What [not shmup] game are you playing now?

[m.sniffles.esq]

10 hours into Cladun Sengoku. Spotty, but I wonder why this series got consistently mixed reviews.

Like Steam reviews? The bad ones are probably "This is made by NIS, and all NIS games are shitty" or "This game is fun, but it crashed, so it's trash"

[Sima Tuna]

I enjoyed Cladun 2 on PSP. It was/is a very simple game but it scratches the old looter rpg itch. I assume Cladun Sengoku is more of the same.

[Steven]

I found something that Vesperia does better than most other games in the series: after you finish the game, the option for new game+ is a separate option and loading your completed save file puts you at your last save point with all of the loop 2 hi-ougi available instead of forcing you into new game+.

I checked out the options in the Grade shop and I'm exactly 400 Grade away from having enough for everything that I'd want for a second playthrough. It would be relatively easy to get that much by fighting in the coliseum because most things in there do 1 damage per hit to my level 59 Yuri and don't cause him to stagger even without Glory, but it would take a while. I'm pretty enticed to do a second playthrough now, but with Graces f out on PC in three days and the pre-order already paid for, now is definitely not the time.

Dhaos is a really cool dude. He's barely in the game at all, but when he's there he's awesome. Love that guy.

He was the first of a lot of good, but ultimately extremist Tales villians who the heroes could've very well sympathized with if not for their methods.

I like that one Radiant Mythology game where Dhaos appears with a superpowered version of Tetra Spell that casts 4 high tier elemental spells one after the other with full damage. Crazy stuff.

Dhaos is always awesome in everything he shows up in. He's still one of the coolest characters and best antagonists in the whole series, or at least probably the one I like the most.

Symphonia had free run fully implemented about halfway through development, but they realized very quickly that it upset the game's balance quite severely

I can see why, Abyss makes it very powerful for a lot of encounters. I'd rather it be more like Abyss than Vesperia though, Vesperia felt like everyone was so darn slow that evasion for anyone not named Repede was extremely hard.

Yep, and Repede unfortunately didn't escape unharmed either because of his ultra tiny attack range. I tried playing as him once and dropped him very quickly because of this. If I played this game in multiplayer and someone else took Yuri, I'd have a hard time choosing who I would want to use. I never learned how to use Judith, so at this point I'd probably go with Raven, with Repede being a backup for when Raven isn't around. I think Repede probably has second best availability after Yuri.

I'd take Flynn if he actually bothered to be in the party more and wasn't one of the slowest characters in the game. I remember when I got him for the first time on the PS3 version all those years ago. Checked him out in the menu to see what he had ("hell yeah, he's basically Cless!"), and then in battle I immediately discovered that he's not Cless but Really Really Slow Cless. Did the same thing when I got him for the first time in this playthrough. I didn't expect him to be super fast because he's wearing all of that armour, but it's still pretty disappointing, especially because his design is quite literally just Armour Guy.

I think Graces' implementation works well. Side-stepping is a good way of allowing the mobility to move in a 3D environment and dodge, without giving everyone broken constant high speed running in Abyss, or outrageously nerfed movement speed in Vesperia. Symphonia's speeds are actually pretty good and I think a sidestep, even a slow one to prevent getting cornered, would've solved that problem. It's especially weird given Regal has a proximity based heal spell that's effectively useless except for self-healing since he can't reliably move to any individual party member.

Symphonia would be cool with a sidestep like what Graces has, and it would also fix one of the biggest disappointments of Symphonia, that being its almost non-use of 3D space despite being a 3D game. It would need some balancing to go with it because it might hurt some of the fights, like a certain one-on-one near the very end of the game, but it could work.

I've seen a hack of Symphonia with free run implemented, I wonder if free run is actually still in the game for player and was simply inaccessible/disabled, and all the hack did was make it accessible.

That is a very interesting point. It's possible that they left the code in the game to make it easier to make the next game using the implemented code and disabled the functionality. I saw this hack recently, but I can't buy the PC version because of the region lock, so I can't check it out.

