Jarpig pride worldwide (Let's talk about JRPGs)

[Sengoku Strider]

I'm a Mac user, so unfortunately Windows ports do me no good. One day when Xbox One Xs are dirt cheap, I might grab one of those and play through some enhanced 360 games, of which FFXIII is one. Along with the 5-6 worthwhile XBone exclusives.

[Ed Oscuro]

WINE may actually be an option these days. I've read reports of people using it successfully on Mac.

[Sengoku Strider]

I've been watching this woman's reviews of 16-bit jrpgs; she's coming to them now, without having grown up with them, and it's funny to see how things look to someone without the nostalgia goggles. She liked Final Fantasy VI & Secret of Mana, but saw a lot of ways they were unremarkable in this era, and came away feeling like they were overrated. She pretty much savaged Phantasy Star II. Then I watched her review of 7th Saga, and I think she's completely right about it:

https://youtu.be/ehPDfXYFZ80

I'm not going to knock FF VI off its pedestal. But I do think it might be time to rewrite the SNES canon, and put the NA version of 7th Saga up there as a well made 'badge of honour if you can beat it' type game. She's right that a lot of jrpgs in that era were just choosing fight & heal over & over. Final Fantasy games were designed to appeal to broad audiences, and while not optimal, it wasn't hard to get through most of them without ever using status effect spells & items (actually, with how infrequently they typically work, they're practically discouraged), caring much about elemental weaknesses or ever touching the defend command. Something like 7th, where every battle is a potential YOU ARE DEAD, really stands out in that regard. And it has one of the best soundtracks that sound chip ever put out, lots of cool little touches, and a degree of personal agency in how you play it that most jrpgs from then lacked.

WINE may actually be an option these days. I've read reports of people using it successfully on Mac.

Could be, though I don't prefer to play games like that off my laptop. Either way, I'm not lacking for rpgs in my backlog atm so I'll hold off for now.

[Blinge]

I get it but those RPGs that kill you very quickly if you slip up can get very, very tiresome.
Imagine doing that for 100s of random battles? naaaa man.

Also old FF needs status buffs...
... just cast Haste every damn battle

[TransatlanticFoe]

Ha I'm wondering if that's me too, because I didn't grow up playing JRPGs and find they frequently have zero respect for the player's time/sanity. I remember my point of "oh fuck this shit" in FFX was a big old field where I was happily slaughtering enemies until a Malboro showed up after about 10 or so encounters. Inflicted a bunch of ailments which meant I couldn't control anyone and GAME OVER. Lost about an hour, then after that tediously had to rotate a specific set of characters into the party after every single battle so I could guard against it in future.

Original Phantasy Star broke me early on, with how easy it is to explore and stumble into high level enemies that GAME OVER instantly. Why was I even exploring? Because I couldn't work out what to do - turns out I needed to keep asking the shopkeeper to sell me the thing he didn't want to sell me, so I assumed I had to go somewhere else.

There should be a pretty broad line between allowing the player to sleepwalk encounters and forcing them to game over several times in an area just so they know specifically what to guard/equip against in order to progress.

[Sengoku Strider]

I get it but those RPGs that kill you very quickly if you slip up can get very, very tiresome.
Imagine doing that for 100s of random battles? naaaa man.

But...don't you like FromSoft games?

[Blinge]

You can dodge stuff with player skill in FromSoft games.

and you really don't lose anything on death.

90% of JRPGs have a harsher death penalty than a souls game.

look I could write a long post but the more i think about it, the more you're comparing apples and oranges

[Sengoku Strider]

You can dodge stuff with player skill in FromSoft games.

and you really don't lose anything on death.

90% of JRPGs have a harsher death penalty than a souls game.

7th Saga only takes away half your money if you die. So yeah, a Souls game will theoretically let you get everything back, but dying a second time costs you more. And those games kill you a heck of a lot more than 7th Saga does.

look I could write a long post but the more i think about it, the more you're comparing apples and oranges

Those are both delicious fruit which pair well together in a fruit salad. I truly believe it's long past time for we as a society to move beyond this apple/orange apartheid.

[Blinge]

Yeah that falls outside my 90% then?
most JRPGs force you to load save on death. Which can be catastrophic..

Souls games? you lose souls... which are easily gotten back.
Not progress, not equipment or items you find.
oh no i have to traverse an area again what ever will I do?

i'll rephrase

You're trying to undermine my 100% subjective feeling that struggling vs MOST RANDOM ENCOUNTERS in a JRPG feels like a massive slog.
No amount of fatuous comparisons with other genres will change that?

