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Caphi
Jan 6, 2012

INCREDIBLE

Verranicus posted:

I really hope Zestiria, Berseria and Symphonia PC all sold/sell well enough for them to keep porting titles over. I'd love to see poo poo like Vesperia, graces and Xillia on PC.

Actually the popular assumption has been that Berseria has free camera control to force the seamless battles to work, but suddenly I wonder if there wasn't a direction at some point to make the next Tales more PC-compatible.

(This is not why I'm in this thread, okay, I wanted to chat about Star Ocean but I had to come out of hiding early.)

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Caphi
Jan 6, 2012

INCREDIBLE

The White Dragon posted:

ok let's chat about star ocean

let's chat about how lovely it is that it isn't coming to pc

Well, I wanted to chat about it later after I got home and started the new one because I bought it because outside of the combat it looks like everything I ever wanted out of Tales of Zestiria and some stuff I didn't know I wanted out of Zestiria.

I'm going to use it as a test ground for PS4 streaming too because I want to do that when Berseria comes out as well.

Caphi
Jan 6, 2012

INCREDIBLE

Endorph posted:

be sure to tell us how it is, id be interested in impressions

I will do that and also I'll share footage. My current knowledge of it is it looks like a very pretty action RPG and I know basically nothing about the plot other than there are bad guys in space and I think they're making a bad thing or a superweapon or something, and the tiny girl has a mysterious power so that's where I'm coming from.

I watched a preview stream of it from last year's TGS and one of the audience questions was "the heroine doesn't leave partway through, right?" and I chuckled because I'm terrible.

Oh speaking of which I'm late to comment on that meltdown thing but I'll do it anyway: 2ch is awful and all their opinions are poo poo because they're like Gamers but without the veneer of "censorship" whatever that gaijin have to hide behind to feel respectable. I'm pretty sure they just shamelessly consider the pantycam a feature. However I think "害人" is kind of cute outside of being xenophobic and horrible.

Caphi fucked around with this message at 00:44 on Mar 31, 2016

Caphi
Jan 6, 2012

INCREDIBLE
Playing SO5 on YouTube from now until basically whenever I want to eat or sleep, and then at some future point after that, I dunno, I have no plans and I'm not going to have any presentation or commentary, I'm probably just going to hit Share whenever I'm playing. I'll archive it all for the sake of publishing the footage once I figure out how that works, but just an FYI generally. (Also I have never streamed to Youtube before so I don't know what I'm doing, technically.)

Caphi
Jan 6, 2012

INCREDIBLE
Immediate Star Ocean impressions:
  • This game is doing, technically, everything Tales of Zestiria did but a jillion times better.
  • It is really bad at telling you where to go. There was an entire bit where I got lost because someone told me to take some pass but all they gave me was its name, and every other route out of town was blocked but there didn't seem to be a map or pointer (the minimap is fairly small especially compared to the large areas). I got unlost by looking up the place in the in-game encyclopedia, where it said "in the southern part of such and such field." (I am really bad at remembering fantasy names, also.)
  • Fiore's appearance does not match her character at all.

Prism posted:

I like how when I clicked in to watch it was playing Valkyrie Profile music.

Not, like, nearly Valkyrie Profile music, or music in the style of Valkyrie Profile, just actual Valkyrie Profile music.

Yeah, I set it when I started for fun.

Caphi fucked around with this message at 04:05 on Mar 31, 2016

Caphi
Jan 6, 2012

INCREDIBLE

RadicalR posted:

Is this a good thing or bad thing?

For her character? I'm not sure I know her well enough to say, but in the ten minutes she was around the word that came to mind is "professional" (she is a royal magic researcher/expert mage) and this is the design I'm talking about :



No, wait:

Fiore Brunelly posted:

She wears rather revealing clothing. Her legs are marked with high-tier runes. Perhaps showing those off is a way for her to express pride in her talents.

So you see, it's actually empowering. I got nothing on the hair or the floating wings/tail.

Caphi
Jan 6, 2012

INCREDIBLE
PSA: The flip side to SO5's great real-time cutscene technology is that you cannot skip them.

On the plus side, I found the map.

Caphi
Jan 6, 2012

INCREDIBLE

Motto posted:

Welcome to 2004, tri-ace.

You can't even skip or fast-forward. There's no such thing as "press O to continue" anywhere, for better and for worse. And I'm not sure it's even a technical thing, I think it's just being stubborn about their immersive aesthetic. When they say conversations happen in real time, you get loving real time. There are some other oddities like talking to NPCs taking the form of a background bubble, but as a result, to get into a store you have to talk to the store NPC and then wait for their bubble to time out.

