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Bigass Moth
Mar 6, 2004

I joined the #RXT REVOLUTION.
:boom:
he knows...

amaranthine posted:

Totally sound like a shill for Last Remnant at this point, but it's definitely the spiritual successor to the SaGa name and is way open-ended, far more so than almost any western RPG I've played in a very long time.

The storyline is maybe 25% of the content at most, less if you count rare monster spawns and DLC.

The Last Remnant is bad. Do not play it. Actually, do not play the X360 version. Apparently on PC you can do a shitload of stuff (like use all unique characters which owns), so play that version if you must.

The story is bad and the battles aren't anything remarkable.

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Levantine
Feb 14, 2005

GUNDAM!!!
Last Remnant did a lot of things well but please don't play for the story. Of all things in the game the story feels heavily unfinished and weird. The ending twist is so far out of left field that either I slept through the game or they just sprung something totally wild on the playerbase.

That said, the combat mechanics are great, if a little random. The greatest bit of strategy is how you build your units for combat. Having a versatile team is key but the luck of the draw on who learns abilities and what they equip can kind of be a pain. The PC version solves some of that though.

Rasamune
Jan 19, 2011

MORT
MORT
MORT
Funny thing is, I used to like Unlimited SaGa.

But then one day I realized that no matter how much I learned to appreciate the art style and the presentation, no matter how many guides I read on building characters and obtaining overpowered equipment, the basic core of the game (especially the character growth system) was never going to stop hating me.

Still one of the best JRPG soundtracks I've heard, though.

Coolio
Nov 5, 2009

by Ozmaugh
I couldn't play Last Remnant because a lot of its mechanics are completely opaque and inscrutable, to the point that when I tried years after it came out the wikis and fan sites devoted to it still had only a vague idea of what a lot of stuff did and meant.

amaranthine
Aug 27, 2009
I AM A TERRIBLE HUMAN BEING

Coolio posted:

I couldn't play Last Remnant because a lot of its mechanics are completely opaque and inscrutable, to the point that when I tried years after it came out the wikis and fan sites devoted to it still had only a vague idea of what a lot of stuff did and meant.

That's part of the draw for me, I like playing a game that is so weirdly designed that people can't give concrete numbers for things. It's fun to go to a wiki entry for a monster and see a possible HP range of like 100,000.

(and yes, on the PC, not on the 360)

As for the story, I like how much the characters are fleshed out (especially some of the not-quite-main characters like Nora), but the ending is pretty bad. I didn't find it unpredictable, but I did find it unsatisfying.

babypolis
Nov 4, 2009

Levantine posted:

Last Remnant did a lot of things well but please don't play for the story. Of all things in the game the story feels heavily unfinished and weird. The ending twist is so far out of left field that either I slept through the game or they just sprung something totally wild on the playerbase.

That said, the combat mechanics are great, if a little random. The greatest bit of strategy is how you build your units for combat. Having a versatile team is key but the luck of the draw on who learns abilities and what they equip can kind of be a pain. The PC version solves some of that though.

Yeah the story in that game is weird as hell characters just seem to develop offscreen and it feels like you missing half of the story or something

I actually found the obstuseness of the game's mechanics to be kind of fun. It keeps things surprising and the game is not hard enough that you need to figure out how all the weird poo poo works

babypolis fucked around with this message at 16:45 on Jun 6, 2011

ACES CURE PLANES
Oct 21, 2010



Bigass Moth posted:

The Last Remnant is bad. Do not play it. Actually, do not play the X360 version. Apparently on PC you can do a shitload of stuff (like use all unique characters which owns), so play that version if you must.

The story is bad and the battles aren't anything remarkable.

It can't possibly be worse than Last Rebellion.

I swear to God, that is quite possibly the worst RPG I have ever played. And I make a point to play a lot of bad RPGs.

Gwyrgyn Blood
Dec 17, 2002

I still can't figure out what the Conqueror's motivations are at most points in the game. It's really weird. As I recall, you were intended to be able to play as the Conqueror as well, so it's likely that a lot of his story explanation was intended to be done on his side. But since they ran out of time and had to cut that, they had to try and shoehorn everything together in some way.

