raocow's talkhaus

Just wait until the sequel, there's quite a twist!

In terms of plot or gameplay?

Story. If it's your first time, it's a pretty neat twist

at least I thought so!

Were any of my issues in the bullet points addressed in the sequel? I need to figure out if I want to continue the series cause I've kinda got a bad taste in my mouth after the first one.

I personally enjoyed the writing of the first two games, even if it did get tedious and long-winded from time to time. Might just be nostalgia filter, but it is still long winded and tedious in TLA.
The story, though, is much better in TLA and tons of questions get answered. I could write a *huge* essay or make an hour plus video (if I had a decent computer or software or microphone lol) as to why Dark Dawn is an insufferable pile of garbage.

Some puzzles in TLA are pretty obtuse from what I remember, but if anything the dungeons (

Air's Rock comes to mind

) themselves can be super long.
It's hard for me to even remember anything I got stuck on in the past whenever it comes to either of these games since the first time I played through them was more than 15 years ago, and I've played through them multiple times since then.

I enjoyed that system of picking attacks, but that's more a matter of personal preference. It's usually easier to just try to pick your attacks in order of which character has what as their "primary adept element", like Jupiter usually has the highest speed, and iirc Venus the lowest. If nothing else you can try to plan around the "speed" stats in the menu. I was able to guess based off damage output and the strength of my characters which enemies would fall first, so I'd attack based off that. It's guesswork and memorization, but if nothing else you could always just attack different enemies with each character or do a"1-2-1-2" pattern with attacks.

I don't remember my characters falling often enough that it was much an issue? Isn't there at least one revive psyenergy that's fairly reliable?
I think I'll give these games a play again when work slows down or I have more free time

I didn't really leave dungeons the last playthrough, but the real problem for me giving any semblance of useful advice is that I know these games too well to even think about what it's like to play them blind again. It's like how a level maker can make a level they'll have no trouble beating but someone who's going into it blind can get stuck for a long time.

I'd recommend TLA if nothing else than for the story, though it might be pretty frustrating. Maybe take a break?


Hope that helps! I'm trying my best

I probably won't continue on with the series for now, but I do appreciate you answering my questions! And putting up with my whining!

Ashan wrote:

• The writing is absolutely awful.
• Puzzles on the overworld were either way too easy but still time consuming, or complete nonsense that had you using some specific psynergy for no reason.
• I don't like this battle system of choosing all your attacks ahead of time instead of just choosing your attack when you're about to attack.
• They're way too stingy with revives.

i think you just wouldn't like most jrpgs (and that's okay)

I love re:coded
The combat is pretty fun
And like
All the commands are useful in some way
Well, mostly
I'm not sure about Quake

KobaBeach wrote: ↑4 years ago i think you just wouldn't like most jrpgs (and that's okay)

I thought FFX was pretty good!

Still replaying Arc the Lad ( -ω-)
Done the Toyoke Forest stuff, gonna be getting Gogen and Tosh back in Seirya/Sumeria, then head for Alatos/Aralatos, possibly after some quick grinding.

Currently just memorizing readings by writing the kana for the dialogue in Millmana I ran across in my spreadsheet.

Ashan wrote: ↑4 years ago I thought FFX was pretty good!

A lot of the problems you mention are kind of apparent in a lot of JRPGs, though the poor writing can also be exacerbated by a reliance on shounen manga tropes and a lot of the time, a poor translation. So just a fair warning if you decide to explore the genre more.

FFX is pretty good, I just hate how Kimahri is kinda pointless. He deserved better.

I've been playing New Super Mario Bros. U DX while all my friends are touting their fancy Mario Maker 2s. The amount of shortcuts in the overworld is mind-boggling and I even discovered two of them accidentally on my first clear; I guess the DS version had cannons, but seeing the actual worlds interconnect seamlessly in this way is a lot cooler. The postgame levels are a weird mix of "huh, neat" and "holy P-switch run, batman". I begrudgingly used my first P shroom to clear the P-switch run level just so that I could exit the level instead of dying in future attempts to grab the star coins.

Final Fantasy XV is completed after a major power session with it yesterday. The first eight chapters were so much fun since there was an open-world aspect to it and made it very easy to take things on or not in any order outside of the main plot, of course. Once you get past that point, the game goes to a much more linear setting and brought back some bad memories from X and XIII, two of my least favorites in the series. Still didn't feel too bad since this was like five hours of play as opposed to the majority of the game, but it still hurt to see everything get condensed like that. One chapter in particular was super rough and went on way too long.

That said, the end of the game slightly redeemed itself, but at the same time, I wish they'd be able to keep things going all the way through. The same issue struck FFXII where it felt like they were rushed for time or just sent it out without worrying about how things played out, and it showed. I liked it, but it could've been better. World of Final Fantasy is the best non-online thing that series has released since IX, and that latter game came out almost twenty years ago now. Oops.

Started playing FF1 NES in Japanese last night and got surprised today.
Apparently, Evil Eye was a copyright censorship measure.



I also typo'd でーびど. No katakana for player names.
Doing the Test of Bravery for Bahamut (class upgrade).

