What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Anything from run & guns to modern RPGs, what else do you play?
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BulletMagnet
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by BulletMagnet »

If memory serves you only had 3 people at a time in battle but everybody was always "with the party" and could be switched in and out freely, Tidus included. Been awhile though, I might be misremembering.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by vol.2 »

BareKnuckleRoo wrote:I'm not fond of RPGs where you have a large cast of playable characters, but a main character is forced into occupying one of those slots at all times
that describes *a lot* of RPGs. the original Fallout titles. Dragon Quest. or is that not what you meant?
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by To Far Away Times »

Steamflogger Boss wrote:Xenogears had quite a bit of locked slot moments. It doesn't bother me too much, at least when there are story reasons for it.

Seems like all the pure traditionalists hate VIII. After VII I couldn't be bothered to try it but I will one day.
VIII ups the production values considerably from VII. It also has one of my favorite soundtracks of all time. Nobuo Uematsu really knocked it out of the park.

But the game has a lot of problems though:
  • The battle system depends on summons that have unskippable animations and take 30+ seconds each.
    The junction system is stupid.
    The story goes off the rails towards the end.
    The leveling system is stupid and encourages you to keep your character levels low.
    The final boss is terrible. You can level yourself into a really difficult fight. The fight also takes hours and the boss can randomly cut one of your stats to nearly 0 for the rest of the fight. This move happens several times during the fight. Pray to the RNG gods. This type of difficulty in RPGs is a big no no.
Overall, I think FFVIII and FFII are the two weakest Final Fantasy games from Sakaguchi's tenure.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by BrianC »

Summons in FFVIII are a good time to relax and have a snack.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by WelshMegalodon »

Wait, I thought FFVIII was all about drawing to make your stats go through the roof and then steamrolling everything.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by To Far Away Times »

It is. You draw as much as you can in the beginning and steamroll things for a while. But the enemies level faster than you so by the end of the game you need to have not leveled too much.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by ACSeraph »

BulletMagnet wrote:If memory serves you only had 3 people at a time in battle but everybody was always "with the party" and could be switched in and out freely, Tidus included. Been awhile though, I might be misremembering.
This is right, I kicked Tidus' annoying crybaby ass outa my party the very first chance I got.
WelshMegalodon wrote:Wait, I thought FFVIII was all about drawing to make your stats go through the roof and then steamrolling everything.
FF8 is all about shirking your mercenary responsibilities to become an expert TCG player, converting your cards into overpowered stacks of spells and materials for top tier weaponry. I killed Ultima Weapon because I wanted Eden's trading card and for no other reason.

FF8 is broken in the best way and if you play it like a man and let the enemies scale with you all the way to level 100 the game is incredibly fun to play even with OP junctions. It's still too easy, but I don't feel like JRPGs are meant to be hard. It's certainly not even close to perfect, but actually with a few tweaks to the system for balance it could have been one of the best in the entire series.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Sumez »

BareKnuckleRoo wrote:You can freely use whoever you want in fights, even in story fights that start the battle with specific characters in the frontline you can swap them out at-will.
In FFX you can switch party members in and out at all times (and I think this is the only FF game to even do this?), but it's really too bad IMO because that option is never really a relevant tactical choice. I can't speak for everyone, but I think the game goes through the classical road of focusing on developing the characters you're planning to stick with, and then ignoring everyone else.
Compare Dragon Quest XI where switching out a character will almost always give you a tactical advantage when playing on the proper difficulty. God that game's combat has to be the most satisfying among the classic turn based systems.
Steamflogger Boss wrote:Seems like all the pure traditionalists hate VIII. After VII I couldn't be bothered to try it but I will one day.
I don't think it's so much the fact that the game isn't "traditional" (neither was FFX, nor any game following that), but there's just a whole slew of problems with it. The combat is downright broken and boring, the characters range from wildly uninteresting to annoying, and the story is just a mess that's impossible to get engaged in.

