Oh, I know some people might really hate the weeabooness of it all, but it is a once in a lifetime JRPG experience. It is a mindblowing gameplay experience, and it has shockingly enough the best plot of any Nomura game. Possibly the best character design as well.
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RentI'm always rightFuckin' deal with itRegistered Userregular
XoB, we both agree that FFVI is the best FF of all time, OF ALL TIME! Why you gotta do a thing
(Maybe it's because you're one of those silly goosen who hate VC. Hmmmmm)
Speaking about that, I'm taking screenshots of FF VI Advance right now for my LP. Was going to put it up tonight but I have a snow in situation tomorrow, so I'm better off doing the playing tonight and the posting and hosting tomorrow.
FF VI DS would forever make the DS the undisputed king of JRPG. FF IV DS was a good start. TWEWY is amazing. EO 1+2 were fantastic, 3 is going to follow suit. The system is basically getting SMT 4 next month, also getting a space ship JPRG. DQ V is one of the best games ever made. VI and IX are coming soon. It has 5 solid pokemon games and is getting at least 2 more. This is leaving out a gigantic pile of better than average and average JRPGs that are too numerous to count.
So yeah, FF VI DS and maybe a sprite based Fire Emblem game is all it needs to beat out the GBA and PS2 and PSX and SNES. Of course a DS lite right now has access to the GBA making it the supreme leader.
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RentI'm always rightFuckin' deal with itRegistered Userregular
The game, the drive to accomplish anything, the level designs, the controls, the puzzle design (it boils down to "guess which item class we want you to use" REALLY quickly), the AI
The one thing I disliked a great deal was evolving the pins.
Whoever decided that the only way to collect specific pin points is by not playing the game deserves to be shot.
Yeah...you can adjust your DS's clock manually, you know that right
And also I think every SDPP evolution pin only needs like one night's sleep worth of SDPP points (at most, two) to have enough SDPP points for the evolution
That doesn't excuse the obtuse design. I remember SDPP being more frivolous than MPP. For MPP I could just link up and score massive points. It also had the added function of meeting real people and socialize. SDPP, not so much.
I think TWEWY might be one of my favorite games of all time.
I play it on and off, mainly because (gasp!) it's fun. Honest fun.
It's an RPG with battles that are ACTIVELY ENJOYABLE.
I do like RPGs, but we are all familiar with the grind, and the game just... doesn't grind.
You can switch it up over and over. I'm still playing it, belatedly working on pin mastery/final secret reports.
It makes up for Square's shitty spinoffs, for the most part, and I wish their games were consistently that good.
You hear that, Square? Release fewer games, and make them more awesome.
Like the good days.
Harvest Moon (if you're into that sort of thing)
Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story
Final Fantasy Tactics A2 or whatever it was called
lastly, and most importantly: Mystery Dungeon: Shiren The Wanderer
I picked up Shiren for like five or ten bucks and it's probably the DS purchase that I'm most happy with, and have gotten the most out of. It's really great. Really really great, even.
I'm looking forward to Sonic Classic Collection coming out in March. The 4 Genesis Sonic games on 1 cart, and I never owned a Genesis so would be cool to have those games.
Also looking forward to Infinite Space but I'm going to wait for a lot of reviews before I check it out.
So yeah, FF VI DS and maybe a sprite based Fire Emblem game is all it needs to beat out the GBA and PS2 and PSX and SNES. Of course a DS lite right now has access to the GBA making it the supreme leader.
Beat out the PS2 for JRPGs? Now you're just talking silly. PS2 has 5 awesome SMT games (and some decent ones in addition), BoF: DQ, FFX, DQ8 and that's just counting the games worthy of being in a top 10 best JRPGs of all time list. Plus it has the PS1's considerable back catalog. The DS has TWEWY, Devil Survivor, a couple of good dungeon hacks, a bunch of ports & remakes of varying quality, and a whole lot of mediocrity. Admittedly, this year's lineup looks awesome but even with all the stuff coming out this year, it's going to be a long time before the DS reaches the PS2's level.
