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RPG Community |OT| Take the Epoch to a New Era
- Thread starter Deleted member 419
- Start date
Looks like Humble has a pricing error for Insomnia The Ark (recently released Russian RPG). They are selling the deluxe edition for the cost of the deluxe upgrade pack.
https://www.humblebundle.com/store/insomnia-the-ark-deluxe-edition
Game is reportedly very promising, albeit pretty buggy right now.
https://www.humblebundle.com/store/insomnia-the-ark-deluxe-edition
Game is reportedly very promising, albeit pretty buggy right now.
Finally really started TitS SC--I had seen the opening segment right after playing FC last year and I got into the first dungeon a couple of weeks ago.
Got through the first couple boss fights, so far, having fun. Good to pick it up again (and good to post in here again).
Got through the first couple boss fights, so far, having fun. Good to pick it up again (and good to post in here again).
Got through the prologue. Seems I made a choice not just of party member but what story I get to see, but I've kept a save file at prologue clear.
It was interesting because the dynamic is very different at the start sans a certain character.
I think I'm back into the flow of things.
It was interesting because the dynamic is very different at the start sans a certain character.
I think I'm back into the flow of things.
Well, RPG Era... I guess my desire to play Dragon Quest has not yet been sated after beating both DQXI and DQV PS2. I need more! So more I shall have... even though I never play handheld games, this version seems great so far.
Also yes, modded with the orchestral music. Sounds so good!
Also yes, modded with the orchestral music. Sounds so good!
Nothing is going to turn me off from DQ. DQXI has officially made me a big fan of the series and now I'm just making up for all that time I spent ignoring the series.
Counterpoint: DQ7 3DS is a very good version of one of my favorite games of all time. There are things about it I don't like, especially the visible enemies change, but overall I think it's the version I'll tend to go back to. The only thing I find myself really missing is hybrid skills, but over time I've come to appreciate some of the class system changes.
Honestly, most people who really appreciate the storytelling aspect of the DQ series end up loving DQ7.
Honestly, most people who really appreciate the storytelling aspect of the DQ series end up loving DQ7.
Most people think DQ7 is one of the weaker entries in the series, but I have to say it's one of my favorites. It can be a bit of a slog in the beginning until you get to Alltrades Abbey, but I like how pronounced its episodic nature is as you go around restoring islands and your World Map in the present starts to fill in. I especially love the soundtrack.
The only thing PS1 version needed was an improved walking speed.
The changes in the 3DS version are almost universally terrible, moreso if you don't have a jailbroken N3DS.
DQVII is great, imo. It is the epitome of a core facet of DQ, the vignette approach and it uses the structure of its world to great effect towards said approach.
Moreover, it is very unique in the way it unfolds with its focus on exploration and building the world coupled with, again, the peculiar structure of its world.
Moreover, it is very unique in the way it unfolds with its focus on exploration and building the world coupled with, again, the peculiar structure of its world.
Thanks.
Own a cartridge of Mother 3. Need to sit down one day and copy the rom from it.
FF's on GBA are probably out of my budget for a while.
How hard are the Fire Emblems? Not really a fan of the perma death.
FE 6 is the hardest of the three on normal mode.
FE 7 and FE 8 are pretty forgiving on normal mode.
Oriental Blue: Ao no Tengai
Dragon Quest Monsters: Caravan Heart
Mario Golf and Tennis
Super Robot Taisen (two OG games have official English versions, and there's a patch for J)
Fire Emblem 8: The Sacred Stones is the easiest one as you can grind pretty early on. But both 7 and 8 are pretty great. 6 is unfortunately Japan only.
Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga is also pretty good on the GBA. I also really enjoyed Shining Soul 2 as a kid. It's kind of like a cute byte-sized Diablo.
Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga is also pretty good on the GBA. I also really enjoyed Shining Soul 2 as a kid. It's kind of like a cute byte-sized Diablo.
Couple of questions:
I know it really doesn't matter and it makes me wonder why there are both options but I always use the circle button to leave a shop menu instead of selecting cancel.
- When a game has V.O., do you listen to the character speak their entire line of dialogue or do you read it yourself and skip when you're done?
- If an shop has a cancel option i.e. Buy, Sell, Cancel, do you use it or do you back out with whatever the cancel button is?
I know it really doesn't matter and it makes me wonder why there are both options but I always use the circle button to leave a shop menu instead of selecting cancel.
