you do if you want a high damage attack
otherwise you can go for
shock on steiner
dragon crest on freya (you gotta kill a bunch of dragons to get the damage high, but that's the easiest way to get to lvl99 anyway)
frog drop on quina if you wanna go catch all the frogs for the sidequest
literally anything with vivi
you do if you want a high damage attack
otherwise you can go for
shock on steiner
dragon crest on freya (you gotta kill a bunch of dragons to get the damage high, but that's the easiest way to get to lvl99 anyway)
frog drop on quina if you wanna go catch all the frogs for the sidequest
literally anything with vivi
Zidane will hit for 9999 at the end of the game either way, it doesn't matter.
If you want to steal, learn Bandit, then hit steal until you fail an attempt, or the enemy you want to steal from doesn't have anything else. Then move on. If you REALLY want to steal, learn Master Thief first, then start bleeding bosses dry.
The new demo for the final fantasy nioh-like is the same game that it has been, but maybe they added new jobs? A lot of them seem fun though, and it looks like there's a lot of potential depth in combat when switching between your two current jobs. I read that between base and advanced jobs (that require mastery of 2 or more jobs to learn) there are 27 total?
The demo is also pretty long! WAY longer than I thought it'd be.
I don't think I'd call it a 'soulslike' though, especially with Elden Ring reminding people of From's specific formula. Nioh 2 did a good job at becoming its own thing and carving its own niches, but this is enough Nioh to where if you've played it, you can probably at least get some insight as to whether you'd enjoy this. It DOES seem pretty generous in the difficulty department though. It's got multiple difficulties that you can change literally anytime, and a 'Casual Mode' that you can turn on if you're already playing at the lowest setting that makes it even easier. They don't seem super interested in having players prove their aptitude to at least see the story
I'm stopping short of recommending it as a purchase if you're still on the fence, but it'd make a good 'pick it up when it goes on sale' title.
And speaking of story
the demo is still just 'FF1 again' on its face, but there's a lot of hints at more things happening still to be revealed. A lot of flavor text talks about 'Dimensions' and curious things about at least one member of your party, and that the story is already veering from the regular FF1 plot (Captain Bikke is a benevolent pirate that's taking care of the Provoka due to the Mayor dying, and you flat out not fighting Astos at all when you first meet him)
I just want to play this charming entry in a classic JRPG series but it seems any of those made before 2005 include some clunky mechanic you have to engage with early on if you want to be at or ahead of the curve 30 hours later and I start to remember why I struggle to get into JRPGs
+1
PiptheFairFrequently not in boats.Registered Userregular
I just want to play this charming entry in a classic JRPG series but it seems any of those made before 2005 include some clunky mechanic you have to engage with early on if you want to be at or ahead of the curve 30 hours later and I start to remember why I struggle to get into JRPGs
bear in mind, you only need to do those things if you wanna get HUGE and kill a giant ball of dark matter and a book
if you wanna just play the game you do not need to engage in the clunky farming mechanics
I just want to play this charming entry in a classic JRPG series but it seems any of those made before 2005 include some clunky mechanic you have to engage with early on if you want to be at or ahead of the curve 30 hours later and I start to remember why I struggle to get into JRPGs
As a kid, FF9 was the first time I thought "Maybe a video game can have too much stuff in it".
0
MaddocI'm Bobbin Threadbare, are you my mother?Registered Userregular
If you don't get Excalibur II are you even really playing FF9 though
The Diofield Chronicle honestly has 3 impressions.
Man that 3d animation looks slow and rough for a turn based game.
I'm a sucker for fantasy war map turn based strategy games.
The 2d character art is pleasant to look at.
Looks like a game which could be a enjoyable diamond in the rough with interesting story and gameplay or a complete slog to play.
Perfectly happy to gauge my personal interest in a game based on artstyle tho. Will be my loss I guess.
0
MaddocI'm Bobbin Threadbare, are you my mother?Registered Userregular
DragkoniasThat Guy Who Does StuffYou Know, There. Registered Userregular
edited March 2022
The funniest thing about Growlanser is that the series is a medieval tactics game and for the most part carries itself that way. Everyone just looks like they're headed to an S&M convention.
Which...tbf isn't that different from your typical jRPG.
Growlanser games happen in a world where somehow the only fabric ever invented was latex so they just make everything out of it and no one thinks anything of it
Everyone in the setting just constantly exudes a thin layer of oil that light is reflecting off of. Similar to how frogs coat themselves in mucus to prevent drying out.