Symphonia has the best difficulty curve and balance of the three, but lacks flexibility due to the T <-> S system preventing you from learning everything

I actually like the idea of experimenting with character builds where not all skills are accessible, I just think it's poorly implemented and tying it to EX Skills sucks. It's actually not hard locked to EX Skills settings as you can learn the moves you want then switch EX Gem setup, but it's a tedious process swapping between T and S to get the specific moves you want, fighting battles so your T - S meter changes and reflects the new EX Gem settings, and if you find you don't like the skills, experimenting and switching back. It's really tedious and especially for Raine, whose multitarget heals are generally way better, you don't want to go through one type only to discover the other's way better. It's a lot less of a hassle if you know what skills are under which type and which ones are most worthwhile, but it's still super clunky compared to games with skill trees that allow you to pay to quickly respecialize your skills if you decide to experiment and aren't happy with the results.

There is also the glitch in the Gamecube version (and only the Gamecube version) that allows you to get the level 3 skills from both S side and T side. It's clearly not intended, and it's not entirely a fix, but it's something. I would have liked a Grade Shop option to be able to learn everything, but I guess the devs didn't want that, and it would ruin part of the purpose of the EX Gems.

and [Symphonia] also has a rule that you can only have one mid-level or high-level spell out at once, which is annoying and restrictive.

I'm sure you know this, but for other folks this is usually called the Spell Queue, where only one mid or high level spell can be on the field for each side at a time (player and enemy) and if one's animating the game will wait before allowing another one to be cast, even if the caster's finished the casting time. This is in Symphonia, Tales of Destiny 2, and I think Tales of Eternia? It's why in Symphonia especially, where spell damage isn't as high as in ToD2, that you don't want a spellcasting heavy team because it interferes with healing. I don't think it's in Rebirth, and it wasn't in Phantasia or Destiny because in those games mid and high tier spells pause the game to animate, so you can't have two spells overlapping together.

I've seen people say that they prefer using low-level magic in Symphonia just to not have to deal with this. Never tried it myself and I'm not sure if that's actually the best way to do it because your magic damage output is probably going to go down the toilet, but clearly the Team Symphonia devs thought it was stupid too because they fixed/got rid of it in their next game.

[Abyss's] AD Skill system is obtuse and vague without a guide

I get what they were after. On a first playthrough on Normal, you equip whatever cores help the stats you want and just kinda end up with skills that reflect the bonus points you've earned. Later playthroughs, if you inherit cores, you then just learn a bunch of AD Skills from using cores that raise all stats at the same time, making the process hassle free, or simply inherit AD Skills from a previous playthrough. It's not awful, but I think the skill list doesn't actually show how many points are needed to trigger each skill, so the only way of figuring it out without a guide is trial and error, but you're not meant to worry about hunting specific skills anyways on a first playthrough.

Yeah, the only real annoyance on your first playthrough is not being able to use items on other characters, life bottles, treats, and specifics excluded, until you figure out that raising physical attack is what allows this. It's pretty obvious that raising agility would give you Dash, but for a lot of the other skills it's pretty weird. Still kind of annoying to have to pass Grandioz, Lunatito, and Tutti around to everyone every time someone levels up, but it could be worse.

[XoPachi]

Like Steam reviews? The bad ones are probably "This is made by NIS, and all NIS games are shitty" or "This game is fun, but it crashed, so it's trash"

Not Steam. The whole series has always had fairly mixed reception from outlets which kind of surprised me. I figured this would be the kind of game most people, especially reviewers, would eat up like mad. But yes, you're right. The main point of contention I saw was "It's a NIS game so it's just a grind fest". I know fuck all about NIS besides these games so that's kind of whatever blanket claim to me about their work. But I find it kind of short for Cladun specifically.

I understand thoroughly why people hate grinding. Lord knows I usually do. And I will still grant that yes, it is grindy. But I feel like this game gives you so many ways to make that not a tedious headache. The gameplay itself is very fun. I love how careful you have to be in the dungeons. There's a lot of really good, constant repositioning required to hit enemies because of how precise you need to be with most weapons. That's in conjunction with the party system. It makes receiving damage a very interesting mechanic of not wanting to get hit at certain angles to preserve your Magic Circle on top of trying to get the right opening on enemies. You need to be mindful of terrain and how much you're running through danger as that halves your defense (a really cool sprint balancing idea I don't think I see too often). And making sure you aren't moving too hastily so you don't step on FIRE traps. I think the game is doing a lot to make the moment to moment play very interesting and methodical.