Not sure what ending 'twist' you are talking about though...

If you mean that Rush is a Remnant, they make that abundantly clear at a bunch of points in the game. They only subtly brush upon the fact that Rush is adopted though.

If you're talking about Conqueror trying to kill all humans for whatever reason, well, see my statement above. I can throw out a few guesses on what the overarching story actually is, but I don't really know for sure. Did they ever release a mook to go with the game or anything?

If you mean the bit after the end credits, well, who knows.


I love the game despite all it's weirdness, or maybe because of it.

Zedd
Jul 6, 2009

I mean, who would have noticed another madman around here?



Nutbladder posted:

It ran a lot less abysmally on my next PC, but that's hardly a point in it's favor since both were within the required system specs and the first PC ran ME2 flawlessly. Unfortunately even without the horrid bugs it still looked terrible and my opinion on the gameplay proved to be unmarred by the technical issues so I couldn't stomach another playthrough.

I can respect your opinion on the game, it has a lot of flaws and most of your arguments are correct and can indeed be dealbreakers.

One last question though: I think that the alpha Protocol level of graphics is perfectly fine, fancier is unneeded in my eyes because it can only take away development time meant for gameplay and story building.
I like good looking games but I would instantly trade away graphical advancements higher then the alpha protocol level for gameplay and story excellence.
So my question is, what game do you think look good?

Rascyc
Jan 23, 2008

Dissatisfied Puppy
What's your point though? I mean it's basically a biblical war on whether graphics should just be 'good enough' or should push the limit, and nobody has a good answer as a consumer other than "I like what I like!" and the majority is obvious at this point.

Also animators/graphics teams are generally not writers/system programmers/designers so the claim that more graphics time comes at the expense of writing quality/gameplay time is something of a fallacy.

You could make a case that it causes a strain on budget, but given the availability of graphics engines at this point and the prevalence of news stories "well we decided at the last minute ..." does not indicate that there's a systemic problem that studios are making tradeoffs in RPG writing quality/gameplay for the sake of graphics. If anything, most RPG genres have always been the caboose on graphics quality compared to other genres, with the odd-duck being a lot of action RPGs. Oh, and Final Fantasy I guess (when they're on time).

Big elephant in the room for varying RPG quality these days is the same it was years ago - management and publishers. Design compromises lead to strained schedules as QA comes back and says "no this isn't fun" and then it's a mad scramble - for better (BG2) or for worse (Xenogears). There are hundreds of known examples of this from various news sources (classic examples: Xenogears Disc 2, Baldur's Gate 2: Imoen, Dragon Age 2's LET'S GET THIS DONE IN A YEAR, etc)

Zedd
Jul 6, 2009

I mean, who would have noticed another madman around here?



I guess I am sour, I just think the constant bashing of looks of a game seems to be so much louder then people bashing gameplay or plot. (SA is petty good about it though)

thark
Mar 3, 2008

bork

Syrg Sapphire posted:

Actually, SaGa 2/3 have received DS remakes, with 2 getting a fan translation a few months ago.

While I admit that I had forgotten about this, it's not entirely relevant to my point as the "free scenario" (their name for it) deal started with Romancing SaGa, afaik. Not that this makes the GB SaGas BAD games or anything. (Final Fantasy Legend, I should perhaps add for the benefit of the thread.)

Nutbladder posted:

I played Unlimited Saga for about an hour several years ago and I remember being physically unable handle playing any more of it. It was that bad. Is that game the malformed retard of the franchise or am I just allergic to the series?

Haven't played it myself because of it's reputation, but generally even series fans look ... unfavorably ... upon it.

S-Alpha posted:

It can't possibly be worse than Last Rebellion.
I swear to God, that is quite possibly the worst RPG I have ever played. And I make a point to play a lot of bad RPGs.

2010 Kusoge Of The Year grand champion. (Last Rebellion that is.)

Nutbladder posted:

It ran a lot less abysmally on my next PC, but that's hardly a point in it's favor since both were within the required system specs and the first PC ran ME2 flawlessly. Unfortunately even without the horrid bugs it still looked terrible and my opinion on the gameplay proved to be unmarred by the technical issues so I couldn't stomach another playthrough.

