Jarpig pride worldwide (Let's talk about JRPGs)

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

Post by Sima Tuna »

Hearing how much you're enjoying Scarlet Grace Ambitions makes me want to replay it. I guess my only minor criticism of the game is that there are only four origins. This could be a good thing, depending on your point of view. I remember hearing more origins were intended originally, but that four were settled on because of constraints in development. That's probably the smart design decision. But it does seem to me there are certain characters who could have merited a full story mode. I wish that the game had done better. Maybe we would have seen additional scenarios added as DLC or something. The focused approach isn't bad at all. It's only that I remember other SaGa games, and how you could select one character or another and see a totally different aspect of the game. Almost like playing another game entirely.

On balance, however, I'd still rank Scarlet Grace Ambitions as top two or three among the SaGa titles I've played. I haven't played Minstrel Song yet (I'm waiting on the remaster,) but I'm familiar with it.

Once I'm done with my current game (Subnautica,) I think I'll delve back into some SaGa. A second run of Scarlet Grace Ambitions is sounding really tempting. I love the combat and there are so many fun party members.
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Vanguard
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Re: Jarpig pride worldwide (Let's talk about JRPGs)

Post by Vanguard »

It is really, really lame that Scarlet Grace has a fast battle option but you can't use it until you unlock it. Even worse, the unlock condition is beating the game. They knew their slow-ass battles were a problem and they decided to force their audience through them anyway!
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Re: Jarpig pride worldwide (Let's talk about JRPGs)

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This is such a good game.
Indie hipsters: "Arcades are so dead"
Finite Continues? Ain't that some shit.
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Sima Tuna
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Re: Jarpig pride worldwide (Let's talk about JRPGs)

Post by Sima Tuna »

Probably the best gameplay of a classic era Final Fantasy. Big ups Butz and Y Burns.
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XoPachi
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Re: Jarpig pride worldwide (Let's talk about JRPGs)

Post by XoPachi »

I reinstalled NGS to see if the game's any good now.
It's...well there's things to do finally. They're not great, but the progression isn't stunted or frustrating, I guess.
I see Photon Arts are still something Sonic Team's developed a newfound allergy to though.
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Vanguard
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Re: Jarpig pride worldwide (Let's talk about JRPGs)

Post by Vanguard »

I finished the final route of Hat World. What a game. Best longform RPG I've played in years. I will once again say that Hat World easily stands a head and shoulders above any of the real SaGa games. Really looking forward to playing the dev's Final Fantasy Tactics clone ten years from now!

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I wrote a little guide to help new players start out in Hat World for another forum, might as well copy paste it here:
Spoiler
i'm a fan of unarmed combat in Hat World, but weapons do ultimately have higher endgame potential than fists (possibly not if you grind for dozens of hours but there's no need for that) but fists are still good enough to use even against the very brutal true last boss. they're convenient and have a good moveset. guns and spears seem like the best weapons to me. guns have high damage, especially if you manipulate your bullet count. i'm a fan of the humble musket because it gains tons of damage every time you upgrade it and goes great with the attack that does more damage the fewer bullets you have loaded. spears combine good damage with great utility. they have a strong aoe attack, an attack that gets stronger with repeated use until you leave the map, an innate ability to defend while preparing an attack, and an attack that allows the user to survive a single otherwise-fatal hit for the round. swords seem like the worst weapon type in general. you can dual wield them for some nice damage, but you can also dual wield guns which seems like a better idea unless a character specifically specializes in dual swords like Janice does. maces are good because magic staves count as maces but afaik a staff's attack power doesn't affect its magic performance. it'd probably be ok to use the starting broom as your staff for the entire game. axes seem to have above average damage and bows have below average base damage but can get critical hits and many of their attacks can't be counterattacked.

a character's skill with their weapon seems to make a bigger difference than the power of the weapon itself. as long as you focus your training on one or two weapon types you should be alright even if your weapons are a little outdated. which is good because crafting weapons can get expensive and uses the same resource you use to buy new skills for your characters. every time you attack with a weapon you gain a bit of experience with that weapon type, every time you cast a spell you gain experience in that school of magic. unfortunately this means that if you respec into a new weapon or school of magic you won't be very effective until you've done some training. you can equip the blue rose OOPart to level up your skill with weapons and magic faster.

