What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

[Sima Tuna]

I'm currently playing Tales of Vesperia and Replaying Tales of Symphonia. I hope Bamco take the opportunity for the 30th anniversary to port a bunch of the games. They have one Tales remaster coming out in January and nothing else currently announced. Given they have an entire year to celebrate the 30th anniversary, they really should be jumping on the opportunity. Tales fans have been complaining for years about the relative lack of western access to the series (and when we do get a release, it's usually locked to one UND ONLY VON console.)

I'd like to see Phantasia and Destiny get remasters. Phantasia has a shitty GBA version with garbage art and compressed audio voices, and that's all we got for english releases.

[Steven]

I just watched the rather disappointing 30th anniversary live stream thing. Kind of wish I hadn't because there was nothing really interesting in there aside from the made-to-order 30th anniversary art book, which I might get, but maybe not. It apparently has commentary from Inomata-sensei in it, so...

I don't think they even mentioned Rebirth at all. At this point I'm hoping they'll do a nice remake of Legendia and actually finish the game this time! Wouldn't that be a novel idea? Poor Legendia. Its soundtrack deserved a much better game.

Anyway, Tomizawa said that more ports are coming in addition to Graces f, and that they'll be released sequentially. Japanese is stupidly vague and he probably meant "one at a time" instead of "the order in which they were originally released" and didn't say how many. I think it's hilarious that there was a time when they crapped out Phantasia remakes and ports of those remakes so much that everyone was tired of them and now everyone wants another remake or port of Phantasia, including me.

I'm kind of looking forward to Graces f because I'm scared of using my PS3 because it's so loud that I fear that it will die if I do. It's so loud that it's louder than my monitor's speakers and I can't actually hear whatever I'm playing even at max volume. I do have my Wii copy of Graces right behind me on my bookcase, but there's not much point in playing the Wii version now... and I really don't want to deal with finding my Wii and the stupid sensor bar and all of that.

List of what I'd really like to see, in order from most desired to least desired

• Get the PS2 games off the PS2 so they aren't stuck with interlaced video. Yes, I know the PSP ports of some of those exist; I bought all of them many years ago as a gift for someone

• this won't happen, but use the Japanese PS2 version of Tales of the Abyss for the above, complete with all of its unique traits (that means broken Guy) and a way to use the world map glitch somehow (purchase as a GRADE shop thing so people don't break the game on their first playthrough, perhaps?) and all of the goofy fun shenanigans that can be had with that glitch. Getting stuck in a place that is too small to use the glitch sucks, though... don't save!

• Abyss remake with less broken battle system and a difficulty level that's actually hard but balanced like the Destiny remake's higher settings and not stupid like Abyss Unknown difficulty, which is famously too hard in the Japanese PS2 version so they made it marginally less stupid for the subsequent releases

• (completed) Legendia remake

• new Phantasia remake

• remove the region lock on the PC games that are not available in Japan on Steam and obviously add Japanese text/voices if needed

• Get the rest of the PS3 games off the PS3 because I don't trust the hardware to not break down

That's about all I can think of for now that's specific. For the ports, I was thinking that they'd prioritize the anniversary titles that aren't on modern hardware, but then I remembered that that consists of Abyss and nothing else because the PS4 refuses to die and take Zesteria with it to its grave. There is also the PC version, but that's not available in Japan, which sucks. They're almost certainly going to release something new for the 30th anniversary, but Tomizawa really seems to want to rerelease the old games, which I have no problem with and actually kind of prefer. I almost expect Phantasia and Abyss to show up and I hope that they do, even if I can stick my discs in my computer and run them on an emulator if I really really really wanted to... but I hate emulation, especially for PS2, so I'm not going to. My PS2's sitting here on my desk with Rebirth in it 100% ready to go anyway.

Rebirth's a fun game. Mechanically it seems daunting at first, but it's not too bad.

