That has to be across many, many playthroughs. Persona 3 FES took me 130 hours my first time through (but I was really taking my time), Persona 4 afterwards "only" took me 70 hours and Persona 5 is not much worse than P3 in that regard. I don't think I ever spent more than 100 hours on a single SMT playthrough, but most games in this series are sub 60h runs.
Jarpig pride worldwide (Let's talk about JRPGs)
Re: Jarpig pride worldwide (Let's talk about JRPGs)
).
blog - scores - collection
Don't worry about it. You can travel from the Milky Way to Andromeda and back 1500 times before the sun explodes.
Don't worry about it. You can travel from the Milky Way to Andromeda and back 1500 times before the sun explodes.
Re: Jarpig pride worldwide (Let's talk about JRPGs)
20 hours into Xenogears rn. Love how obtuse and story-focused it is, and that still dont know wtf is going on. The game feels a lot like watching an early 90s anime by tomino or ryosuke tahakashi and that really hooked me in.
If I end up liking the game at the end, Im planning to play Xenosaga 1 right after finishing it.
If I end up liking the game at the end, Im planning to play Xenosaga 1 right after finishing it.
Re: Jarpig pride worldwide (Let's talk about JRPGs)
It's neat they've added Yumi from Tokimeki Memorial to the Dragon Quest 2 Remake Remake Remake.
It's neat back in the day they considered downer endings, like your buddy carking it in the final battle and his sister stabbing you for not bringing him back. It's something I say often, but most of the isekai slop really doesn't capture how these worlds are miserable war planets where people are constantly fighting off demons. One fan theory that I thought was pretty grimdark is how the princess in the first game insists on marrying you and won't take 'no' for an answer. On how quickly the royal family was to let her shuffle out of town with the big blue fuckox that murderated their dragon wizard infestation. On where the dragonlord's descendant in DQ2 might have came from.
In another topic, watched a video about trying to beat Final Fantasy 1 without spending money. The conclusion was 'hell no'.
It's neat back in the day they considered downer endings, like your buddy carking it in the final battle and his sister stabbing you for not bringing him back. It's something I say often, but most of the isekai slop really doesn't capture how these worlds are miserable war planets where people are constantly fighting off demons. One fan theory that I thought was pretty grimdark is how the princess in the first game insists on marrying you and won't take 'no' for an answer. On how quickly the royal family was to let her shuffle out of town with the big blue fuckox that murderated their dragon wizard infestation. On where the dragonlord's descendant in DQ2 might have came from.
In another topic, watched a video about trying to beat Final Fantasy 1 without spending money. The conclusion was 'hell no'.
Re: Jarpig pride worldwide (Let's talk about JRPGs)
I'm sure everyone agrees that the canon ending to DQ1 is the one where the hero never returns the princess, but keeps carrying her all the way through the final boss fight.BryanM wrote: ↑Mon Mar 31, 2025 2:33 am One fan theory that I thought was pretty grimdark is how the princess in the first game insists on marrying you and won't take 'no' for an answer. On how quickly the royal family was to let her shuffle out of town with the big blue fuckox that murderated their dragon wizard infestation. On where the dragonlord's descendant in DQ2 might have came from.
Re: Jarpig pride worldwide (Let's talk about JRPGs)
... Ugh, I kind of want to play Dragon Quest 2: Bratty Little Sister Edition now...
No interest in the DQ3 remake since that's a game I've played over a dozen times already, no matter how they reskin it. (If only they made a DQ3-inspired whole new game instead : /) But DQ2 is something I've played only lightly. The entire game isn't permanently burned into my neurons.
This kinda feels like when Malibu Stacey got a new hat...
No interest in the DQ3 remake since that's a game I've played over a dozen times already, no matter how they reskin it. (If only they made a DQ3-inspired whole new game instead : /) But DQ2 is something I've played only lightly. The entire game isn't permanently burned into my neurons.
This kinda feels like when Malibu Stacey got a new hat...
Re: Jarpig pride worldwide (Let's talk about JRPGs)
You should play the "original" NES version of DQ2 before soiling your perspective with the upcoming remake.
I think a lot of the (IMO completely unfair) hate DQ2 has gotten, has resulted in too many attempts (throughout the three or so previous remakes) to fix things which arguably weren't really that broken in the first place, trying to make it more like other PRGs. And hell, while a new party member sounds fun, I think the balance between your three members in DQ2 is one of the more important things that makes the game so unique! While your main character is just objectively much more useful and powerful than his two mates, he still relies on them to make progress and needs to keep them alive as much as possible (and that can be a genuine struggle a lot of the time, which has been memed endlessly).
A lot of the negative impressions you'll hear from modern players trying out the game, comes from them just following a guide the whole way through, which will of course completely upset your progression balance and require a lot more grinding than a natural first-time progression would, while it will also completely rob the game of the entire adventure-style puzzle structure that it has going on, where going to certain places will earn you hints for what to do in other places. It's a game entirely about exploration and observation, and if you take that out, you miss a massive part of that experience. Imagine playing DQ2 with quest markers - or hell, even a pre-drawn map. Oof.
