Anyone here tried the Sword Arts Online games? Trying out Fatal Bullet since it involves gunplay and lets you have your character and it's alright so far.
As someone who has played every SAO game, mostly because they all try something weird and janky and that's entirely my jam, Fatal Bullet is probably the best they've ever done.
Gameplay can be pretty fun, the story isn't too dumb, there is a minimum of sword Jesus and there are some pretty cool set pieces.
Hollow Realization is second in line. The translation is pretty rough and the loop itself is kind of awkward. On the other hand it just has layers and layers of super obtuse and convoluted systems that make it really interesting to play it you're the type who likes to poke at systems that feel like they were designed via dartboard and way too much enthusiasm.
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turtleantGunpla Dadis the best.Registered Userregular
I love Persona but I generally hate when the lead character’s death is game over.
It’s dumb
It makes sense in SMT, where demons are only held in check by the protagonist's will who they otherwise don't give a damn about, but it's very silly in Persona(and only in 3 onward).
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DemonStaceyTTODewback's DaughterIn love with the TaySwayRegistered Userregular
SMT5's more limited save system is definitely hard to get used to after the SMT4 games, where you could both save anywhere and respawn at the spot you died.
Yea with the ability to port back with a button press it really feels like the perfect balance of making exploring out feel dangerous but without being frustrating.
My biggest personal issue is that since every game for the past decade autosaves constantly. So It's very hard to retrain my brain to save every single time I see a save point.
The amount of times I have stopped at a save point, healed up, went in to look at demon set-ups and got distracted for way too long and then leave without saving only to die 3min later is... frankly far too many haha.
DemonStacey on
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Andy JoeWe claim the land for the highlord!The AdirondacksRegistered Userregular
SMT5's more limited save system is definitely hard to get used to after the SMT4 games, where you could both save anywhere and respawn at the spot you died.
Yea with the ability to port back with a button press it really feels like the perfect balance of making exploring out feel dangerous but without being frustrating.
My biggest personal issue is that since every game for the past decade autosaves constantly. So It's very hard to retrain my brain to save every single time I see a save point.
The amount of times I have stopped at a save point, healed up, went in to look at demon set-ups and got distracted for way too long and then leave without saving only to die 3min later is... frankly far too many haha.
I've never trusted auto saves. Being paranoid about manually saving whenever you can pays off when you go back to a game without auto-saves like this!
I just started playing Tales of Berseria and what the fuck is this combo system
It's a bit more complicated and cumbersome than it needs to be (Arise refined it a lot), but if you play as Velvet you can basically just button mash as her Soul Break is basically "rip and tear" and wrecks things and gives you a weakness hitting attack.
Other characters you have to plan out a little better (and can edit their combos any time on the pause screen) or switch characters if you want to hit weaknesses.
You get those magic rocks that give you more combat options as you play the game (I think a lot of them come from killing the hunt monsters).
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DemonStaceyTTODewback's DaughterIn love with the TaySwayRegistered Userregular
SMT5's more limited save system is definitely hard to get used to after the SMT4 games, where you could both save anywhere and respawn at the spot you died.
Yea with the ability to port back with a button press it really feels like the perfect balance of making exploring out feel dangerous but without being frustrating.
My biggest personal issue is that since every game for the past decade autosaves constantly. So It's very hard to retrain my brain to save every single time I see a save point.
The amount of times I have stopped at a save point, healed up, went in to look at demon set-ups and got distracted for way too long and then leave without saving only to die 3min later is... frankly far too many haha.
I've never trusted auto saves. Being paranoid about manually saving whenever you can pays off when you go back to a game without auto-saves like this!
Yea part of it is definitely just how much stuff you do at the save point. So I tell myself "ok lemme get all this stuff sorted before I save" and then do everything but save haha. So I am trying to slowly train myself to save first, and then if I remember save a second time after I finish buying/selling/fusing.
I know they're not exactly the same, but I can only handle so much anime nonsense so I'm thinking of getting either Tales of Arise or Scarlet Nexus to play.