If you've never played the first two Breath of Fire games on SNES, they're available on GBA. They're pretty cheap and I love them. The GBA games made the encounter rate less tedious but the image is off for some reason. At least it is to me. Looks like it's too bright/high contrast.
No one should be made to play the GBA or original SNES versions of BoF 2.
Retranslation patch or bust.
I didn't know they were bad. I've played them multiple times. Huh.
I was planning on playing through the Bitterblack isle from Dragons Dogma, but shortly after the first boss the level becomes boderline impossible with my current level and gear.
Would probably have to grind my ass of the stand a chance and well, screw that.
Would probably have to grind my ass of the stand a chance and well, screw that.
Thanks for the suggestions but looking at some of those prices it probably has to wait until I'm done studying.
Good news, everyone.
The whole 7th Dragon series is available in English:
7th Dragon 2020-II translation patch
The whole 7th Dragon series is available in English:
7th Dragon 2020-II translation patch
I'm watching Colbert and for the intro/outro music to this commercial break the band played Opening - Bombing Mission from FFVII. <3
TitS SC: I decided to go back because I was unsure and couldn't check if I was locking myself out of sidequests, but I finished all I had available and redid the story portion to get myself caught up with where I was and progressed somewhat further beyond.
It is really interesting how the map is largely the same as FC, how the same NPCs show up, and how the world retains the changes and developments wrought by events in FC. I'm glad though that the actual main dungeon of the chapter, which I've started to delve is new.
It is really interesting how the map is largely the same as FC, how the same NPCs show up, and how the world retains the changes and developments wrought by events in FC. I'm glad though that the actual main dungeon of the chapter, which I've started to delve is new.
Are you playing on a backlit screen? Capcom upped the contrast way too much to ensure that people could see the game on a standard GBA.
There's a romhack that restores the colors for backlit screens.
yep, I sure am. I had no idea they did that. Makes sense. Guess i have a reason to get an everdrive now.
thanks.
I second the bolded part of your quote. But I actually liked the 3DS version a bit more than the original version, because it streamlined some things. It still was a real drag to finish, lol.
So I am knee deep into Morrowind after fiddling around with mods and enhancers. Sorry, nothing felt right to me. It sure looks better, but the charm of the original is hard to top and so I uninstalled all the mods. I only installed the Code Patcher becaue I have quest log error that never shows finished quests as finished, but it's still there. The game still holds up to this day. I always liked Oblivion and Skyrim more than Morrowind, but Morrowind is still da damn fine game that for some reason I never finished and I didn't even start the DLCs. I will do that now :) This, Skyrim VR and The Elder Scrolls Online make the wait for TES6 somewhat bearable. It's such a fantastic series of RPGs and I love more and more the older they get. There really isn't anything comparable out there.
Got into Chapter 2 today, started doing the sidequests in the new region. The 'short' duration sidequest is a bit awkward. Almost did it the first time but I didn't get the chance to interrupt the boss character once and that ruined the battle. No option to retry either because of the way it is set up so... :(. But the awkwardness is that I kind of want to just continue the story at this point rather than get this particular quest done but not sure I have that choice if I want to ever do this quest (the short duration).
I do miss the more organic world exploration of FC. I do like that the world in FC is retained, as I said above, but at times it is very clear it is designed for FC in particular wrt the level design and how the content is designed to exploit your progress. SC is much more free wheeling in its side content design. The other thing is, I liked walking between the regions on foot. It was quite cool to have a road trip around the entire country.
I do miss the more organic world exploration of FC. I do like that the world in FC is retained, as I said above, but at times it is very clear it is designed for FC in particular wrt the level design and how the content is designed to exploit your progress. SC is much more free wheeling in its side content design. The other thing is, I liked walking between the regions on foot. It was quite cool to have a road trip around the entire country.
This poor thread has really died down, and I'm really sad about it. Early on, it was a great co-mingling of different RPG fans talking to each other and recommending games to each other that we may not ordinarily have played. It seems like there's been a major shift from this thread toward the Discord, but the number of active participants there is much lower, and the conversations are much more limited in scope. I'm not sure what to do about this, or if anything can be done (or if you guys are even interested in addressing it), but I've been thinking about it a lot the last few days and it really bums me out.