It all just really comes together nicely imo. So individual dungeons stay fresh for a long time.

[m.sniffles.esq]

I understand thoroughly why people hate grinding. Lord knows I usually do. And I will still grant that yes, it is grindy. But I feel like this game gives you so many ways to make that not a tedious headache.

The thing that seems to drive (some) people nuts about them is that they're very fond of including post-game stuff where you can grind your party up to 20 million (or whatever) if you so desire. Then including some level 20 million post-game boss to fight so you don't feel like you did all that for no reason. They're hardly the first dev to do this, but it makes ocd, 'MUST. COMPLETE. EVERYTHING.' players nutty.

I'm not one of those, so sometimes I dip into the post-game stuff, sometimes when the game ends I feel it was sufficient and just stop there. Regardless, I've always enjoyed their games...

[vol.2]

I understand thoroughly why people hate grinding. Lord knows I usually do. And I will still grant that yes, it is grindy. But I feel like this game gives you so many ways to make that not a tedious headache.

The thing that seems to drive (some) people nuts about them is that they're very fond of including post-game stuff where you can grind your party up to 20 million (or whatever) if you so desire. Then including some level 20 million post-game boss to fight so you don't feel like you did all that for no reason. They're hardly the first dev to do this, but it makes ocd, 'MUST. COMPLETE. EVERYTHING.' players nutty.

I'm not one of those, so sometimes I dip into the post-game stuff, sometimes when the game ends I feel it was sufficient and just stop there. Regardless, I've always enjoyed their games...

Interesting comments. It brings to mind experiences with grinding in RPGs and how sometimes it feels like a sucky chore and sometimes it's fine. I think for me the distinction is how enjoyable or smooth the whole combat experience is, especially insofar as the number of steps you have to go through for each encounter. If it's a fairly streamlined experience, dipping in and out of combat to grind can feel very meditative and satisfying. Then again, if the combat is overly labored and complex it can be really horrible to do. There's got to be a balance between the complexity of the combat and the required frequency of encounters.

[m.sniffles.esq]

There's got to be a balance between the complexity of the combat and the required frequency of encounters.

Well, by and large, NIS does love it's complicated combat systems* (as mentioned, positioning is very important in the Cladun games) which makes combat feel more like puzzles rather than straight 'hack, hack, heal' affairs. That said, they tend (and this isn't absolute, as I haven't played every game they developed) to be very good about making any main campaign grinding to be achieved by doing 'things' (item world from Disgaea off the top of my head) rather than just walking around doing the same two floors of a dungeon for three hours.

*however, one of the things I generally like about their RPGs is how they present a game that's initially very familiar, then keep introducing different twists and turns to the formula, until you end up with something way more complex than it seemed at the beginning.

[Squire Grooktook]

I think grinding - in the sense of "walk in a circle outside the boss arena fighting mooks for 2 hours in order to power up - is vastly, vastly over-stated in most Japanese rpg's and usually barely present.

The vast majority of them are balanced such that if you kill everything from point a to point b on the way to the next objective, you'll be geared out to fight the boss by the time you reach it. Grinding mostly tends to happen on the infrequent circumstance of faceplanting into the occasional poorly balanced difficulty spike.

[vol.2]

I think grinding - in the sense of "walk in a circle outside the boss arena fighting mooks for 2 hours in order to power up - is vastly, vastly over-stated in most Japanese rpg's and usually barely present.

The vast majority of them are balanced such that if you kill everything from point a to point b on the way to the next objective, you'll be geared out to fight the boss by the time you reach it. Grinding mostly tends to happen on the infrequent circumstance of faceplanting into the occasional poorly balanced difficulty spike.