Thoughts?
No access to gamepass btw, since it seems Scarlet is on that.
I just started playing Tales of Berseria and what the fuck is this combo system
i've been playing through with a friend and my advice is just pick an element for each face button and stick moves on it in ascending order of cost, that's flowed pretty naturally for velvet at least
until you get ~16 moves this will continue to feel like nonsense. good luck!
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DemonStaceyTTODewback's DaughterIn love with the TaySwayRegistered Userregular
I know they're not exactly the same, but I can only handle so much anime nonsense so I'm thinking of getting either Tales of Arise or Scarlet Nexus to play.
Thoughts?
No access to gamepass btw, since it seems Scarlet is on that.
Any preferences on combat or other mechanics or is anime levels the main consideration?
Lucky crit or enemy spamming Mudo/Hama bullshit yeah
One of the best changes they made was making the Mudo/Hama insta death on work on weaknesses.
No more fear of every random mob with Light/Dark skills!
I'm fascinated by all these new crazy skills, like healing + HP buffing, phys + status, element + phys, just don't know if they're very practical.
Some of them definitely are!
Like charge for healing + overheal? Fantastic! You can take other non healing actions without losing the buff. And then when you do need a heal BOOM! big heal! Plus no longer wasted on a full HP member!
Rakunda/Tarunda on attack skills? Oh hell yea! Don't need to take a turn off to get debuffs going!
the whole taunt line-up? Completely changes the way I build my party/play.
Basically I am loving all the new skills. Really allows for all sorts of new ways to build a team and all sorts of stuff to look forward to.
Definitely the most fun I've had team building in SMT.
I know they're not exactly the same, but I can only handle so much anime nonsense so I'm thinking of getting either Tales of Arise or Scarlet Nexus to play.
Thoughts?
No access to gamepass btw, since it seems Scarlet is on that.
Any preferences on combat or other mechanics or is anime levels the main consideration?
Having played the Arise demo and about an hour of Scarlet on Game Pass, the combat in Arise is a lot more fluid. Good mouth-feel and all that. I do enjoy the telekinetic combat moves in Scarlet. But Arise feels like a much higher budget game; the structure of Scarlet Nexus in combination with the stiffer combat and story board cutscenes reminds me of the "HD remaster of a PSP game" ports that used to be a thing.
Also, Scarlet Nexus starts on the anime nonsense about thirty seconds in, with child soldiers screaming in agony as they get plugged into the matrix. This is followed shortly by flower aliens and girls giggling about cute boys in their squadron.
I love the ability to change your weaknesses and abilities of your demons and protagonist in SMTV.
Really missing the save anywhere and pay to revive ability from IV though.
I love the Miracle/Essence system... to an extent. I hate having to wait until I have enough points to purchase stuff that used to progress over time, like extra skill slots and party spaces. Not to mention to buff the spells, I miss when that was doable(and super broken) via fusion in IV, not a massive point sink.
Like every SMT update throughout the years, it has major pros and cons, and no game has a perfect system yet.
I guess that's fine, every game still has its niche, like Raidou 2 still having the pinnacle of the negotiation system(thanks to demon partners making it basically impossible).
As weak as the co-op system was in SJ, I like that it rewarded you for being firmly on one side or another. I wouldn't mind a return to that, in some form. Exclusive gear is always nice too(hi Imagine).
I just started playing Tales of Berseria and what the fuck is this combo system
i've been playing through with a friend and my advice is just pick an element for each face button and stick moves on it in ascending order of cost, that's flowed pretty naturally for velvet at least
until you get ~16 moves this will continue to feel like nonsense. good luck!
Yeah, that's more or less how I had shit set up. eg X was Beast moves, O was amorphous, etc. Reconfigure when you reach a new area and stop seeing snakes but start seeing birds.
That SMT/Persona feeling of losing 3 hours of progress to a lucky crit on your protagonist and turning the game off and not playing for a week.
