Random thoughts on whatever JRPG you're currently playing?

[spekkio]

As for Denghinsea, this is the quick way to deal with him

Basically, you have to use only your strongest furry / scalie units, instead of humans. Fucking A, mang.

 

[Endemic]

Basically, you have to use only your strongest furry / scalie units, instead of humans. Fucking A, mang.

Well it is a low turn count run, which means you have to focus on the strongest units by definition. I agree the unit balance is poor, though (Greil Mercs vs Dawn Brigade being the obvious comparison).

 

[jungl]

I have no idea how fire emblem franchise got popular. The games are either annoying as fuck to play or slighty above mediocre. There many other trpgs where you don't have to deal with stupid game mechanics.

 

[Malamert]

Finished Shining Resonance Refrain and aside from the game having practically zero difficulty, I enjoyed it greatly. Took quite a while to finish it, about 117 hours or so.
It has some good action gameplay and some neat stuff like having your party perform songs during combat to become empowered or to weaken enemies. The protagonist can also transform into a dragon that can cause quite a lot of damage on the battlefield and also strengthen nearby allies. Problem is that you don't really have to use them that much since the game's so easy. It has only two difficulty settings: Casual & Normal. I can't even begin to comprehend how easy Casual must be. Had to go out of my way to fight way stronger enemies that blocked the paths to higher level zones to encounter some difficulty and even then some enemies were so insanely slow that I pretty much ran circles around them and tickled them to death.
The characters and their designs are all great and very charming. The villains are an absolute joy when they're on screen. VN sections are done with 3D models, so it's all quite lively.
Graphics wise it's pretty good, but I did have some issues with it. For some reason the game's anti-aliasing option either doesn't work or it does fuckall. Using Reshade didn't really help as it caused the game to crash after setting up SMAA and FXAA (which still didn't help too much). Forcing MLAA through the driver yielded the same crashes. Had to downscale it from 4k in the end.
The soundtrack is simply superb. Just absolutely amazing. No ED song, but it has so many other songs throughout the game that it's not an issue.
Story isn't anything to write home about, but I think it does its job and leads to some fairly entertaining scenarios and setpieces.

 

[Fluent]

Still playing Labyrinth Of Lost Souls and have a lot of thoughts about. So many little details and intricacies in the systems design, it's really a joy to explore. I treat the game like an obstacle I have to overcome, so I live with the difficulties as well, and it does have some nice quality of life features that make it not super hardcore, yet still pretty challenging. I lost 2 characters to permadeath, but had close calls several times. Each floor u go down tests your mettle just that much more, and sometimes u may have to switch dungeons if the new floor is just too much. But really a lovely game that I wish had more fanfare, because we could definitely use more Wizardry games like this one! Cheers guys. <3

 

[Carpincho Pampeano]

Finished Shining Resonance Refrain and aside from the game having practically zero difficulty, I enjoyed it greatly. Took quite a while to finish it, about 117 hours or so.
It has some good action gameplay and some neat stuff like having your party perform songs during combat to become empowered or to weaken enemies. The protagonist can also transform into a dragon that can cause quite a lot of damage on the battlefield and also strengthen nearby allies. Problem is that you don't really have to use them that much since the game's so easy. It has only two difficulty settings: Casual & Normal. I can't even begin to comprehend how easy Casual must be. Had to go out of my way to fight way stronger enemies that blocked the paths to higher level zones to encounter some difficulty and even then some enemies were so insanely slow that I pretty much ran circles around them and tickled them to death.
The characters and their designs are all great and very charming. The villains are an absolute joy when they're on screen. VN sections are done with 3D models, so it's all quite lively.
Graphics wise it's pretty good, but I did have some issues with it. For some reason the game's anti-aliasing option either doesn't work or it does fuckall. Using Reshade didn't really help as it caused the game to crash after setting up SMAA and FXAA (which still didn't help too much). Forcing MLAA through the driver yielded the same crashes. Had to downscale it from 4k in the end.
The soundtrack is simply superb. Just absolutely amazing. No ED song, but it has so many other songs throughout the game that it's not an issue.
Story isn't anything to write home about, but I think it does its job and leads to some fairly entertaining scenarios and setpieces.

You are probably the first person on the internet that likes the game, haven't played it yet but the elf seems cute.

I started Etrian Odyssey V yesterday, game has good production values like editing haird and skin colour of your guild members and a wide arrange of voices for them, i hope i can re edit them because i only gave voice to one of them to test the waters and is great. I haven't finished the first stratum so my combat experience is limited but my poison necro is carrying my team very hard.

