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RPG Community |OT| Take the Epoch to a New Era
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Oh no, don't worry about it! You marked it fine and it wasn't a big spoiler, and my post has CS2 spoilers anyway (that I hope you didn't click lol)
Wish I was home playing TiTS The 3rd tbh.
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Just got into two very good indie turn-based RPG's. Anyone familiar looking to give me some slight low-spoiler pointers?
SteamWorld Quest's amalgamation of deckbuilding and turn-based RPG elements felt very easy to mess up. Besides the stark disconnect between the mobs, which were very often pushovers through-and-through, and the surprisingly time-consuming and sometimes truly difficult bosses, the game was a treat. Perhaps the core battle system is lower-engagement and overall significantly easier than Heist, but Quest's focus on build-management, mana-maintenance and deck-synergizing gave a very strong feel of freedom and strategizing that's rare in the traditional turn-based RPG and has enraptured me with the game.
I was in love with the comic series and sad to find out, rather abruptly, I'd be deprived the right to an ending proper. I was a bit late to the party in actually getting involved with the game, but since it was revealed I had my eyes on it and finally got around to picking up it up very recently.
Just like SteamWorld Quest, the variety of skills and their secondary effects offers a certain focus on party-synergy and strategy that I feel is lost on a lot of traditional turn-based RPG's. Though I'm very early in and have yet to see how it carries throughout, based on early impressions I'm in for a game that may very well scratch my tactician's itch in a way no turn-based RPG has besides Etrian.
SteamWorld Quest's amalgamation of deckbuilding and turn-based RPG elements felt very easy to mess up. Besides the stark disconnect between the mobs, which were very often pushovers through-and-through, and the surprisingly time-consuming and sometimes truly difficult bosses, the game was a treat. Perhaps the core battle system is lower-engagement and overall significantly easier than Heist, but Quest's focus on build-management, mana-maintenance and deck-synergizing gave a very strong feel of freedom and strategizing that's rare in the traditional turn-based RPG and has enraptured me with the game.
I was in love with the comic series and sad to find out, rather abruptly, I'd be deprived the right to an ending proper. I was a bit late to the party in actually getting involved with the game, but since it was revealed I had my eyes on it and finally got around to picking up it up very recently.
Just like SteamWorld Quest, the variety of skills and their secondary effects offers a certain focus on party-synergy and strategy that I feel is lost on a lot of traditional turn-based RPG's. Though I'm very early in and have yet to see how it carries throughout, based on early impressions I'm in for a game that may very well scratch my tactician's itch in a way no turn-based RPG has besides Etrian.
Is White Knight Chronicles 1 or 2 worth playing? I have the option of buying White Knight Chronicles 2 (which comes with 1) or Suikoden V.
It's hard to say. They have some interesting concepts to them but they're largely pretty slow in combat. WKC2 includes the first game as well with some of the speed ups and improvements, but they're still big and slow Level 5 games. If you like giant fantasy mecha you might find some redeeming qualities to them.
For me, the big selling point was playing them online with friends. Creating my own attack chains, building my own village, tackling big quests, etc. My biggest complaint is the time you spend not doing anything in combat while you wait for your attack to be ready. It's a slower ATB system with nothing to weave in between and (iirc) no way to swap over to other characters for tactical control.
There is some charm to them, but the story isn't anything special, the characters are just filling a role, and the fetch quests are overdone. You could certainly check it out yourself, I wouldn't say they're bad games by any means. Just be prepared to wait around a lot and run to the same areas.
GAME 4: Chrono Trigger - COMPLETE
I bought this game back when it came out on DS but barely got an hour in before something distracted me. It's been on the list of shame for 10 years but now I have rectified my sin. Finished the game in 38 hours, but could've shaved 10 hours off if I skipped the side quests near the end. I ended up saving the best for last, because this was my favourite game out of the ones I played this blitz.
So first up, the combat. I really liked how the encounters are set up so your party gets in formation on the map and takes their positions at the same time as the enemies. The thing about not having random encounters combined with moving through distinct pathways in areas is that the fights are set up in a mostly linear fashion, with battles first starting with one new enemy, then fighting several of them at a time, then doing the same with a second new enemy, and then combining the two enemies in one battle. The way the enemies are introduced and fought in different combinations reminds me of a character action game, and over the course of a dungeon you are learning weaknesses and which enemies to prioritise until you get to the boss. You start off poking and prodding the monsters cautiously when you get to a new area, but before long you have the knowledge to steamroll past them.
The actual mechanics involve the Active Time Battle system, with each character's speed stat dictating how quickly they can act between turns. You swiftly make your move while others are getting ready for their turn, but you can wait to have several characters take their turns right after each other in case you don't want an enemy to interrupt your flow for whatever reason. The choices are simple, only using attack, item and tech, but it keeps the fights snappy.
The tech mechanic is Very Good. Initially, you start off knowing something basic, and the characters learn new tech as they accumulate Tech Points from every fight. At a certain point you get Double Techs, which allow two characters to use specific abilites and combine them into a single move. You can combine a fire spell with a sword attack to get a devastating flaming sword tech, for example. You can also get the more powerful Triple Techs, using all three characters at once. There is a good sense of trade-off between fighting as quick as possible and waiting for two allies to take their turns together, and in boss fights you have to balance this with healing and timing your attacks right so you have someone free directly after taking a nastly hit while still dishing out some punishment. The thing about the techs is that only some of them are single target, and the other deals AoE damage, either in a straight line like a laser, or in a radius either centred around an enemy or an ally, depending on the tech. So for some battles, you have to keep an eye on enemy movements so that you can pick the optimum time to attack. Some enemies actually forcefully move you around the screen, and the change in positioning can lead to better damage output.
Anyway, I totally love the opening with Crono waking up and leaving his house. Just the world map alone is a showcase of the game's gorgeous graphics, with the clouds sifting in and out and a flock of birds just flying above. This leads to the fair (although you can do some exploring beforehand) which establishes a peace that eventually will face danger. You have some charming characters here, like Gato the karaoke robot, and then the first event comes about when testing Lucca's new invention. It is a well executed introduction to the world, the premise and the characters.
Story Stuff!
Music!
Other nice stuff:
Nice, now I can go watch past speedruns of CT on AGDQ!
. . . or I could just play the game again . . .
I bought this game back when it came out on DS but barely got an hour in before something distracted me. It's been on the list of shame for 10 years but now I have rectified my sin. Finished the game in 38 hours, but could've shaved 10 hours off if I skipped the side quests near the end. I ended up saving the best for last, because this was my favourite game out of the ones I played this blitz.
So first up, the combat. I really liked how the encounters are set up so your party gets in formation on the map and takes their positions at the same time as the enemies. The thing about not having random encounters combined with moving through distinct pathways in areas is that the fights are set up in a mostly linear fashion, with battles first starting with one new enemy, then fighting several of them at a time, then doing the same with a second new enemy, and then combining the two enemies in one battle. The way the enemies are introduced and fought in different combinations reminds me of a character action game, and over the course of a dungeon you are learning weaknesses and which enemies to prioritise until you get to the boss. You start off poking and prodding the monsters cautiously when you get to a new area, but before long you have the knowledge to steamroll past them.
The actual mechanics involve the Active Time Battle system, with each character's speed stat dictating how quickly they can act between turns. You swiftly make your move while others are getting ready for their turn, but you can wait to have several characters take their turns right after each other in case you don't want an enemy to interrupt your flow for whatever reason. The choices are simple, only using attack, item and tech, but it keeps the fights snappy.
The tech mechanic is Very Good. Initially, you start off knowing something basic, and the characters learn new tech as they accumulate Tech Points from every fight. At a certain point you get Double Techs, which allow two characters to use specific abilites and combine them into a single move. You can combine a fire spell with a sword attack to get a devastating flaming sword tech, for example. You can also get the more powerful Triple Techs, using all three characters at once. There is a good sense of trade-off between fighting as quick as possible and waiting for two allies to take their turns together, and in boss fights you have to balance this with healing and timing your attacks right so you have someone free directly after taking a nastly hit while still dishing out some punishment. The thing about the techs is that only some of them are single target, and the other deals AoE damage, either in a straight line like a laser, or in a radius either centred around an enemy or an ally, depending on the tech. So for some battles, you have to keep an eye on enemy movements so that you can pick the optimum time to attack. Some enemies actually forcefully move you around the screen, and the change in positioning can lead to better damage output.
Anyway, I totally love the opening with Crono waking up and leaving his house. Just the world map alone is a showcase of the game's gorgeous graphics, with the clouds sifting in and out and a flock of birds just flying above. This leads to the fair (although you can do some exploring beforehand) which establishes a peace that eventually will face danger. You have some charming characters here, like Gato the karaoke robot, and then the first event comes about when testing Lucca's new invention. It is a well executed introduction to the world, the premise and the characters.
Story Stuff!
Talking of which, the good intro doesn't just stop there. At the first moment you walk through the Gate that appears after Marle vanishes, you know something is off by the way the map has changed (something that occurs in all time periods, like how in prehistory the world is basically a supercontinent like Pangea). Walk into the inn at Truce and you see that the townspeople talk differently than how they do back home, using words like mirth and merryment. You find Marle in the castle, where the people have mistaken her for the queen, and then all of a sudden she is wracked by pain and basically disolves into light. Lucca arrives and says they have caused a paradox and need to set things right. It's not just the events in this opening that are good, which involves the above but also meeting Frog , but that there is a bunch of groundwork laid for the future, such as Fiendlord and the chancellor.
Returning Marle home is the end of the first big "chapter" but then things take a turn when Crono is put on trial as he is accused of her kidnapping. The scene of the courtroom looks absolutely amazing as Crono stands alone surrounded by a gallery of chattering heads. His escape is aided by Lucca, and eventually Marle, and they all exit by a Gate to a wasteland, whch they learn is the future. Something horrible has happened, and preventing it is the main mission of the game.
It isn't long before the group find footage of a creature called Lavos erupting from the ground in 1999AD and setting fire to the world. The group are shocked but they are determined to stop it, since from their point of view the future hasn't happened yet. And thus begins the era-spanning adventure to stop the world's destruction.
I want to talk about Lavos as a fight but I can't do that without mentioning the other boss battles. Most bosses brings their own little gimmick, such as having a counterattack stance, a multi-part boss which needs to be attacked down in a certain order, a boss that has a short window where attacks are very damaging but otherwise is nigh-invulnerable and so on. It's not a new idea but it is handled very well. This coalesces in the Lavos fight where he takes the attack patterns of previous bosses when you fight his first form. You see a small glimpse of a past boss, and then you adjust your tactics for each phase. It is more or less a guantlet of fights, where you can heal up with items inbetween. I actually fought Lavos early and lost to a boss identity who I hadn't faced in the normal storyline. But the best part if fighting Lavos' third form within the shell, and you see the repulsive creature's true form. It has an unusual physiology which adds to the mystery of having an alien origin. There is, of course, the element of cosmic horror of how something from the depths of space fell to our planet, and how it has lived for longer than we can imagine, and how it consumes everything only to leave and do the same thing again to other planets with its spawn. It kind of reminds me of Galactus.
