Random thoughts on whatever JRPG you're currently playing?

[unfairlight]

Valkyrie Profile 2. It's the one JRPG I have ever played. I have it on PS2 but I'm emulating it right now. I like it, it has good gameplay, good music, pretty visuals, fun combat and well thought out systems. After I'm done with it I'll have to look into what to play next in the genre.

 

[Puukko]

Back to Persona 2 EP, in the (second to?) last dungeon. I continue being impressed by the depth of this game's mechanics, but not without frustrations. First, Personae are created via cards associated with their arcana, which have to be acquired through demons or in the case of several arcana, via turning empty cards into usable cards. Every party member can technically use any arcana, this is highly inadvisable since they have affinities for specific ones that more or less match their personality, which reduces MP costs and allows hidden abilities to work at full power. Thing is, the PSX version doesn't show these affinities and MP costs for the 'great' and 'good' ones are identical so even that's not a reliable way of telling which arcana are the best for whom, so you'd better have the wiki and walkthrough open. Once you have a new persona, it needs to be ranked up to unlock all its skills, which takes time. The quickest way to do this is to use fusion spells but early on you may not have any skills that work in those since they require combinations of specific elements. The game really wants you to use these since ending a battle with one has a decent chance of giving you any bonus from double ranks to extra stats and hidden abilities or mutations. So you'll be using fusion spells a lot of the time for easy ranks, especially aiming to end each battle with one. Fully ranked personae can be turned in for unique items or spell cards that can be used to give new personae extra skills, but you can only know what you'll get once the persona is already at max rank and you try to turn it in. I found myself constantly strapped for good skill cards and really unsure where to find them. Mutations are cool on paper, essentially persona evomution, but a lot of the time the resulting persona would be like 2 levels higher and not really worth it to rank up all over again. The PSP remake fixes some of the issues but alas it's untranslated.

There's lots of cool personae I've never seen in other games in the series, as well as lots of cool spells and overall different mechanics compared to the rest of the series. Some groups of personae have unique fusion spells tied to their mythological relationships. It's a shame none of the 70+ ones will ever see any real use since the game ends when your party is somewhere in the 60 range and you can only summon personae 5 levels above your strongest member. So no Lucifer or Satan for me - it would take an absurd amount of grinding for little payoff in a game that's honestly not very difficult in the first place. Now, compared to PSP IS it is a notch or two higher, mostly in the enemy damage department where I've gotten pretty close to getting SMT'd by random encounters, but if the game was a notch more difficult with a beefy side dungeon and maybe more lenient options for summoning high level personae, it would come together very nicely. The mechanics could easily support another 20-30 hours. Interestingly, it seems you completely lose access to the crafter in the endgame, at least the walkthrough makes no mention of him being available after that part of the city is lost, so I need to rely on regular stores for my gear. Really odd choice.

I like the all-adults party and setting and the story is kind of a retread of the story notes of the first game, just with different villains. This allowed them to reuse dungeons and some bosses. Losing the PSP QOL changes wasn't that bad, but the game is slower so I am on speedup mode all the time and hence rarely hear the music outside important story bits and bosses. The game works really well with some filter magic from a visual perspectice. It has, dare I say, soul compared to the cleaner remakes. I'm just a sucker for PSX visuals - the slow menus, less so...

 

[Sigourn]

My second playthrough of Final Fantasy (NES) wasn't a pleasant experience. There are five major issues with this game. I'm not talking writing or story because writing is sparse and story is just as spartan.

• The combat.
• The magic system.
• Shops and inventory system.
• The world design.

Final Fantasy has you miss attacks on a dead enemy. This is fine but it grows bothersome because every single enemy accounts as one, and you can face up to 9 enemies in battle, but in general this becomes a problem when facing anything in between 4 and 8 enemies (9 enemies are rare). Because characters are prone to miss, and their damage output is very random, knowing when an enemy is going to die is a matter of luck. This makes the already slow battles (because of their natural pace and the amount of enemies you can face at a time) even slower. We also have enemies that can stunlock you into oblivion (should you have bad luck) because your status isn't restored after the end of a round, but during a round. In practice, this means something like

1. Ghoul attacks Fighter
2. Fighter is paralyzed
3. Fighter has recovered!
4. Ghoul attacks Fighter
5. Fighter is paralyzed.

