Random thoughts on whatever JRPG you're currently playing?

[notpl]

What you're describing is the entire thesis of the game Fear and Hunger (and its sequel, Fear and Hunger: Termina)

Wow, thanks for the recommend never heard or seen of this series.

Going to pick up one of them today, which do you recommend?

I haven't actually played the new one yet - the first game got some significant addons via patches throughout its life, so I figure I'll wait a bit and see what he does with it.

 

[Tse Tse Fly]

I'm playing Yggdra Union (PC/Steam). I never played the game before (neither GBA nor PSP version). Currently I'm on the 10th scenario.

It's a weird mix between Fire Emblem/Langrisser and card battler. In fact, the gameplay has significant differences from both, but it's the closest comparison that comes to my mind right now, given my limited experience both with tactical/strategy JRPGs and card-based videogames. Like in Langrisser, your characters come to battle along with their squads that will be fighting alongside them against similarly composed enemy regiments, and like in Fire Emblem there are various strategic objects on the map that you can visit and make use of. On the other hand, your dead squad members replenish after each battle and you don't get to control "regular" units (that are not led by some unique character with a personality). One notable feature about the combat system is that your positioning matters, in the way that depending on the character's gender he or she can summon their adjacent-standing allies to conduct a joint attack against any enemy unit standing beside them (for that, your allies must be positioned around the acting character in a "X" pattern - for male characters, and in an "+" pattern - for female characters), and the foe, depending on their gender, can call up allies from their side. Besides, there is a variation of rock-paper-scissors system similar to Langrisser and Fire Emblem, but it includes more weapon types. I've mentioned that Yggdra is somewhat of a card battler, but it is a very very very loose description. Sure, you collect some cards and can use them in battle, but Yggdra lacks some distinctive features of these games, such as deck building; basically these cards are just skills that you can equip and unequip at your discretion. You typically acquire new cards from winning story scenarios, and before each scenario you get to select a given number of cards from your collection that will be available to you during the scenario. Each turn you must draw 1 card from that deck, and you can activate the skill of that card when fighting against an enemy unit (your enemies also have cards and can use them). Once the turn ends, the card becomes unavailable until the next scenario and you must pick your next card. If you use up all the cards before achieving the scenario's objective, you lose the scenario and must start over. So the combat system has a puzzle side to it, and it is always fun to calculate the most efficient way to deal with your enemies, carefully selecting cards, characters positions and their targets. On the other hand, different unit types don't differ much in anything besides their weapon type, and there is only 1 equipment slot. As such the gameplay systems and mechanics are not particularly deep or complex (convoluted would be the right word; though it is so not to the point of taking away from my enjoyment) and it all comes down to whether or not the game is long enough to overstay its welcome.

The visual style and design might be not for everyone. Indeed, one can feel confusion looking at those child faces and hearing those adult voices, and in general this kind of visuals does not go well with the story, setting and theme of the game. On the other hand it doesn't look dull or boring so I give it that.

The story, by the way, is pretty typical for many games of this kind - the main heroine has been ousted from her country by foreign invaders who usurped her throne and took her lands, now she must gather her army, expunge the invaders and restore peace over the whole continent. Or something like it. I expect that later on it will turn out that those invaders were acting not on their own accord but actually were manipulated by some great ancient evil.

Regarding the music, for a former GBA title, the game boasts a pretty sizeable collection of music compositions (several dozens in total), though many of them are rather short and loop early on in the track. The music surely will not let you feel bored when playing the game but few tracks are actually memorable.

And finally, the port quality seems to be barely satisfactory (as in it is "OK", totally playable but a bit disappointing, could've been better), I'd give it 3.5/5. The developers did try to bring the experience closer to emulators, but there are still a few aspects where they could've done better. The most glaring flaw of the port for me is the blurry graphics filter which just looks bad on a big screen (or any screen bigger than phones or switch). I'm not asking for a whole new HD set of graphical assets for this price (though seeing what some enthusiasts can achieve on emulators with the help of AI, even having no proper access to the sources, makes me contemplate on this statement for a little longer; besides, what could've prevented the developers from setting the price a little higher, if that's an issue, and doing the proper justice to their own title, or at least to make a good impression with their first (?) PC port in Steam?), but at least they could have given us the ability to use integer scaling. To be fair, there *is* a setting in the options menu which is supposed to disable the filter, but it seems that it only works for the characters sprites and even then it is not helping much. Another issue is the crippled mouse support - you can somewhat use it to navigate around the menus but there's no proper visual and audio feedback from hovering and clicking the UI elements, and the game uses the default system cursor. Last but not least, the turbo feature seems to be available only during fights between units. With all that being said, the price for this port is only about $10 dollars, not full $60 (for a fucking remaster of a 10+ years old game) like some other developers like to do.