[Sengoku Strider]

>_>

<_<

...uh, when did we stop talking about the relative merits of 7th Saga among the SNES' jrpg library? Because I feel like things have blown way off course here. I do appreciate you stopping at fatuous, however, without proceeding onward to risible and contemptuous. Fair play.

The FromSoft analogy was based purely on one's tolerance for repeated quick death. This being the shmups forum, home of those gaunt few who welcome death, laugh in the face of lost powerups, and in the shadow of getting screwed out of a TLB appearance by a bullet they couldn't even see, with a grim smile hit insert credit one more.

[Ed Oscuro]

I do agree it was a rather risible comparison

RPGs live and die on their pacing. I've made some *very* occasional forays into the genre and I find it hard to enjoy the ones that are just stop-everything-and-sit battles. Say what you will about Dark Souls' gameplay loop, it is NOT that. Even if you are abusing the enemy clear system in Dark Souls 2 and not jinking your way all the way through a horde to the boss, you're constantly in movement.

[Blinge]

...uh, when did we stop talking about the relative merits of 7th Saga among the SNES' jrpg library?

when you brought up shmups

[BryanM]

ArKnights has pretty much convinced me that there isn't any "good" tactical combat possible with the basic wizardry style combat system.

One of the biggest reasons it's so good a game for big brain peoples, is the quality level of units differs wildly depending on the enemies and gimmicks you face, the geometry of the stage, etc. When what you need is a hammer, the world's best screwdriver is going to be useless trash. The worst hammer in the world the game just gives you, intending it to be replaced within your first week of play, is going to do far better.

It doesn't even use the design crutch of rock-paper-scissor elemental types. There's physical and magical. Their math is different: Defense is a flat minus from physical, resistance is a percentage decrease from magic. Physical scales better at high atk values, magic at low.

And of course failure is expected on the very hardest stages. You're supposed to spend time learning how it works; and if you don't have the time or willpower you can cheat by using the cowardly power of friendship: look up the answer online. You'll often see something obvious you overlooked and feel very sm0l brained. This is all about what merits tingles of that "pride and accomplishment" we hear so much about: there is nothing to be proud of in beating up a little kid, you should be ashamed of that. But defeating a ravenous, giant ass drooling monster made up of all the unfair bullshit in the world? Tingles. Or at the least, relief.

An example of what a marvel it is: the highest difficulty event type (where they like to show off their musical commissions featuring lyrics about the enemy red weeb units and such. As menu music.) revolves selecting an assortment of "challenges". These are just things like decreasing your attack, making certain classes cost more to deploy, mostly just simple number changes. In most games, this would be lazy insulting padding: who cares if you move 20% slower in an action game and the enemy has 100% more life, you're still doing the exact same strategy to win. But in ArKnights, this drastically shifts the kind of units that are "good", to the point of necessity. It forces you to play a stage differently. A puzzle to be solved: what challenges to take that'll get you a full clear with the tools you have at hand.

For jRpgs to match this, some kind of distance/spacing positioning mechanic would be required. Along with making it more and more like a card game. At that point, it isn't wizardry style combat anymore.

So I feel like Dragon Warrior 1 and Pokemon have it right, on the whole. One active unit in your party is the most fun way to design the combat: adding more characters just adds more inputs, more time to encounters.. all it accomplishes is slowing everything down.

jRPG slogs

I think the final dungeon of Final Fantasy 3 kind of changed things forever for the genre. A dungeon that takes like 2 hours to complete beginning to end, and if you die while playing on original hardware...... haha... ha.... ......... h...

So from then forth it was mandatory to have a save point inside dungeons. Which kind of eliminates the "endurance run" aspect they used to have, arguably moreso than infinite healing reserves from your inventory does.

...uh, when did we stop talking about the relative merits of 7th Saga among the SNES' jrpg library?

I always really like the early game of 7th Saga and then quickly lose interest after the Red Pison fight. It always feels like everything to see and do is accomplished by then, it's very much like the mid-game malaise I feel in Mother games, but onsets much earlier.

The aspects I find really cool about it never really get explored in the genre: that it doesn't feel like you're the "chosen one", you're just another schmuck. It kind of feels like there are social game aspects re: your relationship with your rivals, even though there really isn't. You can imagine the kind of drama there could have been, as random or emergent events: love stories, grudges, vengeance, comedy, etc. Like you see in stories of other competitive high-stress environments. With just seven characters, that seems like something the SNES could have handled and wouldn't have consumed a ton of development time.

