FMW
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Everything posted by FMW
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Here, I can give you a breakdown of the ending options without spoiling anything. There's Law, Neutral, and Chaos. Once you've been in Tokyo for a while you can talk to a guy in all the bars with that horrid abrasive music and he'll tell you "How people think about you" or something awkwardly translated along those lines. Basically, you can keep track of where you're leaning and adjust accordingly if you feel the need. The Law and Chaos endings are shorter game experiences, but also much more direct. I landed on Law my first time through and it was pretty fun! A cool extra long dungeon and a sequence of tricky bosses leading up to a showdown with Lucifer. Good times. The NEUTRAL path on the other hand is much harder to land on (you can't stray very far at all in either alignment direction without getting railroaded to that ending) AND there's this super dumb stretch where the game says "In order to access the neutral ending, go do all the sidequests". That's where I got on my replay file going for neutral ending. That's not cool game. I need to replay the whole damn campaign just to see the new finale, but I ALSO need to dick around doing all the sidequests first? Very not cool. Problem is, there's way more content to the neutral ending and it's pretty clearly the "good" ending. SMT pretends to trade in moral greys, but this one dropped the ball. The two extreme endings are pretty much bad news, if you want any ending that isn't horrific you need to land on Neutral. So your choice. Straightforward ending towards whichever alignment speaks to you, or get the most out of your game and go for the "good" ending (which I still haven't see all of so I can't comment on specifically) and have to do all the sidequests. Also: SMT V won't be for at least six or seven years, so it'll depend on the state of the video game market then. I doubt it'll be console though. The real question is whether it'll be portable or mobile phone.
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There totally is a run button. You just hold B while walking, no? I think that was in Persona Q also. It's not usually a good idea to USE it mind you (at least in EO, usually running means quick death) but it's there.
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Friend drunk bought a PS3. Was looking at catalog, not a lot of quality JRPG there? Weird. Best genre entries went to Xbox (Lost Odyssey) or Wii (Last Story/Xenoblade). Most PS JRPG is low quality big budget franchise bad (FF XIII and Tales). Am I missing anything?
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Oh yeah, my wife has been playing Ni No Kuni all the time recently (it contributed to my desire to play P4G) and she almost never is able to get into long games.
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Vecha you need to update the goddamn SMT IV thread. I bumped it just the other day trying to get your attention.
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@tcp I'll give you that ninokuni was more polished...but there was something special about XBC. I love em both. Lol
And FMW, I'll give my exp updates soon
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I can respond to Mr. Jack's inquiries: Persona Q is watered down Etrian Odyssey. So it may be more palatable to an outsider (like you) but if judged by a person who enjoys playing Etrian Odyssey games it doesn't hold up as a dungeon crawling experience. You're sad that you don't get a shiny for fully exploring a floor? Your shiny is the reliable knowledge of the entire floor's layout and knowing there aren't any more treasures out there. Persona Q watered the mapping down. The mechanic of filling up a percentage meter and then getting a bauble for doing so made it less an experience of mapping out unfamiliar territory and more coloring in the blanks in a coloring book. Do it right, do it the way the game wants you to (why do I need to walk over every damn square to fill in the map percent? I can map tiles without standing on them thank you very much), and get the preordained reward. In EO IV your reward is that you completely filled in the map for that floor and that feels satisfying. It sounds cheesy, but I think this is actually true: If you don't want to explore, then don't play Etrian Odyssey. Etrian Odyssey creates a space where the player has zero clue what's out there and wanting to answer that question is the motivation to play. If your motivation to explore in Persona Q is predicated on getting the treasure chest reward then you're playing the wrong video games. As for a few of your specific complaints: 1. Persona Q has better menu layouts, there's no contesting that. I imagine that's an upgrade that will show up in Etrian Odyssey V, but since we haven't seen any new EO games since PQ it currently holds the uncontested "best interface" crown. 2. Having no story is better. Persona Q is filled with one dimensional reductions of Persona characters being stupid together ("Meat"! "Workouts"! "I get in petty fights with Akihiko"!). Etrian Odyssey demands that one's imagination fill in blanks. Read this, it went up just yesterday: http://www.siliconera.com/2015/02/08/etrian-odyssey-untold-your-brain-will-fill-in-the-rest/ 3. F.O.E.'s still move during battle turns in PQ, it's just that PQ treats the player like a baby and doesn't put free roaming FOEs in areas where there are two or more that even COULD aggro on at the same time until like 40 hours into the game.
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80 down, 40 to go! THE GREEN STAR HUNT IS STILL GOING BABY!
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Oh come on. Who else is going to have a breakfast cereal username with a related sesame street character image? Super Mario Galaxy 2 BTW
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Frosted Mini-Wheats > Count Chocula.
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Ah, Super Mario Galaxy 2 was fantastic. I remember playing through it back when it came out. Just an fyi, there are 242 stars in SMG2. D:
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Etrian Odyssey Untold is kinda good! I won't make a whole thread since I think I'm the only one into it, but I'm having a good time! I'm starting to enjoy games that lack mercy.
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I still need to finish IV. Brutal game. I look forward to the new game since the mechanics looks so much better.