One of my favourite things about this game is how the moments that advance the game play out like a set piece. The first one I feel was at the cathedral which is in habited by monsters. You walk in not suspecting a thing, and then the nuns turn out to be snake monsters in disguise. Even though you win, there is another, and just before she attacks, Frog comes in to save Crono and Lucca. The way the scene inolved combat but also advanced the story is how the game handles most of it's big moments. Another good example is when you have Robo and you encounter the other robots who tell him he is malfunctioning and attack. The game gives out steady doses of plot and character work and it worked really well to keep me engaged.
One thing I wished the game had more of is interactions between the main characters. I feel like the only duo that stood out to me was Lucca and Robo. She rebuilds him after finding him in a poor state, and she makes a comment while repairing him that machines are not inherantly bad, that the fault lies upon the humans that made them. Another great part is when it is revealed to the player why Lucca chose to be an inventor; because she could not stop the machine that claimed her mother's legs. Robo offers to take himself apart so he can offer his legs to Lucca's mum as a sweet gesture. There is also the final scene in the ending after everyone has returned to their own time, where Lucca has made her own mini version of Robo as she walks around a field. Out of all the other combinations, I think I wanted to see more of the friendship between Lucca and Marle to be honest.
When you lose to Lavos, you get the bad ending, with the message "in the end, the future refused to change". It is the idea the game revolves around, about pushing back on what some may consider inevitable or breaking the chains of fate. One of the things about the future is that all the people have lost their hope, and have forgotten what life was like on this planet before Lavos came. You can inspect this idea from a couple of different viewpoints, one of which is that we leave the planet to our descendants after we are gone, so if we don't take care of it we are dooming future generations. Considering the state of the future, with the people running out of food and how there is an eternal snowstorm, you can see a thread that makes it as if Lavos is a a nuclear weapon. I think this kind of ties into Queen Zeal and how obsessed she was with amassing power, siphoning it from Lavos during her time period. There's also the robots and how they were originally made to help humans, but now are hostile. While not as aggressive as creations-turned-against-their-creators you may have seen in other stories, it is definitely is about humans and their relationship with the machines they build. All in all, even though the future looks dire, there is still time to set things right.
Returning Marle home is the end of the first big "chapter" but then things take a turn when Crono is put on trial as he is accused of her kidnapping. The scene of the courtroom looks absolutely amazing as Crono stands alone surrounded by a gallery of chattering heads. His escape is aided by Lucca, and eventually Marle, and they all exit by a Gate to a wasteland, whch they learn is the future. Something horrible has happened, and preventing it is the main mission of the game.
It isn't long before the group find footage of a creature called Lavos erupting from the ground in 1999AD and setting fire to the world. The group are shocked but they are determined to stop it, since from their point of view the future hasn't happened yet. And thus begins the era-spanning adventure to stop the world's destruction.
I want to talk about Lavos as a fight but I can't do that without mentioning the other boss battles. Most bosses brings their own little gimmick, such as having a counterattack stance, a multi-part boss which needs to be attacked down in a certain order, a boss that has a short window where attacks are very damaging but otherwise is nigh-invulnerable and so on. It's not a new idea but it is handled very well. This coalesces in the Lavos fight where he takes the attack patterns of previous bosses when you fight his first form. You see a small glimpse of a past boss, and then you adjust your tactics for each phase. It is more or less a guantlet of fights, where you can heal up with items inbetween. I actually fought Lavos early and lost to a boss identity who I hadn't faced in the normal storyline. But the best part if fighting Lavos' third form within the shell, and you see the repulsive creature's true form. It has an unusual physiology which adds to the mystery of having an alien origin. There is, of course, the element of cosmic horror of how something from the depths of space fell to our planet, and how it has lived for longer than we can imagine, and how it consumes everything only to leave and do the same thing again to other planets with its spawn. It kind of reminds me of Galactus.
One of my favourite things about this game is how the moments that advance the game play out like a set piece. The first one I feel was at the cathedral which is in habited by monsters. You walk in not suspecting a thing, and then the nuns turn out to be snake monsters in disguise. Even though you win, there is another, and just before she attacks, Frog comes in to save Crono and Lucca. The way the scene inolved combat but also advanced the story is how the game handles most of it's big moments. Another good example is when you have Robo and you encounter the other robots who tell him he is malfunctioning and attack. The game gives out steady doses of plot and character work and it worked really well to keep me engaged.
One thing I wished the game had more of is interactions between the main characters. I feel like the only duo that stood out to me was Lucca and Robo. She rebuilds him after finding him in a poor state, and she makes a comment while repairing him that machines are not inherantly bad, that the fault lies upon the humans that made them. Another great part is when it is revealed to the player why Lucca chose to be an inventor; because she could not stop the machine that claimed her mother's legs. Robo offers to take himself apart so he can offer his legs to Lucca's mum as a sweet gesture. There is also the final scene in the ending after everyone has returned to their own time, where Lucca has made her own mini version of Robo as she walks around a field. Out of all the other combinations, I think I wanted to see more of the friendship between Lucca and Marle to be honest.
When you lose to Lavos, you get the bad ending, with the message "in the end, the future refused to change". It is the idea the game revolves around, about pushing back on what some may consider inevitable or breaking the chains of fate. One of the things about the future is that all the people have lost their hope, and have forgotten what life was like on this planet before Lavos came. You can inspect this idea from a couple of different viewpoints, one of which is that we leave the planet to our descendants after we are gone, so if we don't take care of it we are dooming future generations. Considering the state of the future, with the people running out of food and how there is an eternal snowstorm, you can see a thread that makes it as if Lavos is a a nuclear weapon. I think this kind of ties into Queen Zeal and how obsessed she was with amassing power, siphoning it from Lavos during her time period. There's also the robots and how they were originally made to help humans, but now are hostile. While not as aggressive as creations-turned-against-their-creators you may have seen in other stories, it is definitely is about humans and their relationship with the machines they build. All in all, even though the future looks dire, there is still time to set things right.
Music!
I could post the entire soundtrack, but I'll go with these.
The game's main theme, which first plays at the fair when the pod malfunctions.
The main battle theme is GOOD.
Robo's Theme is something you wouldn't expect from a robot character or from someone who comes from the desolate future, but it works so well in making him out to be a source of hope and optimism.
Final dungeon music. The bassline alone is dope.
The game's main theme, which first plays at the fair when the pod malfunctions.
The main battle theme is GOOD.
Robo's Theme is something you wouldn't expect from a robot character or from someone who comes from the desolate future, but it works so well in making him out to be a source of hope and optimism.
Final dungeon music. The bassline alone is dope.
Other nice stuff:
- When a ranged character attacks an enemy close to them, they elect to do a melee attack, like Lucca pistol whipping an imp rather than taking a shot.
- Also, the characters turn to face the closest enemy during battle. I don't know why this impresses me so much.
- When choosing your party, they straight up show the available double/triple techs on the screen.
- You can sort out everyone's equipment on a single screen. I hate it when certain RPGs require you to switch out characters in your party to change their weapons/armour *gives a dirty look to the Atelier series*.
- Shelters! I don't remember the last time I used a shelter in a game (or save points for that matter).
- NPCs in towns usually give tips for monsters you will encounter soon.
- The mayor's manor at the beginning of the game functions as a tutorial area, explaining mechanics with the justification that a lot of adventurer's start their journey here.
- For the description of the confuse status ailment: "Confuses you into attacking allies. This can be a little tough on friendships."
Nice, now I can go watch past speedruns of CT on AGDQ!
. . . or I could just play the game again . . .
Amazing write-up, glad you loved it so much :D
Well, it does have 13 endings :)
Well, it does have 13 endings :)
Extra special thanks to anyone who did any write-ups for their games. It's been nice to take a breather from work and read through someones thoughts on something. Better yet, it's refreshing to get updates on where people are at with things. And when someone is enjoying a game you loved? Even better! Anyways, enough about that. How does the drawing work? You get 1 entry for each completed game. I then put those entries into a randomizer (e.g. Luminaire 1, Luminaire 2, Luminaire 3) and draw that way.
As a reminder, we're going with gift cards for the eShop, PSN, XBL, Steam, and Amazon. For Steam, an alternative option is for me to just gift you (a) game(s) up to the value of your prize via friendslist gifting. For participants not in the US, we'll do our best to get you a card in your currency, but do note that there are a lot of hoops to jump through for that. We can also look into a global key from a legitmate reseller (e.g. CDKeys), or you could make a US account on your console and purchase from that regions store. We'll hash that out when we get to it!
First though!
Below is a bunch of data!
~The Hall of Fame~
These people finished all five of their picks!
Hall of Fame
DarknessTear
emonk
Fou-Lu
Gevin
nivorae
Novel Mike
Seda
Taborcarn
These were all the games that were selected this season for blitz!
These are all the games that were completed!
There are the games that had 3 different people complete them!
These are the games that had 2 different people complete them!
These are the games that only had one person complete them!
Data data data~
Onto the drawing!
This is the list that I'm putting in the randomizer. The numbers just denote which entry it is. For this season, there are 88 entries. If there is a duplicate, I'll redraw.
So! Our winners are...
Grand Prize Winner - $50 Card of choice
Novel Mike Congrats!
Runner-up - $20 Card of choice
Gio Congrats!
2nd Runner-up $10 Card of choice
DarknessTear Congrats!
Winners, I'll DM you either here or on discord to figure out what card you'd like and how we'll get it to you. It may take a little bit to hammer how we'll get it to you, so your patience is appreciated!
Once again, thanks to everyone who participated in our little community program. It may seem silly to some people, but it's really heartwarming to see a lot of people play games together, write and share their experiences, recommend new titles to one another, and just encourage one another to play through things they've put off for such a long time. In the discord, the blitz channel has such a strong air of positivity to it that does wonders to shake off the negativity of the internet (and even our front page on era.)
Season 2 may be over, but we'll be back with Season 3 after we have some time to wind down, take some feedback, and see what we want to add or change. As a note, Season 3 will start on July 1st. We already have a few additions in mind, so look forward to it!
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I'm really surprised that I won, we had so many more entries this time around so I wasn't even really thinking about actually winning. This is hands down my favorite community that I've been apart of in a long, long time. I'm really bad about writing up thoughts on games on here (although I do talk quite a bit about them on discord) but I've been working on an overall write up of this last Blitz and I think I'll try to get that done sometime tomorrow.
