Jarpig pride worldwide (Let's talk about JRPGs)

Anything from run & guns to modern RPGs, what else do you play?
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BryanM
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Re: Jarpig pride worldwide (Let's talk about JRPGs)

Post by BryanM »

It was buried on platforms that had extremely anemic longplay type games support. Enix and Square (and Atlus) being the entire market and all being under Nintendo's thumb... I used to think Sega should have done more to compete on that front back then, but lately have changed my mind. They were selling a console, not so much games in isolation. They couldn't have pushed against the tidal wave of RPGs their opponent had even if they tried.

They still might have done better if they put more into longer games and franchises, though. One and done arcade games couldn't have built a lasting dynasty.

Anyway, I think the love the internet gave Lunar at the time was for the anime FMV's, which were novel at the time, and very little more. Honestly I don't think I've ever seen anyone gush over it after 2002. Hear about Phantasy Star all the time.

I just checked the legacy of Lunar: the newest game in the series was released 17 years ago on the DS. More than half of the franchise is just remakes and ports of the first game. It has never been used as the basis of nor a promotional collab in a gacha game, and even freakin' King's Knight got a gacha game for six months from Square's doo-doo mobile garbage heap. (On the other hand, the Langrisser mobile/pc game has actual human beings who actually like it. Point for old Sega console games, I guess.)

As for doomed party members, Final Fantasy 2 gave you a constant revolving supply the entire game, it was a meme.
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Sumez
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Re: Jarpig pride worldwide (Let's talk about JRPGs)

Post by Sumez »

I don't think a party member dying is such a novel idea that it'd have to be stolen from somewhere else. :)
Phantasy Star is cool tho. But I think 4 is a bit overrated. I'd love a real Phantasy Star 5 some day, ignoring the whole PSO spinoff, popular as it is.
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BIL
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Re: Jarpig pride worldwide (Let's talk about JRPGs)

Post by BIL »

I remember Yoshinori Kitase, I think, mentioning in an EDGE interview circa 2003, that there was never a cat in hell's chance of them bringing galpal back, as some neckbeards ardently maintain was Teh Plan All Along to this very day.

Well, some are ardent. Many screech and holler and REEEE, like fat sassy ladies who've lost out on MAUREH's paternity bingo, as Kitase moonwalks and pirouettes and self high-fives his way offstage into a limousine full of supermodels with a well-stocked cooler, flashing an impeccable shit-eating grin as the door slams shut and all speed off into the glittering Tokyo night. :cool:

The way he put it was that sometimes, IRL, friends die. Tuesday Fantasy XVIII: Nazo no DUI. And they wanted to impart some of that implacably mundane to the story. ("Shouldn't she have fallen down the stairs and cheerfully waved off a visit to the ER, before going to bed and never waking up again, like my poor Shiozawa-kun?" I wondered to myself, as a young nerd having just learned why the badass VA behind all those cucumber-cool anime/VG roles - Snatcher! MGS! Guilty Gear! mahfuckin FOTNS and LOGH and Area 88! - wasn't getting work anymore)

Image

It's a well-meaning but twee thing, to say "OH NOES THEY DEAD LMAO" is some great narrative innovation. FOTNS may be very silly - where do all those calories come from? - but ala LOGH and Area 88: dead is dead. Friend collector? I'm sorry sir, you have the wrong department. This is... Dead Neighbour Storage! That's just the sound of a medium hitting the critical mass where someone, somewhere will have the emotional maturity to leave the dead be, and the bean-counting cunts upstairs are sufficiently fattened-up (or blissfully ignorant) enough to STFU.

There's no surer indicator of an allegedly human story's disposability than DBZ Bullshit. (Dragon Ball itself having always been a kungfu-themed gag manga, no matter how vast the Scrooge McDuck moneypit it lucked into via X-TREEEM hot-blooded shonen) See all the Marvel/DC funnybooks for children that we read in the bathtub recast as MoobieBub-approved Totes Meaningful Cultural Conversations, lately.

TLDR: Congrats to PSII staff for sticking their necks out, and telling a story that wasn't vapid flippant shite. May our medium be blessed with many more of their ilk! Image

Cracking ending, had PSII. Some call it a downer, but I think it was a bloodening glimpse of man's most quintessential struggle and anger. All it needed was a post-script with a Palmanian suicide bomber taking out an Earthman burger stand.

"Struggle is the spark of life, no?" - 2002 SEGA Enterprises
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Mykaizer
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Re: Jarpig pride worldwide (Let's talk about JRPGs)

Post by Mykaizer »

How do you guys get a satisfying feedback loop with RPGs nowadays?