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A friend of mine who is a complete nerd about those games claims that IV is the easiest one in the series.
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Wait, which new one? You mean the mystery dungeon crossover? Also, @Mr.Jack - your friend is right.
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Well, Layton X Ace Attorney came out. It kinda blows. I'm bummed. Sometimes two great tastes don't taste great together. It's the nonsense magic storytelling of Layton that we were discussing up above, but then you go to court and peel events that happen in a fun and friendly fantasy Layton world apart. It's TERRIBLE! You need to either do the Layton thing and not care about the rules of reality all the time and just let what's emotionally right prevail, or you need to stick to the way the world actually works to dissect interesting murder mysteries. As is the mysteries are the worst in any Ace Attorney game ever because they revolve around the rules of magic, which are all made up on the spot and thoroughly uninteresting. But the story can't ever just handwave and say "and then Layton tipped his hat and said something dapper and everyone left the room happy" because they're trying to treat everything like a mystery with cause and effect. Ugh. On the upside, Professor Layton and the Azran Legacy is REALLY good. Best Layton or second best, depending on how much you like Unwound Future. I think Azran Legacy is the best, hands down.
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I demand an update! Vecha! Did you or did you not find that black samurai? You shouldn't start a thread where we talk about a game you're playing and then go dark on us. Did you manage to soldier through the not-very-good opening of SMT IV and get into Tokyo? Did you align yourself with a particular story path? Did you digress off to any of the different SMT games you were talking about instead?
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Jesus Christ. Just booted up my first computer I had when I was a kid. I used to write my forum posts for this place down and had a special folder for them where they were edited and everything. You guys haven't gotten quality like that out of me in half a decade.
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@TCP - they're still here dawg. Go dig up the old thread starters about Metroid Prime 1/2, or the detailed breakdown I made of how FF X HD ought to be handled back when it was announced(for some reason). I've got a KH II rant in there and a partially done FF XII post that I guess I never got how I wanted it. I can't find it on the forum.
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Wow, that's WAY more thought/effort than I've ever put into a post on here.
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And it's way more thought/effort than I ever should have. But whatever. As far as dumb things to have done in high school, it's harmless.
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Playing Dragon Quest again. Maybe this is unfair since I'm coming off FF 13, but it is once again plain as day to me that Dragon Quest is better than Final Fantasy
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Yeah, they've been releasing them all on iOS or whatever. Think they're up to DQIII now.
And as someone who has only played Dragon Quest VIII... I'm inclined to agree. It's easily one of the best JRPGs I've ever played. I really wish they'd drop that mobile nonsense and give DQVIII a proper HD version.
I really should get around to playing the rest of the series, though. I still have my copy of the DS remake of IV but I have no system to play it o...
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...play it on.
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Prediction: The Dragon Quest 8 remake comes out for new 3DS. Square Enix has been reliably remaking all of them from 4 through 7 on Nintendo handhelds, I don't see a reason why they would suddenly stop now.
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The final boss of FF XIII is utter bullshit. For a game that had a "fun combat system/crappy game around that combat" dichotomy it's such a bummer that it ends with terrible combat.
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Hey, he started it.
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I had enough levelled seraphs crowns for this not to be that tough a fight. It's cheap that there is no warning that he will be a total dick, but he's no worse than Zombie -> Full life cheap-shotting Seymour.
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Except that if Seymour Zombie/Full Life's Tidus you can bring him back and keep going. Instant Death attacks are okay as long as the fight is balanced around them. I just think that Orphan did a crappy job of that.
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My preference is how Gen V handled it. Don't give the player the easy way out "you don't actually need to USE a Pokemon to level it up" item, just design the game so that every successive route and dungeon has higher level enemies than the last. It's not that hard - every JRPG ever has needed to do this. Even in the Gen VI games I don't use the XP Share. Raising Pokemon without having to use the Pokemon robs the game of the experience of growing alongside them, which is kinda the central theme of every Pokemon game. If a person were to be satisfied just letting their team level up in the background while they use someone else, why not just level everyone up in the daycare? I dunno. I'm sure it's nice for competitive players and breeders or whatever, but as far as a single player "Go on an adventure, make friends with pokemon, get stronger with them, become the very best" experience, I feel like the modern XP share kinda undercuts it. I mean, in the new games they don't even show you the stat upgrades of Pokemon that level up who aren't on the battlefield - how much more hands-off could it get than that? You don't need to use the Pokemon to level it up, you don't see the ways that it is getting stronger, you don't build up a cache of memories with that Pokemon. So what's the point then?
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I am actually mad hooked on Pokemon HeartGold right now. But going back to Gen II games which were childhood games for me I am coming to recognize that the level scaling in those games were WAY messed up. Here's the sequencing at one point: Go through an area of wild pokemon and trainers around level 20, fight a gym with pokemon in the high 20s, fight another gym leader with pokemon in the low 30's, go to a new dungeon with wild pokemon below level 20 again. All through the game it's like that. The random encounter levels are just crazy out of whack with the boss levels. I'm fighting level 18 wild pokemon around the 6th gym for god's sake!
