Random thoughts on whatever JRPG you're currently playing?

[Archwizard Hank]

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.

If it follows the precedent set by X-2 at all (which by all accounts, it pretty much does, right down to the bizarre monster collecting minigame) then I'd imagine so.

I will say this though, I've watched up to about halfway through that game and the experience was like getting my brain sucked out through my nose. I mean I know RPGs just don't translate well to LP footage in general but goddamn.

 

[lightbane]

I finished Bowser Inside Story. Quite a cool game, if relying too much on minigames. It somehows makes you feel bad for Bowser, as despite being the main protagonist of the game and doing so much... He's still owned by the Bros offscreen and gets only a cake for his efforts.

Now playing Dream Team. How slooow it is, the downgrade to 30 FPS is lame, the new art style is boring and not as funny as the previous games, it takes forever to level up and, despite Luigi being the main protagonist this time, even in dreams he sees himself as a support to his brother. The Pi'llos are funny and have a cool design, they're the Ancient Civilization of a Wondrous Age (TM) but in Mario-verse. I wonder if the devs watched Wakfu (the French cartoon), because they have some resemblances with the Eliatropes.

 

[InSight]

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.':

It saddens me when sword use is portrayed in such a way when you know and value the craft behind them.
"it’s important to understand, swords are valuable and sharp edges are fragile, and you don’t and can’t slam two thin, sharp edges together without severely damaging them. It's simple physics and there is no escaping it."

http://www.thearma.org/essays/edgemyth.html

 

[Siveon]

It saddens me when sword use is portrayed in such a way when you know and value the craft behind them.
"it’s important to understand, swords are valuable and sharp edges are fragile, and you don’t and can’t slam two thin, sharp edges together without severely damaging them. It's simple physics and there is no escaping it."

It's fantasy, my man. Nobody in that game is worrying over smallpox, armor chafing and ration quality either so let the anime men slam their swords together all cool-like.

 

[deuxhero]

Not really a jRPG, but figured I do it here. Played Wind Waker and after finishing it am doing Twilight Princess straight after. Never finished WW before this, while I hadn't played Twilight Princess since it came out for Wii.

Wind Waker:
I know people have said it aplenty, but I'll say it again: The Great Sea is empty and boring. I used a romhack to add HD's swift sail (double speed, no need to play ballad of gales), and I still walked away from the game to get a glass of water or use the bathroom on multiple times. Playing with a cheat code that lets you swap between two sets of items with down on the d-pad really, really helps the game since it makes heavy use of its items even outside of its dungeon. It's also way too easy, as only Wizzrobes (in certain rooms) and Darknuts are ever any actual threat.

Spoiler

Hyrule

looks amazing and it's a shame it is just a short walk to the final dungeon because a large wilderness area looked amazing. Many bosses feel unfinished, with several having me expecting a second phase due to how simple they were only to just end.



Twilight Princess:
Game needs a more vibrant color pallet. It's way too close to the "real is brown" shit (though some areas are better than others), and it means the real/natural world and Twilight aren't distinct enough. Game is too linear and even parts that would be trivial to make non-linear (letting you grab the mirror shards in any order wound require minimal changes, but you can't) are linear. Even in the TAS, the only thing that's really done out of the intended order is getting the Master Sword really early. Wolf form is moderately interesting power, but you've seen 90% of what it does by the time you can freely swap back and forth and none of the items you get have any interesting synergy with wolf form as interaction between wolf/human is limited to removing an obstacle as one form so you can get past it as the other.

Ultimately both are solid 4/5 games, but their flaws are big.

 

[AdamReith]

Finished up with BoF2 and basically loved every second of it up to the last dungeon which had me having nightmares of a roomfull of japanese developers laughing at my toil. It really takes the piss but the game is so great otherwise I didn't mind too much when I had to bail on the last boss, I'm sure I'll replay it at some point.

Gave Grandia a shot and about ten hours in, very surprised this game isn't talked about more. The item/equip systems, characters, music and basically everything is artfully implemented. At first I was worried it was going to be too "kiddy" for me but somehow it's made these little fuckers so loveable it doesn't bother me at all. 10/10 so far.

 

[Ysaye]

Finished up with BoF2 and basically loved every second of it up to the last dungeon which had me having nightmares of a roomfull of japanese developers laughing at my toil. It really takes the piss but the game is so great otherwise I didn't mind too much when I had to bail on the last boss, I'm sure I'll replay it at some point.