I feel like it's a genre for the younger folks. There are exceptions like Dark Souls 1. Back in the 90s when I was younger and my world was smaller, RPGs felt grand. Now being older I no longer have this feeling thus RPGs don't do it for me anymore (specifically Final Fantasy) Also stories in games are secondary or even the last thing for a game to click with me nowadays.

Stuff like Final Fantasy Tactics can still click with me. ( Although I do need to mod it to be challenging ala Final Fantasy 1.3, plus being able to playing at higher speeds like 160 FPS +~)
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Re: Jarpig pride worldwide (Let's talk about JRPGs)

Post by Sengoku Strider »

BryanM wrote:It was buried on platforms that had extremely anemic longplay type games support. Enix and Square (and Atlus) being the entire market and all being under Nintendo's thumb... I used to think Sega should have done more to compete on that front back then, but lately have changed my mind. They were selling a console, not so much games in isolation. They couldn't have pushed against the tidal wave of RPGs their opponent had even if they tried.
They actually did try, albeit a bit too late to make a dent in Japan. They put forth the Mega Roleplay Project in 1994, branding which put a gold seal on their rpg titles and included metal collector pins with them.

Image

These were the fruits of that initiative:

Ragnacenty/Crusader of Centy
Thor Monogatari/Beyond Oasis
Dragon Slayer: Legend of Heroes
Dragon Slayer: Legend of Heroes II
After Armageddon
Surging Aura
Shining Force CD

Literally only two of which (Shining CD & Oasis) were picked up by SoA, because as we know by now American kids only liked cartoons with 'tude and two or three team sports. And sometimes cars. Atlus rode in at the 11th hour to publish Ragnacenty, which SoA thought was too easy & kiddy.

The Mega Drive had the plug pulled in Japan in 1995 so it didn't move any needles there, but they kept it up and the Saturn's JRPG library went on to be considerable. Y'know, in Japan. How they never made a 45 minute long rpg about American football players with attitude and guns to go after that international overlap is beyond me.
Anyway, I think the love the internet gave Lunar at the time was for the anime FMV's, which were novel at the time, and very little more.
It deserves credit for its battle system, which worked range, spacing and area of effect into the traditional JRPG template. It was quite innovative for its time in that regard. I don't know about the Mega CD versions, but playing through the Saturn version now, the characters are also more fully developed than other JRPGs I'm aware of contemporary to its original release.
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BryanM
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Re: Jarpig pride worldwide (Let's talk about JRPGs)

Post by BryanM »

For a second there, I mixed up Dragon Slayer with the Dragon Knight series. Which is uh, while the more traditional kind of RPG in some ways, diverge in some critical ways in others. Maybe a little too hardcore for SEGA, those cowards. Haven't thought of them in decades.

I gave Langrisser M a try today after putting it off for years. Can't say that I like it; it's still too stripped down a game for me and the intro stages are miserable. The entire time I was thinking about how much better a real Fire Emblem/Shining Force/Disgaea/almost anything was.

I really think difficulty is important. ArKnights isn't afraid to punch you in the face, repeatedly, and doesn't ever disparage you by assuming you're a little baby who can't be trusted to click on shit for yourself.
Shining Force CD
A fancied-up port of two of the three game gear games. For a portable game at the time it'd have been pretty kickass, but the loss of town sections made it a big step back from the core games in the series.
Mykaizer wrote:How do you guys get a satisfying feedback loop with RPGs nowadays?

I feel like it's a genre for the younger folks. There are exceptions like Dark Souls 1. Back in the 90s when I was younger and my world was smaller, RPGs felt grand. Now being older I no longer have this feeling thus RPGs don't do it for me anymore (specifically Final Fantasy) Also stories in games are secondary or even the last thing for a game to click with me nowadays.
I've mentioned failure as a core necessity of feeling a sense of accomplishment. If you never had any chance of failing, it wasn't ever a game to begin with, no?

One of my favorite parts of RPGs are the early game where you can't go very deep into the dungeon or whatever, and you grind to amass power to clear it. A hard bastard of a boss, etc.

Still, I enjoyed the dating mechanics of Persona 4 far more than its fightin' system I've already experienced a million times before. Pressing fight n' heal, I've mastered that thanks. Watching the drama girl drama'ing, or hanging out at the river in the middle of the night with an old granny? Can't say those have come up too often, no.

A ridiculous but effective subgenre is the incremental game. Like Cookie Clicker; where you make decisions on how to make the numbers go up faster. It's stupid how little it takes to make those kinds of games work; Progress Quest could have been a masterpiece played seriously to this day if they'd put in some strategic decisions for the player to make.

