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Caphi posted:Hey, you better watch out! He knows about Team Destiny and Team Symphonia. You have broken my heart, sir or madam. But saved me money, so I guess we're even.
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Aug 21, 2015 03:20
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| # ? May 22, 2024 04:54 |
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i am almost at the end of hearts r now in the volcano and i'm very sick of the combat. is zestiria more satisfying than just one attack button, 4 moves, a block, and no dodge?
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Aug 21, 2015 03:29
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I will answer both your questions by finally explaining SC, because this is a little complex but not actually bad. Or, to be more accurate, if you find the combat in Zestiria bad, whether in comparison to Graces or otherwise, it probably won't be because of the chain system. You have a fixed chain size of 4 (3 while Armitized), much like AC. You can extend this one at a time by a Same 4 skill (the same equipment skill exactly 4 times), or by specific high level equipment and titles. All artes, spells, and steps are counted as actions. If you spend any action on a Base Arte, you get the Base Arte corresponding to what step you're on (if you have Exceed it cycles around), not the last Base Arte you used like Graces. Oh, and you need the SC to power all those moves, but SC adjustments are a whole other thing. This means you can't do a self-sustaining combo like you could with CC (unless you're willing to spend BG, which is limited and limits your combo cadence), and you have to plan more carefully if you intend to hit with a specific chain. On the other hand, step->step->step->quick spell is a totally valid and extremely useful tactic, so the new system is great for spells, just because stepping counts as a chain element for the purpose of accelerating them. It definitely puts the focus on the attack/defend cycle, to a greater extent than even one of the CC systems, because there's no way to extend an attack sequence without Chain Blast. In Destiny, you could crit-chain. In Graces, you could dodge-chain or stun-chain or whatever (I did not ever get pro at Graces). Hearts didn't really do this because regenerating EG amounted to stepping back and brandishing your weapon a bit, unless you got attacked while recovering (and also you could crit-chain). And, in addition to running out of steam by necessity, it takes a bit for SC to regenerate if you spend it all at once. It comes back faster if you defend or dodge, which are both required to generate BG anyway. I'd say it's a more rhythmic Tales than certainly anything else you'd call Destiny, unless you were as bad at Graces as me.
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Aug 21, 2015 05:32
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I kind of think you're coming down too hard on Zestiria. Let's not forget that Graces had a second chance to address a number of grinding and CC return issues in Graces F. Zestiria has not had that opportunity. I wish it would, because at its core, it's a great game. Moreover, I'd say dodging for CC return is more akin to flash guarding in Destiny r, and if you dodge in Zestiria, you get huge BG returns. If you go right from Destiny R to Graces F, you will notice that it's way harder to combo to your heart's content. Team Destiny clearly made a choice to reduce CC return, and to make it harder to abuse weaknesses, when they made Graces. Similarly, I think the developers felt that people were stepping too often in Graces and kind of just accidentally getting the reward from dodging. Recall that the director's cut of ToDr also nerfed flash guarding. Zestiria's integrating the stepping into the chain makes you think twice about just spamming steps, like people used to spam the down + square charge flash guard in the original ToDr. The reward for dodging being BG directly benefits your ability to combo. You shouldn't be afraid to use your BG to chain blast or banish. They both allow you to continue your combos and, if well timed, your ensuing combo should cover much of the BG lost. One nice thing about the new system is it lets you enter Zestiria's equivalent of the a-arte chain at different points in the chain and the combo. It's much more of a free system, it's just that you have to keep the number you're on in mind. I think, perhaps, they should have made the number more obvious (maybe a colour or a sound), but I didn't really mind. Still, I will agree that Zestiria's battle system is worse than Graces at the end of the day. I can think of a few minor changes that may make me change my opinion, however. Arcane artes shouldn't accelerate casting; they should just bounce off. Arcane artes and spells should have two enemy attributes per, not one or none. (Also, there shouldn't be any bosses where you can hit 0 attributes, unless they also want to give elemental weaknesses to those bosses. That was a dick move.) They should let you map more artes. I like what they did to basically let you use all the artes on one control scheme, but I'd still like more variety. Of course, the gear/skill system and the AI still needs a major overhaul to really make the game great. I don't think that's really the core battle system's fault, though. It just really negatively effects it. Imagine, if the skills were more like Graces or Destiny r, you'd have way more exceed, way more BG, way more BG and SC return by end game. And so you should. It's odd that you're locked to 4 or 3 from start to end.
