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BoF3 also deserves some credit for its creation of the Master-Apprentice and Examine mechanics (though I suppose one could make the argument that the latter was inspired by Blue Magic of Final Fantasy fame). Both were intriguing systems that allowed for a very nice amount of character customization. BoF4 is considered a better game because it IMPROVED on those systems, fixing the flaws and improving on the strengths. It did much the same thing with the fishing system, unless you like the ability to guarantee rare catches by pulling out all the commons, which I admit was nice. Sadly, the new dragon system wasn't as good (mini-game dependent evolutions? SERIOUSLY?), but you can't have everything.
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Jun 22, 2014 08:33
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MartianAgitator posted:So as someone who absolutely appreciated all the unique parts of BF4 and thought BF3 was the most generic jrpg since Legend of Dragoon, what's there to like about BF3? Generic anime art, generic anime characters, generic plot...I guess watching the kid go from swinging his sword blindly to more competence is kinda fun. I just don't get it. Nostalgia, mostly - BoF3 was one of the first games I played through and beat in middle school. And I have a soft spot for Peco and the art style; BoF4 included non-sprite enemies and what not that I didn't like. But yeah, Bufuman's take on it is one I can agree with. How's about "BoF4, with BoF3's art style/dragon system" as my dream game?
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Jun 22, 2014 08:56
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BoFIII's big strength, thinking on it, is mostly that it has a great sense of how much to tell the player and when to do so. There's few parts of the game where I didn't have some hook that made me want to keep playing, and even if it was a small thing, there was always some sort of payoff for those hooks. Some of that though is I played BoFIV first and distinctly felt a lack of hooks most of the game. The Fou-Lu stuff was so very very good but there was just nothing I gave a drat about in the Ryu portions of the game, so it was basically a complete chore struggling through them to get more Fou. There's probably some Ryu bits I underrate because I held this mindset most of the game, but it gave me a keener appreciation for BoFIII's charms. ... it's so strange we've had this extended tangent about Breath of Fire in a SaGa thread, considering the series are basically on complete opposite sides of the innovation spectrum.
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Jun 22, 2014 09:21
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The thing I like most about BoF3 is that it really gives you a sense of being a child in a big, strange world. Ryu is lost and confused, and the game is very good about getting that across to the player. Moments like the first big party split have a hell of a lot of impact. He may be a silent protagonist, but there's a definite sense of growth in his story. Also you can fuse genes to turn into hella sweet dragons. Even when you're just Infinity Radiance Trance-ing things, you know you've got all of these other genes and you could totally turn into Tiamat or something instead and that's pretty cool!
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Jun 22, 2014 10:06
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CmdrKing posted:... it's so strange we've had this extended tangent about Breath of Fire in a SaGa thread, considering the series are basically on complete opposite sides of the innovation spectrum.
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Jun 22, 2014 15:14
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Saga  Breath of Fire Wild Arms Suikoden This LP 
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Jun 23, 2014 00:23
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citybeatnik posted:Nostalgia, mostly - BoF3 was one of the first games I played through and beat in middle school. And I have a soft spot for Peco and the art style; BoF4 included non-sprite enemies and what not that I didn't like. Art style maybe (though BoF4 has some of the best spritework of all time; I remember when it came out, they were like 'over 3000 frames' and I believe it), but the muted colour palette in BoF4 contributed a lot to the tone of the game.
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Jun 23, 2014 02:13
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neongrey posted:the muted colour palette in BoF4 contributed a lot to the tone of the game. So did the music, especially with the VERY noticeable divide in the songs between the east and west halves of the game.
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Jun 23, 2014 02:54
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neongrey posted:Art style maybe (though BoF4 has some of the best spritework of all time; I remember when it came out, they were like 'over 3000 frames' and I believe it), but the muted colour palette in BoF4 contributed a lot to the tone of the game. This is true, both games had a color scheme that worked for them. BoF3's vibrant colors helped keep things relatively upbeat even when things got serious, while BoF4's mostly "brown is real" color theme worked well for the game's serious tone. Both were also helped out by their cast and music, with BoF3 having a mostly cheerful party and lighthearted soundtrack, while BoF4 had a fairly determined and serious party and a somber musical score (well, mostly, anyway; BoF3 has a few depressing and serious moments, while BoF4 has some comedy early on). It's amazing how two games from the same series can be so different and yet so good in their own ways.