Yeah, it's been a VERY LONG TIME since I even thought about this game and its battle system, almost 2 decades. Unfortunately I don't have a second PS2 controller, so I don't think I can do the extensions for Duel/Dual the Sun and all of that, but I'm not really worried about it.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Phantasia's best English port is the fan-translated PS1 port, where the guy has like 3 different translations depending on if you want localized tech names to match later games, japanese tech names, or literal translations. It's a good one. Shame we don't have a good official release, it's the game which has seen the least love in the west (the GBA port is technically nifty but an embarrassment).

Unfortunately I don't have a second PS2 controller, so I don't think I can do the extensions for Duel/Dual the Sun and all of that, but I'm not really worried about it.

You need to be on a second playthrough anyways to trigger them, and you really need multiple playthroughs so it's not as hard to trigger it (each clear reduces the # of button presses needed at each stage of the extensions). It's a silly extension that's largely there as an easter egg, I wouldn't sweat it.

[Steven]

lol that doesn't surprise me at all after Majin Rengokusatsu requires the player to be on at least loop 3. Of course, they changed that to loop 2 for the PSP version. Maybe they realized that it was kind of ridiculous to want loop 3 just to add a single slash and thrust... or maybe it was just because everyone knew about it and it wasn't a secret anymore.

On the subject of secrets, I remember it took a long while to find out how to do Jade's Indignation. That was a pretty well hidden secret. I seem to recall people thinking it wasn't even in the game for several months until either the guidebook released or someone found it by chance.

Now that I think about it, Tales of the Abyss has a huge amount of cut content. I'd really like to see as much of that cut content as possible in a hypothetical remake of the game. A bunch of player characters and enemies have unfinished normal skills and hi ougi that have voice lines and hi ougi cut-ins intact on both the Japanese and NA PS2 discs. They had to abandon so many things on that game due to the insane rush they were forced to do to finish the game on time for the 10th anniversary. It's something of a minor miracle that the game did ship on time at all. Then they were forced to rush the game a second time for the NA PS2 release and added a bunch of bugs that cause the game to crash along with some of the previously unfinished stuff. What a giant mess. The 3DS version (I absolutely bought my first 3DS just for this game BTW) of course sucks, so there still isn't a single perfect version of the game, but the Japanese PS2 version's the best one. It's long past time to fix that.

[m.sniffles.esq]

Indiana Jones: The Great Nazi Killing Machine is... fine. I mean, it's one of those games that rely heavily on 'stealth' gameplay, yet:

• A guard can turn around for thirty seconds, only to turn back around and find his buddy has completely vaporized, yet he finds nothing odd about this

• The German army seems to train their guards to walk up to walls, stare at them for a full minute before turning and walking to the opposite wall, then repeating

• A guard can witness a strange man stroll across a courtyard, and as long as said man ducks behind a box upon reaching the other side, the guard will be convinced this sight was purely imaginary

• If the same man then stands and throws a bottle, the guard will find the bottle MUCH more interesting than the man throwing it, providing said man immediately returns to ducking behind box

• The player quickly learns it's much more efficient to just walk up and smack guards in the face with a hammer rather than engaging in this nonsense

I sometimes become bothered that this gameplay is utilized in at least 80% of the AAA titles released, yet it really hasn't evolved that much since Metal Gear Solid and Tenchu Stealth Assassins, but nobody seems to mind that much either.

[Sumez]

I'd rather have dumb enemies in a stealth based game, that enemies that behave realistically and makes avoiding decetion becoming slow and tiresome instead.

[m.sniffles.esq]

I'd rather have dumb enemies in a stealth based game, that enemies that behave realistically and makes avoiding decetion becoming slow and tiresome instead.

While I understand a lot of people feel this way, personally, when surmounting a task becomes a matter of assessing and finding flaws in game parameters rather than using situational logic, my engagement begins to seriously dwindle.

Not to mention, it strikes me as odd that a game released in 2024 has such a giant percentage of it's gameplay dedicated to the pursuit of these sneaky/stalky shenanigans, yet I find myself thinking 'gee, too bad this stuff isn't as sophisticated as Hitman 2: Silent Assassin released 22 years ago'

In all fairness, Indiana Jones: Nazi Slaughter Specialist is far from the only game where the above thought entered my head while playing (and it won't be last). Anecdotally, I think it was Skyrim where I popped up from behind a rock, shot an arrow into a guy's head, ducked back down, and was treated to him saying "Hmmmm... Guess it was just my imagination..." while an arrow is protruding from the center of his forehead.

