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Post by DarknessLink7 on Jun 6, 2016 20:02:20 GMT -5
Personally I've been watching Rokka no Yuusha (which is a great anime if you like mindgames and beautiful fantasy worlds). I also found a ridiculously brutal psychological horror manga called Jinrou Game but it hasn't been translated past chapter 7 even though it's been completed since 2015. I guess I'll never know how it ends. XD Other than that I'm incredibly hyped for Zero Time Dilemma which is coming out in late June. I haven't been this hyped since November last year when Xenoblade Chronicles X was about to be released! Anyway, what are you guys doing?
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Post by Primulus on Jun 16, 2016 7:36:31 GMT -5
It took me a while to notice this thread, I am sad to say. And your last thread here, I never got around to posting in! And so it died too. (Actually, since Max's departure it seems this board has been a lot less active lately.)
In any case, I've been watching Wakfu, an... anime-like, I guess? It's a French cartoon and I tend to call it "French Avatar." It's pretty good, and overall I think I might like the first season of Wakfu even more than I do the first season of The Last Airbender (and definitely more than the first season of The Legend of Korra). In addition, I've been playing Dark Souls 2 a lot lately. It's my personal introduction into the "Soulsborne" franchise and from here I intend on moving on to either Dark Souls 1 or Demon's Souls. I just recently finished Dark Souls 2, with the only thing left to do being the Dark Covenant questline, which leads to an optional boss.
I've also been playing a little bit of Guilty Gear Xrd -Revelator-, attempting to master the character Jack-O'. Otherwise, I eagerly await Dizzy's release, who used to be one of my mains in the previous generation of games.
As for hype for games to come? Ys VIII: The Lacrimosa of Dana and NieR: Automata, both PS4 titles. There are some other PS4 titles I have my eye on, so I'm going to have to get one in the next few months. I greatly enjoyed Ys VII and have been a fan of the series since first playing Ys VI over a decade ago, so Ys VIII is the system seller for me, like XCX was for the Wii U. (If you're wondering why they took so long to go from VI to VIII, it's because they made a prequel and full remakes of III and IV between VI and VIII. And we're not just talking remakes with updated graphics, I mean the remakes of III and IV are completely different games entirely that completely replace the original III and IV and retcon them.)
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Post by Primulus on Jul 1, 2016 14:54:43 GMT -5
Double posting (sort of) to update this thread and get the ball rolling. Shall we make this our primary go-to thread for keeping up conversations about happenings? That means flameheadshero and ancientrune need to realize this thread exists. So too, Rathlion and Wolfe, why not? Hopefully they're still dropping by every now and then. Since my last post I've moved on to Dark Souls 1, and really enjoying it so far. It's unforgiving, and feels like climbing a mountain that seems at times insurmountable, yet as long as you're paying attention and willing to learn from your deaths... it's quite a grand experience. Dark Souls definitely has that "once in a generation" experience, I feel (although technically it falls into the same generation as Xenoblade Chronicles). It is, however, more of an experience than anything else. Certain gameplay conventions and conveniences that have become standard are actually completely missing in Dark Souls 1 (and 2, to a lesser degree), and it is intended to be this way to make it more of an experience. As a game by itself, that's probably a bad idea, but the experience itself works well. (It is also rather unpolished in certain areas, like Blighttown. Blighttown makes the framerate drop so harshly it is a struggle to get through it. Fortunately about 80% of Blighttown can be skipped if a player desires to do so, however I did not skip it.)
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Post by flameheadshero on Jul 1, 2016 16:57:49 GMT -5
Dark Souls is one of those games I never looked into because I wasn't into the visuals. Though I do appreciate gameplay philosophy that respects your intelligence and also expects you to lose unless you're on top of your game. I'm not really into brutally hard difficulty but I do like when a game just gives you the pieces and tells you to figure out what to do with it.
Big reason why I mentioned XCX earlier. I really love that it respects your intelligence. The first time I got killed by a high level indigen, I thought it was great that I couldn't just stroll through without paying attention. Plus it feels more rewarding when you overcome a challenge like that. It really confuses me what parts I see people get utterly stumped at in this game though. Like really simple stuff that makes me think "Did you not look at the menu? Like, at all?" When I start a game like this, I get my bearings. As soon as I got control of my characters, I went through every menu and tried all the controls to see exactly what I could do before even getting into the first fight. I learned that most people don't do that. I guess in most games, you would be forced to tutorial anything you need to know so I guess people are conditioned to not look into things to figure out how to do them since the game usually tells you anyway.