I never played the P3 extra story bit because after sitting through like 30 minutes of unskippable cutscenes, it drops you into a scripted fight. The script being that once you're under 30% HP or so, the enemy stops attacking and lets you auto-win. Except that it only skips its turn if it's a new turn. So if you're at ~40% HP, and it gets a critical hit, oops, now you're at 10% HP, it's taking another turn where it's going to attack you again, and game over. Enjoy your unskippable cutscenes, asshole.
This is also more or less what turned me off of Xillia completely. There was some town cutscene or NPC in a particularly big town that I couldn't find. Spent like 45 minutes looking all the fuck over for it with the only clue being "explore the town to progress!" so I left the town, saw one of the Tales Slenderman monsters, though "Oh, a rare. Let's fight it." And the fucking thing insta-shot my entire time in its first attack. Game over. Enjoy the title screen. That's what you get for daring to take five steps outside a town.
ArcTangent on
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DemonStaceyTTODewback's DaughterIn love with the TaySwayRegistered Userregular
I love the ability to change your weaknesses and abilities of your demons and protagonist in SMTV.
Really missing the save anywhere and pay to revive ability from IV though.
I love the Miracle/Essence system... to an extent.I hate having to wait until I have enough points to purchase stuff that used to progress over time, like extra skill slots and party spaces. Not to mention to buff the spells, I miss when that was doable(and super broken) via fusion in IV, not a massive point sink.
Like every SMT update throughout the years, it has major pros and cons, and no game has a perfect system yet.
I guess that's fine, every game still has its niche, like Raidou 2 still having the pinnacle of the negotiation system(thanks to demon partners making it basically impossible).
As weak as the co-op system was in SJ, I like that it rewarded you for being firmly on one side or another. I wouldn't mind a return to that, in some form. Exclusive gear is always nice too(hi Imagine).
I actually prefer this method here. I just love feelings of progression. And this has made me continuously have new stuff to look forward to and feel like I'm continuously added new levels to my character over time. That is exactly what I come to RPGs for.
Don't give me too much too soon or easily! That's how you lose me.
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ShadowfireVermont, in the middle of nowhereRegistered Userregular
I just can't imagine wanting to engage with SAO at all, I dunno
I have really complicated feelings on SAO.
Like... I really liked the first season stuff. It was dumb but it was fine, I was a big MMO fan so like, yeah, getting stuck in an MMO that's actually a death game, sure, it's fine. I liked the characters enough. But then they took Asuna from a badass fencer to a damsel stuck in a tower being assaulted repeatedly and.. I struggled through it, but I wasn't happy.
But hey, ok, things got a bit better at the end there because she started punching people and cool. So now I'm invested again and Gun Gale was kinda neat! A new game, and dealing with the fallout of psychopaths from the original game that weren't taken care of properly and all. Kinda neat. Still dumb, but pretty alright.
Get through all that, and hey, now we're just playing a game. Again, dumb. But it's just a bunch of buds playing a game together at that point, and it's pretty lighthearted fun. I enjoyed that a lot.
So Alicization then goes up its own ass, and the latest I've been able to see, the place Kirito is being rehabbed/held is assaulted by *waves fingers* in a gunfight and.. what the fuck?
The first half of SAO tricked me cause it was relatively restrained as far as those kind of shows go.
But from what I see it not only dove headfirst it became like the shining example of everything I hate about that genre.
It basically defined the instances of everything you hate about the genre. It's pretty much the origin of the "new" wave of power fantasy isekai that are flooding us to this day.
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DragkoniasThat Guy Who Does StuffYou Know, There. Registered Userregular
The first half of SAO tricked me cause it was relatively restrained as far as those kind of shows go.
But from what I see it not only dove headfirst it became like the shining example of everything I hate about that genre.
It basically defined the instances of everything you hate about the genre. It's pretty much the origin of the "new" wave of power fantasy isekai that are flooding us to this day.
True but honestly most modern day isekai is basically just harem where the MC is the protagonist of a video game world.