Thanks so much for this Luminaire Fou-Lu and everyone else of RPG ERA, the blitz has been so much fun to be able to talk and discuss so many of these games and finally play games I and many others have been meaning to play for such a long time. This was such a brilliant idea and I know I'm far from the only one who has really enjoyed it.
Really looking forward to next blitz and playing Mother 3, DQVI with futurememory and several others!
Thanks so much for this Luminaire Fou-Lu and everyone else of RPG ERA, the blitz has been so much fun to be able to talk and discuss so many of these games and finally play games I and many others have been meaning to play for such a long time. This was such a brilliant idea and I know I'm far from the only one who has really enjoyed it.
Really looking forward to next blitz and playing Mother 3, DQVI with futurememory and several others!
Here ya go, FiveSide hasn't updated the link in the OP.
Hidden content
Y'all should play Pathologic 2. Near perfect game for me. It is a combination of dialogue based role playing, horror survival elements, and Russian esoteric traditions. It is intense literary storytelling, possible the best I've seen in the medium. If you have any interest in games as art, then play the shit out of this.
Congrats to all of the lovely winners of the blitz!! I usually only lurk our OT (yes, I'm terrible that way, and Era is blocked at work), but I love and adore all of the enthusiasm over all of the great games everyone played this time around. It's fantastic to see all the heart and soul poured into the mini reviews that people post in here, so thanks for all of your hard work and dedication!
Next blitz will start up in July, so get those new lists ready! Like Novel Mike said, a whole slew of us will be tackling both Mother 3 and DQVI for the first time, so feel free to join!
Next blitz will start up in July, so get those new lists ready! Like Novel Mike said, a whole slew of us will be tackling both Mother 3 and DQVI for the first time, so feel free to join!
Baldur's Gate 3 hype!
So true. I wonder if I should try to install BG Trilogy again.. and then fail to play it, sigh.
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I haven't played enough to really form an opinion (and I also just restarted because I didn't like my build) but I super appreciate that Pathfinder Kingmaker let's me do good things but frame them in an evil way.
Playing an "evil" character is super annoying in most games becaues it usually means you just play a straight up asshole. But - at least in the beginning, no idea if this keeps happening - in Pathfinder you can help some random soldier and later when somebody asks you why you did it you can just basically say you needed a meat shield and he was more useful alive than dead.
That's fantastic.
Also I know no developer reads this but I cannot, and I have to stress this, I CANNOT believe it's 2019 and still no cRPG I'm aware of has a "test build" option where you can attack a training dummy or something before starting the game. It is so god damn annoying because sometimes I just want to test a weird build I made but have to watch and play through the opening of the game again and again and again (PoE II was especially bad about this). Just give me a room with a dummy, a trap and a locked chest or something so I can test the viability of my build before committing to it. That's such a simple feature, why is this not a genre standard.
Playing an "evil" character is super annoying in most games becaues it usually means you just play a straight up asshole. But - at least in the beginning, no idea if this keeps happening - in Pathfinder you can help some random soldier and later when somebody asks you why you did it you can just basically say you needed a meat shield and he was more useful alive than dead.
That's fantastic.
Also I know no developer reads this but I cannot, and I have to stress this, I CANNOT believe it's 2019 and still no cRPG I'm aware of has a "test build" option where you can attack a training dummy or something before starting the game. It is so god damn annoying because sometimes I just want to test a weird build I made but have to watch and play through the opening of the game again and again and again (PoE II was especially bad about this). Just give me a room with a dummy, a trap and a locked chest or something so I can test the viability of my build before committing to it. That's such a simple feature, why is this not a genre standard.
Finished Trails in The Sky The 3rd!
Interesting game. A real mixed bag.. But also fantastic.
In short: main narrative started out strong (edit: aside from the idiotic forced chocolate kiss lol) but began to lose me somewhere around chapter 5 maybe, ultimately devolving into goofy shit I couldn't really take very seriously by the end, but I like Kevin and Ries so it was ultimately enjoyable and interesting enough to follow all the way through. Gameplay was, aside from two exceptions I'll list in the negatives later, fucking leaps and bounds above FC and SC, there's really no question about that. The combat is absolutely what elevates the game for me and, quite shockingly, after being mostly bored out of my mind with FC and SC's combat, I think The 3rd might be one of my all-time favorite turn-based JRPGs when it comes to combat. I will absolutely replay the game on higher difficulties later on.
That's it for the summary, but due to the nature of the game I have a LOOOT of various random thoughts about the whole thing, some of which I'll list under this. I'll try to keep things short, to the point and organized between things I liked, things I didn't like and things I feel mixed about. The following three spoiler tags are just there to keep this post a bit smaller, actual spoilers I'll tag properly inside these ones.
I'll start off with the negatives and work my way to the positives, so anyone who manages to read through the whole post will leave with a positive vibe in the end lol.
Overall, it was definitely a great game. It's actually a bit hard to rank it against the others since it's so vastly different compared to them, but I can pretty confidently say that I agree with the folks who call this the best localized one yet.
--
I really want to move on to Cold Steel right away, but I think I'll try and pace myself a bit. I have new-found motivation to give Sekiro another chance, and Judgement is out real soon too, which will probably devour my gaming time for a couple of weeks because I fucking love the Yakuza games. I'd really rather play the Crossbell games before the Cold Steel games too, but we'll see how long I can hold out. Maybe I'll order Ao online and watch a Youtube playthrough of Zero with the shitty TL.
Interesting game. A real mixed bag.. But also fantastic.
In short: main narrative started out strong (edit: aside from the idiotic forced chocolate kiss lol) but began to lose me somewhere around chapter 5 maybe, ultimately devolving into goofy shit I couldn't really take very seriously by the end, but I like Kevin and Ries so it was ultimately enjoyable and interesting enough to follow all the way through. Gameplay was, aside from two exceptions I'll list in the negatives later, fucking leaps and bounds above FC and SC, there's really no question about that. The combat is absolutely what elevates the game for me and, quite shockingly, after being mostly bored out of my mind with FC and SC's combat, I think The 3rd might be one of my all-time favorite turn-based JRPGs when it comes to combat. I will absolutely replay the game on higher difficulties later on.
That's it for the summary, but due to the nature of the game I have a LOOOT of various random thoughts about the whole thing, some of which I'll list under this. I'll try to keep things short, to the point and organized between things I liked, things I didn't like and things I feel mixed about. The following three spoiler tags are just there to keep this post a bit smaller, actual spoilers I'll tag properly inside these ones.
I'll start off with the negatives and work my way to the positives, so anyone who manages to read through the whole post will leave with a positive vibe in the end lol.
- Chapter 6
Holy fuck, truly dreadful. Three immensely big (like, easily "worth a chapter each of their own" big), incredibly boring dungeons with labyrinthine design, same-y, repetitive AND frequent fights, endless corridors and barely anything of interest to find. The bosses were not only boring gameplay-wise, but narrative-wise too, pretty much all repeating the same trite shite about their condition, to keep things relatively spoiler-free. Somehow this chapter managed to ruin getting to fight friggin' Cassius and Morgan for me.
- Being forced to utilize all party members on a couple of occasions
I can appreciate a big playable cast... When I get to pick my favorite characters and stick with them. Being forced to use everyone is just not something I ever enjoy in RPGs with big casts, and The 3rd especially goes waay too far with this, particularly with the final dungeon. Doesn't help that the narrative reasoning for these occasions was always paper thin, if not nonexistent.
Easily my biggest complaints about the game, and all I can say is thank god for Cheat Engine.
- Oh, uh, fuck the fishing again too, I guess. I did give up on that minigame right away so it didn't have a big impact on my enjoyment of the game.
Holy fuck, truly dreadful. Three immensely big (like, easily "worth a chapter each of their own" big), incredibly boring dungeons with labyrinthine design, same-y, repetitive AND frequent fights, endless corridors and barely anything of interest to find. The bosses were not only boring gameplay-wise, but narrative-wise too, pretty much all repeating the same trite shite about their condition, to keep things relatively spoiler-free. Somehow this chapter managed to ruin getting to fight friggin' Cassius and Morgan for me.
- Being forced to utilize all party members on a couple of occasions
I can appreciate a big playable cast... When I get to pick my favorite characters and stick with them. Being forced to use everyone is just not something I ever enjoy in RPGs with big casts, and The 3rd especially goes waay too far with this, particularly with the final dungeon. Doesn't help that the narrative reasoning for these occasions was always paper thin, if not nonexistent.
Easily my biggest complaints about the game, and all I can say is thank god for Cheat Engine.
- Oh, uh, fuck the fishing again too, I guess. I did give up on that minigame right away so it didn't have a big impact on my enjoyment of the game.
- Some of the doors in general
Particularly the Moon doors. They weren't bad or anything, I just didn't care about the stories or events in these ones, except for 2, surprisingly. That one was fun and a bit tragic. I didn't watch the second part of the Agate/Tita door though, pretty sure I would've hated it for reasons MoonFrog mentioned in an earlier post.
- And more specifically, Star Door 15
- The tonal inconsistency in the context of the rest of the series
I've always maintained that FC, SC and Cold Steel 1 and 2 are borderline Saturday morning cartoons the vast majority of the time (with some very specific but small exceptions), especially when considering the themes or situations they're supposed to be handling, and its 100% to their detriment and they would REALLY benefit from some darkness. And I always chalked it up to the writers simply not wanting to write anything too dark. Now that The 3rd has showed me that not only are they willing to go dark, they're willing to go all the way to fucking child prostitution, the ever-present light-heartedness of the other games frustrates me even more.
But I guess they're only willing to go dark with backstories and when hinting to past events.
- Some of the dialogue
There's still a lot of impromptu essay readings, random bouts of immense insight and self-reflection and utterly perfect articulation and composure that just kind of makes me go "wow, this is not how actual humans talk". I don't like that sort of stuff. Thankfully, there's still tons of enjoyable and entertaining dialogue too.
Particularly the Moon doors. They weren't bad or anything, I just didn't care about the stories or events in these ones, except for 2, surprisingly. That one was fun and a bit tragic. I didn't watch the second part of the Agate/Tita door though, pretty sure I would've hated it for reasons MoonFrog mentioned in an earlier post.
- And more specifically, Star Door 15
In itself, it was good. I can enjoy some really goddamn dark storytelling, and it was for the most part well told aside from some minor corny bits. But all it ultimately did was just further sour me on the character of Renne and how the story treats her. I could go on for quite a while on this one alone, I think, but I'll summarize by saying that I fucking hate how unnaturally quickly Estelle's Spunky, Thick-headed but Big-hearted, Energetic, Optimistic Anime Girl shtick managed to reach someone so incredibly deeply traumatized (and probably thoroughly brainwashed to boot) as Renne. The whole thing just feels so goddamn cheap to me somehow.