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Post by Wolfe on Jul 2, 2016 12:29:58 GMT -5
I was on my XB360 recently and found Dark Souls on there. I had forgotten that I scooped it up for free when I still had XBL Gold. I'll have to try it sometime when I'm in the mood for that kind of game. I've been unmotivated and depressed, which is part of why you haven't seen me for a while (though I still check in regularly and catch pieces of the Shoutbox conversation). My XCX playthrough seems to have fallen into a slump of some uninteresting normal/affinity missions, and as I get closer to the final challenges that I am vaguely aware of but have tried to ignore, I've been turned off by the prospect of gearing up to tackle them. But I'm very grateful to Primulus for leaving the rich resource of advice here for me to consult when the time comes. Lately most of my gaming time has been with racing games, my most comfortable genre. The "January" patch for FAST Racing Neo finally arrived in May, so one or more of you may have seen me playing that from my Wii U status. The multiplayer population is sporadic, but so far it has been surprisingly reliable at certain times of day. On other consoles, I finished Forza Horizon 2, discovered the Nintendo DS version of GRID and finished that, then realized that I never actually finished GRID on XB360 and have that almost wrapped up. In between I've been grinding away at Enthusia Professional Racing (#1 favorite of mine), working on my goal of levelling up every car in the game in the "Enthusia Life" career mode. I hope to get that done before I (probably) buy a PS4 this holiday season to start on the next generation of racing titles. There's also The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild, which has surpassed my expectations and looks to be the Zelda game I didn't know I was waiting for.
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Post by flameheadshero on Jul 2, 2016 17:33:30 GMT -5
Sometimes I think Xeno fans are bad for Monolith Soft... It seems like so many people just want repeats of old legacies. Got a little frustrated reading a post on Gamefaqs about how the game was incomplete because it didn't have a story focus like the other "Xeno" games. And to be honest, I wouldn't care much if that wasn't the first time I heard that exact complaint. Do people not play games for games anymore? Maybe this is just my perspective as someone who has only played this game and Xenoblade before it and didn't know much about Monolith Soft. Wolfe I know the feeling of hitting a wall in X. I hit one a few months ago. Took a break to play some other games and then with Prim's help, I started going for 100% survey rate. Now I feel like I can't get enough of the game. I started a new playthrough immediately after getting 100% - mostly just planned to try some different things out for a few hours and move on but now I've been playing a full playthrough. At first I was kind of reluctant to place this over the games that have been my favorites for years now just because of nostalgia and such but at this point, I think I just gotta admit this is my favorite game of all time haha Zelda looks really good too. I can't wait for that. I stopped being excited about it after they went silent on it for so long but once they showed it off at E3 I couldn't be more excited. I already feel like it's going to top my favorite Zelda game.
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Post by DarknessLink7 on Jul 3, 2016 5:19:02 GMT -5
I don't have much experience with Dark Souls (I've only played up to the second boss in the first game), but I appreciate the atmosphere in that game. Being alone in such a threatening world really pulls you in. I've also seen people compare it to Castlevania, which is one of my favorite series ever. I'll give it another go at some point. I tend to get overly stubborn with hard games and I get a real rush once I overcome an obstacle, so Dark Souls should fit me perfectly in theory.
For the past few days I've been absorbed in Zero Time Dilemma. I've mentioned before that I'm interested in Game Theory, and this game offers plenty of that. There's always some sort of "if I choose this, and he chooses that, I should choose that" impossible choice going on. Add in some life-or-death stakes and it's a recipe for my type of game.
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Post by flameheadshero on Jul 3, 2016 12:52:03 GMT -5
Has anyone bought Tokyo Mirage Sessions? I got it but I haven't played it yet. I've heard good things about it though.
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Post by DarknessLink7 on Jul 3, 2016 18:27:32 GMT -5
Has anyone bought Tokyo Mirage Sessions? I got it but I haven't played it yet. I've heard good things about it though. It looks awesome, but I just have too many games in my backlog to justify buying it right now. In a few months I might get it though! I definitely dig the colorful graphics and a good old turn-based combat system is always fun.