It's also the game where Nobuo Uematsu started losing his stride IMO. There are some nice tracks in it, but overall the soundtrack is boring compared to the standard for the series.
But that still has its fans, so eh.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Obiwanshinobi »

I know a girl who enjoyed FFVIII, but couldn't get into VII (as "too gloomy", or something like that, not liking the settings early on).
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by BareKnuckleRoo »

vol.2 wrote:that describes *a lot* of RPGs. the original Fallout titles. Dragon Quest. or is that not what you meant?
The original Fallout titles are more an example of main character = the player's avatar, with everyone else acting as guests. It's a bit more understandable in that case at least.

What I'm describing are RPGs where you have a cast of playables with you that exceeds your party size, and each character is perfectly controllable and fleshed out and isn't just a "guest character", but one character slot is arbitrarily locked to the "main" character. The Persona games after 2 started doing this, having a larger cast of playables than your party size you could swap, but the justification for "main must always be present" is if he goes down, you gameover (ouch).

Tidus can definitely be booted immediately in FFX, but generally he and Wakka are the best post-game attackers along with Rikku as backup because he has high hitcount multihit Overdrives along with Wakka's attack reels (and Rikku's got item mixing, the most powerful and versatile Overdrive by a ridiculous margin if used correctly).
but it's really too bad IMO because that option is never really a relevant tactical choice.
The problem with "encouraging" character swapping is it can go from "encouraged" to "forced" very rapidly.

Labyrinth of Touhou is a cool system, frontline of 4, party of 12, where you're actively encouraged to swap people in and out to have glass cannons come in to attack, recover magic, and reset the time bar after using slow but powerful nukes. It also has a cast of 40, no forced character usage and a New Game + that lets you start with the full cast and use whoever you want from the getgo.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Steamflogger Boss »

Sumez wrote:
BareKnuckleRoo wrote:You can freely use whoever you want in fights, even in story fights that start the battle with specific characters in the frontline you can swap them out at-will.
In FFX you can switch party members in and out at all times (and I think this is the only FF game to even do this?), but it's really too bad IMO because that option is never really a relevant tactical choice. I can't speak for everyone, but I think the game goes through the classical road of focusing on developing the characters you're planning to stick with, and then ignoring everyone else.
Compare Dragon Quest XI where switching out a character will almost always give you a tactical advantage when playing on the proper difficulty. God that game's combat has to be the most satisfying among the classic turn based systems.
Steamflogger Boss wrote:Seems like all the pure traditionalists hate VIII. After VII I couldn't be bothered to try it but I will one day.
I don't think it's so much the fact that the game isn't "traditional" (neither was FFX, nor any game following that), but there's just a whole slew of problems with it. The combat is downright broken and boring, the characters range from wildly uninteresting to annoying, and the story is just a mess that's impossible to get engaged in.

It's also the game where Nobuo Uematsu started losing his stride IMO. There are some nice tracks in it, but overall the soundtrack is boring compared to the standard for the series.
But that still has its fans, so eh.
I definitely was not professing to know why, I'm not well versed enough in the series, just something I observed. I have one friend that only likes the pre-PS1 entries and 9.

I need to give DQXI another go. I tilted at the stupid dub and there being no Japanese audio. I know it sounds ridiculous, but I'm ridiculous. :lol:
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Sumez »

The Switch version actually added a Japanese dub... Though the English voices are pretty solid IMO.
BareKnuckleRoo wrote:The problem with "encouraging" character swapping is it can go from "encouraged" to "forced" very rapidly.
It's a tough balance. I'd rather have an "enforced" mechanic than an "encouraged" one in a tactical combat system to be honest.
A lot of JRPGs suffer from being full of options that are mostly superfluous. From inventory items with certain effects, over an overflow of redunant skills, to irrelevant or unreliable status effects. This is nice if you're treating battles as a playground, but for a tactical challenge you definitely get a lot more satisfying experience by skimming the mechanics to only the essential - either by removing the unnecessary ones, or improving the utility of the ones you want to keep.