And so on. Then we have the magic system, where the Vancian magic system means you are extremely limited regarding how many can you cast at a time. And unlike Baldur's Gate or Icewind Dale, where you can rest at a dungeon, the only way you can restore your charges are by sleeping at an inn or at a tent (outside dungeons), meaning you have to conserve your spells until the very end. Even then, the genuinely "powerful" spells are often used to get rid of pesky enemies (like those that can paralyze you on touch), as opposed to being used because they are genuinely powerful. Remember what I said earlier: charges are few in Final Fantasy, and we are talking spells that are shittier than those found in Baldur's Gate. Potions render spells like Cure moot since you can buy up to x99 of those and they heal for just as much. This is probably why Hi-Potions aren't a thing. What else? Shops only let you buy one item at a time, which makes for bothersome visits. Dragon Quest III works this way too, but your inventory is very limited in that game so you never spend too much time buying Potions and Antidotes. Dungeons are fairly labyrinthian compared to latter entries in the series, sadly treasure is awful. Most of the time you get measly fucking Potions, or money in a game that drowns you with it. Last but not least: class balance sucks, with the Monk and Thief making me wonder what the fuck of a purpose do they serve. Because I sure realize the Fighter is the tank, the Red Mage is the jack of all trades, and the White Mage and Black Mage are specialized mages. But what does the Monk and Thief do? I'm still wondering. I'm sure the mechanics paint a specific picture, but I'm not seeing the mechanics as I play.

Overall, it's better than Dragon Quest and Dragon Quest II. But Dragon Quest III mops the floor with Final Fantasy.

• Enemies are grouped into individual parties, meaning you can direct all your attacks to a single party of five enemies as opposed to autistically redirecting each of your attacks to each individual enemy, or focusing all of them into one. It's less flexible, but far less annoying and much faster.
• No Vancian magic system. This is a plus in this game, because unlike Baldur's Gate or Icewind Dale there's no much thought that goes into which spells are useful. Magic is actually powerful and useful, as a result.
  
• Limited inventory makes for quick shopping and careful resource management.
• And the game is simply more quirky and entertaining.

Also lol at "elves" and "sleeping curse" being a thing in both games.

 

[Sigourn]

Man, I just... I'm beginning to sound like a broken record here, but here it goes anyway: Dragon Quest III is fairly shit. It suffers from the same problem Dragon Quest II: suddenly the world massively opens up but directions are far and few between. It feels like you are visiting new villages every step of the way in this massive world, but all of them are equally forgettable. Even worse, the encounter rate kills what could be a chill journey through the oceans trying to find out what to do next. And you face many enemies at a time in this stupid game.

It could be that I hold games to much higher standards than other people. For instance, many say Dragon Quest V is AMAZING, and to me it was simply a good game, nothing else.

 

[Exhuminator]

I put two hours into this... classic... tonight.

I kind of liked it.

"No man is hurt but by himself."
-Diogenes

 

[Lyre Mors]

I put two hours into this... classic... tonight.

I kind of liked it.

"No man is hurt but by himself."
-Diogenes

zwanzig_zwoelf would approve.

Will you continue playing it?

 

[Exhuminator]

Will you continue playing it?

Yes.

I'm a big fan of FromSoftware's older action-RPGs. I legitimately enjoyed stuff like the King's Field series, Lost Kingdoms games, and even Eternal Ring. I've had unplayed copies of Evergrace and Forever Kingdom sitting on my PS2 shelf for many many years. I was in an action-RPG mood, and figured since both of these games have autumn motifs, and it's autumn where I live, I might as well roll with them. Also in a continued effort to beat everything FromSoftware made pre-Souls era.

Evergrace has an extremely quirky OST.

 

[Puukko]

My YT feed was full of KF videos at one point, it's pretty damn interesting but might veer on the side of being more enjoyable to watch than it is to actually play the series. I know very little of the rest of From's catalogue, though.