Tried to play Mystic Ark once, but couldn't keep it high in my priority list. Just so much else to go through, and it doesn't seem like it has much for it to stand out?

Final Fantasy 6 overrated

In the context of what it excels at, aesthetics, there really wasn't anything better in the genre, especially to a western audience that only got roughly 5% of the games released for it at the time. The soundtrack goes into a fullblown ~20 minute long orchestra at the end of the game. Its successor, Granblue Fantasy, succeeded 98% due to copying these aesthetics by hiring the people who made them in the original game.

I don't like Star Wars and loathe how popular and influential it's been, but I can admit the special effects were something very special at the time.

... the alternatives were so hella limited. I played through Last Bible. Last Bible.

[Sima Tuna]

It's a wrpg, but I think Baldur's Gate handles rpg combat pretty well. It would be even better, imo, if the game were turn-based. It's unfortunate that the best way to even know what the fuck is happening during combat is to tweak autopause to go off whenever anyone on either side emits the slightest fart. Otherwise, the text will scroll too quickly to follow.

No, what I like about Baldur's Gate (and really, any D&D derived combat based on 3rd edition or earlier) combat is the emphasis on strategy and creative thinking. Many challenges seem impossible until you stop to think them out. There's often a very simple fix, and I'm not talking about a "look this up on the internet" fix. If you have a basic idea of what moves do what (and to be far, this part you do have to look up,) then you can string together your own solutions to problems. I was dying over and over to this one dragon fight. It's optional, but I figured, why the fuck not. I've cleared BG1 countless times but never bothered to play BG2 far enough to kill all the dragons. So I'll kill this guy. I couldn't figure out why I wasn't winning. I'd end up with my entire party wiped in seconds, and the lead-up would see my characters using all their tools to no effect.

Then, one time, I saw in the combat log...

"Firkraag casts Stoneskin"

Motherfucker! I wasn't imagining things! The stupid dragon wasn't invincible and I wasn't "unable to hit him." He had a fucking spell up that protected his ass! So I hit him with breach and then breach and then breach again until he didn't have shit, and then he died.

Sure, you can look up "how to kill Firkraag solo in one hit" or whatever online. People will tell you if you care. You can cheese with traps, or cast a death spell, or some other meme shit. But the way I did it was to read the combat log and figure out what the hell was happening. IF you can figure out what's happening in these D&D games, there's usually multiple responses to every problem.

The Shin Megami Tensei series is a JRPG that exemplifies this as well. The earlier games tend to tell you very little. But if you know, there are multiple solutions to every seemingly insurmountable problem the games throw at you. You could theoretically look up the best demon party for every boss fight, but it's usually unnecessary even in the balls-hard SMT games. I think Mem Aleph is the hardest fight I can recall in any SMT game, but that's endgame and you have the entire compendium for it. There may not be any creative solutions to that fight. But most SMT fights are not so rigid. Matador is a good example, where you can use wind nulls, stat downs, stat ups, high-damaging physicals, etc. Any or all.


Party combat in RPGs can work, but I hate it when RPGs use the party as an excuse to bloat boss HP bars. Persona 4 did this a lot.

[Blinge]

I think Mem Aleph is the hardest fight I can recall in any SMT game, but that's endgame and you have the entire compendium for it.

Oh cool. Now i am a bossman for beating her

I remember it took 20 minutes, either that or the TLB in Redux did.

Actually Lucifer in kyuuyaku megami tensei was an absolutely horrendous fight.

Here's a pet peeve of mine from DQ11 - I just beat the Ice-Witch on first attempt. I'm gonna be proud about it until Sumez comes along and tells me she's an ez boss.
Anyway - I was trying to hit her with magic seal spells and Sap (defense debuff). It just said she wasn't affected, or 'miss' or whatever. At least SMT has the decency to tell you if a monster is immune or not. With her i didn't know if the spell just failed and I should try again, or if it would never work.
I really hate that, think of all the wasted turns.

[Sumez]

ArKnights has pretty much convinced me that there isn't any "good" tactical combat possible with the basic wizardry style combat system.

I guess you didn't play Dragon Quest 11 on the harder monsters setting.
Otherwise I can sort of understand your sentiment.

