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Topic: General JRPG Thread

Posts 281 to 300 of 397

VoidofLight

I kind of wish the two NieR games would get Switch ports or something. I'd buy and play them all over again if they did.

"It is fate. Many have tried, yet none have ever managed to escape it's flow."

Tyranexx

@VoidofLight Arise and Berseria both seem to trend towards the top of series recommendations, so I'll likely give them a shot when the time comes. Multiplayer isn't a concern of mine when it comes to RPGs, so I could likely start about anywhere and not miss out on much. Thanks for the feedback!

Seconded on the NieR entries. I'd love a shot at them.

@BruceCM Besides Arise, I've also been quite attracted to Vesperia. Not only because the latter is on the Switch, but it's supposedly one of the better entries and is also available at a decent price right now. I really wanna try the former too, but...it'll certainly be a bit lol.

I suspect XC2 will last me quite awhile. There's a reason why I usually pick a longer JRPG during the winter months.

Currently playing: Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story + Bowser Jr's Journey, Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana (Switch)

"Love your neighbor as yourself." Mark 12:31

BruceCM

Yeah but at the rate you play, you'll probably only start Torna in Spring, @Tyranexx .... For Tales games, I've only played Vesperia & Arise, so I can't really comment much on the others! Basically, start with whichever one you like

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Tyranexx

@BruceCM Yep, I get sidetracked so easily in RPGs. Trying to get better about not doing that, but that's easier said than done. XD Sounds like you enjoyed both Vesperia and Arise at least!

Currently playing: Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story + Bowser Jr's Journey, Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana (Switch)

"Love your neighbor as yourself." Mark 12:31

BruceCM

Well, it's often worth doing a lot of the 'secondary' stuff, @Tyranexx ....

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Tyranexx

@BruceCM Precisely! Lol

@CactusMan If it's anything like XC:DE and XCX, I'm sure it'll put me through my paces!

Currently playing: Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story + Bowser Jr's Journey, Ys VIII: Lacrimosa of Dana (Switch)

"Love your neighbor as yourself." Mark 12:31

VoidofLight

I just hope the next Xenoblade has a better story and simpler combat. I wouldn't mind if they go back to X's formula, given it properly builds upon the original's design, and doesn't force you to stand in place in order to execute auto-attacks. I also hope the rumors about 3 being a direct sequel to 2 are wrong, since the main cast of 2 isn't my favorite really.

"It is fate. Many have tried, yet none have ever managed to escape it's flow."

Vortexeo

@VoidofLight I forget if I said this already but I think it would be really cool if the next Xenoblade brought back the vanguard/rearguard concept from Torna and allowed us to switch between party members in the middle of combat like in FF7R!

I do agree with you on the XC3 rumors. As much as I did love XC2 I don't think it needs a direct sequel. I do have a cool story idea that I'd like to see in XC3 though. (Major Xenoblade 1 and 2 spoilers below)

Maybe in XC3 they could make the game about Klaus? I think it would be cool to see first hand what drove him to recreate the universe. They touch on his past in XC1 very briefly and they show more of his original world in XC2. However, all that's shown is pretty much the moments prior and the aftermath of his experiment.

Edited on by Vortexeo

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VoidofLight

@Vortexeo a game about Klaus would be cool, but I don't see how they'd be able to flesh it out into this full concept with a battle system, unless the final battle is going back in time and witnessing the world be recreated or something. My theory is that 3's story is an entirely different world, the one that the conduit went to after the end of Xenoblade 2, and it'll probably be an all out war due to the powers of the conduit itself, with human greed being the main drive behind it.

"It is fate. Many have tried, yet none have ever managed to escape it's flow."

kkslider5552000

VoidofLight wrote:

I just hope the next Xenoblade has a better story and simpler combat. I wouldn't mind if they go back to X's formula, given it properly builds upon the original's design, and doesn't force you to stand in place in order to execute auto-attacks. I also hope the rumors about 3 being a direct sequel to 2 are wrong, since the main cast of 2 isn't my favorite really.

I agree with basically all of this. My only disagreement is that the combat doesn't NEED to be simpler necessarily, but it needs a vastly better tutorial system. Xenoblade is very weird in that its maybe the only series I've ever played that started with the MOST tutorials and QOL ideas of the series and then gradually had less of both for the follow up games.

Also I'm not sure there's a single example of a JRPG with separate stories each game deciding to eventually make a sequel to one anyway where the sequel felt like it needed to exist at all.

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VoidofLight

@kkslider5552000 Eh, by simpler, I meant more in the vein of the first two, rather than throwing all of these combo systems and gacha mechanics at you.

Also, there have been some games that have direct sequels, like Final Fantasy X and X-2, but for the most part, they usually stay different entries for the big numbered ones.

Xenoblade is a different case, given that 1 and 2 are linked together, and X is an outlier. We don't know what the future holds, since there's only been 2 main series games.

Edited on by VoidofLight

"It is fate. Many have tried, yet none have ever managed to escape it's flow."

Buizel

@Tyranexx I'd go for Vesperia (often regarded as best in the series) if Switch is your preference, but also recommend Symphonia, which is available on Steam. The latter is slightly more aged, but I'll forever recommend it as the game that got me into JRPGs, and it potentially falls in my list of top 10 favourite games of all time.

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Pizzamorg

So I picked up Ni no Kuni In the Eshop Festive sale, like to give every game an hour just to get my initial feelings on it, but this game is so slow to start off with it took me a good couple of hours and I still felt like I was still in the tutorial. It is funny because narratively it ramps up really fast, but I am not sure you even have a single battle in that first hour.