The DQ series itself has often been guilty of this kind of inflation, especially with the absurd skill library in DQ6 and 7, so DQ11 was really a refreshing surprise. Though unfortunately only if you're playing it on the "real" difficulty.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Vanguard »

ACSeraph wrote:It's still too easy, but I don't feel like JRPGs are meant to be hard.
I think this belief has done a lot of harm to the genre. JRPGs have the potential for great gameplay, but you rarely see it in practice because most JRPG developers don't even try and most JRPG players don't really care.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by ACSeraph »

Vanguard wrote:
ACSeraph wrote:It's still too easy, but I don't feel like JRPGs are meant to be hard.
I think this belief has done a lot of harm to the genre. JRPGs have the potential for great gameplay, but you rarely see it in practice because most JRPG developers don't even try and most JRPG players don't really care.
Great gameplay doesn't necessarily have to be excessively difficult. I love me some SMT3 Nocturne for the brutality, but there are definitely times when I want to get drunk and walk from one fantasy town to the next watching my party slaughter everything in their path ala FF12. There is room in the world for both.

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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by BareKnuckleRoo »

Sumez wrote:A lot of JRPGs suffer from being full of options that are mostly superfluous.
Are you suggesting that tactical strategy games don't have superfluous options at times?

I hate the design philosophy of having rigid skill progression in an RPG and having very clear forcing into "you must play this way". Even in games with very freeform skill progression or varied skill trees, some of which may not be as useful as others, part of the joy of learning a combat system is often discovering which synergies work well and which do not. And in some cases, playing with a subpar skillset for amusement can sometimes be nice to have as an option too. It's also worth noting that the meta as far as what's useful and what's not can change with specific discoveries depending on the game, and I can think of a couple RPG examples where the community once thought specific characters sucked because of subpar stats on-paper, but once a few people started using them they realized that their skills are wildly more useful in practice than anticipated and became very popular. This sort of thing I think is really neat and one of the reasons it's nice for games to have a good variety of options; not even the developer can always fully anticipate how the metagame will play out in terms of skill/character selection!

In skill tree games with a large number of options but only a limited number of points (or skill slots to use at once), it is nice to be able to "respec" for a fee so you can experiment with different skillsets without feeling like you have to restart to do it though.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by FinalBaton »

I remember the in-fight party-switching in FFX to actually give the option for some strategy advantages? maybe I'm remembering wrong, I need to replay that one
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by BareKnuckleRoo »

You can't swap out dead members in FFX, so aside from specific story fights where certain characters can use a Trigger Command to do something special such as taunt the enemy, swapping characters isn't hugely advantageous or necessary, but it can be helpful if one character's been hit hard and with several status effects, and instead of trying to heal all of them you just want to pull someone in who's completely fresh and ready to go in their place.

You can also use it to swap people in and deal burst damage with their Overdrives by having everyone max their Overdrive meter out prior to the battle, then quickly burn your meters, swap in members, burn meters, etc. 7 Overdrive meters tossed out rapidly can do a lotta damage.

They were experimenting with character swapping in battle essentially since it was basically the first in the series to allow mid-battle character swapping, and I think even though the game doesn't revolve heavily around the use of the mechanic, it's a small but nice option to have.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Steamflogger Boss »

BareKnuckleRoo wrote:
Sumez wrote:A lot of JRPGs suffer from being full of options that are mostly superfluous.
Are you suggesting that tactical strategy games don't have superfluous options at times?

I hate the design philosophy of having rigid skill progression in an RPG and having very clear forcing into "you must play this way". Even in games with very freeform skill progression or varied skill trees, some of which may not be as useful as others, part of the joy of learning a combat system is often discovering which synergies work well and which do not. And in some cases, playing with a subpar skillset for amusement can sometimes be nice to have as an option too. It's also worth noting that the meta as far as what's useful and what's not can change with specific discoveries depending on the game, and I can think of a couple RPG examples where the community once thought specific characters sucked because of subpar stats on-paper, but once a few people started using them they realized that their skills are wildly more useful in practice than anticipated and became very popular. This sort of thing I think is really neat and one of the reasons it's nice for games to have a good variety of options; not even the developer can always fully anticipate how the metagame will play out in terms of skill/character selection!