I think a lot of the (IMO completely unfair) hate DQ2 has gotten, has resulted in too many attempts (throughout the three or so previous remakes) to fix things which arguably weren't really that broken in the first place, trying to make it more like other PRGs. And hell, while a new party member sounds fun, I think the balance between your three members in DQ2 is one of the more important things that makes the game so unique! While your main character is just objectively much more useful and powerful than his two mates, he still relies on them to make progress and needs to keep them alive as much as possible (and that can be a genuine struggle a lot of the time, which has been memed endlessly).
A lot of the negative impressions you'll hear from modern players trying out the game, comes from them just following a guide the whole way through, which will of course completely upset your progression balance and require a lot more grinding than a natural first-time progression would, while it will also completely rob the game of the entire adventure-style puzzle structure that it has going on, where going to certain places will earn you hints for what to do in other places. It's a game entirely about exploration and observation, and if you take that out, you miss a massive part of that experience. Imagine playing DQ2 with quest markers - or hell, even a pre-drawn map. Oof.
Re: Jarpig pride worldwide (Let's talk about JRPGs)
Aah, I know you love the game. I meant 'lightly' in the sense of only all the way through once or twice, for the NES and GBC remake. (But definitely not the SFC remake.) There are only a few bits I can remember, in contrast to the entirety of DW3 permanently occupying space in my brain.
Guadia Quest, a subgame within Retro Game Challenge (also known as Game Center CX) is heavily inspired by DQ2. I have bittersweet feelings about the game; the guys at Zeboyd games had the same thought I had while playing it which was 'Hey, this is really fun. Why did they stop making games like this?' And then tried to make a jRPG myself. I feel a lot of envy of them, for having a friend in real life also interested in making games.
The Earthbound games are really wacky with character balance. They always make sure to try and include one weakling who really sucks and doesn't do much that's interesting!
It balances out the boring guy with big numbers. Ah, having more than a 'fight' command really makes things more interesting. In the gacha market, there's barely any games with just a generic 'fight' command. Epic Seven being a good example of the norm: Characters' basic attacks always do something a little extra. Like shred the enemy's defense or a light heal, that kind of thing.
It just appeals to my autistic brain when assembling a party that works together as one cohesive machine instead of having a bunch of random guys who don't actually synergize with one another. That's one thing lacking in most of the AAA titles... like you can't build a poison team, a shock team, a buff team, an item find team, etc. Just good 'ole Fight And Heal (And Sometimes Buff).
One of the cool things in the old days is when they'd often ship guides that documented the entire game right there in the box. The Dragon Warrior games were amazing in that sense, with a full walkthrough and a chart of all the enemies, items, and spells... Just hundreds of pages, and if you read through it it was like playing the game yourself.
They used to put so much into the box back then, sigh. Now you have to pay like $90 in exchange for a guy to change the CONST values on the framerate and resolution for the new console. It just ain't the same...
Yeah though, playing like a robot in any game is foolish. The later-age Persona games are absolutely miserable if you follow a social link guide. Like I always try to say, perfection is pointless since as soon as you're done with a game you lose everything. Might as well choose to have fun instead.
Guadia Quest, a subgame within Retro Game Challenge (also known as Game Center CX) is heavily inspired by DQ2. I have bittersweet feelings about the game; the guys at Zeboyd games had the same thought I had while playing it which was 'Hey, this is really fun. Why did they stop making games like this?' And then tried to make a jRPG myself. I feel a lot of envy of them, for having a friend in real life also interested in making games.
I think the balance between your three members in DQ2 is one of the more important things that makes the game so unique! While your main character is just objectively much more useful and powerful than his two mates, he still relies on them to make progress and needs to keep them alive as much as possible
The Earthbound games are really wacky with character balance. They always make sure to try and include one weakling who really sucks and doesn't do much that's interesting!
It balances out the boring guy with big numbers. Ah, having more than a 'fight' command really makes things more interesting. In the gacha market, there's barely any games with just a generic 'fight' command. Epic Seven being a good example of the norm: Characters' basic attacks always do something a little extra. Like shred the enemy's defense or a light heal, that kind of thing.
It just appeals to my autistic brain when assembling a party that works together as one cohesive machine instead of having a bunch of random guys who don't actually synergize with one another. That's one thing lacking in most of the AAA titles... like you can't build a poison team, a shock team, a buff team, an item find team, etc. Just good 'ole Fight And Heal (And Sometimes Buff).
A lot of the negative impressions you'll hear from modern players trying out the game, comes from them just following a guide the whole way through
One of the cool things in the old days is when they'd often ship guides that documented the entire game right there in the box. The Dragon Warrior games were amazing in that sense, with a full walkthrough and a chart of all the enemies, items, and spells... Just hundreds of pages, and if you read through it it was like playing the game yourself.
