Xansies

@Sonos Well, there is a strategy game stapled to this one. It's not deep or challenging, but there is gameplay pretty much once a chapter plus free battles if you want to collect mons that really aren't worth using compared to the story mons since there is overlap with evolutions. Unless they die. Like, I wouldn't buy it for the gameplay because it's painfully bland, but it isn't just a visual novel.

Honestly, there's kinda a reason this wasn't localized. It's not super great and its releasing almost full price the same month as xbc 3. Like I played a translation forever ago. It's goodish, but it's also disjointed and the last stage is overly long for what's basically a single dungeon.

@ChromaticDracula It does, eventually.

@somebread Ieam, Bayonetta already heavily depends on time travel in both games. It's not a leap to include a multiverse. I mean, there's already multiple versions of characters present in 1 and especially in 2.

@NintendoWife persona itself is technically a spin off of another series, but persona is more popular than the main series anyway. These are the mainline persona games anyone really cares about. Persona 2 was had a great story but that game is a slog.

@Thomystic I dunno. The p3p release is for sure a good call and even p4 golden if for some reason someone didn't have a PC and wanted to play it, but I'm sure most people interested in p5R have played it by now. I mean, I bought p5 twice now so thats all the double dipping atlus is getting from me. I might by p4 golden again for the portability and I haven't play p3 in 15 years so I'll probably get those.

@rustedtin 5 is the most streamlined and game and has the best dungeons all things considered just by default of actually having non randomized dungeons. 4 has probably the best characters. That's a little controversial, but they definitely have more depth and the individual character stories are a little darker and more risky in 3 and 4. 3 probably has the best social links but it's the worst game of the 3, 4 probably has the best characters but the lightest toned story and the gameplay is just good enough, 5 royal has definitely the one of the best turn based battle system ever and the story is good enough, but the characters are kinda bleh and the team feels less like a team than the other games. In 5 half the team just kinda gets sidelined narratively.

@Fizza why? The Pokemon games didn't have the same developers, but the warriors games definitely don't have the same developers and three hopes was clearly built almost entirely from three houses assets anyway

@ModdedInkling for the guys basically time travelling, it's a last minute twist. Up until that actual moment it's a prequel.

But I mean, if you just want to play the game it's cool, but strikers assumes you know Morganas deal and it's referenced without being explained like 100 times, every single thing about the what happened is talked about as "last year" without saying what that was, the game treats all the characters like you know who they are and they talk about what they did in persona 5 without really explaining or recapping constantly. Like the game makes sense plot wise if you never played p5, but the game also assumes you have.

@ModdedInkling arguably you need to play persona 5 to play strikers. That game assumes you know what happened in each characters arc and know who each character is. It doesn't recap at all. I mean, I f you don't care about the story in any way you it doesn't matter, but if you want to know what's going on you need to play p5. Age of calamity being a prequel means botw doesn't matter (until the end) because the plot events of botw haven't happened yet.

@dBackLash dunno if people who played this before are the target audience. Cross was divisive when it came out and I kinda settled on it being okay at best. Its a game that certainly happened.

@Strumpan it was

@Geonjaha I mean Stardew is pretty much as comprehensive a farming sim as you could get. The art could be better and the fighting could be better, but those two aspects arent actually bad (anymore. I hated the portraits for the first few updates). There's really no way to improve upon Stardew except offer a different artstyle and more interaction with each character and different flavors and archetypes.of characters. Which I feel like rune factory 4 special kinda hit. If Rune factory 5 is rune factory 4 but worse because of the 3d change then everyone should just save 40 bucks and get rf 4

Yeah, literally no one will agree that x was better than gx.

