Xansies

@Jeremazing I actually don't get these comments. Like the majority of the games were unvoiced anyway. Like 90% of it had zero voice acting. Whether it's japanese or English the only real difference it makes is battle voices. Otherwise either way you're reading. It's a 20 year old jrpg. Full voice acting is barely a thing now in jrpgs, back then it was only for extremely major cutscenes and even then it was brief before going back to being unvoiced.

@AnVold It's a 20 year old game. The frame rate is probably coded to the game speed. If you ran it at 60 fps if that's how the game was coded, and a lot were at the time, you'd have a game running at twice the speed and that would render this game in particular unplayable because time is an integral component of the game. Like a lot of the comments here forget that this is an old game. A lot of things were not standardized or really done in the same way 20 years ago.plus it's a turn based rpg. I don't see any benefit from this game running at 60fps.

@BeefSanta I was going to play 1 with voices off if possible. I never want to hear that again

@Aerona They're good games. Bk 1 had one of the worst dubs of the GameCube era and voice acting wasn't where it is now so that's saying something. Origins was good, but don't get it twisted, these are 20 year old rpgs from gen 6 consoles. You're going to be reading 85-90% of the time. Voices mostly come in battles or just acknowledging you did something with the cards outside of battle or really major story cutscenes

@JohnnyMind I think the weird thing is people treat the romance thing as new. It was the entire point of the first half of fe4, which was the first game to have children characters whose stats were determined by who was A rank supported with who (and there were definite right answers statwise who to pair up) and that every other game had ending text crawls that basically said who got married or had kids with who or became platonic wandering heroes together or whatever. Fates went crazy with having children characters for no reason (mechanically there was a reason, but storywise it was totally unnecessary), but three houses gets a bad wrap for being a dating sim when really all it did was have more character development and a much smaller cast. Like you got to see relationships develop in that game instead of just randomly at the end finding out that whoever you stood next to another character long enough ended up falling in love somehow. Like you could pet your dudes in fates and do tea time, but I never did that stuff and never felt like I missed anything.

@romanista I mean, the main issue every reviewer seems to have with engage is that it's not three houses. The characters honestly are stat vehicles and the story is good guy vs. bad dragon where all your friends are good and all the bad guys are also secretly good unless they are said bad dragon, who is bad.

The combat is the best the series has been in terms of complexity and map and enemy layouts as well as the new break and smash systems. One character can't overrun an entire stage like previous games because how enemy groups are considered and honestly how many enemies a map throws at you at once. This is sort of a balancing thing. The emblem skills are good at doing one thing extremely well once and can turn 8 guys running down a character into a more manageable number or wipe out a miniboss or boss health bar where without them you would definitely lose a character, which is for some players the equivalent of losing the level. However, the game also gives you 50 characters if you want to let your guys stay dead, which is easier now that they have much less characterization and there are like 4 replacements for any role. These guys are about has fleshed out as the gba games, which is to say not at all.

So story and characterwise this game is honestly a huge step back, but combatwise it's a huge improvement on a series that already had good tactics combat.

@Bahamut_GR Besides minor stat boosts. You need the arena and the ring room. All the shops are there too. Basically it just centralizes things like the camp in the GameCube games except you can walk around it instead of it being menus. You can ignore the +1 to certain stats mini games and eating and it wouldn't matter, but you do need to do the arena in order to get skills unless you want to do it the unnecessarily long way. This is kinda the same as past few games, but you have to spend a resource to level up a characters bond so you can inherit skills from an emblem. You can do this by using the emblem in combat, but unless you do skirmishes endlessly, its kinda a waste of time. Using the arena to level characters still exists, but it's not nearly as important as the skill thing. Other than that, you need the ring room to learn the skills. Nothing else in somniel matters. Oh there's the trial tower thing. That's cool, but it's just more combat.

just because I just realized this in my playthrough, why the hell is clanne a mage? He has high strength, speed and dex growths and very low magic growths. He's a terrible mage. Make him a sword master and he is stupid good. He wants to be a swordmaster. Same with anna. starts as a fighter, but has low strength and high magic growths and is kinda speced to be a mage or high priest.

