Random thoughts on whatever JRPG you're currently playing?

[Reinhardt]

meh. meh-meh-meh. mehmeh. ekera.

 

[d1r]

Project X Zone
basically a sequel to Namco X Capcom that does some things better than NxC, but a lot of things worse than NxC. Where both games shine is the music department. Where both games fail is still the difficulty. They're both piss easy on the Standard difficulty. And while Advanced mode is probably more challenging due to enemies having more HP and DMG output, both games do not offer anything interesting in NG+ to warrant a second playthrough (they're still very long games, and PxZ2 exists).

Overall, PxZ feels like a cheaply made tribute to NxC. The graphics do not look as good and crisp as NxC, the art style in most cases is worse than NxC's, the game looks way too bright and sometimes can be a real eye sore, the story is hot garbage (NxC at least tried to be serious with it), and fights with a lot of enemies on screen feel very underwhelming because of how the game handles enemy groups on the battlefield.

Basically, there are some missions in the game that make you battle more than 60 enemies on screen. Sounds interesting at first, right? But then you notice, that enemies only in your proximity will move to you and attack you. Turns out, that most battlefields in this game are split into trigger zones that enable the AI of a specific enemy group when you step onto them. It's a super weird design decision, considering that trash mobs, that attack you, do not lock you into a battle screen anymore (unlike in NxC where you had to spend ressources to not engage with them in the battle screen). So any form of tactics, on how to handle a group of enemies approaching you, can be safely thrown out of the window.

PxZ's new battle gameplay looks different than NxC's at first glance, since it's way more chaotic, because both characters (a unit consists of two characters) do a barrage of attacks simultaneously on button press instead of one character doing one string in NxC. PxZ is all about XP meter management (which allows characters to cast skills or do flashy super attacks), and who in the party gets to use it, since the XP bar is shared by THE WHOLE PARTY. Other units on the battlefield can join a unit into the battle when they are close to the unit that engages the enemy, and you can also assign guest characters to all units for even more chaos. So you often find yourself in a battle with at least five party members throwing all kind of shit onto the enemy (which is neccessary though because simultaneous hits of different units give you cross hits, and cross hits make XP regenerate faster). At the end of the day however, it's still all about timing (well timed inputs net you crits), and finding the optimal combos for max damage and optimal XP regeneration.

Special attacks of units look great in this game, because of the nicely drawn and animated 2D artwork, and the music. Definitely one of the few highlights of this game.

Overall, a pretty average game, and kind of a disappointment for me, because I really had high hopes for a sequel to NxC.

 

[flyingjohn]

Anyway wouldn't mind other players thoughts on Koei games, esp. w.r.t. difficulty, how dynamic they are, AI etc.

Play l'Empereur, a koei Napoleon game. Most nations gang up on you and the ai is pretty aggressive.

 

[Reinhardt]

xenoblade chronicles 2 chapter 7

 

[goregasm]

Anyway wouldn't mind other players thoughts on Koei games, esp. w.r.t. difficulty, how dynamic they are, AI etc.

Can't really speak too much on some of that because it's been legitimately decades in some cases since I have played some of these, that said I can say what I recall fondly.

Gemfire, as you spoke about before. The Genghis Khan game was similar in many ways but had some pseudo historical stuff in it. Probably played that one the most.

I remember Balor of the evil eye being fun but difficult.

Liberty or death, was in the same vein of gemfire/khan and enjoyed it.

Most of these I played on console as a kid, so who knows how they translate to now, but I can say I know I really enjoyed their Khan game, and it got me into strategy games later.

Have always been very particular about jrpgs, not a big fan of 90% of what I played outside of a few series, Lunar, Vay, a decent amount of the Working Designs published games were part of growing up actually.

The forays into strategy or turnbased games, came from my early days sitting down with my nes as a little dickhead, and Keoi had a big part in that. Got games like civilization on my radar later in life. Much of their strategy games were "samey" but I do remember enjoying them.

 

[deuxhero]

Tales of Vesperia DE. It's a huge step up over Symphonia (which I could never understand the love for). Since you can run around in any direction at the press of a button, have ways to put assign additional attacks beyond just four, ways to break the normally linear level 1 to level 2 to level 3 arte chain limitations, artes can be more or less effective depending on what enemy they're used on (higbox size, stun resistance, even range), and skills aren't a total pain in the ass to reassign (In Symphonia you have to find another copy of an extremely rare item to learn or change skills, but in Vesperia you just learn skills from having weapons equipped and can assign as many as you have points for) there's way more depth to combat.