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Aug 21, 2015 06:49
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I know you've actually played this game way more than me (because by the time I got to the postgame/DLC I didn't care anymore) but I'm not really convinced that you can generate an entire BG in three attacks. Back when I was actively trying to grind Blasts, I got like a quarter of a BG from a really good dodge, though I don't remember how cheesed I was on titles. I'm more inclined to believe you can get a lot done if you're up to 7 max BG, but honestly, who has the goddamn time to get all the Skills for it (and you still have to regenerate them). Despite everything, I still like Zestiria's LMBS. I was never good at finding degenerate chains, and I prefer to get good at the rules rather than break them, so Zestiria's chain system actually appeals to me. My Exceed 1 full-chain-spell strategy got me through the game for exactly as long as I wanted to play it anyway. The only time I've ever tried to lock-chain is that one three arte chain Chromatus has, and it was a very deliberate decision for me, and that's because every time I actually broke out the Chromatus was to get a boss goddamn over with already. (Oh, I also did infinite Double Tap a few times. God, Xillia 2 was dumb.) I did say it wasn't the combo system that got me frustrated with Zestiria, didn't I? Far from it. It was the writing, and apart from that, it was the Skill Table. The Skill Table is the worst. God. My main problem with Chain Blast-based gameplay, other than never bothering to have more than 3 BG and never having the kind of playstyle where I cared for it or got good at it, is that it means you're never using 4-artes and you're probably not using Arcane Artes (because the good ones will take most of your 50 SC per cycle, if not more). Also, you're not using Armitization, and at that point you really might as well just play Graces. footnote: The interrupt cycle was actually a very good idea for making things interesting, especially with the way Armitization has attack types. And in a Seraph's Crucible, you can turn it on monsters really easily and it's great. It's the AI that's bringing the system down like an anchor. e: I guess you could probably Skill the gently caress out of your BG regeneration, but I already feel like I spent way too much time synthesizing 50 kinds of rings, and it's even shittier before you can forge Unsigned. If I was willing to judge a game based solely on endgame resources instead of its actual progress curve, I'd be way friendlier towards Vesperia. Caphi fucked around with this message at 22:39 on Aug 21, 2015 |
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Aug 21, 2015 22:18
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I think their main issue with AI has been them, well, barely or not touching whatever they had from prior games at all. The more they change the combat systems up and add new special features, the worse the AI seems to get mostly because it still behaves like the old systems are in play and doesn't have anything added to take advantage of new systems. So you get Zestiria AI using arcane artes on casters and trying to heal HP on allies suffering from a status, you get them just not putting any AI/barebones AI in Xillia to handle linking, in Vesperia the fatal strike system might as well have not existed as far as the AI cared, Graces/F and Xillia 2 AI don't know how to weakness system, etc. The most hilarious thing is Hearts R, as much as I hate basically everything else about it, having the best AI in the entire series. Sure, they don't counterguard on their own and don't think I've ever seen them chase, but they combo like beasts, you can full party guard and thus get counterguards for them and you can even set up a gambit-like system for all of their stuff. Basically, it's both the strongest AI and has the most ways to cover/make up for where it's weak. For most of Zestiria's bad stuff adding in the gambit system alone would have sufficed for fixing things, so really don't know why they didn't unless it would've tanked battle fps even more than PS3 tales titles already tank. Definitely not going to say that AI design for games like this is easy--it's really hard to find the right balance between acceptable and "too good" since the latter can ruin a game real quick--but to me it's largely been unacceptable ever since free run. Like I'm sure you could even argue Hearts R is too close to the "too good" side of things when it comes to comboing, but the rest of the series has been so bad that it felt refreshing.
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Aug 22, 2015 00:43
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At least they're not reusing enemy models from Abyss anymore or at least I think they aren't
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Aug 22, 2015 01:32
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Yeah, it's definitely true that a lot of Tales poor AI is likely due to some legacy code. But that's not even my main gripe with Zesitira's AI. No. What I take issue with is that Zestiria didn't even bother to give you settings for the defining aspect of the game: kamui. I'm sure it wouldn't have taken them much time at all to allow me to decide when to go into kamui and when to drop it. Just breaking it off from the BG settings would have been a huge improvement. If it was done right, there should have been an AI setting for each kamui, and there should have been a setting for entering/dropping kamui. I'd also like if they brought back Graces' A-arte and B-arte frequency use setting, but whatever. I mean, basically, I'm not even asking for them to fix their horrible AI. I'm just asking for more settings. Graces had a setting for when to go into Accel, right? Just like that.
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Aug 22, 2015 05:41
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Hey guys, I managed to get my Japanese Vesperia PS3 save working with the translated version. Is there any way to access the Vesperia DLC I bought from PSN on a CFW PS3 with the translated version?
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Aug 23, 2015 08:55
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Just like you normally would, download it from PSN. I dunno how you connect to PSN on a CFW console, though.
