FALCOM Thread

Anything from run & guns to modern RPGs, what else do you play?
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KAI
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Re: FALCOM Thread

Post by KAI »

Fingers crossed for a remake of the gagharv trilogy using prerendered graphics like the old kiseki games (or at least a localization of the pc versions), or maybe Brandish vt for steam, or the win sorcerians... anything pleasee!!
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Re: FALCOM Thread

Post by Mischief Maker »

Look, I'm a filthy gaijin and I definitely think the 7 trilogy is a decline in gameplay philosophy compared to the Oath trilogy. The central gameplay concept from the very first games was speed. Adol shanks enemies at a full sprint without stopping for breath. Boss fights force you to run and jump all over the arena. The great thing about Origins bosses is half of them involve platforming on the boss itself like Shadow of the Colossus on a coke binge.

I watched a video of someone beating (the boss I'm currently stuck at) and they barely moved at all. Just stood in front of the boss waling on them by spamming skills and flash guarding whenever the boss struck. Now I don't have a problem with timed blocking in games, but other games do it better (God Hand has directional dodges as opposed to a single move that blocks everything if the timing's right), and not running around the stage is very un-Ys to my western mind.

In fact, the more I think about it, the more inclined I am to shelve Ys VIII for another couple months in hopes of a patch 8 that fixes the turtle boss glitches and replay the Oath trilogy on Nightmare.
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Re: FALCOM Thread

Post by Squire Grooktook »

Mischief Maker wrote:Look, I'm a filthy gaijin and I definitely think the 7 trilogy is a decline in gameplay philosophy compared to the Oath trilogy. The central gameplay concept from the very first games was speed. Adol shanks enemies at a full sprint without stopping for breath. Boss fights force you to run and jump all over the arena. The great thing about Origins bosses is half of them involve platforming on the boss itself like Shadow of the Colossus on a coke binge.

I watched a video of someone beating (the boss I'm currently stuck at) and they barely moved at all. Just stood in front of the boss waling on them by spamming skills and flash guarding whenever the boss struck. Now I don't have a problem with timed blocking in games, but other games do it better (God Hand has directional dodges as opposed to a single move that blocks everything if the timing's right), and not running around the stage is very un-Ys to my western mind.

In fact, the more I think about it, the more inclined I am to shelve Ys VIII for another couple months in hopes of a patch 8 that fixes the turtle boss glitches and replay the Oath trilogy on Nightmare.
This is my problem with most modern character action and why I've burned out on the genre a bit as of late.

If you give people a move that can deflect everything through perfect timing, then spatial reasoning and maneuvering go out the window and timing is all fights will ever boil down to.
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Re: FALCOM Thread

Post by Obscura »

It seems weird to me to see Seven and VIII getting lumped together as though they're the same thing; the two games really don't play similarly at all.

Seven is one of the best games in the series, perhaps the most overall polished aside from the horrible material grind right before the last boss bringing the pacing to its knees. Flash guard is a thing you can do, yes, but it's generally a last resort; there's no bonus for using it, and if you get the timing wrong, you get penalized majorly. VIII is just kind of mediocre, at best; worse system design than Seven (the skill system's implementation is worse, more of your effective health is concentrated in healing items, much slower overall pacing because "heal by standing still" is suddenly so important in the field segments, Flash Guard becomes a thing you actively want to do instead of another tool you can use to keep yourself alive), worse pacing, worse story, worse bosses, worse dungeon design, worse everything. It's telling that so many people feel that the "Dana virtue dungeon" is the best part of the game; the part of the game where healing items are much less important, you can't heal by standing still, and everything moves much faster.

Also, VIII has nothing even a tenth as awesome as the coliseum boss in Seven. One of the high points in the series, that!
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Re: FALCOM Thread

Post by Mischief Maker »

Well another thing I like about the Oath trilogy is the simple controls. It's like a 3-button 16-bit platformer, just jump, attack and RUN/MAGIC! (Plus switch magic, but that's a button rarely used). I am not a fan of complex controls for the sake of complex controls, and the fact that flash guarding in 7 required two buttons irritated me to no end.
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Re: FALCOM Thread

Post by null1024 »

Mischief Maker wrote:Well another thing I like about the Oath trilogy is the simple controls. It's like a 3-button 16-bit platformer, just jump, attack and RUN/MAGIC! (Plus switch magic, but that's a button rarely used). I am not a fan of complex controls for the sake of complex controls, and the fact that flash guarding in 7 required two buttons irritated me to no end.
it wasn't until I was literally at the final boss that I found out that flash guarding was a thing in Ys 7 :P
But yeah, 7 and up's controls are a bit complex. 8's took me a bit to find a scheme that didn't suck for me [got auto-lock on down, switch on L, guard/skill on R, dash on square, look on triangle, attack on X, and jump on O].
went back and opened up 7 and Celceta to make as close to that scheme as I could in each [despite being quite similar, each game is juuuust different enough to make mapping the controls the same way a pain]