In skill tree games with a large number of options but only a limited number of points (or skill slots to use at once), it is nice to be able to "respec" for a fee so you can experiment with different skillsets without feeling like you have to restart to do it though.
This is why I like Fire Emblem and SRT so much, basically. It can be really fun to use "trash" characters and still beat the game. Those games to me have insane replay-ability. I've beat Fire Emblem Path of Radiance 5 times (that I can remember) with different character combinations.

That said I can enjoy games for non-gameplay reasons too. I still adore things like the Lunar games even though they are simplistic. The total package of atmosphere, fun characters, breezy story etc is just sometimes exactly what I'm looking for.
ACSeraph wrote:
Vanguard wrote:
ACSeraph wrote:It's still too easy, but I don't feel like JRPGs are meant to be hard.
I think this belief has done a lot of harm to the genre. JRPGs have the potential for great gameplay, but you rarely see it in practice because most JRPG developers don't even try and most JRPG players don't really care.
Great gameplay doesn't necessarily have to be excessively difficult. I love me some SMT3 Nocturne for the brutality, but there are definitely times when I want to get drunk and walk from one fantasy town to the next watching my party slaughter everything in their path ala FF12. There is room in the world for both.

---

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Well said all around.

I miss being able to order things from Japan without batshit crazy shipping, hopefully soon lol.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by BareKnuckleRoo »

This is why I like Fire Emblem and SRT so much, basically. It can be really fun to use "trash" characters and still beat the game. Those games to me have insane replay-ability.
The original Final Fantasy, and particularly the first SaGa games (Final Fantasy Legend 1 and 2) were exceptional for this. You could replay them with various class combinations, and have fun with more unorthodox ones. 4 Robots in FFL2 is ridiculously overpowered and silly for 90% of the game when you know how to tweak them.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Mischief Maker »

Steamflogger Boss wrote:I miss being able to order things from Japan without batshit crazy shipping, hopefully soon lol.
Well if you're not hellbent on playing something on an actual console, give Fell Seal: Arbiter's Mark a try in the meantime.

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It's the Final Fantasy Tactics 2 we never got, and it's on pretty deep discount at GOG right now.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Steamflogger Boss »

BareKnuckleRoo wrote:
This is why I like Fire Emblem and SRT so much, basically. It can be really fun to use "trash" characters and still beat the game. Those games to me have insane replay-ability.
The original Final Fantasy, and particularly the first SaGa games (Final Fantasy Legend 1 and 2) were exceptional for this. You could replay them with various class combinations, and have fun with more unorthodox ones. 4 Robots in FFL2 is ridiculously overpowered and silly for 90% of the game when you know how to tweak them.
Damn, I really just can't play Game boy games. First FF is a bit rough for me but still enjoyable. Open to recs not on Gameboy. :lol:

Baldur's Gate II was another I forgot to mention. Back when I had infinite time I did it with every class including some solo runs.

@mm: I'll check that out. I've got no shortage of games to play, I just wanted to bemoan the current situation. Edit: still $10, I'll wait. It does look good though!
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

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BareKnuckleRoo wrote:You can't swap out dead members in FFX, so aside from specific story fights where certain characters can use a Trigger Command to do something special such as taunt the enemy, swapping characters isn't hugely advantageous or necessary, but it can be helpful if one character's been hit hard and with several status effects, and instead of trying to heal all of them you just want to pull someone in who's completely fresh and ready to go in their place.

You can also use it to swap people in and deal burst damage with their Overdrives by having everyone max their Overdrive meter out prior to the battle, then quickly burn your meters, swap in members, burn meters, etc. 7 Overdrive meters tossed out rapidly can do a lotta damage.

