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Adam Bowen posted:I'm looking to play a classic (or classic style) PC RPG, preferably of the dungeon crawling type. What I'd really like is a good remake of ultima underworld, but all I can find when searching for that is a shitload of unfinished projects. I was hoping that since System Shock got a nice upgrade with better graphics and mouse control a couple of years ago maybe UUW has as well, but I can't find any good ones. If anyone knows of one, I'd love to hear about it. I've heard a lot of good things about Frayed Knights, but I haven't played it myself.
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Feb 5, 2012 21:44
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BGrifter posted:There are people who don't reload when they're about to die? I only had to do it once or twice in DQIX but I don't really deal with the death penalty in any RPG. Worst case scenario it's been a little while since I last saved, but habits from 90s adventure game fandom come in handy on that front. In Dragon Quest, the only penalty for death is that you lose half your money; you still keep all the EXP and items and plot advancement you've gained since your last save. It's usually worth it to keep playing, especially since reloading and just accepting the death both send you back to the save point.
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Feb 6, 2012 01:55
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Rascyc posted:I can think of one or two but I can't think of very many. Obviously Chrono Trigger handled time-based repercussions fairly well, but aside from that I can't think of any particularly good ones but I might be having a dry morning. Each of Chrono Trigger's story arcs used different rules for time travel, but the story never dwelt on the mechanics of it. At one point it openly violated the only hard-and-fast rule it gave, namely that more than three entities entering a gate would wind up at the End of Time.
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Feb 8, 2012 22:25
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Henry Fungletrumpet posted:Any recommendations for RPGs that are fun to just veg out and grind to? Looking for something to play while I listen to podcasts and junk, so something low maintenance without a lot of dialog to sift through. Not just looking for any old crap of course, I'd like something that's satisfying to play and has a nice sense of progression (so, roguelikes are out), but besides that I'm easy. Action, turn-based, old, new, doesn't matter so long as I can play it on a mid-range PC. Thanks.~ This describes the entire Dragon Quest series almost exactly. However, you'll have to emulate them to play on a PC. I don't know the state of DS emulators, and I don't think a "mid-range" PC could emulate PS2 effectively, so that leaves you with just the first seven to choose from.
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Feb 15, 2012 08:56
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Twitch posted:Can anyone recommend some RPGs with a lot of crazy visuals? Stuff like Earthbound, Mother 3, most of the Shin Megami Tensei or Final Fantasies, etc. Give Lost Odyssey a try, or Baten Kaitos.
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Feb 23, 2012 18:28
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MockingQuantum posted:How is Lost Odyssey? There's a used copy at the local game place, and I've read the reviews, but I've never talked to anybody that's played it. If it makes a difference, I'm really pretty happy with traditional turn-based JRPGs. Lost Odyssey is like a lost Final Fantasy game, which is unsurprising given its pedigree. Imagine a cross between FF4 and FF10 and you're about halfway there. In gameplay it's about as standard as it gets: turn-based and menu-driven with a few modest twists. Its unique mechanics are novel and thematically appropriate, and while they're interesting enough they're not really earth-shattering. The story is mostly like a 16-bit RPG with surprisingly good voice acting: not exactly Shakespeare, but mature (if the main character weren't umpty-thousand years old, you'd put him in his late 30s) and notably free of anime bullshit. More importantly, it's punctuated with written (very) short stories detailing incidents that the main character experienced in the distant past and forgot about, and those are really fantastic. It's put together solidly enough that the most common complaints are about implementation details: it's got some pretty nasty loading times (though I suppose if you install it that will be mitigated), the middle of the story has too much focus on the most annoying characters, party balance is sometimes pretty iffy, there's a lot of points of no return, and the gameplay takes a long while to open up. It starts out really strong, but I kind of get the impression they didn't have the budget to do everything as lavishly as they would have liked. Some people I know would call it the game they wanted FFXIII to be. I wouldn't know, as I followed their advice and skipped FFXIII.
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Feb 24, 2012 09:16
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Polite Tim posted:Sed was the guy who was sixty years older than his mum, right? Well, she only looks like she's in her 20s, but yes, Sed's an old man.
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Feb 25, 2012 01:55
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A random encounter shouldn't always demand a careful strategy to win, but it should always give the player opportunities to think about how to win it more efficiently than the obvious, both in terms of resources and time. That's how the player executes on the long-term resource management game. Too-frequent encounters inevitably mean repeating something on the encounter table, and it's rarely fun to repeat a puzzle you've already solved, which is what a repeat encounter is if your material situation hasn't changed substantively since the last time. They also frustrate attempts to make the game feel like it's proceeding quickly.