unlike weapon skill, growth in your hp, soul, and attributes are semi-random. growth is influenced by what you're doing, attacking with an axe is likely to increase your strength, unarmed attacks are good for everything. the best way to increase your chances of a stat up is to fight against stronger enemies. as long as you're fighting things appropriate for your level you'll grow quickly.

weapons, armor, and accessories gain experience with use. once an item has gained enough you can upgrade it at your home base. weapons tend to level up very slowly aside from fists which grow quickly and don't need to be refined to get the extra attack power. both weapons and armor can be leveled up by consuming a fatima OOPart, but levels gained from fatimas won't carry over to future NG+ cycles. you can equip the chrome plated sword OOPart to increase your equipment's leveling rate, but it will only apply to the item it is equipped to.

if you hit F5 that will bring up a list of all of the side quests you've completed on your route, and will display ???s for the ones you haven't. it's a convenient way to tell if you've missed anything and if so what it is you missed. unlike the real SaGa games, Hat World has very little permanently missable content and is good about giving you clues for where to investigate next.

instant spells don't take up a turn and can't be stopped by magic jamming. most (all?) instant spells are only instant when you specialize in their school of magic, if you try to activate dualcasting through master magic you'll have to expend a turn. i don't think master magic is useful tbh.

the player's party and enemy parties share the same mana pool. wasting all of your mana on expensive spells to deny it to the enemy is a good idea and sometimes they'll do it to you too. there are a bunch of ways to reduce the mana cost of your spells and it's a good idea to reduce your magic users' basic spell costs down to zero so they can't be easily shut down.

Shiki, Natalie, and arguably Janice are good characters to play as for your first playthrough. Shiki can use time magic and can see the turn order for the upcoming round, which is important for playing the game well so if you're playing as someone else, try to defeat Shiki early so you get that stuff. Shiki and Natalie's final bosses are relatively easy. Janice's is fairly hard but it's mechanically interesting and gets drastically easier the more NG+ cycles you play so you may or may not want to do her route early. Lavie's route has the toughest final boss of the main six routes so you probably shouldn't play as her until you're more familiar with the game and maybe have a few NG+ cycles in your save file. Lavie and Natalie are BFFs who team up on each others' routes, so beating Natalie's route will train Lavie and make her route a lot easier. Mel's route is the original Hat World's route and it reveals the most information about the setting and the plot, so hers should be done late or last. i think Dora's route is the weakest of the bunch, just do it whenever. all of the routes work fine as self-contained stories, you can call it quits after playing through one and still have a satisfying experience if you want.
Doujin RPGs are so good these days that there really isn't much point in playing corporate JRPGs anymore. Even high tier ones like SMT Nocturne really pale compared to the better doujin games.
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Blinge
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Re: Jarpig pride worldwide (Let's talk about JRPGs)

Post by Blinge »

Man my google-fu brought up nothing about Hat World.

I've been thinking about Sigma (male) Star Saga a lot lately.
thinking about trying again. Although I just remember that game being extremely flawed and not very fun
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Re: Jarpig pride worldwide (Let's talk about JRPGs)

Post by Vanguard »

Blinge wrote:Man my google-fu brought up nothing about Hat World.

I've been thinking about Sigma (male) Star Saga a lot lately.
thinking about trying again. Although I just remember that game being extremely flawed and not very fun
There's very little information about Hat World on the English internet right now, would be great if that changes. If you search "Boushi Sekai" there are a handful of reviews and videos of the original game (what got translated is the insanely ambitious remake, you see). There have been threads discussing it lately on /vrpg/ if you don't mind browsing 4chan. And ol' Van would be glad to answer any questions if you PM or ask in this thread.
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Re: Jarpig pride worldwide (Let's talk about JRPGs)

Post by Vanguard »

Licorice wrote:How does it compare with e.g. Labyrinth of Touhou 2 (the best I've personally experienced)?
Scarlet Grace's combat mechanics and boss fights are well below the standards of Labyrinth of Touhou 2, but otoh Scarlet Grace's trash enemies present a non-trivial threat while more than 90% of LoT and LoT2's random encounters go down before they ever get a turn. I value both Labyrinth of Touhou games much higher than I do Scarlet Grace, but it might still be worth checking out. I could easily see it being preferred by those who dislike LoT's meaningless random encounters.