They were experimenting with character swapping in battle essentially since it was basically the first in the series to allow mid-battle character swapping, and I think even though the game doesn't revolve heavily around the use of the mechanic, it's a small but nice option to have.
it's been awhile so I can't remember well but : don't certain character can inflict more damage on certain monsters? due to their weakness?


Speaking of ''what's fun to tweak in jRPG'' : I just started a FFV game, and got reminded of how it can be fun to modulate your character progress to achieve the most powerful late game character. Doing so whitout a guide can be fun, if you're into that sort of thing. You get the satisfaction in the late game of saying ''I thought of that''. I read some skill paths on Reddit and holy fuck, there are some avenues I haven't thought before that would make characters so much more powerful that I ever thought possible. Wow.

but for me, that alone is not enough, however cool it is. and unfortunately, the strory is not gripping in V (althought recent translations seem apparently a bit better). stil fun to go through tho

count me in the camp who loves to go through FF1 with shit parties! I probably played that game to completion 30 times by now
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

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Now playing:

-Castlevania Circle of the Moon

This is my first go-round playing a GBA game (or any GB game) in emulation. It looks pretty sweet on good CRT with the mgba emulator. I haven't re-played any of those old GBA/DS games in years because my eyes suck and handhelds are kind awful for me, so I'm looking forward to blasting through Aria of Sorrow, etc, etc.

-Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney

Never played any of these before, picked up the series on Steam for cheap a few weeks ago. It's fun, but the solutions don't always make a lot of sense. It's like if the people who scripted the Zelda game narrations were allowed to write laws in the real world for real people. Kind of surreal.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by BareKnuckleRoo »

Steamflogger Boss wrote:Damn, I really just can't play Game boy games.
Any particular reason why not? Game Boy emulates well nowadays and the three SaGa/Final Fantasy Legend games are among some of the pinnacle games for the system.
FinalBaton wrote:it's been awhile so I can't remember well but : don't certain character can inflict more damage on certain monsters? due to their weakness?
Early on the game encourages you to use certain characters vs certain monsters due to initial skill differences. Tidus and Wakka are both effective physically vs fast monsters, Wakka's physical attack is long range and can hit certain enemies other can only hit with magic, Lulu is encouraged against elementals who have high physical defense but are vulnerable to opposing element spells, Auron's weapons come with Piercing which allows him to do full physical damage against armored enemies, Rikku's steal can instant kill some robotic enemies encountered after obtaining her, and so on.

However, aside from Wakka's ranged physical property (which is very useful in a few key battles), everyone eventually gets to do whatever they'd like depending on how you level them up in what part of the sphere grid. Everyone can build up accuracy to hit fast or flying enemies (or just use spells), everyone has the option of learning spells to deal with elementals, everyone can acquire weapons with the Piercing property to hit armored enemies for full damage (or just use spells), and so on.

Essentially, early game is more rigid about encouraging the use of specific characters against specific monster types, and this opens up where multiple characters can be made to handle certain types of threats by the middle or so of the game as your options increase.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Steamflogger Boss »

vol.2 wrote:Now playing:

-Castlevania Circle of the Moon

This is my first go-round playing a GBA game (or any GB game) in emulation. It looks pretty sweet on good CRT with the mba emulator. I haven't re-played any of those old GBA/DS games in years because my eyes suck and handhelds are kind awful for me, so I'm looking forward to blasting through Aria of Sorrow, etc, etc.