[Sima Tuna]

Indiana Jones: The Great Nazi Killing Machine is... fine. I mean, it's one of those games that rely heavily on 'stealth' gameplay, yet:

• A guard can turn around for thirty seconds, only to turn back around and find his buddy has completely vaporized, yet he finds nothing odd about this

• The German army seems to train their guards to walk up to walls, stare at them for a full minute before turning and walking to the opposite wall, then repeating

• A guard can witness a strange man stroll across a courtyard, and as long as said man ducks behind a box upon reaching the other side, the guard will be convinced this sight was purely imaginary

• If the same man then stands and throws a bottle, the guard will find the bottle MUCH more interesting than the man throwing it, providing said man immediately returns to ducking behind box

• The player quickly learns it's much more efficient to just walk up and smack guards in the face with a hammer rather than engaging in this nonsense

I sometimes become bothered that this gameplay is utilized in at least 80% of the AAA titles released, yet it really hasn't evolved that much since Metal Gear Solid and Tenchu Stealth Assassins, but nobody seems to mind that much either.

This kind of stealth is what I call "stealth gameplay without stealth mechanics."

Guards with intentionally stupid behavior are a function of no intermediate state between undetected and detected. Stupid AI can also be a result of a game where the AI was never really designed to work in a stealth game, so they had to dumb down detection ranges and add intentionally, obviously stupid patrol patterns.

The bottle throwing is basically hardcoded to work that way, because again the only other result in such a simplistic "stealth" system is just getting detected. If there were intermediate states, the guard could become frightened by the bottle and patrol around where they THINK the bottle was thrown from. Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory guards will do this.

when surmounting a task becomes a matter of assessing and finding flaws in game parameters rather than using situational logic, my engagement begins to seriously dwindle.

Same, but there are very few actually good stealth games with proper stealth mechanics. At the very least, you need three discreet enemy states: Unaware, Searching and Aware. But ideally, you need even more states than that, such as: Alerted but not aware of your location, Unaware but suspicious, Searching in a highly suspicious state, etc. Each AI state requires a lot of work to create. A game with combination stealth/something else gameplay probably isn't going to put that many resources into the stealth.

Games like Thief use the same AI states across all enemies iirc, so they're getting as much use as they can out of the systems for their dev time and it doesn't hurt Thief is basically a pure stealth game. That's the best-case scenario with two games considered among the best stealth games ever made. But even they could have more AI states than they do. Chaos Theory has more, I'm pretty sure. Guards in Thief have the three standard AI states and then one or two more for when they are alerted or suspicious but don't know your exact location.

Machinegames are rather notorious (to me) for shitty and unsatisfying stealth sections in their games. In a world where Dishonored is like, the bare minimum of what a proper stealth game needs to be solid, you have Machinegames telling the player to crouch walk with a crowbar out and stab sleeping dogs to death (WITH A CROWBAR, NOT A KNIFE) in Nu-Wolfenstein. And it's just shit, mate.

[m.sniffles.esq]

This kind of stealth is what I call "stealth gameplay without stealth mechanics."

Which is why I find it so odd that so much of their game is dedicated to it (granted, I've only played 10-12 hours. But thus far, there's been a lot of skulking around), yet it's so... rote. If these sections required the played to do stuff like think, assess, react, etc they'd actually be a lot of fun. As it stands, they're just parts you have to get through.

Machinegames are rather notorious (to me) for shitty and unsatisfying stealth sections in their games. In a world where Dishonored is like, the bare minimum of what a proper stealth game needs to be solid, you have Machinegames telling the player to crouch walk with a crowbar out and stab sleeping dogs to death (WITH A CROWBAR, NOT A KNIFE) in Nu-Wolfenstein.