They used to put so much into the box back then, sigh. Now you have to pay like $90 in exchange for a guy to change the CONST values on the framerate and resolution for the new console. It just ain't the same...
Yeah though, playing like a robot in any game is foolish. The later-age Persona games are absolutely miserable if you follow a social link guide. Like I always try to say, perfection is pointless since as soon as you're done with a game you lose everything. Might as well choose to have fun instead.
Re: Jarpig pride worldwide (Let's talk about JRPGs)
Got Ultima Weapon in Kingdom Hearts 3.
That was awful.
That was awful.
Re: Jarpig pride worldwide (Let's talk about JRPGs)
I've only played NES Dragon Quest 2 but imo it stinks. The extra party members slow the combat down a lot compared to DQ1 but don't really add any depth. The first prince is going to spam standard attacks and the princess is going to spam spells, what little decision making there is is almost entirely concentrated around the second prince, who is functionally similar to the DQ1 protagonist. The grindy and luck based endgame is bad too.
Re: Jarpig pride worldwide (Let's talk about JRPGs)
Imo it's one of the most memorable jarpig experience I've had.
Yeah, combat drags on and makes the game slow, especially due to all the slow messages popping up one at a time.
It's an annoyance, and a big shift from DQ1 which is basically the opposite - but the exact same point could be made for DQ3, a game which is by many considered the best of the series. In fact, it's true for pretty much all DQ games up to and including DQ8, as well as all the DS remakes. So it's really not something worth singling out DQ2 for.
And no DQ game ever had any depth to its combat until DQ11. In fact, very few jarpigs ever did outside of that game, and maybe the newest SaGa games.
Re: Jarpig pride worldwide (Let's talk about JRPGs)
Doujin JRPGs do so much better on gameplay that I hardly touch mainstream JRPGs anymore. I know that DQ isn't a series you play for deep combat, but DQ1 at least did have fast paced, consequential combat and 2 really threw that in the garbage and it deserves some blame for it.Sumez wrote: ↑Fri Apr 25, 2025 10:28 am Imo it's one of the most memorable jarpig experience I've had.
Yeah, combat drags on and makes the game slow, especially due to all the slow messages popping up one at a time.
It's an annoyance, and a big shift from DQ1 which is basically the opposite - but the exact same point could be made for DQ3, a game which is by many considered the best of the series. In fact, it's true for pretty much all DQ games up to and including DQ8, as well as all the DS remakes. So it's really not something worth singling out DQ2 for.
And no DQ game ever had any depth to its combat until DQ11. In fact, very few jarpigs ever did outside of that game, and maybe the newest SaGa games.
I think DQ1 has a near perfect approach to open world design and it's a shame they also abandoned its flavor of nonlinear exploration limited by enemies who will kill you. iirc 2 still does a little bit of that, but not nearly as much.
Re: Jarpig pride worldwide (Let's talk about JRPGs)
2 doesn't do "a little bit of that". It does exactly that, and a lot more than 1 does. It does a great job at expanding on the same ideas and it's exactly the reason I love it so much.Vanguard wrote: ↑Fri Apr 25, 2025 6:05 pm Doujin JRPGs do so much better on gameplay that I hardly touch mainstream JRPGs anymore. I know that DQ isn't a series you play for deep combat, but DQ1 at least did have fast paced, consequential combat and 2 really threw that in the garbage and it deserves some blame for it.
I think DQ1 has a near perfect approach to open world design and it's a shame they also abandoned its flavor of nonlinear exploration limited by enemies who will kill you. iirc 2 still does a little bit of that, but not nearly as much.
1, 2 and 3 all have that open world approach where your progress is blocked primarily by enemies and knowledge, and occasionally certain items you'll find elsewhere. There is no strict set path through either of them, outside of a pretty set beginning and end for each.
Re: Jarpig pride worldwide (Let's talk about JRPGs)
It has open exploration, but it's a lot less "you can go this way but you'll probably get wrecked" and a lot more "wander around these featureless open seas for an hour until you find something."
Re: Jarpig pride worldwide (Let's talk about JRPGs)
The multiple character thing slowing down combat is always something I've thought about. A hypothetical jRPG where you control one character at a time, but can swap to other party members, and there's very quick animation where one button press = one command... Basically an arcade-style jRPG with no player downtime just constant flow-state, seems a bit unique...
Though there's a part of me that really loves the idea of building up an army through a game, and actually using it. There's this web novel-come web comic, Surviving The Game As The Barbarian, that's like that. The first floor of the dungeon is nothing but Goblins and bear-traps - the people in that world throw their kids in there all alone as a right of passage. It's like a litRPG roguelike at the start...
... but as one descends the floors of the labyrinth, the threats escalate and larger and larger groups are necessary. In the final floors, basically every single combat against trash mobs is against the equivalent of a raid boss that requires around 100 people to kill.