 

[Exhuminator]

My YT feed was full of KF videos at one point, it's pretty damn interesting but might veer on the side of being more enjoyable to watch than it is to actually play the series.

I'm a big King's Field fan. I've finished KF1-4, plus Pilot Style. Also have finished Shadow Tower and Shadow Tower Abyss. I will fully admit FromSoftware's first person dungeon crawler/action-RPGs are an acquired taste. But goddamn they are delicious once you do.

 

[Puukko]

Persona 2 EP beat. That last boss was decently tough, my first 50 minute blind attempt ended in failure and I had to go back and grind some appropriate personae which took a few hours. Even then, one missed Tetraja meant my party would get muted which to my knowledge only has one cure, namely death, so I got into a limbo of having most of my party be useless, die on purpose, get resurrected and then immediately muted again. At least Tatsuya could dish out decent damage on his own and was immune to that shit. The game also does nothing to tell you what multi-effect spells do, so you're left wondering what this seemingly harmless spell did, only to find out you can't swap personae anymore.

The final dungeon was likewise pretty damn long. They saved all the Shadow fights to the end but they weren't very difficult even when I gave the answers that boosted them by 10 levels.

Overall I recommend the duology though not as a first foray into the series unless you're a big PSX JRPG fan who can deal with complex and obscure mechanics because there's no shortage of those here. Of the two games this is the more fleshed-out game though part of this is due to IS PSP being so easy that most of it is not terribly memorable (quite ironically). And that's still a 40-45 hour game while this one took me some 75 hours.

 

[CryptRat]

I took some time to play Kaijy Big Battel: Fighto Fantasy, one of the few commercial games made with OHRRPGCE (Alien squatter is another recently released one which I intend to play as well). The game aims to be reminescent of your average SNES game, not more, not less, which is fine.

The settings is quite interesting. The game is inspired by a real wrestling league I think and you play as a bunch of wrestlers chasing the evil Dr Cube in different altered time periods from old Egypt to modern ones like early 20th century Russia. The game is kitsch, silly, funny and over-the-top, don't expect it to take itself seriously, the game filled my expectations in that department.

Overall you explore the time periods one after another, although you recruit the different playable characters along the way (up to 8, one is optional, you can use 4 at a time) and each one has a special skill to interact with environment which will invite you to travel back to the previously visited locations. Hard to explain why, more of feelings, but overall I thought that the locations were a bit small while I thought the layouts were more often good than bad ; depending on the location there's more or less room for free exploration while you enter a new location with a more or less straight pass and more or less closed areas. There are some occasionnal puzzles including a cool one where you need to reorder statues based on a small story.

Encounters are visible on the map, they are relatively sparse and the monsters won't respawn until you rest. Besides, if I had only one advice, I think that, apart maybe from the very beginning where you may be lacking in gold to buy MP potions, the good way to play the game is not to rest until you know you won't roam the location a lot anymore (so for example you may rest before and after fighting against the final boss of the location, not much more besides these spots), the game seems balanced around doing the encounters once.

Combat uses a classic turn-based system. Basic attacks make no damage, each available character feels quite unique and even the different skills are generally different enough. There are hidden but logical elemental weaknesses, and I got to use buff and debuff skills. Buying the right equipment, using skills and not avoiding encounters (but not grinding either) the game is relatively easy but as you advance monsters make real damage so you'd better kill them and the game contains several fun boss fights near the end.

You have no control on characters' level up, which is a flaw in my opinion, the characters regularly gain new skills which is fine, and the best skill for each character has to be found which is even better, but I think I would have preferred to have some control on raising stats so I could more or less min/max attack/defense, and some characters even have some possible fighter or mage builds (depending on some special pieces of equipment) which could have made for a fun choice.

On a technical level, the visuals are good, especially the environments which are varied and furnished. The soundtrack is original and fits the game, all things considered I can't say I loved it myself but it's only a matter of taste. The game takes a little more than 10 hour long to beat if you do everything, which could seem short but the game really don't lack in content in my opinion. It's not notably great but I had a good time playing it.

