Register a SA Forums Account here!
JOINING THE SA FORUMS WILL REMOVE THIS BIG AD, THE ANNOYING UNDERLINED ADS, AND STUPID INTERSTITIAL ADS!!!

You can: log in, read the tech support FAQ, or request your lost password. This dumb message (and those ads) will appear on every screen until you register! Get rid of this crap by registering your own SA Forums Account and joining roughly 150,000 Goons, for the one-time price of $9.95! We charge money because it costs us money per month for bills, and since we don't believe in showing ads to our users, we try to make the money back through forum registrations.
 
  • Locked thread
Sir Ilpalazzo
Sep 4, 2012
I've been reading a lot of good things about these games, and that Gamasutra interview that was just posted is making me want to jump on these. I was going to go for Oath of Felghana first, but I prefer my action games to be more linear and focused, and people said Origins is a good entry point, so I think I'll go for that first.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Sir Ilpalazzo
Sep 4, 2012
I just played through the Origins demo. I wasn't feeling it at first because the basic enemies felt boring to fight (although I was only on Normal), but the boss was incredibly fun and took a bunch of tries to take down. I'm probably going to buy the game before the sale ends, but I have a few questions. Are non-boss parts of the game more interesting than the demo part, and is there an option to remap the controls? I screwed up a lot during the boss fight because I felt like the jump and attack buttons needed to be reversed, but I didn't see any option for that in the menu.

Sir Ilpalazzo
Sep 4, 2012
I'm playing through Origin as my first game and I really dislike how you move around when you attack. When I'm surrounded on every direction by stuff and I just want to stay in a tiny safe spot and hit him, I just want Yunica to stay still instead of moving around to the other side of the boss by herself.

The game is really good though. I thought fighting regular enemies was boring early on, but they've improved a lot over the game, and every boss fight so far is great.

edit: But I don't know about Jenocres, he can cancel his attacks into other attacks instantly and you can't jump out of attacks so I don't think there's a guaranteed way to attack him without getting hit.

Sir Ilpalazzo fucked around with this message at 05:24 on Mar 6, 2013

Sir Ilpalazzo
Sep 4, 2012
Jenocres really sucks. I think this would go a lot more smoothly if half of his attacks didn't keep you from seeing your character. On top of that his wind attack is undodgeable if he cancels into it from something else, and I just found out that he stops doing his only punishable attack after you get him below half health.

Sir Ilpalazzo
Sep 4, 2012
That's what I was talking about. If you could just go up to him and hit him, it might be better, but Yunica flies ten feet in weird directions whenever you press the attack button so that's not really a possibility.

Sir Ilpalazzo
Sep 4, 2012
I have been switching between wind and fire for this fight a lot. The fire magic itself seems overall more useful but I really dislike the sword. The wind magic helps for mobility and attacking while moving, so I generally try that, but it's so much weaker than the axe that I only use it when I need to attack and move away from him immediately afterwards.

Bobby The Rookie posted:

I honestly never had that problem when playing as Yunica, but then again I can only do Hugo's 'lower enemy defense' move if I consciously think to do it, which I guess is the same button sequence. That should really just be mapped to a single, separate button, though.

I wasn't actually talking about the lunge attack (which I can never do consistently either); I just don't like how you move forward when you attack. It's hard enough finding safe spots to attack from when you can't see yourself on the screen without having to worry about your own attacks shooting you into fire.

edit: I got him down to half health for the second time and I have to wonder what the secret to beating him is. After his health gets low enough he permanently turns every pixel of the center of the room into a death zone and camps there forever. Is this fight supposed to only be for Hugo?

Sir Ilpalazzo fucked around with this message at 09:10 on Mar 6, 2013

Sir Ilpalazzo
Sep 4, 2012
I know that wind lets you stay still for a few seconds while inflicting damage but it still has the same problem where you get launched forward during the initial cast. And I know that touching enemies doesn't do damage but you do bounce off of enemies if you ram them with wind and that just gets you launched into the statue attacks in the Jenocres fight.

I really underestimated how much more damage wind does than melee for this fight, but I'm still thinking this is a Hugo boss that fell into the wrong story. I literally can't damage him in the second phase unless he bunches the statues into a square and gets inside them, like he spends 90% of the time inside a field of fire or lasers that never goes away. If he ever does come out, he stays out long enough for one hit, and one hit every three minutes would make this fight take hours.