The characters are also way more interesting. Main character Yuri is a local heroic problem solver of some skill for the lower class who comes to recognize how destructive to the ends of liberty a multi-tier justice system is and actually decides, on his own, to alter or abolish it (but he's impatient and sometimes engages in mean-spirited humor at the expense of others). This is a great change from the typical jRPG hero who is either A: A blank slate b: Naive about the world (so he can be infodumped) and stupid but unquestionably virtuous. I also love how the party members just don't get along perfectly, which makes for great dynamics (KotOR2 being another great example of this in action) and allows for skits to actually have interesting interactions beyond lolsowhackyanimearchetype.

 

[Puukko]

I've been watching a friend play through the Ar Tonelico games. This series mostly interested me due to the music and ties to Atelier. So far I don't think I'm losing out on much by experiencing the games this way. The standout qualities are wrapped in a lot of standard JRPG fare and anime nonsense.

The series is the director's pet project and a lot of effort has been put into the world building including a made up language that is extensively used in the music. This means a lot of terminology and concepts to keep up with, marred by a mediocre NISA translation. The second game has a patch to fix some of that but in all honesty I can't say it's a big improvement when compared to the first game. I don't really care for the character designs or overall style of characterization. A big focus is on the magical girls whose social links take up a substantial amount of time. Let me tell you, these girls have layers to make Shrek blush, along with issues and high requirements of effort and maintenance. Hope you like yanderes. But you get outfits and magic for your efforts at least.

Now, the music gets high praise and a strong recommendation from me. I posted a selection of stuff in the vgm thread and even without the context of having played the games, following the translated lyrics while listening is genuinely a great experience.

 

[Reinhardt]

i still have lots of songs from 1-2 in my youtube playlist.
pity third game is still unplayable on pc iirc.

 

[Puukko]

i still have lots of songs from 1-2 in my youtube playlist.
pity third game is still unplayable on pc iirc.

I played a chunk of it back in 2021 and it worked fine.

 

[Reinhardt]

i still have lots of songs from 1-2 in my youtube playlist.
pity third game is still unplayable on pc iirc.

I played a chunk of it back in 2021 and it worked fine.

good to know. will check ps3 emulation again after i finish messsing with switch games.

 

[Reinhardt]

100+ hours in xenoblade chronicles 2, pandoria in blurred glasses > pandoria in clear glasses.

 

[Puukko]

Some initial impressions on Front Mission 3. Surprised by the amount of front loaded story and optional exposition, you get a whole ass intranet with lots of pages of information/propaganda. Also the earliest route split I've ever seen, literally right after the tutorial and it is not obvious at all.

The combat is... Well for someone who's mostly used to Fire Emblem, it's not easy to tell when exactly an enemy will counter and there's a lot of unpredictability since different weapon types hit different body parts with some degree of logic but also randomness. I do like the extra angle though since you can force enemies to surrender by wearing them down.

I'd like to be able to easily see enemy range as well but so far that doesn't seem like it'll be a feature.

 

[Reinhardt]

playing etrian odyssey 3. sea exploration is some broken shit. sitting at 50+k after first stratum. and i didn't even sent my farmer army into the dungeon yet.

 

[Elthosian]

Putting a lot of time into Berwick Saga right now, and man, what a fucking great TRPG; from the protag. Lord not being able to participate in sidequests to the way most recruitable units are mercenaries you need to make happy if you want to get them forever, Kaga went out of his way to make the gameplay very consistent with the narrative (in contrast, with, say, TO:LUCT). On top of that, the mission objectives have been pretty varied even though I'm like 33% into the campaign, and itemization is brilliant, with most weapons/spells/crafting elements having relevant use cases. Definitely / , hadn't enjoyed a Japanese product this much since I binge-watched Legend of the Galactic Heroes.

Also, very nice music:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwMKNJWjH-g

The only thing I'm missing is a fatigue system such as in FE Thracia 776, as it is I'm not really sure about how many units I should focus on, and boy it's hard to decide since they all bring pretty unique skills to the table

 

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Also, very nice music:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwMKNJWjH-g

Cool track. Very cool cover art too! I've heard of Berwick and Tear Ring brought up over the years but this cover art really makes me interested.