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I am 80% sure that there is a squirrel that's moved into my air vents. I hear him all the time. I move in a month. I just keep telling myself "it's not my problem, it's not my problem". I may not make it.
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ARE SQUIRRELS FUCKING NOCTURNAL???
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They shouldn't be...
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Only one conclusion then. Vampire Squirrels are living in my vent.
Still not my problem. Fuck the next tenants.
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Captain Toad Treasure Tracker is maybe remarkable for a 2014 holiday game release. 1. It is guaranteed to work and 2. It appears to be inspired by nothing more than motion within a 3D space. I want it very much.
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I wouldn't be surprised if the bomber notebook was overhauled too. The basic idea of having all these side quest lines to be pursued that progress regardless of your presence based on the flow of time over the three days is super duper smart. It's great. But the menu in the game to help the player keep track of those side quests was lacking. So a more organized bomber notebook with a little bit more information to help players experience the quality side content in the game would help more people appreciate the game without changing anything that made it good.
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I would support adding voice acting if it was actually going to be incorporated into the design of the game. Like, maybe a Twilight Princess style deal where you have an always present companion who's chatty and can provide color commentary while the game is in motion. Or if they want to tell a different type of story that would benefit from nuanced delivery. However if all we're talking about it Zelda as we know it with voices reading along with the text in the barebones cutscenes that justify visiting all the local dungeons I'm gonna say that's a bad idea.
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I mean, lets just clear the air about Majora's Mask for a moment. It is probably the worst expression of the things that Zelda games normally do. The exploration isn't as fun because you always feel like being rushed. All the fun little discoveries of secrets tucked away in the world are kinda less fun because those things are still there but they're all dark and creepy and twisted. The scale is all condensed down so that everything can be quickly accessible within the time limit. The story isn't at all similar to the Zelda myth that guides 90% of the franchise narrative arcs. Majora's Mask is, for all these reasons, not a very good Zelda game. If you want a Zelda fix, it won't come from Majora's Mask. But if we set aside the expectations of "Does Majora's Mask do a good job of being Zelda" I think that it stands as a very well made and powerful game on its own. What's done with the graphics is remarkable. Most quickly made sequels that just recycle models from the previous installment feel cheap. Majora's Mask actually takes advantage of the fact that they have old models that players will have expectations of and subverts those expectations over and over again. That's where a lot of the creepy comes from. The music (as this announcement trailer did a lot to remind us) is REALLY good and unlike most video game soundtracks. The way the entire game world operates like clockwork revolving around the central clock tower allows for some really well done sidequest storylines that play out over the course of the three days. The main story is one of the more thematically rich stories in video games period (pro tip: it's about the end of childhood). There's a lot of stuff in Majora's Mask that's REALLY good. Though it is not good at the things that people think of when they say "Zelda game", I think it is one of the very best video games that is branded Zelda.
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I beat Ornstein and Smaugh. Wasn't easy. Wish the walk to the boss was a bit shorter even with running past all the enemies I swear moving that staircase up and down a million times. Now that I've accquired and placed the Lordvessel it's kind of paralyzing. The new goal is "go out and beat all the bosses and get stronger while you do so". So it's Megaman. And I have about a ton of stages to choose from. Off the top of my head: The door in Deepwood Garden I open with the crest of Artorias (already puchased) The tomb with the regenerating skeletons adjacent Firelink Shrine The Valley of Drakes The Ruins of Old Londo with the goddamn ghosts The chaos hell beyond Quelaggs Domain The mist door on the hill behind Anor Londo that used to be gold but now is white And the problem I face is just knowing that this is Dark Souls so at this particular point in the game several of these options will lead me to certain death. Others I won't have some item for. There are probably only one or two places I'm actually equipped to traverse next, but Dark Souls would rather I play guess and check to find out where. I mean, this is the game that starts you in Firelink Shrine and only one of the three available paths is at ALL viable. So I think I'm taking a break from Dark Souls. I'll come back to it when I'm so hungry for it that I'm willing to put up with the bullshit guess and check to find a level that I can actually play.
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How do we feel about Man of Tai Chi here? I feel like it's a very well produced and directed film... and the acting is pretty good (I mean, assuming your on board with Keanu Reeves, which really everyone should be)... but it just kinda left me feeling empty. Like I'm not sure what I was supposed to take away from it, or even feel really. It's so well crafted in order to achieve... what? I eventually decided that this goes in the "good movies" thread because I'm still thinking about it trying to figure that out.
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I feel a bit guilty. I own a Wii U and Bayonetta 2 reviews are incredible AND it includes the first game and I... just don't care. I'm the reason third parties don't develop for Nintendo.
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Totes fair. I've never been able to get into them either. Though apparently one of Bayo 2's strengths is that it is REALLY good at catering to people who aren't seasoned action players. Called 'Casual' mode or something. Apparently brilliant craic.
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I wouldn't consider myself an action game fan, but at the same time I never really had much trouble with Bayonetta. Is the game supposed to be hard for its genre?
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Yeah dawg I hear ya. I'm not big on those fast-paced combo action games. Platinum loves to make fast paced games too. I'm a slow tactics kind of guy, so RPG's are more my jam