The SAO Abridged is the canon version and nothing will change my mind
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turtleantGunpla Dadis the best.Registered Userregular
I feel like isekai used to be mostly centered on girl protagonists and the shows were often good. Been watching Escaflowne with a friend recently and that show still kicks ass. She's been watching Inuasha and that show is a perfectly fine action comedy thing still.
Idk if it was SAO's fault the genre turned into the shambling horror it is today, kinda feel like trends in modern anime were going to get there one way or another. But it is depressing something as simple as "person gets sent to another world" has been so thoroughly coopted by shitty dudes.
Gundam, of all things, actually managed to make a good isekai a year or so back, so it's not like people can't. Antisocial dude power fantasy just sells I guess.
I feel like isekai used to be mostly centered on girl protagonists and the shows were often good. Been watching Escaflowne with a friend recently and that show still kicks ass. She's been watching Inuasha and that show is a perfectly fine action comedy thing still.
Idk if it was SAO's fault the genre turned into the shambling horror it is today, kinda feel like trends in modern anime were going to get there one way or another. But it is depressing something as simple as "person gets sent to another world" has been so thoroughly coopted by shitty dudes.
Gundam, of all things, actually managed to make a good isekai a year or so back, so it's not like people can't. Antisocial dude power fantasy just sells I guess.
Magic Knight Rayearth: also an old-school shoujo isekai that’s great
+8
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MaddocI'm Bobbin Threadbare, are you my mother?Registered Userregular
El Hazard was a male led isekai harem anime back in '95
I'm sure there are others, it's just what immediately came to mind
I feel like isekai used to be mostly centered on girl protagonists and the shows were often good. Been watching Escaflowne with a friend recently and that show still kicks ass. She's been watching Inuasha and that show is a perfectly fine action comedy thing still.
Idk if it was SAO's fault the genre turned into the shambling horror it is today, kinda feel like trends in modern anime were going to get there one way or another. But it is depressing something as simple as "person gets sent to another world" has been so thoroughly coopted by shitty dudes.
Gundam, of all things, actually managed to make a good isekai a year or so back, so it's not like people can't. Antisocial dude power fantasy just sells I guess.
Magic Knight Rayearth: also an old-school shoujo isekai that’s great
Was just thinking of that one.
Did anyone ever play the JRPG on the Saturn based on it?
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cj iwakuraThe Rhythm RegentBears The Name FreedomRegistered Userregular
I feel like isekai used to be mostly centered on girl protagonists and the shows were often good. Been watching Escaflowne with a friend recently and that show still kicks ass. She's been watching Inuasha and that show is a perfectly fine action comedy thing still.
Idk if it was SAO's fault the genre turned into the shambling horror it is today, kinda feel like trends in modern anime were going to get there one way or another. But it is depressing something as simple as "person gets sent to another world" has been so thoroughly coopted by shitty dudes.
Gundam, of all things, actually managed to make a good isekai a year or so back, so it's not like people can't. Antisocial dude power fantasy just sells I guess.
Magic Knight Rayearth: also an old-school shoujo isekai that’s great
Was just thinking of that one.
Did anyone ever play the JRPG on the Saturn based on it?
Yep, I still own it. It's fantastic.
+3
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turtleantGunpla Dadis the best.Registered Userregular
I feel like isekai used to be mostly centered on girl protagonists and the shows were often good. Been watching Escaflowne with a friend recently and that show still kicks ass. She's been watching Inuasha and that show is a perfectly fine action comedy thing still.
Idk if it was SAO's fault the genre turned into the shambling horror it is today, kinda feel like trends in modern anime were going to get there one way or another. But it is depressing something as simple as "person gets sent to another world" has been so thoroughly coopted by shitty dudes.
Gundam, of all things, actually managed to make a good isekai a year or so back, so it's not like people can't. Antisocial dude power fantasy just sells I guess.
Magic Knight Rayearth: also an old-school shoujo isekai that’s great
That and Dunbine are on my short list of stuff I wanna watch.