Clearly you and I have different tastes in what makes a good RPG. Out of the hundred or so RPGS on the PS2 I like maybe five of them, most of them are not on your list.
The DS is already at the PS2's level. It's not quite beating the PSX or SNES yet, despite having a ton of the SNES games available. With the GBA's back catalog I'd say it is the best as the GBA has the remaining SNES games, the two Golden Sun games, and all three mother games, Mother 3 being quite possibly the single greatest JRPG ever released.
I'm so glad that Lunker remembered to mention Retro Game Challenge. If you love the games of the 8-bit era, you will love this game to death. You get a couple of quality shmups, three platform games, a racing game (I'm not counting the palette swapped version of Rally King as a separate game), and an RPG which plays like a mix of Dragon Quest (first-person battles, very similar world map) and SMT (making pacts with enemies). All of them are excellent recreations of various old school classics.
You get challenges to do which unlock each game. Once you clear each challenge, you can then play each game to your heart's content in free play mode. It sounds annoying but it really isn't, and there are shortcuts you can take to get around the few really annoying challenges, which are given to you in gaming magazines that you can actually check on the bottom screen while playing.
It's just so much fun, and the arcade-y, pick up and play nature of most of the games makes it perfect for portables.
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RentI'm always rightFuckin' deal with itRegistered Userregular
Clearly you and I have different tastes in what makes a good RPG. Out of the hundred or so RPGS on the PS2 I like maybe five of them, most of them are not on your list.
The DS is already at the PS2's level. It's not quite beating the PSX or SNES yet, despite having a ton of the SNES games available. With the GBA's back catalog I'd say it is the best as the GBA has the remaining SNES games, the two Golden Sun games, and all three mother games, Mother 3 being quite possibly the single greatest JRPG ever released.
I liked Mother 3 when it was doing the individual character chapters but I thought it kind of lost steam once you got your full party. Besides, if you're going to start bring up imports, there are tons of PS2 games that could be mentioned like Summon Night 3 (quite possibly the best Strategy/RPG of all time).
And GBA? The GBA's RPG selection (in the US at least) was pathetic. There were some good portable versions of some excellent older home console games, but I can't think of a single really good exclusive GBA RPG, though there were some good Action/Adventure games on it like Minish Cap & some Castlevanias.
Back on topic: Elite Beat Agents, Retro Game Challenge, the Castlevanias (Ecclesia is the best), The World Ends with You, and Etrian Odyssey are the DS games I've had the most fun with so I highly recommend all of them.
If you want a story-based game, the best there is is Hotel Dusk. It's the best-written game on the system... aside from one GRIEVOUS moment where the writing and the game design intersect in a conspiracy to ruin the game for you. That said, it's not a moment like, say, in Indigo Prophecy/Fahrenheit where the story went completely bananas.
If you want a story-based game that isn't going to make a huge amount of sense but is a weird and interesting ride, you can get Flower, Sun and Rain. It's got a flavour all its own, but its weak technology and its focus on intentionally frustrating the player are certainly things that might not make it enjoyable.
If you want to a game that, in a manner that some may find like the original Dragon Quest in Japanese, encourages you to read every line of dialogue aloud, you should get Dragon Quest IV Chapters of the Chosen is the game to get.
If you want a story-based game, the best there is is Hotel Dusk. It's the best-written game on the system... aside from one GRIEVOUS moment where the writing and the game design intersect in a conspiracy to ruin the game for you. That said, it's not a moment like, say, in Indigo Prophecy/Fahrenheit where the story went completely bananas.
I tried to play that early and had the opposite experience, at least with the beginning of the game. It felt like I was just running around doing odd-jobs for unlikeable characters - everyone from the protagonist to the hotel manager to the weird guests seemed like losers with no redeeming qualities. The quirky humor-laced story of the Phoenix Wright series did a lot more to pull me in than any of the characters in Hotel Dusk.