People lump 7 and 8 together, because there's a direct lineage between them of how they play, and a lot of things some people don't like [such as the aforementioned control complexity] began there.
8 is a much looser game than 7 [or even Celceta] and I really do kinda wish it had more of a focus on actual movement. You don't need to get out of the way. You can fucking jump now... but you don't really need to when fighting anything.

as for it being worse -- in terms of raw straight up combat mechanics, yeah, it's worse
but in terms of the overall experience, it's full of little QOL things and despite the overarching plot being a bit dumb, I like the setting and think that Adol and co on a deserted island full of dinosaurs getting involved in a plot about an ancient civilization is a perfectly good Ys story
it's just a real shame about the details

Once I finish 8, I should really go replay 7 -- pretty sure I have enough reputation for the good ending and should just go finish the game, but I'm running around doing little side things anyway. :lol:
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Re: FALCOM Thread

Post by Sumez »

VIII was just good enough that I'd forgive the stupid Seven/Celceta formula, but I really wish they would give it a rest.
Everyone agrees that Origin and Felghana has the best gameplay of the series, but Falcom probably feels like those are a bit too archaic for their flagship series, so I'm kind of bummed at where they could take the concept for the next game.

They are most likely going to carry on with the same recipe since VIII was a big success as far as I'm aware. Or even if they change things up, they are probably only going to add more noise to the mechanics instead of subtracting from it, which is what really worries me the most.
Honestly, I just want really memorable boss battles again, that test your skill and don't make you rely on party members and consumable inventory items.
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Re: FALCOM Thread

Post by Durandal »

Obscura wrote: Seven is one of the best games in the series, perhaps the most overall polished aside from the horrible material grind right before the last boss bringing the pacing to its knees. Flash guard is a thing you can do, yes, but it's generally a last resort; there's no bonus for using it, and if you get the timing wrong, you get penalized majorly
You literally get bonus SP and EXTRA for Flash Guarding, on top of a temporary damage boost. There's no reason why you wouldn't Flash Guard before performing an EXTRA Skill in order to maximize its damage output.
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Re: FALCOM Thread

Post by Obscura »

Ok, fuck Ys 8, I seriously think I'm done with this fucking retarded game.

"hurr durr let's have a sequence where there's a ton of enemies that have this stupid 'roar' move that knocks you down for an hour that can't be dodged or blocked, and then other enemies that can one-shot you while you literally have no control"

Whoever came up with chapter 6 needs to be fucking shot. Seriously.

Worst game in the entire series. Yes, even including V. Possibly the worst game Falcom has ever made.
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Re: FALCOM Thread

Post by Mischief Maker »

New Ys VIII patch just dropped, promising to fix my one big outstanding bug (the turtle fight).

Strangely enough it's not announced on the Steam page.

Time to download this game again.
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Re: FALCOM Thread

Post by Durandal »

Obscura wrote:Ok, fuck Ys 8, I seriously think I'm done with this fucking retarded game.

"hurr durr let's have a sequence where there's a ton of enemies that have this stupid 'roar' move that knocks you down for an hour that can't be dodged or blocked, and then other enemies that can one-shot you while you literally have no control"

Whoever came up with chapter 6 needs to be fucking shot. Seriously.

Worst game in the entire series. Yes, even including V. Possibly the worst game Falcom has ever made.
You can't even Flash Guard it? I remember being able to do so for similar roar-type attacks in Seven.
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Re: FALCOM Thread

Post by Obscura »

Can't flash guard roars in 8. The ones from bosses can be rolled through, but the ones from the common dinos can't.
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Re: FALCOM Thread

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Re: FALCOM Thread

Post by Mischief Maker »

BulletMagnet wrote:Prepare yourselves.
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Re: FALCOM Thread

Post by Obscura »

More innovative Ys 8 mechanics -- a boss that has an attack that unavoidably gets you stuck in an infinite damage loop, and, on occasion, crashes the game!

Here's the setup -- boss does a "charge" move around a ring-shaped room with bottomless pits on the center and side. You block (which is the only way to avoid the attack, it's too tall to double-jump over, and it takes the whole width of the ring), and sometimes, you just magically teleport over the central pit after blocking; after this, you fall in, and then re-appear inside of the boss, where one of two things happens -- either you teleport back over the pit to repeat the cycle, or the game freezes your computer entirely, requiring a reboot.