Also: I just tried copying the Japanese voice files from the PC version of Scarlet Grace over the files for an English copy of the game and it seems to be working fine. Highly recommended, the English dub is not good.
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Sima Tuna
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Re: Jarpig pride worldwide (Let's talk about JRPGs)

Post by Sima Tuna »

I'm completely absorbed in the new Minstrel Song remaster. Whoever at Square is pumping out these Saga remasters is a god. They've all been universally awesome reworks that add a ton of quality-of-life features as well as actual new content (such as new recruitable companions.)

Many of the other Square remasters of more mainstream games have been kinda middling or poor (Chrono Cross remaster, FF9 remaster), but I can't complain about the Saga remasters. I guess somebody at Square really loves the Saga games. I never thought I'd be able to one day own every Saga game on a single console. Romancing Saga 1 (minstrel song), RS2, RS3, Saga 1, 2 and 3 and Saga Frontier are all on Switch. AFAIK, all the ports are of very high quality. Now we just need a Switch port of the PSP version of Final Fantasy II. And maybe saga frontier 2... I guess.... Unlimited Saga can stay where it is...

I doubt Minstrel Song will be able to surpass RS3 and Scarlet Grace Ambitions as my favorite, but who knows. It is certainly the most complex and opaque Saga game I have played. I've already started up around 4 different characters, just testing the waters in various directions. I'll probably make Barbara's start my main playthrough though. I like it when the game throws you into the open world early. Barbara and Gray are great for that.
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Re: Jarpig pride worldwide (Let's talk about JRPGs)

Post by BryanM »

Since Tokimeki Memorial's finally been englishified, I played a few loops of it. Contrary to its outside impression, the game is not a date'em up. It's actually a monogamy enforcement simulator. You're just sitting there, trying to practice your hobbies or spend time with your GF, while these awful floozies try to swoop in and ruin everything.

It's one of those times where the brevity enforced by the hardware limitations make the game better, versus the bogged down text bloat so many visual novel type games can fall into: scenes go by faster. And the less that's said, the more you're free to expand and read into things however you like. It's a better engine for helping players create interpretations.

It is essentially the same exact game as Persona, minus the dungeon crawling.



I've been reading various comments by people saying they wish they'd break the formula or have adult characters in Persona 6. Which I'm not exactly on board with: the Newsona games have a stricter separation between reality and fantasy. In the magical nightmare world, you can be a god that kills gods. In the real world, you can be murdered by a punk with a gun in a single shot, that can only deal a measly 23 HP worth of damage in the fantasy world.

So a Persona game in adulthood would involve going to your mandatory job every single day. Your party members would be Salaryman A, Salaryman B, Salaryman C, etc. (This could actually be kind of a cool idea if you weren't the protagonist, but like one of the protagonist's parents. A bystander mob adjacent to the plot. But that feels like a totally different kind of game altogether.)

Another idea that often comes up to mix things up is to have a Female Main Character and only a female main character. Since the games are male wish-fulfillment fantasy worlds, that's uh... an optional FMC like in P3Portable is the most they could hope for. (Maybe they could have the two avatars have more of the same vibe than they did in P3P.)

Eternal Punishment was quite the deviation for that series. And IMO Maya did a very poor job at her job. I don't think she ever got around to writing that article on that scoop of hers.

I'm not exactly sure why some folks want a Persona game that isn't Persona to be made. It's okay to give a game a pass or to not be into a franchise...
Last edited by BryanM on Sun Jan 29, 2023 12:41 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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XoPachi
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Re: Jarpig pride worldwide (Let's talk about JRPGs)

Post by XoPachi »

I should finish Astlibra Revision at some point. That game is so much fun.
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Re: Jarpig pride worldwide (Let's talk about JRPGs)

Post by XoPachi »

Played the demo of Forspoken and everything is immediately not fun.
With each pillar of this game, there is something else comparable to it that does it better.