- The tonal inconsistency in the context of the rest of the series
I've always maintained that FC, SC and Cold Steel 1 and 2 are borderline Saturday morning cartoons the vast majority of the time (with some very specific but small exceptions), especially when considering the themes or situations they're supposed to be handling, and its 100% to their detriment and they would REALLY benefit from some darkness. And I always chalked it up to the writers simply not wanting to write anything too dark. Now that The 3rd has showed me that not only are they willing to go dark, they're willing to go all the way to fucking child prostitution, the ever-present light-heartedness of the other games frustrates me even more.
But I guess they're only willing to go dark with backstories and when hinting to past events.
- Some of the dialogue
There's still a lot of impromptu essay readings, random bouts of immense insight and self-reflection and utterly perfect articulation and composure that just kind of makes me go "wow, this is not how actual humans talk". I don't like that sort of stuff. Thankfully, there's still tons of enjoyable and entertaining dialogue too.
- Like I said, the combat
Somehow almost everything about it seems to work here. The new round bonuses can have immense effects, turning the tables in a blink of an eye. Aside from chapter 6, the combat is very well paced, I almost never felt like I was getting continuously assaulted by endless trash mobs and the fights themselves were usually fast but dangerous. And man, some of the boss combat puzzles were just amazing.
- Itemization
Related to above. It's SO much better than the earlier games', with a bunch of quartz and items with interesting effects. My favorite was probably the quartz Nothingness, which makes you inflict random status effects on enemies when you hit them. I absolutely love this kind of stuff.
- The rest of the doors
Some of the doors were fucking fantastic. Standout for me was easily the Salt Pale one, I absolutely loved everything about it, from the presentation to the format to the actual events it described. Hell, aside from Star Door 5 (The Banquet), I think I'd say I pretty much loved all of the Star Doors. Definitely the highlights of the game along with the combat.
Somehow almost everything about it seems to work here. The new round bonuses can have immense effects, turning the tables in a blink of an eye. Aside from chapter 6, the combat is very well paced, I almost never felt like I was getting continuously assaulted by endless trash mobs and the fights themselves were usually fast but dangerous. And man, some of the boss combat puzzles were just amazing.
- Itemization
Related to above. It's SO much better than the earlier games', with a bunch of quartz and items with interesting effects. My favorite was probably the quartz Nothingness, which makes you inflict random status effects on enemies when you hit them. I absolutely love this kind of stuff.
- The rest of the doors
Some of the doors were fucking fantastic. Standout for me was easily the Salt Pale one, I absolutely loved everything about it, from the presentation to the format to the actual events it described. Hell, aside from Star Door 5 (The Banquet), I think I'd say I pretty much loved all of the Star Doors. Definitely the highlights of the game along with the combat.
Overall, it was definitely a great game. It's actually a bit hard to rank it against the others since it's so vastly different compared to them, but I can pretty confidently say that I agree with the folks who call this the best localized one yet.
--
I really want to move on to Cold Steel right away, but I think I'll try and pace myself a bit. I have new-found motivation to give Sekiro another chance, and Judgement is out real soon too, which will probably devour my gaming time for a couple of weeks because I fucking love the Yakuza games. I'd really rather play the Crossbell games before the Cold Steel games too, but we'll see how long I can hold out. Maybe I'll order Ao online and watch a Youtube playthrough of Zero with the shitty TL.
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As mentioned earlier, most of my problems with the game have to do with the structure of the game, and to be honest, I don't necessarily think the issue is with the game but the issue is with me. This is not a game you want to play upwards of 7 to 8 hours a day, which is what I was doing when I was playing it. This is a game you want to get through at your own pace, largely because the structure of the game is very formulaic. Aside from the final chapter and the prologue every chapter starts the same way and by chapter 4, I started really finding it repetitive. Every chapter will usually start with homeroom, and then you can either choose to spend time talking with NPCs (which you absolutely should do as the NPC dialogue is amazing), or going to your dorm and ending the day. The following day entails you doing quests given to you by the student council, exploring an old school house which is the only combat you'll really see in the on campus section of each chapter, bonding events and NPC dialogue. From there the game skips to a Wednesday where you have a combat training test, and then from there you will have your field study, which entails going to one of the many towns in Erebonia, and basically familiarizing yourself with it. Field Studies can last up to 4 days but are usually only 2 to 3, and each day you have a set of quests to do, in the area. If you've played a Trails game before it's worth nothing that both the student council quests and the field study assignments are what you've come to expect from Trails which basically boils down to monster extermination requests and quests that involve specific NPCs.
If you intend on basically blowing through the game in a week, expect this formulaic approach to the game to get extremely repetitive, especially towards the end, however I'd have to imagine it's much better if you take your time with it. I think my biggest pet peeve with the structure of the game is how little combat there is in the lead up to the field study. While the dungeons of the old school house are fun, they felt very simple and short to be honest. The longest one will take is 20 to 25 minutes. Unlike the field studies where it felt like there was some resemblance of balance between tasks inside of towns and combat related quests, student council quests feel heavily skewed in one direction, and while that isn't necessarily a bad thing, as I felt the main purpose of the school side of each chapter was for you to enjoy talking with classmates and such, it really got to me just how repetitive it was near the end.
The field studies themselves, I actually found myself really enjoying and they are by far the highlight of the game. Especially after chapter 2, every field study felt like a home run in terms of how interesting the location was, and how powerful some scenes within the field studies were. One thing I really love about this game, is how the bonds between these classmates develop as you go through the game, and that is very much on display in the field studies. There are a lot of scenes in the game that are tied to specific characters that I just thought were wonderful from a character development side. They might not be as good as the Sky cast, but I really enjoyed the main cast in this game, and I thoroughly enjoyed learning about all their backstories and all their different circumstances.
Rean: I found Rean's backstory, surprisingly interesting largely because of how it tied into his training with Ka Fai. While it is a common character trope, Rean struggling to accept himself for who he is, and what's inside of him was really interesting to see and how it tied with the backstory of his family, really made it feel like a homerun. How it all ties with Elise was particularly interesting largely because, she cares for her brother, yet her brother doesn't really know what to make of himself, his past, or how to coup with the unknown about him.
Alisa: Alright, I'm gonna be honest, I didn't really know what to make of Alisa early on largely because this game starts off on such a bad foot with regards to what happens between her and Rean during the prologue, but despite that I found myself really liking her by the end. Her feelings towards her own family, I think are one of my favorite things about her during CS1 largely because she clearly cares for her family, and she's clearly hurt with how her mother turned into a workaholic, but she feels powerless throughout most of the game until chapter 6 when she tells her mom how she feels. The stuff related to the reinford company was really interesting as well largely because while perhaps a little idealistic, Alisa isn't comfortable, with the pain and terror that the weaponry her family's company has made caused.
Machias: I found Machias's backstory probably the saddest one out of all of them largely because it gave a lot of weight to his hatred of the nobility and how it ties into his father being one of the reformist faction's greatest allies. Machias as a character was admittedly kinda obnoxious a good while just because of his constant fighting with Jusis and how he was upset with Rean too and while to be honest, I still think his behavior was kinda annoying, I really like how his backstory just made his behavior have more weight to it. Almost like it's hard to blame him for how he feels after learning his backstory.
Jusis: I found Jusis's backstory quite interesting as well, largely because it felt like his father had tossed him aside and really the only person who cared for him was his brother, and his uncle. One thing that I thought was interesting about Jusis is that while he is a noble, he clearly isn't happy with their actions and especially towards the end, you can see how critical he is of the noble faction. By the end I thought it was really powerful how despite his family being part of the noble alliance, he still chose to fight alongside his classmates.
Elliot: Elliot probably is my second favorite character in terms of backstory, largely because of how he was never really allowed to do whatever he wanted and ultimately his father decided his future in a military academy. Despite that however, he still pursued his love of music, so in a way he worked within the confines of the hand he was given which would ultimately lead him to Thors. I can sorta relate with Elliot's backstory a bit as I had family members who were constantly pressuring me into doing what they wanted rather than what I wanted to do, and in that sense Elliot's backstory really struck a cord with me.
Gaius: Gaius felt like a really bland character throughout most of the game and to be honest, he was at the bottom for me in terms of favorite characters, but I really enjoyed how much chapter 3 fleshed him out and I really enjoyed learning about his motives. I thought it was really interesting how despite his love for the nord highlands, he chose to leave it behind, to get stronger so he could protect it. Might be a bit cliche, but I think it's a really cool motive for Gaius especially given that up to that point he was sorta painted as the mysterious transfer student.
Laura: Laura is really interesting for me largely because looking back on it, I don't really feel as though her backstory was really touched on very much. Her strongest point was probably her conflict with Rean, regarding the way of the sword. I still really liked her as a character, and I really enjoyed meeting her family, but I feel that a lot of Laura's strong points in this game tie to Rean, especially early on.
Emma: Alright, so I gotta be honest, I don't hate Emma, but I was really frustrated with her especially towards the end. Throughout the game, she's sorta treated as a mystery character, and throughout the game she clearly has the behavior of someone who knows a lot yet doesn't want to say anything. What bothers me about Emma and her connection to the big reveal of the game, is how there is constant forshadowing, yet there wasn't really much revealed near the end. which really frustrated me personally.
Fie: Fie is another character who I wasn't really sure how to feel about early on in the game, but towards the end I really started to like her as a character. Her issue with Laura and how that gets settled and the explanation of her backstory are probably some of my favorite moments of this game. I think her backstory with the Jaegar corps was just really interesting and also really sad. She almost reminds me of Joshua in a weird way except Joshua's backstory is quite different from Fie's but the whole theme of, being alone, finding a home and then having that home forcefully taken away from you hit home quite strongly with Fie.
Sara and Toval: This isn't really much of a comment on them as characters as to be honest, there isn't really much to make out of Toval largely because he appears a bit towards the end of the game, but he still isn't heavily present in CS1. The reason why I largely have these two together is because of their connection to the bracer guild and how I absolutely love the fact, that if you played Sky, Sara and Toval are living examples of how some of the events described in SC and 3rd regarding the attacks on the bracer guilds of Erebonia has effected people. I also really liked Sara as a character though her past still remains a bit of a mystery outside of knowing that she is a bracer.
Alisa: Alright, I'm gonna be honest, I didn't really know what to make of Alisa early on largely because this game starts off on such a bad foot with regards to what happens between her and Rean during the prologue, but despite that I found myself really liking her by the end. Her feelings towards her own family, I think are one of my favorite things about her during CS1 largely because she clearly cares for her family, and she's clearly hurt with how her mother turned into a workaholic, but she feels powerless throughout most of the game until chapter 6 when she tells her mom how she feels. The stuff related to the reinford company was really interesting as well largely because while perhaps a little idealistic, Alisa isn't comfortable, with the pain and terror that the weaponry her family's company has made caused.