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Post by ancientrune on Jul 4, 2016 6:46:22 GMT -5
Sometimes I think Xeno fans are bad for Monolith Soft... It seems like so many people just want repeats of old legacies. Got a little frustrated reading a post on Gamefaqs about how the game was incomplete because it didn't have a story focus like the other "Xeno" games. And to be honest, I wouldn't care much if that wasn't the first time I heard that exact complaint. Do people not play games for games anymore? Maybe this is just my perspective as someone who has only played this game and Xenoblade before it and didn't know much about Monolith Soft. I think this isn't exclusive to Xenoblade games and is becoming the norm in all jrpgs and its fans. The incessant need to have some sort of super story to make a RPG great is really hurting the genre. Not every RPG has to have an in your face story. This is a major part on why stories are becoming less and less important to me when looking at RPG especially jrpgs as sometime a simple story is for the best and the game being fun is more of a factor for my enjoyment.
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Post by flameheadshero on Jul 4, 2016 12:35:42 GMT -5
DarknessLink7 Ah, backlogs. I guess I don't really have one because I only own a Wii U hahaha! I'm still planning on getting a PS4 but I want to wait for a sale. Fire Emblem Fates is still on my backlog. I just can't seem to drum up an interest to play it again... ancientrune Yeah, I mean, I like a good story but if a game's main focus isn't that and it excels at what it tries to focus on, I don't see a problem. People just seem to overlook all the gameplay because of the story though... I think the expectation of JRPGs to be all about stories is from the 3rd, 4th and 5th generation of home consoles, where JRPGs were some of the only games made in a way that allowed bigger stories. You had your Final Fantasies and such and I think people just got used to JRPGs being those long games with big stories. But nowadays, you can even get big stories in a 3rd person shooter. There's a lot of cinematic games now too. So I don't see why JRPGs HAVE to be mostly about story. Sometimes when people say that, it sounds like they're saying the story needs to be good because the gameplay wouldn't hold up on its own. I wonder how many people just used to tolerate JRPG gameplay just to get the story. Just keep pushing ahead to the next cutscene, you know? For the next Xenoblade, I sure hope they don't go to the extreme to listening to the story complaints. I would like a better main story but not at the expense of the gameplay.
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Post by Wolfe on Jul 5, 2016 3:56:11 GMT -5
flameheadshero -- XCX is still a whopping favorite of mine too. The other day I went through the Miiverse messages my wife and I have sent to each other, and there were more XCX-related drawings than anything else. As for Zelda, I wasn't even excited about "The Legend of Zelda for Wii U" in the first place. I loved the original game and A Link to the Past, but I wasn't a fan anymore after Ocarina of Time. I actually wasn't sure why; I guess it seemed to me like the games were the same as always. But Breath of the Wild has opened my eyes to how much of what I don't like about the games are conventions carried on from OoT. This is the first time I've been looking forward to a Zelda game since 1998. I think the expectation of JRPGs to be all about stories is from the 3rd, 4th and 5th generation of home consoles, where JRPGs were some of the only games made in a way that allowed bigger stories. You had your Final Fantasies and such and I think people just got used to JRPGs being those long games with big stories. But nowadays, you can even get big stories in a 3rd person shooter. There's a lot of cinematic games now too. So I don't see why JRPGs HAVE to be mostly about story. Sometimes when people say that, it sounds like they're saying the story needs to be good because the gameplay wouldn't hold up on its own. I wonder how many people just used to tolerate JRPG gameplay just to get the story. Just keep pushing ahead to the next cutscene, you know? In my opinion it really took a turn with the 5th and 6th generations, between the advent of FMV cutscenes, advances in graphics, voice acting, and CDs/DVDs to store it all. JRPGs were among the first to explore a whole new level of grand stories told via cinematic FMV or real-time 3D cutscenes, and their gameplay had always been easier to stretch out, like you said. Xenogears and especially Xenosaga were symptomatic of the shift in priorities, which is where you get your Xeno fans who expect grand storytelling above all else. Takahashi later considered that a personal failure, as well as a problem with JRPGs in general. Xenoblade was made as an experiment to refocus on a balance between gameplay and storytelling. Lots of people were introduced to JRPGs by the Playstation, and of course the success of Final Fantasy VII. PSX/PS2 JRPGs defined the genre for them. Personally, my first JRPG was Final Fantasy.