 

[Elthosian]

Also, very nice music:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cwMKNJWjH-g

Cool track. Very cool cover art too! I've heard of Berwick and Tear Ring brought up over the years but this cover art really makes me interested.

I definitely recommend you give it a try. It was fully translated some time ago and plays very smoothly in any PS2 emulator with a controller. It also has lots of pretty detailed tutorials about most of its systems that make it easy to go in blind.

 

[Suicidal]

Just finished playing Romancing Saga 2 and I was very impressed by it.

I've never played any Saga games before and I decided to play it because I've heard that Genius of Sappheiros, another game that I greatly enjoyed, was a clone of Saga, so I played it expecting a similarly autistic dungeon crawler.

Instead I got an empire building sim + RPG hybrid that handles choices & consequences and player freedom better than many of the CRPGs beloved by the Codex, despite being a 30 year old console game and predating most of them.

One of the few RPGs where you can actually fail main quests and still continue playing and where choices & consequences can significantly impact gameplay instead of making some character vomit a different set of dialogue at you 5 hours later.

I was reminded of Pathfinder: Kingmaker while playing this game, but I ended up liking RS2 much more, because the dungeon crawling and empire building aspects actually work in tandem with eachother, instead of one of them being some lame tacked-on sub system that is a boring waste of time that completely kills the pacing of the game, but you HAVE to engage with it in order not to trigger certain game over flags. In fact, if I was the emperor of earth, I would enact a law that if a game dev wants to implement some city/kingdom building elements into an RPG, they have to play RS2 beforehand to see how it's done.

I could see that GoS took some inspirations from RS, mainly the combat mechanics, but that game is completely different, much more focused on combat with much more elaborate mechanics and encounter design. Here the combat is honestly quite basic and is like 90% preparation 10% execution, but I still like the way it was done. The game gives you opportunities to learn about your enemies by traveling to different parts of the world and talking to NPCs. For example, you learn that one of the story bosses is a mega-thot sorceress that turns men into simps with magic, so you bring a party full of women to fight her and her signature spell is useless against you, turning the fight into an auto win.

I also liked the game's approach to party members - you can teach any one of them any skill or spell you want and make them use any weapon and you are forced to constantly use different parties so you have to build a suitable one depending on which quests or areas you choose to tackle at a given time.

Definitely far from a perfect game. I particularly hate how obtuse it is at times and how it lacks certain mechanics to support its own game design (for example, there is no day-night cycle in the game, but some quests or interactions can only be done at night time, and the way you trigger a day -> night switch is different depending on the zone, which is inconsistent and quite retarded).

Highly recommended to all local JRPG enjoyers, who, for some reason, still haven't played it like me.

 

[ghostdog]

I'm close to finishing Astlibra Revision. It was a nice surprise to discover this relatively unknown gem. It's a 2D action-RPG with very good RPG mechanics (for this sort of game) and metroidvania elements. Beautiful graphics, cool music, nice exploration with hidden areas, hidden bosses and the ability to use a certain time/space travel mechanic to go back to previously visited areas and find stuff you missed or to discover new stuff. Story is decent, if it lacked some anime tropes it would be better, but I liked the main plot and ideas.

As I said, I found Astlibra's combat and RPG mechanics quite entertaining. Combat resolves around using combos and skills to quickly kill the enemies, while also dashing around and knowing when to defend. The RPG part is about finding new combos, unlocking new skills, both passive and active, choosing which of the skills to enable according to the situation, finding new gear and training with that gear to unlock extra bonuses. The crafting mechanic supplements nicely your character's improvement, since you gradually create stuff that will give you better bonuses. There's a lot of attention to detail here.

It's one of the better games I've played for a long time, and truly an achievement, considering this was basically made by one dude. I've played about 50h, and I'm close to the ending, but as I understand there's a lot of post-ending content, so there's still a lot of meat to this. Definitely recommended.

 

[Gamezor]

Whoa I'm done with Dusk games. They were noticeably shorter than Mysterious games and way shorter than Ryzas, for two reasons. One of them, at least the latter two entries are ostensibly replayable, with you choosing one of two characters and only able to reach True Ending once beaten the game twice. Second, they're way tighter, and don't overstay their welcome. A testament to time limits, I'm sure.