Posts
I have heard that the parts of the franchise that do not involve kirito are apparently not completely awful
still not gonna touch it, but there's something I guess?
As someone who has played every SAO game, mostly because they all try something weird and janky and that's entirely my jam, Fatal Bullet is probably the best they've ever done.
Gameplay can be pretty fun, the story isn't too dumb, there is a minimum of sword Jesus and there are some pretty cool set pieces.
Hollow Realization is second in line. The translation is pretty rough and the loop itself is kind of awkward. On the other hand it just has layers and layers of super obtuse and convoluted systems that make it really interesting to play it you're the type who likes to poke at systems that feel like they were designed via dartboard and way too much enthusiasm.
Annoying
It makes sense in SMT, where demons are only held in check by the protagonist's will who they otherwise don't give a damn about, but it's very silly in Persona(and only in 3 onward).
Yea with the ability to port back with a button press it really feels like the perfect balance of making exploring out feel dangerous but without being frustrating.
My biggest personal issue is that since every game for the past decade autosaves constantly. So It's very hard to retrain my brain to save every single time I see a save point.
The amount of times I have stopped at a save point, healed up, went in to look at demon set-ups and got distracted for way too long and then leave without saving only to die 3min later is... frankly far too many haha.
I've never trusted auto saves. Being paranoid about manually saving whenever you can pays off when you go back to a game without auto-saves like this!
It's a bit more complicated and cumbersome than it needs to be (Arise refined it a lot), but if you play as Velvet you can basically just button mash as her Soul Break is basically "rip and tear" and wrecks things and gives you a weakness hitting attack.
Other characters you have to plan out a little better (and can edit their combos any time on the pause screen) or switch characters if you want to hit weaknesses.
You get those magic rocks that give you more combat options as you play the game (I think a lot of them come from killing the hunt monsters).
Yea part of it is definitely just how much stuff you do at the save point. So I tell myself "ok lemme get all this stuff sorted before I save" and then do everything but save haha. So I am trying to slowly train myself to save first, and then if I remember save a second time after I finish buying/selling/fusing.
It feels like missing a flight that crashed, that sensation of "Holy shit the only thing between me and tragedy was dumb fucking luck"
Thoughts?
No access to gamepass btw, since it seems Scarlet is on that.
until you get ~16 moves this will continue to feel like nonsense. good luck!
One of the best changes they made was making the Mudo/Hama insta death only work on weaknesses.
No more fear of every random mob with Light/Dark skills!
Any preferences on combat or other mechanics or is anime levels the main consideration?
Oh thank fuck. Every time I saw those spells coming from a mob I would always tense up
I'm fascinated by all these new crazy skills, like healing + HP buffing, phys + status, element + phys, just don't know if they're very practical.
Some of them definitely are!
Like charge for healing + overheal? Fantastic! You can take other non healing actions without losing the buff. And then when you do need a heal BOOM! big heal! Plus no longer wasted on a full HP member!
Rakunda/Tarunda on attack skills? Oh hell yea! Don't need to take a turn off to get debuffs going!
the whole taunt line-up? Completely changes the way I build my party/play.
Basically I am loving all the new skills. Really allows for all sorts of new ways to build a team and all sorts of stuff to look forward to.
Definitely the most fun I've had team building in SMT.
Really missing the save anywhere and pay to revive ability from IV though.
Having played the Arise demo and about an hour of Scarlet on Game Pass, the combat in Arise is a lot more fluid. Good mouth-feel and all that. I do enjoy the telekinetic combat moves in Scarlet. But Arise feels like a much higher budget game; the structure of Scarlet Nexus in combination with the stiffer combat and story board cutscenes reminds me of the "HD remaster of a PSP game" ports that used to be a thing.
Also, Scarlet Nexus starts on the anime nonsense about thirty seconds in, with child soldiers screaming in agony as they get plugged into the matrix. This is followed shortly by flower aliens and girls giggling about cute boys in their squadron.