Gave Grandia a shot and about ten hours in, very surprised this game isn't talked about more. The item/equip systems, characters, music and basically everything is artfully implemented. At first I was worried it was going to be too "kiddy" for me but somehow it's made these little fuckers so loveable it doesn't bother me at all. 10/10 so far.

I agree Grandia is an underrated game that I found gets better as it goes along; the characters do get more mature as it goes along and some of the "goodbyes" later get quite sentimental.

 

[Dishonoredbr]

Short thoughts on Xenoblade Chronicles 2 , after 50 hours on it.

Combat - good. Really good. But comes online realy slow imo.

Story - It's finally picking up but first 4 chapters are slow as sin.

Characters - decent. Zeke and Pandoria the best. Morag is also good. Poppi is cute. Rex, Mytra and Pyra meh. Torna characters really steal the scenes 100% of time.

Character design - is mixed. Good shit - Pandoria , Brigid , Wulfir , Most male blades , Ursula , Vale, etc. But some real garbo - Mythra , Dahalia , Perun , a lot of female blades. Monolith is bit too horny.

Unironically , the best design of this game come from Nomura (yeah that nomura) of all things. Again Torna is really the best thing about this game so far.

OSTs - Freaking amazing.

World Design - Again. Amazing.

Side quests - Better than XC1 DE because Blades quests exist.

Misc stuff - Tiger! Tiger! is a sin and everyone who made should burn / Poppi is good character ruined by the one note Tora and his stupid maid fetish family/joke / Gacha system is trash / Even if i horny or whatever , game too horny at times and quite few times horny at wrong times , i thinking i'm good of upskirt of Poppi QT and Mythra game , Thanks / Boobs physic for some blades are wacky af , 10/10 Literaly Dead or alive.

Spoiler

thanks games let me know Tora design her to use panties even if she's robot

 

[Puukko]

Nopon genocide best day of my life.

 

[Cromwell]

Got me a 3ds and started playing crimson shroud. I am now in newgame+ and everything starts getting tedious. I also have to the the fucking skeleton grind again.

 

[IceyD]

5 hours into BD2. Runs like shit in docked mode. Pretty tolerable in handheld.

Definitely a traditional Bravely experience. I actually like the character models and job outfits quite a bit.

Nice music, good pace and difficulty so far.

 

[jungl]

does the game still play itself?

 

[IceyD]

No auto battle in this one. You can do up to x4 speed and can also press Y to have a character execute their last input again, but no full blown auto battle.

Also you can cut grass with your sword on the world map for a chance at items and there is a lot of grass.

 

[Cromwell]

So for everyone that hasnt played crimson shorud, you cant really gridn in this game. Levels dont exist and the onyl way to get stronger is by getting better gear or getting the same gear and melding it (fusing two items with the same name into +x).

Very early in the game you come upon a dark room and need a certain item to break the spell. The Game doesnt tell you what that item is and where to get it. it gives you a vague hint which ironically you will understand if you looked up where to get the item. You ahve to go to a certain room since encounters only spawn in their rooms and fight some skeletons, you start with 2 archers and a warrior and if you kill an archer reinforcements spawn in the form of either a mage or another archer which means you can get 2 mages (these drop your item) if you kill the warrior a skeelton knight will spawn which takes up one of the two reinforcements slots. Even if you know all that and only kill the archers theres a certain chance the mages wont spawn and if you get one or two of them theres still a high chance your item doesnt get dropped since its drop rate is shit.

You cant progress without this item, fights in this game take a while and you have no real way of grinding to make the process faster so you go into the room spend what feels like an eternity to fight these fucks and then do it again by first going to another room clicking away the text and going back. The first time around it took me over an hour until I had the item (and about only 7 to beat the whole playthrough) and now I am about 2 hours on it. Why I am doing it if the first time wa already soulsucking? because somebody decided it would be a great idea to lock the good ending behind NG+ along with all the additional content.

 

[Cromwell]

I gave up. I went back to check if there are encounters where I could get gear from to meld and found a minotaur waiting. Now this particular creature can lifesteal which means the was the system is set up beating him is a chore. You can do two things in a given round with a character, take some action which means attack, do magic or use an item and also use a skill. for magic and skills you need mp which you get by getting damaged, doing damage or using meditate which is a skill and therefore you cant do any other in the round.