The whole complicated choice in character creation thing that became big with AD&D 3rd edition... is a huge waste of time in my opinion. A game should put that effort toward making a ton of different activities to upgrade power (that isn't just wacking monsters. At least do the random loot thing, these games are based on slot machines after all!) instead. Nippon Ichi has a gist of this, though they often build these mechanics to be like a cheat code and not an intended core progression mechanic that stays within the bounds of the difficulty curve of the game.
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Sengoku Strider
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Re: Jarpig pride worldwide (Let's talk about JRPGs)

Post by Sengoku Strider »

BryanM wrote:For a second there, I mixed up Dragon Slayer with the Dragon Knight series. Which is uh, while the more traditional kind of RPG in some ways, diverge in some critical ways in others. Maybe a little too hardcore for SEGA, those cowards.
Au contraire, because this was '94/'95, and so overlapped with Saturn era Sega who were fully on board the sketch-train. They approved material that outdid Dragon Knight and the darker corners of the PC Engine's library (maybe not the PC 98's, that was a hentai hellscape). The 3DO had improbably carved a niche for itself in Japan as a multimedia machine by embracing risqué software, and Sega were happy to spin dash right through the door they'd opened.

Image

At least until the government got involved. Sega still kept up with it, but the bar for what was acceptable seems to have been raised and they developed a rating system with a red X 18+ tag for the most salacious material.
Spoiler
Image
I'm not sure why they abandoned this & went squeaky clean (y'know, by Japan standards) for the Dreamcast. I don't care what anybody says, Body Special 264 deserved a Cinepak-free Dreamcast sequel.
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Re: Jarpig pride worldwide (Let's talk about JRPGs)

Post by Despatche »

Sumez wrote:I don't think a party member dying is such a novel idea that it'd have to be stolen from somewhere else.
It's one thing to do a revolving door of party members, but extremely few games abruptly and permanently remove a party member that's been with you for basically the entire game. The two most important games to pull this stunt are, yes, Phantasy Star II and Final Fantasy VII. The only other game I can think of that does anything like this is Tales of Symphonia, which does it in this weird way where you can in theory get the party member back.

Even that massive detail aside, basically everything about how Final Fantasy II and Final Fantasy IV function is lifted directly from what Sega was up to, never mind things like Seisen no Keifu swiping Phantasy Star III's generation system wholesale. You can maybe argue that Phantasy Star got some of its shtick from Dragon Quest II, but everyone in Japan got their ideas from Dragon Quest (which got its ideas from Wizardry and Ultima, which got their ideas from D&D, which got its ideas from Tolkien, which... yeah). Speaking of which, noone is willing to recognize that Dragon Quest III was an attempt to harvest Minelvaton Saga for everything that was compatible.

Players may pretend to not notice potential competitors, but developers sure as fuck do. The gaming industry is an army of horrendously incestuous, cannibalistic, violent carnivores, whether the Gamers™ are paying attention or not.
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Re: Jarpig pride worldwide (Let's talk about JRPGs)

Post by BareKnuckleRoo »

Despatche wrote:The only other game I can think of that does anything like this is Tales of Symphonia, which does it in this weird way where you can in theory get the party member back.
Symphonia actually doesn't do this; you have one party member slot that's occupied by one of two characters (who behave more or less the same in battle aside from a few minor differences), and depending on your actions on the story, you'll have one or the other in your party. One of these options does result in a death (which is the non-canon option as per the sequel) though, but because you're not "losing" a unique party member it's not as meaningful as in FF7.

Tales of Destiny actually did this much earlier with Leon Magnus's death, and the sequel as well as the remake of the first game both discuss his death in detail and explore the consequences of it. There's also the option in Tales of Destiny to use him (or any other character who's not normally present due to story reasons at any time) thanks to the Narikiri Doll accessories you can get.
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Re: Jarpig pride worldwide (Let's talk about JRPGs)

Post by BryanM »

Sengoku Strider wrote:Au contraire, because this was '94/'95, and so overlapped with Saturn era Sega who were fully on board the sketch-train. They approved material that outdid Dragon Knight and the darker corners of the PC Engine's library (maybe not the PC 98's, that was a hentai hellscape).
That... could explain why SEGA slapped a hentai artist on a number of their old franchises and turned them into shovelware. (Sigh... part of the reason I'm giving Langrisser M a chance right now is thanks to the Shining Force nostalgiabait mobile game being cancelled. Things are pretty fucked for a franchise when you have far more faith in someone from Korea licensing the thing for a mobile game, than expecting SEGA to do anything decent with it domestically..)

Maybe they pulled back from it as the market became less male dominated.. but probably more to do with not being able to sell crap to Burgerland. We threw a tizzy over Night Trap, which I believe only has salacious imagery of women wearing pajamas? Anyway, if Wal-Mart won't carry your stuff you're kind of up shit's creek.