While activity is higher in the discord than it is in the thread, I don't think the discord itself is the sole contributor to the thread participation dropping. There is a sizable number of active people here who don't even bother with discord, or at least don't bother with the RPG ERA one. That said, we've been working on some things to bolster the community in the discord and foster more discussion. I wonder how much of that can also work for the thread...
Some musings -
• I wonder if RPG Club stuff would be better in here instead of a new thread? Though, I believe some changes are coming. Not sure exactly what yet.
• Perhaps we could have people do weekly/monthly spotlights? e.g. Aeana's spotlights, rabbit's effortposts, etc.
We had a lot of engagement in the discord, this thread, and the essentials thread as a whole when it was going. It drew in people from outside the community, had tons of discussion/debate, and a lot of creative effort put into it. I wonder if smaller projects could help get that same level of participation and interaction...
Some musings -
• I wonder if RPG Club stuff would be better in here instead of a new thread? Though, I believe some changes are coming. Not sure exactly what yet.
• Perhaps we could have people do weekly/monthly spotlights? e.g. Aeana's spotlights, rabbit's effortposts, etc.
We had a lot of engagement in the discord, this thread, and the essentials thread as a whole when it was going. It drew in people from outside the community, had tons of discussion/debate, and a lot of creative effort put into it. I wonder if smaller projects could help get that same level of participation and interaction...
I feel Discord did that to a lot of ERA.
I think it would. People like having their opinions and hard work praised. It'd have to be a constant, engaging thing though in order to retain interest.
OP
OP
This is interesting timing because I was just going to discuss this in the discord later today (I haven't really been at my PC for the weekend).
At the moment I'm on mobile so I won't go into details, but the gist is I think we should brainstorm what a community thread on Era can do relative to Discord, along with any ideas for recurring things to keep the thread interesting and informative, and then reboot this into OT2 incorporating those ideas and discussions. Part of the reason OTs are rebooted anyway is because they've gotten long enough that they become unwieldy, and a change of pace is needed.
The difficulty of differentiating a community thread from a Discord server is something that is a recurring problem in all of Era. It's a recognized problem and, for instance, was one of the major motivations for the "Entertainment" restructure that ended up pretty disastrous and was rolled back astonishingly quickly (in my opinion too quickly).
As Aeana said above, one of the bigger goals of this thread is "cross-pollination" between various RPG communities, and I think that this is something that is worthwhile and worth brainstorming how to keep intact. Even notwithstanding the presence of the RPG Era discord (which yes is quite active), most would agree that that discord is really just JRPG Era, there is not a balance of discussion there like there was in this thread. If nothing else, I would like to have a thread where CRPGs in general can be discussed meaningfully and free from the bullshit that is RPGCodex.
I'll post more when I actually have my PC.
At the moment I'm on mobile so I won't go into details, but the gist is I think we should brainstorm what a community thread on Era can do relative to Discord, along with any ideas for recurring things to keep the thread interesting and informative, and then reboot this into OT2 incorporating those ideas and discussions. Part of the reason OTs are rebooted anyway is because they've gotten long enough that they become unwieldy, and a change of pace is needed.
The difficulty of differentiating a community thread from a Discord server is something that is a recurring problem in all of Era. It's a recognized problem and, for instance, was one of the major motivations for the "Entertainment" restructure that ended up pretty disastrous and was rolled back astonishingly quickly (in my opinion too quickly).
As Aeana said above, one of the bigger goals of this thread is "cross-pollination" between various RPG communities, and I think that this is something that is worthwhile and worth brainstorming how to keep intact. Even notwithstanding the presence of the RPG Era discord (which yes is quite active), most would agree that that discord is really just JRPG Era, there is not a balance of discussion there like there was in this thread. If nothing else, I would like to have a thread where CRPGs in general can be discussed meaningfully and free from the bullshit that is RPGCodex.
I'll post more when I actually have my PC.
Thought so, too.
I always felt there was a severe lack of actual adventure in a thread dedicated to the grandest adventures of all. So I propose we find a random and miraculously still active Neverwinter Nights roleplay server and endow them with an ingame friendly weekend extravaganza their little worlds will never forget!
if we can keep the memes and obnoxious junk to the discord and actually talk about RPGs in this thread, that would be nice. I do appreciate MoonFrog 's posts - I did read them! I have mixed thoughts on SC overall but I do adore Trails 3rd, which of course would not work without SC. I think it boils down that I like the characters more than the actual storyline, so 3rd's focus on diving into the character cast clicked for me.