 

[howlingFantods]

Dragon Quest XI:

Weird that I enjoy this game because it doesn’t really have anything interesting or deep going for it. I guess a tight gameplay loop and simplicity can go a long way sometimes.

Turned a couple of draconian quest settings on (stuff to make game harder) and was disappointed by the Npcs lie to you option. I thought this would make talking to people a puzzle almost: “based on what I know, is this person misleading me?” sort of thing. But damn it’s just an intrusive and annoying flavor thing. People will randomly tell you the most outlandish shit “oh no whoever talks to me loses all their memories!” and then “wow you believed that? You’re weird”. What’s the point of npcs lieing to you if they admit it the next second? I wanted to be bamboozled into doing something stupid, like going to find nonexistent treasure but then there’s just a band of thieves or something. What a letdown

 

[Ysaye]

My second playthrough of Final Fantasy (NES) wasn't a pleasant experience. There are five major issues with this game. I'm not talking writing or story because writing is sparse and story is just as spartan.

• The combat.
• The magic system.
• Shops and inventory system.
• The world design.

Final Fantasy has you miss attacks on a dead enemy. This is fine but it grows bothersome because every single enemy accounts as one, and you can face up to 9 enemies in battle, but in general this becomes a problem when facing anything in between 4 and 8 enemies (9 enemies are rare). Because characters are prone to miss, and their damage output is very random, knowing when an enemy is going to die is a matter of luck. This makes the already slow battles (because of their natural pace and the amount of enemies you can face at a time) even slower. We also have enemies that can stunlock you into oblivion (should you have bad luck) because your status isn't restored after the end of a round, but during a round. In practice, this means something like

1. Ghoul attacks Fighter
2. Fighter is paralyzed
3. Fighter has recovered!
4. Ghoul attacks Fighter
5. Fighter is paralyzed.

And so on. Then we have the magic system, where the Vancian magic system means you are extremely limited regarding how many can you cast at a time. And unlike Baldur's Gate or Icewind Dale, where you can rest at a dungeon, the only way you can restore your charges are by sleeping at an inn or at a tent (outside dungeons), meaning you have to conserve your spells until the very end. Even then, the genuinely "powerful" spells are often used to get rid of pesky enemies (like those that can paralyze you on touch), as opposed to being used because they are genuinely powerful. Remember what I said earlier: charges are few in Final Fantasy, and we are talking spells that are shittier than those found in Baldur's Gate. Potions render spells like Cure moot since you can buy up to x99 of those and they heal for just as much. This is probably why Hi-Potions aren't a thing. What else? Shops only let you buy one item at a time, which makes for bothersome visits. Dragon Quest III works this way too, but your inventory is very limited in that game so you never spend too much time buying Potions and Antidotes. Dungeons are fairly labyrinthian compared to latter entries in the series, sadly treasure is awful. Most of the time you get measly fucking Potions, or money in a game that drowns you with it. Last but not least: class balance sucks, with the Monk and Thief making me wonder what the fuck of a purpose do they serve. Because I sure realize the Fighter is the tank, the Red Mage is the jack of all trades, and the White Mage and Black Mage are specialized mages. But what does the Monk and Thief do? I'm still wondering. I'm sure the mechanics paint a specific picture, but I'm not seeing the mechanics as I play.

Overall, it's better than Dragon Quest and Dragon Quest II. But Dragon Quest III mops the floor with Final Fantasy.

• Enemies are grouped into individual parties, meaning you can direct all your attacks to a single party of five enemies as opposed to autistically redirecting each of your attacks to each individual enemy, or focusing all of them into one. It's less flexible, but far less annoying and much faster.
• No Vancian magic system. This is a plus in this game, because unlike Baldur's Gate or Icewind Dale there's no much thought that goes into which spells are useful. Magic is actually powerful and useful, as a result.
  
• Limited inventory makes for quick shopping and careful resource management.
• And the game is simply more quirky and entertaining.

Also lol at "elves" and "sleeping curse" being a thing in both games.