That's not what I remember about playing a lot of older JRPGs, but I don't really play much if any of them after the early 2000s. I definitely have some distinct memories of grinding the hell out of FF1 and Shining in the Darkness, but it never really felt too horrible because the combat is so simple. When it comes to slightly later titles, it was less a thing, but there was still a pretty clear line between grinding a little bit to get tough enough for a dungeon and trying to level up as you go and just dying until the RNG let you pass.

But like I said, I kind of stopped playing the newer ones. Maybe the most recent I've played is FF12.

[Squire Grooktook]

But like I said, I kind of stopped playing the newer ones. Maybe the most recent I've played is FF12.

I would suggest that once the wizardry influence faded, most jrpg's from the mid 90's onward were on average more like what I described then less. Pick up any well liked game from the age of Chrono Trigger up through the PS2 era and you're mostly in for a breezy ride IMO.

Archaic Nes RPG's are obviously a whole different breed. I remember having to grind for literal hours at times in Final Fantasy 3's ds port. Completely different experience from something like Xenogears where the game really just wants you to not skip encounters and exercise basic strategy and resource management.

[vol.2]

Archaic Nes RPG's are obviously a whole different breed. I remember having to grind for literal hours at times in Final Fantasy 3's ds port. Completely different experience from something like Xenogears where the game really just wants you to not skip encounters and exercise basic strategy and resource management.

I got that DS port like the day it released and had a great time playing it. I really enjoyed the online component. I forget exactly what you had to do, but there were items or specific side quests you needed to contact people through the online service to get. It was also the first time I ever played that game because of the way they got released in the US.

As much as I love JRPGs, I just haven't been able to carve out too much time at once to get through one anymore. I still haven't finished FF12 and I really liked that game a lot. It's feeling like it's been so long I can't finish it anymore.

[XoPachi]

Made her some weapons. c:

[BulletMagnet]

I would suggest that once the wizardry influence faded, most jrpg's from the mid 90's onward were on average more like what I described then less. Pick up any well liked game from the age of Chrono Trigger up through the PS2 era and you're mostly in for a breezy ride IMO.

I distinctly remember Nintendo Power's coverage of Final Fantasy IV (or II, as we knew it then) making a rather big deal of the fact that just fighting the random battles between boss encounters was enough to get you the exp and money you needed to progress, so yeah, sometime in the 16-bit era seems about when the design philosophy started to decidedly (though certainly not completely) shift.

I'd be inclined to guess that this was in no small part due to the generational leap in how much available space developers had to work with; if players demanded a game that would take them dozens of hours to finish, back in the day you likely had to force them to walk in proverbial (and often literal) circles to pad things out, since there was only so much stuff you could fit on the cart; once things opened up you could, assuming you had the resources and time, instead just give them a greater total number and variety of places to go and things to do.

[Sima Tuna]

Made her some weapons. c:

Original sprite art, do not steal. XoPachi owns these images now.

[m.sniffles.esq]

I'll openly admit, making dumb characters and shit was a BIG appeal of Cladun.

It was one of those "why doesn't every game have this option"?

[XoPachi]

I like those games like this where your characters are a bunch of dots and they just let you make everything. I wish I had pictures of it off my old PS3, but in 3D Dot Game Heroes, I made a pretty exact Ducker Mobile Cannon hero. I was really excited for it when the character editor popped up because it instantly looked like the Gummi Ship editor which was my favorite part of Kingdom Hearts 2.

I don't need or even ever really think about custom content. Like I don't even mod games like that unless there's just an absolutely dire fix I need. But when I get it, it can be a lot fun.

[Steven]

Tales of Tiger Festival

uh

I mean Graces f released on PS4/PS5/Switch yesterday and I was EXTREMELY tempted to go pick up a PS5 copy at Tsutaya to play it early, but I somehow managed to refrain. PC version released this morning and I woke up super early to play it. The port is almost perfect. The only negative thing about it is that although it says that it's supposed to support 16:10, the 16:10 implementation is broken and stretches a 16:9 image to 16:10 instead of actually being 16:10. Steam Deck humans can fix it by setting it to windowed mode, which will allow 16:9. I would have liked for it to have an unlocked framerate and not be stuck at only 120 FPS, but it's still nice even with just 120, so I'm not going to complain about it.