I am playing the Resonance of Fate remaster. I wasn't too hot on the game at release, largely because I found the battle system to be very repetitive and the flashy Hero Mode actions get stale quickly. But it's been a while since then so I wondered if a replay would change my mind a bit. So far, not so much. A big factor is that the game doesn't really have much in terms of systems progressions. Combat doesn't change much from hour 3 to hour 30. You basically use machine guns to deal scratch damage - get some parts easily breakable, then do a pistol run to dish out real damage and refill your hero gauge, and repeat. I also find "tri-attacks" to be not worth the hassle in setting up, though some people swear by them. Occasionally it's worth equipping your team with certain status protections in certain areas, but otherwise the general strategy to combat is always the same. I don't detest it, but I wish there was something more.
Also fighting trash mobs for hex drops to fill the map is also kinda tedious.
I'm not sure it's done exceptionally well, but I do appreciate the attempt at a low-exposition narrative style. Most (not all) of the scenes in the game don't actually "explain" anything to the player directly, but instead shows conversations between characters where you actually have to piece together the context in what they are talking about or why they are acting the way they are. One of my reasons for a replay was to experience this storyline style again because it admittedly confused me the first time through.
I am playing the Resonance of Fate remaster. I wasn't too hot on the game at release, largely because I found the battle system to be very repetitive and the flashy Hero Mode actions get stale quickly. But it's been a while since then so I wondered if a replay would change my mind a bit. So far, not so much. A big factor is that the game doesn't really have much in terms of systems progressions. Combat doesn't change much from hour 3 to hour 30. You basically use machine guns to deal scratch damage - get some parts easily breakable, then do a pistol run to dish out real damage and refill your hero gauge, and repeat. I also find "tri-attacks" to be not worth the hassle in setting up, though some people swear by them. Occasionally it's worth equipping your team with certain status protections in certain areas, but otherwise the general strategy to combat is always the same. I don't detest it, but I wish there was something more.
Also fighting trash mobs for hex drops to fill the map is also kinda tedious.
I'm not sure it's done exceptionally well, but I do appreciate the attempt at a low-exposition narrative style. Most (not all) of the scenes in the game don't actually "explain" anything to the player directly, but instead shows conversations between characters where you actually have to piece together the context in what they are talking about or why they are acting the way they are. One of my reasons for a replay was to experience this storyline style again because it admittedly confused me the first time through.
Well, the thread started slowing down a lot back around page 60 iirc. I was upset about it back then already tbh. This was exacerbated because I was not present on the discord for the majority of the year. I wanted my forum experience, damn it! As a result, I never really gave discord much of a chance after Era was settled.
The thread saw a lot of activity in the immediate aftermath of the Era settling: people were excited and energized by the shared experience, the relief of having a forum again, and just that new forum experience. The conversation that began on the GAF essentials thread greatly enlarged. We got new blood. We started new group activities, e.g. the club.
Personally, I was also playing a lot of RPG in the relevant period and even if I was posting about DQ and SMT in their respective OTs, I was also posting a good deal in here about games. Eventually, I stalled but I kept posting in here because I love this thread. So I have a lot of inane posts. I tried to at least draw out more stuff about RPGs from other posters but some of it is just babble :P.
Why do I love this thread? Because I love reading about RPGs. RPGs I have already played, am playing, might someday play, or will probably never play all. Moreover, I love the ethos of this thread, which, again, growing from its roots on GAF has prioritized inclusion and thoughtful rather than polemic critique. This should be a thread where you think about why you like and dislike things and don't take said likes and dislikes out on other posters.
I also love long posts. I like writing them. I like reading them. I think they are valuable to understanding games better. Forums are good for long posts and archival purposes.
Why do I think it slowed down? Why does conversation on a forum slow down? Lack of engagement with the hobby, lack of points of conversation, and lack of activity (yes, it snowballs imo). When people aren't playing RPGs, it is hard to keep talking about them. This thread isn't a fully open social space. We don't discuss any and everything here. When people talk about RPGs but no one can talk to them about the game they're playing and no one engages them, it can feel kind of meaningless to post. It is easiest if you can post for yourself and kind of ignore whether people are reading your stuff let alone responding to it (which they might not do if they read it, keep that in mind). At the same time though, I don't think anyone posts entirely for themselves. Moreover, part of the point of a forum is to be heard and engaged. To this further point I just raise, part of the point of a forum is also to hear and to engage. The latter is in your control, the former is not.