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Mar 3, 2012 21:43
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Lakbay posted:Okay I'm borrowing Lost Odyssey from a friend, will it have a high encounter rate and/or get grindy later on? I have very little tolerance for that kind of stuff nowadays. The encounter rate is quite low, but the loading times are not. Strongly recommend you install it to your hard drive.
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Mar 12, 2012 05:06
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Lakbay posted:I installed disc 1 to my hard drive. I only have a 12 gig so when I hit the other discs can I delete the previous disc off my hard drive or will it gently caress up my saves? You only need to install the disc you're currently playing. Polite Tim posted:Speaking of which, I'm playing Twilight Princess at the moment, why aren't there more knock-offs of the 3D zelda games? It's a really succesful formula Well, they are making Darksiders 2. And elements of 3D Zelda games have been sneaking into other games for as long as there've been 3D Zelda games.
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Mar 13, 2012 02:54
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nessin posted:What is the Zelda formula? It's a 3d action game, there are tons of them out there (God of War, Bayonetta, Devil May Cry, etc...), and they all follow the same general style of progression. The simplest form of the Zelda formula is: repeated dungeons or comparably discrete areas in which you obtain a new verb which creates substantial new options in previously-accessible areas.
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Mar 13, 2012 04:19
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Lakbay posted:My thoughts on Lost Odyssey so far: Jansen should've been the main character, the villain is so mustache-twisting evil that I can't stop laughing, and do I have to read the memory stuff? Jansen is the best character ever, the villain's mustache-twirlingness should clue you in to the sort of story you're getting yourself into, and while you don't have to read the memory vignettes (there are a few that provide minor foreshadowing), you really should, because they're pretty great.
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Mar 13, 2012 05:18
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If at any point you find yourself disliking Lost Odyssey's story, just imagine that instead of voice-acted human-looking models, it's being told in text boxes by 24-pixel-tall sprites with giant heads.
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Mar 13, 2012 11:11
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Pick any of 4-6 (recommend GBA versions of 5 and 6, or PSP version of 4). They're all good and proceed quickly; based on what you liked about it, we'll know which of the other two you'll prefer. Bonus dungeons may be safely skipped. 5 has a strong gameplay focus with lots of ways to just play around with its system, but its story is a comical pastiche of the four preceding games; 6 sets out to tell its story very well, but you can sort of stumble through the gameplay rear end-first, in consideration of which it has been likened to a sort of prototype of 7. 4 strikes a balance between those two. In none of them will you need to grind, though all of them might make you want to. Final Fantasy has always been very good about ensuring that understanding the system and applying good strategy trumps merely having sufficient numbers for victory, but there's usually a situation where just a few more AP will get you a shiny new wholly unnecessary toy to play with. You might like 10 or 12, or you might hate them. Without knowing what it is you enjoyed about the ones you've played, it's hard to say.
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Mar 18, 2012 17:43
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5 is definitely the gameplay-iest entry in the series. If you ever played Final Fantasy Tactics, that uses a job system based on 5's, though balanced around the fact that battles take 30 minutes instead of 30 seconds. All the SNES games have good encounter and boss design, I thought, and so does 10. Musically speaking, 6 is the one most highly reputed, though for audio you can't really go wrong with any game in this series.
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Mar 18, 2012 18:53
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RadicalR posted:FF4 at that price worth it for someone who have never played it? FF4 is quite good, and at that price it's the cheapest version there is.
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Mar 21, 2012 00:15
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Monster medals are for selling. You won't need them. The game won't give you enough skill points for everything and you can't respec; you should pick two things per character to specialize in. Unfortunately it doesn't tell you the important unlocks until later. But it's not hard enough that you'll screw yourself over. For the characters in order of recruitment, I recommend: Swords and Courage, anything because they're all good, Staves and anything else, and anything because they're all terrible. Dragon Quest 8 isn't just classic-inspired.
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Mar 21, 2012 23:02
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tenderjerk posted:So just to clarify, before I plunk down $5, the PSN version of FF6 still has the load time slowdown that the PS1 discs did? I never played the PS1 re-releases; is the load time a deal breaker? The PSN version of FF6 does indeed have Problems. Other, better ways to play it on your TV include:
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Mar 21, 2012 23:59
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WYA posted:Haha I just played Dragon Quest 8 to the point where you get Jessica and I just need to ask this question: whats the deal with RPGs and tit-bounce physics? Am I the only one who finds it ridiculous and slightly creepy? In this case, it's not Japan in general, but Akira Toriyama specifically. The man loves him some cheesecake.
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Mar 23, 2012 06:05
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WYA posted:I really like the art-style though. I'm not too big on most anime style things but this game is pleasantly goofy and also beautifully done with cell shading. I was reading that the game only lasts about 12 hours, so I guess I'm getting close to the half-way point :-/ Whoever told you that is a liar. This game can easily take you 80 hours to reach the end, and then there's post-game content. WYA posted:Edit: I've been spending a lot of time between towns looking for those unique monsters to fight and treasure chests, is it worthwhile to spend time doing this or am I going to make the game too easy? If you really overlevel yourself then you run the risk of making the random battles too easy to be interesting, but there's no wrong way to play a Dragon Quest game. There are suboptimal ways but you don't need to be optimal. It's easy-going. Just do what feels right.