I was under the impression that there would be an option in the weird new loop 1 Grade Shop to skip the child part, but nope. At least it's not too long and I finished that part already. It's so strange to start the game and be greeted by the Grade Shop almost immediately. It gives exactly enough Grade to buy everything that is available, but I opted for nothing, which I somewhat regret. Before I go any further, I am considering restarting and getting double SP from the Grade Shop to reduce the tedium of the game's title system. Skipping cutscenes will get me back to where I am very quickly, so I may very well do it.

I noticed Tiger Festiv- uh... Sophie standing around doing mostly nothing during the first boss fight. No attacking, no moving, no First Aid, just nothing. It's been so incredibly long that I'd forgotten that friendly AI in this game is not that great.

Playing and finally finishing Vesperia recently made me realize how difficult it must be to design good bosses for this series, but it's also quite interesting to go from playing a game with TP for 70 hours to CC just a few days later. I do still think PS2 Destiny has the better battle system, but this is still good.

This port seems quite excellent, and I am quite pleased! If anyone's worried about the quality of the port, don't be, because it's good. It looks beautiful for a decade-and-a-half-late PC port of a PS3 port of a Wii game and it runs flawlessly and will likely do so on anything released in the past decade that isn't the Switch. Good job, TOSE. You guys are good and cool and I hope that whoever works at TOSE that did this port does the rest of the upcoming Tales ports... and that the Destiny remake is one of them so I can retire my childhood PS2 copies.

[Lander]

That's good to hear; late ports being well-refined is as rare as hen's teeth. I'll have to table it for after I leave the Stalker-modding rabbithole.

NG1 grade shop sounds pretty weird, but I like the idea of not having to recover from a full playthrough to actually check it out. Poking around, it sounds like you can just buy everything and toggle it at your discretion in the custom menu.

Playing and finally finishing Vesperia recently made me realize how difficult it must be to design good bosses for this series, but it's also quite interesting to go from playing a game with TP for 70 hours to CC just a few days later. I do still think PS2 Destiny has the better battle system, but this is still good.

Now you mention it, I can only think of a couple of bosses from the series that are genuinely mechanically memorable. And those tend to center around a situational gimmick, like using Aurora to undo the final boss' party wipe in Eternia, or that fight against the lady with option drones in Dycroft. Beyond that they tend to be elemental-abuse combo sponges with the added snag of having to respect footsies every so often - fun enough, but quite uniform.

Perhaps that's a broader facet of ARPG - raids and raid bosses seem like a popular solution in modern incarnations, working puzzle elements directly into the action and such. Maybe that's the modern equivalent to cerebral strategy-heavy gimmicks like FF8's Ultimecia Castle.

[Steven]

That's good to hear; late ports being well-refined is as rare as hen's teeth. I'll have to table it for after I leave the Stalker-modding rabbithole.

Oh yeah, no doubt about that at all.

Looking at some of the recent 10-20 year-old games that got ports to PS4/Switch is pretty disappointing. SMT III had some weirdness going on on Switch and even PS4, Tales of Symphonia supposedly had even more and worse weirdness on Switch (and I don't mean that it's a port of the PS3 and by extension PS2 version; they broke some stuff, apparently), I guess Nintendo's new Donkey Kong port runs worse than it did on whatever system it was originally on (Wii, I think), Sonic Colors Ultimate... happened, I guess nobody liked the Demon's Souls remake/port thing on PS5 for whatever reason (never played either version, so I don't know what's wrong with it), MGS Master Collection had a bunch of issues that took a while to get fixed, and I seem to recall some input lag oddness on Switch Super Mario Sunshine, but it's been quite a while since I played it on Gamecube.