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Jun 26, 2014 04:47
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One thing I like about Breath of Fire games in general is the way things can be generic one moment, but take a turn for the surreal the next; I mean, you have animal people everywhere, so it's entertaining seeing a rhino working the desk or whatever, but you're fighting some boars, then some catfish, then you're entering a person's body and destroying their fat cells, then it's a quick detour to fight some slimes, and zombies, and then you've suddenly made a new divinely animated robot pal with a god inside her. As opposed to SaGa games, which treat everything with a kind of dull sensibility, so 85% of the time it doesn't really have an impact, but the other 15% of the time it just serves to underline the bizarre settings/events.
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Jun 26, 2014 05:26
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John Lee posted:As opposed to SaGa games, which treat everything with a kind of dull sensibility, so 85% of the time it doesn't really have an impact, but the other 15% of the time it just serves to underline the bizarre settings/events. You clearly haven't played Final Fantasy Legend 2 (SaGa 2), wherein you have to shrink yourself to drive badguys out of a woman's body, and the random encounters in the body include robots and terrorists.
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Jun 26, 2014 05:42
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Hokuto posted:You clearly haven't played Final Fantasy Legend 2 (SaGa 2), wherein you have to shrink yourself to drive badguys out of a woman's body, and the random encounters in the body include robots and terrorists. Seize the means of production (of white blood cells). White blood cells are also an enemy. I really should LP one of the remakes of SaGa 2 or 3.
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Jun 26, 2014 05:58
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Prism posted:Seize the means of production (of white blood cells). White blood cells are also an enemy. Yes please this.
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Jun 26, 2014 06:24
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I dont know posted:To echo the other posters BOF:DQ is criminally underrated, though it's not hard to see why. I feel like if it were released today it would be better received, since quasi rogue-likes have become popular in the last few years. Eleven years ago, people straight up didn't know what to make of it. I love the BoF series and also really enjoyed V. Did this really kill the series like some others suggest suggest? The wikipedia articles makes it seem like it was well received in Japan.
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Jun 26, 2014 08:40
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Chuu posted:I love the BoF series and also really enjoyed V. Did this really kill the series like some others suggest suggest? The wikipedia articles makes it seem like it was well received in Japan. It's not really specific to game reception, per se. It was the result of a growing competitive field in the market of RPGs, with much bigger and more well-equipped competition. Capcom was too small to keep up with juggernauts like Square, and they acknowledged that and decided to focus on other areas where they could thrive.
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Jun 26, 2014 09:11
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Hokuto posted:It's not really specific to game reception, per se. It was the result of a growing competitive field in the market of RPGs, with much bigger and more well-equipped competition. Capcom was too small to keep up with juggernauts like Square, and they acknowledged that and decided to focus on other areas where they could thrive. I'd also assume it has a little to do with people from the Dragon Quarter team being used to make Dead Rising, which went on to outsell the poo poo out of the Breath of Fire series so that's likely where Capcom's priorities remain.
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Jun 26, 2014 14:40
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Hokuto posted:You clearly haven't played Final Fantasy Legend 2 (SaGa 2), wherein you have to shrink yourself to drive badguys out of a woman's body, and the random encounters in the body include robots and terrorists. I more meant the fact that in BoF, everything is treated like a ~wacky~ anime, and it just happens to be at the exact right level for me. In SaGa, a lot of the time equally weird things happen, but the tone is completely different; the dialogue (in the games that I've played, granted) is pretty minimalist, and it ends up more like a surrealist drama than crazy adventures.