The first PC98 Touhou I ended up beating was the third one, Phantasmagoria of Dim Dream. I don't really like how it seems to be a bit reliant on luck (something I don't have much of) but it wasn't too terrible.
In my replay of SMT1 I'm going for Chaos Alignment and right now am at Kongokai/Diamond Realm. Kind of eager to get out of there and to apocalypse Tokyo. Ruins is a great track in the SNES version.
I 100%ed the original LEGO Star Wars the other day and I probably won't do it again. It's an okay game but it's pretty rough around the edges. And it's a game I played the hell out of with my brother back when it was released so there is definitely some nostalgia factor in me playing it again at all. I think my copy of it might be getting close to crapping out because I did run into some weird glitches that I had never seen before (such as the screen going totally black but I could still do things I jsut couldn't see anything in the game.)

At Chaos Shrine in FF1.

Beat FF1. Put down savestates just in case, but I ended up never needing to use them. This happens all the time.

Anyway playing this in Japanese was pretty neat. My lack of skills added a bit of challenge in the "not being able to instantly retain the info on say status screens and whatnot from a mere cursory look due to inexperience in the language" department. Truly, the "5 year old playing video games in English or Japanese despite that not being their mother tongue or having any decent skills in it" experience most of us had.

It was fun. To see that such an early localization (the NES version) managed to retain so much of the original Japanese version (censored as necessary) is marvelous to say the least. They even retained the flavor text for the fountains and Cornelia's well, when they really didn't need to. Worthy of applause.

Arylon's name is an odd addition, though. That always stuck out to me for some reason haha
I also learned about the Beholder dilemma by playing this. Truly fascinating.

All in all, weretigers are cute and my boyfriends.

I beat Final Fantasy Adventure.
It was a very fun experience, and a bit longer than I expected.

I also started a randomized version of Pokemon Black.
I don't regret choosing random for the Starter because now I just casually start with a Rayquaza.

Resuming Arc el Muchacho. Tosh is my wife

BurntTenda wrote: ↑4 years ago I beat Final Fantasy Adventure.
It was a very fun experience, and a bit longer than I expected.

I also started a randomized version of Pokemon Black.
I don't regret choosing random for the Starter because now I just casually start with a Rayquaza.

Niiice

FFA is good, I started Sword of Mana at a whim the past week and it's pretty fun for a game everyone rags on.
The AI honestly doesnt seem that much worse than most Mana games. Lots of text though!
Fun fact, we will be hearing an arrange from Sword of Mana in VIP5 later! Not spoiling it for those who haven't watched or played it before, it's a bit of VIP5 I love.

I might replay FFA sometime. It's a very good almost Zelda-ish ARPG. Basically sorta ARPG lite but not that lite. Just as detailed as they could make it on a handheld from like 89. Wish Adventures of Mana was on PC. I'd totally get my hands on it somehow wink wink nudge nudge

Any of y'alls got a Switch but not got Cadence of Hyrule, you should

I feel like a fraud if I buy Cadence of Hyrule when I've put off playing Necrodancer for so long since it kinda sends the message "I won't play your cool unique game unless it has sprites of things I'm familiar with"

I mean I kinda get where you're coming from but at the same time it's like. No-one's monitoring your purchasing habits so they can judge you for them. Also I feel like multiple people have said CoH is a good... learning tool?... for CotND, so you could always just play it afterwards.

After 4 years of on and off playing and an outright restart, I have finally finished Trails in the Sky First Chapter. Interesting revelation at the very end, and (Actual FC spoilers) Unfortunately, I don't own Sky the Third but I do have to play SC before I get to that one .
Oh also, in the SMT1 replay I left Kongokai/Diamond Realm and ventured into apocalypse Tokyo. And I beat Knights of the Old Republic 2 again. Ahhh, I really like Kotor1 and 2. Shame there will probably never be a Kotor3 that can live up to those two.

Because of Pink's streams, I'm giving Secret of Mana another go. Pretty sure I already made it back to where I was when I stopped a few years back in the Upper Land area way back when. Basically trying to speed through the game this time.

Played through The Expression Amrilato's good ending. It's a pretty interesting premise. A girl ends up stumbling into a parallel world and the story is mostly focused around her learning to communicate with the people of that world. There are a handful of issues though. For example early on you earn a dictionary. But it's only accessible from the main menu until you beat the game. This is completely pointless because when you beat the game you also get an option to have Juliamo (Esperanto language with a custom set of characters) text automatically get translated. I ended up just taking a bunch of notes throughout the game and basically making my own dictionary. Ended up 1100 lines of text, lol. Despite those issues though, the story is pretty interesting.

Bean wrote: ↑4 years ago Because of Pink's streams, I'm giving Secret of Mana another go. Pretty sure I already made it back to where I was when I stopped a few years back in the Upper Land area way back when. Basically trying to speed through the game this time.

Secret of Mana kind of falls apart for me when the boss strategy just devolves into

"use magic forever"

for every boss.

I hope you're enjoying it. If you liked it (or you didn't in my case), do check out Trials of Mana (even the old Neill Corlett translation) and Secret of Evermore, they take Secret of Mana's formula and improve upon it tenfold.