Everyone in the setting just constantly exudes a thin layer of oil that light is reflecting off of. Similar to how frogs coat themselves in mucus to prevent drying out.
If Fate has taught me anything, it's that sometimes mana is just viscous.
They are just leaking mana, ok. Mana juice on everything.
The funniest thing about Growlanser is that the series is a medieval tactics game and for the most part carries itself that way. Everyone just looks like they're headed to an S&M convention.
Which...tbf isn't that different from your typical jRPG.
While it's easy to poke fun at the ridiculous designs, Urushihara does do some genuinely fantastic work:
Everyone in the setting just constantly exudes a thin layer of oil that light is reflecting off of. Similar to how frogs coat themselves in mucus to prevent drying out.
If Fate has taught me anything, it's that sometimes mana is just viscous.
They are just leaking mana, ok. Mana juice on everything.
Considering what Fate calls a mana transfer that must mean that entire world smells like crusty socks
The funniest thing about Growlanser is that the series is a medieval tactics game and for the most part carries itself that way. Everyone just looks like they're headed to an S&M convention.
Which...tbf isn't that different from your typical jRPG.
While it's easy to poke fun at the ridiculous designs, Urushihara does do some genuinely fantastic work:
Not all of his artwork goes full eroge.
It's like I said, everyone wears latex, but it's just ordinary clothes material in the setting
Found the first actual boss, and it was decently challenging enough, though I hadn't updated my equipment or items when I could have. Was a little past the point where an upgrade was definitely warranted though. Also finally got a new party member, who I thought would be great because his level 1 skill (ie the one you get to use for free in assist attacks) is the first AoE of that kind, and he's clearly meant to be a back row support tank with taunt skills and various guard bonuses, but I already kind of hate him. Like Frilly McGauntlet, he's totally physical type, but unlike her, can equip basically only two items, so can't just fill in the holes with those, and doesn't have even the crappy magic skill she has. Too fucking many enemies resist physical and/or auras counter physical, and single target guard/support doesn't help much when the real problem are AoEs. So any time there's an enemy that resists physical, all he gets to do is heal or benchwarm.
Letting you straight up duplicate anything you want immediately without having to go through the restock or Chim/Hom bullshit is nice too, but christ, the cost to do so is laughably low even before I've started unlocking the cost reduction skills.
I'm liking the aura mechanic more, though it's certainly just an overt slowdown to keep you from immediately killing things and/or using AoE. It does make the thorns armor thingy a fuck-load better than it originally seemed on the surface since that knocks off at least a turn or two of chipping away at the aura. Every mini-boss seems to have them now, along with maybe 25% or so of regular enemies. Speaking of which, as I feared, updating my equipment instantly moved all the random elite spawns from impossible to trivial. Went from doing around 70 damage an attack to 10. Only the rainy forest dragon was still doing enough damage to be somewhat threatening, but that ended up being a pure DPS check.
Here's a super fun way Sophie 2 has massively, MASSIVELY fucking backslid.
Remember as we go through the numbers here that each map is ginormous.
Any given map has 1-4 zones.
Each zone has 2-4 possible weathers.
Each weather per zone has about ~50 gathering points (some, but nowhere near all, are shared across weathers)
Each gathering point has three possible drops. (all identical points in a zone-weather, eg pots or flowers or rocks have the same three drops).
So any given zone with any given weather has somewhere around 40-80 possible unique materials.
If you're looking for a specific item, you need to know the map, the zone, the weather, and the type of gathering point.
Want to guess what is listed in the item encyclopedia when you look up items? Only the map.
If you want to narrow it down further, you have to leave the encyclopedia, go to the map information, select the zone, select the weather, and then scroll through the list of all 60 some odd materials looking for it. For each fucking weather, in each fucking zone, until you find it. They're not arranged in alphabetical order, or near as I can tell, fucking any order whatsoever. Enjoy your unsorted list. That's as detailed as the in-game information gets. Assuming you've finally found the right zone and weather, and don't need to go find a switch to change the weather in the zone itself, you fast travel there, and now it's time to run around and bump up against every type of gathering point until you find the material you're looking for.
But wait, IT GETS WORSE. So you've picked up some rare material from a chest or the shop or a monster/miniboss drop, but the sidequest is for GATHERING it, so that doesn't count. But that's cool. The encyclopedia says it's available in the Newbie Forest map. So it's time to crawl through every fucking weather in every zone looking for it. Okay, found it. Confirmed it's here. Time to go running around.................. and you need a tool that you haven't unlocked yet. Or maybe you do have the tool, but you need to use a weather that you haven't unlocked to get to the part of the map where it's in. So in no way is it available in this map to you. But it might be in another one, because sure, you need a Hammer here, but you can just pick it up off the ground elsewhere. Which will it be? Fuck you, that's which.
