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[Recommend on] long-ass single-player 360 games
Legba
He did.Registered User regular
He did.Registered User regular
So far my Xbox collection has been devoted mostly to short(ish) games with heavy multiplayer.
However, in a couple of month's time I'll be packing my bags and heading for China. From what I understand there's no Xbox Live available in Beijing, so multiplayer games are out. And since I have only a vague idea of what it'll be like buying new 360 games there, it might be best to bring a couple of games I haven't played yet with me.
So here's the rub. I've got about 2,000 points worth of Goozex credit left that I'll need to get rid of before I go. I'm looking for two or more games that
Beyond that, basically I trust your definition of "good".
However, in a couple of month's time I'll be packing my bags and heading for China. From what I understand there's no Xbox Live available in Beijing, so multiplayer games are out. And since I have only a vague idea of what it'll be like buying new 360 games there, it might be best to bring a couple of games I haven't played yet with me.
So here's the rub. I've got about 2,000 points worth of Goozex credit left that I'll need to get rid of before I go. I'm looking for two or more games that
- have a single-player component worth the price of admission
- take a nice long while to finish, and
- are either out now or will be out within the next month (so I can get them on Goozex before I leave)
Beyond that, basically I trust your definition of "good".
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DLC isn't an option unfortunately, since I have only 70 MS points on my account and money is extremely tight before the move. That's why I want to get the games on Goozex if at all possible.
Isn't Fallout 3 coming out with an expansion disc? If that is out before August it might be worth a peek.
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I'd agree with all the other recommendations made.
Fallout 3, is massive and will take a long time to make it through so long as you explore and do side quests. It took me a week or so to do the main quest and a handful of side quests and I barely touched the meat of the game.
Oblivion is another that will proably soak up a hundred hours or so, but it's not as good as FO3.
Lost Odyssey is epic, I put in about 50 hours and only got to disc 2 before I moved onto other things, but it's well worth the admission price, and it should be pretty cheap now too.
GTA4 is okay, but found the missions kinda boring after a while and it's not as fun as the previouos GTA games.
Which reminds me of one, Saints Row 2. This game is much better than GTA4 and probably lasts about the same length of time too.
Where Madness and the Fantasical Come to Play
Diablo-esque hack'n'slash sounds right up my alley. I'm playing the hell out of Too Human at the moment, even with all its flaws, and I'm psyched for Diablo 3. Though I wonder how long it would keep my interest without being able to show off my shiny new gear to other players.
I used to be into JRPGs in a big way - okay, I used to be into Final Fantasy in a big way - so a JRPG-esque game might be a good option.
I need the single-player campaign to be a decent size the first time around, because I very rarely replay games - the notable exception being Mass Effect, which I'll bring with me and which I expect will get a third play-through eventually.
Day-mn. How many discs are there? And the story is good you say? That sounds pretty good.
Are you trying to make him hate you? The 360 port is abysmal.
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You do have a PC for that, right?
If my memory serves me right it's over 4 discs.
The story is good, although it is very much JRPG fare, its significantly better than the last few Final Fantasy's have been. Plus there are dozens of very well written short stories littered throughout the game which fill in the back story of the main protaganist.
Where Madness and the Fantasical Come to Play
Oo
Not what I have read / seen on youtube?
Not out in the UK till the 5th though
I have heard that once you reach disc 4, though, the story just kind of dies. I am only on the end of disc 2 myself, but I was not told good things about disc 4.
That said, the first 2 discs of the game, as that is all that I have played, are probably some of the best, if not the best, storytelling I have ever seen in a game. Probably the first game I could describe as a tear-jerker.
I do, although I've barely touched it for gaming since I got my 360. We'll see how much in the way of hardware upgrades it'll need to play Diablo 3, but unless it flops horribly, that's one of the few games I'd bother going through the effort for. (So many hours spent playing Diablo 2.)