Maybe that's why I find it so odd, as I'm pretty sure the last Wolfenstein title I played was on c64. Although, that example is definitely a case of "surmounting a task becomes a matter of assessing and finding flaws in game parameters rather than using situational logic"

[XoPachi]

Modded my Vita so I'm having quite the time right now.
Finally getting around to Phantasy Star Nova since I can translate it (a little bit anyway). It's refreshing playing this because PSO2 went to COMPLETE shit in 2021. I really liked base PSO2, so a sort of pseudo return to it is nice.

[ryu]

Gasp, you've figured me out! >w>;;

I play a lot more RPGs than my presence here or Youtube channel probably lets on (I play them so slow that footage from me would be super boring) so I'm guessing it's one of those.

Yeah it was on the Legend of Dragoon boards.

Don't have much to say on the game. The combat is terribly gimmicky but the characters and plot are good enough to keep me engaged. Really digging the simple town -> dungeon -> repeat structure of the game. I played lots of modern games this year and at some point just had enough of endlessly running around in open worlds. But I have to complain that the game is starting to feel really bloated for its time.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

But I have to complain that the game is starting to feel really bloated for its time.

It was a fairly late release PS1 game if I recall (released around the time FF9 was released), so the expectation of RPGs by then was that they'd be lengthy, multi-disc affairs to get one's money's worth. The graphics are gorgeous, I love prerendered 3D backgrounds and it has arguably some of the best artwork in any PS1 game. The combat's basic rhythm elements are cute, if somewhat simple, and I do appreciate the limited inventory capacity which requires more thought and planning and simply loading up 99 of every available healing item. A solid RPG with some interesting, unique mechanics that generally work well, if perhaps a bit linear at times aside from one or two optional areas.

My only major gripes are that Dart, the lead character, can't be removed from the active party so you're always stuck with one of 3 character slots locked-in as him. Limits how much freedom you have selecting a team. Also, the last character to join you is extremely poorly balanced, with such low speed that they're quite bad. The worst character by a significant margin, and their enormous HP pool is offset by their insane susceptibility to magic, and relatively middling damage output. You can make them fairly sturdy with a Legend Casque and fix their speed with Bandit's Shoes, but basically anyone with a Legend Casque becomes incredibly tanky, so that's not unique to them.

[Steven]

I was supposed to be playing Tales of Rebirth, but I mainly switched to Vesperia instead. Thanks, Steam Deck. I'm about to reach the part where I dropped the game on Switch, which is also where I dropped it on PS3 a decade and a half ago. All I need to do to progress is to pass through one town and I'll set a new record.

I also preordered the PC version of Graces f, which I haven't played for over a decade and am looking forward to playing again. Fortunately I forgot literally everything about the game, which is good! Probably. Well, I remember that the story sucks and the only reason to play it is for the battle system, and also that the adult battle music is an arranged version of the childhood battle music (or is it the other way around...?), neither of which I actually remember, and I vaguely recall that the world map is basically a series of corridors that you can't explore in because there's nowhere to go but down those corridors, but that's all fine. This game's recommended GPU is from January of 2011 and Tose is doing the port, so this is going to be no problem for the Steam Deck. Too bad it's capped at only 120 FPS; my PC can run Vesperia at about 400 FPS at max settings, so I imagine I'd get something better on Graces f if it wasn't capped... not that my monitor actually goes above 60 anyway.

Still going to continue with Rebirth, possibly simultaneously. At this rate I will probably end this year with zero new STG clears, but I'll have a few days free at the end of the year to maybe do something.

[Sima Tuna]

I was supposed to be playing Tales of Rebirth, but I mainly switched to Vesperia instead. Thanks, Steam Deck. I'm about to reach the part where I dropped the game on Switch, which is also where I dropped it on PS3 a decade and a half ago.

... Wolf boss?