Holy shit, what an awful game. What the hell happened to the Ys series?!?!?!

EDIT: LOL, and there's an optional boss where, when it's low on health, to make it "harder", they change the hitboxes of its attacks and when they go active, but not the animations, so you have to finish it off by blindly trying to flash-guard attacks that don't match the animations. Holy shit, what a fucking kusoge this turns into in the last chapter.
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Re: FALCOM Thread

Post by BrianC »

Obscura wrote:More innovative Ys 8 mechanics -- a boss that has an attack that unavoidably gets you stuck in an infinite damage loop, and, on occasion, crashes the game!

Here's the setup -- boss does a "charge" move around a ring-shaped room with bottomless pits on the center and side. You block (which is the only way to avoid the attack, it's too tall to double-jump over, and it takes the whole width of the ring), and sometimes, you just magically teleport over the central pit after blocking; after this, you fall in, and then re-appear inside of the boss, where one of two things happens -- either you teleport back over the pit to repeat the cycle, or the game freezes your computer entirely, requiring a reboot.

Holy shit, what an awful game. What the hell happened to the Ys series?!?!?!

EDIT: LOL, and there's an optional boss where, when it's low on health, to make it "harder", they change the hitboxes of its attacks and when they go active, but not the animations, so you have to finish it off by blindly trying to flash-guard attacks that don't match the animations. Holy shit, what a fucking kusoge this turns into in the last chapter.
Does this apply to the PS4 and Vita versions, or are the issues the result of a buggy port?
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Re: FALCOM Thread

Post by Mischief Maker »

Obscura wrote:More innovative Ys 8 mechanics --
Do you have the most recent patch installed?
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Re: FALCOM Thread

Post by Sumez »

None of the stuff the Obscura keeps complaining about ever happened to me on PS4. :\
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Re: FALCOM Thread

Post by Obscura »

Mischief Maker wrote:
Obscura wrote:More innovative Ys 8 mechanics --
Do you have the most recent patch installed?
Yep. Chapter 6 still needs a lot of work, the game suddenly gets a lot more crash-y there. In addition to stuff I've mentioned earlier, the cutscene at a certain garden just before going off to the "really final dungeon" has to be skipped because it crashes the game every single time, and I had to kill the TLB in the epilogue twice becuase the first time, the game entirely locked up during the ending cutscene.

EDIT: That said, I'm not ready to chalk up everything to the port. The healing situation in the lategame, where you're walking around with around 50 revive items, 10 of which will restore you to full health, shows that Falcom had an extreme lack of confidence in their engine (Tokyo Xanadu has a similar healing item situation, and is built in the same engine).
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Re: FALCOM Thread

Post by Mischief Maker »

Well thanks for the heads up. I was about to start again, but honestly I think I'll just try a mage archer in Dragon's Dogma instead.
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Re: FALCOM Thread

Post by KAI »

Finished the Zero/Ao trails duology, and now I can finally say it, this is by far my favorite jrpg series.
Beautifully designed games, all of them. also best trailer ever made
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That ending damn it!! Hope to play the cold steel games someday, my shit gpu can't handle them sadly :(


I'm seriously thinking about playing the (apparently awfully localized) PSP Gagharv trilogy after I clear Nayuta and the Zweis.
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Re: FALCOM Thread

Post by gameoverDude »

KAI wrote:Finished the Zero/Ao trails duology, and now I can finally say it, this is by far my favorite jrpg series.
Beautifully designed games, all of them. also best trailer ever made
Image

That ending damn it!! Hope to play the cold steel games someday, my shit gpu can't handle them sadly :(


I'm seriously thinking about playing the (apparently awfully localized) PSP Gagharv trilogy after I clear Nayuta and the Zweis.
Just bought the PC version of Zero off of DLSite. Excellent like any other Trails game, & now on sale there for 1350 JPY, or $12.15 US. Not a bad deal at all. I just cleared the prologue.
There are some features here that Cold Steel carries over, like the EXP bonuses (such as Overkill, No Damage/Unscathed, & First Strike) & attacking enemies in the world map to take advantage. I've usually had Elie as the leader.
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Re: FALCOM Thread

Post by ED-057 »

Just bought the PC version of Zero off of DLSite. Excellent like any other Trails game, & now on sale there for 1350 JPY, or $12.15 US.
1350 yen? Might as well, at that price. Although if Sora 3rd and Cold Steel are anything to go by I fully it expect it to be a giant time waster, even before taking my Japanese reading abilities into account. Need something to kill time on while I wait for a patch that makes Memories of Celceta actually run.