Atelier Ayesha IS the big boy of this trilogy. It has the tightest mechanics, the perfect amount of risk vs. reward, plenty of challenges both mandatory and optional, and the wonderfully grounded, slightly depressing mood. Hobo Elf claims Ayesha is what Ryza failed to reproduce, and I'm able to agree with him. The whole Dusk trilogy is about alchemy having fucked the planet up ages ago, and the current generation of men struggling to cope with a world that is, quite literally, dying - like a setting sun, y'know, in the middle of dusk.. Ayesha builds up on this and delivers a wonderfully personal story, and manages to do so nearly fully bereft of typical anime stylization. Really, character designs in particular are absurdly realistic. But enough talk about storyfag crap - Ayesha is a tough game, it demands of you to manage your time, and to manage it well. If you're fine with that, bravo champ. If you're not, grow some balls. Once you do, you'll be mercilessly zooming all around Ayesha's tiny ass map doing the bare minimum required to proceed, CONSTANTLY in the middle of the balancing act of how much bullshit you're able to get away with. You have three in-game years to reach your goal, and I did reach it in 1,5 years, horribly under-levelled and under-equipped, beating the final boss in a highly testosteronic battle. Ayesha is turn-based, pretty much no-frills, though it relies heavily on positioning around the enemies - you will find yourself jumping back and forth to avoid attacks and capitalize of continuous effect items. The items are depletable, and the progression is very much alright, unlike in, say, Sophie. Itemization is funny - you find equipment in the field, then identify it and improve it, rather than construe shit yourself. Ayesha is a survival horror more often than not, with you being constantly starved for means to advance, but also starved for any clues on how to advance - really, there's no quest log telling you where to go, and the way to reach the final goal is amazingly vague. I guarantee that you will be like a rat in a maze, but in a good way.

Atelier Escha & Logy (Eschatology hehe) builds upon Ayesha in a rather confusing manner, and it's a highly confusing game. Rather, it's a series of "chapters" in which you need to tackle a number of tasks, usually rather straightforward, upon which completion you're free to dick around and to Atelier stuff. Due to the storyline being split between the two characters, you'll find that there are much fewer events than usual, as they're distributed between the two. Your guys are two public servant alchemists assigned to a miraculously alive town of Colseit in the middle of an otherwise depressingly dead wasteland. As expected of public servants, they engage in mundane bullshit on the clock, and eat through tax money. No, really - money is the biggest change in E&L. In Ayesha, you were rather starved for money, but in E&L you swim in it, except - you also pay large amounts of money to unlock passive upgrades, which were relegated to 'memory points' in the previous game. Because of this, the economy is very deceptive, and you'll find yourself replicating items a lot. You craft your own equipment this time, though I must say that the progression in E&L is very unbalanced, and you effectively skip through entire tiers of items at a time. The game being on the easier side doesn't punish you for doing it, until you hit endgame and all the bosses are pain. The griffon beast before the main boss took me way more time than the main boss proper though lol. Unlike in Ayesha, and very much like some future entries, your party has a 'back row' of benched characters, who jump back and forth to deal extra damage, and to swap between skillsets. To make this valid, fights in E&L are also much too tedious for the level of challenge they present, with most enemies being annoying hp sponges, most bosses having multiple attacks per turn, etc. It's an unwelcome trend, but so it goes. All in all, it's not a bad game, but suffers from Gust's typical mid-trilogy mechanics fuckery.

Atelier Shallie kinda annoyed me in the same way Atelier Lydie & Suelle did. It's a very radical shift from the previous two games, also it relies much too much on past characters and events, instead of telling a new story. I guess it's to be expected, as both are trilogy finales, but it really confuses me how could anyone recommend it as a standalone game. Unlike the previous two, there's absolutely no time limit here, though you'll have a gimmick mechanic punishing you for dicking around - morale, making you literally run slower if you don't progress. For some reason, halfway through the game the morale counter remained maxed out for me, and I assume it's a bug, directly tied to how the game tackles progression. Like in E&L, there's the core task to tackle per chapter, then you're free to dick around doing 'life tasks,' and you need to do some to progress next. Which makes Shallie the one game which doesn't respect your time at all, since you'll be revisiting locations all the time, in spite of the time optimization habit you picked up playing the previous two games. These life tasks proc very randomly, usually catching up with what you were doing in the pre-life task phase, with a dozen activating at once. Suddenly, you're level 30 like eight hours into the game, because the tasks give you some exp, and remain super confused. The economy is busted, and it really doesn't matter at all. The alchemy speeds up super slowly, contrary to E&L, but as it speeds up it also gains amazing momentum, allowing you to craft broken shit which wouldn't have flied at all back in Ayesha, lol. Very much like E&L, hp bloat is pain, and you will face basic enemies with 4-6k hp in the endgame quite routinely. The game relies a little too much on your burst gauge, which used to power ultimate attacks or support attacks in the previous games, here it unlocks the super damage mode without which you simply wouldn't be able to kill any boss monster. Even main boss is a conscious testament to this design, and spawns trash mobs just so that you have anything to power up your burst gauge on lol. It's not a bad game, but it's a Willbell fanservice game first and foremost, which is surely a pro argument for many.