Also I was early on impressed by the game giving you more control of Fidel than most JRPGs but it's all for show, the game will block you from taking certain exits or restrict you to a specific zone when an event is active and all that bullshit.

It's mostly an solid RPG (so far, I should say), and very majestic even though I'm poo poo at combat as usual - I just get the sense that SO5 is still sort of trying to feel this UX out.

Caphi fucked around with this message at 06:10 on Apr 1, 2016

Caphi
Jan 6, 2012

INCREDIBLE
I can't deal with White Light because I like the song but every time I hear it I remember how excited I was in late 2014 and get sad.

Caphi
Jan 6, 2012

INCREDIBLE

Rascyc posted:

but is there space

There's space in the trailer I think, but I'm 5 hours into the game itself and no space (there's been a spaceship and a couple of spacemen).

The Colonel posted:

zestiria has lots of good music that i enjoy listening to. i hope that go shiina is involved in berseria, so that we can possibly get a good tales game soundtrack, and also a good tales game at the same time this time

I like the song that I assume is Velvet's theme, it's got an action-y mix in PV2 and a soft piano mix at the beginning of PV3. I don't know what it is but I support it.

Caphi
Jan 6, 2012

INCREDIBLE
I think Zestiria is pretty bad but the thing is that everyone else I know either thinks the plot is deep and good, or bland. I'm apparently the only one who thinks it's bad in a deep way.

Caphi
Jan 6, 2012

INCREDIBLE

ZenMasterBullshit posted:

Being partially paralysed and losing function in your legs is the most anime disease.

..."Minfillia"? :crossarms:

Caphi fucked around with this message at 16:29 on Apr 1, 2016

Caphi
Jan 6, 2012

INCREDIBLE
Which FF6s don't have horrible fundamental bugs, I keep thinking of playing it through someday but I know the original is a broken lump of software design and I don't have the nostalgia to deal around it.

Caphi
Jan 6, 2012

INCREDIBLE

Endorph posted:

Who knows, but a lot of things. If you ever replay Zestiria, look at the cutscenes for the first ten hours or so. Everything is super janky and the cuts are all over the place in a way that suggests they were slapped together to try and piece some sort of first act together out of the scattered pieces of what was either a full alisha route or a very different plot that got left on the cutting room floor. My personal favorite is the fact that the war scenes flip between day, afternoon, and night about 6 times with no transition to imply time passing.

Once Rose joins, the game's plot suddenly feels a lot more cohesive and the cutscenes actually function like they should, and they even have little side gags and details that suggest actual time was put into them.

On the other hand, all those Hard Choices the game kept presenting as a feature dry up instantly when you get to the first war segment. The only one left is the sidequest in Ladylake, I think.

Caphi
Jan 6, 2012

INCREDIBLE

Endorph posted:

the dagger/pipe thing with rose kind of balloons out into a couple of mini sidequests. that's about it.

I'm pretty sure the "original" plot was about the struggle to maintain hope ("zest") amid cynics and push on to "light the world". You can see it coming together in a lot of the early briefs. There's an entire segment in Ladylake that invites Sorey to sell out; this also comes back when he's forced to go to war. Alisha's is "only one with faith with a corrupt establishment working against her" and her nemesis is the Council or whatever represented by Bartlowe, also an early reveal who vanishes from the game after the first war. Lucas also probably fits into this in some way but I'm not 100% sure how it would have gone.

The choices were part of that - I don't know if they were going to affect the broader plot (probably not?) but I think they represented Sorey being forced to make sacrifices between doing his job, following his heart, and making people happy. I think, if there was an "original" Zesty, he still sacrificed himself at the end of it.

Caphi
Jan 6, 2012

INCREDIBLE

wateyad posted:

Choices don't need to have an actual in game effect to be an important tool in video game storytelling.

(Please note that this post is not intended to imply any kind of judgement with regards to the quality of the specific execution found in Tales of Zestiria.)

Agree on both counts.

Speaking of bogus choices, the not-quite-freedom in SO5 is getting to me. It's the same cutscenes only they start without warning, you can't fast-show any lines, and they put arbitrary borders up so they can let you walk slowly around in it. Either you can't leave until the lines are over, or you can but you shouldn't because changing areas or starting combat will interrupt the scene!

I went into a building and took a side path to snag some chests, and the scene area stopped like a foot in front of the chests and I hadn't actually triggered the scene yet. It's not the first time in the game something was just outside a radius that something was about to happen in, either.

It's like Zestiria, a really nice idea with a hundred tiny, infuriating shortcomings in execution, and Zestiria, if nothing else, at least had its cutscenes on straight when it bothered to do them.