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Post by DarknessLink7 on Jul 5, 2016 7:38:45 GMT -5
I'm a little torn when it comes to what I want from a video game. Most games consist of two things: mechanics and flavour. Some people prefer one over the other, while some think both are equally important. My top ten list of favourite stories has at least five video games on it, while my top ten mechanics in games only features one or two video games. If I want a pure strategic experience I turn to board games. If I want a story experience I turn to video games (or anime, manga etc.). I've found that many video games have impressed me with their stories to the point of me expecting video games to have a great story. I'm not saying I can't enjoy a game on its mechanics; Xenoblade is a great example of this, but I play video games mainly for the flavour side of the experience.
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Post by flameheadshero on Jul 5, 2016 17:16:02 GMT -5
I think you hit the nail on the head there, Wolfe . That's basically what I wanted to say about RPGs of that time but more in depth. I think my expectations come from the fact that I never really was big on JRPGs during that time. My first JRPG was Pokemon haha. Pokemon obviously has never been about the story. It was always about the gameplay. So I guess that's why I struggle to understand when someone, for example, says they absolutely loved Xenoblade but despise Xenoblade X because they didn't like the story. Or, I guess I can get that. What I don't get is how that makes X a bad game to some people. Not just X, other games too but I digress. For me, a great story works well for a game but after a point, the story has been told and you're left to play the game. I know when I beat the story in Xenoblade, it was a struggle to go take care of all the extra gameplay stuff. It felt like the game lost its appeal at that point because I wasn't being fed cutscenes for making progress. It felt disappointing in a way once that element had been removed. I mean, Xenoblade is still one of my favorite games of all time but I looked beyond the story and realized that I was having more fun playing X. I think it's just plain better as a game and that's a good thing. With X, I beat the story and was like "Can I keep playing, please?!" DarknessLink7 Actually, I'm the same. I care about flavor too. Mechanics alone are usually enough to get me into a game unless they are REALLY good. But for me, flavor doesn't just come down to story. A lot of it comes from visual aesthetics. Not graphical fidelity but just art direction. I've said here before that I lose interest in most games with realistic art styles. The personality and vibe of the game also matters to me. I usually can't get into really dark and depressing stuff, unless it's really good. (Not a game but I love Berserk despite its subject matter) Even then, if a game with a visual style I like doesn't do it for me on the gameplay front, I usually drop it.
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Post by Primulus on Jul 5, 2016 20:19:51 GMT -5
On the topic of games mechanics vs. story, first I'd like to object to Xenogears to a degree. I mean, Xenogears as a game actually works pretty well for its time. It could've been more polished, but I enjoyed its battle system immensely. However, I will generally agree on this: a game is better with solid gameplay than a great story, if it's going toward one or the other. However, a story can still be fantastic enough without great gameplay. In the end, I think it's better to find a healthy balance, and I think Xenogears (mostly in its first disc, it is very clear the second had budget issues) achieves this pretty well. On the topic of Dark Souls, it's definitely one of those games that went for "game" first over story. The story is actually pretty bare bones, but the lore of the world is amazing, although much of it is locked away in item descriptions you tend to pick up, and NPC conversations that can be very easy to miss. The game is a shining example of "mechanics first" however, as the game's design almost through and through like a puzzle, with multiple solutions based on the kind of character you're playing. Enemy placement is usually very, very well thought out and incredibly fair as long as you're being a careful player (with a few notable exceptions, like the archers of Anor Londo). I'm almost done with the game, so when I finish I'll be making a long post on it, Dark Souls 2, Ys 7 and some other games I've been playing. flameheadshero - Odd that you mention Berserk but never getting into Dark Souls, considering Berserk was one of the biggest inspirations for Dark Souls, according to the director of the series himself. It's to the point that both pre- and post-Eclipse Guts' armors and weapons exist in DS3 from what I've heard, although I could be wrong about that. I know there is some armor that is intentionally designed to look like Guts' armor in several of the games though, and just about every game has a sword that looks suspiciously like the Dragon Slayer.