The logistical issues of a player controlling that many units is one of those huge, annoying cursed game design problems. The idea is cool.. making it a reality seems impossible. You can't have one player manually control 100 units, it has to be simplified or automated somehow. You can't have the same control system for small party play as large raid group play. You have to design for one, or the other.
It vexes me so..
As for games that require 10 thousand IQ big brain usage, it makes me a bit sad ArKnights isn't accessible without heavy investment of calendar time. Never played a game that required firm understanding of your units, the enemies, and the special stage gimmicks. Failure is the default state and every difficult stage is a mini research project. Never saw so much variety in the number of units that weren't just merely 'viable', but optimal, depending on conditions. A character that's just ok or even awful most of the time, might one day be literally the best tool you have to make some annoying problem become 100x easier to clear.
A key to that is not every enemy can just be unga-bunga'd with a sword. Countering standard optimal strategy is kind of the point of every stage, requiring at least a bit of thought.
But as the old quote goes: "Miyamoto knew that people hate learning things." I'm at least glad at least one or two games exist that require some neurons in a market that's especially mindless and braindead...
Though there's a part of me that really loves the idea of building up an army through a game, and actually using it. There's this web novel-come web comic, Surviving The Game As The Barbarian, that's like that. The first floor of the dungeon is nothing but Goblins and bear-traps - the people in that world throw their kids in there all alone as a right of passage. It's like a litRPG roguelike at the start...
... but as one descends the floors of the labyrinth, the threats escalate and larger and larger groups are necessary. In the final floors, basically every single combat against trash mobs is against the equivalent of a raid boss that requires around 100 people to kill.
The logistical issues of a player controlling that many units is one of those huge, annoying cursed game design problems. The idea is cool.. making it a reality seems impossible. You can't have one player manually control 100 units, it has to be simplified or automated somehow. You can't have the same control system for small party play as large raid group play. You have to design for one, or the other.
It vexes me so..
As for games that require 10 thousand IQ big brain usage, it makes me a bit sad ArKnights isn't accessible without heavy investment of calendar time. Never played a game that required firm understanding of your units, the enemies, and the special stage gimmicks. Failure is the default state and every difficult stage is a mini research project. Never saw so much variety in the number of units that weren't just merely 'viable', but optimal, depending on conditions. A character that's just ok or even awful most of the time, might one day be literally the best tool you have to make some annoying problem become 100x easier to clear.
A key to that is not every enemy can just be unga-bunga'd with a sword. Countering standard optimal strategy is kind of the point of every stage, requiring at least a bit of thought.
But as the old quote goes: "Miyamoto knew that people hate learning things." I'm at least glad at least one or two games exist that require some neurons in a market that's especially mindless and braindead...
Re: Jarpig pride worldwide (Let's talk about JRPGs)
I'm playing the pixel remasters of the classic Final Fantasy games and it just reinforces to me how much I love FF2. FF2 has so many little touches that are either completely unique to it or were inspirational in developing out what would become the SaGa gameplay series loop.
I'll just go over all the games I've played a significant amount of the Pixel version. Only thing to really say about the Remasters is the graphics are an upgrade for most of the games but FF6 looks pretty bad with the new lighting and color palette. The remastered music is hit and miss. The remaster versions of NES tracks are upgrades, in my opinion. But the SNES had a really excellent sound chip and that's obvious in comparing the music from "remaster" to original. Some songs just don't sound right in the remaster, like Battle on the Big Bridge. Anyway, the remasters are FINE, I GUESS. The best thing is the ability to turn off random encounters, which cuts down on tedium when you don't need to grind and just want to progress the game to the next boss encounter or story progression.
On to the games:
Final Fantasy 1: I played this one first in the remasters, so I have the least memory of it.
I had beaten it previously on GBA. Turning off encounters allowed me to clock in with a 12ish hour playtime, start-to-finish. The dungeons are absolute hell if you don't turn off encounters. I know, they're supposed to be that way... But I don't think it's fun gameplay. The labyrinth dungeon design mixed with very high random encounter rate was a technique to breathe life into these games, so they weren't over too quickly. Anyway, the game is still fun. I think building your party is the best part. I went Fighter, Red Mage, Black Mage, White Mage.
Final Fantasy 2: GOD! I LOVE THIS GAME SO MUCH! I love the keyword system. I love how much story was added compared to FF1. I love the little characters, even if they're kind of under-developed. "Hi, I just met you and I know this is crazy, but here's my ring please deliver it before I di-ACK!" I love the airship/ship bus system and the fact the canoe actually matters for a damn. All these little movement upgrades are super nice. You can still customize your party, although they now have names. But they are otherwise blank slates. The pixel remaster gives you more feedback to show you what skills you are leveling in combat. It seems otherwise the same as GBA version. I don't THINK skills can actually go down or stats can be lost. The GBA didn't have that either. AFAIK these updated versions fixed all the spaghetti code too. But god damn it! I just love FF2. It's so relaxing to sit and grind out skill levels and see immediate, massive jumps in my power level while I do. I love the magic interference system and how you actually have to think about what you equip. Even if it kinda makes Fists overpowered.