@PoundShopOrwell different strokes. Fata morgana is well reviewed and it has no gameplay. It's not even bad, it's just not a game. Same thing here. The main mechanic is the politics of the world. The actually gameplay is secondary. If you don't care about the story, that's literally two thirds of the game. If you do care, it's quite a good story of political intrigue and the choices are some of the most impactful I've seen in a game. Like the choices that matter really matter in ways I couldn't see cominylg. Even in the demo. You know giving Roland up isn't great, but did you really expect it to go that bad that fast? And all the choices so far are that. It's really interesting it's just that's the whole game. The strategy sections are breaks from the choice based visual novel stuff. theres like one battle a chapter more or less like fire emblem but like 30 hours of dialogue. It's a visual novel more than anything. Having strategy in the title is almost misleading

I think the scenes are overly long. To be fair, they were just as bad in war of the lions, but there wasn't a focus on having so many scenes after so many scenes. Like go back and play war of the lions, it's just as pretentious and weirdly Elizabethan as this is, but since there's a whole mechanic around votes and politics here it's just given more weight that some people find too much. I like it, but I understand why people don't. Like id like to play through again to see the other routes, but I mean, it's a lot to go through back to back.

@nocdaes It's kinda like how I wish the just called octopath saga. They clearly were influenced by it, they must have at some point considered that it was similar to saga, it may have been been pitched as a saga game, yet they didn't go with it probably thinking the franchise didn't have enough recognizability.

Similarly, triangle strategy is tactics ogre let us cling together for the PSP 2. It's literally all the choice and branching paths and exceedingly similar battle system, presentation style, and tone to the point I'd be surprised if they aren't just going through they're catalogue and picking obscure games to rehash. Triangle strategy is an expansion on tactics ogre, but it's at the heart of it the same game. I also can't imagine that at some point they didn't consider calling it final fantasy tactics for the brand recognition, but maybe they wanted, I'm guessing like octopath, technically new ips that could spin into their own franchises. That's literally the only reason I can think of for not calling these games what they clearly are. since they're remaking front mission, my next guess for the next one is Valkyrie profile. They already tried chrono trigger with I am Setsuna and lost sphear. This is their second recent attempt at just recreating old games and it's definitely more successful.

@zool To be fair, it's not like the game is rocket science. Move the guy next to the other guy and choose what you want to do to him from a list that clearly tells you what each thing does. I honestly don't understand the complexity here. Chess is much more complex than the average strategy rpg. Like there are literal lines that tell you what will happen the next turn of you move someone somewhere. Things couldn't feasibly get more clear.

There's also the bit that if you've played any ff tactics game or tactics ogre or the Valkyrie chronicles strategy game or the suikoden strategy game or kinda disgaea and fire emblem a little you know how this particular game works. Especially if you played any of the ff tactics or tactics ogre. This game is an actual spiritual successor to the PSP tactics ogre game. To the point you can play that game and pretty much say you played triangle strategy. Triangle strategy is the bigger game, but list the qualities of each and you got the same exact game.

@czdjax It's not similar to disgaea. To be honest triangle strategy os so story focused it's basically a visual novel that you play sometimes where disgaea is definitely more gameplay focused. It's also not really that similar in how it plays either. Looks similar, isn't.

@malsan I get the feeling it's more a visual novel with some strategy battles breaking it up than something like fire emblem. I guess it depends on how many sub missions there are. I didn't hate the dialogue in the demo

I mean, this is the closest well probably get to another tactics ogre game. It's criminal how the obvious inspiration from that game isn't more mentioned in this. Seriously if you're interested in triangle strategy, play tactics ogre let us cling together. It's the same deal but slightly smaller in scope. Similar battle system, same tone, same branching paths, though it looks like there's more choice in triangle strategy than TO. It's like octopath and saga. Same formula to the T, but removed enough by time that nobody really brings it up.

@Kirgo I mean, I was being sarcastic. The line is somewhere. That isn't Ukraine though. No one is going to fight over Ukraine. And Putin knows that.

@BeefSanta Triangle strategy is definitely light on the strategy for a strategy game. The focus is definitely the story. Having just played fata morgana I learned that I really don't mind just reading as a game, but other people don't like that as much. This game is more visual novel with a different artstyle interrupted every hour by a battle than a strategy game like fire emblem or ff tactics where there is a heavy focus on story, but because of random encounters there are ways to have more game than story and the story sections themselves are much more brief. Approaching this game as a visual novel kinda helps reframe things where the heavy text isn't as bothersome

@echoplex this game is basically ff tactics or tactics ogre. Advanced wars is only like itself. Maybe it's like fire emblem crossed with some systems from real time games like warcraft in terms of unit creation and base capture. If you want a story, advance wars is not for you. It's much more arcadey and the value comes from trying to get the highest rank and maybe creating maps and that sort of stuff while the value in so.ething like triangle strategy is the story and the replay value would be the different routes to see a different story. They're not really alike at all except being different types of strategy games.