Overall good game (so far), flawed port.

 

[Dishonoredbr]

Fire Emblem Engage is kino.

 

[TalgoTheYank99]

7 Hours into Shadow Hearts for the PS2. 1900's China is an intersting setting.

 

[Modron]

41% done with Like a Dragon Ishin and I haven't joined the Shinsengumi or got those trooper cards yet.

 

[Tse Tse Fly]

I'm still playing through Yggdra Union. Currently on scenario 20 and Steam is showing about 34 hours played. The game is really starting kicking my ass in terms of difficulty - at first I thought it was kinda too easy (I selected the hard difficulty level at the start), but now I've no healing items left and am no longer able to restore my characters' morale (basically hp under a different name) between battles, and some of them have to start the battle with just 1 morale, quickly dying afterwards and losing all the XP they might have been accumulated. You really cannot afford losing clashes (fights between units) on this difficulty level, because healing items don't occur too often and you can never have enough of them. Another option to restore morale is by consuming equipable items, but I'm also out of stock here. And this was my mistake - I wasted many powerful items on the easier scenarios instead of saving them up until they are really needed. Besides I was really lazing around sometimes and solved many scenarios suboptimally, taking more damage than I could. So I'm thinking about restarting my playthrough and doing things more sensibly this time. It is not like I'm in a game-over situation though, the game does allow you to restart the scenario with +6 free medals (used to restore morale) and weakened enemies (that's what you get when you choose Retry on game over screen - keep that in mind if you ever pick up this game, because I didn't notice it at first), but it isn't fun when I have to do it like every 2nd scenario. On the other hand, I really hate to replay content that I've already seen (when there's little to no variation to how it plays out, no real replay value), even if it's just 5 minutes.

 

[e-mailio estevez]

Kind of bouncing between games. My old gaming laptop (i know) broke, built a new PC and haven't recovered anything or backup saves from the old hard drive. Mostly messing around with emulators-- some games look really nice now that I have some more horsepower to upscale things.

Kinda wanted to try Atelier Iris 2, I've never played any of the Atelier games and it has a 90s aesthetics in its character portraits similar to Grandia that I kinda dig. I take one look at the newer Atelier and Neptunia shit and I don't want to touch it.

Only problem with Iris 2 is how it looks in PCSX2, even in software mode and with much fiddling. Weird seams in the landscape, visuab bugs and whatnot. Looks great in retroarch's PCSX2 Core and with shaders applied... but apparently the PCSX2 retroarch core doesn't have save states. Blargh. I'll probably just end up playing Shadow Hearts 2 again.

 

[Derringer]

Kind of bouncing between games. My old gaming laptop (i know) broke, built a new PC and haven't recovered anything or backup saves from the old hard drive. Mostly messing around with emulators-- some games look really nice now that I have some more horsepower to upscale things.

Kinda wanted to try Atelier Iris 2, I've never played any of the Atelier games and it has a 90s aesthetics in its character portraits similar to Grandia that I kinda dig. I take one look at the newer Atelier and Neptunia trash and I don't want to touch it.

Only problem with Iris 2 is how it looks in PCSX2, even in software mode and with much fiddling. Weird seams in the landscape, visuab bugs and whatnot. Looks great in retroarch's PCSX2 Core and with shaders applied... but apparently the PCSX2 retroarch core doesn't have save states. Blargh. I'll probably just end up playing Shadow Hearts 2 again.

I think the GaussianBlur shader (https://files.catbox.moe/gndktd.fx) works well with Reshade if you don't want to force bilinear filtering with the sprites. I have it set to GaussianBlurRadius 2, GaussianBlurOffset 0.420 andGaussianBlurStrength to 1.0.

 

[flyingjohn]

Labyrinth of Refrain Coven of Dusk. Fuck this game, I wanted to like it.
-Combat for 2/3 of the game is just put auto battle because magic is too costly and generally not worth it
-Game mechanics are not very complex but are presented as the most complex thing ever
What is the illusion status effect?
Blind.
Stuff like that is common.
-Magic users get fucked. Only game where you can pick a mage and not have anything but a generic heal regardless of mage class because the extra magic is relegated to a party formation thing.
Extra magic abilities usually have the added passives of "things cost 50 percent more mana now".
-The dungeon is decent I guess. You can get wiped just by falling off and there are traps.
-There is a game breaking bug that just kills any progress you made and can happen anytime.