The other thing is Discord. Discord does provide a more general social space. It also provides a chat-friendly format. This serves some needs of the community better than this thread. It also siphons engagement with the thread away in such a way that reinforces what the majority can just chat about, namely in this case JRPG, to the detriment of what fares better in a slower paced setting, such as a forum thread, namely in this case CRPG. It closes the community somewhat, which is nice in some respects--you get to know people better--but is also obviously limiting.
So when all the JRPG conversation occurs in discord, the thread is left severely underpopulated and that also affects the CRPG conversation, which isn't occurring on discord, and was fairly healthy in this thread at one point. I think this is attributable to both the factors listed in the penultimate paragraph above and the factors listed in the ultimate paragraph above.
....
Ideally, discord would be active and so would this thread. What binds discord together, namely an admixture of personal fondness and RPG talk, is much easier to sustain than what binds this thread together, namely RPG talk.
The thread saw a lot of activity in the immediate aftermath of the Era settling: people were excited and energized by the shared experience, the relief of having a forum again, and just that new forum experience. The conversation that began on the GAF essentials thread greatly enlarged. We got new blood. We started new group activities, e.g. the club.
Personally, I was also playing a lot of RPG in the relevant period and even if I was posting about DQ and SMT in their respective OTs, I was also posting a good deal in here about games. Eventually, I stalled but I kept posting in here because I love this thread. So I have a lot of inane posts. I tried to at least draw out more stuff about RPGs from other posters but some of it is just babble :P.
Why do I love this thread? Because I love reading about RPGs. RPGs I have already played, am playing, might someday play, or will probably never play all. Moreover, I love the ethos of this thread, which, again, growing from its roots on GAF has prioritized inclusion and thoughtful rather than polemic critique. This should be a thread where you think about why you like and dislike things and don't take said likes and dislikes out on other posters.
I also love long posts. I like writing them. I like reading them. I think they are valuable to understanding games better. Forums are good for long posts and archival purposes.
Why do I think it slowed down? Why does conversation on a forum slow down? Lack of engagement with the hobby, lack of points of conversation, and lack of activity (yes, it snowballs imo). When people aren't playing RPGs, it is hard to keep talking about them. This thread isn't a fully open social space. We don't discuss any and everything here. When people talk about RPGs but no one can talk to them about the game they're playing and no one engages them, it can feel kind of meaningless to post. It is easiest if you can post for yourself and kind of ignore whether people are reading your stuff let alone responding to it (which they might not do if they read it, keep that in mind). At the same time though, I don't think anyone posts entirely for themselves. Moreover, part of the point of a forum is to be heard and engaged. To this further point I just raise, part of the point of a forum is also to hear and to engage. The latter is in your control, the former is not.
The other thing is Discord. Discord does provide a more general social space. It also provides a chat-friendly format. This serves some needs of the community better than this thread. It also siphons engagement with the thread away in such a way that reinforces what the majority can just chat about, namely in this case JRPG, to the detriment of what fares better in a slower paced setting, such as a forum thread, namely in this case CRPG. It closes the community somewhat, which is nice in some respects--you get to know people better--but is also obviously limiting.
So when all the JRPG conversation occurs in discord, the thread is left severely underpopulated and that also affects the CRPG conversation, which isn't occurring on discord, and was fairly healthy in this thread at one point. I think this is attributable to both the factors listed in the penultimate paragraph above and the factors listed in the ultimate paragraph above.
....
Ideally, discord would be active and so would this thread. What binds discord together, namely an admixture of personal fondness and RPG talk, is much easier to sustain than what binds this thread together, namely RPG talk.
Dunno if this will have legs here, but a cross-post from the Fallout: New California mod thread. TLDR it has remarkably good quest design for a fan-mod imo. World design is a bit lacking.
---
Finished it just now. I have lots of thoughts on it but don't want to dump a big old pile of text in here so I'll do some general bullets.
+ I really like the quest design for the majority of the main story. I feel like I easily could see a wildly different outcome if I made some different choices. I saw at least 4 or 5 major branching points that I could go back and make the other decision. There's replayability here.