Without those buffs you wont do much so ou have to keep all the necessary things up and also debuff the enemy, Since you have to spend turns meditating to get mp all of that takes a while while your healer has to keep you alive and also buff/debuff. in the first playthrough the battles already were long compared to standard jrpgs but it was bearable since there arent really trash fights only long normal fights and slightly longer hardrer bosses but everythign went realtively smoth (aside from the skeleton thing I mentioned in the first post). The Game gives you options to make things smother for example with spells that buff or debuff whole teams in one go but you would have to grind for this (which is hard since there arent random trash fights and most fights aret repeatable), you also would have to fuse them into equip since only skills are bound to the character magic is boudn to items which also means you have to keep the item if you want to avoid grinding for it again. Most skills are also single target and only work for the one thats casting them therefore limiting your options.

when fighting the minotaur I spent most of the time keeping my buffs up instead of damaging hiom which meant one unlucky hit from him undid 70% of what I ahd done int he last two minutes and than startuing again with buffign debuffing. You also cant see which debuffs the enmy has because it is only mentioned at the start of his turn for a second, for everything else you have to open a submenu look at the combat log and check what was stated to know if any given debuff has run out. in the first playthrough everything was still fun and doable even the few harder encounters but since NG+ started even the fucking trash goblins have more hp which means more round s of buffs and debuffs and all that shit until I get enough gear and spells to even it out but its such a chore that I dont want to slog through it anymore.

 

[spekkio]

BROS, finished another Fire Emblem, Path of Radiance this time.

Things I liked:

- New features, like Bonus Experience:

Skills:

& Forging:

- Ability to choose secondary weapons when promoting knights:

- Protag being actually one of the best units in the game (which wasn't the case in older ones),

- Generally hot babez:

I esp, loved some 3d models, which look great in enhanced res. Japs seem to have devs who specialize solely in 3D modeling of female thighs & butts.

- Story which was quite decent (protag is not a messiah this time, at least for most of game's time)

Things I didn't like:

- Fucking furries:

Overpowered as enemies, yet useless as units. #yiffinhell

- UI being a mess when compared to Snes / GBA games. WTF happened here, with old layout you were able to do the same, but much easier / quicker.

- Generally easy and uninspired encounter design (beginning of the game is an exception), combined with occasional "superman" boss. Final boss was the single most retarded enemy in the series so far (only two units can hurt him, at least on hard, while he can one-shot almost any ally). GTFO with this cheap shit, give me demanding yet fair encounters from Snes era games.

Anyway, MVPs:

I was also able to link both GBA games using VBA-M, which enables three additional Trial Maps:

And two galleries:

It takes some time to set everything up, but works fine. Info here.

And "final" save can be imported to Radiant Dawn:

 

[AdamReith]

Finished Grandia, the two discs kind of feel like different games but not necessarily in a bad way. The second half was a lot more generic though.

Great fun right until the end with just enough sentimentality to get you involved with the characters. Loved the short and sweet dungeons.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

MVPs:

Boyd is always 1st.

 

[Ialda]

I feel dirty for playing a mobile game, but Another Eden on IOS is the most '16-bits JRPG' experience I've had for years - warts and all (I mean, your party infiltrates the big mothership of the baddies by being shot at it with a big fireworks canon). And the gacha has been good to me by giving me some good OP 5* characters for my party. Grinding the hard/very hard versions of the dungeons to get multiclass and gear materials feels dumb, of course, but it's a rather optionnal activity as long as you don't go for endgame content.

 

[Cromwell]

I tried to give crimsons hroud another try and banged my head against it some more but I am finally done (probably). I read a few reviews about the game and aside from one nobody that reviewed it has played new game plus since the difficulty is on another level from new game. More hp, more damage more skills that get used while your power doesnt increase as much. You are required to grind for items and with the combat system as it is grinding in ng+ isnt even remotely fun.

 

[Gamezor]

I cant put down 13 sentinels. The story drip feed is addictive.

 

[Thac0]

I am mainly playing Crimson Shroud and Bravely Default 2 right now.
Also I am very close to finishing my Romancing SaGa 2 run, just lapping up some sidequest stuff before going into the final dungeon.