Speaking of...

Here's a pet peeve of mine from DQ11 - I just beat the Ice-Witch on first attempt. I'm gonna be proud about it until Sumez comes along and tells me she's an ez boss.

She definitely killed me a few times before I went up and made sure to go back and buy/craft to extra prepare for her most damaging types of attacks. I don't think she's ez at all.

Anyway - I was trying to hit her with magic seal spells and Sap (defense debuff). It just said she wasn't affected, or 'miss' or whatever. At least SMT has the decency to tell you if a monster is immune or not. With her i didn't know if the spell just failed and I should try again, or if it would never work.
I really hate that, think of all the wasted turns.

I can understand this, honestly. But I think in DQ11 especially, almost nothing is immune to anything, they just have really high resistance, which plays into a lot of the "gambling" mechanics of the DQ combat system, where you always need to weigh your chances when attempting certain tactics. In a lot of other tactical games that would feel useless because it's almost always better to run with the more "safe" tactics, but DQ really takes the randomness and rolls with it to the point where it becomes a part of the strategy.
I agree if something is immune, it should be made clear. And otherwise, DQ11 is definitely a lot better at communicating things than almost every DQ before it, though 9 did make great strides too.

[Blinge]

so she wasn't immune, and it would've been a decent move to keep attempting the Debuff when she was at higher health?

[Sumez]

Maybe, it's possible. I'm just guessing here! I never really used that spell on bosses, I think I assumed it would have a low enough success rate to not be worth it.
Some times I try a whole different slew of various debuffs until I find something that works and just stick to that, even if it working might have been pure coincidence.

[BryanM]

I guess you didn't play Dragon Quest 11 on the harder monsters setting.
Otherwise I can sort of understand your sentiment.

I've been wanting to play it. Besides being a fan of the series since I was 8, your enthusiasm contributed to pushing me a bit. Doesn't work on any hardware I happen to own, tho..

Can't imagine it's as brutal as these later Megami Tensei games, where you'll be casually taking a small walk after killing God and get surprise attacked by some trash mobs, who end up wiping you out in one turn because [reasons].

Core to tactics, I think, is having a lot of different actions you can take. Some of them are less optimal than others, it's not always obvious why, and truly exceptional pro moves are occasionally hidden within this forest of possibilities. jRPG combat tends to boil down to "do I need to enhance my endurance", "is damage over time effects worth it", "do I have the right rock/paper/scissors here", "do I heal" and the answers to these are usually obvious. It's just not complex enough to introduce uncertainty, especially if all the information isn't hidden.

What depth these games actually have tend to be relegated to the strategic layer, things like Etrian Odyssey's skill trees, selecting where and how to farm EXP. I don't think that necessarily a bad thing - having chill stressfree games to relax to while numbers go up is great.

.... "Cookie Clicker is the purest form of the jRPG", there I said it!

so she wasn't immune, and it would've been a decent move to keep attempting the Debuff when she was at higher health?

I can't recall a boss in a dragon quest game that's been immune to Sap. Metal Slimes maybe, but no boss.

[Sumez]

DQ11's hard mode is surprisingly brutal honestly.
But that's not really what grabbed me about it though, it's a tactical involvement of the battles where you feel like you are constantly making important decisions on the fly to salvage the fight, as the enemies (namely the bosses) are constantly fighting just as hard to turn the tables on you.
In the SMT games I've played at least, though they are indeed challenging, it feels to me like most of that rather comes down to proper preparation and knowing what to do to deal with specific enemies, strongly carried by a rock-paper-scissors style weakness system, which is a very different approach.

Though common encounters in DQ11 can indeed turn dangerous, at least early on, they are generally a non-threat due to how easily you can just run around all of them and never get into a fight. It's probably the thing I dislike most about the game, honestly. At least put in a few enemy overworld behaviors that are challenging to outrun.

[Sengoku Strider]

Tried to play Mystic Ark once, but couldn't keep it high in my priority list. Just so much else to go through, and it doesn't seem like it has much for it to stand out?

I didn't even know this existed. Even as a guy with a weird passion for reading old platform release lists, that name is so generic and anonymous my brain barely registers it. I'll have to check it out.

Final Fantasy 6 overrated

In the context of what it excels at, aesthetics, there really wasn't anything better in the genre, especially to a western audience that only got roughly 5% of the games released for it at the time. The soundtrack goes into a fullblown ~20 minute long orchestra at the end of the game.