Like, I think they did it on purpose with the early game characters. Etie isn't the best archer. she honestly straight sucks because she cant take a single hit by literally anything and is completely overshadowed once you get the second archer who is one of the best characters in the game, but instead of being a sniper she is a good warrior if you give her axe proficiency because even though her defense is still abysmal, her strength makes her viable. She's also a good flyer if you give her canter. Actually, just give her canter no matter what. She's built to be a hit and run character because she can't afford to get hit. Same thing with jean, whose skill basically means he's good at literally any class and is kinda wasted as a healer.

Like you can build almost any character to work even if it's sort of not spelled out by the game itself. The only real lost cause is Vander. He's a classic crutch character for the first few chapters, but he has prepromoted stats and gains exp like a promoted character. I'm sure you can make him work, but the time and effort is probably not worth it considering Alfred is awesome.

@AtlanteanMan I really disagree. Engage is a jack of one trade, combat. The somniel stuff is just a centralization of stuff that was spread out in other games. The supports are back to being like three text boxes and there is no more romance than there was in like sacred stones or the Tellus games. You can polish rings. That's it. They dumped all the stuff they've been doing since awakening. Engage probably does fe style tactical combat the best it's ever been. Getting skills from the emblems is a bit of a pain and some characters outright aren't built for their base classes like clanne and Anna, but there is a lot of depth with the game if you pay attention and you can make even overwhelming odds manageable. And that is how they balance the engage mechanic in this game. They throw much larger waves of enemies in staggered armored, calvary, assassin, flying combos where one character can't run away with the whole map like you could in some of the older games. Like there have been multiple times where a map would have been actually impossible to not have any deaths if not for cellicas echo or warp or Sigurds overdrive taking out three horses at once just because there was still four more dudes to deal with after that.

@mercilessrobot That's what I'm worried about. The switch is the one console I invested in the most. I didn't really put enough in the PS4 to care of the PS5 was backwards compatible, but I easily spent a few grand in games for the switch.

@Matl Should be able to do that, but I'm positive that almost all unreal 5 games are still going to be a no go. Which keeps the switch in the same position the first one was when it came out, but at least it's not two generations behind like it is now

@ArcticEcho The gacha elements seem turned up in this one, but the waifu relationship stuff seems turned down even further than it was in 3h

@Notsoavid The 3ds games is where the focus on relationships and honestly dlc started. Three houses calmed down the dlc thing and was a step back from the waifu stuff in fates, but engage looks more like the gba, radiance games though the story seems to be unanimously silly and not very good unlike the radiant games. Before those though the story was always kinda anime bs

@KBuckley27 Joker has a personality. He's shy in his day to day, but badass on the job. He's also really into doing the right thing. Persona 3s protag also had a bit of a personality in that he was lazy and kinda emo and you can see that by contrasting the males responses and the girls responses in the psp version. 4s dude actually doesn't have any personality at all

I clicked on this thinking, "Yeah, it's obviously Makoto." I'm surprised joker is more popular lol

I literally just started going through the whole ys series. Honestly, the games pre-7 are so dated at this point the bits that are fun are overshadowed by the bits that are outdated

@RiasGremory ya 8 did anyway. I mean, it was a ps Vita game originally. It would have been weird if it didn't run fine. 9 I heard had minor performance issues, but I mean people play Pokemon scarlet and violet so eye of beholder and everything

@Astral-Grain It's gonna be at least three years til the next mainline pokemon game, that's just the cycle they do. But gen 9 technically is open world. It's just not good. LA was more like monster hunter or sonic frontiers. You chose what big map you got to go on, but they were all separate

@Astral-Grain I wouldn't say they attempted it twice. Swsh had a good in between towns. Ocarina of time did the exact same thing as the wild zones. And I refuse to let anyone pretend that Arceus isn't just a monster hunter ripoff. They're big zones, but essentially it's no different than rises maps.