That's a good thing actually, because it means I just about might be able to get a copy on Goozex before I head off. I'll have a look at reviews and hear what people say before I pick it up, but I do like me a good hack'n'slasher.
Hmm. Well, I'm a sucker for a good story. If three out of four discs are good, I'll be willing to put up with a disappointing ending - I didn't froth at the mouth at Assassin's Creed, and I'd like to think that that says something about how tolerant I am. Plus, a 80-100 hour long game (going by Duchess Prozac's playtime) sounds perfect. There's no way I'm not going to know how to go about getting my next game by the end of that, surely.
That's 1,400 Goozex points sorted (assuming I get Lost Odyssey and Sacred 2), which still leaves me with a decent amount of points. Keep recommending!
I would also recommend Star Ocean:TLH. So much stuff to do in that game. Admittedly, I am currently only on the first disc, of 3, clocking in so far at around 18 hours. Basically, to me, this is a next-gen Rogue Galaxy done right. There are pretty large areas to explore on each planet, they can all be revisited (or so it seems so far), pretty interesting story that spans time and space, a pretty in-depth item crafting system, and I heard people talk about a battle tournament of sorts, but I haven't gotten that far yet.
It is pretty cut-scene intensive both in length and frequency, but unlike a lot of other games, they are actually interesting, so I never seemed to mind sitting through them.
There are probably a vast number of elements of the game that I have left out, or have not yet experienced, as early in the game as I am. However, after Lost Odyssey, if you're looking for solid, lengthy games, this would be my second recommendation.
Blue Dragon is also a long rpg if you can stand the melonhead art style (has a demo up on marketplace, one part of the demo is spoiler-ish but can remember which).
Too Human isn't too bad if you are looking for a Diablo-clone (has also a demo).
Oblivion lasts longer than Fallout 3 if you do all quests and all guilds (well for me at least). F3 has a better combat system though but Oblivion can be found for cheap.
GTA is around 10 hours iirc which isn't special when it comes to shooters on the 360.
How prevalent is this? If I buy it in Europe, I won't exactly be able to return it once I get to Beijing, and I'd be pretty pissed off if I spent 80+ hours playing a game only to be stuck with a broken copy and no way of fixing it.
If chances are good I'll end up with a broken disc, that's a real deal breaker for me.
Yeah, this is a pretty great Diablo-like game to sink a lot of time into. There's lots of character customization, and the game world is open ended (I believe 22 square miles). When you do get back to be able to play online, we'll be waiting for you in co-op and Free Play options. :P
Mass Effect is a worth owning, although it can be beaten in like 18-25 hours if you ignore exploring the extra planets (which are all pretty much the same). I got the game two weeks early when K-Mart put it on the shelves, and popped back 22 hours later having beaten it, and that was with all the side-quests I could find, too.
Fallout 3 and Oblivion are good time sinks and fun to play, although if you haven't played those before and have a PC capable of running them, getting them on the PC is better due to the incredible amount of user created content that fixes and improves and adds to the game. I'm just mentioning that in case you wanted to save some money.
Like Bartholamue said, Tales of Vesperia is a pretty long JRPG. I beat it at 65 hours. It's a fun game worth playing twice, too. As you play, you earn grade points which can be spent at the start of a new game to unlock bonuses or carry over items and skills.
Blue Dragon's story and characters are incredibly simplistic, if that's not your thing. Some people like that classic kind of tale, chasing the bad guy all the way to the end. There's little to no character development, however, so that's something you may want to know.
As far as Star Ocean: The Last Hope? The gameplay is fun, no doubt, but the story? The characters? Beyond horrible. I'm going to clock you in the face, Dourin! :P
Tales of Vesperia is great, though.
Fun fact: Star Ocean:TLH and Tales of Vesperia aren't released here in europe, end of june is release.