I know this is a forum where people play hard games, but that boss seriously pissed me off when I got to it. I managed to level and move past it but apparently wolf guy is harder than the rest of the bosses in the game.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Gattuso is pretty rough if you're new to the game or series and haven't setup your AI strats to deal with him. There's actually a fairly easy way to thrash him on a new game file on Normal though. Get into some fights as Rita, and cast nothing but Fire Ball. Use Overlimit and you can chain cast multiple Fire Ball spells with no delay at all. Keep doing this to get the arte usage count up; some abilities change properties and get nifty upgrades after certain usage counts (Love Shot is the biggest example, it becomes the best healing ability in the entire game at 200 uses due to becoming a rapid fire multi character heal spell). Fire Ball specifically can quickly be upgraded to hit 3 times, each one dealing full damage! This also works in Star Ocean 3, where Fire Bolt's usage count causes it to gain more shots as you use it.

Once you're at 3 or 4 Fire Balls launched per cast, build up your Overlimit meter to max, make sure the AI settings are set to not use it themselves, play as Rita with her formation set to start as far from the enemy as possible, use Overlimit, and spam Fire Ball non-stop. I can't remember if Gattuso's health is low enough to blaze it down, or if it's better to go after the two smaller dogs he comes with, but either way, cast it constantly.

Using items gives a brief invulnerability period so you can toss items if Gattuso approaches. His close range howl attack that hits in a small AOE is very painful and has no startup delay, so block if he gets close. Unlike other games where traditional spellcasting healers are handy, Estelle is a bit of a liability due to Vesperia having very fast enemies in general while she's still stuck with slow healing. You get a couple guys eventually who, together, basically outfight and outheal Estelle easily.

[Steven]

I was supposed to be playing Tales of Rebirth, but I mainly switched to Vesperia instead. Thanks, Steam Deck. I'm about to reach the part where I dropped the game on Switch, which is also where I dropped it on PS3 a decade and a half ago.

... Wolf boss?

I know this is a forum where people play hard games, but that boss seriously pissed me off when I got to it. I managed to level and move past it but apparently wolf guy is harder than the rest of the bosses in the game.

First boss after the normal battle music and world map music change. I made it past that point a few minutes after posting, so new record.

[Sima Tuna]

My problem with Gattuso even after beating him was he has no startup on many of his attacks and they deal too much damage+stunlock you. Even blocking on approach, he has some incredibly fast block-breakers and other attacks that will still deal a lot of damage even when blocked.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Yeah, Vesperia had some really inconsistent boss difficulty. The original version has one fight late game where your party's split up and half your healers are gone while you're forced to fight a very difficult, mobile boss. It's much easier on Remastered versions as you have Patty and Flynn with you, both of whom have healing spells.

[Sima Tuna]

Yeah, Vesperia had some really inconsistent boss difficulty. The original version has one fight late game where your party's split up and half your healers are gone while you're forced to fight a very difficult, mobile boss. It's much easier on Remastered versions as you have Patty and Flynn with you, both of whom have healing spells.

I know Vesperia is considered one of the best Tales games but in terms of combat flow and enemy design, my bias is more on the side of Abyss or Symphonia. Having said that, I didn't play Berseria yet or Zestiria or Tales R (I will buy that one in January,) and I've heard all of those have excellent combat systems.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

I can't think of anything Vesperia is considered the best in. Certainly not combat, it takes a LONG time for it to open up and develop enough tools to feel like you're flexible and powerful compared to other games where the early game is just as fun as later on (Rebirth, Destiny R, Destiny 2, Hearts). Vesperia's got Yuri, who steals the show in a lot of scenes, but I feel like other games have better overall casts. Jade in Abyss is still top tier material

[Steven]

Vesperia is an extremely phoned-in game and it's very easy to tell. This dev team put all of their effort into their previous two games and was likely burned out by the time they got here and it shows. It's like they all did enough to get a passing grade and a paycheck and stopped there. Sakuraba in particular turned in a very generic and uninspired soundtrack; perhaps he felt bad about getting his ass kicked by Tales of the Abyss guest composer Fuji-kun, a pretty young guy who has never worked on a video game in his life only to show up to do the OP and a handful of tracks and steal the show, causing Sakuraba to stop caring. Or maybe not, but Sakuraba's Tales scores started to become increasingly disappointing after Symphonia, though Rebirth is pretty good.