Agree with the post. On those two classes:

The thief is a non-magic using glass cannon with evasion, and also gets offensive magic when upgraded to a Ninja.
Monk is just if you want to not spend money for upgrading a tank with new armor and weaponry at every new town.

But yes balance was clearly not really in mind.....

 

[Puukko]

Some 60+ hours into Xenoblade Chronicles if the ingame timer is to be believed, just got the last party member. That might sound really late but it has a proper story reason. I absolutely understand where the MMO comparisons come from but those elements are not nearly as big of a detractor as one might think based on how other single player games have copied MMO elements, because considerable effort has been put into making those elements more convenient. There's a billion collectables and types of materials, but the game marks ones needed for quests before you can even get the quest and goes the extra mile by showing a flash forward scene showing who will need the item and how many. They're also needed for building affinity between party members so almost none are useless, but I would say there is an excess here since I can't hope to remember 90% of what items I have. Another area where I think less would have been more is the size of the environments - this series prides itself on exploration, which is fine, but a lot of the areas are needlessly padded and could have been scaled back by some 25% without losing anything.
The game thrives on its fetch quests but since the vast majority don't need to be turned in, you might as well take that quest to kill 3 lizard people and get it done without even needing to think about it. Really, the grindiness here is very constrained.

On the topic of visual and technical matters, I'm emulating the game on Dolphin with the WIP HD texture pack and the game looks very serviceable most of the time though the unchanged textures do remind you how weak the Wii was. That, and the low character detail and draw distance. Still, considering how large the game is while being designed for what was essentially a Gamecube on crack, a lot of the technical sacrifices can be forgiven.

The combat is where MMO influence is obvious, but I have still found it largely satisfying. Everything is cooldown based and you pick 8 abilities from an eventual list of roughly twice as many which allows for a good amount of flexibility. The two tanks can go all out on damage or stack defensive and aggro management cooldowns, etc. The "gimmick" here is that the MC's plot sword is needed to damage mechanical enemies with melee attacks, and while he can always damage them normally, he needs to buff party members for them to not be constantly parried, which when left to the AI's whims can be pretty unreliable. I like to play tanks and have the AI handle the MC's positioning that is required for his big damage output. Also, I am happy with the game'a difficulty as it really pushes you to improve your characters and you will have times when a boss or unique enemy requires you to restart once or thrice. I have found there to be a certain inflexibility when it comes to party composition against tougher enemies though - you'll always want a tank, the MC for his special abilities and the one dedicated healer. Off healers simply won't be able to keep up during those fights. I get the impression Sharla the healing sniper is considered weak but I have found her to be indispensable and she has so many useful abilities that the 8 ability limit feels really restrictive.

One more MMO element is how the game handles levels - you can almost forget fighting anything that is more than 4 or so levels above you since they gain a lot of evasion and accuracy. This is a shame since the game also puts really high level enemies just off the road in low level areas but there is no chance in hell you'll be able to take them on.

The story is solid - not the most amazing thing ever, but I am invested enough that I want answers to questions. I am not even really sure who the actual true villain will turn out to be - I've met the mechon leader, but I know there's still other figures in the shadows and he won't give a straight answer to the reason behind the aggressions. Say what you will about these super long RPGs, but I think one of their greatest strengths when it comes to storytelling is being able to set up questions and primers for plot points dozens of hours before they pay off, like a really long book or TV series would.
I like the British voice cast in all its cheesiness though no single character really stands out as being exceptional. And don't get me started on the faggot furball Riki.

The soundtrack is seriously good and I will most likely miss it once I start X since that game has a more... experimental OST. I do plan on playing X right after this assuming I don't run into serious problems with emulation. 2 will have to wait some day in the future.

 

[AdamReith]

Followed Sseth's instructions and grabbed Evenicle, really love the art style and it's kind of a lightweight wizardry clone? I also realised that these adult themed games seem to have much better writing than the general audience stuff.

Between this and Sengoku Rance I'm wondering if it's good to be bad?

 

[Grauken]

I thought it's top-down, not first person perspective?