edit: this game even works in Windows 2000 ^__^
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Re: FALCOM Thread

Post by soprano1 »

FUCK YEAH, HYPE LIKE IT'S 2011! :lol:
Jokes aside, that's fucking well done.
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Re: FALCOM Thread

Post by KAI »

Sen no Kiseki IV's trailer is out and
Spoiler
YOOOOOOOO!!
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Re: FALCOM Thread

Post by Despatche »

"Time to sell all the copies." -Falcom
gameoverDude wrote:Should Falcom decide to go with a V remake for the next Ys, they surely have a lot they can add to it. Ys I-V Complete Works' version of the V story draft has a lot of stuff that got cut from the SNES game. I trust them to make another good one.
This is the big one. I like Ys V, but it was much too ambitious for what Falcom was trying to do with it. I'm pretty sure the original Ys V project is part of why poor Ys IV got all mixed up like it did.
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Re: FALCOM Thread

Post by Squire Grooktook »

Finally picked up both Felghana and Origin again after too long. Was in the mood for some 3d melee combat that didn't rely on parry/i-frame dodges for all means of survival (fuck you, modern 3d character action). Played through like half of Felghana a while back before being sidetracked. Finished it off this time, and now working through Origin.


Anyway, both games are fantastic but so far I think Origin is vastly superior. Felghana may be more iconic in its presentation but Origin boasts:

-Better enemy variety (not that Felghana was bad in this department, but in comparison you spent too much time fighting goblin / bug variants with nearly identical attacks until it hits its stride in Valstein Castle.)

-Better boss design (I like the increased emphasis on platforming in the bigger ones, and they're all actually challenging now without being memorizer hatefucks. I honestly found the telegraphing and massive hitboxes in Felghana to be simply shocking from a game design perspective. It's the kind of unbridled fuckery that normies erroneously think of when they picture 8/16 bit action game difficulty.)

-Lots of misc improvements that overall make it a better experience. Spells/skills have tiny tweaks to their handling which make them more fun to use, there's a more fitting and enjoyable soundtrack (blasphemy, I know. But Silent Desert alone slays the entire Felghana ost for me), and even the platforming and "dungeon" layouts are much better paced and exciting.

Most of the complaints I've heard are pretty superfluous: Everything taking place in the same tower (I actually prefer this, gives the Castlevania feel of unraveling one massive megaplex with its own biomes), and presentation (I don't think there's any more talking than there was in Felghana, and what's there is just as charming if not moreso).

Don't mean to rip on Felghana, it's also a great game and their both fantastic fun to chainsaw through. But Origin is the one I'll probably be replaying the most in the future.


Anyway, after this, I'm thinking I'll give the pc version of YS Seven a try. To be honset, I'm extremely skeptical of it on the basis of Flash Guard's presence alone, but I'm actually interested in the party system. Might have some relevance to a project I'll be working on in the future after my shmup is done. I can barely find justification for playing video games these days without it being "for research", heh.
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Re: FALCOM Thread

Post by Obscura »

Totally agreed on Origin vs. Felghana, aside from the soundtrack (Felghana soundtrack is SSS++). While Origin does occasionally get a bit too happy with its "lol this boss can heal itself" mechanics (works well on Velagunder, less well on Khonsclard and Pictimos when playing on Nightmare, the latter of whom in particular turns into an absolute marathon, but it's still better than fucking Gyalvva from Oath), not having to work with a sidescroller as its base keeps its dungeon layouts a lot more fun to play since you have a lot more movement possibilities, and yeah, it's abilities are much better balanced than "lol use wind all the time unless you're fighting Gildias or Chester 2" Felghana.

I really hate the idea that the modern Ys games should be seen as two separate trilogies, with people having a strong preference for one or the other. Within the same "trilogy", there's huge differences in playability and quality. Origin > Seven > Oath >>> Napishtim >>>>>>>>>>>> Dana, IMO (still need to play Celceta). Flash Guard isn't near as bad in Seven as it is in Dana, the window is tighter, the punishment for missing is HUGE (like, "probably get turned into a grease spot instantly"), and the benefits aren't nearly as good. It's either a high-risk/medium-reward tool that isn't really worth it, or it's a last resort against attacks that are really hard to manually dodge.
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Re: FALCOM Thread

Post by ED-057 »

Did anyone else notice that the 特務支援課 computer runs WinXP on an Athlon 64? Seriously, there's a texture which appears to be a fuzzy screengrab of DXDIAG. I remember seeing some weird textures in Trails of Cold Steel as well (one with the text "who's going to die this time?" or some such)
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Re: FALCOM Thread

Post by BulletMagnet »

Looks like the next Ys won't be a remake.
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