Steam has been a massive vector for a renaissance of not just pr0n, but of the non-existent-here visual novel genre as a whole. All these old ass games we never got were ported and translated for us, it's nuts.
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Re: Jarpig pride worldwide (Let's talk about JRPGs)

Post by BulletMagnet »

BryanM wrote:Steam has been a massive vector for a renaissance of not just pr0n, but of the non-existent-here visual novel genre as a whole.
...but mostly porn. :P
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Re: Jarpig pride worldwide (Let's talk about JRPGs)

Post by cave hermit »

I'm about 4 hours into Lunar, last session ended with my party headed to Vane.

Yeah, I'm not really sure if there's any real reason for me to keep playing. Generally JRPGs for me either need to have a compelling plot, or compelling gameplay (read, challenge). Ideally both obviously.

I finished Final Fantasy IV (English translation of the super famicom original/hardtype) a few years ago without any sort of speedups or save states (I was playing on my MiSTer), I'm glad I finished that game in retrospect even though it was a frustrating experience, and I basically played that whole game without much help from online guides (I tried using online guides, but they primarily referred to the DS remake, so they weren't much help for the version I was playing). The plot was basically just a framework for typical JRPG dungeon crawling and battles (the trip to the moon was a bit unexpected though, and is probably the most iconic part of the game), so that couldn't have been what kept me playing. Therefore it must have been a desire to overcome the challenge put in front of me. That, and a desire to appreciate classic Final Fantasy.

In comparison, the version of Lunar complete I'm playing, with Working Design's balance fuckery reverted, doesn't really have much to keep me interested in terms of gameplay. Battles are pretty straightforward, so far I've been having zero trouble just fighting most encounters I run into, buying equipment as I pop into town, and beating bosses after buffing Alex with Vigor and one of Luna's songs before just spamming Sword Dance while Luna heals and Rammus shits himself and does nothing.

The story is very bog standard for 90's anime/OVAs of the time. There's really nothing particularly interesting or unexpected that happens. I looked at a plot overview in the hopes of maybe having something interesting to look forward to, but no, the game is just a series of JRPG plot tropes. Not even in a particularly endearing way like with Dragon Quest. Some reviews I've read talked about how it is meant to be a romantic love story between Alex and Luna, but I don't really see that, nor would I care much for that sort of thing anyway being a fat, autistic, nihilistic manchild. The characters seem to be again, typical 90's anime material from characterization to art design.

It really does seem like the factors that made Lunar stand out at the time had more to do with things like it being associated with Sega, having numerous anime style FMVs, and being a flagship localization product for Working Designs.

I did like how much effort was put into giving NPCs a constantly changing set of dialogue, almost like a proto Trails in the Sky. Music was catchy, if nothing else.

I have 25 days until Xenoblade Chronicles 3 comes out. In the meantime I might try the most famous and iconic of Japanese console role playing games, Gothic II.

Or maybe I'll try Wizardry the Five Ordeals. I kind of want to play something retro and gameplay oriented to contrast against Xenoblade Chronicles 3.
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Re: Jarpig pride worldwide (Let's talk about JRPGs)

Post by BryanM »

If you thought regular SNES FF4 was a little rough, hoo boy, the DS version was not gentle at all. My ex had it and when I played some of it, I was like "jesus christ, this thing's designed for jaded, burnt-out grognards. How the hell is a newbie supposed to enjoy this masochism?"

Lunar always reminds me a tiny bit of Lufia, being a jRPG d-lister. I can recommend Lufia 2. I can't recommend anything before or after Lufia 2.

The gameboy Lufia was eh, passable for the time (remember, before pokemon all we had was Saga, Last Bible... and Shining Force Game Gear Edition? Devil Children was ripping off the pokemon craze so had to have come after..). Conditional recommendation on Gameboy Lufia if you're really into gameboy RPGs.

Argh, since Dragon Knight came up, I've looking at all the dithering-heavy art that computer system used. What's the word for a nostalgia for something you've never experienced personally?
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Re: Jarpig pride worldwide (Let's talk about JRPGs)

Post by Gamer707b »

Despatche wrote:See, the above post is exactly what I'm talking about. People need to know about Nei as much as, if not more so, than Aerith. I'm not even any kind of Phantasy Star fanboy, I did not grow up with Sega. It's just stunning to me how one of the most important series in RPGs ever is perpetually ignored.
I agree. I did grow up with Sega and did play the Phantasy Star games. They were very forward thinking and way beyond their years. The first game on the Master System actually had 3D dungeons. Something that very few console games were capable of doing. Maybe the first? The games were also somewhat connected. Something that I liked over FF which had nothing to do with one another.
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Re: Jarpig pride worldwide (Let's talk about JRPGs)

Post by Sumez »

cave hermit wrote: Yeah, I'm not really sure if there's any real reason for me to keep playing. Generally JRPGs for me either need to have a compelling plot, or compelling gameplay (read, challenge). Ideally both obviously.
Maybe you should have played the Working Designs version :D
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Re: Jarpig pride worldwide (Let's talk about JRPGs)

Post by Steamflogger Boss »

BryanM wrote:If you thought regular SNES FF4 was a little rough, hoo boy, the DS version was not gentle at all. My ex had it and when I played some of it, I was like "jesus christ, this thing's designed for jaded, burnt-out grognards. How the hell is a newbie supposed to enjoy this masochism?"