@HenHiro and this is how the ideology behind WWIII starts. Rather Russia have Ukraine than a war between nuclear powers. There's a reason there hasn't been one since WW2. Nobody wants that smoke. There's no universe where Ukraine remains independent without aid and foreign aid could and probably would lead to escalation and escalation could lead to the fall out universe. Just let em have Ukraine. ***** let em have Alaska. That's Russia's idea too. They know Ukraine can't stop them and nobody else would risk a war with a peer country over Ukraine. Either this passes soon or WW3 happens. My bet is it's over in a week.

I guess it's the thought that counts. Ultimately it's a completely meaningless gesture, but I guess, cool? I mean, whether there's Pokemon ads or not doesn't affect a occuring and potentially growing conflict at all. Guess, it could be in poor taste, but I mean, I don't really get it

@AlexSora89 Not related, but is the Pokedex limited? I mean, there's like 700 in gen 8 now. Just include the other 250 in 9 and you're done. Like most can be gotten now and the ones that can't I guess I'm not a big enough pokemone fan to care. It's literally almost 700 different things. That's a lot of things. Shame that 300 are paywalled though. I guess you could trade, but no one does.

I mean, really, there was two and a half years between swsh and the last two games. I think you can blame Covid for that release schedule. I don't think it ultimately matters. Its not like scarlet and violet started development after LA finished and the remakes weren't developed by gamefreak at all so they wouldn't have any effect on these new games. I'm really convinced that the only reason we're seeing three games this year is that development was slowed down because of Covid and it turns out that this is how things worked out. Given how Pokemon games release on a three year schedule it probably always was the plan for gen 9 to release this year and LA to be a buffer but it got delayed a few months.

@Duboiss It's definitely enough time. I don't believe they should do an open world game or that this even is one. Could be this is just like swsh with several wild areas instead of one. That would make more sense. It would be pushing the switch to have many towns and dungeons and frankly they look better in the style swsh did. I don't think open world games should be on the switch. The thing is basically comparable to a PS3. Even if that's not strictly true, open world games still look about 15 years old on the switch. It works a lot better with smaller games.

@Yosher Chances are LA was delayed a year for Covid and the remakes have nothing to do with gamefreak. So they released two games this year with one likely being delayed a bit. Likely gen 9 has been on development since gen 8 finished. Three years is more than enough time and typically how gamefreak does it. I don't see a problem

@Lord I think Covid is why we saw three this year. ***** got pushed a bit

@HenHiro I think the problem is botw is literally the best that can be done and it was a launch title. Even that game is empty and has frame rate problems despite being as optimized for the hardware as it can be. A lot of botw comes down to a very very specific artstyle meant to capitalize on it's strengths. Have you seen the thing without shaders? Like gamefreak will never do as good a job as Nintendo who really needed botw to sell the switch, but my point was that's literally one example. The other game didn't run well on the switch and it's much, much smaller. Small games are fine on the switch, it's open world games I wish they'd stop trying because the hardware isnt there for them. Every open world switch game looks 15 years old because that's about what the chipset can do.

@Ketsumeishi It's just overly ambitious for a pretty lackluster team with little 3d experience on underpowered hardware. Botw turned out to be literally the best larger world game a studio could do on the switch and it was a launch title. Like the switch has games that look good, but they're all small or heavily compromised versions of things that already existed like mh rise. Like rise looks good if you don't look at world and wonder why everything is so sparse.

@Savage_Joe I think people's problem is it came so soon after Arceus. Which I'm not even sure was developed by the same team. It's been three years since swsh and the gen 4 remakes we're someone else so it's not like 3 years isn't enough time for a new game. It just feels like three pokemon games in a year is too much

@luckiernut I hope it doesn't have arcs mechanics. It works for one game but arc was kinda a monster hunter spin off. The open world should stay but the battling and catching mechanics should go back to classic. It's not like it wasn't good, it's just not something I see as worth staying. Chucking 100 pokeballs to catch the 12th bidoof to fill out a checklist can die for all I care. It was just annoying padding.