I had a similar experience. Mass Effect 1 runs semi-lovely even with minimal graphics settings on my machine; Mass Effect 2 runs butter smooth on medium-to-high settings. (Actually, it's pretty much miraculous how well ME2 runs considering this old heap of junk.)

stfu
May 16, 2011

I think I just drooled on my keyboard a little bit.

Zedd posted:

One last question though: I think that the alpha Protocol level of graphics is perfectly fine, fancier is unneeded in my eyes because it can only take away development time meant for gameplay and story building.
I like good looking games but I would instantly trade away graphical advancements higher then the alpha protocol level for gameplay and story excellence.
So my question is, what game do you think look good?
I've never seen alpha protocol so I can't comment on what I think of it's graphical quality, but I am not at all what you would consider a graphics buff. It's incredibly easy to please me because I don't place a lot of relevance on how strong a game's anti-aliasing is or whatever. I place more emphasis on design over fidelity, but it's not very hard to satiate me there either.

ME1 looks like a grotesque monster though. The textures were ugly and the character models and animation looked incredibly meh. All of this wasn't so bad, even though I felt a little cheated considering how high the system requirements are. The worst part was the shadows. They were jagged and weird to the point of being so distracting that I turned them off. They looked like total poo poo, and none of the pathetic selection of graphical options did anything to fix it. I want to think that this was a problem with lovely porting to the PC and not initial developer incompetence (Like the inability to choose any resolutions larger than 1280x720) because I will honestly tell you that I think Half-Life 2 looks better than ME1 and that game came out over 6 years ago and I can run it on my microwave.

To add insult to injury, ME2 had the same loving system reqs and looked like a god in comparison. It still didn't look like anything particularly special, but the textures didn't pop out with horribleness and the shading problem was small or nonexistent.

tl;dr: The Source Engine looks pretty rad.

Rascyc
Jan 23, 2008

Dissatisfied Puppy
You definitely played the very buggy PC port of ME1. The games were really similar as far as the character graphics went, to be pretty honest. They improved some designs here and there with the armor and definitely the animations, but the basic stuff looked pretty much identical.

They eventually did fix the PC port aside from shadows. That took ME2 to be correctly fixed.

Levantine
Feb 14, 2005

GUNDAM!!!

Gwyrgyn Blood posted:

I still can't figure out what the Conqueror's motivations are at most points in the game. It's really weird. As I recall, you were intended to be able to play as the Conqueror as well, so it's likely that a lot of his story explanation was intended to be done on his side. But since they ran out of time and had to cut that, they had to try and shoehorn everything together in some way.

Not sure what ending 'twist' you are talking about though...

If you mean that Rush is a Remnant, they make that abundantly clear at a bunch of points in the game. They only subtly brush upon the fact that Rush is adopted though.

If you're talking about Conqueror trying to kill all humans for whatever reason, well, see my statement above. I can throw out a few guesses on what the overarching story actually is, but I don't really know for sure. Did they ever release a mook to go with the game or anything?

If you mean the bit after the end credits, well, who knows.


I love the game despite all it's weirdness, or maybe because of it.

I think you're right about the Conqueror storyline being intended to fill in gaps but seriously, where did they even hint that Rush was a Remnant? I mean, he was special from the jump obviously but I never ever got that particular element from the story. It's possible I missed it but that seemed like kind of a big deal.

EDIT: Also, what was the bit after the end credits? I don't recall anything.

Gwyrgyn Blood
Dec 17, 2002

Levantine posted:

I think you're right about the Conqueror storyline being intended to fill in gaps but seriously, where did they even hint that Rush was a Remnant? I mean, he was special from the jump obviously but I never ever got that particular element from the story. It's possible I missed it but that seemed like kind of a big deal.

EDIT: Also, what was the bit after the end credits? I don't recall anything.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JkFdRKnFLuE&feature=mfu_in_order&list=UL

There's a bunch of other small bits here and there, Conqueror constantly moaning about how Rush hasn't "awakened" or whatever, and lots of other not so subtle hints that Rush and Conqueror have some connection.

The bit after the end credits is just a short chat between the two indicating that neither of them are actually dead.