Machias: I found Machias's backstory probably the saddest one out of all of them largely because it gave a lot of weight to his hatred of the nobility and how it ties into his father being one of the reformist faction's greatest allies. Machias as a character was admittedly kinda obnoxious a good while just because of his constant fighting with Jusis and how he was upset with Rean too and while to be honest, I still think his behavior was kinda annoying, I really like how his backstory just made his behavior have more weight to it. Almost like it's hard to blame him for how he feels after learning his backstory.
Jusis: I found Jusis's backstory quite interesting as well, largely because it felt like his father had tossed him aside and really the only person who cared for him was his brother, and his uncle. One thing that I thought was interesting about Jusis is that while he is a noble, he clearly isn't happy with their actions and especially towards the end, you can see how critical he is of the noble faction. By the end I thought it was really powerful how despite his family being part of the noble alliance, he still chose to fight alongside his classmates.
Elliot: Elliot probably is my second favorite character in terms of backstory, largely because of how he was never really allowed to do whatever he wanted and ultimately his father decided his future in a military academy. Despite that however, he still pursued his love of music, so in a way he worked within the confines of the hand he was given which would ultimately lead him to Thors. I can sorta relate with Elliot's backstory a bit as I had family members who were constantly pressuring me into doing what they wanted rather than what I wanted to do, and in that sense Elliot's backstory really struck a cord with me.
Gaius: Gaius felt like a really bland character throughout most of the game and to be honest, he was at the bottom for me in terms of favorite characters, but I really enjoyed how much chapter 3 fleshed him out and I really enjoyed learning about his motives. I thought it was really interesting how despite his love for the nord highlands, he chose to leave it behind, to get stronger so he could protect it. Might be a bit cliche, but I think it's a really cool motive for Gaius especially given that up to that point he was sorta painted as the mysterious transfer student.
Laura: Laura is really interesting for me largely because looking back on it, I don't really feel as though her backstory was really touched on very much. Her strongest point was probably her conflict with Rean, regarding the way of the sword. I still really liked her as a character, and I really enjoyed meeting her family, but I feel that a lot of Laura's strong points in this game tie to Rean, especially early on.
Emma: Alright, so I gotta be honest, I don't hate Emma, but I was really frustrated with her especially towards the end. Throughout the game, she's sorta treated as a mystery character, and throughout the game she clearly has the behavior of someone who knows a lot yet doesn't want to say anything. What bothers me about Emma and her connection to the big reveal of the game, is how there is constant forshadowing, yet there wasn't really much revealed near the end. which really frustrated me personally.
Fie: Fie is another character who I wasn't really sure how to feel about early on in the game, but towards the end I really started to like her as a character. Her issue with Laura and how that gets settled and the explanation of her backstory are probably some of my favorite moments of this game. I think her backstory with the Jaegar corps was just really interesting and also really sad. She almost reminds me of Joshua in a weird way except Joshua's backstory is quite different from Fie's but the whole theme of, being alone, finding a home and then having that home forcefully taken away from you hit home quite strongly with Fie.
Sara and Toval: This isn't really much of a comment on them as characters as to be honest, there isn't really much to make out of Toval largely because he appears a bit towards the end of the game, but he still isn't heavily present in CS1. The reason why I largely have these two together is because of their connection to the bracer guild and how I absolutely love the fact, that if you played Sky, Sara and Toval are living examples of how some of the events described in SC and 3rd regarding the attacks on the bracer guilds of Erebonia has effected people. I also really liked Sara as a character though her past still remains a bit of a mystery outside of knowing that she is a bracer.
As far as the combat system in the game goes, to be honest it's what you've come to expect from Trails along with some new additions here and there. The master quartz system from Azure returns for CS1, but the biggest change to the combat system in CS are links. Throughout the game you can deepen the bond between characters and those have a impact on combat as, the stronger your bond with a character is the more link abilities you have with a character. I thought it was a really cool addition to the game, as it puts the idea of bonds between your class getting stronger throughout the game in a gameplay situation. The max bonding level is 5, and I personally had around 4 characters maxed out by the end. While it was briefly touched on earlier, I really enjoyed the bonding events in the game, my only disappointment was that I couldn't see every bonding event.
As for the story, itself I think, for the most part I like where the game ended up, though I did feel some reveals felt a bit too sudden.
The Misty reveal really threw me off largely because of how sudden it felt. While comparable to other reveals in the series, I think what made Misty's reveal even more sudden was how the game made the player think the C reveal was going to be the big reveal of the game.
I was kinda surprised by how the C reveal was handled largely because, for starters by chapter 5 it felt really obvious and also it was kinda revealed without much fanfare at all. Like it didn't feel like this big thing the game was building up to, it sorta just happened and while I really like how the reveal goes done, it just felt odd.
In hindsight, I kinda feel that the C reveal was sorta mean't to be a decoy, to hide the actual reveal of the game which was Vita Clotilde being the second Anguis. While, I like the reveal overall, I didn't really get the same gut punch from this reveal like I did other reveals in the series, and I don't really know why. I certainly didn't think it was a bad reveal, and finally seeing how the society fit into the picture was awesome to see as I was eagerly anticipating it, it just felt really sudden I suppose.
I was kinda surprised by how the C reveal was handled largely because, for starters by chapter 5 it felt really obvious and also it was kinda revealed without much fanfare at all. Like it didn't feel like this big thing the game was building up to, it sorta just happened and while I really like how the reveal goes done, it just felt odd.
In hindsight, I kinda feel that the C reveal was sorta mean't to be a decoy, to hide the actual reveal of the game which was Vita Clotilde being the second Anguis. While, I like the reveal overall, I didn't really get the same gut punch from this reveal like I did other reveals in the series, and I don't really know why. I certainly didn't think it was a bad reveal, and finally seeing how the society fit into the picture was awesome to see as I was eagerly anticipating it, it just felt really sudden I suppose.
All in all, despite the issues I had a good time with the game. While the structure of the game certainly was a problem for me towards the end, I still really enjoyed the game.
I think Divinity OS 2 has ruined me.
I just can't get into Pathfinder, as hard as I try.
But all the time I just can't help and think "Man, OS 2 was so much more comfortable. I didn't have to think about rolls, or stats, everything was clearly spelled out, there weren't 76 classes to choose from and the neverending fear of building an unviable character.....". Yes, that's right. I have become a casual. I'm just too old. Or not old enough, however that works.
Damn you Larian.
I'm reinstalling OS 2.
Fuck
I just can't get into Pathfinder, as hard as I try.
But all the time I just can't help and think "Man, OS 2 was so much more comfortable. I didn't have to think about rolls, or stats, everything was clearly spelled out, there weren't 76 classes to choose from and the neverending fear of building an unviable character.....". Yes, that's right. I have become a casual. I'm just too old. Or not old enough, however that works.
Damn you Larian.
I'm reinstalling OS 2.
Fuck
I never beat Pathfinder: Kingmaker, I think it lost too much steam at like hour 100 or something, but it's actually not that bad of a game and probably worth beating if better paced. It certainly has no shortage of interesting scenarios and the combat is rather good with some effective if uninspired dungeon crawls.
If I can convince you try it again, Kingmaker NEEDS a respec mod. The game is actual tons more fun when you can just literally make new characters and try them out, some of the pathfinder classes are really out there and with the respec mods you can turn your weird goon character classes the companions pick into actual interesting classes. Half the fun of the game is just trying out different synergies, as I'm told it's a VERY faithful recreation of the Pathfinder system so there's all sorts of weird munchkin builds you can use and at the harder difficulties (where enemies have ABSURD AC) you actually need to make use of it. The story isn't also all that bad, though it's glitchy as fuck and the kingdom making aspect of it is 100% half-assed.
Since nobody has posted anything in over a week, I guess it's a good idea to do so myself:
In about three weeks I completed Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep and wanted to share some of my impressions with you all. As I've mentioned before writing long pieces isn't my thing so don't expect a particularly coherent text. Unmarked spoilers ahead
Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep or how to kick a puppy so many times in a row and still receive an standing ovation
Prequels tend to be sad and unfair most of the time. Birth by Sleep (BBS from now on) is no exception. Instead of kicking a puppy several times as I mentioned earlier, this game is about kicking three puppies and all while you get to take part in a weird retelling of some old Disney movies.
The Disney worlds involved this time are Snow White's, Cinderella's and Sleeping Beauty's; there are some Disney worlds in which your involvement is just a fraction of the movies you watched too: Peter Pan's, Lilo and Stitch, Hercules', and some extra worlds that have been part of the KH storyline since ages ago.
There are two main changes to the KH formula in this game: The combat system and the way to tell the story.
The combat system is still the classic ARPG that KH has always been, but the twist here is that you can freely assign commands to your arsenal and each command is treated as an object. The advantage of that is that the game encourages you to fuse those commands to get new and more powerful ones, so you are constantly trying new ones, which makes the combat feel fresh. My main complaint would be the finish commands (or whatever they are called) because you don't know exactly how to trigger them since the game doesn't tell you, and I found some of them more useful than others. Another change is the fact that you only follow one character (probably due to the limitations of the PSP) instead of being accompanied by two useless ones, but now you get to borrow the powers of other Disney characters instead of summoning them as well. All in all, the combat was fun.
As for the story: you play the game from the perspective of three characters, each of them visiting different parts of the worlds I talked about earlier and also at different times. The clear advantage to that is that it keeps things fresh but the disadvantage is that by the time that you play as your third character you just want to rush to the ending, because to understand the whole thing you have to play as the three characters (and you unlock the Final Episode only after you've beaten the story for the three main characters).
There are tons of things to do in this game: playing the different mini games available (I played the board game most times than I should've), exploring the world to find hidden stuff, doing the different challenges; but you have to do all this three times because all the things you get for one character cannot be transferred to the others... fortunately leveling a command up doesn't take that much time.
And now I'd like to talk about the three puppies in question: Terra, Ventus and Aqua.