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Jun 26, 2014 23:37
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Welcome back today we're going to start up Lute's tale. It's definitely one of the shorter ones.    We begin with a quick shot of Yorkland and then Lute's mom waking him up. Just like in Chrono Trigger! Sadly Crono will prove to be the much more superior protagonist.  Ma, I'm still worried about leaving you here all alone. Don't treat me like some old woman. I'm not so oldI have to be worried about. Work hard Lute.Alright Ma. See you Thunder. Be strong. Take care of Ma. Well I guess I'll be goin'. And so Lute sets off on his journey, and the game is nice enough to give us a little more exposition before hand.  But for some reason all of the neighborhood punks liked him. This young boy's name is...  Finally Lute decided to move away from home and live on his own. Jeez even the narration doesn't seem to think too highly of Lute. So our first step to making something of ourself is actually getting out of this backwoods town. Surely it won't be too hard to get a ship.  Oh. That's unfortunate. Not allowed? But I gotta get on. This has been chartered by Trinity.You've gotta have some room in a ship this huge. How about in a corner somewhere?Stop buggin' us or we'll arrest you!Arrest me? For what?  No problem here sir! Go on now, get out of here! You want to board ship? All right, we have room for you. Come on.Your boss seems like a nice guy.   I'm from Yorkland too you know.By the way, where is this ship goin?Manhattan. And with that the ship speeds off towards Manhattan.  Of course there's not much for us to do in Manhattan so we immediately leave. You can get some background info on Mondo from Fuse, but all it ammounts to is "Mondo is not as nice as you think he is"  Instead we head to Owmi to meet a crucial character in Lute's tale. This is one of the more obscure things you have to do in this game. As far as I know there's not really indication that you should head here to advance the plot.  We want to head over to the restaurant there's some interesting patrons here.  Like this young lady, but more importantly...   You can eat a whole lot more here because they don't use crap like MSG.Really? You're from Nelson, eh? You look pretty decent to me, although Trinity says you people are vicious pirates.That's nothing but propaganda. Come see my ship sometime. You'd be surprised. Captain, it's time.See you soon. Chef, food was just terrific as usual. So now that we've met the Captain, whenever we go to Nelson, instead of going straight there we get this.  Sorry about that.Lute is the pinnacle of class.   Moving on through the ship we reach the captains quarters. Get ready for the first and last big plot dump of Lute's tale. This is the Victoria, a very special independent fighter from Nelson. Currently, the ship is assigned to monitor the activities of Mondo from Trinity's 2nd Intelligence Division. I assume you know him too.Mondo? Oh yeah, he gave me a ride on his ship. But I don't really know him.No, I'm talking about the guy who betrayed your father, and sold him out to the Trinity.What're you talking about? You mean dad and Mondo knew each other?You really don't know? I though you approached me to avenge your father's death. Not to mention fulfilling his last wish.Dad's last wish? What was he involved in?He was an anti-Trinity activist. He lost his first wife during his mission.Hey, hey hold on for a sec. Ma never told me none of this stuff. I don't even know your name. How do I know you're telling me the truth. Nelson is a tiny region. In order to resist an enormous power like Trinity, we need to collect all kinds of information. That's why we know many things which others don't.Crammin' me with this stuff 'bout dad and Trinity all at once is only confusing me.I don't blame you. Maybe I should start over from the beginning. Like I said before, we are now assigned to watch over Mondo's activities. We discovered he is secretly building his own private army base. We are getting ready to attack the base when the time comes.You're gonna start a war against trinity?There won't be any war. Even Trinity doesn't know their own command is creating a private army.Why does he need a private army. He's power crazy and wants to completely rule Trinity. Sounds a little to far-fetched to me. I mean why would anyone like Mondo need to crave for more power? Goodness glad we got that out of the way.  See this screen? This screen is where many a first time player make a huge mistake. If you say that you're ready, this will immediately take you to Lute's final dungeon. Right now our party consists of Lute and Captain Hamilton. This would be a bad thing.    Again, despite being an area we see very little of, there's a pretty good amount of detail put into the Victoria's backgrounds. Anyway, now that we've met the Captain, it's time to do some early game sidequests.  We pick up Rouge.  We start the Arcane quest.  We pick up Gen and T260G.  We do the Luminous Labyrinth.  We loot the sunken ship.   As you can see, the Captain starts with a really impressive loadout, and is probably the strongest human character out of the gate.  Finally we do the Junk Shop glitch.  Now I know most of you don't think of the Shield Card quest when you think about early game quests in Saga Frontier, but I want to use Fuse here so we'll be doing it now.  Yup. This was the main reason I did the Junk Shop. The mechs and Hamilton are going to carry us through this.   We're going to skip the Dragons as I don't think this team can handle them. We can squeak by Suzaku though.  So every main character in Saga Frontier gets something that's unique or helpful in their quest. T260G got the form changes, Blue got the region map and all magic, and Emelia had her outfits. What does Lute have?  We can move him out of our main party. If you so choose, Lute can complete his quest without participating in a single battle. We're going to drop him for the boss, but he'll be in our final team at endgame. I'm sure he'll do his best to impress us with his mediocrity.  Here we go.  For the most part Suzaku is fairly manageable early on if you have mecs and the junk shop glitch. Many of his attacks only hit one or two characters and can be blocked with shields.  This is what you don't want to see. It kills off the non mecs and does a hefty chunk to them as well.  But T260G and Engineer car are able to pull it out by the skin of their teeth.  Next time we'll do more sidequests because that's all there is to do in Lute's tale. We might even go right back to Yorkland an pay a visit to Lute's mom!