Is it not 'for' me, or does the game just have a slow start? There has to be more to the story than wandering around a grey hotel full of scowling robots trying to remember where you put suitcase keys, but I just couldn't push through another hour to try to find it.
Yeah, not a fan of Superstar Saga - too many tutorials, forced humor, and I'm generally not a fan of controlling two things at once (though I make an exception for TWEWY since the game is so good).
Oh and I almost forgot. Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker is an awesome DS game and much better than any of the Pokemon games for all of your monster raising needs if only for the fact that the battles aren't excruciatingly slow. Seriously, would it kill them to offer an instant text & animation feature in Pokemon?
You can turn off battle animations in Pokemon which speeds them up somewhat. But yeah, I do agree that Diamond and Pearl are excruciatingly slow (R/S/E before it and Platinum/HGSS much less so).
Final Fantasy Tactics Advanced 2: story is absolutely atrocious, but it's still one of the best strategy RPGs out there. The hunt to unlock more classes will haunt your dreams. There are others on the system, but none touch the amount of polish and addictiveness of FFTA2.
Planet Puzzle League: Same gameplay as Tetris Attack or Pokemon Puzzle League, if you've played either, but in a much more attractive package, online play (there's still people playing, last I checked), and great music.
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RentI'm always rightFuckin' deal with itRegistered Userregular
Also known as "the two worst RPGs of all time, ever"
Oh no you did not just diss Golden Sun.
Oh yes I did :P
Sorry, I'm not a fan of lame Pokemon ripoffs with a battle system that would've been severely outdated ten years ago
(Oh sorry, you targeted something that was dead. So your character is just not gonna attack and get its shit fucked up by the monsters!)
Also, any game that has the "go past a certain point and you lose access to content" is a terrible game
Also also, "puzzles" consist of "Do I have the right freezey/flamey/leafy Mon?" Woohoo so much fun! Not
The "story", such as it is, is the most predictable RPG tropes ever just thrown in a stew
Finally, that final last ultimate boss of the second game is unkillable, I had all the Djinni in the game and every single summon including the super-ultimate-awesome last summon and still got my shit fucked up repeatedly
I'll throw in another recommendation for Shiren, Dragon Quest Monsters Joker, and Etrian Odyssey. My unique (I think...) contribution is Contra 4. If you've never liked a Contra game before, this won't change your mind, but if Contra 3 was one of your top 10 SNES games, you shan't be disappointed.
I'll toss in a recommendation for the first Professor Layton game. I probably put close to 20 hours into it altogether. You can probably find a used copy for like, $10-15. That brings you to less than 1 dollar an hour.
All the stuff you listed are things I liked. *shrug*
Comparing it to Pokemon shows how little you know of the game's mechanics. Your difficulty with beating the last boss is a testimony of that. The last boss is hard, but far from unbeatable. The only attack that really fucks your shit up is the attack that turns your djinns yellow, but fortunately you should still have Granite, Flash or Shade available to allow you to regroup.
It seems to me that you didn't think through customizing classes by shuffling the djinns. It is one of the key systems, I dare say the most important, and one that lowers the difficulty spike substantially. You don't just give djinns to the appropriate element adept, since that'd make their stats inferior. You give them djinns of the opposite element.
A Master for example, as a venus adept, uses up 5 jupiter and 4 mars. This setup is perfect for a Catastrophe summoner which should be your main summon to spam on the last boss, not Iris. Give Ivan/Sheba 5 mercury 4 venus or Mia/Piers 5 jupiter 4 venus and they become the best healers of the game. Heal every turn and it'll be sufficiently difficult to lose.
It's an easy to use and surprisingly deep system and one that you can reap the benefits if you had bothered to experiment.
Amusingly, the same could be said about Final Fantasy 4. Missable content, predictable plot, unrelenting difficulty spike.
Why is it then that FF4 is held to a high standard and Golden Sun is not?
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RentI'm always rightFuckin' deal with itRegistered Userregular
Amusingly, the same could be said about Final Fantasy 4. Missable content, predictable plot, unrelenting difficulty spike.