Lunar always reminds me a tiny bit of Lufia, being a jRPG d-lister. I can recommend Lufia 2. I can't recommend anything before or after Lufia 2.

The gameboy Lufia was eh, passable for the time (remember, before pokemon all we had was Saga, Last Bible... and Shining Force Game Gear Edition? Devil Children was ripping off the pokemon craze so had to have come after..). Conditional recommendation on Gameboy Lufia if you're really into gameboy RPGs.

Argh, since Dragon Knight came up, I've looking at all the dithering-heavy art that computer system used. What's the word for a nostalgia for something you've never experienced personally?
Lufia 2 is great for sure.
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Re: Jarpig pride worldwide (Let's talk about JRPGs)

Post by BareKnuckleRoo »

Gamer707b wrote:I agree. I did grow up with Sega and did play the Phantasy Star games. They were very forward thinking and way beyond their years. The first game on the Master System actually had 3D dungeons. Something that very few console games were capable of doing. Maybe the first?
As an avid fan of dungeon crawlers, I love pseudo 3D labyrinths. But Phantasy Star was far from the first to showcase a first person perspective dungeon!

It's been around since the Apple II computer days with Akalabeth, Ultima I, and Wizardry all being released with wireframe pseudo 3D dungeons. It's not true 3D of course, there's no polygons involved, not even in later games with similar dungeons like Wizardry and Ultima IV's NES ports, just very clever spritework. Also plenty of Game Boy Wizardry Gaiden games used the same perspective.

Phantasy Star did something pretty neat though that's not generally seen before true 3D polygonal first person dungeons (I can't think of any other games that do it), and that's that it had animated movement when walking from one square to the next or turning left and right. Most games just redraw the screen immediately when you move from one square to the next, but Phantasy Star actually has a walking animation showing you moving forward as well as turning, which involved some extremely impressive spritework and the sheer amount of effort that must've gone into animating this is probably difficult for people to appreciate nowadays.

Other systems I think would be capable of doing these animations, but simply don't bother, because of the sheer effort involved in animating the movement.
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Re: Jarpig pride worldwide (Let's talk about JRPGs)

Post by BryanM »

Warriors of the Eternal Sun has a little bit. Dungeon Master 2 has some 'tweens when stepping forward/backwards. The PC Engine ports of some Dragon Knight games had it.

It's really not that much work... but for what it adds, well. For what a pain space in particular was back then, it'd probably cost more than it gave back.

These days most of us just wanna move fast.
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Re: Jarpig pride worldwide (Let's talk about JRPGs)

Post by BrianC »

BareKnuckleRoo wrote:
Gamer707b wrote:I agree. I did grow up with Sega and did play the Phantasy Star games. They were very forward thinking and way beyond their years. The first game on the Master System actually had 3D dungeons. Something that very few console games were capable of doing. Maybe the first?
As an avid fan of dungeon crawlers, I love pseudo 3D labyrinths. But Phantasy Star was far from the first to showcase a first person perspective dungeon!

It's been around since the Apple II computer days with Akalabeth, Ultima I, and Wizardry all being released with wireframe pseudo 3D dungeons. It's not true 3D of course, there's no polygons involved, not even in later games with similar dungeons like Wizardry and Ultima IV's NES ports, just very clever spritework. Also plenty of Game Boy Wizardry Gaiden games used the same perspective.
AD&D Treasure of Tarmin for the Intellivision and Escape from the Mind Master on the 2600 also use a similar perspective.
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Re: Jarpig pride worldwide (Let's talk about JRPGs)

Post by Sengoku Strider »

BryanM wrote:Maybe they pulled back from it as the market became less male dominated.. but probably more to do with not being able to sell crap to Burgerland. We threw a tizzy over Night Trap, which I believe only has salacious imagery of women wearing pajamas? Anyway, if Wal-Mart won't carry your stuff you're kind of up shit's creek.
Night Trap featured Dana Plato's FULLY VISIBLE sports bra. Allowing such a display outside the confines of a doctor's office was an incontestable sign of the moral decay of Western civilization. Anyway, back to Marilyn Monroe's dress flying up, the Dallas Cowgirls and the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue for wholesome Americana suitable for public consumption.

