Random thoughts on whatever JRPG you're currently playing?

[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.

 

[Jinn]

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?

 

[Endemic]

封緘のグラセスタ.

Well shit.

 

[Jinn]

How do second and third part compare to first?

The second is definitely the weakest in the series, but absolutely still worth playing. The third is kind of where everything good came together from the the two previous games.

 

[Grampy_Bone]

How do second and third part compare to first?

Xenosaga is a partial-birth abortion of a series. Play the first and pretend the sequels don't exist.

 

[v1rus]

How do second and third part compare to first?

Xenosaga is a partial-birth abortion of a series. Play the first and pretend the sequels don't exist.

That also seems to be a common sentiment - second one is agreed as disaster, but opinion on third one goes from "best" to "not worth playing". Ill give them a try, and hell, prolly finish it even if I dont like them, cuz autism strong in me.

 

[v1rus]

are tutorials in this game sucky or I'm just stupid?

 

[Lincolnberry]

I thought Xenosaga was quite hard the first time I played it. It's been at least 15 years so I don't remember much but I don't think it's just you - not well explained how it works.

The first bit with the cyborg dude and doll chick in particular was rough.

 

[deuxhero]

Trying to do the 18th Secret Mission in Tales of Vesperia now. I conclude Secret Missions are retarded. A bonus for doing certain actions in a boss battle seems fine, except the execution is all over the place. Some are near automatic, several require a particular character in your party (something you can't change mid-fight), others require setups that are impossible to find naturally. It feels like a mechanic included because achievements were a new feature/gimmick on the 360, like waggle in a Wii game.

 

[v1rus]

I thought Xenosaga was quite hard the first time I played it. It's been at least 15 years so I don't remember much but I don't think it's just you - not well explained how it works.

The first bit with the cyborg dude and doll chick in particular was rough.

Its not matter of difficulty (yet) - I played like two 1 hour-ish sessions, and I barely fought, because, you know... Xenosaga. But I got email about tech attacks, or was it esper attacks, or some third kind of attacks... And for the life of me, I cant make any sense of it. Something two buttons, something one button... Something leveled, one button, unleveled, two buttons.... but when I did fight, interface didnt look like that, at all.

Its prolly gonna turn out real simple, but told in most convoluted way possible. Coming from Gears, still cant figure out how do "not-deathblows" work, because, it seems, they sure as hell dont work like deathblows did.

 

[Nikanuur]

I don't usually play JRPGs, much less 2D side scrolling, but when I do it's Fortune Summoners. An uncanny mix of kiddy, yet appealing presentation, often surprisingly challenging combat, and an exploration that can be fulfilling, yet also often borderlines wtf kind of frustration. I don't know why I like it, I suppose it's like eating too much of those aggressively fizzy, sour gummies that you can't stop eating even though your palate is already hurting and you know that it's going to get even worse.

...there's even that flying rabbit-thing that replaces all its Rs with Ws for that added layer of diabetes-inducing sweetness.

 

[Modron]

You should give the demo for Astlibra Revision a try if you want another fix of sidescrolling RPG.

 

[newtmonkey]

Cosmic Fantasy (PC Engine)
You couldn't make a more generic 16-bit RPG if you tried. It's ridiculously linear, with you going from town to town solving the local problem (always by killing a "boss" enemy in a nearby cave or tower). You start out with a single character, but are joined by a second character shortly into the game. The main hero is strong with (basically) no magic ability, and the other character is weak but has strong magic abilities. There's not much you can do with that.

Every random battle is a war of attrition, so you absolutely need to cast the one spell that halves damage every single battle. Then you need to heal at least one character after every battle. However, healing magic is both cheap and powerful, so it ends up just being busywork rather than a challenge. You can also purchase ridiculously powerful healing items cheaply (heal to max HP and MP instantaneously), and there's nothing else to spend money on; at just about over halfway through the game, I've spent the last 5 hours or so with max gold simply because I don't have anything to spend it on. You also always go first in combat, so unless you somehow get to the point where you stumble into a cave low on HP and MP with absolutely no items, you are basically invincible.

The game feels unfinished and buggy. There are a ton of weird items that seem useful, like stuff that is supposed to freeze enemies, or slow them down, or whatever. The thing is, absolutely none of it works. You have a spell to escape dungeons, and it doesn't work in 90% of the dungeons. You have a Run command, but it never works. You have a spell that's supposed to block enemy magic spells, but no enemies cast magic spells. You have this system of barrier and gun items, but the barriers basically never work, and the guns require expensive ammo yet do less damage than your regular attacks. The solution to every single encounter in the game, including bosses, is to cast the defense spell and then just attack until you win.

It also looks like garbage. Yet another PC Engine CD-ROM game where, after spending hundreds of dollars to get next-gen gaming, you're stuck with something that's barely a step above Famicom games.

---

This is another of the "legendary" RPG series on the PC Engine, like Tengai Makyo, so hopefully the first entry is just awful and then it gets better with the second game.