Levantine
Feb 14, 2005

GUNDAM!!!

Gwyrgyn Blood posted:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JkFdRKnFLuE&feature=mfu_in_order&list=UL

There's a bunch of other small bits here and there, Conqueror constantly moaning about how Rush hasn't "awakened" or whatever, and lots of other not so subtle hints that Rush and Conqueror have some connection.

The bit after the end credits is just a short chat between the two indicating that neither of them are actually dead.


Oh interesting. I never took the Conqueror's comments about Rush awakening as anything other than generic comments about the "special" RPG character and his "special" powers. I can see how it ended up that way but it seemed so sudden like it all happened offscreen or whatever.

I'd really like a fleshed out sequel to that game though.

I810BUX
Aug 10, 2007

Cheesu~~
Can someone explain to me why everyone hates Dragon Age 2 so much? I played through that whole game in like 3 sittings and had a blast. I even did like 95% of the sidequests and crap.

Unsmart
Oct 6, 2006

RotationSurgeon posted:

Can someone explain to me why everyone hates Dragon Age 2 so much? I played through that whole game in like 3 sittings and had a blast. I even did like 95% of the sidequests and crap.

To begin: 3 environments, waves of enemies mechanic is the stupidest thing ever and completely negates any type of strategic positioning or any strategy at all really because you have no idea how many waves you are going to fight, character development is done in time skips offscreen etc etc. I don't mind them bringing the camera closer and most of the other skill/general battle system changes but everything else is loving terrible.

Rascyc
Jan 23, 2008

Dissatisfied Puppy

RotationSurgeon posted:

Can someone explain to me why everyone hates Dragon Age 2 so much? I played through that whole game in like 3 sittings and had a blast. I even did like 95% of the sidequests and crap.
You can go in a lot of different directions to answer this question, but ultimately it's probably because most people can see that it could have been a really fun game but there's just some major flaws that prevent it from being so. So in the end, it's really your tolerance to forgive its flaws that will decide how much you enjoy the game.

Do you tolerate re-used dungeon sets/textures/environs?

Do you tolerate re-used encounter setups?

Do you tolerate degrading writing value as the game goes on, punctuating in a very short end game?

Do you tolerate the replacement of a tight cohesive narrative with a more character oriented episodic arc that lacks "last time on days of our dragon age ..."?

The game has some good fundamentals but lacked enough time to fully flesh everything out cohesively. A lot of things just scream "not enough time" as you play it if you are impartial about it.

In some ways it feels like Dragon Age 1 had too much time devoted to it while Dragon Age 2 had not enough time devoted it. Lots of people really pine for a good strategic CRPG like the Baldur's Gate series these days. Dragon Age 2 kind of changed direction from Dragon Age 1 and a lot of people will always be bitter about that.

amaranthine
Aug 27, 2009
I AM A TERRIBLE HUMAN BEING

RotationSurgeon posted:

Can someone explain to me why everyone hates Dragon Age 2 so much? I played through that whole game in like 3 sittings and had a blast. I even did like 95% of the sidequests and crap.

Because it's terrible?

Honest answer: because it's terrible, they recycled all the maps, the battle system centers around you waiting for your abilities to cool down for most of the fight, the characters are mostly awful stereotypes or just awful, the story is over in the second act and then they tack on this third act that is horrifyingly bad, the "inventory" is boiled down to "is five larger than three, if so, equip"

I can continue, if you like.

Ice Phisherman
Apr 12, 2007

Swimming upstream
into the sunset



Overall, I'm not sure why the game designers were so loving lazy, but they were. These problems are fixable, even easily fixable. And the last act had nothing to do with the other ones, which had been semi-cohesive up until that point. And the writing is loving terrible at times.

I was -extremely- pissed at this giant run into the deeps that they hype for hours in the beginning of the game and it is at most an hour long dungeon romp. Completely worthless.

The game is rough and spastic at times. The only thing improved from the first game is the combat.

claw game handjob
Mar 27, 2007

pinch pinch scrape pinch
ow ow fuck it's caught
i'm bleeding
JESUS TURN IT OFF
WHY ARE YOU STILL SMILING

amaranthine posted:

the story is over in the second act and then they tack on this third act that is horrifyingly bad

Alright, I haven't played a DA title yet but I keep hearing this. Mind if I ask what exactly this issue with the act 2/3 transition is? I'd look on wikipedia but I don't know where the acts start/end.