I love the Miracle/Essence system... to an extent. I hate having to wait until I have enough points to purchase stuff that used to progress over time, like extra skill slots and party spaces. Not to mention to buff the spells, I miss when that was doable(and super broken) via fusion in IV, not a massive point sink.
Like every SMT update throughout the years, it has major pros and cons, and no game has a perfect system yet.
I guess that's fine, every game still has its niche, like Raidou 2 still having the pinnacle of the negotiation system(thanks to demon partners making it basically impossible).
As weak as the co-op system was in SJ, I like that it rewarded you for being firmly on one side or another. I wouldn't mind a return to that, in some form. Exclusive gear is always nice too(hi Imagine).
Yeah, that's more or less how I had shit set up. eg X was Beast moves, O was amorphous, etc. Reconfigure when you reach a new area and stop seeing snakes but start seeing birds.
I never played the P3 extra story bit because after sitting through like 30 minutes of unskippable cutscenes, it drops you into a scripted fight. The script being that once you're under 30% HP or so, the enemy stops attacking and lets you auto-win. Except that it only skips its turn if it's a new turn. So if you're at ~40% HP, and it gets a critical hit, oops, now you're at 10% HP, it's taking another turn where it's going to attack you again, and game over. Enjoy your unskippable cutscenes, asshole.
This is also more or less what turned me off of Xillia completely. There was some town cutscene or NPC in a particularly big town that I couldn't find. Spent like 45 minutes looking all the fuck over for it with the only clue being "explore the town to progress!" so I left the town, saw one of the Tales Slenderman monsters, though "Oh, a rare. Let's fight it." And the fucking thing insta-shot my entire time in its first attack. Game over. Enjoy the title screen. That's what you get for daring to take five steps outside a town.
I actually prefer this method here. I just love feelings of progression. And this has made me continuously have new stuff to look forward to and feel like I'm continuously added new levels to my character over time. That is exactly what I come to RPGs for.
Don't give me too much too soon or easily! That's how you lose me.
I have really complicated feelings on SAO.
But hey, ok, things got a bit better at the end there because she started punching people and cool. So now I'm invested again and Gun Gale was kinda neat! A new game, and dealing with the fallout of psychopaths from the original game that weren't taken care of properly and all. Kinda neat. Still dumb, but pretty alright.
Get through all that, and hey, now we're just playing a game. Again, dumb. But it's just a bunch of buds playing a game together at that point, and it's pretty lighthearted fun. I enjoyed that a lot.
So Alicization then goes up its own ass, and the latest I've been able to see, the place Kirito is being rehabbed/held is assaulted by *waves fingers* in a gunfight and.. what the fuck?
I'm mad that I'm invested.
But from what I see it not only dove headfirst it became like the shining example of everything I hate about that genre.
It basically defined the instances of everything you hate about the genre. It's pretty much the origin of the "new" wave of power fantasy isekai that are flooding us to this day.
True but honestly most modern day isekai is basically just harem where the MC is the protagonist of a video game world.
And I hated that genre way before.
SAO has such a cool digital sword swing sound effect that it tricked folks into thinking the whole show is good.
Idk if it was SAO's fault the genre turned into the shambling horror it is today, kinda feel like trends in modern anime were going to get there one way or another. But it is depressing something as simple as "person gets sent to another world" has been so thoroughly coopted by shitty dudes.
Gundam, of all things, actually managed to make a good isekai a year or so back, so it's not like people can't. Antisocial dude power fantasy just sells I guess.
Magic Knight Rayearth: also an old-school shoujo isekai that’s great
I'm sure there are others, it's just what immediately came to mind
Was just thinking of that one.
Did anyone ever play the JRPG on the Saturn based on it?
Yep, I still own it. It's fantastic.
That and Dunbine are on my short list of stuff I wanna watch.
Love me some fantasy mecha.
Not sure the veracity of this site, but there’s rumblings of a chrono cross remake.