@itslukec I think you're right. I don't think the switch has the power to handle fully open 3d cities. Best case is that all the outside town areas are open and the towns and dungeons and either much more close in or just the same side scrolling thing as swsh and sun and moon

@HenHiro I can't defend the attack on graphics. It doesn't look any worse than any other switch game. Yeah, it looks bad, but so does kind of all the larger world switch games. Botw got away with it by making it's emptiness a thematic point, but it chugs on the switch if there's any fire or water. MH rise is a great example. It's a good game, but go back and play world and be amazed and how the only reason rise is acceptable is because we've all agreed that the switch is kinda weak and they did the best they could.

Arceus was underwhelming for a switch game, but it wasn't that much far behind. These will probably be the same. My point is there really needs to be a switch 2 before graphics can really be complained about. They all suck. Like I'm 100% convinced we wouldn't have a hd 2d concept if not for the switch and it's low output. It works amazing on an underpowered portable device but wouldn't be necessary if the thing had some oomph

@wanderwonder I don't get how. They're all colors or metals or something. What wouldn't be a bad title then? They're all just one random word that has nothing to do with anything.

@Bunkerneath they are. Theres still octopath and bravely sequels and triangle strategy and final fantasy origins come out this month.

I'll probably get this but I do hope the genealogy remake is also coming. I don't even know what that would look like consider map design was really odd in that game and most of the really fire emblem stuff including the map types didn't exist until Thracia. I honestly kinda don't want it if it's still the same maps. It gets old capturing three castles outside per chapter over and over again

@Ear_wiG I hate equating realistic to hardware requirements. Kingdom hearts 3 could never run on the switch and that's not a realistic game.

Hard to justify the price if you have a PS4.

@VoidofLight I don't have a problem with games taking a bit from gnosticism. It does limit the possible plots for these games. Like SMT and the xeno games both crib from the same source and both are kinda identical in the track they follow. 2 didn't follow the same religious angle as much besides Rex being Jesus and I think because of that there's a lot less focused plot going on. I actually hope 3 leans on gnosticism again because that seems to be the plot these guys can write.

@AzzyC Yeah, you definitely haven't played the xeno games. A robot was Mary Magdalene in Saga. Literally was Mary Magdalene. Xenogears was a gnostic allegory. Blade 1 was also a gnostic allegory but more veiled. These games are actually pretty antigod because the main godlike entity I'm gnosticism mistakenly believes he's an almighty god when he is actually under a greater power. That mistaken god is the Abrahmic God. You kill it in all the games.

Again, this was really blatant in gears and oh my god was it blatant in Saga. If anything you'd actually have to know about this beforehand to really pick it up in the xenoblade games with 2 putting the religious angle on the back burner. Rex is more Jesus than the others though and there's still crucifixion because there always is.

@VoidofLight Xenoblade isn't nearly as bad on that front as gears and especially saga. I can only think of vague allegory in xb compared to a character is directly responsible for Jesus' miracles and a robot is literally Mary Magdalene in Saga.

@Mr_Fox it would have been great of it was finished. The problem is disc two is awful because they ran out of time an money. Most of the disc is Ellie in a chair describing what happened. Xenosaga was more Christ-y but at least it was finished.

@fenlix To be fair, square enix has only tried one style that way so far. It'd probably look like the Ds Pokemon games of they did 2.5 D. I can definitely imagine mother 3 with hd sprites and 3d environments.

@SwitchVogel A lot of it is hype because it never got a release and part of it is it actually broaches things that games just don't if they're not directed by yoko taro. It's lowkey a very depressing game with the tiniest silver lining. It's remarkable how just dark that game gets thematically while still remaining hopeful somehow, maybe. Or everyone dies. It's just a brilliantly written game. Gameplay is earthbound which is dragon quest so that's definitely not the selling point.

Like, is the main reason mother 3 never getting a western release the magypsies? Like, child death, but it's 2022 and the west and Japan are different. The depiction of the magypsies would get some heat for sure 100%. I honestly think this is the reason mother 3 doesn't get a remake, but square enix greenlights live a live.

@JayJ Not supposedly. There were a lot of changes (cuts mostly) but the characters and the overall plot was the same.