Barudak
May 7, 2007

Syrg Sapphire posted:

Alright, I haven't played a DA title yet but I keep hearing this. Mind if I ask what exactly this issue with the act 2/3 transition is? I'd look on wikipedia but I don't know where the acts start/end.

Spoiler City Follows:

Act 1 and the intro basically exist to establish the setting and introduce the characters. During this period the game talks a lot about the Qunari (a race of demon-looking demi-humans or perhaps actual demons) moving into town, not integrating, and being weird. You end up dealing with racists who hate the Qunari, religious fanatics who want them expelled because the Qunari faith is growing popular, and those who wish to profit from them on one side and the Qunari's strange ways, suicidal behavior, and obvious schemeing on the other. By the time Act 2 rolls around this has exploded into huge racial issues with the protagonist thrust into this thin line keeping the peace between the two groups. Ultimately, it boils over in violent civil unrest either because of the humans racism or because the Qunari enact their plan/grow tired of the humans racism.

Act 3 then just kinda happens and is about mages and templars clashing and is such a massively less interesting and played out story its not even remotely amusing. Even more deflatingly, no matter who you side with you fight the same bosses just in different order and nothing you say or do seems to have any impact. Then the game just sort of ends because this plot had no real connection to the story line.

Kagon
Jan 25, 2005

It really comes down to a lot of inexcusably lazy decisions combined. I might have tolerated some of them individually (the combat being done in uninteresting waves of enemies or constantly reused maps with obviously greyed out former doors to act like you're somewhere new) but all together just made for a terrible experience. After coming from Origins, which admittedly wasn't perfect, it's a step down in every single direction.

It really doesn't help that within 20 minutes of starting the game, you've skipped forward in time, and everyone's referencing all of the amazing things you did during that time. So instead of even letting us build some reason to be connected and that Hawke's an interesting character and accomplished a lot, you're just told it. Then you're immediately sent out to fulfill a mind numbing amount of fetch quests to satisfy a seemingly random and unimportant goal. Though more extreme, it'd be like if Mass Effect 2 didn't exist and having everyone tell you at the beginning of 3 how you great you were during the suicide mission- absolutely poor story telling.

VDay
Jul 2, 2003

I'm Pacman Jones!

Kagon posted:

It really comes down to a lot of inexcusably lazy decisions combined. I might have tolerated some of them individually (the combat being done in uninteresting waves of enemies or constantly reused maps with obviously greyed out former doors to act like you're somewhere new

I'm usually not a sperglord or care about IMMERSION in games, but I seriously said "Oh they've got to be making GBS threads me" the first time I ran into the fake doorway.

For anyone who hasn't played it, what they did was use the same exact cave dungeon over and over and over again. The way they made it different was that there were a bunch of doorways/passageways in it, and depending on which cave you were supposed to be in, certain doors would be blocked off. Except the doors weren't blocked with a big rock, or a rockface texture, or even a fallen log. It was literally a loving grey, unclickable square that was set in the god drat doorway with the wooden supports still right loving there so that you could tell that it used to be a path. It seriously looked like someone had come and put up some drywall.

It was beyond lazy and, at least to me, downright inexcusable because this same stupid cave was the setting for like 80% of the quests, with the main story set in the same loving city, so it's not like they ran out of time designing some massive interactive world.

SpaceDrake
Dec 22, 2006

I can't avoid filling a game with awful memes, even if I want to. It's in my bones...!

VDay posted:

so it's not like they ran out of time designing some massive interactive world.

Unfortunately, this is basically what happened, after a fashion. Dragon Age II is the result of EA wanting a sequel to a popular new franchise that they'd sunk millions of advertising dollars into, and wanting it within a year of the first game's launch. The end result is dreadfully predictable.

I'd hoped publishers had learned from the example of E.T., but it looks like another lesson was required. DA is going to need a lot of careful resuscitation as a franchise after the damage DA2 has inflicted on it.