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Jun 27, 2014 03:44
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I like how Lute's only unique ability is being lazy enough to make everyone else do the work.
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Jun 27, 2014 03:49
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dude789 posted:
 dude789 posted:
 Well played, SaGa Frontier. Well played.
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Jun 27, 2014 03:59
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I thought the only skill he brought to the table was "bitchin' fez." I can't believe it's epic sloth.
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Jun 27, 2014 04:10
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Lute also joins any other character, doesn't he? Just in case you need another mediocre human / benchwarmer?
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Jun 27, 2014 04:15
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Orcs and Ostriches posted:Lute also joins any other character, doesn't he? Just in case you need another mediocre human / benchwarmer? Yup. Although Gen, Mei-Ling, and Emilia can also join any team and they're all much better than Lute.
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Jun 27, 2014 04:31
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W.T. Fits posted:
Yeah, that's more or less entirely my reaction as well. God, Lute is so loving worthless.
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Jun 27, 2014 04:45
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I don't know, I like that he's such a bum. I mean, you don't often see 'total slacker' as a character in a video game who doesn't change over time. Lute is total slacker the whole way through and it's great. Though for just playing around with sidequests I'd always pick Blue just because of the region map.
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Jun 27, 2014 05:04
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dude789 posted:
So yeah everybody, that's it. That's Lute's story. We're done. He moved out. And then met some pirates. What an epic tale. why the gently caress did they even bother including this?
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Jun 27, 2014 05:10
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Talking to Captain Hamilton really IS obscure, for the simple reason that you can talk to her in EVERY quest, but this is the only one where she actually does anything. I wonder if they just forgot to put in a hint somewhere. Considering how incredibly short and seemingly rushed this quest is, it wouldn't surprise me at all.
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Jun 27, 2014 05:19
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It's almost like they had the very beginning and very end of his quest finished, but ran out of time to do everything else. But since it's beatable, it's shipable.
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Jun 27, 2014 05:20
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If we're being honest here, Lute's real Magical Protagonist Power is being able to recruit Captain Hamilton. Hamilton only joins Lute, and it's a drat shame since she's pretty much Emilia, Liza, and Roufas rolled up into a single human.
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Jun 27, 2014 05:34
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I know the point of Lute's quest is that he's finally starting out on his own and starting his life, so he goes all around the world, to justify all the level grinding. That being said, they could have given him extra reactions or story content to all the sidequests to actually justify it. For example, give his story a point to the one seemingly pointless mirror in Luminous, let him be the one guy that can drag Rouge back to the Magic Kingdom and see what his reaction is to casually being asked to kill his brother, give him a deadbeat stoner reaction to Dr. Nusakan instead of running away since Lute is just a deadbeat stoner, make him the one human that can get the gift for Mystic magic that even the complete Blue/Rouge can't do and learn spells only available to some of the boss Mystics we've yet to see, etc. And isn't Lute supposed to be pretty fast at sparking new techs/spells?
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Jun 27, 2014 05:39
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Well, at least Lute is charming.
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Jun 27, 2014 05:59
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My impression is that you're not supposed to find his plot hook. You're supposed to wander around the world randomly until you stumble upon it by accident, but which point you're hopefully strong enough for the final dungeon. Lute's quest is "go around, do stuff, I dunno" because that's also Lute's character.