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Aug 23, 2015 10:37
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Meanwhile: whatever happened to that Tales of Rebirth translation team? They probably died? shucks. I know Rebirth is "Hey, remember that racism subplot from Symphonia? Let's make an entire game around that!", but for whatever reason Rebirth is the untranslated game I want to play the most 
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Aug 24, 2015 04:39
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because it's the only untranslated game that is a full console game and isn't a sequel or remake
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Aug 24, 2015 05:09
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None of the PS2 tales of games have full fan patches because the PCSX2 debugger was horrible to the point that modern revisions don't even include it. Lack of a quality debugger made adding features, like subtitles during battle/post battle, and even just inserting the text kind of a pain. Now the guy who worked on making PPSSPP's great is working on PCSX2's for the Destiny R translation project so that's been largely revitalized and if things keep pace you might see a patch in a year or two. Destiny 2 and Rebirth are on hold, but I imagine the work from Destiny R will help and/or they'd just focus on the PSP releases. If you don't mind playing with a script nearby on a phone or something, I believe there's an Italian translation of both Destiny 2 and Rebirth that somebody ran through google translate and edited for english. Unlike going from eastern to western languages, google translate is at least decent for western to western and I believe the editor did know Italian and cleaned it up where it looked off. Haven't actually used them, but I remember reading that they were good translations of the Italian at least--dunno if the original Italian translator did a good job or not.
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Aug 24, 2015 08:54
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Decus posted:If you don't mind playing with a script nearby on a phone or something, I believe there's an Italian translation of both Destiny 2 and Rebirth that somebody ran through google translate and edited for english. Unlike going from eastern to western languages, google translate is at least decent for western to western and I believe the editor did know Italian and cleaned it up where it looked off. Haven't actually used them, but I remember reading that they were good translations of the Italian at least--dunno if the original Italian translator did a good job or not. I don't know if it's the same one but the Rebirth translation I got from GameFAQs years ago was really well done and covered all plot dialog and all the skits, including the PSP exclusive ones.
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Aug 24, 2015 14:50
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Destiny 2 and Rebirth both had PSP ports, though. That's how I played them (I did not have a PS2).
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Aug 24, 2015 17:46
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Checked gamefaqs and they actually both have good Japanese to English translations too. It was Destiny 2 that had the Italian one. Will probably check those out the next time I feel like playing either. And yeah, looks like a separate team is actually working on patching both the PSP and the PS2 versions of Rebirth in parallel to the Destiny R team. They also want to try to hack PSP version features into the PS2 version and they're translating it into 4 languages among other "wow that's super ambitious you guys might be done in like 3-4 more years over what you've already done" things. Text insertion/formatting is hard enough when you've got one language but when you're working it for multiple and not wanting to give up accuracy to spacing issues that's just all the effort. Like, more effort than official localisations put in when they have direct access to the devs--they usually just manipulate the translation to make things work. And they also won't want to release any language/version/etc. before the other. Basically, hope you don't mind reading the scripts as you play.
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Aug 24, 2015 20:31
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IS there anything I need to know before I play vesperia? Like missible poo poo and such.
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Aug 29, 2015 16:07
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The Taint Reaper posted:IS there anything I need to know before I play vesperia? Like missible poo poo and such. Taint Reaper, this is mean.
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Aug 29, 2015 16:18
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Oxxidation posted:Taint Reaper, this is mean. I've had the special edition of Vesperia for years but I have yet to spend more than an hour with it. But after beating Abyss I want to do play the supposed "good one game" now, because I really liked Xillia 1 and 2.
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Aug 29, 2015 16:24
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There is so much missable poo poo in Vesperia you're probably better off not worrying about it and pretending it isn't there. Even the dudes who translated the Japanese version had to ask in this thread whether a cutscene could be triggered or not.
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Aug 29, 2015 16:31
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Like Abyss, it has a million different missable sidequests, but you really shouldn't care about them on your initial playthrough because the game has enough content just in the main story.
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Aug 29, 2015 16:31
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If there one simple piece of advice to catch stuff: after any major story point that ends in a town, sleep in that town's inn until you stop getting scenes. Many of the game's sidequests are triggered this way.
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Aug 29, 2015 16:33
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The Taint Reaper posted:IS there anything I need to know before I play vesperia? Like missible poo poo and such. Dont sell any weapons.
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Aug 31, 2015 17:19
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KoB posted:Dont sell any weapons. 100% this
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Aug 31, 2015 17:34
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Wasn't there something about not upgrading one of Karol's starting weapons in the 360 version? Since I think it had two paths and one was obtainable some other way while the other was unique. Kind of like the trollforge in Abyss where if you wanted item collector in 2 playthroughs you had to know the Bow option was available in Din's shop.