AG3
Feb 4, 2004

Ask me about spending hundreds of dollars on Mass Effect 2 emoticons and Avatars.

Oven Wrangler

SpaceDrake posted:

Unfortunately, this is basically what happened, after a fashion. Dragon Age II is the result of EA wanting a sequel to a popular new franchise that they'd sunk millions of advertising dollars into, and wanting it within a year of the first game's launch. The end result is dreadfully predictable.

I'd hoped publishers had learned from the example of E.T., but it looks like another lesson was required. DA is going to need a lot of careful resuscitation as a franchise after the damage DA2 has inflicted on it.

Speaking of games and release dates, how far off is Chantelise now? :v: It's still scheduled for a June release, I hope?

AG3 fucked around with this message at 12:13 on Jun 8, 2011

19orFewer
Jan 1, 2010

Levantine posted:

Last Remnant did a lot of things well but please don't play for the story. Of all things in the game the story feels heavily unfinished and weird. The ending twist is so far out of left field that either I slept through the game or they just sprung something totally wild on the playerbase.

That said, the combat mechanics are great, if a little random. The greatest bit of strategy is how you build your units for combat. Having a versatile team is key but the luck of the draw on who learns abilities and what they equip can kind of be a pain. The PC version solves some of that though.

The most irritating part of the game for me was being sent on quests to the same place repeatedly and often consecutively. I finally gave up in a strop after I was sent to the same place 3 times in a row, on each occasion having to clear the same trash in order to get to the same location.

I'll agree with the mechanics being good though - it managed to balance difficulty by adding in a bit of randomness and a lot of predictable cause and effect. A ton of mechanics were really obscure so it could take a while to work out what was going on - but when you did it was certainly satisfying.

bewilderment
Nov 22, 2007
man what



Fire Emblem, FF Tactics (both PSX and Advanced). Strategy games where you have a team full of unique little scrubs (so, not Advance Wars where everyone is expendable) that you turn into a well-honed killing force.

What other games like this are there? I'm aware of X-COM but honestly it feels a little too difficult. I've played one of the Shining Force games but it didn't feel very polished. I've played a bit of the new King's Bounty but the battlefields in that game are small and not really what I want.

Ragequit
Jun 1, 2006


Lipstick Apathy

bewilderment posted:

Fire Emblem, FF Tactics (both PSX and Advanced). Strategy games where you have a team full of unique little scrubs (so, not Advance Wars where everyone is expendable) that you turn into a well-honed killing force.

What other games like this are there? I'm aware of X-COM but honestly it feels a little too difficult. I've played one of the Shining Force games but it didn't feel very polished. I've played a bit of the new King's Bounty but the battlefields in that game are small and not really what I want.

The new version is only for PSP, but you absolutely need to play Tactics Ogre: Let us Cling Together. Check it out here: http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3385365

19orFewer
Jan 1, 2010

bewilderment posted:

What other games like this are there? I'm aware of X-COM but honestly it feels a little too difficult. I've played one of the Shining Force games but it didn't feel very polished. I've played a bit of the new King's Bounty but the battlefields in that game are small and not really what I want.

Although they are not strictly unique units to start (but end up that way despite having generic names) and it's pretty hard in parts if you go for the fastest kill awards

http://www.gog.com/en/gamecard/fantasy_wars

has grunts you build up, carrying them over with gear and xp based skills and has some pretty large and sprawling battles with multiple objectives.

or Jagged alliance 2 (particularly with the 1.13 fan patches which allow a huge amount of fiddling and removes a ton of UI and logistics irritations (and has a SA thread all to itself)

http://forums.somethingawful.com/showthread.php?threadid=3053233

19orFewer fucked around with this message at 15:50 on Jun 8, 2011

Levantine
Feb 14, 2005

GUNDAM!!!

19orFewer posted:

The most irritating part of the game for me was being sent on quests to the same place repeatedly and often consecutively. I finally gave up in a strop after I was sent to the same place 3 times in a row, on each occasion having to clear the same trash in order to get to the same location.

I'll agree with the mechanics being good though - it managed to balance difficulty by adding in a bit of randomness and a lot of predictable cause and effect. A ton of mechanics were really obscure so it could take a while to work out what was going on - but when you did it was certainly satisfying.