Great fucking game! If you don't like FF2 then you are wrooooong!
FF3: Haven't played yet
FF4: Almost finished. I got to a point where I'd need to either play better or grind a bunch to beat the final boss, so I'm taking a break. It's fun... But I think my memories of this one are fonder than my experience was playing it this time. With the ability to turn encounters off, the scripting is revealed as very rudimentary (not much better than FF1 or FF2 in that regard) and the story, while hugely influential for the time, is beyond basic now. In some ways, I actually prefer the story of FF2 and think FF2 has a secret goated storyline. I don't like the constant party reshuffling in FF4. I knew who the final party were going to be beforehand and this counter-incentivized me from grinding. Which was cool and definitely made Rubicante a harder fight, but still kinda annoyed me overall. Eh, I just don't know if this is an FF I'd return to. I do like all the secret items though.
FF5: Haven't played yet, but I have beaten it multiple times on GBA. I'll report when I play the pixel remaster version.
FF6: Color scheme looks wack as fuck. I turned the brightness down to 40 but it still looks bad. Sabin's blitz commands have been made impossible to fail now. Cyan's sword skills have completely had the risk/reward taken away. The mode 7 looks weird now with the fancy 2d pixels in the rest of the game. You can't listen to the opera song in the sound test, or at least I think you can't. I dunno. I love FF6 (I love FF5 as well) but I won't bang on about it here. Everyone knows what FF6 is. I would play this again just because it's FF6, but I don't know about this version. I guess it has the spaghetti code fixed for all the broken weapons and stats and shit?
FF7 Pixel Remaster when? I'm not interested in re:intermezzo or whatever rewriting of history square has going.
I'll just go over all the games I've played a significant amount of the Pixel version. Only thing to really say about the Remasters is the graphics are an upgrade for most of the games but FF6 looks pretty bad with the new lighting and color palette. The remastered music is hit and miss. The remaster versions of NES tracks are upgrades, in my opinion. But the SNES had a really excellent sound chip and that's obvious in comparing the music from "remaster" to original. Some songs just don't sound right in the remaster, like Battle on the Big Bridge. Anyway, the remasters are FINE, I GUESS. The best thing is the ability to turn off random encounters, which cuts down on tedium when you don't need to grind and just want to progress the game to the next boss encounter or story progression.
On to the games:
Final Fantasy 1: I played this one first in the remasters, so I have the least memory of it.
I had beaten it previously on GBA. Turning off encounters allowed me to clock in with a 12ish hour playtime, start-to-finish. The dungeons are absolute hell if you don't turn off encounters. I know, they're supposed to be that way... But I don't think it's fun gameplay. The labyrinth dungeon design mixed with very high random encounter rate was a technique to breathe life into these games, so they weren't over too quickly. Anyway, the game is still fun. I think building your party is the best part. I went Fighter, Red Mage, Black Mage, White Mage. Final Fantasy 2: GOD! I LOVE THIS GAME SO MUCH! I love the keyword system. I love how much story was added compared to FF1. I love the little characters, even if they're kind of under-developed. "Hi, I just met you and I know this is crazy, but here's my ring please deliver it before I di-ACK!" I love the airship/ship bus system and the fact the canoe actually matters for a damn. All these little movement upgrades are super nice. You can still customize your party, although they now have names. But they are otherwise blank slates. The pixel remaster gives you more feedback to show you what skills you are leveling in combat. It seems otherwise the same as GBA version. I don't THINK skills can actually go down or stats can be lost. The GBA didn't have that either. AFAIK these updated versions fixed all the spaghetti code too. But god damn it! I just love FF2. It's so relaxing to sit and grind out skill levels and see immediate, massive jumps in my power level while I do. I love the magic interference system and how you actually have to think about what you equip. Even if it kinda makes Fists overpowered.
Great fucking game! If you don't like FF2 then you are wrooooong! FF3: Haven't played yet
FF4: Almost finished. I got to a point where I'd need to either play better or grind a bunch to beat the final boss, so I'm taking a break. It's fun... But I think my memories of this one are fonder than my experience was playing it this time. With the ability to turn encounters off, the scripting is revealed as very rudimentary (not much better than FF1 or FF2 in that regard) and the story, while hugely influential for the time, is beyond basic now. In some ways, I actually prefer the story of FF2 and think FF2 has a secret goated storyline. I don't like the constant party reshuffling in FF4. I knew who the final party were going to be beforehand and this counter-incentivized me from grinding. Which was cool and definitely made Rubicante a harder fight, but still kinda annoyed me overall. Eh, I just don't know if this is an FF I'd return to. I do like all the secret items though.
FF5: Haven't played yet, but I have beaten it multiple times on GBA. I'll report when I play the pixel remaster version.