Caphi
Jan 6, 2012

INCREDIBLE

Cake Attack posted:

2.5 stars with 188 reviews. the distribution is actually pretty even though, lots of 2s and 3s

Dunno if I'd go that far. So far it feels more ambitious beyond its means than like anything is particularly hosed about it. Though the combat is... there are, again, a lot of little annoying things about it, but one big one is this is the second action RPG I've played in as many years where they set you up with a move rock-paper-scissors system and then put you up against enemy groups and it never seems to go well.

Caphi
Jan 6, 2012

INCREDIBLE

Tae posted:

Do you have 7 party members yet?

I had 7 extremely briefly. I'm back to 6.

The problem is Anne and Emerson joined pretty recently, and Victor has been gone for most of that. There is a segment where you get Victor and three of his soldiers that are clearly substitutes for Emerson, Anne, and Fiore, but this is before you have Riria.

Frankly, I think combat was a bit of a clusterfuck by 4. The camera isn't as offensive as Zestiria, to be sure, but it's too low to the ground by default and it's easy (for me at least) to lose track of things between some large enemies and increasingly impressive spell effects. More targets also makes it really hard to get whatever Reserve Gauge you get for guarding attacks, which is enough of a pain just by default. (Also, I have had limited combat in enclosed spaces, and I have a feeling encounter zones will continue to be relatively open, since encounters are fixed instead of wandering.)

Also the entire short/long basic attack system feels like playing the original Tales of Phantasia, and while I still love Phantasia, it's definitely not for that part of it.

Caphi
Jan 6, 2012

INCREDIBLE

ImpAtom posted:

The only 'importer and summary site' I've seen dislike it are ones associated with They Who Shall Not Be Named who are thinly veiled complaining about panties so I'll wait and see.

I'm an importer and I am very anti-panties and I am posting complaints here such as I have them and you are free to take them with as much salt as you like.

Actually I haven't seen 2ch complaining about panties lately either, nor clearly are they flooding Amazon with 1-star reviews - and some of them are certainly complaining. (I mean, Zestiria's 1-star review flood was undoubtedly a hit campaign but there was a lot of complaining about the combat and plot there, too.)

I think 2ch seriously exaggerates how lovely things are, and the Alisha thing was a huge embarrassment to me as a person who honestly disliked Zestiria before it came out in the west, but there are such things as valid complaints.

Caphi
Jan 6, 2012

INCREDIBLE

ImpAtom posted:

I wasn't referring to you, natch.

I know you weren't, I'm just saying I don't know which ones you did mean but I'm an importer with totally non-panty issues with the game (I'm not prepared to say I dislike it yet but we'll see) and I would believe that others exist who have gotten to disliking it.

Caphi
Jan 6, 2012

INCREDIBLE

Super Ninja Fish posted:

The ENEMY

I have no choice

Better be careful

I won't lose

This looks bad

Energy Arrow

Energy Arrow

Energy Arrow x 20

I think people recommended I play SO2 as a joke. Or else they hated me.

Unexpectedly weak!

Caphi
Jan 6, 2012

INCREDIBLE

Million Ghosts posted:

SO has basically always been good to really drat good battle systems stuck in a casing ranging from mediocore to torturous.

Gonna gripe about the battle system, then.
  • Coming from Tales, two short and two long skills is embarrassing, but I guess that's just an SO thing.
  • Also coming from Tales, the entire system is effectively Semi-Auto like it's still 1996, also just an SO thing.
  • I have whiffed with an L-heavy basic attack, because it involves running up to the enemy and doing a slow jump attack (like in Tales of Phantasia!) so it can miss if the enemy moves.
  • poo poo's hard to see in melees, camera is a major contributor. This is especially bad in the war segments with encounters that spawn continual enemy soldiers with friendly soldiers also in play, which are really hard to tell apart. The second one takes place at loving night. At this point you really might as well just slam O and X alternately and let the game pick your target.
  • Also, targeting is kind of obnoxious.
  • poo poo's also hard to see while the bigger spell effects are going off.
  • The big triangle mechanic they talked up is largely hosed by timing. The entire system is based on countering but the action delay is heavy enough that I'm having a really hard time actually reacting to enemies, plus, again, the thing with enemies being hard to see sometimes, and the fact that if you're trying to bait enemies, sometimes they'll just turn around and go for somebody else.
  • In the specific case of light attacks vs. heavy attacks (it may be that these are general issues but heavy attacks are simply easiest for me to see because they have a big obvious effect): certain enemies can use heavy attacks basically instantly. I'm convinced a bee's entire heavy charge-up is faster than Fidel's light attack. I have also hit heavier enemies with light attacks and not interrupted their heavy attacks, so there's probably some hidden attack weight bullshit involved. And there's not much in the way of attack splash so if something that isn't in front of you/your target starts charging a heavy, regardless, you might as well just accept it.
  • Oh yeah, and the whole "hard to tell what's going on sometimes" issue isn't helped by the fact that spell-chanting and heavy attack effects are utterly identical for all combatants.
  • Doesn't matter though because you can combo enemies and the AI will be attacking so why sit there and bait a counter to begin with, especially when there's good odds that the enemy will just start ignoring you, apparently.
  • Entering combat while running (holding X) will automatically trigger your L-heavy skill (also holding X). Because combat is seamless there's little time to let go. Do not run near enemies. (Also don't run because the exploration camera isn't sensitive enough so you basically have to slow down to rotate the camera whenever you turn a corner, but that's not a combat gripe. Whoops.)
  • Death to MP.