I am usually not a fan of “turn based but with a twist” JRPGs, just either be one or the other, but as far as these sorts of games go, I actually don’t mind this too much. The way opening a menu pauses the action helps a lot. I ended up bouncing off the first Xenoblade Chronicles because I just found it so overwhelming and exhausting to have to stress about so many things - the health of my characters, the status effects I was applying, where everyone was positioned, whether my team attack gauge was charged etc etc - I just don’t think that game worked at all by being in real time. I know that isn’t a popular opinion, but I think that game would have been immeasurably better if it was just turn based or at least had a pause, but I feel that way about everyone of these “with a twist JRPGs”.

That isn’t to say this can’t also be quite overwhelming, you still have to focus on position, defence, stamina and health here all in real time, but it doesn’t seem you’re required to be in specific places or to apply specific statuses. I dunno, maybe that’ll come later. But I dunno, it just feels a bit more manageable. I have read though that your party eventually expands to six, so I dunno whether it’ll just become a complete ***** trying to manage that many people. I guess I’ll find out.

Visuals are a real mixed bag too. You have to love that Studio Ghibli magic, but the anime cutscenes felt weirdly choppy and I dunno if it’s because the game is being compressed down so much to work on the Switch, but at times the attempts to translate the anime style directly into the engine just really didn’t look great to me. At other times, however, the game is really wonderful looking. Just a mixed bag.

Edited on by antdickens

Life to the living, death to the dead.

Vortexeo

@VoidofLight That sounds like a pretty cool theory as well! Either way, I'm going to explode with hype if Xenoblade 3 is ever revealed

Also, I heard Square Enix stopped selling Final Fantasy 14 because it was too popular? lol

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VoidofLight

@Vortexeo Yep. The servers can't handle this many people, and the queues are long, so they stopped new sales of the game until things calm down. They had no way of expanding server compacity, given the semi-conductor shortage that's going on currently.

"It is fate. Many have tried, yet none have ever managed to escape it's flow."

Ralizah

@Pizzamorg Hard disagree on NnK. It's a menu-based experience that runs in real time without any slowdown, which just fundamentally breaks the gameplay. Ally AI is actively stupid. And boss fights are miserable until mid-game when you gain a command that let's your entire party defend themselves from super-attacks.

The presentation is phenomenal, but the battles are so bad I actually stopped playing it.

Edited on by Ralizah

Currently Playing: Advance Wars 1 + 2: Re- Boot Camp (NS)

Pizzamorg

Ralizah wrote:

@Pizzamorg Hard disagree on NnK. It's a menu-based experience that runs in real time without any slowdown, which just fundamentally breaks the gameplay. Ally AI is actively stupid. And boss fights are miserable until mid-game when you gain a command that let's your entire party defend themselves from super-attacks.

The presentation is phenomenal, but the battles are so bad I actually stopped playing it.

Oh dear. Maybe I’ll dislike it the more I play then.

Then again, I’m not saying the combat is great here actively, I am just saying in comparison to all of the “with a twist” JRPGs I’ve played, this so far seems the least frustrating to manage. In the context of everything, I just wish these games were fully one or the other.

Or if you’d do the whole pause thing, do it like a proper CRPG where I can assign skills, tactics, roles etc to my party and let them do their thing, with me pausing to micromanage where necessary, but not as a requirement.

Life to the living, death to the dead.

Ralizah

Five in-game days into TWEWY now. It's... weird. The game keeps adding layers to the gameplay, but the gameplay loop itself still feels really shallow in general. tbh, I often feel like handheld JRPGs are derided unfairly, as they often provide gameplay as deep as what you'd find in a home console one, but this feels like a gimmicky handheld game to me.

The sound design is just horrendous. The music is actually grating, and it'll blast out no matter what's happening on-screen. At least one event that should have been even somewhat emotional was just ruined by the musical caterwauling in the background.

It's very interesting conceptually (has sort of a 'death game' feel to it, which I wasn't expecting), but the script is... I dunno. Feels very underdeveloped.

Environments are tiny and have nothing to do in them apart from battling. The battles themselves are interesting but ultra-repetitive. I'm getting pretty good at keeping my attention divided between the screens, but I don't feel like it actually adds much to the game. It feels more like a distraction from how shallow the battle system is overall.

The approach to leveling is interesting. It's a cool idea being able to deliberately underlevel yourself in order to gain more item/money drops from battles.

I'm going to keep playing, but I'm really not impressed with it so far. I mostly haven't dropped it because it feels like the sort of game that gets the better as it goes on. And also because I'd actually like to play Neo: TWEWY and understand the references to this game.

@Pizzamorg Battles aren't really an issue for the first few hours. By the time you get to actively challenging encounters, the game reveals just how structurally broken the battle system is. What's sad is it's, like, a few small changes away from being really good.

It's actually a pretty open secret. I kept seeing people online recommend against NnK, and I just couldn't imagine why, as the Ghibli-esque presentation was so enchanting. And it broadly remains that way. But the battle system suuuuucks. It actively annoyed me, and I'm pretty damn lenient when it comes to JRPG combat. So I'll be curious to see how your feelings change as you get further in.

The monster collecting aspect is pretty underwhelming as well.

btw, Xenoblade 1's combat mechanics are quite a bit more simple than in XCX or XC2. XCX makes the simple act of healing your party or recovering TP reliant on obtuse mechanics, and XC2 adds entire layers of complexity to the XC1 stuff, to the point where battles actively feel like something out of a puzzle game at times.

Edited on by Ralizah

Currently Playing: Advance Wars 1 + 2: Re- Boot Camp (NS)

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