 

[Rean]

Finished Shining Resonance Refrain and aside from the game having practically zero difficulty, I enjoyed it greatly. Took quite a while to finish it, about 117 hours or so.
It has some good action gameplay and some neat stuff like having your party perform songs during combat to become empowered or to weaken enemies. The protagonist can also transform into a dragon that can cause quite a lot of damage on the battlefield and also strengthen nearby allies. Problem is that you don't really have to use them that much since the game's so easy. It has only two difficulty settings: Casual & Normal. I can't even begin to comprehend how easy Casual must be. Had to go out of my way to fight way stronger enemies that blocked the paths to higher level zones to encounter some difficulty and even then some enemies were so insanely slow that I pretty much ran circles around them and tickled them to death.
The characters and their designs are all great and very charming. The villains are an absolute joy when they're on screen. VN sections are done with 3D models, so it's all quite lively.
Graphics wise it's pretty good, but I did have some issues with it. For some reason the game's anti-aliasing option either doesn't work or it does fuckall. Using Reshade didn't really help as it caused the game to crash after setting up SMAA and FXAA (which still didn't help too much). Forcing MLAA through the driver yielded the same crashes. Had to downscale it from 4k in the end.
The soundtrack is simply superb. Just absolutely amazing. No ED song, but it has so many other songs throughout the game that it's not an issue.
Story isn't anything to write home about, but I think it does its job and leads to some fairly entertaining scenarios and setpieces.

You are probably the first person on the internet that likes the game, haven't played it yet but the elf seems cute.

Hm? Shining Resonance was for the most part viewed favorably. Very fun game (minus the gay MC, wish he was Rean).

 

[Rean]

the elf seems cute

Which one btw?

 

[Malamert]

Rinna-chan is perfect!

 

[abnaxus]

Fuck Elves

 

[Malamert]

Literally.

 

[spekkio]

During the weekend I've tried a couple of games, only to give up on them after about an hour. I couldn't stand the RTS gameplay of Growlanser or the amount of VN bullshit in Persona 3 Portable. Then I cautiosly tried something else... And got sucked in immediately.

Yeah, crewman Bro Anon reporting for duty!

Well, to play DRPGs you have to be at least a bit autistic, so...

Over 9000 tutorials, yet for somebody who played any MT game, everything feels more or less familiar:

Too bad that DLCs are basically cheat codes...

 

[Nifft Batuff]

During the weekend I've tried a couple of games, only to give up on them after about an hour. I couldn't stand the RTS gameplay of Growlanser or the amount of VN bullshit in Persona 3 Portable. Then I cautiosly tried something else... And got sucked in immediately.

Yeah, crewman Bro Anon reporting for duty!

Well, to play DRPGs you have to be at least a bit autistic, so...

Over 9000 tutorials, yet for somebody who played any MT game, everything feels more or less familiar:

Too bad that DLCs are basically cheat codes...

Yes... Atlus DLCs usually ruin the gameplay. Don't install them.

 

[spekkio]

Yeah. First I've installed them ("OMG, what it's gonna be?!"), then checked what they actually do ingame (add "cheat code" subapps), and disabled like 90% of them (free money, free experience, free stats-increasing items). I was like: "what the fuck, is that what people pay real money for?". Just hexedit what you need, like a real man...

 

[Sentinel]

the macca/item/exp DLCs are free

 

[Shadenuat]

Ace Attorney Chronicles

it's silly, it's easy, kinda kiddy even, except when someone gets ded suddenly, I still enjoyed 1st part especially episode with carriage, and now going through Part 2, which seems a bit more of a recycling of first one and meh
sometimes very funny writing, especially japanese NPCs kowtowing before british
ABSOLUTELY GORGEOUS INGAME ANIMATIONS JAPANESE DRAW EUROPE BETTER THAN EUROPEANS!!

it's raining, I am sick, let's send some english into prison.

oh right it's not rpg.
...whatever!

 

[deuxhero]

Playing Dragon Quest 4 with the party chat implementation. Just got to chapter 4.
The prologues thing, where you play as a new character for 2-4 hours with their own story, is interesting in theory, but they all start by forcing you to do the boring initial grind from level 1 with no equipment. You don't even get unique low level monsters either. Only one of the four has unique mechanics (Torneko's quest for money, which is interesting if totally exploitable and tedious). I think Wild Arms 3 did it best where each of the characters focused on demonstrating one of the game's core mechanics (magic, puzzles, etc.) and you could do them in any order.
The accents thing is cancer though. The first chapter is totally incomprehensible fake scottish accent, the second is broken slav speak that's readable but just looks poorly translated instead of a distinct speaking style. The third is actually toned down far enough it kinda works (most alternate forms are common enough you might even find them in a dictionary) and I haven't played enough of the fourth to get an opinion on it. Can't really give an opinion on party chat so far since its barely been in so far, though the bits in chapter 2 are amusing.

Played some more. I'm into chapter 5 now and at the point after grabbing all party members where have to clear Alena's castle of monsters. This point in the game is a huge difficulty spike, and is impossible to win without serious grinding (boss attacks twice and can kill party member instantly at a point in the game you have no revival options), with some guides suggesting average party level to 20 or higher (was 15 for most characters except the sisters, who were slightly higher because there's two monsters only found in their chapter and you need to kill 20 of them to make their drop show up in the bestiary). This is really bad because this is the point the world briefly looks like it has opened up, but in reality (according to the guide I checked to see if I was missing something, as early game had some really opaque sequence keys) there's nothing you can actually do out of order except some mandatory collectibles you can grab out of order if you can deal with absurdly powerful random encounters, and the grand total of two real sidequests in the game (one of which you already did two chapters ago if you didn't deliberately skip it).