Sir Ilpalazzo
Sep 4, 2012

Lance Streetman posted:

What difficulty are you playing on, what level are you, and what equipment do you have/what level is your equipment/have you properly tempered your weapons?

I'm on hard. I'm pretty confident I have every upgrade so far (my weapon is level 4, my armor and leggings are as recent as they get and are both blessed). I'm at level 25.

Internet Friend posted:

I just jumped into Time Attack, Normal with Yunica. You should be doing around 50-60 damage per hit. Attacking with wind and melee (remember, you can do both at the same time) he dies without any effort. Just dodge a little, jump over his crap, downstab at him, let go of your charged wind attack and mash attack.

That is actually what I'm doing for the first phase and it works pretty well. The problem is that after the first phase I can only get in one or two hits at a time and those don't add up. Once I did nearly kill him because he did the statue square formation and sat inside it until I took him down to around 5% health, but that's not something that's replicable.

Sir Ilpalazzo
Sep 4, 2012
I beat Jenocres earlier, but I only ended up winning because he did the statues-sit-in-a-square-in-the-center formation a lot. Good enough for me.

I'm up to Pictimos now and I just realized that you don't have to pause to switch spells.

Sir Ilpalazzo
Sep 4, 2012

Lance Streetman posted:

:psyduck:

I think I found your problem.

I don't think it really mattered, I only used wind throughout the whole Jenocres fight anyway, and even in the two boss fights afterwards, I can't find any reason to use any spell besides fire.

I actually did guess that you could cheese Jenocres by sniping him with fire for the whole fight but it did so little damage that I just didn't have the patience to try it for twenty minutes, die, and start over.

Speaking of spells, is it just me or is Yunica's thunder spell not very useful? The game said you can use it to block certain attacks but I've never seen that happen. It seems like there's no reason to ever use it unless the enemy you're fighting is specifically weak to it, and the wind and fire spells have a lot more utility.

edit: I don't really like that you can't pause in boss fights without alt+tabbing or whatever. I feel like either you should never be able to pause or you should be able to pause anywhere.

Sir Ilpalazzo
Sep 4, 2012
I'm playing Origin on Hard and I feel the same way about that game. Every so often I need to go back and get one level to deal with a boss, but I don't think you ever really have to grind. It's even smoother with Hugo because he has an easier time with most regular enemies.

Sir Ilpalazzo
Sep 4, 2012
I finished Origin with Hugo yesterday. I think I came away from that thinking the same thing as most of the other people in this thread. Playing as Hugo was fun for the catharsis of totally destroying everything that gave me trouble as Yunica but it feels like most of the game was designed around the other characters. I started a playthrough with Toal a little bit ago, and so far I think he's my favorite character. The first two mid-bosses were more fun than just about any boss fight with Hugo.

Sir Ilpalazzo
Sep 4, 2012

Fergus Mac Roich posted:

Finally came back to Ys Origin after a hiatus and marathoned the last half of the game as Yunica. What an awesome, awesome game. I can't wait to play it again as the other characters. Are the other characters harder to play? I was thinking of cranking up the difficulty, but if they're harder in the first place I'll hold off.

Hugo is a good deal easier, and I think he ends up being less fun too. The third character is probably slightly harder to beat the game with than Yunica, but he's also the most fun.

I just beat the game with all three characters two days ago. It's definitely a pretty awesome game, but I don't like how getting all the unlockables requires you to do like seven playthroughs. I guess it does add a lot of replay value, though. The next time they go on sale, I'm definitely going to buy the other Ys games on Steam.

Sir Ilpalazzo
Sep 4, 2012
Yeah, Claw is by far the most fun character, and he definitely had the best story too. I actually feel a little disappointed that none of the other Ys games seem to have characters that play like him.

I think the human boss fights in Claw's story are the most fun in the game, too, and that's saying a lot.

Sir Ilpalazzo
Sep 4, 2012
I forgot about the Mask of Truth too, but I ended up getting to it with her wind spell.

Sir Ilpalazzo
Sep 4, 2012
I had more trouble with those than anything else in Hugo's game too. I didn't want to grind, so I got them stuck on the stairway on the right side of the room so I could just shoot them to death without having to worry about anything else.