I will write about Crimson Shroud in more detail when I finish it. Fun game, very unorthodox compared to other JRPGs and has quite deep gameplay that benefits for its strangeness. Also peak aesthetics.
The story triggers are absolutely awfull however. Fully agree with Cromwell on that, it seemed like they tried to stretch playtime by making the progression very obtuse. Ok with a guide, but idk how people play this blind.
I like it much more than him however, exotic and difficult is my jam.

Bravely Default 2 swept me away.
Final Fantasy IV is the first JRPG I ever played, and it holds a special place in my heart. I like all off FF III,IV,VI a lot, since they all share common design principles that you don't see that often ironically. Despite the massive success of Final Fantasy noone ever really copied SNES FF systems wise. Bravely Default's role for me has always been the Nostalgia bait for classic FF.

Default 2 is in every way more accurate to SNES FF.
The initiative is now the same system as FFX, count time battle (CTB). That is the best Final Fantasy system, since it marries the purely turn based initiative from very early FF with the later ATB.
The characters are the same archetypes as usual, Seth is Tiz, Gloria is Agnes, Elvis is Ringabel, Adelle is Edea. And they are all a step up, they are around the same quality as the characters from FFV, the weakest FF characters.
Also the narrative is played mostly straight this time. Both bravely games were much more subversive, doing weird multi dimension shit much sooner. I always thought it was to their detriment.
There is a lot of hidden stuff. I got a tinge of Nostalgia as I could walk square through a wall, through a door obscured by the camera angle, for a chest in the first dungeon. That is a big part of the charm of early FF dungeons.
The new weight system encourages you to use all the stuff you get from chests, even if it is weaker than your current gear. Having a lighter helmet in your inventory for when you buy/find a heavier axe is good.

The new thing this game does is a lot of sidequests. Some of them are awfull, literal fetch quests where you kill 3 goblins for 500 gold. Some are decent, longer quest chains with some dialogue and a boss for unique rewards. Some really enhance the game, containing valuable characterisation that enhances the characters a lot, and unlocking new group dialogue. The quest where you find new shoes for Adelle is the reason I have such a high opinion of this games characters.

And best of all, the difficulty is brutal. I heard it described as the hardest JRPG in a decade. Shin Megami Tensei IV Apocalypse was 2013, and that was equally tough on apocalypse, so I can't fully agree.
Still it has been ages since I fought a boss, died, retried with better strategy, died again, realised that I don't have enough phoenix downs to win this, leave the dungeon, gear everyone up, return fully equipped and staffed with consumables and STILL have a close battle against the boss. This is FF V if you didn't have to mod the game for it to be hard.

I love this game.
It will be a real task for SMT V to snatch GOTY 2021 from BD II for me.

 

[Thac0]

I feel dirty for playing a mobile game, but Another Eden on IOS is the most '16-bits JRPG' experience I've had for years - warts and all (I mean, your party infiltrates the big mothership of the baddies by being shot at it with a big fireworks canon). And the gacha has been good to me by giving me some good OP 5* characters for my party. Grinding the hard/very hard versions of the dungeons to get multiclass and gear materials feels dumb, of course, but it's a rather optionnal activity as long as you don't go for endgame content.

That game has some prestigious staff.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Masato_Kato

But I can't get over my guttural disdain against gacha games.
Some mobile JRPGs are adequate, Final Fantasy Dimensions is decent SNES FF nostalgiabait aswell.
Lootboxes and 5* units sound disgusting.

 

[Cromwell]

I will write about Crimson Shroud in more detail when I finish it

I am still from time to time playing a battle in NG+ to get a bit of gear to try finish it with the good ending, I cant help myself. So I hope you do NG+ to give impressions.

 

[Thac0]

I will write about Crimson Shroud in more detail when I finish it

I am still from time to time playing a battle in NG+ to get a bit of gear to try finish it with the good ending, I cant help myself. So I hope you do NG+ to give impressions.

I usually don't do NG+, if the game gives me a halfway decent ending I am happy with it, even if it's sad. But sure, the gameplay is good enough to justify NG+ for this one, especially if it gets harder.
That might take a while, I only game on my 3DS while watching western TV shows currently. There havn't been that many good ones, maybe I finish it when I start the new season of The Expanse.