@Uncle_Franklin Botw is still empty compared to Witcher or GTA 5 or cyber punk. It was just well designed with canyons and mountains that it seemed like there was more in it than there was

@ModdedInkling agreed. Gen 9 looks better, but there are things like shadows and flickering textures that make it objectively worse

@Uncle_Franklin these have an open world just for the sake of having open worlds. All switch open world games are barren. Hell, anything with large areas are mostly barren, it's just a limitation of the hardware. But there's a sort of verticality and logic in a game like xbc 3 that isn't in gen 9 pokemon. These are just different colored fields and really remind me of PS2 games. Worse even than some like dq8. It honestly feels like a b list late PS2 early ps3 game

@Axecon If it helps, Arceus and this weren't developed by the same team. They've had since swsh came out and this is still what they came out with.

The switch is still underpowered and holds back game development pretty hard. Still, you can't say it's the hardware when someone got Xenoblade 3 to run on the thing. Even bayo 3 obviously pushes the switch, but it still runs despite obviously would have been better on better hardware.

@Crono1973 Well, level design for open world games has really taken a hit because the switch's low power. Even bayo 3 feels a little sparse. Like people say graphics don't matter don't understand that hardware really limits what kind of games can be made. All the switch open world games just feel barren. These games are particularly bad about that. At least with xbc 3 there were enough roadblocks and verticality that it felt like an actual world. Pokemon it's just different colored fields so far.

@RupeeClock it's partly on the developer. It's been clear from this year that the switch is totally maxed out. However, when you have this, which honestly barely runs, and you have xbc3 , which has a much denser and curated map (and indoor areas, which for some reason these games just put everything in menus) the difference is stark. Like ,there needs to be a switch 2, but this feels like incompetence in working within what the switch can do like bayo 3 and xbc 3 run smooth enough despite some drops where violet and scarlet have invisible pokemon, ridiculous pop in, and a flickering day night cycle on top of consistent frame drops. The game WILL stutter at the end of every cutscene

@Rosona the performance issues are bordering on severe. There's the whole thing, frame rate stutters, pop in, invisible pokemon, frame rate drops at the end of literally every cutscenes, low res textures, textures that don't load. It's not like it drops occasionally. It's genuinely bad

@blindsquarel The issue is that the graphics include things like level design. Bayo 3 pushes the switch to it's absolute max and the main thing you will notice is the areas are large to accommodate the scale they want for this game, but they're also absolutely empty and low res and bayo herself isn't. It's an awkward contrast. Of the switch had more power more interesting levels could be designed. The game feels like it's being held back.

@PessitheMystic The issue for me isn't that its normal rpg classes, it's that it's the same classes as the first game. Good to tell different stories with the same themes, but it would be cool to see different jobs

@Pandy-the-Panda I mean for most of those, they came out long enough for people to have not been born and now be old enough to drink. Or drive. Generations and colors were good and mania is what it was, but then you have all the rest.

@Sam_Loser2 three sky games two crossbell games and 4 cold steel games. You need a PC for sky and most of cold steel and the second part of crossbell is coming a couple months before this.

Sky mostly sets up the setting broadly and you can kinda get away without it, but since it introduces concepts that the other games just assume you know it's better to have played them. Characters from all three series crossover and are referenced as well.

Reverie is an epilogue to the crossbell and cold steel games. It basically just wraps up the lingering plot threads before going into the next arc, which is already two games in and will be translated eventually. Don't play reverie without playing the crossbell and cold steel games. It assumes you've played all six and literally will make zero sense out of context. At least play cold steel. A third of the game still won't make sense, but at least you could piece it together

@UmbreonsPapa couldn't transfer over with gen three either. It worked itself out with the remakes of red and blue shortly after, but still. There are like 70 not included in the switch games after gen 9 and probably will be by time dlc is done. Either way, there's like 1000 now. I couldn't really care less.