What version of ayesha are you playing / what system and how us the performance?

 

[Maxie]

Whoa I'm done with Dusk games. They were noticeably shorter than Mysterious games and way shorter than Ryzas, for two reasons. One of them, at least the latter two entries are ostensibly replayable, with you choosing one of two characters and only able to reach True Ending once beaten the game twice. Second, they're way tighter, and don't overstay their welcome. A testament to time limits, I'm sure.

Atelier Ayesha IS the big boy of this trilogy. It has the tightest mechanics, the perfect amount of risk vs. reward, plenty of challenges both mandatory and optional, and the wonderfully grounded, slightly depressing mood. Hobo Elf claims Ayesha is what Ryza failed to reproduce, and I'm able to agree with him. The whole Dusk trilogy is about alchemy having fucked the planet up ages ago, and the current generation of men struggling to cope with a world that is, quite literally, dying - like a setting sun, y'know, in the middle of dusk.. Ayesha builds up on this and delivers a wonderfully personal story, and manages to do so nearly fully bereft of typical anime stylization. Really, character designs in particular are absurdly realistic. But enough talk about storyfag crap - Ayesha is a tough game, it demands of you to manage your time, and to manage it well. If you're fine with that, bravo champ. If you're not, grow some balls. Once you do, you'll be mercilessly zooming all around Ayesha's tiny ass map doing the bare minimum required to proceed, CONSTANTLY in the middle of the balancing act of how much bullshit you're able to get away with. You have three in-game years to reach your goal, and I did reach it in 1,5 years, horribly under-levelled and under-equipped, beating the final boss in a highly testosteronic battle. Ayesha is turn-based, pretty much no-frills, though it relies heavily on positioning around the enemies - you will find yourself jumping back and forth to avoid attacks and capitalize of continuous effect items. The items are depletable, and the progression is very much alright, unlike in, say, Sophie. Itemization is funny - you find equipment in the field, then identify it and improve it, rather than construe shit yourself. Ayesha is a survival horror more often than not, with you being constantly starved for means to advance, but also starved for any clues on how to advance - really, there's no quest log telling you where to go, and the way to reach the final goal is amazingly vague. I guarantee that you will be like a rat in a maze, but in a good way.

Atelier Escha & Logy (Eschatology hehe) builds upon Ayesha in a rather confusing manner, and it's a highly confusing game. Rather, it's a series of "chapters" in which you need to tackle a number of tasks, usually rather straightforward, upon which completion you're free to dick around and to Atelier stuff. Due to the storyline being split between the two characters, you'll find that there are much fewer events than usual, as they're distributed between the two. Your guys are two public servant alchemists assigned to a miraculously alive town of Colseit in the middle of an otherwise depressingly dead wasteland. As expected of public servants, they engage in mundane bullshit on the clock, and eat through tax money. No, really - money is the biggest change in E&L. In Ayesha, you were rather starved for money, but in E&L you swim in it, except - you also pay large amounts of money to unlock passive upgrades, which were relegated to 'memory points' in the previous game. Because of this, the economy is very deceptive, and you'll find yourself replicating items a lot. You craft your own equipment this time, though I must say that the progression in E&L is very unbalanced, and you effectively skip through entire tiers of items at a time. The game being on the easier side doesn't punish you for doing it, until you hit endgame and all the bosses are pain. The griffon beast before the main boss took me way more time than the main boss proper though lol. Unlike in Ayesha, and very much like some future entries, your party has a 'back row' of benched characters, who jump back and forth to deal extra damage, and to swap between skillsets. To make this valid, fights in E&L are also much too tedious for the level of challenge they present, with most enemies being annoying hp sponges, most bosses having multiple attacks per turn, etc. It's an unwelcome trend, but so it goes. All in all, it's not a bad game, but suffers from Gust's typical mid-trilogy mechanics fuckery.