I couldn't imagine spending $70 or god forbid $90 on a game like this. It feels like an open world Sonic Forces with that braindead Arkham Asylum combat I can't fucking stand. I had to turn off voices too. I normally do that for JRPG's because I hate the voice acting in basically all of these games, dubbed or otherwise. But this is just an Aloy situation where it's a matter of please shut the fuck up. But compared to Frey, Aloy is quieter than a dead church mouse in Chernobyl. It's literally every single thing in the game she has a Marvel quip for it and I'm tired of AAA video games doing this.

Also had to play keyboard and mouse as the game doesn't recognize my controller. The only one I've played that doesn't so it's not the controller's fault. And it runs like shit. And it hurts my eyes because it has more soupy blur and particle effects than PSO NGS.
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Re: Jarpig pride worldwide (Let's talk about JRPGs)

Post by Vanguard »

i just finished nepheshel, an old doujin rpg maker game that has a very good reputation in japan. nepheshel is a third person dungeon crawling jrpg without much of an explicit story. instead it mostly drops bits of lore here and there. it does a good job of implying context and meaning for the people and places you encounter and overall its world feels intriguing.

you spend most of the game exploring dungeons. your enemies are visible while you explore as in chrono trigger or earthbound, and dodging enemies to avoid fights is a huge part of the game. most enemies come in easier green, medium blue, and harder red varieties. usually you go through a dungeon fighting the green guys and avoiding the others until you get some equipment and can grind on blue ones. the enemy movement patterns are varied and avoiding them is usually an interesting challenge. the dungeons are largely interconnected with each other and you have some freedom in which order to explore them. you can go into much higher level areas to try and snipe some good treasure as long as you avoid the enemies well. searching for secrets is another huge part of the game. they're everywhere and they're often very rewarding. in the first dungeon they're mostly very clearly telegraphed, like a section of wall is a different color than the rest, so you interact with it and sure enough it was a hidden door, but they get harder over time. eventually the secrets get so arbitrary and so poorly telegraphed that a brute force approach becomes your best option. there's a hidden accessory you can find in the kobold caves which, if you equip it, will make a little chime sound when you're next to a secret entrance, so what you end up doing in the second half of the game is equip the accessory and just scrape every wall of the dungeon listening for the sound. it's kind of tedious and you pretty much have to do it. there is some good fun you can have searching for nepheshel's secrets, but ultimately i feel that the tedium outweighs the good.

the combat system is just the rpg maker default, which isn't great. at first you play as a lone melee fighter main character, but for most of the game you will be accompanied by one of three allies whom you can freely switch between. deeva, the dual wielding fighter, seems to be the clear winner for most of the game. she does lots of damage, doesn't have to spend MP to do so, and can withstand more damage than the other two. late in the game there's an item that allows you to use all three allies at once. buffs, debuffs, and elemental weaknesses (including cut/bash/jab physical damage types) are pretty important. but it's ultimately just rpg maker combat where you spam attack and heal as necessary. if your hammer isn't doing damage, reload and try a spear or a sword. that's pretty much the game. it's too slow paced for how frequently you're expected to fight, and it's fairly tough so you can't get away with missing a lot of secrets or not doing enough level grinding or item farming.

you can get the english translation of nepheshel here: https://rpgmaker.net/games/12678/. but i think anyone who is interested in nepheshel should instead check out demon king chronicle, which is conceptually very similar but much better all around. it does almost everything i just described except the bad parts are good and the good parts are better. the english version of dkc is no longer officially available, so here is a download link for it: https://files.catbox.moe/l02ghi.zip.
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Re: Jarpig pride worldwide (Let's talk about JRPGs)

Post by BareKnuckleRoo »

BryanM wrote:Eternal Punishment was quite the deviation for that series.
Disagree. It was only the second game in the Persona series; it literally wasn't established enough to be a deviation because there wasn't an expectation of "this is what makes a Persona game a Persona game". I mean, sure, it's an SMT spinoff and the SMT games have generally been about teenage protagonists being thrown into unusual situations, but hey, they can do new stuff with a spinoff, right? Maya in Innocent Sin as an adult looking after the kids, and then for all the protags to be adults in Eternal Punishment is a nice change from the RPG trope of having all teenage protagonists.
I'm not exactly sure why some folks want a Persona game that isn't Persona to be made. It's okay to give a game a pass or to not be into a franchise...
I feel like people use Persona 3 as the template for "this is a Persona game" way too heavily for my tastes. Persona 2 remains my fave duology, but the wild popularity of P3, P4, and P5 makes me understand why they're retaining the tone of those... it's what sold. Persona 2 didn't have the heavy dating sim elements, and that's a bonus for me.
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Re: Jarpig pride worldwide (Let's talk about JRPGs)