@Thenewguy XBC 3 is a good example of an open world game that can run on the switch, but it's virtually empty. Like they did the best they could, but density and complexity are severely limited when you're basically working with a ps3. Like I don't care about 4k and particle effects, there needs to be a hardware upgrade just to have innovations in game design. The switch hit it's limit like the first year.

@Ironcore for me that's just an arbitrary number. It honestly doesn't make a difference in non action and fps games. Stability does. I'd rather have 30 fps stable then a game that jumps from 20 to 45 to 60 to 30. And if a game can't but 30 stable I'd rather just not have the game.

@Jireland92 were not talking the difference between 30 fps and 60, were talking unloaded textures and dips from 20 to 30 causing stuttering. Persona 5 on the switch runs at 30 stable and it's fine, but there are still some textures that run at like 5 fps and it's weird.

@Tyranexx That's the problem. Returning heroes is fine, but I'm sure they'll also go with returning villains as an obvious move that probably pair with the og villains Tokyo mirage sessions style. That leaves a lot of question as to what point the original characters have. The basic idea of fusing with old characters is dope, but story wise I cant see it being a step forward from three houses.

@Bizaster It'll could go the opposite way where the crossovers completely take over that gameplay and are weirdly absent in the story. Like Tokyo mirage session did this and it was basically a persona game with a bit of Fe. This could just be old Fe characters replacing adjuncts and pair ups and giving you a power up and maybe you fight old bosses, but otherwise that's all you get.

@Bobb It works like the pair up mechanic and I think the two can fuse like in Tokyo mirage session for a power up. Basically it's taking what happened in TMS and putting it in an actual fire emblem game. I don't know how I feel about it. Three houses dropped a lot of gimmicks that awakening and especially fates had. This seems like a step backward. Fates was terrible and I'm worried this is going to go in that direction.

@Slowdive Not that I don't disagree with Shapiro on just about everything but his take on the batman was straight wrong. His main criticism was that Batman actually kinda sucked at being Batman. Yeah, it's his second year and first real actual supercrime he's solving. The point of the movie is that hes inexperienced and over the movie he learns from his mistakes in order to become THE Batman. The thing was planned as a trilogy him sucking is a baseline to grow from.

@Switch_Pro I'm torn between xenogears needing a remaster or not. I'd like to see it as a finished game, but we also got xenoblade 1 which covers the end pretty much exactly as it probably would have been with the wels and telethia thing. And my god I don't know if you played 3 yet, but it's xenogears. Name a plot point and aspect from xenogears, it's in 3. I'm talking literally it's just name changes on some of this stuff with better pacing. I'm absolutely arguing that Xenoblade 3 is the xenogears remake. Some stuff shows up later and some stuff earlier, but it's a straight retelling. Like if you're thinking, no way they did that one specific thing the exact same way again, they did. And the designs are the same!

@Octorok385 after the revenge egil shows up and it's about stopping him from killing everyone. The ending I sort of agree. 2 makes the ending of 1 actually good for me, but I also don't think 2 is a good game and that retcon being the only good part of the whole thing so in the end I think it's worth it. It kinda feels to me like the star ocean games after 3. They're not good, but knowing the twist of 3 gives some cool context to the series even if it's mostly ignored

@Octorok385 It's from a different time. It's really episodic and cares more about the general plot than the characters. Literally no character aside from shulk and fiora matter outside their arc, but the general plot structure is sound. I think I like 3 so much because it's at the heart of it 1s plot again with the team dynamics of 2 combined with, I mean, a lot of xenogears. Like everything to do with the baddies is a straight rip from scenes from xenogears.