Atelier Shallie kinda annoyed me in the same way Atelier Lydie & Suelle did. It's a very radical shift from the previous two games, also it relies much too much on past characters and events, instead of telling a new story. I guess it's to be expected, as both are trilogy finales, but it really confuses me how could anyone recommend it as a standalone game. Unlike the previous two, there's absolutely no time limit here, though you'll have a gimmick mechanic punishing you for dicking around - morale, making you literally run slower if you don't progress. For some reason, halfway through the game the morale counter remained maxed out for me, and I assume it's a bug, directly tied to how the game tackles progression. Like in E&L, there's the core task to tackle per chapter, then you're free to dick around doing 'life tasks,' and you need to do some to progress next. Which makes Shallie the one game which doesn't respect your time at all, since you'll be revisiting locations all the time, in spite of the time optimization habit you picked up playing the previous two games. These life tasks proc very randomly, usually catching up with what you were doing in the pre-life task phase, with a dozen activating at once. Suddenly, you're level 30 like eight hours into the game, because the tasks give you some exp, and remain super confused. The economy is busted, and it really doesn't matter at all. The alchemy speeds up super slowly, contrary to E&L, but as it speeds up it also gains amazing momentum, allowing you to craft broken shit which wouldn't have flied at all back in Ayesha, lol. Very much like E&L, hp bloat is pain, and you will face basic enemies with 4-6k hp in the endgame quite routinely. The game relies a little too much on your burst gauge, which used to power ultimate attacks or support attacks in the previous games, here it unlocks the super damage mode without which you simply wouldn't be able to kill any boss monster. Even main boss is a conscious testament to this design, and spawns trash mobs just so that you have anything to power up your burst gauge on lol. It's not a bad game, but it's a Willbell fanservice game first and foremost, which is surely a pro argument for many.

What version of ayesha are you playing / what system and how us the performance?

I played Ayesha DX on Linux, it did run pretty much flawlessly, except for the ending cinematic actually. I had to install the game on Windows just to play the last ten minutes hehe

 

[Modron]

I'm close to finishing Astlibra Revision. It was a nice surprise to discover this relatively unknown gem.

Hey I tried to get codexers to play the demo 8 months before it came out but RPGcodex posters mostly play triple A stuff exclusively.

 

[LarryTyphoid]

Still playing Digital Devil Story: Megami Tensei on Famicom. I really don't like this game but I've already spent so much time with it that the sunk cost fallacy is keeping me going till the end. Unfortunately I'm a giant purist autist and I couldn't justify using save states despite the game having no save feature, so I've been writing down the passwords on the same Grid Cartographer sheet I've been using to map out the dungeon. DDS is even more simple than a game like Wizardry 1 and most of it consists of auto battling; battling manually is extremely tedious on account of the very long waiting periods between attacks, so I autobattle even if it'd be smarter to manually battle.

I had planned to play the entire MegaTen series in order, but I might just skip to Strange Journey after this one. As a Christian I really don't care for the stories of games like DDS 2 and SMT 2 and their JRPG shenanigans. I've been meaning to learn some Japanese for the purpose of playing JRPGs, so I might check out Devil Summoner on the Saturn despite it lacking any English translation.

 

[v1rus]

Started Xenosaga Ep. 1. So far, I find it enjoyable, but I'm like 2 hours in. I find something about Takahashis self-indulgent wankery with plot strangely enjoyable. Looking forward to playing more of it.

 

[Lyre Mors]

Started Xenosaga Ep. 1. So far, I find it enjoyable, but I'm like 2 hours in. I find something about Takahashis self-indulgent wankery with plot strangely enjoyable. Looking forward to playing more of it.

It's a good ass game. One of the more challenging JRPGs out there too. Enjoy!

 

[v1rus]

Started Xenosaga Ep. 1. So far, I find it enjoyable, but I'm like 2 hours in. I find something about Takahashis self-indulgent wankery with plot strangely enjoyable. Looking forward to playing more of it.

It's a good ass game. One of the more challenging JRPGs out there too. Enjoy!

Oh, nice. My usual complaint about JRPGs is the lack of challenge; Looking forward to it even more.

How do second and third part compare to first?