Terra is stupid, Ventus is broken and Aqua is the only one that gets shit done. The end. Well, that's the TL;DR version... as I said at the beginning the game is kind of the story of a tragedy from three not so different points of view: The game starts with a graduation ceremony for Aqua and Terra and then the presence of Master Xehanort drives the three friends apart. Terra is tempted by the Dark side and he's manipulated to commit stupidity after stupidity which eventually leads to the assassination of his own teacher, which leads him to searching revenge which in turn leads him to become the vessel of the old Xehanort... so basically Terra's story is the story of how he became the bad guy from KH and KHII... which is okay, I guess. As for Ventus, Ventus was supposed to be that "vessel" Xehanort wanted, except that he's so nice that he's scared of joining the dark side, which makes Xehanort accept the kid is useless for him, except that then he decides to conduct an experiment on him: He extracts Ventus' darkness and that leaves poor Ventus basically broken, until little Sora helps him to keep his heart from fading. Ventus' heart is basically pure light and his darkness became sentient (and inexplicably looks like Sora)... and both of them fighting and fusing would lead to the creation of a X-Blade ("chi-blade", also pronounced as keyblade) sigh . Which would create an apocalypse... and all that was before the actual game; in the game we just see how Xehanort and Vanitas manipulate Ventus into creating that X-Blade that Xehanort wants. Aqua is the only one of the three that's an actual keyblade master and her story mode is basically fixing what the other two characters couldn't during their journeys. She has the task to keep an eye on Terra and send Ventus home since everybody treats him like a baby despite the fact that he's training to basically become a Jedi. Anyways, Aqua is so busy fixing all that's wrong in the universe that she basically fails to protect Terra and Ventus from themselves. By the end of each of their stories they reunite in that scene that's the secret ending of KHII:
It is a bittersweet ending: Terra gets possessed by Xehanort, Ventus ends in a coma and Aqua sacrifices herself to save both her friends... Aqua defeats Terranort who loses his memory and will become the bad guy from KH and KHII. When Ventus defeated Vanitas he basically destroyed his own heart... which leaves him in a coma, Aqua basically creates Castle Oblivion and leaves Ventus there to keep him protected before going to fight Terra, who asks her to destroy him. Aqua sacrifices herself to send Terra to the realm of light: she sends her armor and her keyblade away leaving her stuck in the realm of darkness without a way to return home. By the way, the Final and secret episodes in which Aqua does all that stuff are super tough: a couple of hits are enough to send you to the game over screen in Critical mode.
An interesting thing that I forgot to mention before is that the worlds are big yet basically empty (something that I thought it was due to the PSP limitations)... or at least it felt that way at the beginning of my playthrough as Terra, while in the second story -Ventus' story- even though I visited the same worlds, they were more complex and fun, which made me change my opinion about the game.
All in all I had a lot of fun while playing BBS. The last episodes were super tough and drained all my energy; they were super emotional too, not enough to move me sentimentally but they touched the right notes to make me feel kind of empty right after I finished the game. BBS is definitively one of the best Kingdom Hearts games I've played.
In about three weeks I completed Kingdom Hearts: Birth by Sleep and wanted to share some of my impressions with you all. As I've mentioned before writing long pieces isn't my thing so don't expect a particularly coherent text. Unmarked spoilers ahead
Kingdom Hearts Birth by Sleep or how to kick a puppy so many times in a row and still receive an standing ovation
Prequels tend to be sad and unfair most of the time. Birth by Sleep (BBS from now on) is no exception. Instead of kicking a puppy several times as I mentioned earlier, this game is about kicking three puppies and all while you get to take part in a weird retelling of some old Disney movies.
The Disney worlds involved this time are Snow White's, Cinderella's and Sleeping Beauty's; there are some Disney worlds in which your involvement is just a fraction of the movies you watched too: Peter Pan's, Lilo and Stitch, Hercules', and some extra worlds that have been part of the KH storyline since ages ago.
There are two main changes to the KH formula in this game: The combat system and the way to tell the story.
The combat system is still the classic ARPG that KH has always been, but the twist here is that you can freely assign commands to your arsenal and each command is treated as an object. The advantage of that is that the game encourages you to fuse those commands to get new and more powerful ones, so you are constantly trying new ones, which makes the combat feel fresh. My main complaint would be the finish commands (or whatever they are called) because you don't know exactly how to trigger them since the game doesn't tell you, and I found some of them more useful than others. Another change is the fact that you only follow one character (probably due to the limitations of the PSP) instead of being accompanied by two useless ones, but now you get to borrow the powers of other Disney characters instead of summoning them as well. All in all, the combat was fun.
As for the story: you play the game from the perspective of three characters, each of them visiting different parts of the worlds I talked about earlier and also at different times. The clear advantage to that is that it keeps things fresh but the disadvantage is that by the time that you play as your third character you just want to rush to the ending, because to understand the whole thing you have to play as the three characters (and you unlock the Final Episode only after you've beaten the story for the three main characters).
There are tons of things to do in this game: playing the different mini games available (I played the board game most times than I should've), exploring the world to find hidden stuff, doing the different challenges; but you have to do all this three times because all the things you get for one character cannot be transferred to the others... fortunately leveling a command up doesn't take that much time.
And now I'd like to talk about the three puppies in question: Terra, Ventus and Aqua.
Terra is stupid, Ventus is broken and Aqua is the only one that gets shit done. The end. Well, that's the TL;DR version... as I said at the beginning the game is kind of the story of a tragedy from three not so different points of view: The game starts with a graduation ceremony for Aqua and Terra and then the presence of Master Xehanort drives the three friends apart. Terra is tempted by the Dark side and he's manipulated to commit stupidity after stupidity which eventually leads to the assassination of his own teacher, which leads him to searching revenge which in turn leads him to become the vessel of the old Xehanort... so basically Terra's story is the story of how he became the bad guy from KH and KHII... which is okay, I guess. As for Ventus, Ventus was supposed to be that "vessel" Xehanort wanted, except that he's so nice that he's scared of joining the dark side, which makes Xehanort accept the kid is useless for him, except that then he decides to conduct an experiment on him: He extracts Ventus' darkness and that leaves poor Ventus basically broken, until little Sora helps him to keep his heart from fading. Ventus' heart is basically pure light and his darkness became sentient (and inexplicably looks like Sora)... and both of them fighting and fusing would lead to the creation of a X-Blade ("chi-blade", also pronounced as keyblade) sigh . Which would create an apocalypse... and all that was before the actual game; in the game we just see how Xehanort and Vanitas manipulate Ventus into creating that X-Blade that Xehanort wants. Aqua is the only one of the three that's an actual keyblade master and her story mode is basically fixing what the other two characters couldn't during their journeys. She has the task to keep an eye on Terra and send Ventus home since everybody treats him like a baby despite the fact that he's training to basically become a Jedi. Anyways, Aqua is so busy fixing all that's wrong in the universe that she basically fails to protect Terra and Ventus from themselves. By the end of each of their stories they reunite in that scene that's the secret ending of KHII:
It is a bittersweet ending: Terra gets possessed by Xehanort, Ventus ends in a coma and Aqua sacrifices herself to save both her friends... Aqua defeats Terranort who loses his memory and will become the bad guy from KH and KHII. When Ventus defeated Vanitas he basically destroyed his own heart... which leaves him in a coma, Aqua basically creates Castle Oblivion and leaves Ventus there to keep him protected before going to fight Terra, who asks her to destroy him. Aqua sacrifices herself to send Terra to the realm of light: she sends her armor and her keyblade away leaving her stuck in the realm of darkness without a way to return home. By the way, the Final and secret episodes in which Aqua does all that stuff are super tough: a couple of hits are enough to send you to the game over screen in Critical mode.
An interesting thing that I forgot to mention before is that the worlds are big yet basically empty (something that I thought it was due to the PSP limitations)... or at least it felt that way at the beginning of my playthrough as Terra, while in the second story -Ventus' story- even though I visited the same worlds, they were more complex and fun, which made me change my opinion about the game.
All in all I had a lot of fun while playing BBS. The last episodes were super tough and drained all my energy; they were super emotional too, not enough to move me sentimentally but they touched the right notes to make me feel kind of empty right after I finished the game. BBS is definitively one of the best Kingdom Hearts games I've played.
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Good writeup!
Birth by Sleep might be my favorite overall Kingdom Hearts game. The combat and progression systems ended up being really fun, and each World is compact enough that they tend to not overstay their welcome, which I feel is a problem in pretty much every other game in the franchise to date. I think other KH games peak at a higher quality than BbS does, but they also tend to have lower lows. So Birth by Sleep may just currently be the best full package to me.
I'm still playing Dragon Quest V.
Finished the Coburg story. It's good. Got a Slime Knight, Rotten Apple, Brownie, Dracky and Slime in my wagon.
Finished the Coburg story. It's good. Got a Slime Knight, Rotten Apple, Brownie, Dracky and Slime in my wagon.
Aw man that RPG blitz looked like fun. Any idea when the next one is? I'd love to participate in it.
Next blitz starts July 1st. It lasts 3 months and then there's a month break. You can think about a few rpgs you wanna finish already if you're interested.
Join us~
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Also, a link to the discord if anyone is interested.
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Anyone heard of this game? Dungeon of Dragon Knight. Looks like Grimrock. On sale for just under $10.
Was playing dragon quest v for the past week but got sidetracked with bloodstained. Aiming on playing it again afterwards & currently at the section where I need to find the ultimate key from Bjorn.
Thanks! Should add myself to the Google Document when I decide on the five RPGS or do I have to PM someone?
You can add yourself! Even before you've figured out your full list. As you can probably see, not everyone has put down all five of their games yet.
Yeah just fill it in, if you change your mind during blitz then let Lumi know.
While most people picked up the Collection of Mana to finally play Sieken Densetsu 3 I went the other way and played Final Fantasy Adventure. I just wrapped up the game last night, and it was a thoroughly enjoyable experience. Playing Secret of Mana for the first time is one of my fondest memories from childhood, and it was really fun to play it's predecessor. Adventure is essentially a simplified version of Secret of Mana, and in some ways has better mechanics. Not having to pause to cast magic is a big plus, and I found the boss fights to be more enjoyable. Also, no magic grinding! I think being on a more rudimentry system really helped the boss fights. In Secret of Mana I remember having to really rely on magic, but since many of the boss patterns in Adventure are so simple that isn't the case in this game. I was also surprised how thorough a story the game told for being on the gameboy. Hopefully Trials of Mana is well done and has some success and that will convince Squeenix to give this game the same treatment.
The game does have flaws. The biggest of which is that that you have to switch weapons all the time for the different types of monsters (which involves going in to the menu and stopping the action). Most of the games flaws are due to limitations from the platform though and don't hold the game back.
If you picked up Collection of Mana I would highly recommend you give the game a shot at some point. It's a really fun experience to see where the series started and how it gives you an impressively similar experience to what you get on the SNES in Secret of Mana.
The game does have flaws. The biggest of which is that that you have to switch weapons all the time for the different types of monsters (which involves going in to the menu and stopping the action). Most of the games flaws are due to limitations from the platform though and don't hold the game back.
If you picked up Collection of Mana I would highly recommend you give the game a shot at some point. It's a really fun experience to see where the series started and how it gives you an impressively similar experience to what you get on the SNES in Secret of Mana.
Finished ToCS 2.
I liked it overall. It is a very strange and very mixed package, though.