 

[v1rus]

Mixed feelings about Xenosaga Part 1.

I'm enjoying the setting, plot, and even combat is great. Tad too linear map design, but still enjoyable. OTOH, cutscenes are killing me. I usually dont mind long, narrative cutscenes, but it doesnt float my boat right now, at all.

Not the games fault, and I knew fully well its a cutscene fest, just picked it up at a wrong time. Shame, because Im gonna finish it, since if I put it down, I'd most prolly forget all of the plot (and thousand mysterious baddies that pop up all over the place). I'm at Miltia, so I'm well into game, I think, prolly like 2/3, so not that much left. I'll return to part 2 and part 3 for sure, but not now, no. Prolly gonna go to something active, perhaps Hyper Light Drifter or Environmental Station Alpha.

Its weird tho. I wanna play the game. Really. But knowing theres a 30 minute cutscene ahead, even tho I'm enjoying the plot itself, just knocks me back.

 

[Jinn]

Why in the fuck would you play a Xenosaga game if you weren't ready for some cutscenes per session?

Either way, they tend to come less frequently from that point on I think, though the halfway point is when I kind of started looking forward to every upcoming cutscene, because they get continually better from then on. Don't tell me you're playing the dubbed version too? The Japanese voice acting makes every cutscenes fifty times better than the shitty dub version.

 

[v1rus]

Why in the fuck would you play a Xenosaga game if you weren't ready for some cutscenes per session?

Either way, they tend to come less frequently from that point on I think, though the halfway point is when I kind of started looking forward to every upcoming cutscenes, because they get continually better from then on. Don't tell me you're playing the dubbed version too? The Japanese voice acting makes every cutscenes fifty times better than the shitty dub version.

Undub, always, dw

Dont know. Just didnt know what I was feeling like, the game has been on my PC for a while, and I decided to boot it up, only to realize halfway I should have left it for when I'd enjoy something more passive.

OTOH, the setting seemed (and proved to be) really enjoyable, thus at least my space opera itch was scratched.

 

[v1rus]

Oh, I also wanted to test PCSX2 nightly version, working and looking great. The game does look phenomenal with some tasteful upscaling and a non-intrusive shader.

 

[Maxie]

Why in the fuck would you play a Xenosaga game if you weren't ready for some cutscenes per session?

Either way, they tend to come less frequently from that point on I think, though the halfway point is when I kind of started looking forward to every upcoming cutscenes, because they get continually better from then on. Don't tell me you're playing the dubbed version too? The Japanese voice acting makes every cutscenes fifty times better than the shitty dub version.

Undub, always, dw

Dont know. Just didnt know what I was feeling like, the game has been on my PC for a while, and I decided to boot it up, only to realize halfway I should have left it for when I'd enjoy something more passive.

OTOH, the setting seemed (and proved to be) really enjoyable, thus at least my space opera itch was scratched.

why the undub
missing out on the cheese

 

[v1rus]

Why in the fuck would you play a Xenosaga game if you weren't ready for some cutscenes per session?

Either way, they tend to come less frequently from that point on I think, though the halfway point is when I kind of started looking forward to every upcoming cutscenes, because they get continually better from then on. Don't tell me you're playing the dubbed version too? The Japanese voice acting makes every cutscenes fifty times better than the shitty dub version.

Undub, always, dw

Dont know. Just didnt know what I was feeling like, the game has been on my PC for a while, and I decided to boot it up, only to realize halfway I should have left it for when I'd enjoy something more passive.

OTOH, the setting seemed (and proved to be) really enjoyable, thus at least my space opera itch was scratched.

why the undub
missing out on the cheese

idk, i always like undubbing. Jap game? Bring me nippon. Ruskie game? Gib me Ruskie.

Not sure should Gothic be played in German or Polack tho, hm.

 

[Derringer]

Cosmic Fantasy (PC Engine)
This is another of the "legendary" RPG series on the PC Engine, like Tengai Makyo, so hopefully the first entry is just awful and then it gets better with the second game.

Tengai Makyo is a little bit better but it's still just edo Dragon Quest, Tengai Makyo 2 tried a bit more with the design and writing of the game along with the art/va assets, from playing it in Japanese.

why the undub
missing out on the cheese

idk, i always like undubbing. Jap game? Bring me nippon. Ruskie game? Gib me Ruskie.

Not sure should Gothic be played in German or Polack tho, hm.

I liked the dub for Valkyrie Profile since it had the old 4kids vas doing the work and they did a decent job with it even if it's kinda cheesy and obviously not as clean sounding as the Japanese dub. I never really cared for Xenogears' dub, G Gundam's dub was better. Gothic's German dub sounds better compared to the English dub but I couldn't find a easy way to swap the dub unless I tried swapping it manually.

 

[musouking]

playing DQ1 but DOS port.
Thanks to felipepepe crpg book, learned a lot.

Comparing two versions at the same time is fun.