Realistically, and in all seriousness, the dude's worked on almost every game in the series minus Legendia and those are absolutely not small soundtracks; every year he comes back to do another 100+ track soundtrack and at some point he's going to get burned out and it seems like Vesperia was that point. Tamura's there too, but I don't think I've seen them talk about how they divide their work, so Sakuraba usually gets most of the credit.

Anyway, the character models for a lot of Vesperia's zako and their animations are recycled from Abyss as well, and since animations are the same the attacks are largely the same, so Vesperia often betrays itself as being a partial asset flip. Abyss, as far as I can remember, doesn't share anything with Symphonia, but it's been a very long time so I might be wrong! At least the animations are more smooth and the models have higher poly counts, but you can tell that they're the same.

The story... exists. I read all of the spoilers when this game came out because my Microsoft-hating self would never think of buying a 360 (bought two of them so lol so much for that), and it's not all that great. Yuri is the only thing about this game that the devs seemed to actually care about. It's really too bad that he isn't in a better (non-spinoff) game! Speaking of yuri, there is also that thing with Rita maybe or maybe not being gay and in love with clueless Estelle, which is the only other notable/interesting thing about the game's story/characters and of course they unfortunately decided not to commit to it. I can't think of any other game ever made where the heroine ends up falling in love with Random Girl She Met Along the Way™ instead of the hero, so maybe that would have been an interesting development if the devs had chosen to actually go with it. Not that the hero, Yuri, in this case, is romantically interested in Estelle as it is. Estelle has the personality of a cardboard box, which does not help.

As for the battle system...

Yeah, Vesperia had some really inconsistent boss difficulty. The original version has one fight late game where your party's split up and half your healers are gone while you're forced to fight a very difficult, mobile boss. It's much easier on Remastered versions as you have Patty and Flynn with you, both of whom have healing spells.

I know Vesperia is considered one of the best Tales games but in terms of combat flow and enemy design, my bias is more on the side of Abyss or Symphonia. Having said that, I didn't play Berseria yet or Zestiria or Tales R (I will buy that one in January,) and I've heard all of those have excellent combat systems.

Vesperia's battle system is a horrific mess.

"Let's take the Tales of the Abyss battle system and make it really slow and awkwardly clunky for no reason!"
"Everyone said Abyss was too easy, so let's make the game "hard" by having all of the enemies mob the player character and ignore the other members of the player's party completely!"
"Let's make it so that important skills like THE ABILITY TO USE ITEMS ON OTHER CHARACTERS are attached to weapons that don't show up for 4/5 of the playable cast for 1/3 of the game! That's a great idea!"
"Let's make it so that those important skills cost points to equip, so you will have to wait forever to have enough of those points to be able to equip all of the basic functions that every game prior to Abyss and this one gave to all characters from the start!"
"Let's make it so that there are a bunch of fights where Yuri has to solo a bunch of enemies all by himself, so the player has no choice but to run away, use Souhajin, and then repeat until there is only one enemy left!"
"Let's make it so that there's a boss that shows up way before you have most of the things that you want to deal with that boss properly!"

whyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy

I guess the last two are general game design and not the battle system itself, and it gets better once everyone can use items on each other and recover in midair and all of that, which is at about the 1/3 point when the music changes for the first time, but damn if everything before that doesn't suck miserably.

If you want the best battle systems, play Rebirth, Destiny Director's Cut, and Graces f. Best part = no TP in those games, but you still can't spam. Vesperia's own Judith almost seems like a silent admission that the Destiny remake's battle system is in fact better than Vesperia's own battle system! She's still stuck with TP and the limitations of the game's battle system, unlike the Destiny remake where you can do (almost) whatever the hell combos you want whenever the hell you want to do them, provided you have enough CC, but she does not play entirely dissimilarly (this site's autocorrect hates this word and says it's wrong; I say this site's autocorrect needs a better vocabulary!) to Stan or Lion in that remake.