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Post by Wolfe on Jul 6, 2016 2:38:37 GMT -5
DarknessLink7 flameheadshero -- I consider myself a "gameplay > story" guy, but mechanics aren't necessarily enough to attract me to a game either. Sometimes protagonists turn me off, and the aesthetics and art direction do matter. Music can make or break the flavor of a game by itself. As an aside, I wish more modern games had "videogamey" soundtracks. Gentle orchestral music, dramatic clamor, moody atmosphere, licensed songs, etc. have their place, but I want a dungeon theme I can sing along with and a boss battle theme I can't help but rock out to. Nowadays music is one of the leading reasons I'm happy to be a fan of Nintendo's games. That live band stuff they've been doing is fantastic. Getting back to the first point, while I care about the protagonist(s), the plot is less important. I can shrug or laugh at just about any plot if I'm comfortable with my protagonist and the other elements of the game are solid. It should respect my time, though, unless it's well-written enough to be worth it. Primulus -- The first disc does a pretty fine job of presenting itself as a well-rounded game (I greatly enjoyed the gameplay), but there are some rather lengthy spans of dialogue and (IIRC) Takahashi's trademark save point between cutscenes, and some gameplay elements and the flow of the game were affected by the rush to cram in such an elaborate story. However, I wasn't picking on it as being terribly out of balance, it was just a relevant example.
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Post by ancientrune on Jul 6, 2016 5:03:42 GMT -5
quick point today, I've seen a lot of a word thrown about a lot that is really starting to get on my nerves, that word is immersion. Why is having this or lacking this such a big deal breaker to many jrpg fans, I've seen people downright quit and hate on a game because they didn't feel immersed in the game and it boggles my mind why that would render a game unplayable to some.
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Post by Primulus on Jul 6, 2016 14:24:52 GMT -5
Wolfe - On the subject of soundtracks, I think it depends entirely on the game itself, but there are definitely an excess of soundtracks that you've listed off. It's another highlight of the Ys series, which I suspect will keep doing as it always has been doing, going into its 8th installment. (The Ys series itself has always been about gameplay over story as a priority, as well.) There are a few other great series out there, like Guilty Gear, with tremendously fantastic soundtracks that do well to sound quite "gamey." What I've also heard from Bloodstained: Ritual of the Night sounds really great too. Protagonists are a good point too. That's one reason why I've never gotten into The Witcher, really. As a protagonist, Geralt has never particularly appealed to me, so I've never been interested in his story. On the other hand, I was a pretty huge fan of both Michael and Trevor in Grand Theft Auto V (Franklin, the third protagonist, was great too) which made the experience of that game so much better. Even if the protagonist is silent though, I generally prefer for them to hold some kind of appeal to me. And finally, I think Xenogears would've been a lot less unbalanced between its story and gameplay had it had the proper funding. I can only think of maybe two occasions in the 50 hour (or longer) first disc where there were cutscenes that had save points in the middle of them, and both occurred during really, really big moments in the story where a lot was going on. ancientrune - I think it's because "immersion" has become a buzzword that doesn't quite mean anything. Or perhaps, it's better to say that it doesn't really mean anything consistent from person to person. Immersion cannot be objectively measured, and one person's immersion is another person's lack of immersion. Using it to review a game negatively or positively, however, implies that it can be objectively measured, which is silly. From there, "I wasn't immersed" seems like a fancy way of saying "I didn't like this game," a manner in which it needs to be loaded with some form of justification on why the game wasn't liked to give the opinion some form of higher standing. Just the same, "I was immersed" may well be the vice versa scenario, as a positive instead of a negative.
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Post by Wolfe on Jul 6, 2016 16:17:52 GMT -5
And finally, I think Xenogears would've been a lot less unbalanced between its story and gameplay had it had the proper funding. I can only think of maybe two occasions in the 50 hour (or longer) first disc where there were cutscenes that had save points in the middle of them, and both occurred during really, really big moments in the story where a lot was going on. I agree that it was on the right track. Even as it is, to me it tops FFVII or Chrono Cross for PSX JRPGs. And yeah, I was only thinking of one or two of those save points.
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Post by flameheadshero on Jul 7, 2016 20:09:30 GMT -5
Primulus Berserk and Dark Souls still look very different to me. I can tell Dark Souls has some inspiration from Berserk but the style isn't exactly the same. Berserk is more stylized. I also was drawn to Berserk because of the characters. ancientrune Immersion is... well, I get the appeal of it. However I think there are places for immersion and places where you don't need it. With some people, anything that breaks immersion is bad but for me, sometimes a game's gotta be a game and you need to suspend your disbelief. I think people just use it as a justification to dislike a game, like Primulus said.
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