Nippon Ichi, why? Why do you fuck up so much? If you wanna play refrain and galleria, do it on the switch emu.

 

[Maxie]

Rance 9 is p good some ten hours in though I don't see the point in the Hoverfort gimmick?

 

[AdamReith]

Played through Atelier Ayesha. Very excellent game and the alchemy hit a sweet spot for me where I was applying all sorts of weird effects to my items without fully understanding how it worked exactly.

Overall I think Totori is still my favorite but this one was very fun and had the bonus of not crashing to desktop every few hours.

 

[Rahdulan]

I remember playing the original on the Wii for about ten hours or so, but this time I'm determined to finish Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition for the Switch. Just got through the gorgeous marsh area and side """"quests"""" are already driving me up the wall. I know that's how the game is structured, that I'll be over-leveled by doing them all, and that they're utterly uninspired "kill X" or "collect Y" ordeals, but I also don't want to miss out on small stories some provide or Affinity ratings.... which seem to be a trap of their own as progressing further by doing bland chores unlocks more bland chores to do. Combat mechanics also seem to be severely overdesigned for the kind of encounters and even bosses game is dealing with, though. I'm still early so maybe that will change as I unlock more of DA MONADOH's secret powers.

 

[Lincolnberry]

I remember playing the original on the Wii for about ten hours or so, but this time I'm determined to finish Xenoblade Chronicles: Definitive Edition for the Switch. Just got through the gorgeous marsh area and side """"quests"""" are already driving me up the wall. I know that's how the game is structured, that I'll be over-leveled by doing them all, and that they're utterly uninspired "kill X" or "collect Y" ordeals, but I also don't want to miss out on small stories some provide or Affinity ratings.... which seem to be a trap of their own as progressing further by doing bland chores unlocks more bland chores to do. Combat mechanics also seem to be severely overdesigned for the kind of encounters and even bosses game is dealing with, though. I'm still early so maybe that will change as I unlock more of DA MONADOH's secret powers.

Unfortunately it doesn't really change. Probably the biggest issue I had with the first game, followed by the MMOish combat.

 

[newtmonkey]

Lennus: Kodai Kikai no Kioku (SFC)

Finished! This was released as Paladin's Quest outside Japan, and although it seems like a pretty typical 16-bit JRPG at first, it has a lot of interesting stuff going for it. First off, it has a very unique look to it, with the graphics all drawn in saturated pastels. It's also got an interesting world/setting that mixes fantasy and sci-fi, and a surprisingly decent story (though, sadly, written very poorly).

More interesting (to me) is how the game plays; more specifically, how it handles party members, magic, and combat.

You (almost) always have two fixed main characters in your party, and can fill the remaining two slots with mercenaries hired in towns. Each mercenary has his/her own attributes, spells, and equipment. Mercenaries gain levels, but you cannot buy them new equipment... so it's sometimes worth hanging on to a mercenary found earlier in the game over one found later, if he has really good equipment.

Spells are cast using your HP (there are no magic/spell points), and each spell consists of one or two elements. There are no healing spells, so instead you have to rely on refillable healing bottles you find throughout the game (or certain equipment that heals you when used in battle). Casting a spell in battle levels up whatever elements the spell uses; higher element levels make your spells more effective, and also increase your resistance to enemy spells. It's crucial, therefore, to constantly cast spells in battle to level up your elements (one spell per character per battle is more than enough).

The combat is quite good for a JRPG. It's consistently challenging but fair, and support spells are extremely useful whether against normal enemies or bosses. Random encounters are suprisingly deadly, especially in the second half of the game, and there are very few battles where you can simply turn your brain off and select "attack" over and over. So, although there are a lot of random battles, it doesn't feel like trash combat.

The last boss was quite brutal. He has three forms, and you are given no chance to heal in between any of them. There's no way to revive characters in combat, but the game does show some mercy and revives any dead characters for the final form (but at only 1 HP!). I got to the third form on my first attempt, but could not keep up with his insane damage, and was worried that I'd have to grind some levels. Instead, I took another approach and was able to defeat him on my second attempt. A very satisfying finish!