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Mar 23, 2012 06:25
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HondaCivet posted:Over and over in Games, I see one person say that DQ is grindy, then immediately after, someone posts that it isn't. Which is it damnit? 1 and 2 demand that you grind; if you don't, you simply won't be powerful enough. With all the others excepting 8, the encounter rate is higher than average (although the battles are fast) but you don't need to seek out combat in order to remain strong enough; in fact, if you don't run from or otherwise avoid a goodly portion of the encounters, you may end up slightly overleveled. 6, 7, and 9 have advancement systems that are parallel to just gaining EXP, so you might be tempted to fight without progressing. 8 and especially 7 are very long games; 8 just has a lot of content and more detail than the series usually has, but 7 progresses very slowly. The bulk of 9 is in post-game content intended to feed into passive local multiplayer, so it only ends when you get sick of it. In that respect 9 eventually becomes a grind, albeit of a different sort than you usually expect in an RPG. 10 isn't out yet but it's to be an MMO, with mechanics unique for that genre but apparently influenced by 9's multiplayer. Dragon Quest's storytelling is minimalist and driven by small vignettes, mostly centered around single towns with nearby dungeons. Their modest scale makes them all the more human; more RPGs should be like Dragon Quest.
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Mar 26, 2012 22:37
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With respect to official English versions, 1-3 are on NES, and GBC. 4 is on NES and DS. 5 and 6 are DS only. 7 is PS1, 8 is PS2, and 9 is DS. There are fan translations of the SNES versions of 1-3 and 5. My personal favorite is 3 (recommend the GBC or SNES version), but it's hard to go wrong with any of them. 7 tends to drag on a bit, 2 is poorly-balanced and inconvenient, and 1 is sort of a relic, but one thing you can say about Dragon Quest is that they're very consistent. Each of them brings modest improvements and minor variations to a formula that was first proven in 1991. Half of them may give you preset characters instead of generics, some of them have class changes and others don't, one or two let you recruit monsters (a mechanic that was later diverted to a successful spin-off series of its own), but broadly speaking you know what you're getting into and you can confidently expect it to satisfy.
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Mar 26, 2012 23:09
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Azraden posted:Speaking of DQ, I actually picked up 9 for pretty cheap. I've never played a DQ game before, so what should I expect from it? Also, does the multiplayer not unlock until the main story is finished or does it open up in a plot-related place? You should expect a laid-back adventure with a huge amount of sidequests, ranging from MMO-style fetches to unlocking new classes to whole plotlines that continue developing post-game. You'll probably reach the final boss about 40 or 50 hours in, then keep playing for at least that long afterwards. The multiplayer is local only, and it unlocks once you reach a certain city fairly early on, and features related to or useful in multiplayer continually unlock as you attain other milestones in the plot.
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Mar 26, 2012 23:25
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HondaCivet posted:Maybe people are just confused about what "grindy" means? I always think of "grindy" as referring to games that require you to stop and repetitively defeat lots of monsters to gather enough XP/levels to get you through the next piece of content. Am I wrong? Maybe some people think that "grindy" is just having to fight a lot? "Grind" is one of those words used inconsistently. Dragon Quest 1 and 2 are grindy in the way you describe, but the rest are not. The rest are grindy in that they have relatively high encounter rates, but battles tend to be well-differentiated and end quickly.
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Mar 26, 2012 23:40
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DQ9's vocations (an idiosyncratic name for classes or jobs) are kind of a pain to unlock. Some of them are puzzle-like things you can do in particular battles, whereas others are just repetitive MMO-style quests. It is a complaint unique to that game in the series.
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Mar 26, 2012 23:55
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casual poster posted:Did they include this in the psp remake as well? No. The PSP remake is based on the GBA version, which is a much more conservative remake. A lot of gameplay elements were revised in the DS one only, for the sake of increasing the difficulty and complexity.
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Mar 27, 2012 02:36
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CheerGrrl92 posted:So following recommendations from this thread, I picked up DQ5. I ended up taking it back three days later though.. You don't have to do that. Did you ever try just going forward at your current power level? It leaves you at pretty much exactly the level you need to be. Don't upgrade all your gear in every new town; just buy what you can afford. If you really are too weak to proceed, then struggling through a few of the new area's stronger monsters will get you caught up significantly faster than walking in circles among weak monsters. CheerGrrl92 posted:With that said, is FF4 and FF6 going to be the same way? Are all the other DQ's the same way too? I remember someone saying DQ5 and earlier were the ones that were grindy.. All Dragon Quest games are balanced pretty much the same way, which is to say, you don't need to grind but you might be fooled into thinking that you do. Final Fantasy games have an even more forgiving difficulty level.