FF6: Color scheme looks wack as fuck. I turned the brightness down to 40 but it still looks bad. Sabin's blitz commands have been made impossible to fail now. Cyan's sword skills have completely had the risk/reward taken away. The mode 7 looks weird now with the fancy 2d pixels in the rest of the game. You can't listen to the opera song in the sound test, or at least I think you can't. I dunno. I love FF6 (I love FF5 as well) but I won't bang on about it here. Everyone knows what FF6 is. I would play this again just because it's FF6, but I don't know about this version. I guess it has the spaghetti code fixed for all the broken weapons and stats and shit?
FF7 Pixel Remaster when? I'm not interested in re:intermezzo or whatever rewriting of history square has going.
Re: Jarpig pride worldwide (Let's talk about JRPGs)
?
Could you fail Sabin's commands in the original? What's the risk with Cyan's sword skills?
Are you sure you remember the SNES version well?
Re: Jarpig pride worldwide (Let's talk about JRPGs)
There were no input commands on the screen in the snes version in combat. You never knew if you were inputting the commands correctly and yes, you absolutely could fail the inputs due to the lack of feedback. Oh and the remaster also puts the command input on the screen *in battle,* with a real-time tracker showing where you are in the input, so you can't possibly fuck it up.
Oh yeah, and wrong inputs in SNES version used to require you to retry inputting from the start... Like, you couldn't just mash a big circle in the dpad during the Pummel input and still get Pummel. You CAN do that in pixel remaster, because the missed inputs don't do anything! They don't affect your input! It only counts the correct inputs. So if you spam the 360 butter churn motion, you will EVENTUALLY get the pummel input if you selected pummel in the blitz skills menu. Which is another thing you couldn't do in FF6 SNES: select individual blitzes.
The risk with Cyan's sword skills is you have to charge then and ATB runs while you are charging. To do any skill beyond the simple level 1 sword skill takes time that gives enemies additional turns to attack you. You can't buffer into issuing commands with other characters while charging Cyan skills or whatever. You have to sit there doing nothing and ATB runs the entire time. Get into a boss fight and try to do a level 9 Cyan skill in FF6 SNES vs Pixel Remaster and tell me I'm wrong.
I know you like to be contrary, but I'm right.
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BareKnuckleRoo
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Re: Jarpig pride worldwide (Let's talk about JRPGs)
The "baby's first JRPG" changes to make Sabin's blitzes foolproof are dumb.
Cyan's skills simply having a charge time that happens in the background rather than actively interfering with other people's turns unless you queue up a bunch of moves before selecting Cyan isn't terrible though; Cyan regularly ranks low on people's rating of the characters and their relative usefulness in large part cuz SwdTech is cumbersome to use and delaying other characters to charge it up ain't worth it.
I do think a lot of people just don't know they can hit Y on the SNES ver to skip turns. You just gotta wait until everyone else has moves selected then have Cyan do his thing. You can easily get to level 4 or 5 before things resolve, and if you're going for the higher ones, 6 to 8 are all useful for various things that the charge can be worth it even if it gives an enemy an attack or two. Just don't pick Cyan then have everyone else standing waiting around forever with full ATBs and you're good.
Apparently the final boss in FF1 has 10x as much health or something crazy compared to the NES version, without the damage scaling found in the GBA or PSP versions where his health was first buffed, so it's functionally way harder to beat at the very end.
The lack of bonus dungeons from the GBA versions is unfortunate. I can see why they didn't add them in FF1 as they were designed around a totally different kind of stat balancing, but FF4 and FF6 could really have used the extras from the GBA ver as those were inoffensive positives.
Cyan's skills simply having a charge time that happens in the background rather than actively interfering with other people's turns unless you queue up a bunch of moves before selecting Cyan isn't terrible though; Cyan regularly ranks low on people's rating of the characters and their relative usefulness in large part cuz SwdTech is cumbersome to use and delaying other characters to charge it up ain't worth it.
I do think a lot of people just don't know they can hit Y on the SNES ver to skip turns. You just gotta wait until everyone else has moves selected then have Cyan do his thing. You can easily get to level 4 or 5 before things resolve, and if you're going for the higher ones, 6 to 8 are all useful for various things that the charge can be worth it even if it gives an enemy an attack or two. Just don't pick Cyan then have everyone else standing waiting around forever with full ATBs and you're good.
Apparently the final boss in FF1 has 10x as much health or something crazy compared to the NES version, without the damage scaling found in the GBA or PSP versions where his health was first buffed, so it's functionally way harder to beat at the very end.
The lack of bonus dungeons from the GBA versions is unfortunate. I can see why they didn't add them in FF1 as they were designed around a totally different kind of stat balancing, but FF4 and FF6 could really have used the extras from the GBA ver as those were inoffensive positives.