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Jun 27, 2014 07:35
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Shitenshi posted:And isn't Lute supposed to be pretty fast at sparking new techs/spells? Lute is okay at sparking. If you needed a word to describe Lute in pretty much any situation, "mediocre" would be it. He's the game's baseline for humans, so to speak - he's not overwhelmingly great at anything, but he's not dealbreakingly terrible at any of it either. Gen and Roufas will always be better at sparking sword techs, Liza will always be better at sparking martial arts moves, Mei-Ling and Rouge will always learn Gun Techs/Spells faster. The damning thing there is that pretty much EVERYTHING Lute can do, Hamilton can do better, and she starts off on a quicker foot, too. Whereas he's the average, she's the slightly-above-average - still not the best in any given category, but pretty respectable nonetheless. The whole thing really does feel like it's meant to be her show, with Lute just along for the ride. KataraniSword fucked around with this message at 13:29 on Jun 27, 2014 |
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Jun 27, 2014 13:27
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Lute is incredibly bad at the start, and really slow at the midgame. He starts to shine later on, and he does seem to spark more often midgame/lategame than other chars. If I remember right, having another character spark a technique makes it easier for others capable of sparking that tech learn it, and Lute cheats that slightly and can learn anything that another char has sparked a little faster than normal; his power comes from having a strong team. That's always been true for me, and I usually always bring him in my teams. He does suck for an incredible amount of time, though, and that usually makes him not worth bringing especially on his own quest, because it is the shortest of them all.
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Jun 27, 2014 22:05
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I got this game as a kid because I absolutely loved the gameboy SaGa's. I'm pretty sure I chose Lute's path first, and gave up on the game because I couldn't figure out what the heck I was supposed to be doing.
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Jun 28, 2014 01:10
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Chuu posted:I got this game as a kid because I absolutely loved the gameboy SaGa's. I'm pretty sure I chose Lute's path first, and gave up on the game because I couldn't figure out what the heck I was supposed to be doing. I kinda feel like his path should be locked off until you've finished at least one other person's path, maybe more? But then, imagine the disappointment when the "locked" character's path is such garbage...
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Jun 28, 2014 01:49
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Clarste posted:My impression is that you're not supposed to find his plot hook. You're supposed to wander around the world randomly until you stumble upon it by accident, but which point you're hopefully strong enough for the final dungeon. Lute's quest is "go around, do stuff, I dunno" because that's also Lute's character. I actually talked to Hamilton and went to the final dungeon on my first play though.
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Jun 28, 2014 02:21
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It's really strange that we have this minimalist scenario which is basically just, "Go do sidequests until you stumble on the right event flag for the final dungeon," when they apparently had a whole 8th scenario planned out for Fuse that never made it into the final cut. I wonder if they just ran up against time constraints or something before they could implement Fuse and decided, "gently caress it, just put something in there," and we got Lute's story instead.
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Jun 28, 2014 02:51
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W.T. Fits posted:It's really strange that we have this minimalist scenario which is basically just, "Go do sidequests until you stumble on the right event flag for the final dungeon," when they apparently had a whole 8th scenario planned out for Fuse that never made it into the final cut. I wonder if they just ran up against time constraints or something before they could implement Fuse and decided, "gently caress it, just put something in there," and we got Lute's story instead. That is definitely exactly what happened. No doubt you were originally intended to go recruit the other protagonists as Lute, or maybe just other important characters, taking a brief role in their storylines.
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Jun 28, 2014 14:46
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It sucked that Capt. Hamilton was stuck in Lute's non-scenario. I always felt that she would have been better turning up somewhere in Emelia or Red's scenarios. They might have intended for her to have a bigger role had they had the time to finish the game; maybe even a part in Fuse's scenario. Either way, she kind of got shafted into the most uninteresting of all seven stories. The idea of Lute being a part of the other char's scenarios would be interesting; but from the looks of it, that's what Fuse's scenario was supposed to be like. He probably would have had access to Doll and Rabbit too, which would have been nice. I still think Asellus' scenario is probably my favorite, even though she gets a bunch of unique mystics that are a little underwhelming. Dr. Nusakan was probably my favorite mystic, and I wish he'd had more scenarios to be a part of. Him and Mesarthim not having those Mystic Mails made them so much better than the rest.
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Jun 29, 2014 02:37
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