Some thoughts:
There's an obvious comparison to TitS SC:
Continuing along these lines, the narrative of ToCS 2 was fairly unengaging but it arrived at a good point in the end:
ToCS 2 is a fun game. It plays better than ToCS 1. Fie in particular is a joy to use. It has more freedom and a base-building component. It has lots of silly, exuberant shonen moments that at times got the better of me.
ToCS 2 is a more openly perverted game than ToCS 1. It mostly lacks Rean's horny internal monologues but it makes up for them in a plethora of "skinship" moments, largely but not exclusively by any means headpatting, some more mundane and some truly wacky. I am really saddened to hear that there are air-ducts in subsequent ToCS games. I really do not need to repeatedly hear the girls panting and moaning nor about the boys either looking up their skirts or hoping to do so or fitting themselves into tight spaces. I don't know why there are so many of these.
I lost count of the headpats, though, because surprisingly a late-game headpat montage is pretty much the best scene in the game.
I liked it overall. It is a very strange and very mixed package, though.
Some thoughts:
There's an obvious comparison to TitS SC:
SC and ToCS 2 both take the setting of their predecessor and throw it into chaos. Both reuse and remix the content of their predecessor. Both have a narrative that is largely more zipping to and fro and less studied and less about world building.
On a micro-level, ToCS 2 is a more efficient remix. The quests are better lined up and tailored to the travels the game sends you on despite the maps being designed for ToCS1. Each chapter takes up fairly little time. ToCS 2 also reorders and abbreviates all the content types from ToCS 1, making a brisker game compared to its predecessor whereas SC is more laborious than FC.
On a macro-level, ToCS 2 is highly inefficient: very little happens of any note in the majority of ToCS 2. SC was slow with regards to its main story threads but each chapter offered a character-centered vignette of some note. That is not the case here. ToCS 2 is all about finding and reuniting with friends but it exploits that to basically no narrative end on each venture.
Finally, ToCS 2 lacks anything on the level of and with the centrality of the Estelle/Joshua emotional narrative.
On a micro-level, ToCS 2 is a more efficient remix. The quests are better lined up and tailored to the travels the game sends you on despite the maps being designed for ToCS1. Each chapter takes up fairly little time. ToCS 2 also reorders and abbreviates all the content types from ToCS 1, making a brisker game compared to its predecessor whereas SC is more laborious than FC.
On a macro-level, ToCS 2 is highly inefficient: very little happens of any note in the majority of ToCS 2. SC was slow with regards to its main story threads but each chapter offered a character-centered vignette of some note. That is not the case here. ToCS 2 is all about finding and reuniting with friends but it exploits that to basically no narrative end on each venture.
Finally, ToCS 2 lacks anything on the level of and with the centrality of the Estelle/Joshua emotional narrative.
Basically, the entire civil war was a hiccup in the Osborne storyline. The whiplash is interesting--in ToCS 1 there was an undercurrent of creep factor to the imperial authority and that found expression in ILF but also just the intense armament of Erebonia and Osborne's person, but the element mainly villainized were the nobles; then in ToCS 2 although the main cast does this whole third way thing in voice they really don't and the imperial army--which in TitS is a menace--are the good guys. Then you go back to that moment of the speech, as if nothing had happened except now Osborne has robots and he just steamrolls Crossbell. And Rean, with some new-found daddy complex, is the vanguard of this conquering army. And it all just feels so wrong. (It is supposed to tbc.) Osborne has performed a perfect parry.
I wasn't a big fan of Crow. I don't much like his/Lechter's archetype tbh. That said, his death was well done and was the perfect presage for Osborne's return, with the symmetry between his death and the assassination of Osborne: the rebellion opened and closed with these events; Crow thought he had accomplished everything with the assassination only to have it revealed in his death he accomplished nothing. Moreover, this is the very moment you realize your third way has accomplished nothing: you may have defeated the nobles but not on your terms--Osborne was waiting in the wings to set the terms of victory rather than dead beforehand leaving victory to be defined by you and Olivier. Cue the sad montage about kids growing up and seeking to accomplish things centered on Crow's death.
In general though, getting there was disappointing:
I was super into the palpable tension and arms race in ToCS 1 between the nobles and the reformists. I was super into the tension between industrial/commercial "progress" and old landed power. I was also into wondering where the imperial family stood and how they were using the reformists against the nobles to secure their place. The nobles were generally the antagonists of ToCS 1 but there were lurking shades of Hamel--the ghosts of the victims of "progress" and Osborne's realpolitik. The conflict between the nobles and Osborne in ToCS 1 ending through ToCS 2 draws on very little of this.
The nobles just sort of come in with a power outside the budding tension and then none of them is a good face of their interest--they're all jokes or traitors to the cause. Duke Albarea just repeatedly bumbles around and gets sacrificed for no good reason. Duke Cayenne is just a crazy man that wants a powerful robot to avenge a centuries old grudge. I was long suspicious of the Luciferian quality of Rufus; I was hoping he'd come forth as the epitome of the noble cause. Instead he's an Ironblood and repurposed towards a different story.
Meanwhilem Rean operates basically for the imperial army but w/o committing to it and his "third way" is even more nebulous than Olivier's in ToCS 1: it is just about magic of friendship really and that is the driving force behind almost all of ToCS 2.
There's very little exploitation of the tension they built up. Then you get to the conclusion. After Cayenne is off the stage you have the Crow scene. Then you Osborne being Osborne and parrying it all towards his own monstrous ends and you have Rean the tool of "progress" victimizing the world and treading on crow. suddenly the themes come back much better. But basically, the entire nobles versus Osborne conflict, when it actually burst out, was wasted.
I burnt most of my ire on this disappointment at the end ToCS 1 but it is a persistent problem with Trails writing:
Trails is great at positing a world state. When that world state jumps, however, it tends to go "very anime" to make that movement: it becomes more about larger than life figures, cartoonish motives, friendship power, etc. and it can be disappointing that tension is resolved in this way when that isn't how it is set up.
Trails is a victim of its own worth in this regard: only because of the quality of its world building and the particular nature of its focus does this become a problem. Still I'd love to see a game with the vision and ambition of Trails in the hands of a truly great writer. (Never going to happen...)
I wasn't a big fan of Crow. I don't much like his/Lechter's archetype tbh. That said, his death was well done and was the perfect presage for Osborne's return, with the symmetry between his death and the assassination of Osborne: the rebellion opened and closed with these events; Crow thought he had accomplished everything with the assassination only to have it revealed in his death he accomplished nothing. Moreover, this is the very moment you realize your third way has accomplished nothing: you may have defeated the nobles but not on your terms--Osborne was waiting in the wings to set the terms of victory rather than dead beforehand leaving victory to be defined by you and Olivier. Cue the sad montage about kids growing up and seeking to accomplish things centered on Crow's death.
In general though, getting there was disappointing:
I was super into the palpable tension and arms race in ToCS 1 between the nobles and the reformists. I was super into the tension between industrial/commercial "progress" and old landed power. I was also into wondering where the imperial family stood and how they were using the reformists against the nobles to secure their place. The nobles were generally the antagonists of ToCS 1 but there were lurking shades of Hamel--the ghosts of the victims of "progress" and Osborne's realpolitik. The conflict between the nobles and Osborne in ToCS 1 ending through ToCS 2 draws on very little of this.
The nobles just sort of come in with a power outside the budding tension and then none of them is a good face of their interest--they're all jokes or traitors to the cause. Duke Albarea just repeatedly bumbles around and gets sacrificed for no good reason. Duke Cayenne is just a crazy man that wants a powerful robot to avenge a centuries old grudge. I was long suspicious of the Luciferian quality of Rufus; I was hoping he'd come forth as the epitome of the noble cause. Instead he's an Ironblood and repurposed towards a different story.
Meanwhilem Rean operates basically for the imperial army but w/o committing to it and his "third way" is even more nebulous than Olivier's in ToCS 1: it is just about magic of friendship really and that is the driving force behind almost all of ToCS 2.
There's very little exploitation of the tension they built up. Then you get to the conclusion. After Cayenne is off the stage you have the Crow scene. Then you Osborne being Osborne and parrying it all towards his own monstrous ends and you have Rean the tool of "progress" victimizing the world and treading on crow. suddenly the themes come back much better. But basically, the entire nobles versus Osborne conflict, when it actually burst out, was wasted.
I burnt most of my ire on this disappointment at the end ToCS 1 but it is a persistent problem with Trails writing:
Trails is great at positing a world state. When that world state jumps, however, it tends to go "very anime" to make that movement: it becomes more about larger than life figures, cartoonish motives, friendship power, etc. and it can be disappointing that tension is resolved in this way when that isn't how it is set up.
Trails is a victim of its own worth in this regard: only because of the quality of its world building and the particular nature of its focus does this become a problem. Still I'd love to see a game with the vision and ambition of Trails in the hands of a truly great writer. (Never going to happen...)
ToCS 2 is a more openly perverted game than ToCS 1. It mostly lacks Rean's horny internal monologues but it makes up for them in a plethora of "skinship" moments, largely but not exclusively by any means headpatting, some more mundane and some truly wacky. I am really saddened to hear that there are air-ducts in subsequent ToCS games. I really do not need to repeatedly hear the girls panting and moaning nor about the boys either looking up their skirts or hoping to do so or fitting themselves into tight spaces. I don't know why there are so many of these.
I lost count of the headpats, though, because surprisingly a late-game headpat montage is pretty much the best scene in the game.
CS2 from the protag's perspective is SC from the protag's perpsective gone horribly, horribly wrong.
The Nobility faction parallels elements of the 19th/20th Century passing of power from landed gentry to the 3rd Estate in Europe. Self-absorbed, greedy, and hereditary-based promotion left spots held by at times incompetant leadership. Cayenne is a schemer but is out of his depth given his new allies and just WHAT they're getting into (he as you say, thinks of it superficially as revenge/a way to roll back the clock on recent history), Alberea is a sociopath, etc.
The 3rd Way was Oliviert's plan. Remember The 3rd's Moon Door 8? He and the Emperor recognized what Osborne was (not this charismatic, supereffective leader of a liberal democracy party, but a megalomaniac whose veterancy in the army-yet anti-invasion happy ways are anything but nice and true), and of course recognized what the Nobility was up to so a 3rd way loyal to the Emperor, the people, and the country was the aim. That's why they neither gave nor accepted orders from the army nor any Iron Bloods; it would have changed the dynamic of their cause.
It of course went Horribly Horribly Wrong though.
The Nobility faction parallels elements of the 19th/20th Century passing of power from landed gentry to the 3rd Estate in Europe. Self-absorbed, greedy, and hereditary-based promotion left spots held by at times incompetant leadership. Cayenne is a schemer but is out of his depth given his new allies and just WHAT they're getting into (he as you say, thinks of it superficially as revenge/a way to roll back the clock on recent history), Alberea is a sociopath, etc.