In terms of the Dreamcast going puritan, I just meant in Japan. It has a bunch of PC visual novel ports, but with all of the sexy bits removed. The Saturn had nekkid boobs all over the place. That said, there were still edits in some of those titles compared to their PC versions, Eve: Burst Error for instance. Though that improbably wound up as the #1 all-time game in the final Saturn Magazine readers' poll, so I don't think anybody was all that bothered:
Spoiler
Image

For anyone wondering:

1. Eve: Burst Error
2. Grandia
3. Langrisser V: End of Legend
4. Yu-No: The Girl Who Chants Love at the End of this World
5. Machi
6. Welcome to Pia Carrot!! 2
7. Sakura Taisen 2
8. Linda³ Complete Edition
9. Culdcept
10. Devil Summoner: Soul Hackers

Yeah, the Japanese video game audience might have had slightly different tastes at the time. There isn't a single game in that top 10 that saw a Western release. Though it does make one wonder what happened in the alternate worldline where Bernie Stolar just said "You know what? Fuck this. We're going full weeb. I want every copy of Criticom burned."
BryanM wrote:Argh, since Dragon Knight came up, I've looking at all the dithering-heavy art that computer system used. What's the word for a nostalgia for something you've never experienced personally?
Anemoia.

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Re: Jarpig pride worldwide (Let's talk about JRPGs)

Post by EmperorIng »

Been kind of wondering if I should jump into Star Ocean 1 or 3. I know 1 has that remake on modern consoles, and I have 3 that's been sitting around from a used copy I bought a while back but just never started.

Big fans of the series around here?
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BryanM
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Re: Jarpig pride worldwide (Let's talk about JRPGs)

Post by BryanM »

Yeesh, Shin Megami trading card stuff is probably some of the most niche stuff out there. There's like two youtube videos, a couple wiki articles saying "they exist" which give the impression there's three series of games (two for mainline, and one that was part of the big push they did with Devil Children), and like some guy with a google spreadsheet translating many of the cards.

Big fans of the series around here?
I played through Star Ocean 2 all the way to the end once, and a couple floors of the bonus dungeon. That makes me the uncontested supreme expert on the series so bathe in my insights on these two games:

One time I tried playing Star Ocean 1 but I got angry, said "this is doo doo!" and threw my controller at the screen. And looking at screenshots of Star Ocean 3 makes me sad. User reviews give it a 7 out of 10, which you know is the same as 2 out of 5. It's like riding the edge of the lowest score a game can ever receive, a six!

To be a little fair to the games, Star Ocean one got its fan translation pretty late. It reminds me of the Last Bible 2 and Devil Children Black translations; just decades too late. SO 1 and 3 seem a little out of time, while 2 was something special.

Ah, you don't need me to tell you what to do. You look at these games, and your tummy rumbles to put them inside your brain or it doesn't. If it doesn't, I'd try to push a Rune Factory game on you or something.
The Saturn had nekkid boobs all over the place.
From my research on this very important subject, it seems like the change in policy was made halfway through the lifespan of the Saturn.

Mulling it over, it was most likely the wrong thing to do. Not that I have any argument for it that's stronger than this one: It was SEGA, after all. So it had to be the wrong thing.
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Sima Tuna
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Re: Jarpig pride worldwide (Let's talk about JRPGs)

Post by Sima Tuna »

EmperorIng wrote:Been kind of wondering if I should jump into Star Ocean 1 or 3. I know 1 has that remake on modern consoles, and I have 3 that's been sitting around from a used copy I bought a while back but just never started.

Big fans of the series around here?
Star Ocean 1's remake is Star Ocean 1 running on the Star Ocean 2 engine/battle system. As a fan of both games, I think it's excellent. Star Ocean 1 has my favorite story and characters of the series and you have a lot of flexibility about "routes" to take recruiting characters. Certain characters lock off other companion choices.

In combat, the game plays like Star Ocean 2. Which is fine. Star Ocean 1's Snes combat engine was kinda jank. SO2 improved upon it in many ways.

The star ocean hd remake is essentially the psp star ocean remake displayed in HD.

Star ocean 3 has great combat but story and characters are kind of bland. To say nothing of the gray and brown visuals.
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EmperorIng
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Re: Jarpig pride worldwide (Let's talk about JRPGs)

Post by EmperorIng »

I appreciate your guys' insights. I did decide to pick up Star Ocean 1 and although I'm only two hours into it, I was actually surprised at how nice it is. I thought I was going to get an uprezzed SNES game, but you were right, the remake does turn it more into Star Ocean 2 which I do have a little experience in and thought was fun. It feels like playing another PS1 rpg, which is good because most SNES rpgs are pretty smelly and crusty at this point.