Sir Ilpalazzo
Sep 4, 2012
So after putting over a hundred hours into Origin. I grabbed all the Ys games when they went on sale a week ago. This series really is pretty awesome and I felt like putting down my thoughts on each game so far.

I really got into Ys 1 and 2. Their old-schoolishness really appealed to me, and I think the bump system is actually pretty genius and fun; it keeps things going at a fast pace and it keeps you at risk when you attack, so you always have to watch your back. I think Ys 1 suffered a little because of the weird way leveling and equipment work - you can be getting completely destroyed by a certain group of monsters, but only one upgrade later you completely outclass them. It feels like no enemy group is threatening for very long since you always end up outpacing them. The bosses were kind of a mixed bag: Pictimos and Yogleks / Omulgun were awesome fights, but then the game also had really weird fights that ended in seconds like Nygtilger and Khonsclard (and then there were tedious bosses like Jenocres and Vagullion).

I thought it was cool that you hit max level around halfway through the game. I dislike how in Origin I always had to worry about my level since it sucks to plow through a boss fight just because your level was too high (or, less often, to wonder if some bosses were only as hard as they were because I was expected to have one more level), so it was nice of the game to take care of that for me. I didn't like the open save system; I wish Falcom had worked in a checkpoint-based system like Origin and Oath while they were updating the games but I guess they might have left it the way it was for tradition's sake. But regardless of what it might sound like, I still liked the game a lot and I think it's really replayable (I'm on my third playthrough now, a Nightmare mode run).

Ys 2 was definitely a big improvement. I thought it was cool how the change in structure (making the game a quest through the land to the Shrine of Solomon instead of exploring a more open area) gave the game a totally different feel from the first one. The leveling system was made sane, so it was nice to have enemies remain a threat through most of the game, although I wish the level cap had been used like it was in the first one. I'm not sure how I felt about the fire magic, though. On one hand, it kind of invalidates the bump system since you can beat most enemies just by spamming fire shots, but at the same time making the boss fights into shooters was a great idea. Every boss in the game is awesome (although I have to admit that my favorites were the two that you fight with melee attacks, so I wish they had explored that a little more). Other than that, the only criticism I have to make about the game is that it was annoying how every dungeon or area was a huge, complicated maze. I'm confident in saying that the game is overall better than Ys 1, but the thought of going through the mines, ice ridge, or shrine again makes me feel like this one isn't quite as replayable.

I've only barely started Oath in Felghana. So far it seems like it's pretty much on the same level as Origin, at least (and to me that's a pretty high standard). I'm not sure how I feel about the game being open (I started the series with Origin instead of Felghana because Origin's structure sounded like it would appeal to me more), but so far it doesn't seem like the world drags the game down or anything so I'm okay with it. One thing I really love about the game is that it makes fights against basic enemies feel more meaningful. Fighting standard enemies in Origin felt kind of like a slog a lot of the time because almost none of them were very threatening unless you were on Nightmare mode and the very strongest ones were damage sponges, but Felghana is doing an awesome job of making the stages feel more engaging. The bosses seem to be a little bit harder than Origin's so far, although I sort of feel like some of them use lame "gotcha" moments way more than Origin's did (like the Chester fight is all about baiting him into using his charge so you can attack, but sometimes he just decides to attack with no warning during what should be his vulnerable period, and even though I got past that fight it felt a little bit cheap). Despite that, unless the game starts going downhill after the lava dragon boss, I can't see it not being amazing.

I hope Ys 6 comes to Steam eventually, but these games are pretty packed with content and the only one I've really dug into is Origin, so these should last me for a while.

Also, every one of these games have amazing soundtracks.

Sir Ilpalazzo
Sep 4, 2012

Zombiecop posted:

Falcom Megathread: TitS and Yss.
Yses? What's the plural of Ys?

Maybe Y'S.

Sir Ilpalazzo
Sep 4, 2012
The PSP version of Oath in Felghana has more frequent checkpoints and a lower framerate. I don't think I would recommend it over the PC version; the voice acting is kind of bad and none of the changes in the PSP version are for the better.

Adbot
ADBOT LOVES YOU

Sir Ilpalazzo
Sep 4, 2012

GrossMurpel posted:

"Oh no I have a shield that is the best ability in the entire game, this is so unfun!"

His projectile-based moveset is pretty boring in general; the shield just makes things worse.

  • Locked thread