Post by Sengoku Strider »

Not sure if this is something anyone here knows offhand...I'm playing Legend of Xanadu/Kaze no Densetsu Xanadu on the PC Engine, but I can't seem to save. There's a save command in the item menu, but when I come back to the game it doesn't seem to have saved anything. I don't think it's my console, since it's holding saves for everything else just fine. What am I missing here?
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Re: Jarpig pride worldwide (Let's talk about JRPGs)

Post by CStarFlare »

After 118 hours, I've finished Persona 5 Royal with all achievements. I appreciated that it was a clear step up from the standards P3 had set for presentation and gameplay-wise (P4 felt like a very small upgrade). I loved the way the interrogation framed the action, but once I got there I was ready for a big payoff and the ending, and was discouraged to realize there was still ~20 hours of the main game left.
Spoiler
Every Persona is exhausting by the end. There's always a tension between engaging with the life sim half of the game and resenting everything I have to do instead of moving the story forward. If you don't stay diligent with your schedule you'll find yourself with a 90 hour save file that you'll never be able to go back and properly "finish," so you feel obligated to keep grinding side content when you'd rather advance the plot. It's murder on the pacing. This was most obvious to me when it came to Mementos - intriguing when it was introduced, but by the time we got to the point of actually solving it my interested had faded in the 60 hours the game spent putting that mystery on the back burner.

The extra semester added to Royal followed a similar pattern - a strong start, but lost me quickly. It was a great concept for continuing the story, and the section where you walk around and ruin all of your party members' perfect lives one by one was surprisingly impactful. But this was followed by a week of every character having the same apologetic conversation with you (separately) which dampened my enthusiasm for what was developing. I wouldn't say I thought the extra semester was good, but there's probably a lot of my exhaustion with the game coloring my opinion here.
Persona 5 pulled me in hard and held my heart for at least 50 hours. I wasn't willing to abandon it, and in the end I'm just glad it's over. On some level it's all optional content, but that content is the thing that makes modern Persona special. If there were 30% less of it - if the game ran through 7 or 8 in-game months, had fewer confidents, etc - I might feel pretty good about it.

I had the same reaction to Persona 4, but I have entirely fond memories of Persona 3 - maybe it's just because I played that when I was young enough to not be sensitive to the idea that I was wasting my time. I have the suspicion it's that, mixed with additions to the P3 formula piling up into something that needs a more ruthless editor. I'll be interested to see P6 when it drops, but I have a bad feeling that it's going to continue down the same road.
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BryanM
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Re: Jarpig pride worldwide (Let's talk about JRPGs)

Post by BryanM »

Most of Atlus's games tend to be brutally long. They're very much of the philosophy "don't let anyone feel like they didn't get enough for their money." It doesn't matter if it's Persona 2, SMT, or Etrian Odyssey. If you want to do everything in one of their games, it's gonna cost you at least 120 hours. At four hours a day, that's an entire month of game time.

Nobody really wants to submerge themselves into something for more than two weeks nonstop! That week I read Mother of Learning was like my soul separated from my body.

If you really wanna have some Atlus fun, go play Digital Devil Saga. That feeling.

You flop over the finish line, dry heaving your guts out and gasping for breath... and it hits you. There's another whole game they made that's almost exactly like this one. Digital Devil Avatar Whisperer... TWO. And the only thought going through your head is: "They made another one of these??? Why would anyone want another one of these???!!!!"

... I deal with it by taking multi-year long breaks in the middle of the games. 60 hours one year. 60 hours four to eight years later... Currently in the middle of P4 and SMT4. Might get to their sequels around the same time oil reserves run out.