But wait, it can get EVEN WORSE. Okay, I'm looking for Sandy Sand. The encyclopedia says that it can be found in Newbie Forest. ...Huh. It's not there. That's weird. I must've overlooked it. ...Nope. What the fuck? Well, here's the thing. It's genuinely not there. It can be in a zone that you haven't unlocked yet. Or in a zone you've unlocked, but it's not in a weather you've unlocked. There is literally no way to even see either of those things. The game will happily tell you to go to Newbie Forest to find it, but it's not actually there yet. And almost every material can be found in like 3-4 maps, so start combing through each weather in each zone for each map. Maybe it'll be in one, maybe not.
Now repeat this a dozen times, because the story unlocked a dozen of these recipe quests on you all at once.
Meruru. Fucking Meruru on the PS3 back in 2011 did the expanding-as-you-go thing and didn't fuck it up this royally. The minimum, the BARE FUCKING MINIMUM, would be to allow players to mark a desired ingredient and it'd be flagged on the map, zone, and weather. They have the technology. They do that when you have a material/monster for a pub request, but you can't just do it whenever you want for when you need to go grab something, or for the recipe inspiration sidequests. But the real solution is to JUST NOT FUCKING HAVE MAPS THAT ARE FUCKING TEN FOOTBALL FIELDS IN SIZE WITH UPWARDS OF A HUNDRED DIFFERENT MATERIALS SCATTERED RANDOMLY ACROSS THEM.
It strikes me as the fundamental problem with the design philosophy in a lot of the Atelier games from the PS3 era on. You're not ACTUALLY supposed to engage with all the mechanics and quests that it throws at you. You're SUPPOSED to just haphazardly run around, do synthesis at random with maybe SOME attention towards doing it well but not really, not care about the unlocks or bonuses or optimizing equipment or character quests or story or endings. You're just supposed to not care about being efficient, effective, and understanding the systems/mechanics and engaging with them. Just do whatever and things will EVENTUALLY happen by chance, and don't worry, it won't be too difficult. Just skip any sidequests or areas that seem too hard. Actually using the game systems is for NG+ and/or the post-game, where the difficulty spikes through the roof and you need to start making completely game-breaking things.
It wouldn't be so bad if the story and pacing wasn't so fuckawful too. Even the older ones weren't this bad. The second boss is followed by a General White-like sequence of two to three line scenes each going "Huh. Maybe we should try looking somewhere else" as you backtrack around about seven different places for no fucking reason.
Since I was trying to explain how insane this interface was to a friend and it was an excuse to finally learn how to take screenshots on a console, here's an illustration of the entire insane process that I went through.
Okay, I need(ed) to gather Sand Bamboo. Simple, easy, should take like 20 seconds.
So let's say I really did find it somewhere in those lists (spoiler, it's not there). This is what it looks like to gather in the game itself.Example 2. First material is common, second is uncommon, third is rare. Uncommon and rare are unlocked by various other mechanics.
We can instead go to the datamined wiki and see that Sand Bamboo in the Flower Bank Ruins is only found during Thunder weather, which is not unlocked yet. If you instead look at the Dusk Forest, Sand Bamboo is available with the Sickle tool in both Sunny and Snowy weather, all of which I do have access to. And I'll note that of the five maps it says I can find it in, only the Dusk Forest and Snowy Corridor are ones where I can actually get it. You need Thunder weather in Flower Bank and Windswept, and I can only access a tiny corner of one zone in Illusion Vale which doesn't have it.
Posts
Sure they can. That's where they keep their singularities.
you do if you want a high damage attack
otherwise you can go for
shock on steiner
dragon crest on freya (you gotta kill a bunch of dragons to get the damage high, but that's the easiest way to get to lvl99 anyway)
frog drop on quina if you wanna go catch all the frogs for the sidequest
literally anything with vivi
Zidane will hit for 9999 at the end of the game either way, it doesn't matter.
If you want to steal, learn Bandit, then hit steal until you fail an attempt, or the enemy you want to steal from doesn't have anything else. Then move on. If you REALLY want to steal, learn Master Thief first, then start bleeding bosses dry.
The demo is also pretty long! WAY longer than I thought it'd be.