The Destiny remake is actually pretty difficult for a Tales game, too, as even on normal there are some bosses that are very difficult. The final boss in that game will absolutely beat the crap out of you and send you to the game over screen. If you win, your first victory will almost certainly be a very close victory with most of your party dead. Then you go and look at some of the other games in the series where the final boss is a punching bag that spends the entire duration of the fight stunlocked and it's like... yeah. One of the worst offenders is of course otherwise one of the best games in the series, too:

Spoiler

Phantasia

Thanks, Destiny remake and Destiny remake devs, for being so badass. Or maybe for just not making your game ridiculously easy, but you know.

[To Far Away Times]

Mass Effect 1 to Mass Effect 2 is quite the glow up, isn’t it?

I finished Mass Effect 1 and while it generally saved the best for last, I couldn’t help but think this series was seriously overrated based on the first game. But now I get it.

[Steven]

Oh boy, Mass Effect. Given what it is, I should love Mass Effect. But I don't. There is no other game I can think of that has almost nothing but stuff that I should be interested in but fails to actually be fun or interesting.

Edit: nope, Symphony of the Night also exists, so add that to the list

I asked a family member who played the trilogy when Mass Effect 1 gets good and the answer was "when you get to Mass Effect 2". I've been planning on trying again eventually. Maybe I'll skip to 2, but I'd rather not.

[neorichieb1971]

Mickey's Great Adventure in Tokyo Disneyland - Super Famicom.

Bought it in Japan earlier in the year.

[ryu]

... Wolf boss?

I know this is a forum where people play hard games, but that boss seriously pissed me off when I got to it. I managed to level and move past it but apparently wolf guy is harder than the rest of the bosses in the game.

Haha, that boss also filtered me hard. I remember it taking a while to beat him.

Rumor is that part was what you played in the demo, with a much higher levelled party, and they forgot to adjust the boss to the party's level in the actual game.

[Steven]

... Wolf boss?

I know this is a forum where people play hard games, but that boss seriously pissed me off when I got to it. I managed to level and move past it but apparently wolf guy is harder than the rest of the bosses in the game.

Haha, that boss also filtered me hard. I remember it taking a while to beat him.

Rumor is that part was what you played in the demo, with a much higher levelled party, and they forgot to adjust the boss to the party's level in the actual game.

lol

Like other games in the series, the original 360 version was probably rushed and definitely incomplete (see: Flynn not joining permanently, Patty cut from the game entirely despite having code referencing her, various attacks including hi-ougi scrapped, etc.), so it wouldn't be surprising if this was true.

Reminds me of how Van was originally planned to join the party in Tales of the Abyss at one point in development, but there is only one point in the final version of the game where that would be possible and he'd leave without you being able to ever use him in battle, which is probably why he got cut as a player character. That's a shame, as playing as Van would have been pretty cool.

Anyway, I beat that boss on hard a few days ago. The annoying part is doing the secret mission. Otherwise I had it stunlocked by the flowers for the duration of the fight.

Getting some of those damn secret missions is really annoying. On the one after Raven joins, you have to use one of Raven's attacks at a certain time, and during that fight the boss was ALWAYS in overlimit when the time came, so it didn't work, or maybe I just missed or something. I somehow got it, though. Raven's attack actually killed it and completed the secret mission simultaneously. Didn't know that was possible, but I do now!

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Rumor is that part was what you played in the demo, with a much higher levelled party, and they forgot to adjust the boss to the party's level in the actual game.

You also have way more skills at your disposal in the demo. You can do longer combos, you have higher level spells for Rita available, and so on. The arte list is from a couple hours later in the game, so when you play the game for real you have much less available. It's quite weird.

The final boss in Destiny R is also cool in that if you go through the bonus dungeon, he'll be upgraded to punish specific moves, making him that much more brutal to beat. I remember the first time I played through the game the fight took a solid 20 minutes, he has a lot of health and can punch through your team if he feels like it with his slash attacks. Staggering him is not trivial by any means due to his Penetrate status.