Based on this and my limited knowledge of SO2 (never finished, will have to correct that), I think it's funny that a series named Star Ocean seems to really be preoccupied with plopping you down on medieval fantasy planets for so much of its runtime.

Sorry though Bryan - I tried to get into Rune Factory with 3 and just did not like it. I don't think I ever liked any of the Harvest Moon or Rune Factory series outside of the nostalgia of watching my older brother play them as a kid.
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Re: Jarpig pride worldwide (Let's talk about JRPGs)

Post by BareKnuckleRoo »

Sima Tuna wrote:Star ocean 3 has great combat but story and characters are kind of bland. To say nothing of the gray and brown visuals.
The voice acting also sucks at times. Like, very obvious falsetto that makes you grit your teeth. I can't remember which, but Tynave and Farleen, one of them has a horrendous VA. This only applies to secondary characters though, all the playables actually have pretty quality VAs (though not everyone's gonna dig Roger or Peppita).

It's also got some sheer clunkiness and poor design in terms of the interface compared to the "Tales of" series:

• You can't swap battle skills in battle. If the enemy absorbs a certain element, you're basically left without battle skills and have to use your normal attacks, or you have to reload the game. There's a LOT of elemental battle skills and a lot of bosses that can nullify or absorb elements that make those battle skills much less useful than they could have been. Several of the late-game or post-game skills are Fire Elemental like Roger's Star Fall, Sophia's Meteor Swarm, Mirage's Blazing Cannon and Avenger Charge, etc. Compare this to Maria, whose starting skills include some of the highest DPS in the game (Scatter Beam chains ftw).

• AI settings are not intuitive. Specifically, if you want Sophia to do cancel bonus stunlocking with her battle skills, "Concentrate on healing/recovery" is the only AI setting that gets her to actually do this. There's an entire guide written on the AI and an eye-opener; depending on if you play the NTSC or PAL version some characters will or won't cancel certain battle skills! For instance, Maria will not properly use Scatter Beam chains set to Short Minor / Major on NTSC version, but will use them on the PAL version. Peppita can't do long range Instanto Blast chains under AI control on NTSC, but will on the PAL version.

• The game box suggests it has multiplayer. You'd think it was cooperative multiplayer (again, like the "Tales of" series), but this is a lie; the only multiplayer is in a small minigame you can find in an optional dungeon.

• Chaining attacks is a bit awkward especially if the enemy changes range while you're chaining leaving you stuck unable to continue a chain. You also have few options if you want to avoid a minor attack during the chain bouncing off a shield. You can just use only major attacks or symbology, but the game's introduction of the cancel bonus system really encourages you to do basic chaining.

The battle system's not bad, but the game's bonus meter encourages you to play a long ranged character as they're safer to avoid hits with. Conveniently, Maria, the only one sensible in a futuristic game to carry a gun, also happens to be the top tier character in the game with some of the most ridiculously useful battle skills by far. Peppita's also very fun as she's the character with the best counterattack skills (that give you iframes) on her normal short major and short minor, and you can also use finger guns with her to spam Instanto Blast chains at long range (Albel has a less impressive normal counter, and Fayt has Side Kick chains which are weak but decent when cancelled).

It's worth noting that the North American release was actually an updated rerelease. In the original, cancelling battle skills didn't give a multiplier as far as I know, several skills had damage values tweaked, and numerous skills had elements swapped or added (Fayt's Dimension Door is way stronger in the NA release apparently).

• If you want to access the higher difficulties, and more importantly Full Active Mode, the game's version of what Manual mode is in the "Tales of" games, you need to grind out the game's achievements (Battle Trophies). There's a lot of them, and there's a lot of very dumb ones in the list.

It's especially annoying because Full Active Mode makes long range Battle Skills vastly more useful. There's a number of them where using a skill at Long range moves you to the enemy and puts you only a few steps away from being Short range, but FAM allows you to use these skills at a MUCH further distance. And of course it's the very last thing you unlock after getting 95% of all the trophies (285 out of 300!!), after all the costumes. You'll really only be able to experience it after going through all of the difficulties in the game from the default upward, because several superbosses have 3 trophies each for the difficulties, like "beat X on the hardest difficulty, beat X on the hardest difficulty without taking damage, beat X on the hardest difficulty under 20 minutes", and so on.

It's an achievement grind with a bunch of arbitrary achievements before achievements were even a thing.

• There's 4 optional characters each playthrough. One of them will naturally join unless you find very specific cutscenes for the other, and one character's missable entirely (Roger). This would be fine, if you could make any party of three you wanted, but you can't, because there's only 2 slots in the game for the optionals. There's 2 fairly minor characters that were added to the North American version apparently (Adray who's brand new, and Mirage who originally was around but not playable), but they're mandatory members. Why can't you at least recruit 3 optional characters each playthrough? It'd allow you to make whatever team you like, but as it stands, a team like Peppita, Albel & Roger is literally impossible (unless you somehow hack one of them in).