I don't think I'd call it a 'soulslike' though, especially with Elden Ring reminding people of From's specific formula. Nioh 2 did a good job at becoming its own thing and carving its own niches, but this is enough Nioh to where if you've played it, you can probably at least get some insight as to whether you'd enjoy this. It DOES seem pretty generous in the difficulty department though. It's got multiple difficulties that you can change literally anytime, and a 'Casual Mode' that you can turn on if you're already playing at the lowest setting that makes it even easier. They don't seem super interested in having players prove their aptitude to at least see the story
I'm stopping short of recommending it as a purchase if you're still on the fence, but it'd make a good 'pick it up when it goes on sale' title.
And speaking of story
I just want to play this charming entry in a classic JRPG series but it seems any of those made before 2005 include some clunky mechanic you have to engage with early on if you want to be at or ahead of the curve 30 hours later and I start to remember why I struggle to get into JRPGs
bear in mind, you only need to do those things if you wanna get HUGE and kill a giant ball of dark matter and a book
if you wanna just play the game you do not need to engage in the clunky farming mechanics
As a kid, FF9 was the first time I thought "Maybe a video game can have too much stuff in it".
of all the times I've beaten that game, I have never ONCE entertained the notion of getting excal2
Easy!
Man that 3d animation looks slow and rough for a turn based game.
I'm a sucker for fantasy war map turn based strategy games.
The 2d character art is pleasant to look at.
Looks like a game which could be a enjoyable diamond in the rough with interesting story and gameplay or a complete slog to play.
Perfectly happy to gauge my personal interest in a game based on artstyle tho. Will be my loss I guess.
oh noo.
So it's real time strategy?
Well don't gotta think about that one.
Speaking of, Valkyria Chronicles' designs were also done by a famous doujin/hentai artist by the name of Raita.
// Switch: SW-5306-0651-6424 //
Which...tbf isn't that different from your typical jRPG.
If Fate has taught me anything, it's that sometimes mana is just viscous.
They are just leaking mana, ok. Mana juice on everything.
While it's easy to poke fun at the ridiculous designs, Urushihara does do some genuinely fantastic work:
Considering what Fate calls a mana transfer that must mean that entire world smells like crusty socks
It's like I said, everyone wears latex, but it's just ordinary clothes material in the setting
Found the first actual boss, and it was decently challenging enough, though I hadn't updated my equipment or items when I could have. Was a little past the point where an upgrade was definitely warranted though. Also finally got a new party member, who I thought would be great because his level 1 skill (ie the one you get to use for free in assist attacks) is the first AoE of that kind, and he's clearly meant to be a back row support tank with taunt skills and various guard bonuses, but I already kind of hate him. Like Frilly McGauntlet, he's totally physical type, but unlike her, can equip basically only two items, so can't just fill in the holes with those, and doesn't have even the crappy magic skill she has. Too fucking many enemies resist physical and/or auras counter physical, and single target guard/support doesn't help much when the real problem are AoEs. So any time there's an enemy that resists physical, all he gets to do is heal or benchwarm.
Letting you straight up duplicate anything you want immediately without having to go through the restock or Chim/Hom bullshit is nice too, but christ, the cost to do so is laughably low even before I've started unlocking the cost reduction skills.
I'm liking the aura mechanic more, though it's certainly just an overt slowdown to keep you from immediately killing things and/or using AoE. It does make the thorns armor thingy a fuck-load better than it originally seemed on the surface since that knocks off at least a turn or two of chipping away at the aura. Every mini-boss seems to have them now, along with maybe 25% or so of regular enemies. Speaking of which, as I feared, updating my equipment instantly moved all the random elite spawns from impossible to trivial. Went from doing around 70 damage an attack to 10. Only the rainy forest dragon was still doing enough damage to be somewhat threatening, but that ended up being a pure DPS check.
Loving what I'm seeing.
// Switch: SW-5306-0651-6424 //
NGL it would be nice if Atlus had a non-SMT/Persona game where they could test more radical gameplay changes.
But the game has a lot of style so I'll probably get it off that.
Personality and characterization is so refreshing. Maybe we'll even see agency!
// Switch: SW-5306-0651-6424 //
sigh
12 years ago
The Raidou games aren't amazing, but I enjoyed them.
FFXIV: Tchel Fay
Nintendo ID: Tortalius
Steam: Tortalius
Stream: twitch.tv/tortalius
Remember as we go through the numbers here that each map is ginormous.
Any given map has 1-4 zones.
Each zone has 2-4 possible weathers.
Each weather per zone has about ~50 gathering points (some, but nowhere near all, are shared across weathers)
Each gathering point has three possible drops. (all identical points in a zone-weather, eg pots or flowers or rocks have the same three drops).