Then TOSE comes along and is like here's Graces f, freed from PS3 jail, but now with

• 4K

• 120 FPS

• support for all modern console controllers out of the box

• impossibly flawless performance on everything, probably including your decade-old potato laptop because its system requirements are practically non-existent because the minimum and recommended specs are literally parts from 11 years ago

• dual audio for those that want it

• added translations for stuff that was previously only in Japanese for those humans who can't do that language

• almost fully customizable controls for both inside and outside of battle

• added optional convenience features to make the annoying parts of the game less annoying

• almost all of the non-licensed DLC

• Grade Shop on new game so those of you who played this in the nearly two decades since its original release can have a rad optional pseudo-new game+ on loop 1 if you want

• two battle music tracks from every single main entry in the series that you can toggle on and off individually and either play at random or in sequence just in case you don't like this game's battle music or simply want some variety

and I'm like please marry me TOSE. I'll make gloriously fresh handmade waffles every single day. I promise.

Honestly, though, this should be the absolute minimum acceptable standard for everything, not the high-quality outlier. Too bad that's how it is these days.

Apparently this might be running on Unity. It's gotten an undeservedly terrible reputation, but Unity also means that someone's probably already working on getting the missing licensed DLC back in there, unless it's like Vesperia and still in the game and needs only some hex edits to restore.

NG1 grade shop sounds pretty weird, but I like the idea of not having to recover from a full playthrough to actually check it out. Poking around, it sounds like you can just buy everything and toggle it at your discretion in the custom menu.

It was super weird because you select new game, and then of course the options menu shows up, and then immediately after that the game's like "Welcome to the Grade Shop!". It's the strangest feeling. Only some of the stuff can be toggled on and off, though. I think double SP is one of those types, but I'm not sure about the rest. Edit again: yep, it can be disabled, as can triple SP. Most things can be toggled on/off, it seems. I decided to not be able to read Japanese for some reason today...

It seems that I forgot to enable the faster movement speed option. Looks like I'm restarting just for that, as being able to move faster outside of battles won't hurt the game in any way at all. Undecided as to what else to take, but double and/or triple SP are tempting.

Playing and finally finishing Vesperia recently made me realize how difficult it must be to design good bosses for this series, but it's also quite interesting to go from playing a game with TP for 70 hours to CC just a few days later. I do still think PS2 Destiny has the better battle system, but this is still good.

Now you mention it, I can only think of a couple of bosses from the series that are genuinely mechanically memorable. And those tend to center around a situational gimmick, like using Aurora to undo the final boss' party wipe in Eternia, or that fight against the lady with option drones in Dycroft. Beyond that they tend to be elemental-abuse combo sponges with the added snag of having to respect footsies every so often - fun enough, but quite uniform.

Perhaps that's a broader facet of ARPG - raids and raid bosses seem like a popular solution in modern incarnations, working puzzle elements directly into the action and such. Maybe that's the modern equivalent to cerebral strategy-heavy gimmicks like FF8's Ultimecia Castle.

Yeah, it's an aspect that I would like the series to improve on. Vesperia tried with the secret missions. It was semi-successful. The final boss of Vesperia's act 1 stood out because of the enemy spawning mechanic and how you can stop the spawning. Others are of course Barbatos（アイテムなぞ使ってんじゃねええええ！！！）, who famously will kick your ass if you try grinding on the world map in the Destiny remake with all of your characters set to auto, one of the bosses in Abyss, which has a time limit that there is pretty much no way you'll exceed, and Symphonia, which has... a door. Uh... yeah.

Some of the cameo battles are pretty cool, though.

[nogden]

Hyrule Warriors Definitive Edition on switch. I know the new Dynasty Warriors just came out but I never finished this game so I figured I’d come back to it first. God I love the Koei tecmo twist of all the Zelda characters. Great game and a shit ton of content.

[vol.2]

Hyrule Warriors Definitive Edition on switch. I know the new Dynasty Warriors just came out but I never finished this game so I figured I’d come back to it first. God I love the Koei tecmo twist of all the Zelda characters. Great game and a shit ton of content.

That's the one where they made link wear a scarf lol.

[Marc]

So I wanted a PC that would run some old stuff and less demanding emulation. Opted for the mini HP thing with Ryzen 5 Vega 11, 16gb, and 1TB. Paid £180.00.