 

[AdamReith]

I thought it's top-down, not first person perspective?

Yep, exploration is diablo style but combat and levelling up is wizardry style. Very nice mix actually.

Skill system is... haven't seen anything like it actually. You pick up skills like items.

 

[Grauken]

So basically like every other jRPG, or does it have a race/class system like Wiz1-5?

 

[flyingjohn]

So basically like every other jRPG, or does it have a race/class system like Wiz1-5?

Nope,it is a typical jrpg with set characters and classes.

 

[AdamReith]

So basically like every other jRPG, or does it have a race/class system like Wiz1-5?

Nah, in most JRPGs you level up when you reach a certain amount of XP and skills are inherent to your character.

 

[Puukko]

... I MAY have just played Xenoblade for 80-90 hours before realizing I could upgrade the Monado arts. In my defense, even at rank 1 those arts were still the single most damaging abilities by a considerable margin but man did I have a laugh when I tried pressing A on the talent art icon in the arts menu.

I went and checked everyone else's talent arts just to be sure.

 

[InD_ImaginE]

Playing SRW 3 in SRW Complete Box for PSX.

Game is hard. Thing is unlike later entries in the series like Alpha onward. there are several glaring issue with the difficulty:

1. Real robots (think Gundam, Full Metal Panic, basically smaller robots), at least early until late mid game, are incredibly weak with their pew pew arsenal. You would probably need 4 - 5 attacks from Real robots to kill a mook with exception early game powerhouse like Z-Gundam.

2. Real robots are incredibly weak armor wise and would get their health reduced by 50 - 70% by one hit. Later game balance this out by having them being speedster with good evasion (usually mooks have 20 - 50% chance of hitting them). Here the mooks are so accurate that they have 80 - 100% hit chance most of the time. This with above factor basically relegates them to try out-range enemies (which is hard mid game onwards due to enemies usually have range of half the fucking screen) or having the repair robots repair them instantly after they attacks otherwise they are guaranteed dead on enemy turns.

3. Super robots (think Mazinger, bigger robots which are powered by pretty much magic) are woefully inaccurate (or enemies have too high of evasion). Super robots are the only one damaging your enemies due to reason number one above... but they do it with 50 - 70% accuracy. There skills to solve this problem.. but you are limited only using it maybe 4 times a stage.

4. Enemies deals way too much damage. Some enemies can deal 30% of a Super robot health in one attack and can nearly insta-kill Real robots. Those enemies also happens to have very high accuracy so you have no choice to eat its attack most of the time. Did I mention they have range of half the fucking screen? Of course they do.

5. Resource are scarce. You barely have the money to upgrade your units so they will be on par with the enemies. After early upgrades you probably got enough money in one stage to upgrade one of your unit parameters (out of 5, 3 of which are important) once (out of 10 upgrades for each parameters).

 

[Silentstorm]

It's even harder if you go for the true ending and boss, if i recall, the PSX version has you needing to beat several stages in 350 turns or less, anymore than that and you can kiss the true ending goodbye, and i seem to recall it being the canon ending for SRW 4.

Meaning the game doesn't really expect you to play super conservatively and slowly which...can be a problem like you said.

 

[InD_ImaginE]

It's even harder if you go for the true ending and boss, if i recall, the PSX version has you needing to beat several stages in 350 turns or less, anymore than that and you can kiss the true ending goodbye, and i seem to recall it being the canon ending for SRW 4.

Meaning the game doesn't really expect you to play super conservatively and slowly which...can be a problem like you said.

From what I understand another keypoint for the true ending is pretty much skipping all the optional stages especially early in the game when you are at the weakest... which is another problem entirely due to the fact that doing so exacerbate the resource issue, not to mention your pilots will be under-levelled.

 

[Nutmeg]

Playing SRW 3 in SRW Complete Box for PSX.

Game is hard. Thing is unlike later entries in the series like Alpha onward. there are several glaring issue with the difficulty:

You seem to be playing it wrong. From memory the way to play the game is to make extensive use of the fortress/carrier thingo's massive AOE attacks.