So any given zone with any given weather has somewhere around 40-80 possible unique materials.
If you're looking for a specific item, you need to know the map, the zone, the weather, and the type of gathering point.
Want to guess what is listed in the item encyclopedia when you look up items? Only the map.
If you want to narrow it down further, you have to leave the encyclopedia, go to the map information, select the zone, select the weather, and then scroll through the list of all 60 some odd materials looking for it. For each fucking weather, in each fucking zone, until you find it. They're not arranged in alphabetical order, or near as I can tell, fucking any order whatsoever. Enjoy your unsorted list. That's as detailed as the in-game information gets. Assuming you've finally found the right zone and weather, and don't need to go find a switch to change the weather in the zone itself, you fast travel there, and now it's time to run around and bump up against every type of gathering point until you find the material you're looking for.
But wait, IT GETS WORSE. So you've picked up some rare material from a chest or the shop or a monster/miniboss drop, but the sidequest is for GATHERING it, so that doesn't count. But that's cool. The encyclopedia says it's available in the Newbie Forest map. So it's time to crawl through every fucking weather in every zone looking for it. Okay, found it. Confirmed it's here. Time to go running around.................. and you need a tool that you haven't unlocked yet. Or maybe you do have the tool, but you need to use a weather that you haven't unlocked to get to the part of the map where it's in. So in no way is it available in this map to you. But it might be in another one, because sure, you need a Hammer here, but you can just pick it up off the ground elsewhere. Which will it be? Fuck you, that's which.
But wait, it can get EVEN WORSE. Okay, I'm looking for Sandy Sand. The encyclopedia says that it can be found in Newbie Forest. ...Huh. It's not there. That's weird. I must've overlooked it. ...Nope. What the fuck? Well, here's the thing. It's genuinely not there. It can be in a zone that you haven't unlocked yet. Or in a zone you've unlocked, but it's not in a weather you've unlocked. There is literally no way to even see either of those things. The game will happily tell you to go to Newbie Forest to find it, but it's not actually there yet. And almost every material can be found in like 3-4 maps, so start combing through each weather in each zone for each map. Maybe it'll be in one, maybe not.
Now repeat this a dozen times, because the story unlocked a dozen of these recipe quests on you all at once.
Meruru. Fucking Meruru on the PS3 back in 2011 did the expanding-as-you-go thing and didn't fuck it up this royally. The minimum, the BARE FUCKING MINIMUM, would be to allow players to mark a desired ingredient and it'd be flagged on the map, zone, and weather. They have the technology. They do that when you have a material/monster for a pub request, but you can't just do it whenever you want for when you need to go grab something, or for the recipe inspiration sidequests. But the real solution is to JUST NOT FUCKING HAVE MAPS THAT ARE FUCKING TEN FOOTBALL FIELDS IN SIZE WITH UPWARDS OF A HUNDRED DIFFERENT MATERIALS SCATTERED RANDOMLY ACROSS THEM.
Get some fucking playtesters, Gust.
It wouldn't be so bad if the story and pacing wasn't so fuckawful too. Even the older ones weren't this bad. The second boss is followed by a General White-like sequence of two to three line scenes each going "Huh. Maybe we should try looking somewhere else" as you backtrack around about seven different places for no fucking reason.
Okay, I need(ed) to gather Sand Bamboo. Simple, easy, should take like 20 seconds.
Hit the button for Related which lets me browse straight to the entry for Sand Bamboo.
Oopsie, boopsie, that's where it just gives the maps. Hitting Related here doesn't help at all.
Okay, so it can be found in the Flower Bank Ruins.
But which zone and weather?
And yes, the materials change whether it's sunny or rainy.
But don't worry, you can also browse textually. No idea how this shit is sorted at all.
So let's say I really did find it somewhere in those lists (spoiler, it's not there). This is what it looks like to gather in the game itself. Example 2. First material is common, second is uncommon, third is rare. Uncommon and rare are unlocked by various other mechanics.
We can instead go to the datamined wiki and see that Sand Bamboo in the Flower Bank Ruins is only found during Thunder weather, which is not unlocked yet. If you instead look at the Dusk Forest, Sand Bamboo is available with the Sickle tool in both Sunny and Snowy weather, all of which I do have access to. And I'll note that of the five maps it says I can find it in, only the Dusk Forest and Snowy Corridor are ones where I can actually get it. You need Thunder weather in Flower Bank and Windswept, and I can only access a tiny corner of one zone in Illusion Vale which doesn't have it.