Oh man, did you beat it yet? There are a ton of what the fuck plot hole moments right in the end (well, all throughout the game, really, but a ton happen right in a row at the finish). It's also a really short JRPG, too. It can be beaten in 20-30 hours, so that might not be what he's looking for.
Eh, like I said, SO:TLH reminds me of Rogue Galaxy for the PS2, which I absolutely loved. That said, the story seems decent enough, and if he's ever sat through a traditional jrpg, the characters will be no surprise to him. The combat, though, is so much fun, there seem to be tons of side quests to do, as well as other things to keep you busy when you're not progressing through the story, and it has a decent enough story to keep you interested.
Honestly, though, how can you complain about the characters in SO:TLH, but yet mention nothing of the characters in Vesperia, and consider the characters in SO to be worse than those in Blue Dragon? :P
Edit:
Oh, ouch, really? Damn, so much awesome coming to you guys in June. God, remind me never to move to Europe.
Just seconding/thirding Lost Odyssey. Mistwalker studios is a good chunk of the team that made the first 10 final fantasies (such as sakaguchi and uematsu), so it's some pretty good jrpg stuff. Another game by mistwalker is Blue dragon, which is now a bargain bin title. The plot's pretty simple and "kiddy" but it's still fun and charming, and will probably last you a good 40-50 hours at least. Has a great job system that reminds me of FFV.
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I actually haven't even opened the shrink wrap yet. Busy, busy.
Well, I wasn't directly comparing the titles I talked about with each other. Now that I think about it, though, I probably do think the characters in Last Hope are worse than the ones in Blue Dragon. In Last Hope, they're pretty much all extremely annoying and whiny. The rest are just bland. In Blue Dragon, I don't recall wanting to strangle them as much or yelling at my PC for the cast to shut the fuck up, I just remember they had little to no character development. Really, all you did in the game was chase the bad guy for 60 hours and win.
Vesperia's characters I really enjoyed, specifically Yuri Lowell. I consider him to be one of the better JRPG protagonists out there. He's so bad ass. They do have kid characters in the game, two specifically (one is like 16, the other 12 or so), and neither of them annoyed me. In fact, their interactions with each other were quite hilarious. The combat, as I already said, is fast and fun. It's all real-time and you learn and level up artes by using them.
Infinite Undiscovery's characters, though? They were probably the worst characters I've ever had the misfortune of seeing on screen, specifically the twins. Ugh.
As far as story for Star Ocean: The Last Hope? It was completely unoriginal almost the entire way through. Everything was a cliche. Everything. It wasn't terrible like Infinite Undiscovery, it was just bland.
Oh, and Rogue Galaxy? Awesome game until the very end where it went Dragonball Z and ridden with cliches. It started off really interesting, finding a treasure planet, and then sunk to everything we've seen before.
I'll keep an eye on the bargain binds first and foremost and see what happens.
End of June releases aren't a problem, by the way. I'm heading off in early August, so that leaves a good month for people to get sick and tired of the games and stick them up on Goozex. ;-)
Really, though, in SO's defense, haven't the stories for jrpg's routinely become cliched? I mean, there seems to be this very specific formula to which they all must strictly adhere, and they seem to have run out of new ways to tell the same story. This is why gameplay in jrpg's has become so important to me lately. Gameplay, and music, really. Which, I have to say, as awesome as Vesperia seems, it is most definitely severely lacking in musical variety. I was so glad to hear my girlfriend had beat the game, as it meant I would not have to listen to that damn circus theme again for a long while.
I didn't come across anything game breaking when I played it. If you can find it for cheap, it's worth it. It's turn based with random battles, but they don't shove a ridiculous amount of them in your face like other games. You could go through an entire large area with only two or three random battles. The memories you can unlock are incredibly well done and actually made me cry a few times. Good stuff. The game does have twin children that join your party, naturally (dammit Japan), but I didn't find them to be too annoying.