I disagree that one's plot is a mess. It's really simple. Friend dies/revenge/ meet people/ they want revenge/ get more power/ revenge turns out to be unneeded/ bad guys were actually misunderstood/ helpful character was bad all along/ kill him. It's a pretty by the numbers jrpg story except the villain is technically a twist that only somewhat comes out of nowhere but nowhere near some final fantasy final bosses. And I like zanza as a one note villain, especially when two explains why he's one note. The literal one thing that's weird is the ending and that gets retconned in two. And technically 3 kinda. I wish how 3 worked was more explained but that's what dlc is for.

I kinda get the thing about x being ported and a sequel, but I think it can be argued that due to certain story elements and the class system, 3 is also kinda a spiritual successor to X as well. Hell, there's even a support character early on where I was like "that's elma"

@Mrkittyhead They're barely separate. Like one and 2, sure. The link is only apparent in the last dungeon and it really does retcon 1 in a way that's better. 3? 3s battle system is a combination of 1 and 2 and there's an actual thematic story reason for that. Like you don't have to play one and 2 for 3 to make sense and there's very little story and character carry over (though what is there is cool) but world building wise, 3 absolutely relies on you caring about the first two. The main twist even involves the first two in a very intrinsic honestly Chrono Crossy way that again, you'd understand without playing the games, because it's not like that convoluted, but I feel like it'll lose a lot of weight on what it really means. Especially the ending.

@moodycat You're missing out on 3. It's basically everything good about one with much better gameplay. 2 is a skip. Like it's a game that I want to like but you have gacha, a battle system that's too convoluted for it's own good, a battle system that isn't really fully, fully exploitable until 3/4s of the way through, real time wait mechanics, and a story that's overall a coming of age story but the stakes are so incredibly low. It does however have one scene in the last five minutes that makes xb1 better.

@BananaMetallurgica like I said, it really doesn't matter. It's not set in the usual setting and they literally don't say the word digimon once. There's just a lot of similarities between the characters and they digimon partner. Basically it goes, what if we take this character, make him 10 times worse and then mess him up real bad. If you don't have that point of reference you still get to see a scared kid inevitably die by digimon (I mean, kids die no matter what, but I think there's one route where they just drop)

@Arawn93 I've literally beat the game. Maybe it's closer to 30% but there is a sort of mandatory option to engage in battles for exp and other mons that can't be gotten any other way. there are also choices to be made throughout the game that do influence who makes it, but it's mass effect filling a bar style instead of something intuitive to the player. And honestly, I googled it, one is less deadly by far than the others (the one I did). It's honestly disappointing that it's clear which one of three choices won't get people killed and thats that.

It's actually really close to triangle story gameplay to story, which is to say it is very story heavy. I would say there's more gameplay in survive than ts since there is more than one battle a chapter, but the battles do take less time and the system is much, much less deep. Maybe its not comparable to fire emblem, but three houses I spent a lot of time at the school so it felt like I was doing that more than the battles.

@Sonos No. Some like fata Morgana are just books with music and backgrounds. That one is a hard sell for most people.

Then you have dangan ronpa and ace attorney which really involved sequence once per chapter. These are gameplay heavy

Steins gate style route based games that have choices and routes from when these all used to be hentai games

And then you have this which is about a 60/40 split. I wouldn't call it light. You have to engage in the battle system and it's not bad, its just not challenging and there's no point to there being more than 8 mons. It's about as much gameplay, technically, as triangle story or fire emblem.

@BananaMetallurgica nah, it's basically a darker version of the first season but completely unrelated to anything else in the franchise. They don't even use the word digimon in the game once. In fact, the Digi part of the franchise is excised entirely. They get rid of the technology aspect of everything. Which isn't a bad or good thing but you'll never have to read the word digidestined. It's generally more themed to people who've watched the first season as kids and nothing else.

Even then If you've seen the first couple seasons of the show twenty years ago you'll notice some parallels, but other than that there's no relation except that there are the same monsters

I've played half of it by now. It'd be a better show than a game. Not because it's a visual novel, but because it's generally a darker retelling of the first season of digimon and does a good job at that. It would just work better not as a game.