Why is it then that FF4 is held to a high standard and Golden Sun is not?
Every Final Fantasy has missable content. I hate it there too. I've become reluctantly used to it at this point, and I make a special exception for FF, because, well, it's fucking Final Fantasy, and of the 13 games in the series, only one of the...8 or so games I've played wasn't worth my time
Also, FFIV came out in like the early 90s, and it doesn't have that stupid "attack a monster who's dead? WHOOPS skip your turn!" shit. It got me killed more than once, and, well, that shit wasn't my fault, it was fucking the game's stupid-ass mechanics
In addition, FFIV was a product of its time: for its time, it brought a whole lot new to the table. I judge it as an early-90s game, since, well, that's what it was. I just GS as a early 00s game(s), because, well, that's what it is- and there's no excuse of the shit it pulls
I literally cannot express in words how much I hate the game mechanics of GS. It literally ruined the game for me, how stupidly old-school RPG the mechanics were. There was no excuse for that shit. None
Also, I had no problems with difficulty in FFIV. I don't really know what people are talking about when they mention it
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BugBoyboy.EXE has stopped functioning.only bugs remainRegistered Userregular
You can turn off battle animations in Pokemon which speeds them up somewhat. But yeah, I do agree that Diamond and Pearl are excruciatingly slow (R/S/E before it and Platinum/HGSS much less so).
Yes, but there's a reason for the slowdown. The graphics are far better, so keeping the high speed would mess things up. Or so I've heard.
Posts
Oh, I know some people might really hate the weeabooness of it all, but it is a once in a lifetime JRPG experience. It is a mindblowing gameplay experience, and it has shockingly enough the best plot of any Nomura game. Possibly the best character design as well.
XoB, we both agree that FFVI is the best FF of all time, OF ALL TIME! Why you gotta do a thing
(Maybe it's because you're one of those silly goosen who hate VC. Hmmmmm)
Speaking about that, I'm taking screenshots of FF VI Advance right now for my LP. Was going to put it up tonight but I have a snow in situation tomorrow, so I'm better off doing the playing tonight and the posting and hosting tomorrow.
FF VI DS would forever make the DS the undisputed king of JRPG. FF IV DS was a good start. TWEWY is amazing. EO 1+2 were fantastic, 3 is going to follow suit. The system is basically getting SMT 4 next month, also getting a space ship JPRG. DQ V is one of the best games ever made. VI and IX are coming soon. It has 5 solid pokemon games and is getting at least 2 more. This is leaving out a gigantic pile of better than average and average JRPGs that are too numerous to count.
So yeah, FF VI DS and maybe a sprite based Fire Emblem game is all it needs to beat out the GBA and PS2 and PSX and SNES. Of course a DS lite right now has access to the GBA making it the supreme leader.
The game, the drive to accomplish anything, the level designs, the controls, the puzzle design (it boils down to "guess which item class we want you to use" REALLY quickly), the AI
Whoever decided that the only way to collect specific pin points is by not playing the game deserves to be shot.
Yeah...you can adjust your DS's clock manually, you know that right
And also I think every SDPP evolution pin only needs like one night's sleep worth of SDPP points (at most, two) to have enough SDPP points for the evolution
I would say it's creative and fun, but well short of fantastic.
Repetitive gameplay aside, the lame dialogue bugged the shit out of me.
I play it on and off, mainly because (gasp!) it's fun. Honest fun.
It's an RPG with battles that are ACTIVELY ENJOYABLE.
I do like RPGs, but we are all familiar with the grind, and the game just... doesn't grind.
You can switch it up over and over. I'm still playing it, belatedly working on pin mastery/final secret reports.
It makes up for Square's shitty spinoffs, for the most part, and I wish their games were consistently that good.
You hear that, Square? Release fewer games, and make them more awesome.
Like the good days.
If you don't like KH, though, don't because it's definately a game aimed at fans.
Both are pretty cheap now too.