Re: Jarpig pride worldwide (Let's talk about JRPGs)
Yeah, I almost mentioned the final boss HP buff in FF1. I had to look up a thing online to understand why he was so hard. I remember beating him in the pixel remaster though and I don't think I used cheese to do it. Buffs are very powerful in FF1 and I think you can stack Tempers on your Fighter/Knight to do the big damage. It is a noticeable tweak though and I don't know why it exists.BareKnuckleRoo wrote: ↑Fri May 09, 2025 8:44 pm The "baby's first JRPG" changes to make Sabin's blitzes foolproof are dumb.
Apparently the final boss in FF1 has 10x as much health or something crazy compared to the NES version, without the damage scaling found in the GBA or PSP versions where his health was first buffed, so it's functionally way harder to beat at the very end.
The lack of bonus dungeons from the GBA versions is unfortunate. I can see why they didn't add them in FF1 as they were designed around a totally different kind of stat balancing, but FF4 and FF6 could really have used the extras from the GBA ver as those were inoffensive positives.
I'm given to understand bonus dungeons were taken out because "we wanted to keep the spirit of the original releases." Which is like, ok... But you fixed the spaghetti code and the stats that don't do anything and a bunch of other shit that was weird or stupid in the original releases. So why not let us have bonus content? Just rebalance it. Now, the bonus content for FF2 GBA/PSP was complete trash though and I'm glad it's not included. All it was, was a few dungeons you could run with the redshirt 4th party members who died in the main game. It was stupid. Nobody was crying out for playable post-game Gordon.
So far, the balance of FF2 pixel remaster has been pretty ballin'. I don't know... I've played GBA and PSP FF2, but this might be the best version. It looks beautiful, you can turn off random battles whenever, the stat progression is way more transparent (good for newbs), they fixed all the broken shit and they kept everything awesome that's unique to FF2 (like the keywords, character building, bus system, dark story etc.)
As always, I can never resist making Guy my punchbot. Punching is so strong in FF2. It still is, too. When I had both Guy and Josef in the party at the same time, I was obliterating enemies. I think the meta for speedrunning is still to go 4x punchbots.
I mean, I'm only now getting to the point where Firion dual-wielding swords can kinda start to output similar damage... But only if Guy doesn't get a crit, which he often does. I never know what weapon to give Maria, since I build her as a party black mage. I went with dual-wield daggers this time. She starts with bow, but it has a 70 anti-magic rating. Staff has less but Maces are still around 40.-
TransatlanticFoe
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Re: Jarpig pride worldwide (Let's talk about JRPGs)
Yeah the FF1 final boss thing was weird. Never played it before the Pixel Remaster, was steamrollering everything in the endgame and then that final boss... I think I beat it with everyone dead and a black mage on about 15 HP. Googled it afterwards and no idea why they buffed it so much, it creates a weird difficulty spike because there's nothing vaguely challenging to grind on at that point. I need to pick up FF2 again (distracted by all sorts of games) and hope it doesn't pull the same thing.
Re: Jarpig pride worldwide (Let's talk about JRPGs)
The GBA version of FF4 lets you use the other characters in your party at the end of the game if you wish, minus the un-alived guy of course. The post-game dungeon is kind of nice, there are little scenarios with each character inside to get their ultimate weapon. (Which can do neat things like add a cast of Flare or Holy to a Fight command.) It really does stimulate the imagination to think of a roguelike arcade style dungeon crawl kinda game... (The Final Fantasy 5 Ancient Cave hack isn't the best way this kind of thing could be executed imo.)
The character-specific gimmicks of FF6 are not always the best. Celes and Terra could have especially had something more interesting done with them. I talk a lot about how cutting down on the player waiting for things to happen and just letting them do things is more fun, so Cyan was outright designed to be anti-fun...
It's also kind of funny how Sabin, Strago, Gau, Edgar etc have all these moves to choose from and for some characters it's like 'You get the Steal command from FF5. Congratulations!'
I guess it's still better than only mages getting multiple options in the old games. Like how in FF3 a Black Wizard can cast an Earthquake that swallows an entire swarm of enemies dead, while the other goons have Fight and only Fight.
I guess in the end FF style design is mostly cosmetic anyway. (Characters having limited options, like say the classes in Diablo 2, is really important to make those options matter. Tornado would be a garbage Sorceress skill, but is a treasure to a Druid, etc...)
It's not the best thing, but I guess it exists. Lugia put a ton of work into shining this thing that was paradoxically really good and really bad at the same time.
Shenzhen Nanjing Technology was a very strange, strange company indeed.
Argh, it was the worst feeling in the world. 'YO BLITZ FAILED SHITHEAD' the game would proclaim to all the land, as Sabin gets all shiny before shuffling back into his place in the row, satisfied his aura has been farmed.
I never used anything besides Blitz and Aura. And sometimes I'd suplex a train. Outside of that, I ain't never gonna even try Bum Rush.
The character-specific gimmicks of FF6 are not always the best. Celes and Terra could have especially had something more interesting done with them. I talk a lot about how cutting down on the player waiting for things to happen and just letting them do things is more fun, so Cyan was outright designed to be anti-fun...