Another piece of advice is you don't always have to be a perfect completionist in Persona games, you weren't really meant to date every dog, school chum, and elderly couple the game provides, just the ones you like. Once you move on from the game it won't matter if you got mecha satan godzilla 5000 or not, it's as good as being sent to the trashcan. Being FOMO'd by a live service game is one thing, but to FOMO ourselves in a single player game that'll always be there, is self harm.

............ and now I had the delusional thought about finishing the final fight in DDS and then starting its sequel. Sneaky sneaky Atlus and their interconnected multiverse...
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Re: Jarpig pride worldwide (Let's talk about JRPGs)

Post by Blinge »

BryanM wrote:Another piece of advice is you don't always have to be a perfect completionist in Persona games, you weren't really meant to date every dog, school chum, and elderly couple the game provides, just the ones you like. Once you move on from the game it won't matter if you got mecha satan godzilla 5000 or not, it's as good as being sent to the trashcan. Being FOMO'd by a live service game is one thing, but to FOMO ourselves in a single player game that'll always be there, is self harm.
Well said.

I hear about stuff like ultimate personas or ultimate demons (currently playing SMTIV since august 2022).
I register a little lament that i won't get one. Then someone mentions the Angel Godzilla I wanted is actually unlocked in NG+.. and I think. my god, who TF has time to play NG+ on any of these games?
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Sima Tuna
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Re: Jarpig pride worldwide (Let's talk about JRPGs)

Post by Sima Tuna »

There are usually demons in SMT games who aren't fully "completionist" but still endgame viable. Those demons are typically only locked by your level, not any special fusions or sidequests. I think SMT games (not sure about Persona, but SMT for sure) are pretty good about allowing you to feel suitably overpowered by endgame without excessive grinding or fusions. The only SMT games I bother to be a completionist about are the ones I already love, like Strange Journey or Devil Survivor Overclocked. On a first playthrough, there's no point in going for more than the quick and dirty clear.

One reason I like SMT a lot more than Persona is the length difference. Sure, there are hella long SMT games too. But they generally feel less bloated (to me) than Persona. SMT doesn't have any of those social activities or grinding of non-combat stats, so you're just locked in with the core progression and content of the game. More recent SMT games have added a lot of side quests and fetch quest type of shit, but it's all totally optional and mostly pointless. A demon will task you with bringing him 10 demon asses, so you do and then he gives you a Soma and fucks off. There are a couple of side quests I remember from Strange Journey that actually affect the story/lore, but most of the sidequests in SMT IV and IV:A felt a waste of my time.

My top tier of SMT games (Overclocked, Strange Journey, Nocturne) are not that long, and eminently replayable. I prefer RPGs where the bulk of my play time comes from replays rather than a single play. And where the game is designed with a lot of paths and decisions the player is able to make. Persona just doesn't cater to my preferences in that way.
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Re: Jarpig pride worldwide (Let's talk about JRPGs)

Post by Steamflogger Boss »

Lol. I've beat both DDS games like 3 times including hard mode. They ain't that bad length wise trust me Bryan.

And yeah it's your own fault if you 100% these games. If you just want to beat them, it's not nearly as bad. This is coming from someone that goes full autism with Yakuza and From Soft games. I can't get mad at the companies for making a game I loved enough to do that with. Yakuza is probably even more severe than Atlus JRPGs honestly. We are talking damn near PLUS 70-100 hours from beating the game to all achievements territory. I didn't even do quite everything in Yakuza 0 and ended up at like 110 hours. I think a regular playthrough of that game could easily be 40 hours. The games are kinda constructed in a way that lends itself to doing side content so it's going to vary heavily from person to person how much they do. I'd guess an average playthrough would be around 70 hours. I found a trophy type site since I think that is probably more reliable than hltb and it says 125+ hours for Yakuza 0.

Anyway I finished my FF7 playthrough. Square is extremely overrated. Mess of a plot, lots of jank elements outside the turn based combat (which is fine) etc I enjoyed it enough to finish obviously and I went through games like Chrono Trigger, Xenogears, FF6 again recently and the weird jank fetish is always there. I think next I'm going to play Octopath 2 and not give a shit about the dialogue. The first one was an awesome experience for me. 90 hours or w/e and I was like "oh it's done, damn" so I'm hoping this is as strong for me. I also want to play Ishin. I went from not wanting to play anything new since last Feb (Elden Ring) to multiple games I'm interested in coming out this year.
BryanM wrote:I'm not exactly sure why some folks want a Persona game that isn't Persona to be made. It's okay to give a game a pass or to not be into a franchise...
A lot of people could stand to read this advice and take it to heart.