Without doing any grinding, I ended up reaching the endgame and defeating the last boss with the main character at level 52, though most of the FAQs, etc. I checked after suggested being at least level 55 to complete the game. So, like any good RPG, there's no need to grind. Overall, this game was excellent, and I'm looking forward to playing the sequel... though, maybe not until next year.

 

[TheImplodingVoice]

Mato Anomolies.

You can see they had a limited budget. But did surprisingly well with what they had. It's by no means perfect, but I am enjoying it. Plus the artstyle is kind of cool as well.

I wonder who did the localisation. It's pretty good and dare I say.......based.

Something about it feels like SMT : Soul Hackers 1 mixed with a bit of blade runner. Interesting game and I look forward to playing it more.

 

[newtmonkey]

Final Fantasy IV: Easy Type (SFC)

I completed FF2US and FF4JP years ago, so I thought it would be interesting to try this and compare. It's basically FF2US with some minor changes to make the endgame easier. The equipment you find in the final dungeon is extremely powerful, so the last boss becomes very easy (he also looks completely different [worse, imo] in this version).

It actually has a smoother difficulty curve than the other versions. It's easy for the first 10 hours, then gets slightly difficult and stays that way until the last hour, when it then becomes ridiculously easy. It might be the best way to replay the game, actually.

 

[AdamReith]

Finished Front Mission on my third attempt. Dipping into the fifth one actually made the skill system click for me. It's hilarious how easily I fall for the "do a bit of everything" trap that these games encourage you down.

Having three colour coded specialized classes of mech made the game a very fun and straight forward Wanzer rampage. Really enjoyed the story too.

Also got around to finishing Rance 01. Really interesting game, I kind of hated the chip system but once I accepted it for what it was and grinded a bit it was tolerable enough.

I have a feeling the remake spoiled some of the charm of what should have been a much simpler game but definitely was worth a play. Nice to find something with a sense of humour.

 

[j2alg]

I'm playing Genius of Sappheiros again, this time the remake in English since that finally got an official release. It became my all time favorite 10 years ago and still is, instant nostalgia from fighting Remi

 

[AdamReith]

Blasted through Rance 02. This one was far more palatable and maybe revealed a little to me why the series enjoys so much popularity around here.

Great little JRPG scenario, hard to fault for what it was. The weird love between Sill and Rance is also strangely touching.

 

[flyingjohn]

Playing chrono cross remastered, oh boy.

-New music is dogshit. Everything is slowed down and feels almost like they are making mistakes( i know they are not), but it feels oddly annoying.
-New portraits are dogshit and for some of them you can literally see where they clipped the picture to fit the frame.
They also move from left to right position for no reason
-The performance is still terrible. You can feel the lag and see the speed up enemies thanks to fps issues.
-They introduced lag into the inventory screen.
-New translation is just the old with weird changes. Stuff like "life savings to not so secret savings".
????
- Low res backgrounds stick out without a filter
-Fmv's are original psx quality
-Speed up button doesn't speed up the victory music part

I was never much a big fan, but this is insulting.

 

[Puukko]

I'm not in a hurry to replay Chrono Cross, as charming as it is, but if I ever do end up replaying it I won't even consider the "remaster." Now, a quality difficulty mod would definitely pique my interest.

 

[flyingjohn]

I'm not in a hurry to replay Chrono Cross, as charming as it is, but if I ever do end up replaying it I won't even consider the "remaster." Now, a quality difficulty mod would definitely pique my interest.

The only one is the time anguish one. And that one is "diminish the game" from what i heard.

 

[ZACKIE]

Playing that Neo World ends with you and it's an absolute slog of a game, cutscene, after cutscene after cutscene, 3 hours in and the game is basically walk to another area, text box pops up, dialogue, get transported to a shitty filler fight, walk to another area, 3 minute cutscene, repeat

Game is fucking abysmal

 

[Sreggin Etah I]

Addenudm: More thoughts on Shin Megami Tensei, through the lens of mindlessness

I hate mindlessness in games. The opposite of mindlessness is mindfulness, more commonly called challenge, i.e. when player's neurons are forced to fire in order to win.

Given a game, potential mindlessness is the most mindless approach a player can take and still win. Alternatively, this may also be viewed as minimum challenge - the minimum mental effort a player needs to exude to prevail.

Potential challenge is the how mindful a player must be, on average throughout the course of the game, to optimize some axis of game performance, which has no bearing on the outcome of the game.