It's also kind of funny how Sabin, Strago, Gau, Edgar etc have all these moves to choose from and for some characters it's like 'You get the Steal command from FF5. Congratulations!'
I guess it's still better than only mages getting multiple options in the old games. Like how in FF3 a Black Wizard can cast an Earthquake that swallows an entire swarm of enemies dead, while the other goons have Fight and only Fight.
I guess in the end FF style design is mostly cosmetic anyway. (Characters having limited options, like say the classes in Diablo 2, is really important to make those options matter. Tornado would be a garbage Sorceress skill, but is a treasure to a Druid, etc...)
FF7 Pixel Remaster when?
It's not the best thing, but I guess it exists. Lugia put a ton of work into shining this thing that was paradoxically really good and really bad at the same time.
Shenzhen Nanjing Technology was a very strange, strange company indeed.
Could you fail Sabin's commands in the original?
Argh, it was the worst feeling in the world. 'YO BLITZ FAILED SHITHEAD' the game would proclaim to all the land, as Sabin gets all shiny before shuffling back into his place in the row, satisfied his aura has been farmed.
I never used anything besides Blitz and Aura. And sometimes I'd suplex a train. Outside of that, I ain't never gonna even try Bum Rush.
Re: Jarpig pride worldwide (Let's talk about JRPGs)
Oh wow. I thought you just meant something like a larger timing window. Because the original IIRC already gives you a huge (infinite?) timing window for the inputs, making sure you can't fail them. I had no idea the remake prints the input sequence on the screen.Sima Tuna wrote: ↑Fri May 09, 2025 7:13 pm There were no input commands on the screen in the snes version in combat. You never knew if you were inputting the commands correctly and yes, you absolutely could fail the inputs due to the lack of feedback. Oh and the remaster also puts the command input on the screen *in battle,* with a real-time tracker showing where you are in the input, so you can't possibly fuck it up.
To be honest, though, I'm not really sure it's a difference that matters? It's a command based game, it's not really about execution or testing your memory.
Well yeah, that's how his sword skills work. There's a tradeoff in terms of time spent in battle. I'm not sure how you perceive it as a "risk" though?Sima Tuna wrote: ↑Fri May 09, 2025 7:13 pm The risk with Cyan's sword skills is you have to charge then and ATB runs while you are charging. To do any skill beyond the simple level 1 sword skill takes time that gives enemies additional turns to attack you. You can't buffer into issuing commands with other characters while charging Cyan skills or whatever. You have to sit there doing nothing and ATB runs the entire time. Get into a boss fight and try to do a level 9 Cyan skill in FF6 SNES vs Pixel Remaster and tell me I'm wrong.
Either way, that's irrelevant. What I was curious about is, what is different about how it works in the remake?
Re: Jarpig pride worldwide (Let's talk about JRPGs)
It's completely different. You select sword skill, then it gives you a menu with all available sword skill ability names. You click the ability it wants and Cyan just does it. With the same waiting period for a level 1 sword skill as any other sword skill in the list AFAIK. So if you want to do a level 7 Cyan skill then you just click the name of the ability from the list and it does the ability.Sumez wrote: ↑Mon May 12, 2025 8:09 amWell yeah, that's how his sword skills work. There's a tradeoff in terms of time spent in battle. I'm not sure how you perceive it as a "risk" though?Sima Tuna wrote: ↑Fri May 09, 2025 7:13 pm The risk with Cyan's sword skills is you have to charge then and ATB runs while you are charging. To do any skill beyond the simple level 1 sword skill takes time that gives enemies additional turns to attack you. You can't buffer into issuing commands with other characters while charging Cyan skills or whatever. You have to sit there doing nothing and ATB runs the entire time. Get into a boss fight and try to do a level 9 Cyan skill in FF6 SNES vs Pixel Remaster and tell me I'm wrong.
Either way, that's irrelevant. What I was curious about is, what is different about how it works in the remake?
Yeah, FF6 isn't an input game but the way the commands have been changed makes Sabin and Cyan WAY stronger. I got through large chunks of early game with Sabin spamming the phoenix fire blitz command because it's impossible to fail and it hits all enemies. If I was playing the SNES version, I'd have been using aura bolt (fireball motion) because that and Pummel are typically the only commands I can input reliably on snes pad.
Re: Jarpig pride worldwide (Let's talk about JRPGs)
damn that sounds infinitely better. the Sabin change is lame though, 9999 was your reward for doing bum rush right! it's not like the blitzes were that hard. i might want to play this with just cyan's change sometime. are there good mods for the pixel remakes?Sima Tuna wrote: ↑Mon May 12, 2025 10:09 pmIt's completely different. You select sword skill, then it gives you a menu with all available sword skill ability names. You click the ability it wants and Cyan just does it. With the same waiting period for a level 1 sword skill as any other sword skill in the list AFAIK. So if you want to do a level 7 Cyan skill then you just click the name of the ability from the list and it does the ability.