Oh and yeah Tokimeki is cool.
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Re: Jarpig pride worldwide (Let's talk about JRPGs)

Post by Blinge »

I've been loving doing almost every sidequest in smtIV as soon as it comes up.
with the exception of one of the VR battles because having to learn the exact move sequence of an enemy party to beat it like a chess puzzle is bleh.

no hurry to finish the game I guess.

also most random encounters are so silly. i get attacked.. i used blight+8 and everything is shredded.. I move on with my MC regaining mana with very step :lol:
I appreciate gaining this power though because i know how quickly everything can go south if you get a bit unlucky.
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BryanM
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Re: Jarpig pride worldwide (Let's talk about JRPGs)

Post by BryanM »

Steamflogger Boss wrote:Lol. I've beat both DDS games like 3 times including hard mode. They ain't that bad length wise trust me Bryan.
I checked the 'ole save file and damned if you're not right. 30 hours it says. Even if I sucked, not more than another +10 taking dirt naps.

Makes sense, since it's a very barebones, straight-forward dungeon crawler.
Anyway I finished my FF7 playthrough. Square is extremely overrated. Mess of a plot
It goes back to my Tokimeki comparison: Final Fantasy 7 ends after you leave Midgar. Everything after that is a long meaningless fever dream of sleepy-brain nonsense and babbling. (My god, I have no recollection of what factions were involved in the RTS minigame or why it happened.)

But while inside of Midgar, everything makes total sense. You go on dates with three girls: Arris, Tifa, and Barret. Some of these dates involve committing a little terrorism against The Man. Some typical slice of life "wacky hijinks" ensue, like that time Cloud almost loses his chastity to the local don. It's all very cohesive, full of purpose and direction. Completely sensible.

However, Squaresoft is the poster child of not getting it. The designers of future games clearly don't understand that was an enormous reason why FF7 was so beloved: it was basically a prototypical version of modern Persona games. Or a Tokimeki game with a heavier emphasis on pointless battles. (A Tokimeki game has like five pointless battles. The typical jRPG, five hundred pointless battles. It's a matter of current mood and preferences which of these is better than the other.)

The easy litmus test for if you the reader agree with me, is if you would have preferred they had never left that city except for a field trip to the Golden Saucer where more dating hijinks ensued.



..... setting lab animals free is definitely an act of terror worthy of PETA. "Fuck the man" is definitely cyber-punk.

And just like the ancient jRPG cliche, no one is more the man than literally god. There's a reason why horrible monsters and gods are used for enemies in these games. If the average enemy encounter was little bunny rabbits (which is what they functionally are in most jRPGs) and your hero was just a sociopath walking around, punching and kicking these little animals to death, it uh.... yeah.
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BulletMagnet
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Re: Jarpig pride worldwide (Let's talk about JRPGs)

Post by BulletMagnet »

Steamflogger Boss wrote:Yakuza is probably even more severe than Atlus JRPGs honestly.
You'd better be prepared to put in a lot of blackjack and koi-koi time, that's for sure.
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Steamflogger Boss
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Re: Jarpig pride worldwide (Let's talk about JRPGs)

Post by Steamflogger Boss »

BryanM wrote:
I checked the 'ole save file and damned if you're not right. 30 hours it says. Even if I sucked, not more than another +10 taking dirt naps.

Makes sense, since it's a very barebones, straight-forward dungeon crawler.
Yeah I haven't played it in awhile but that sounds about right.
BryanM wrote:It goes back to my Tokimeki comparison: Final Fantasy 7 ends after you leave Midgar. Everything after that is a long meaningless fever dream of sleepy-brain nonsense and babbling. (My god, I have no recollection of what factions were involved in the RTS minigame or why it happened.)

But while inside of Midgar, everything makes total sense. You go on dates with three girls: Arris, Tifa, and Barret. Some of these dates involve committing a little terrorism against The Man. Some typical slice of life "wacky hijinks" ensue, like that time Cloud almost loses his chastity to the local don. It's all very cohesive, full of purpose and direction. Completely sensible.