e tl;dr: like a lot of it comes down to the fact that they made this technical play/rewards system and it's all defensive and not really reliable, so you might as well just attack most of the time, and you get so few skills that attacking is kind of boring. I've done a lot of alternating light and heavy basic attacks because that's how you cancel-combo, sometimes mix a Double Slash in there.

Unrelatedly, I made this video to illustrate a very specific gripe I have with the cutscene system:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cR-RMSb6AWk

Also FYI I have been continuing to stream passively while I've been playing, will probably continue to do so, and it's all up on my channel if anyone wants gameplay video for any reason. There's no structure or presentation to it though, just raw footage.

Caphi fucked around with this message at 00:10 on Apr 3, 2016

Caphi
Jan 6, 2012

INCREDIBLE

Million Ghosts posted:

oh wow that sounds rough. lots of those things are tolerable on their own but that sounds like a dud of a battle system with all that together. i wasn't super hyped for SO5 or anything but between that and gameplay videos it's in bargain bin only territory now

A huge part of the problem is that the triangle is really obnoxious to try to actively play, but if you mostly ignore it except when you see an opportunity or can afford to focus on a boss, it's a passable sort of action-RPG, I think? Kind of simplistic, but it's not like "hit circle when you see the blue fire" helps that part much anyway. That kind of system didn't exactly elevate Tales of Zestiria over Graces.

Caphi
Jan 6, 2012

INCREDIBLE
Update: fighting a boss and definitely not interrupting his heavy attacks with my lights, this triangle is bullshit.

Caphi
Jan 6, 2012

INCREDIBLE
Two things:

If you play SO5 like me, you will pause and try to have someone use an item on someone. You will select someone, select an item, and then select a target. And then you will find out that in the first step, you didn't select someone to use an item, you did an actual Character Change.

Also, I made it to space.

Caphi
Jan 6, 2012

INCREDIBLE

Davincie posted:

jrpgs will be the new call of duty

And they'll all have seamless transitions.

Caphi
Jan 6, 2012

INCREDIBLE

wateyad posted:

Every full 3D Tales of game excpet Graces, Zestiria and maybe the Xillias would be massively improved by removing the z-axis from the battle system. Jamming sidescrolling combat into a full 3D environment like that is weird and awkward.

Ideally you'd make all your attacks not basically side-scrolling, which is what they've been trying to do. The game still has to aim for you, but that problem is old enough that the first thing 3D Zelda did was add a lock-on feature.

Berseria might play more like a brawler - the first thing someone said to me when the camera controls got revealed was "oh, just like a Warriors game."

Caphi
Jan 6, 2012

INCREDIBLE

wateyad posted:

I thought the implication was clear in my post that the games I listed weren't just sidescrolling combat jammed into 3D?

Yeah I was agreeing.

Caphi
Jan 6, 2012

INCREDIBLE

wateyad posted:

It'll play about as much like Graces and Zestiria as they play like each other but maybe (hopefully) you'll be able to free aim attacks.

Probably not, I suspect. I don't think Tales is going to make the kind of attacks that make this work and I'm almost sure that, at least, Berseria is not already doing that.

I think even if you take side-scrolling out of the picture, which you should, Endorph is fundamentally right. Tales isn't going to make players precisely aim themselves in 360 degrees, that's not its style. Tales doesn't even make players aim themselves vertically in the 2D games with aerial bits.

Caphi
Jan 6, 2012

INCREDIBLE

Endorph posted:

*looking at the greatest combat systems ever put into a video game*

hm. what if we made this suck instead? i think it's worth considering.