+ Even though the dialogue feels really stiff at first, there's some good performances and I feel like a lot of the actors settle into their roles as the game went on, either that or I got used to them. Chevy and Jen were standouts. The amount of ambient dialogue and quest reactive dialogue is impressive.
+ Number of unique perks based on quest results is really cool, and they often lead to unique dialogue options. I had about 20 by the end of the game.
+ Scope of the mod is pretty damn expansive. Feels about the size of 3 DLC packs.
+ I feel like every skill and SPECIAL point is used pretty evenly. There's no obvious stat to boost first and no skills that are worthless. I passed a late-game 9/9 Endurance speech check of all things. I constantly made sure to have Beer, Mentats, Buffout, just to be able to tweak SPECIAL stats on a whim because they were that prevalent in a lot of quest objectives and dialogues. I enjoyed the gameyness of it, if that makes any sense..
+ Decent number of side objectives. Some of them are very limited in scope though,
- The world doesn't feel lived in. Lots of rooms are empty, lots of doors are blocked off, there's no items packs away in corners oftentimes where you'd expect them to be. Backs of trucks are empty, there's no dishes on the tables, just a lot less stuff sitting around in general. It's not a big deal but it's something that I noticed multiple times.
- I don't like how it ties into New Vegas and Fallout 3 (slightly) at the end. I'm not sure how much of the story in general is fan faction or borrowed from earlier games I haven't played.
- Way too many missile launchers, enemies in general, in the last handful of quests. Feels like they were designed for a fast-paced FPS, and not a first person RPG.
- Buggy in general, but some of that could be how I had my mods set up partially. The doctor in Union City never spoke to me, so I wasn't sure how to deal with addition or radiation without just using Fixer/Radaway, inconvenient. Fast travel would crash me often. Dialogue and voice often didn't match a handle of times and there was no voice over present a few other times.
-Writing is a bit juvenile/amateur at times. There's a decent number of cases where it suffers from too severe a Paragon/Renegade sort of dichotomy. You don't want to blindly support someone and then suddenly the animosity ramps up to 11. Some of the writing is corny and breaks the 4th wall slightly too, but that didn't bother me so much. (Ie, the player says "We're sitting ducks!" to be asked "...what's a duck?").
All in all I enjoyed it a lot for what it was. Amateur and sloppy in places but I'm not really holding that against it too much considering it's purely a passion project.
---
Finished it just now. I have lots of thoughts on it but don't want to dump a big old pile of text in here so I'll do some general bullets.
+ I really like the quest design for the majority of the main story. I feel like I easily could see a wildly different outcome if I made some different choices. I saw at least 4 or 5 major branching points that I could go back and make the other decision. There's replayability here.
+ Even though the dialogue feels really stiff at first, there's some good performances and I feel like a lot of the actors settle into their roles as the game went on, either that or I got used to them. Chevy and Jen were standouts. The amount of ambient dialogue and quest reactive dialogue is impressive.
+ Number of unique perks based on quest results is really cool, and they often lead to unique dialogue options. I had about 20 by the end of the game.
+ Scope of the mod is pretty damn expansive. Feels about the size of 3 DLC packs.
+ I feel like every skill and SPECIAL point is used pretty evenly. There's no obvious stat to boost first and no skills that are worthless. I passed a late-game 9/9 Endurance speech check of all things. I constantly made sure to have Beer, Mentats, Buffout, just to be able to tweak SPECIAL stats on a whim because they were that prevalent in a lot of quest objectives and dialogues. I enjoyed the gameyness of it, if that makes any sense..
+ Decent number of side objectives. Some of them are very limited in scope though,
- The world doesn't feel lived in. Lots of rooms are empty, lots of doors are blocked off, there's no items packs away in corners oftentimes where you'd expect them to be. Backs of trucks are empty, there's no dishes on the tables, just a lot less stuff sitting around in general. It's not a big deal but it's something that I noticed multiple times.
- I don't like how it ties into New Vegas and Fallout 3 (slightly) at the end. I'm not sure how much of the story in general is fan faction or borrowed from earlier games I haven't played.
- Way too many missile launchers, enemies in general, in the last handful of quests. Feels like they were designed for a fast-paced FPS, and not a first person RPG.