However, Squaresoft is the poster child of not getting it. The designers of future games clearly don't understand that was an enormous reason why FF7 was so beloved: it was basically a prototypical version of modern Persona games. Or a Tokimeki game with a heavier emphasis on pointless battles. (A Tokimeki game has like five pointless battles. The typical jRPG, five hundred pointless battles. It's a matter of current mood and preferences which of these is better than the other.)

The easy litmus test for if you the reader agree with me, is if you would have preferred they had never left that city except for a field trip to the Golden Saucer where more dating hijinks ensued.



..... setting lab animals free is definitely an act of terror worthy of PETA. "Fuck the man" is definitely cyber-punk.

And just like the ancient jRPG cliche, no one is more the man than literally god. There's a reason why horrible monsters and gods are used for enemies in these games. If the average enemy encounter was little bunny rabbits (which is what they functionally are in most jRPGs) and your hero was just a sociopath walking around, punching and kicking these little animals to death, it uh.... yeah.
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Actually did read it, but hey this meme is good. It's also how FF7's writing made me feel.
BulletMagnet wrote:You'd better be prepared to put in a lot of blackjack and koi-koi time, that's for sure.
And mini car racing. Maybe some drone racing and a real estate mini-game. :lol: At least for the most part the mini-games are well done.
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TransatlanticFoe
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Re: Jarpig pride worldwide (Let's talk about JRPGs)

Post by TransatlanticFoe »

In preparation for Octopath 2 I decided to go back and take on Galdera in the first game. I'd spent time grinding jobs to get the skills I needed (I swear either you need the overhealing skills or you need to be massively overlevelled - because this thing was hitting my level 70 party for 3000+ damage) and saved before the gauntlet... but had the mental block of not wanting to face it again lest I lose a few hours of my life.

It took ages but I won. After my first attempt of simply not having enough elemental attacks and multi-hit damage, I figured this is basically an elemental party and a physical party. First phase was rough just down to how long it took and how tiresome it is whenever the adds respawn. Second phase was much easier... for the most part. While it had adds alive, my transfer rune/sidestep strat was working. Then it started firing an elemental attack that hit for said 3000+ damage - maybe more. Stressful hoping that I had enough overhealing to survive while trying to keep SP and BP in order to hit hard. I'm sure there was an easier way to do it and a more optimum party but just glad to get over the finish line.
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Steamflogger Boss
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Re: Jarpig pride worldwide (Let's talk about JRPGs)

Post by Steamflogger Boss »

I think you do need the overhealing skill. At the very least it's extremely useful.
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XoPachi
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Re: Jarpig pride worldwide (Let's talk about JRPGs)

Post by XoPachi »

I forgot I was given a copy of Final Fantasy 15 a few years ago. This game is...tedious. 10 hours in and I feel like it's finally getting started. Kinda?
As beautiful as Regalia is, I already hate using the fucking thing. Kinda glad she went missing this chapter. It's kind of funny that I used that car in Forza and it handled wonderful but in actual FF15, she handles like an on rails game. Why design such a gorgeous car that's integral to traversal, involve it in the plot, even have skills for it in the nexus, and then make it a horrible play experience to drive? This isn't exactly uncharted territory, driving in a large game world. I'm not asking for Forza but, Jesus man...

Not much about this game feels right really. Feels like Noctis kind of just sort of stumbles a lot. Really jerky, delayed movements and attacks. It's one of those AAAA games that puts fancy in game cinematics and animation fidelity over adequate game feel and fluidity. It's starting to get grating. And when does this world actually get thematically interesting?

This is a FUCK of a lot better than ForSpoken at least.
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TransatlanticFoe
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Re: Jarpig pride worldwide (Let's talk about JRPGs)

Post by TransatlanticFoe »

The game is about 50 hours of fucking around on a road trip then about 20 hours of story that rushes you through to the end of the game. If you aren't enjoying the first part.... it's probably not worth sticking with, because as soon as the story event kicks in you're railroaded to the end and it's largely nonsensical (you can get back to the road trip part via a time travelling dog, which is one of the less stupid things to happen).
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