Downloaded Deus Ex and Thief 2, top settings, great. DC emu, great. OutRun 2006, full everything.... wow. However, I had no idea this thing would run 360 erase games at full pelt.

I've a list as long as my arm of stuff i played somewhat compromised back in the day. It runs Flatout UC at full everything, Half Life 2, Sonic Transformed..... I'm impressed.

GC wise F-Zero GX at 720 60fps.....

And Noita! Shit this is good.

[nogden]

Hyrule Warriors Definitive Edition on switch. I know the new Dynasty Warriors just came out but I never finished this game so I figured I’d come back to it first. God I love the Koei tecmo twist of all the Zelda characters. Great game and a shit ton of content.

That's the one where they made link wear a scarf lol.

Yeah lol. Zelda’s design is the best I’ve ever seen for her though

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Hyrule Warriors Definitive Edition on switch. I know the new Dynasty Warriors just came out but I never finished this game so I figured I’d come back to it first. God I love the Koei tecmo twist of all the Zelda characters. Great game and a shit ton of content.

The second one based on Breath of the Wild is also fantastic if you're into Musou games. It's also got a lot more plot related meat on its bones than Breath of the Wild has and much better characterization (by consequence of all the major characters being dead in Breath of the Wild, you're really just wrapping up loose ends there rather than being a player in a plot). Zelda in particular is written better rather than spending all of the memories moping because her power won't activate for unspecified reasons except long after it's actually needed. In Age of Calamity, she actually gets to be functional and independent, taking direct meaningful actions even without needing her special powers to activate (it also helps that her Sheikah Slate moveset is hilarious and effective).l

[Sima Tuna]

I picked up Tales of Graces F. The grade shop on new game is kinda weird. I only spent about 400 or so points because I didn't want to buy anything that would make the game too much easier. I've barely played the game because I don't have as much time for gaming these days. The port seems good on Switch though. I'm sure it isn't max resolution, max framerate like the other versions but it looks good to me. The combat system is certainly a learning curve after Symphonia, Phantasia and all the more 2d flat-angle combat games.

[Steven]

I picked up Tales of Graces F. The grade shop on new game is kinda weird. I only spent about 400 or so points because I didn't want to buy anything that would make the game too much easier. I've barely played the game because I don't have as much time for gaming these days. The port seems good on Switch though. I'm sure it isn't max resolution, max framerate like the other versions but it looks good to me. The combat system is certainly a learning curve after Symphonia, Phantasia and all the more 2d flat-angle combat games.

I've been playing the shit out of this game for the past few days and I'd forgotten how fun it is to play. I did restart and get the fast running option in the Grade Shop. Turns out that it is the same speed as holding/toggling the run button, except you don't have to hold/toggle it by pressing the button anymore. Some people would say "this makes the game easier because you can run away from all of the enemies!", but in my case it's more that I use it to intentionally run into all of the enemies faster so I can enjoy the awesome battle system more frequently. There is literally no reason to not choose this option, especially because you can disable it if you want. The only other options that I took are the 2x and 3x SP multipliers. Haven't used either of them so far, as I find the extra SP gain from playing on hard difficulty to be sufficient enough so far.

I did notice that while the OP's anime cutscene looks super beautiful, the ones that come later show some signs of AI upscaling. It's not too bad, and I'm still pleased with the game's visuals overall, but it's slightly disappointing.

Graces has a relatively complex battle system by series standards. The beginning part where you are kids sucks because you can't do much, but once you get to the adult part and can go crazy with the insane amount of things that the game gives you it becomes super fun. Hi-ougi access for both your entire party and bosses at 6~8 hours into the game... yep, that's one of the ways that you can tell this game was made by Team Destiny. Those guys certainly loved making crazy and complex battle systems, each one completely different from the last, and this one still doesn't disappoint. I don't mind at all that the characters/story/etc. aren't that great. The story's just an excuse to have fun with the battle system.

Speaking of Tales characters/story/etc., I seem to have convinced one of my friends to play this series just by mentioning its existence and now she really wants to try it, so next month I'm going to bring my PS2 over to her house. What Tales game does one give to a Japanese person for their first one? At this point I think that, assuming you have access to every game in the entire series on real hardware, which I do, and with no language barrier because the target person is Japanese, Abyss is probably the single best entry point in the series aside from Destiny Director's Cut or possibly Eternia.