- Buggy in general, but some of that could be how I had my mods set up partially. The doctor in Union City never spoke to me, so I wasn't sure how to deal with addition or radiation without just using Fixer/Radaway, inconvenient. Fast travel would crash me often. Dialogue and voice often didn't match a handle of times and there was no voice over present a few other times.
-Writing is a bit juvenile/amateur at times. There's a decent number of cases where it suffers from too severe a Paragon/Renegade sort of dichotomy. You don't want to blindly support someone and then suddenly the animosity ramps up to 11. Some of the writing is corny and breaks the 4th wall slightly too, but that didn't bother me so much. (Ie, the player says "We're sitting ducks!" to be asked "...what's a duck?").
All in all I enjoyed it a lot for what it was. Amateur and sloppy in places but I'm not really holding that against it too much considering it's purely a passion project.
I don't think it's the case for everyone that Discord is replacing this thread, I know it isn't for me because the kind of conversation I have in the server definitely isn't the same I use the thread for. Personally I didn't play any RPGs after DQ11 until now (and for DQ11 I used the OT and the DQ community to talk about it).
But anyway, I recently started Final Fantasy VIII after only giving it brief tries in the past and I'm having a great time. I'm kind of frustrated but kinda excited that all everyone ever talks about it is how supposedly bad it is or how busted the gameplay is because I realize I know nothing about it and there's so much to enjoy here. The environments look great, there's a fair but of nice humor in it and the setting and story are pretty mysterious! I just got this fuckboy Irvine to join me and we have to do some trial thing to gain access to a mansion.
I gotta say too that as a fan of resource management in RPGs, the junction system has kept me pretty engaged, I love it. The game is complementing my Dark Souls Switch playthrough nicely.
But anyway, I recently started Final Fantasy VIII after only giving it brief tries in the past and I'm having a great time. I'm kind of frustrated but kinda excited that all everyone ever talks about it is how supposedly bad it is or how busted the gameplay is because I realize I know nothing about it and there's so much to enjoy here. The environments look great, there's a fair but of nice humor in it and the setting and story are pretty mysterious! I just got this fuckboy Irvine to join me and we have to do some trial thing to gain access to a mansion.
I gotta say too that as a fan of resource management in RPGs, the junction system has kept me pretty engaged, I love it. The game is complementing my Dark Souls Switch playthrough nicely.
Using Discord instead of a forum is something I will never understand, maybe that's an age thing.
I like being able to post a thing here, then come back 3 hours later and see if people have replied. Or catch up on an interesting conversation. Discord just stresses me out. I believe the kids call that FOMO.
I haven't been that active here since I just haven't played a lot of RPGs lately. I could dazzle everybody with my hot and unique takes on Dragon Quest 11, I'm sure everybody is just waiting to hear me be annoyed by the terrible sidequests in the game.
I like being able to post a thing here, then come back 3 hours later and see if people have replied. Or catch up on an interesting conversation. Discord just stresses me out. I believe the kids call that FOMO.
I haven't been that active here since I just haven't played a lot of RPGs lately. I could dazzle everybody with my hot and unique takes on Dragon Quest 11, I'm sure everybody is just waiting to hear me be annoyed by the terrible sidequests in the game.
Going for an INT build is a pretty good choice tho
Too bad character creation was decades ago and there seems to be no easy respec option. A higher INT build might help me wrap my head around Linear Algebra.
Yeah. This is the sort of thing that I imagine causes a lot of drop-off: real life.
Alternatively, just not feeling like RPG.
It depends on what you use the forum for, I think.
I also really appreciate the bolded. Forums archive content much better and allow for a slower conversation that can be engaged in more irregularly or quicker depending on the participants. This kind of stuff is awkward on Discord.
Discord is good for shooting the shit, miscellaneous off-topic bonding and reaching out, quick RPG question/answers, etc. It can do more substantial conversations, but if other stuff is going on they get trampled.
I personally find searching and scrolling super awkward on Discord but I suck at technology.
I don't think people are uninterested in takes on game design :P
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Got through that hurdle in TitS SC yesterday. A lot of the extra boss fights have been quite interesting mechanically, which is something I appreciate about the series. There is usually something going on, whether that is a cast to interrupt, additional monsters that particular units summon, buffs monsters give others when they die, monsters that heal themselves (most of their life) when they attack, huge swarms that demand quick AoE burn, etc.
I really miss Joshua though, with his AT delay moves. He was so central to my FC playstyle :(