The only other complaint I have is the direction the story took toward the end of the game. I wish Japanese developers would stick with the style and flow of the mystery and plot all the way through with their JRPGs. They do that cliche switch-a-roo with the plot seemingly so often. It's not too bad, though, much more bearable than Rogue Galaxy, and the characters are generally pretty fun and interesting.
Edit: I know I've been pointing out a lot of flaws, but I just want to give the most informed opinion I can. Some people may not like certain things, after all. :P
Absolutely, and I appreciate it. I probably will pick it up, I'm just leery of being stuck with a broken 4th disc. It sounds like that's a fairly common problem with the European version. Maybe I can avoid it by waiting until I get myself sorted out in Beijing and find it there, but then, that kind of defeats the purpose of finding games to bring with me.
Of course, I could buy it here, then if the fourth disc is broken, buy it again in China. Heh.
To summarize what's been suggested:
Mass Effect
Fallout 3
GTA4
Halo 3
Oblivion
Halo Wars
This first group are games that I've already played (the first four) or aren't really interested in.
The second group (featuring a conspicuous amount of JRPGs) are games that sound interesting while matching the criteria of playtime running many moons.
Lost Odyssey
Sacred 2
Star Ocean: The Last Hope
Saints Row 2
Tales of Vesperia
Blue Dragon
I've listed them in order of interest based on what's been suggested so far and what I've read up on. However, three of those (Sacred 2, Star Ocean and Tales of Vesperia) aren't actually out in Europe yet, so there's no guarantee that I'll be able to pick them up, and I'll have plenty of Goozex points left over if I only get the other ones.
TL;DR: I'm still open for suggestions. Perhaps a few non-JRPGs. Given that I'll grab at least two, possibly three of these long-ass games already, I'll lower the bar and not even ask for a 40+ hour game. I'm looking at the 20+ hour mark. It's more important that it's fun to play and I won't feel like I missed out because I can't play it multi-player.
I loved Star Ocean as well, but I don't think I could recommend it over ToV.
Tales of Vesperia has been the only console JRPG to hold my interest in a long time. I've got 95 hours into it and I'm just about to enter the final dungeon (I think, anyway). All of the characters are interesting, though some people seem to have a problem with Judith and Repede though. Repede's a dog, I don't really see how they could make him all that interesting, unless he could talk (which he can't). Judith has a very blunt, dry personality. If you like British humour, you'll find Judith hilarious. I know I do.
ToV has great character development. It's some of the best that I've seen in a JRPG. Every character is flawed in a very human way and it does affect the story. I've played too many RPGs where they forget this key aspect of character development and it really makes the characters unbelieveable. This is not the case in ToV. I'd say the character development is easily the best part of the game. Their interactions with one another are always interesting and mostly very humourous!
The combat system is fun and hasn't quite gotten old at the 95 hour mark. The combo system can get really intense and there's an achievement for getting a 100 hit combo. I've heard of people getting 500+ hits, which is insane. The combat can be really flashy and there's a lot of room for creative combos once you get the proper skills. There's tons of customization to be had.
I think ToV is the 2nd best RPG on 360, right behind Mass Effect.
Personally, I wouldn't suggest LO, I got bored of it at the third disc. It doesn't help that half the cast are completely forgettable and the cliche children party members are annoying as fuck. The game starts off great and hooked me, I won't deny it. I was rather enthralled by the story through the 2nd disc, then I just became apathetic.
You get the three most interesting characters near the beginning. Then you get the ol' bait and switch and the rest of the characters suck. The combat can be pretty challenging at times. Boss fights are tough. Random encounters are pretty meh. This is your standard turn based affair.
Get Tales of Vesperia, you won't regret it. It's well worth the price of admission. It's easily in my top 5 games of this gen.
And you could probably get quite a lot of play time from the various brawlers on the system seeing as how most if not all of them have multiple difficulty levels: Devil May Cry 4, The Dishwasher: Undead Samurai (XBLA game) & Ninja Gaiden 2.
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