[Sima Tuna]

I was going to say Destiny... Symphonia is a pretty good first entry, as it was the entry point for many westerners. Phantasia is fun enough if the gamer is into retro jarpigs. Abyss is good too. Berseria might be the best entry for somebody who wants to play """MODERN GAMES""" aka they need their hd consoles and free run combat.

If you're going to be around when they are playing it, you might as well recommend your favorite Tales game so you can share all your love of the series like a true nerd.

I'm still in the kids part of the story so it makes sense I can't do anything cool with the combat yet. As I said, I barely played it because I don't have much time for gamin' these days. But I hope to put in a few hours today.

[Squire Grooktook]

she

Never ceases to amuse me how this franchise has such a dedicated female fanbase. I know a girl who's super into it too.

Never got into Tales myself, tried a few times but always bounced off. Still been meaning to put some more time into the series one day.

[Steven]

If you're going to be around when they are playing it, you might as well recommend your favorite Tales game so you can share all your love of the series like a true nerd.

Yep, multiplayer is indeed the plan, and that means no Phantasia. Even though it's still somehow one of the best games in the series as a single player game, it sucks as a multiplayer game because Cless is the only fun character that you have for about 70% of the game. Considering multiplayer, Abyss is probably a safe choice or even the best choice because you get everybody but Natalia within about 2~3 hours of starting the game, which means neither of us will be stuck with Tear for too long before Guy shows up.

Most of the other PS2 games won't give a whole lot of options for characters that early, Legendia doesn't have multiplayer at all, and of course playing Destiny 2 before Destiny is not the best option. Symphonia is close because it gets off to a good, relatively interesting start while also giving you a bunch of characters immediately, including Kratos, who is always fun, but then half of the party leaves for a decent while soon after that. I also have not been successful in locating my copy of the game, which does not help. At least it would be the PS2 version, which fixed the camera problems that the Gamecube version has. Rebirth might not be bad because Mao and Eugene are there from the start, but that game's also got a lot of stuff going on with its complex battle system.

Main problem is hardware; she has an original 3DS and a PSP and nothing else, so I have to bring something with me, and I have the super tiny version of the PS2, so that's a good option.

I'm still in the kids part of the story so it makes sense I can't do anything cool with the combat yet. As I said, I barely played it because I don't have much time for gamin' these days. But I hope to put in a few hours today.

Yeah, the kid part is not so great. Might be better if you got the extra CC from the Grade Shop, but I didn't take the extra CC. When I played the original Wii version, this part of the game left a rather negative impression. Fortunately it's not really that bad, and, more importantly, only about 2 or 3 hours long, even with all of the cutscenes and talking, so you'll be at the fun part soon enough. When I restarted, I skipped all of that stuff and finished it in about an hour and a half. Once you push through that part of the game and get to the adult part, or at least get more CC, it becomes significantly better.

she

Never ceases to amuse me how this franchise has such a dedicated female fanbase. I know a girl who's super into it too.

Never got into Tales myself, tried a few times but always bounced off. Still been meaning to put some more time into the series one day.

Japanese girls in particular love these games a lot, as evidenced by about 90% of the event attendees being female. I can't think of any other major games, if you want to consider this to be a major game series, that have such a disproportionately female fanbase at all.

Did you play the ones with the best battle systems? Those would be Rebirth, the Destiny remake on PS2 and its Director's Cut (which doesn't have the same director as the original version of the remake, so that apostrophe apparently indicates a contraction, not a possessive), and Graces/Graces f. Graces has some weird bugs if you don't have the bugfix version, including the infamous one that shuts off your Wii, which I find hilarious, but unless you like funny glitches, skip Graces and play Graces f instead, especially with the very new shiny PC version out.

[Sima Tuna]

Girls love the Tales series. My sister is a much bigger Tales fan than I am. She owns all the games that were localized. I don't know why girls love Tales so much, but they really do.