Edit: Power leveled to 25/26 by abusing save states to farm liquid metal slimes (both make them appear after whistle and make sure they don't run) and the fight is trivial.

 

[e-mailio estevez]

Yeah. First I've installed them ("OMG, what it's gonna be?!"), then checked what they actually do ingame (add "cheat code" subapps), and disabled like 90% of them (free money, free experience, free stats-increasing items). I was like: "what the fuck, is that what people pay real money for?". Just hexedit what you need, like a real man...

Honestly, I do not mind the macca 'cheats' in these games. I've been using them since Nocturne on action replay. I think the games are a lot more fun when you're free to mess around and experiment with fusion without macca as a bottleneck.

I realize the games are made with macca restrictions in mind so I try to balance this out by avoiding grinding or staying relatively underleveled. Some of the most fun I had with an SMT game was trying a low-level Persona 4: Golden run with extra yen enabled- at one point trash mobs were able to one-shot me and the Mitsuo fight took around an hour to complete- I had to learn the bosses' patterns perfectly and make generous use of the 'wall' elemental spells, since I wasn't high enough level fuse anything that would null his elemental attacks and they would kill me even through guarding.

 

[Puukko]

The cash restrictions are exactly what I don't like about the older games' harder difficulties. Didn't either Persona 3 or 4 have something retarded like 4x compendium costs? Nocturne Hardtype at least reduced it to a much more reasonable 2x from the vanilla 3x.

Then there's IVA that incentivizes dropping the difficulty every time you want to fuse (unless you're playing on the meme difficulty that locks you in) and despite doing that I still farmed a few million macca for fusions.

 

[e-mailio estevez]

Yeah, that's kind of the trap I'm talking about.

I've found that being mindful of my level in JRPGs and not grinding overmuch has made them a lot more enjoyable for me. But maybe I do want to grind money, or job points, or whatever other resource is unique to that game. I thought Bravely Default was brilliant for your ability to 'turn off' XP gain and uncouple grinding from being over-leveled.

In many games your experience level just seems to supersede anything else and can take the punch out of a lot of encounters. I think what I opened my eyes to this more than anything was Xenoblade- I distinctly remember attacking an enemy 5 levels higher than me and half of my attacks completely whiffing. I leveled up exactly once (i think its threat indicator went from orange to yellow) and suddenly all my attacks were hitting and I was doing exponentially more damage. In this case it felt completely arbitrary, but I think for many games it can work in the reverse where maybe you're grinding some money to buy something at the shop and suddenly you're overleveled and the next segment of the game will be a cakewalk.

I really have no issues using action replay codes, or 'cheat' DLC or whatever to try and maximize the amount of fun I can squeeze out of a game. I want the game to be a challenge but in a way I enjoy. DQ11 is made harder when you turn the 'no armor' mutator on, but then you take all the fun of itemization out of the game. I'd rather just maybe starve myself a little bit on XP, maybe add a house rule of 'only use one healing item between battles', and cheat in more money if I feel like it. I actually like the DLCs because it gives you a way to tailor the game more to how you'd like to play it.

 

[Carpincho Pampeano]

I keep replaying the same games over and over. I want to get off this ride.

 

[Puukko]

Here's something from the bottom of the obscure SMT media pile: Giten Megami Tensei, a PC98/Windows game that aimed for the most lucrative of market segments, or "ero/guro".



Not translated of course, save for the manual. The soundtrack is pretty good, but other than that I'm not too sure what to make of this. Graphically it seems pretty run-of-the-mill for the system. The number of demons seems quite limited and they're out of the COMP rarely by the looks of it. Almost all of the female demons are half nude (based) and they don't shun the gore; see 6:04:00 for a prime example, but make sure your mom is not watching. It's a pretty stark tonal shift for the series and made by Atlus to boot.

In an alternate universe, Persona 5 was never made because Atlus found a cash cow in pixel tiddies and gore.

 

[Lyre Mors]

Not translated of course, save for the manual.

There's actually a fan translation in the works that I found out about a few weeks ago. Looks promising. I'll definitely be posting about it in the "Translated Wapanese Games" thread if it gets nearer to completion/completed, unless someone else does it first.

 

[j2alg]

Going through ToHeart2 Dungeon Travelers 1 on Vita after playing the PC original for a while
I dig most of the changes, but I've noted that the character unique skills cause an issue. While they make team building a lot more interesting, they also sort of shoehorn a lot of characters into giving them specific classes. For example Konomi has a big disadvantage with her summon when you turn her into a Witch since she'll have terrible ATK

 

[Fluent]

Besides playing Wizardry: Labyrinth Of Lost Souls lately, Dark Sun & starting Grimoire, I've also started Stranger Of Sword City Revisited. Awesome game so far. Beyond just excellent dungeoneering and great mechanics, the class change feature is super cool, too! I love how u can Power Up loot, as well as "Hide" and ambush chest transporters. And the setting is top notch imo, very atmospheric and interesting to explore. Still starting out, about 5 hours in, but loving it so far. U guys weren't joking when I read over the years that this game is a good one, heh. And Revisited adds even more cool features. Cheers guys! <3