That's absolutely true - the game does have the same problem that DA2 has, albeit not as pronounced where you have a few areas and spend lots and LOTS of time backtracking to those areas. Periodically a new part will open up depending on the quest but still - and the enemies would range in difficulty wildly so it was a crapshoot as to whether or not you could do the quest when it opened.

But the mechanics saved it from being a total waste. Combat and team building were really deep past first glance. The PC version was fantastic since you could add all "hero" units to a group and you could edit the .ini file to allow you to equip individual people instead of that being handled behind the scenes.

It's a fantastic purchase if you can find it cheaply.

Old Hanz
Feb 2, 2003

I am skilled in the arts of war and military tactics, sire.
So I'm playing though The Last Remnant on the PC. Jesus gently caress that game is one big ?????. I wouldn't mind the confusing mess of mysterious character skills and item crafting if the story was any good, but it's pretty drat terrible 14 year old fan fiction.

HondaCivet
Oct 16, 2005

And then it falls
And then I fall
And then I know


SpaceDrake posted:

I'd hoped publishers had learned from the example of E.T., but it looks like another lesson was required. DA is going to need a lot of careful resuscitation as a franchise after the damage DA2 has inflicted on it.

Does anyone know what sales of DA2 really looked like? I know a lot of the more hardcore DA:O fans were pissed and all but if it still sold a jillion copies I doubt BioWare/EA will care.


And while we're talking about sweet SRPGs, I have a question . . . I know that Tactics Ogre and FF Tactics are really similar. I think they had the same designer/director or something right? Could someone outline the major gameplay differences between them? For some reason I'm always worried that if I played both it'd feel like I'd played the same game twice.

stfu
May 16, 2011

I think I just drooled on my keyboard a little bit.

HondaCivet posted:

Does anyone know what sales of DA2 really looked like? I know a lot of the more hardcore DA:O fans were pissed and all but if it still sold a jillion copies I doubt BioWare/EA will care.
[360] [PS3] [PC]

casual poster
Jun 29, 2009

So casual.

bewilderment posted:

What other games like this are there? I'm aware of X-COM but honestly it feels a little too difficult. I've played one of the Shining Force games but it didn't feel very polished. I've played a bit of the new King's Bounty but the battlefields in that game are small and not really what I want.

Valkyria Chronicles has characters that aren't expendable. It's not a "true srpg" though because it doesn't take place on a grid, but there still is alot of strategy needed in it. For instance you have a set amount of steps you can take, how many shots, etc. The first one has a really great storyline also, however it can be very anime at times. Battle takes place on a field where you control the character from a 3rd person view and position them on the battlefield. The 1st one is definitely worth a playthrough.

Mokinokaro
Sep 11, 2001

At the end of everything, hold onto anything



Fun Shoe

VDay posted:

It was beyond lazy and, at least to me, downright inexcusable because this same stupid cave was the setting for like 80% of the quests, with the main story set in the same loving city, so it's not like they ran out of time designing some massive interactive world.


And the map still showed the entire cave, even the blocked areas. The ending was also pretty horrible and obviously rushed.

Catgirl Al Capone
Dec 15, 2007

casual poster posted:

Valkyria Chronicles has characters that aren't expendable. It's not a "true srpg" though because it doesn't take place on a grid, but there still is alot of strategy needed in it. For instance you have a set amount of steps you can take, how many shots, etc. The first one has a really great storyline also, however it can be very anime at times. Battle takes place on a field where you control the character from a 3rd person view and position them on the battlefield. The 1st one is definitely worth a playthrough.

There were missions that pretty much required some bullshit strategies, though. I think there was one I literally could not complete unless I parked my tank right in an anime girl's face.

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Cake Attack
Mar 26, 2010

a medical mystery posted:

There were missions that pretty much required some bullshit strategies, though. I think there was one I literally could not complete unless I parked my tank right in an anime girl's face.

There's only the one really difficult mission, which is pretty manageable once you know what to do (admittedly, knowing what to do isn't easy). If anybody ends up getting VC, I'd be happy the walk them through how to get past that mission.

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