Pokemon White: 3353-4309-8670
(PM me if you add please)
Mario & Luigi: Bowser's Inside Story
Final Fantasy Tactics A2 or whatever it was called
lastly, and most importantly: Mystery Dungeon: Shiren The Wanderer
I picked up Shiren for like five or ten bucks and it's probably the DS purchase that I'm most happy with, and have gotten the most out of. It's really great. Really really great, even.
Also looking forward to Infinite Space but I'm going to wait for a lot of reviews before I check it out.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SYY3ocPMx9w
Beat out the PS2 for JRPGs? Now you're just talking silly. PS2 has 5 awesome SMT games (and some decent ones in addition), BoF: DQ, FFX, DQ8 and that's just counting the games worthy of being in a top 10 best JRPGs of all time list. Plus it has the PS1's considerable back catalog. The DS has TWEWY, Devil Survivor, a couple of good dungeon hacks, a bunch of ports & remakes of varying quality, and a whole lot of mediocrity. Admittedly, this year's lineup looks awesome but even with all the stuff coming out this year, it's going to be a long time before the DS reaches the PS2's level.
Zeboyd Games Development Blog
Steam ID : rwb36, Twitter : Werezompire, Facebook : Zeboyd Games
The DS is already at the PS2's level. It's not quite beating the PSX or SNES yet, despite having a ton of the SNES games available. With the GBA's back catalog I'd say it is the best as the GBA has the remaining SNES games, the two Golden Sun games, and all three mother games, Mother 3 being quite possibly the single greatest JRPG ever released.
You get challenges to do which unlock each game. Once you clear each challenge, you can then play each game to your heart's content in free play mode. It sounds annoying but it really isn't, and there are shortcuts you can take to get around the few really annoying challenges, which are given to you in gaming magazines that you can actually check on the bottom screen while playing.
It's just so much fun, and the arcade-y, pick up and play nature of most of the games makes it perfect for portables.
Also known as "the two worst RPGs of all time, ever"
Good show! (It's cheap, too. I got my copy of Henry Hatsworth for only $20)
I liked Mother 3 when it was doing the individual character chapters but I thought it kind of lost steam once you got your full party. Besides, if you're going to start bring up imports, there are tons of PS2 games that could be mentioned like Summon Night 3 (quite possibly the best Strategy/RPG of all time).
And GBA? The GBA's RPG selection (in the US at least) was pathetic. There were some good portable versions of some excellent older home console games, but I can't think of a single really good exclusive GBA RPG, though there were some good Action/Adventure games on it like Minish Cap & some Castlevanias.
Back on topic: Elite Beat Agents, Retro Game Challenge, the Castlevanias (Ecclesia is the best), The World Ends with You, and Etrian Odyssey are the DS games I've had the most fun with so I highly recommend all of them.
Zeboyd Games Development Blog
Steam ID : rwb36, Twitter : Werezompire, Facebook : Zeboyd Games
If you want a story-based game that isn't going to make a huge amount of sense but is a weird and interesting ride, you can get Flower, Sun and Rain. It's got a flavour all its own, but its weak technology and its focus on intentionally frustrating the player are certainly things that might not make it enjoyable.
If you want to a game that, in a manner that some may find like the original Dragon Quest in Japanese, encourages you to read every line of dialogue aloud, you should get Dragon Quest IV Chapters of the Chosen is the game to get.
Superstar Saga
I tried to play that early and had the opposite experience, at least with the beginning of the game. It felt like I was just running around doing odd-jobs for unlikeable characters - everyone from the protagonist to the hotel manager to the weird guests seemed like losers with no redeeming qualities. The quirky humor-laced story of the Phoenix Wright series did a lot more to pull me in than any of the characters in Hotel Dusk.
Is it not 'for' me, or does the game just have a slow start? There has to be more to the story than wandering around a grey hotel full of scowling robots trying to remember where you put suitcase keys, but I just couldn't push through another hour to try to find it.
He doesn't like Mario games, especially not good ones.