[Steven]

You also have way more skills at your disposal in the demo. You can do longer combos, you have higher level spells for Rita available, and so on. The arte list is from a couple hours later in the game, so when you play the game for real you have much less available. It's quite weird.

Think it's an actual design oversight? I hope not; that would suck. It kind of sucks either way as it is because for some reason, whether it's forgetful devs or questionable game design choices, the game's balance is super weird at that point and it becomes super easy again immediately after that, provided you're cool with the Yuri VS. zako mobs, which I don't really care for. It's one thing to have the hero duel a boss, which can be pretty cool if done properly, but against a group of zako? Nope, do not want because it devolves into Souhajin spam and that's not fun or interesting gameplay.

The final boss in Destiny R is also cool in that if you go through the bonus dungeon, he'll be upgraded to punish specific moves, making him that much more brutal to beat. I remember the first time I played through the game the fight took a solid 20 minutes, he has a lot of health and can punch through your team if he feels like it with his slash attacks. Staggering him is not trivial by any means due to his Penetrate status.

I feel like the entire last third of that game is just one tough boss after another, starting with

Spoiler

Lion, who beat the shit out of me perhaps even harder than Miktran did.

It's been a few years since I played the game, but that's what I seem to recall. It's almost Shin Megami Tensei-like in that you can't just go into any boss fight in the final segment of the game without both a good party and a good plan because you'll quickly game over. Great game though, and probably the greatest game remake ever made. I seem to remember someone somewhere a long time ago mentioning that the remake created some continuity problems with Destiny 2, but I haven't thought about Destiny 2 since Destiny DC released, so I forgot what the problems might have been.

[Lander]

I remember asking "What's great about Vesperia?" a while back and getting "Being on 360" as the answer might have been Roo - that's what they call 'choking out with faint praise'.

Graces F getting a PC version with high framerate support is an unexpected win; sounds like they grasp what makes it a good game. Though I don't much relish the thought of putting up with Asbel 'Doormat' Lhant, Cheria 'N-no baka I'm not crushing on you' Barnes and Hugo 'Nothin personnel' Oswell for another ~40 hours. The CC games just can't seem to catch a break when it comes to writing and / or characters.

Tales of the World never saw a CC entry, right? Similar to Resi with Mercenaries, it feels like a missed opportunity that none of these rad systems ever got a combat-first 'all stars' entry with a decent budget.

[Steven]

I remember asking "What's great about Vesperia?" a while back and getting "Being on 360" as the answer might have been Roo - that's what they call 'choking out with faint praise'.

Symphonia and the Gamecube have exactly the same thing going, honestly...

Graces F getting a PC version with high framerate support is an unexpected win; sounds like they grasp what makes it a good game. Though I don't much relish the thought of putting up with Asbel 'Doormat' Lhant, Cheria 'N-no baka I'm not crushing on you' Barnes and Hugo 'Nothin personnel' Oswell for another ~40 hours. The CC games just can't seem to catch a break when it comes to writing and / or characters.

I'll take that cast over the pile of cheap particle board that Vesperia calls its cast, Yuri excepted, and even he's... well, secretly an edgelord, not that there's anything wrong with that. At least he takes the initiative, and it's always super cool and highly irregular to see a rather competent main dude giving most of the battle tutorials instead of being lectured about those mechanics by someone more experienced for once.

At least Graces is on the short side for this series, so if you don't like the characters, the trip won't last long, especially if you decide not to play the f part (or play the Wii version... why though?). At least, I think it is. It's been over a decade, so maybe I'm wrong and it's really long, and Tempest and Destiny remake are definitely the super short ones. It's going to be kind of sad to replay the game knowing that Inomata-sensei died earlier this year, though.

Tales of the World never saw a CC entry, right? Similar to Resi with Mercenaries, it feels like a missed opportunity that none of these rad systems ever got a combat-first 'all stars' entry with a decent budget.

Nope, as far as I remember. The only games that I remember using it are the Destiny remake and its Director's Cut, Graces, Graces f, and one of the phone games that I didn't play because lol phone games.