The 3rd Way was Oliviert's plan. Remember The 3rd's Moon Door 8? He and the Emperor recognized what Osborne was (not this charismatic, supereffective leader of a liberal democracy party, but a megalomaniac whose veterancy in the army-yet anti-invasion happy ways are anything but nice and true), and of course recognized what the Nobility was up to so a 3rd way loyal to the Emperor, the people, and the country was the aim. That's why they neither gave nor accepted orders from the army nor any Iron Bloods; it would have changed the dynamic of their cause.
It of course went Horribly Horribly Wrong though.
I get where you're coming from or agree with the rest.
So about a month ago I borrowed a copy of Octopath Traveler from a friend who enjoyed it, but found it to be too grindy and long. He took about 90 hours to beat the main story and well I did some extra stuff and actually beat it in less than 50 hours! (49 hours and 59 minutes to be exact).
I think one of Octopaths biggest problems is, that it doesn't disincentivize bad playstyles enough. He never used buffs/debuffs and grinded to reach the danger level of each area. You can play like that if you want and brute force your way through the game, but that seems pretty boring to me. Maybe too many RPGs have reinforced the idea that if you lose your level just isn't high enough. I think there needs to be a boss that heavily reinforces the mechanics of the game and tells people that there are more fun ways to play the game, because Octopaths battles can be pretty fun.
So the best part about Octopath are its boss battles. The artwork is amazing and the battles can be really tense. Do I have the right buffs, when should I break the boss, what is the turn order, what should my team composition be like? There are many fun questions and possibilities in battle, although at the end I just used a handful of dominant strategies and crushed everyone with the buffest Cyrus. I didn't do the postgame though.
Another part I really enjoyed is the world building. Getting a little story for most NPCs was super cool. It's even better if you steal their stuff afterwards! My Therion stole from the rich and the poor, took candy from kids and he even stole my heart, but I still laughed all the way to the bank. Stealing is just too useful and fun.
The structure and the pacing were kind of weird. All the chapters had the same structure and the dungeons were all pretty much the same corridor with some slight branches. And the stories were also kind of basic, but in a sort of refreshing way? So yeah, I enjoyed Octopath a lot, although it is a pretty strange game.
I think one of Octopaths biggest problems is, that it doesn't disincentivize bad playstyles enough. He never used buffs/debuffs and grinded to reach the danger level of each area. You can play like that if you want and brute force your way through the game, but that seems pretty boring to me. Maybe too many RPGs have reinforced the idea that if you lose your level just isn't high enough. I think there needs to be a boss that heavily reinforces the mechanics of the game and tells people that there are more fun ways to play the game, because Octopaths battles can be pretty fun.
So the best part about Octopath are its boss battles. The artwork is amazing and the battles can be really tense. Do I have the right buffs, when should I break the boss, what is the turn order, what should my team composition be like? There are many fun questions and possibilities in battle, although at the end I just used a handful of dominant strategies and crushed everyone with the buffest Cyrus. I didn't do the postgame though.
Another part I really enjoyed is the world building. Getting a little story for most NPCs was super cool. It's even better if you steal their stuff afterwards! My Therion stole from the rich and the poor, took candy from kids and he even stole my heart, but I still laughed all the way to the bank. Stealing is just too useful and fun.
The structure and the pacing were kind of weird. All the chapters had the same structure and the dungeons were all pretty much the same corridor with some slight branches. And the stories were also kind of basic, but in a sort of refreshing way? So yeah, I enjoyed Octopath a lot, although it is a pretty strange game.
Octopath in particular also puts way more into gear than into character levels, e.g. if you do the game in two sets of four, you can do the second four at much lower levels than the previous four. So even if you did most of the exploring/sidequests or whatever with the first four, you don't ever need to grind with the second four.
But yeah, this is a general issue with TBRPGs. People think they take no skill, just levels. Thing is, there are better and worse ways to play the games and the vast majority never actually require grinding. Sure, perhaps you end up needing to grind to get past something but that is almost never the game. IDK. People seem much more able to acknowledge this with other genres and just sort of don't even realize there is a game they could learn with TBRPGs.
It is a mixed thing. Plenty of people seem to really enjoy grinding. That's fine. It is also fine if you find yourself needing to grind. But just the attitude that TBRPGs require grinding to progress and the refusal to figure them out is annoying because, honestly, it has become partly how the genre is defined in the community and that, as you note, can really ruin peoples' experiences when they think that's how the games work.
As to the other stuff, yeah Octopath is an interesting and odd game. I enjoyed it a lot even if I've got my issues with it. I really respect what it went for and am excited to see what the team does next.
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Played some more DQV. Got married to Debs and roaming the world on this cruiseship.
My slime crew is also expanding :slurp:
My slime crew is also expanding :slurp:
Might sign up for the blitz since I have a couple of RPGs I'd like to finish, though the fact that it's so heavily discord-focused is making me a bit apprehensive. It would feel weird participating in something that's 99% focused on a different community and I doubt I'll post on discord since it's so awfully unsuitable for long-form impressions.
A shame this wasn't posted about here. I'd have loved to shill for some lesser-known indie RPGs. Though I doubt anyone would pick them regardless so it's not a huge loss.
A shame this wasn't posted about here. I'd have loved to shill for some lesser-known indie RPGs. Though I doubt anyone would pick them regardless so it's not a huge loss.
We've had plenty people participate from here. Plenty also still post long-form impressions here, whether from the discord or not.
Honestly, we try to be welcoming with blitz and we also try to encourage actually posting here because a) we know posters in here that do not want to be on discord and b) we want to engage a wider population.
As to the thread, I wish it was more healthy than it is. It lost a lot of energy way back and with that lost energy we lost voices. I can also say that insofar as this thread isn't completely dead, a conscious effort from the discord plays a large role.
I'm very grateful for that. I spend a lot of time in the discord now but I resisted it for a good while along the lines you stated. I like the forum format. It is hard to maintain general interest in a thread like this though. Definitely hard to maintain in-depth posting habits. There's the natural wear-and-year of "not playing RPGs," "don't have time to post," and also a less intimate environment that doesn't keep social interest as much.
It makes me very happy, however, seeing someone post who I haven't seen in a while.
Honestly, we try to be welcoming with blitz and we also try to encourage actually posting here because a) we know posters in here that do not want to be on discord and b) we want to engage a wider population.
As to the thread, I wish it was more healthy than it is. It lost a lot of energy way back and with that lost energy we lost voices. I can also say that insofar as this thread isn't completely dead, a conscious effort from the discord plays a large role.
I'm very grateful for that. I spend a lot of time in the discord now but I resisted it for a good while along the lines you stated. I like the forum format. It is hard to maintain general interest in a thread like this though. Definitely hard to maintain in-depth posting habits. There's the natural wear-and-year of "not playing RPGs," "don't have time to post," and also a less intimate environment that doesn't keep social interest as much.
It makes me very happy, however, seeing someone post who I haven't seen in a while.
We have people participating who aren't even in the discord, so that portion is completely optional. People often post their thoughts in shorter forms or ask questions and such in the discord, but we encourage larger write-ups to be here along with longer progress reports. Thread health and lack of activity can be a bit disheartening though.
We usually beta test stuff in the discord to see what works and what doesn't. I've edited in the link to the faves in my previous post (and fixed the initial sign-up sheet link), so feel free to add yours. It's more of a pool to choose from, and not everyone will want to go for the Club game, so don't be too discouraged in no one picks it.
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I know posting about the Blitz without being on the discord is perfectly fine. It just feels weird knowing that if I do, most of the discussion about it will be happening on a site/platform that I don't really visit with a mostly different community. It's probably not all that important though, now that I've thought about it more - the previous blitz still had a number of interesting posts in this thread so hopefully it will be the same with this one.
I guess what I'm mostly trying to say is that I wish more people posted stuff here too because I've really enjoyed reading some of the longer, more in-depth thoughts that do get posted here, even if I understand why most people have moved on to discord.
I guess what I'm mostly trying to say is that I wish more people posted stuff here too because I've really enjoyed reading some of the longer, more in-depth thoughts that do get posted here, even if I understand why most people have moved on to discord.
Yeah, I'd like more participation in the thread. Reading through the more in depth impressions gets me through downtime at work.
That said, I'll need to see what favorite catches my interest. Maybe it's time I give Baten Kaitos a shot as I'm no longer averse to card battle systems.
That said, I'll need to see what favorite catches my interest. Maybe it's time I give Baten Kaitos a shot as I'm no longer averse to card battle systems.
Oh wow. Just seeing this
Oh wow - this sounds like a great idea. A really great idea, all the more so since there are quite a few RPGs on my "must play" list... Just signed up :D. I don't think I'll be able to finish them off in the allotted time, but even if I don't, it should be a fun way to dive through (and chip away at) the backlog. Thanks for running this :D.
Just a reminder - Season 3 of the Blitz starts on July 1st!
Sign Up Sheet below
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For this season, we decided to add a bonus entry. Some of you may remember the RPG Club that we were doing some months ago. Rather than pick a singular game, we decided to go with Themes. Themes can be anything from a specific character type (anti-hero, female protagonist, non-human protagonist, etc.) to a specific genre (srpg, drpg, action, etc.), specific consoles, generations, directors, and more. We voted on themes in the discord and the winning theme for this season was Member Favorites. We had whoever was interested in sharing their favorite game put it on a list. Participants can complete a game from that list if they'd like a bonus entry for the raffle. This mean there are up to 6 entries if you wish to go through everything. Otherwise, only one completion is needed across any of the six.
Member Favorites
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Currently, we're at 40 participants! I'm looking forward to seeing peoples thoughts on the games they're going through.
Late entries/changes will be accepted through July 10th.
Oh wow - this sounds like a great idea. A really great idea, all the more so since there are quite a few RPGs on my "must play" list... Just signed up :D. I don't think I'll be able to finish them off in the allotted time, but even if I don't, it should be a fun way to dive through (and chip away at) the backlog. Thanks for running this :D.
Welcome aboard! The previous Blitzes have been great for me finally getting to some classics that I've been sitting on for years.
Welcome! You only need to finish one within the three months, but some people have more time and focus than others so they can tear through them all!
If anything, we think it's a nice little way to help people focus down backlogs or resume games they stopped midway. It's still pretty fun seeing people group up together and share their thoughts as they go through the same game.
We do encourage write ups and progress reports. We're considering ways to incentivize/encourage/reward write-ups but we'll see!
Thank you both :D. Yep - hoping to get through some of these. I've been really enjoying Trails of Cold Steel when I play it but it's embarrassing to admit that it's taken me well over a year to get through it :(. Hoping to finish that off, at the very least. The other hope I have is that it'll mean I'll play on different systems and thus keep some variety in m playing - I've been PS-only for most of the year and while that's not a bad thing I'd like to diversify more.