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Aug 31, 2015 21:35
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Decus posted:Wasn't there something about not upgrading one of Karol's starting weapons in the 360 version? Since I think it had two paths and one was obtainable some other way while the other was unique. Kind of like the trollforge in Abyss where if you wanted item collector in 2 playthroughs you had to know the Bow option was available in Din's shop. Yes. (Mild spoilers I guess?) Karol's default weapon, the Karolian Hammer, has 2 upgrades, the Karolian Hammer +1 and the Karolian Sword. The +1 can be upgraded into the sword, but not the other way around, and you only ever get one of them, the one Karol starts with. If you upgrade to +1, then to Sword you're fine, but if you upgrade straight from Karolian Hammer to Karolian Sword you're screwed out of the +1 for the run. This only really matters if you're trying to 100% the collectors book, as the skills you get from the Karolian Hammer +1 Half Damage, Quarter Damage, and Min Damage are clearly not necessary or even useful. LanceKing2200 fucked around with this message at 22:37 on Aug 31, 2015 |
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Aug 31, 2015 22:34
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LanceKing2200 posted:Half Damage, Quarter Damage, and Min Damage It should be noted that the game doesnt tell you that these skills are basically auto-equipped since theyre only 1 point each. If youre suddenly not doing damage this is why, just un-equip them.
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Sep 5, 2015 00:04
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So how is Tales of Legendia? Is it worth seeking out a copy? I remember getting it as a kid but not ever getting too far in it.
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Sep 11, 2015 10:40
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Kinda bad gameplay, really ugly graphics, decent but awkwardly executed plot, amazing music.
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Sep 11, 2015 11:33
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LanceKing2200 posted:This only really matters if you're trying to 100% the collectors book, as the skills you get from the Karolian Hammer +1 Half Damage, Quarter Damage, and Min Damage are clearly not necessary or even useful. Those skills are extremely useful for lazily grinding out Grade in the later game. Though that said, you don't explicitly need Karol in the party for that unless you want to level him up a bunch for fighting.
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Sep 11, 2015 11:36
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ZenMasterBullshit posted:So how is Tales of Legendia? Is it worth seeking out a copy? I remember getting it as a kid but not ever getting too far in it. Endorph posted:Kinda bad gameplay, really ugly graphics, decent but awkwardly executed plot, amazing music. What Endorph said. The gameplay is a step down from even Tales of Symphonia but it's around Tales of Eternia levels of playable, the random encounter rate is rather high in rather bland-esque dungeons, the graphical style is all chibi so you'll either love it or loathe it, the plot is pretty interesting but awkward in that all the character development is done in the second half of the game which is unvoiced, the characters are all entertaining and the music is fantastic. It's a game which I wish had gotten a remake because it could easily fix everything bad about the game but have its good points shine through. So is it worth getting? Depends on how expensive it is I guess but I wouldn't pay too much for a copy.
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Sep 11, 2015 14:06
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Cubey posted:Those skills are extremely useful for lazily grinding out Grade in the later game. Though that said, you don't explicitly need Karol in the party for that unless you want to level him up a bunch for fighting. Shut it you. Karol is great 
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Sep 11, 2015 19:28
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I kind of want another 2D LMBS, though.
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Sep 11, 2015 19:46
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Caphi posted:I kind of want another 2D LMBS, though. Maybe if they still had multiple teams to be able to dedicate one to a side project but that's never happening again. And then there'd be no guarantee it wouldn't just be another Alfa System-quality wank.
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Sep 11, 2015 19:52
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Phantasium posted:Maybe if they still had multiple teams to be able to dedicate one to a side project but that's never happening again. Alfa System itself has only phoned in bad Abyss knockoffs like Radiant Mythology and Innocence. Their 2D contribution was Destiny 2, which was ambitiously misguided at worst. (But that was ages ago, so who knows.)
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Sep 11, 2015 20:03
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What I'd like to see now is them go through with games like Tales of Vs. and Twin Brave again except instead of trying to do it themselves actually give them to the companies that could make it work i.e. Tales of Vs. by ArcSys and Twin Brave by Omega Force.
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Sep 11, 2015 20:08
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Their more recent outsourcing studio of choice for Tales of and Tales of derived games has been Seventh Chord rather than Alfa System.
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Sep 11, 2015 20:30
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I don't think Hearts did so well, so I don't know if they will making any more Tales games. I hope they do, I enjoyed Hearts.
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Sep 11, 2015 20:57
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Good av
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Sep 11, 2015 21:07
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I beat Tales of the Abyss It's a game that just doesn't know how to wrap things up. It's always Do A, B, and C and then someone goes oh wait we forgot D! Then it's run back and forth to places you have already been and it felt like it should have ended eons ago.
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Sep 12, 2015 20:08
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