I'm always disappointed in RPGs with a huge playable roster that impose arbitrary limits on how your party is formed like this. It's as bad as RPGs that have multiple characters you can swap out, but that force a "main" character to always be present (FF7, FF8, Legend of Dragoon, etc). Let me use whoever I want, damn it.

• One of the puzzles halfway in the game uses the PS2's Dualshock 2 pressure sensitive face buttons. There's literally no reason for it in the puzzle for it to be used except to show off the gimmick. It's awful, and games that do it when it's unnecessary annoy me (Silent Hill 2's melee controls also use this, fortunately SH3 does not).


So yeah, in my opinion Star Ocean 3 is... an interesting game at times. And at other's it's a hot mess, a literal dumpster fire of bad ideas that leaves me shaking my head. The combat's interesting and fun enough, but there's also a lot that I absolutely loathe in the game.
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Sima Tuna
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Re: Jarpig pride worldwide (Let's talk about JRPGs)

Post by Sima Tuna »

Star Ocean 1 and 2 are the best games in the series, for my money. Of those, I think Star Ocean 1 is superior to the second game. Star Ocean has always had this juxtaposition of technologically advanced characters marooned or exploring backwards medieval worlds. But Star Ocean 1 handles the idea best.

Ing, you think Star Ocean 1 is surprisingly nice? That's just exactly what I thought myself, years ago, when I first played the psp remake of SO1. "Wow, this is actually excellent. Why does nobody know about this game?" Well, it doesn't help that the later Star Ocean games are all garbage. :lol: Or that the remakes of SO1 and SO2 were exclusive to PSP for the longest time. I still recommend the psp remake of star ocean 2 btw. Emulation is the easiest way to play it at this time.

Star Ocean 1 and 2 are excellent rpgs that don't get as much praise as they deserve. Sort of like phantasy star II in that regard.
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BareKnuckleRoo
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Re: Jarpig pride worldwide (Let's talk about JRPGs)

Post by BareKnuckleRoo »

How well regarded are the PS2 remakes of the first two PS games?
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EmperorIng
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Re: Jarpig pride worldwide (Let's talk about JRPGs)

Post by EmperorIng »

The psp remake of 1 (First Departure R) is what we are talking about above. I have yet to see anyone around the internet recommend that I play the SNES version over it, so I guess make of that what you will. Like I said it plays a lot like Star Ocean 2, probably made on the same engine (or updated engine).

SO2 remake on the psp I haven't played but while the gameplay is probably the same about the only thing you can say is that you may not like the newer art character portrait style versus the kind of charming, crude character art of the ps1 original.

For Star Ocean 1 I am keeping it on the "older" portrait style that matches what you see in the animated cutscenes, the newer style doesn't fit the game well.

Still playing through - one character left my party based on my dialog choices and I won't try -too- hard to look at a guide for party members. I'm banking on this being one of those "shorter" 16bit rpg's to ease replayability. :mrgreen:
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Sima Tuna
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Re: Jarpig pride worldwide (Let's talk about JRPGs)

Post by Sima Tuna »

It's not all that long for an RPG. Couldn't tell you the exact length though. You can easily fill up a squad of party members by rolling along and recruiting whoever wants to stick around. Or you can go deep into guide territory and look up the hardest party members to recruit and try to collect them all like pokeymans. :lol: I can tell you that it doesn't matter too much from a game difficulty perspective. You'll inevitably end up with some second-string party members you barely ever deploy in combat, contrasted with an "A-Team" of killers you send out all the time.
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Re: Jarpig pride worldwide (Let's talk about JRPGs)

Post by Air Master Burst »

Star Ocean 1 on SNES is worth playing once for the gorgeous sprite work, although the later uglier versions play much better. I've only ever made it through the original of 1, but I mostly play JRPGs for sprite art anymore anyway. I bounced pretty hard off the hideous graphics of the PSP version before eventually finding the SNES translation. 2 on PSP was pretty good despite the hideous graphics. Never tried 3 as that era of JRPGs holds a lot less interest for me, but it seems interesting!

Sadly, I think I'm old and jaded enough that I need more than basic world-saving and numbers-go-up. If it doesn't have gorgeous sprites and/or a fun unique gimmick I just can't be bothered anymore. I've been picking away at Far East of Eden Zero's nifty real-time clock system off and on since the translation patch dropped, been meaning to have a real go at it one of these days. I really miss elaborate mid-90s RPG gimmicks like that.
King's Field IV is the best Souls game.
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