiler, since he starts appearing 10 hours in or so and doing shady stuff.

I'm in the same boat as you on this one Thac0. I didn't find TLR a masterpiece, but I did find it very enjoyable & worth playing through several times.

Think it's very overlooked.

 

[IceyD]

I have noticed the shop interiors are very similar in style to FFXII's. The zones are a far cut below though. Everything is just blank landscape, it's like a tech demo or something.

The combat is very gratifying but I couldn't tell you what I'm doing right or wrong still.

Story is actually interesting. Also a great sword fight scene came out of nowhere and really took me by surprise. It was like 2 minutes straight.

Dude is like 'No.':

 

[Ysaye]

So, I've been playing a bit of Xanadu Next, but I will probably drop it. I just beat the second boss.

It's a bit light on the action -- all about getting the enemies to whiff and then sneaking up behind them for backstab damage. There's not much variance to it at all, with goblins being the same as skeletons being the same as lizardmen and slimes repeating everywhere. Quadruped or flying enemies have been a bit more varied with some projectile users, teleporters, and hard to hit harassers. You have a basic combo and up to 4 (out of 6) quickly accessible skills which are melee attacks (although you're not likely to have all 4 slots devoted to melee skills) and a bunch of spells which are all projectiles AFAIK and live in the same quick slots. The special moves are mostly for crowd control I found, and you have a limited number of uses each dungeon expedition.

The hard limit on how far you can go is keys, which you purchase with gold. The price inflates the more you buy, but you can keep it down by selling a common monster drop (bones). You can open up shortcuts so when you do go back to crawling, you start near where you left off. So the goal is I guess to open up the next shortcut before you run out of resources, be it health or healing, skill points (if you were relying on those), or keys.

The way the world connects via shortcuts is all very clever, but seemingly has its limits because where I am now they introduced teleporters. It does feel a little like Dark Souls, with the exception that the only "bonfires" (so far) are before a boss.

Also, it's not a Diablo-like at all despite first impressions with inventory Tetris and whatnot. The approach to loot is entirely different, and the action is not as simplified and still suits a gamepad better than a mouse (as I learned after I encountered the first boss and tried fighting it with a mouse only to constantly attack grass). Also the map is not random etc. It really doesn't have much in common except superficially.

The reason I'm thinking of dropping it is pace and density. It's very plodding, and quite sparse. Also, in comparison, Ys has much better action, IMO, and the Brandish remake (not yet played, but on my radar) seems to be a better overhead Dungeon Master (or CSB), with denser dungeons and brisker pace.

Another reason is I don't like the music. Well, I do in this new forest area, but that Harry Potter movie outtake track in the Eternal Maze is infuriating, and I have a feeling I'll be spending more time in there.

The writing, or I should say translation is OK. A bit cringe. They tried to make it all very late 19th century London. I guess because it seems to be inspired by Coleridge's eponymous poem. A bit weird they stuck with Kublai Khan as a figure in the game's fictional Xanadu. I wish it either didn't do that or instead actually went down the historical fiction / alternate history route, instead of a completely fictional world using names from the real world. Minor, but personally serves to disengage me.

If only I enjoyed the music and the world building as much as the environmental visuals, I might be more inclined to stick with it. Seems it could be fun to work out an optimal path through by building cleverly, but would require you going through the game once and then planning it all out.

The redone Brandish is better game IMO but be aware it is basically a rouge-like with a weird directional visual, weapon durability and without the random dungeons - I think the fun is dependent on whether you like that general style of game. There are shopkeepers in the dungeon but otherwise not many people to speak to, apart from Dela the sorceress who is chasing after you ala Inspector Zenigata.

 

[Nutmeg]

There are shopkeepers in the dungeon but otherwise not many people to speak to

Good lol.

 

[Archwizard Hank]

I started FFXIII a couple months ago because apparently I live to torture myself. I got up to the bit where you first control Snow and had to stop because my lone spectator had to leave my house, and eventually my state. I'm expecting him back in April at the earliest.

Also the game was terrible. If it weren't for the erratic scattering of enemies that actually did enough damage to warrant moving my fingers over the menu navigation buttons to select healing items or more powerful moves, this would be a game you could finish by tying rocks to the up key and the confirm button.

 

[NerevarineKing]

I enjoyed what I played of Xanadu Next, but I didn't feel like doing the final dungeon. I thought they did a good jon with the music personally, it seemed to fit the game perfectly fine. The most annoying thing was a bug where the red slimes's explosion AOE is like 10x larger than it should be and I'm not sure if they ever fixed it. I actually started Brandish: The Dark Revenant recently since I just beat Ys 9 and am still in a Falcom mood. It seems like a neat little dungeon crawler so far although it did take me a minute to get used to the controls/perspective.

 

[Zanzoken]

I just started playing an old PS1 SRPG called Arc the Lad.

I love how detailed and expressive the chonky little character sprites are. I always thought Chrono Trigger and FFT had the best JRPG character sprites, but this game shits on both.

 

[aweigh]

The Last Remnant is a SaGa game at heart. If you liked TLR then be sure to check out the SaGa games.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

I couldn't tell you what I'm doing right or wrong still.

Some tips:

-Don't try to create a dedicated healing union. Instead make sure every union has someone who can revive (herbs) and a healer. Once you get revitalize your unions should be able to fully heal in a single turn.

-Arts are unlocked based purely on number of uses with a multiplier based on battle chain. Easy (and boring) way to unlock arts is to go the earliest maps of the game and rack up a big battle chain on the easiest enemies. This will have a minimal effect on your BR because the enemies are so low level.

-There is a button to show you what individual actions each character will take. (Square on a PS controller I believe). If a command says ??? they will decide what to do on the fly, meaning they may heal. Some command sets force everyone to do a specific action or nothing, others will allow more flexibility. Supposedly reassessment chance is based on the unique stat for each character.

-Union leader has the biggest effect on available battle commands. Mostly it's intuitive--combat classes gets combat commands, magic classes gets magic commands. If a union isn't doing what you want try changing the leader. Also, generated commands are different for each enemy union. Try cycling targets to see if any better command sets are available for that turn (like if you need a heal or want to use more arts)

-Combat arts > Magic arts > item arts. Item classes mostly suck. Magic can clear the entire map but the damage potential is lower overall. Using AoEs too much will deprive your fighters of needed Art XP.

-Classes are unlocked by art usage and weapon style. This is somewhat intuitive but there are some quirks. E.g. your character may use items and get locked into an item-based class when you want them to be purely a fighter. If you don't want a character to change into odd classes, disable arts for them you don't plan to use. This is important for Rush since he can get every art in the game. Once a character goes to a higher tier class they can never go back down, so when they hit a high enough class you can unlock the arts and build them up freely.

 

[cosmicray]

I started FFXIII a couple months ago because apparently I live to torture myself. I got up to the bit where you first control Snow and had to stop because my lone spectator had to leave my house, and eventually my state. I'm expecting him back in April at the earliest.

Also the game was terrible. If it weren't for the erratic scattering of enemies that actually did enough damage to warrant moving my fingers over the menu navigation buttons to select healing items or more powerful moves, this would be a game you could finish by tying rocks to the up key and the confirm button.

I found FFXIII-2 kilometers better. I actually fondly remember it. It has decent theme with time hoping, interesting villain, more freedom and better combat. It is also more light-hearted and isn't pretentious. Although, it obviously had less budget and it shows.

 

[IceyD]

I love FFXIII it's just a shame about the early pacing limiting you to 2 party members. The boss fights later on are wild.