Oh and I almost forgot. Dragon Quest Monsters: Joker is an awesome DS game and much better than any of the Pokemon games for all of your monster raising needs if only for the fact that the battles aren't excruciatingly slow. Seriously, would it kill them to offer an instant text & animation feature in Pokemon?
Zeboyd Games Development Blog
Steam ID : rwb36, Twitter : Werezompire, Facebook : Zeboyd Games
Final Fantasy Tactics Advanced 2: story is absolutely atrocious, but it's still one of the best strategy RPGs out there. The hunt to unlock more classes will haunt your dreams. There are others on the system, but none touch the amount of polish and addictiveness of FFTA2.
Planet Puzzle League: Same gameplay as Tetris Attack or Pokemon Puzzle League, if you've played either, but in a much more attractive package, online play (there's still people playing, last I checked), and great music.
Oh yes I did :P
Sorry, I'm not a fan of lame Pokemon ripoffs with a battle system that would've been severely outdated ten years ago
(Oh sorry, you targeted something that was dead. So your character is just not gonna attack and get its shit fucked up by the monsters!)
Also, any game that has the "go past a certain point and you lose access to content" is a terrible game
Also also, "puzzles" consist of "Do I have the right freezey/flamey/leafy Mon?" Woohoo so much fun! Not
The "story", such as it is, is the most predictable RPG tropes ever just thrown in a stew
Finally, that final last ultimate boss of the second game is unkillable, I had all the Djinni in the game and every single summon including the super-ultimate-awesome last summon and still got my shit fucked up repeatedly
Eff that game
- Henry Hatsworth in the Puzzling Adventure
- Planet Puzzle League
- Might and Magic Clash of Heroes
Comparing it to Pokemon shows how little you know of the game's mechanics. Your difficulty with beating the last boss is a testimony of that. The last boss is hard, but far from unbeatable. The only attack that really fucks your shit up is the attack that turns your djinns yellow, but fortunately you should still have Granite, Flash or Shade available to allow you to regroup.
It seems to me that you didn't think through customizing classes by shuffling the djinns. It is one of the key systems, I dare say the most important, and one that lowers the difficulty spike substantially. You don't just give djinns to the appropriate element adept, since that'd make their stats inferior. You give them djinns of the opposite element.
A Master for example, as a venus adept, uses up 5 jupiter and 4 mars. This setup is perfect for a Catastrophe summoner which should be your main summon to spam on the last boss, not Iris. Give Ivan/Sheba 5 mercury 4 venus or Mia/Piers 5 jupiter 4 venus and they become the best healers of the game. Heal every turn and it'll be sufficiently difficult to lose.
It's an easy to use and surprisingly deep system and one that you can reap the benefits if you had bothered to experiment.
Amusingly, the same could be said about Final Fantasy 4. Missable content, predictable plot, unrelenting difficulty spike.
Why is it then that FF4 is held to a high standard and Golden Sun is not?
Every Final Fantasy has missable content. I hate it there too. I've become reluctantly used to it at this point, and I make a special exception for FF, because, well, it's fucking Final Fantasy, and of the 13 games in the series, only one of the...8 or so games I've played wasn't worth my time
Also, FFIV came out in like the early 90s, and it doesn't have that stupid "attack a monster who's dead? WHOOPS skip your turn!" shit. It got me killed more than once, and, well, that shit wasn't my fault, it was fucking the game's stupid-ass mechanics
In addition, FFIV was a product of its time: for its time, it brought a whole lot new to the table. I judge it as an early-90s game, since, well, that's what it was. I just GS as a early 00s game(s), because, well, that's what it is- and there's no excuse of the shit it pulls
I literally cannot express in words how much I hate the game mechanics of GS. It literally ruined the game for me, how stupidly old-school RPG the mechanics were. There was no excuse for that shit. None
Also, I had no problems with difficulty in FFIV. I don't really know what people are talking about when they mention it
Because Golden Sun came out 10 years later.
Zeboyd Games Development Blog
Steam ID : rwb36, Twitter : Werezompire, Facebook : Zeboyd Games