-Phoenix Wright Ace Attorney

Never played any of these before, picked up the series on Steam for cheap a few weeks ago. It's fun, but the solutions don't always make a lot of sense. It's like if the people who scripted the Zelda game narrations were allowed to write laws in the real world for real people. Kind of surreal.
Great games for sure. I got into Phoenix Wright not that long ago.
BareKnuckleRoo wrote:
Steamflogger Boss wrote:Damn, I really just can't play Game boy games.
Any particular reason why not? Game Boy emulates well nowadays and the three SaGa/Final Fantasy Legend games are among some of the pinnacle games for the system.
first

Just personal preference. The last time I did was Pokemon as a kid. I could try but I am fairly sure I'd not play more than 30 minutes. It's definitely not a problem with the Game Boy.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by BareKnuckleRoo »

Pokémon initially started as a bland, glorified cock-fighting simulator which I think a lot of us got into due to its slick marketing campaign more than the actual gameplay quality. That and the multiplayer gimmick.

Final Fantasy Legend 1 & 2 are wildly more interesting in terms of content. Even if you don't like the Game Boy, the Wonderswan Color update of the first one and the DS remakes of 2 and 3 absolutely are worth playing. Though I would say you should be more concerned with the quality of the individual games, especially given the Game Boy is a solid system for when it was released and has many competent and interesting games.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Steamflogger Boss »

I did not mean to compare the games nor do I really like pokemon anymore. I still can't finish Game Boy games, I've tried and they are too visually unappealing to me. I beat those Pokemon games around the year 2000, I wouldn't be able to now. I actually tried gold not too long ago. That's just my experience, I know many people still enjoy the Game Boy.

I'm sorry for bringing this up, I just felt I should mention I don't play Game Boy games since I do at least otherwise consider recommendations. I really wasn't hoping to explain myself but I don't want to just ignore people either. I hope you understand.
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Sumez »

BareKnuckleRoo wrote: I hate the design philosophy of having rigid skill progression in an RPG and having very clear forcing into "you must play this way". Even in games with very freeform skill progression or varied skill trees, some of which may not be as useful as others, part of the joy of learning a combat system is often discovering which synergies work well and which do not. And in some cases, playing with a subpar skillset for amusement can sometimes be nice to have as an option too.
I don't think that's really what I was talking about. There's a very big difference between having choices regarding which direction to take you game, and just having a surplus of useless options every time you need to make a choice in combat.
Also, I never really talked about keeping the options few. But rather, keeping all the ones you do have relevant and accessible.
I do appreciate a limit that allows me to at least constantly have an intuitive feeling for what my options are, but there also need to be enough options that every tactical choice becomes a relevant decision. If the game gives you 20 different status effects, and you never really feel like you need to use any of them at any point throughout the entire game, then that design has failed. Make me want to use them! But also don't force me to just do so blindly. The tactical choice is what matters here.

Really, just to repeat myself - playing DQ11 on the Strong Monsters setting is just an absolutely perfect example of what I'm talking about, and anyone who hasn't played it should go do so now, so they can understand what makes it great. :)
BareKnuckleRoo wrote:Pokémon initially started as a bland, glorified cock-fighting simulator which I think a lot of us got into due to its slick marketing campaign more than the actual gameplay quality. That and the multiplayer gimmick.
... and it never evolved from that, despite still releasing new entries periodically.

Comparing Pokémon to Final Fantasy Legend/SaGa comes across so weird to me. In my mind, these games belong to vastly different generations.
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Blinge
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by Blinge »

Doesn't pokeymans have some deep competitive meta that people really get into?
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Re: What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

Post by null1024 »

Pokemon really is all about multiplayer.
Of course, there's no need to bother with actually playing on cartridge at this point, not when the games have stopped actually even pretending to improve [emphasis on pretending -- I still "like" Pokemon, but the high water mark of actual mechanical improvement was D/P/Pt, and that didn't really change much for the guy how was just playing the game alone straight through vs say, playing Pokemon Gold, each additional game added a bunch of mechanics that really only matter much in multiplayer, and Sw/Sh ended up putting the axe on a bunch of those things anyway], and each game has gotten more hand-holdy despite it starting off pretty easy already.
If you just want to enjoy multiplayer and play with all sort of wacky teams that trying to build on cartridge would take an absurd amount of time and effort, just go on Pokemon Showdown.
Come check out my website, I guess. Random stuff I've worked on over the last two decades.
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