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Mar 27, 2012 05:44
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BadAstronaut posted:So, there's no continuing story or anything else..? 4, 5, and 6 all make very, very minor allusions to each other. It's not worth worrying over.
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Mar 27, 2012 23:01
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Baten Kaitos was creative to the point of virtual unplayability. You may be interested in this Let's Play of it.
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Apr 4, 2012 10:00
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joff_b posted:Something I was thinking about recently was how it would be cool if more RPGs had multiple battle themes just to stop people getting annoyed or bored with the music. Earthbound, Final Fantasy Tactics and The World Ends With You are the only games I've played where there's more than just Regular Battle Theme and Boss Battle Theme. The Fire Emblem and Ogre Battle games do this fairly well. There are quite a few that have two or three battle themes based on your current location, the type of enemy you're fighting, your party leader, or other factors, but there's still just one obvious "main" one. I know that the Paper Mario series gives each boss their own theme, but still just uses the one for common battles.
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Apr 4, 2012 18:02
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low-key-taco posted:Anyone know why nearly every japanese rpg have you playing teenagers when almost no western rpgs have you play as children or teenagers? Are the demographics really different (I know in America I've seen stories that suggest there are more adult than under 18 gamers but I dunno about Japan) or is it just taste? Japanese popular fiction in general tends to use younger protagonists than American. Japanese RPGs use teenagers more often because the reference pools that the designers of Japanese RPGs draw on use teenagers more often. If you want to know why that happens, you'd probably have to ask an opinionated sociologist, because I'm sure it's complicated.
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Apr 16, 2012 00:58
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BadAstronaut posted:With Chrono Trigger now done with, I'm going to pick up my next Nintendo DS RPG. I own both Final Fantasy IV and Dragon Quest VI (and V, but that turned out to be a pirate version that doesn't work on my DSi FFIV DS is sort of a controversial port. Common complaints are: the 3D doesn't look that good and mostly just increases loading times in battle, they elevated the difficulty level a bit too much, and the New Game+ system is pointlessly restrictive. If you love Dragon Quest, then you can't go wrong with More Dragon Quest, provided you're warned in advance about the unique problems of I, II, and VII, which at any rate don't apply to VI. So there's my recommendation.
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Apr 23, 2012 01:44
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) so I am going to play either of those now.
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The game will be properly balanced if you avoid the casinos, or you can give yourself a lasting advantage if you savescum for the best rewards. The odds in Dragon Quest casinos favor the player. Ask yourself these questions: Do I want to spend time gambling in a video game? Do I want to have early access to powerful equipment? The decision should be based entirely on what you expect would be fun; there are no surprises in the casino.
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Apr 25, 2012 01:27
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The thing about Golden Sun: Dark Dawn is that it is Golden Sun and if you already know whether you like Golden Sun then you'll know whether you can expect to like Dark Dawn. Any of the Dragon Quests is a good choice. VI is my favorite, but you just can't go wrong.
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May 3, 2012 21:02
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I think the appeal of it is that it has a pretty interesting class system (that it's not hard enough to require you to understand) and lots and lots of environmental puzzles. I can't speak for anyone else, but puzzles are like catnip to me; I'll overlook altogether too many other flaws.
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May 4, 2012 02:08
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If you dislike grinding and the occult, then you'd probably want to avoid SMT, because that series and its spinoffs are all about both of those things. Pokemon's fantasy but it's a contemporary sort of fantasy. Somehow I don't think you didn't know about that, though. Ditto the Mega Man Battle Network series (I don't know which of these are actually good). Valkyria Chronicles is Anime World War II, which is only a few decades out from being modern.
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May 11, 2012 20:46
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Pierce posted:I played this on PSP and loved it. Very nice use of weapons and strategy. No grinding required if you don't want to. Lots of stuff to unlock if you do. That'd be Valkyria Chronicles 2, I think, which received criticism for being much more anime than its predecessor on PS3.
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May 11, 2012 20:59
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If you purport to be an authority on video games, you should at least know the drat name. I could never get into the Ultima games, even though I tried. Something about the weird sideways graphics just makes it hard for me to look at.
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May 18, 2012 05:46
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Larian Studios should talk to anyone who'll listen, but I'm very curious how anybody could deem someone competent to cover RPGs who has never heard the name "Ultima" before.
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May 18, 2012 05:56
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nessin posted:Also can I assume you agree that every games journalist needs to know about Ultima, or did you just decline to answer? If you're covering RPGs, you should know about RPGs. That's all I said.
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May 18, 2012 06:13
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