Rewarded challenge is how mindful a player must be (again, on average) for game noted achievements beyond basic win conditions e.g. score, rank or clearing "post game content".

I think i understand what are you saying there, though i have a different definition, mindlessness for me is when i'm playing a game in auto pilot, without making decisions, where the outcome is too predictable so i'm daydreaming instead, that because the game is too easy or too repetitive(often both)or just have nothing new. I have this problem in RPGs in general, more in JRPGs than in WRPGs, Breath of Fire 1 being the worst offender, not even speed hack could save this game. The problem with JRPGs combat: too easy, too many encounters and Wizardry menu based and phase combat style where you have to wait for the outcome(which is imo boring as hell especially in games with easy combat). When you combine these three elements, you create torture and suffering(for me at least). In JRPGs i'm just spamming attack button 95% of the time, using magic only for heal(potions beign better though), offensive magic is often a waste of mana and time and then i have to go back to refill it to get through a boss, so why bother? it reach a point where i question why i'm even playing this shit(the result of daydreaming). Sometimes i use magic just so i can lessen the boredom.

Looking at the definition of mindless on google: "acting or done without justification or concern for the consequences" it's a perfect defintion.

The opposite is mindful gameplay, where i'm paying attention to the game or actually taking decisions and aware that those decisions are leading me to victory(and could be very different if i took other viable decisions). SRPGs are better for that, i had to think my moves in Fire Emblem and Vandal Hearts(though Vandal Hearts does not punish death enough, good game though), and how to customize my squads in Ogre Battle(game becomes mindless once you discover the broken units but that's okay). Not to mention X-Com or Jagged Alliance.

Mindfullness or paying attention to the game could be achieve in others ways though, i was mindful when playing SMT, not because of the gameplay, the gameplay is actually repetitive shit, but because of the setting, the demon design and especially: the demon negotiations, i had a lof fun with this shit, same with Persona 1 and 2(which had shitty gameplay but cool and funny demon negotiations) i have never seen something like that in any other game, it felt fresh so it grabbed my attention.

Any game if you played enough, becomes mindless, either because it became monotonous/repetitive/predictable or because you found the stronger strategies, so everything is a cakewalk unless you restrict yourself(so.. predictable).

That applies to everything in life, if you eat pizza after 6 months of not eating anything good you will eat it mindfully and enjoying it. If you eat Pizza everyday, it becomes repetitive so you eat mindlessly and not enjoying so much.

Challenge when playing for game time efficiency is a universally applicable measure of potential challenge and a good substitute for rewarded challenge in its absence. Henceforth called "Universal substitute challenge".

What is game time efficiency? It is simply minimizing the amount of game time (in turn based games, turns, in real time games, real time) passes before victory is achieved.

(A/D/J/S)RPGs are interesting because they usually have almost 0 minimum challenge, i.e. they can be played entirely mindlessly, but they also may have decent substitute challenge (usually hampered by how infrequently they accept player inputs), and sometimes rewarded challenge.

I understand if you like this stuff, beating Heroes scenarios in the least amount of turns to get high score is an fun challenge and integrated into the game design itself. But the last thing i want to do, is to die in a JRPG dungeon because i was underleveled and having to redo mindlessly all those repetitive random encounters again, i would rather play a game that provides real challenge without having to restrict my play style.

 

[Nutmeg]

Any game if you played enough, becomes mindless, either because it became monotonous/repetitive/predictable or because you found the stronger strategies, so everything is a cakewalk unless you restrict yourself(so.. predictable).

Depends how dynamic the game is (rare) or as a substitute in real time games, how much execution skill is required -- which can also contribute to the dynamism. If it is close to humanly impossible to execute the exact same movements to the level of precision required to follow a static strategy, then each play through you're dealing with the slight variances created by your own mistakes, but because the game is so tight these small variances can mean having to really focus and think on your feet. Not to mention this amplifies any RNG the game might already have. This is what makes "simple" action games so engrossing and worthwhile despite their outwardly static appearance.

When it comes to turn based games, there is no such easy crutch.

I understand if you like this stuff, beating Heroes scenarios in the least amount of turns to get high score is an fun challenge and integrated with the game design itself

I don't generally, but it can be a way to make the most out of a slightly flawed gem or maybe a game you like for aesthetic reasons. It's a different story if the game designers have accounted for that kind of play (e.g. playing for ranks in Fire Emblem or Advance Wars (a favorite example of mine)).