Vesperia had multiple solo battles against groups of assassins and they were unbearable bullshit.

Caphi
Jan 6, 2012

INCREDIBLE

Verranicus posted:

Basically, don't gently caress with Tales games please

I agree, Tales should still play like

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OfbbuDA-nOQ&t=6s

wateyad posted:

What if pressing an attack button while the stick is neutral aims towards your target but pressing while holding a direction maintains the direction? There's kind of not really a good reason for what they've done to attack mapping if you can't free aim attacks. Honestly most of the attacks in Graces and Zestiria have forgiving enough hitboxes that full free aim wouldn't be awful in those contexts anyway. Not to mention there'd probably be some amount of autocorrect like how other modern fast paced technical action games work when you aren't locked on (if they have a lock on at all).

Graces and Zestiria still have the quick, pointed combo openers on the 1 and 2 columns and all indications suggest Berseria has artes that fill the same role (Velvet's Swallow Dance is basically Tiger Foot and Tiger Blade was a forward 2-arte in Zestiria).

Also I think the big attacks there have arcs but are still basically centered or else have a follow component like Heaven's Wrath or Searing Gale.

e: projectiles won't work in 3D Tales without auto aim, definitely. There's no full Demon Fang as far as anyone knows but Velvet has that "throw a wheel of fire" arte too.

Caphi fucked around with this message at 05:16 on Apr 3, 2016

Caphi
Jan 6, 2012

INCREDIBLE
One kind of thing that's never going to happen in 3D is a little boss mechanic from Eternia: Undine, the first Greater Craymel, is a "don't just keep firing artes" tutorial. She has an attack, Spear of Baptism, that will gently caress up everybody on the line, but it can be stopped at Reid by his shield.

I've always thought that was cool.

Caphi
Jan 6, 2012

INCREDIBLE

Phantasium posted:

Huh, that's what you were supposed to do? I always thought it was a tutorial for the obscure "make everybody jump at once" command. The one that had like one other use in the game at all.

It might be that too but it's probably easier and cooler to just stop it.

Unless I'm full of poo poo, I guess. Eternia is one of those games I'm afraid I'll be disillusioned with if I play again.

Caphi
Jan 6, 2012

INCREDIBLE
New Game + doesn't automatically let you keep all your levels but it will still let you do stuff like get experience bonuses and start with end game Cores.

Caphi
Jan 6, 2012

INCREDIBLE
The only flaw Milla has as a protagonist is that officially she is half of a protagonist.

Caphi
Jan 6, 2012

INCREDIBLE
I didn't have that problem, I got Miyuki Sawashiro Milla.

Caphi
Jan 6, 2012

INCREDIBLE

ImpAtom posted:

I really like Milla. It's also sort of appealing to have a Godlike figure in a JRPG whose response to humans is "haha, poo poo, you guys are pretty amazing, keep on keeping on, I'm here to help" as opposed to being distant and untouchable or evil and in need of slaying.

X has one of those, though! I believe you punch him right in the face.

My favorite antitheist video game on the planet is Tales of Destiny 2 because it posits a God who is actually omnipotent, omnipresent, and omnibenevolent, and the party decides this is terrible and all agree to murder her.

Caphi
Jan 6, 2012

INCREDIBLE

ImpAtom posted:

Oh, it does, but it's nice for it not to be the only option. I would also be okay with Milla replacing Maxwell in all future Tales games. :colbet:

Maybe if they ever un-retire Maxwell again. I think coming back for Xillia was a special case.

Zestiria was also god-friendly to a fault; it basically said humans are hosed by their own nature in the absence of faith and/or actual grace. I have two mutually non-exclusive wild speculations that Berseria will involve freeing God from the subjugation of the bad guy, and that it ends with your new God being



this kid.

Caphi
Jan 6, 2012

INCREDIBLE

Crabtree posted:

Maybe that's why I didn't like Zestria, it was just blatant religious propaganda without naming any sort of religion. Just YOU ARE WORTHLESS AND MUST WORSHIP A FAITH.

Well, the religion is Shinto - there was some stuff in the Tales thread a very long time ago on the implicit/philosophical parallels between them and the Five are all named after Shinto figures or concepts. But you certainly don't have to get that or care about it to feel like you do.

Libluini posted:

Is that lisp only in the Japanese original? I could have sworn I've listened to Milla for hours and never noticed a lisp.

It's only in the English, I played it in Japanese and I've never actually heard it.

Caphi fucked around with this message at 17:43 on Apr 4, 2016

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Caphi
Jan 6, 2012

INCREDIBLE
gently caress, my first quote not edit

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