Yeah, that's why mentioned I wasn't personally looking to knock it off its pedestal. The reviewer was coming at it from the perspective of "this is good but wasn't the Biblical experience I was promised," which I can understand. I watched my friend play through the opera scene back in the day, and it was so emotional and just generally surprising that a game would have a cinematic go on that long, let alone thread you in as part of it. But I don't quite know how you reset the clock on that one; tinny out of tune MIDI synth vocals just won't hit the same way outside its context. It appeared at a time when most people still hadn't ever played a game on CD, and even if they had, orchestrated soundtracks weren't a thing. It's worth noting the reviewer's main passion is 8-bit rpg & adventure titles, so she's not immune to pixel charm. She was commenting on her experience with exploring the SNES library in general, and she came away personally liking 7th Saga & Ys III better than some of the canonical Greatest Ever titles.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

But I don't quite know how you reset the clock on that one; tinny out of tune MIDI synth vocals just won't hit the same way outside its context. It appeared at a time when most people still hadn't ever played a game on CD, and even if they had, orchestrated soundtracks weren't a thing.

Yeah, there's a lot of games that were mindblowing at the time if you experienced them when they were at the cutting edge of technology.

FF6 is still a delightful game though. The artwork for the monsters and spells in general is incredibly detailed and it's quite charming to play. The open-ended second act is also wonderful to explore, and it's a shame many RPGs stick to a strictly linear experience throughout the entire game instead of offering the player opportunities to wander and explore on their own.

and she came away personally liking 7th Saga

7th Saga is such a strange game. It's neat that it has the freedom to select one of a variety of starting characters, allowing for a lot of replayability, but it's a brutally hard RPG. I honestly can't recommend single character RPGs in general since their combat is... rather flat. Little opportunity for strategy in Dragon Quest for instance (which is as much about the exploration as it is the grinding). 3 or 4 character RPGs have considerably better combat systems in general.

Speaking of single character RPGs, I dabbled in "Great Greed" for the Game Boy recently. It's a really strange RPG about environmentalism where various princesses tag along. You never get a choice of which NPC follower you have though, and though the combat offers multiple elemental attacks, buffs, status spells, and only 4 slots to use them with, combat against bosses usually amounts to levelling up so you have the HP/MP to outlast them. There's no way to recover MP in battles so if they wear down your MP with raw damage or the Cancel spell to remove buffs (final boss says hi), you're dead.

It's also notorious for being one of the earliest games where you're told you have the choice to marry anyone you like in the ending, and that includes any of the guys you've barely interacted with, or to be a gigantic asshole, you can force the one princess who already has a lover to marry you, or even force the king or queen to marry you (despite their protests). Weird how this totally missed Nintendo's censorship.

[BryanM]

I didn't even know this existed. Even as a guy with a weird passion for reading old platform release lists, that name is so generic and anonymous my brain barely registers it. I'll have to check it out.

Yeah, back in the day everyone was like "did you know there's an Elnard 2?!" and then it was like ".... there is not, an Elnard 2." This higher hanging fruit is easy to miss with how long it takes for some games to get translated.

Last Bible 2 got translated a few years ago, and it wasn't... worth the wait. Devil Children has been dropped by two different dudes. I remember the wait feeling like forever when we were waiting for Final Fantasy 5 to be translated, which seems quaint and rather zippy now.

So many notable games never got a chance to add themselves to our zeitgeist. The eye-melting beautiful kusoge Stargazer. That Dark Half game where you alternate between playing the demon lord eating people (or being nice to them, who am I to tell you what kind of demon lord to be) and the hero chasing him down, dealing with the aftermath.

But I don't quite know how you reset the clock on that one; tinny out of tune MIDI synth vocals just won't hit the same way outside its context.

Oh, all things are fleeting and there's nothing wrong with that. What was magical or special in the moment inspired others. Shoulders of giants, etc. Dating sims adding voice was probably even more revolutionary for immersion, but that's an entire branch of game history western audiences missed out on completely, which is probably sadder if you think about it.

If they ever got that Matrix-thing working sometime in the future, it would be the most amazing and incredible thing for kicking reality to the curb and going full-fantasyland. For like ten years. Then it'd just be another activity you can kill time with.

[Blinge]

Well I made it up to Yggdrasil in DQ11

Spoiler

Boy am I glad I went around tying up loose ends first! The crossbow stuff, the sidequests.

It was my usual falling asleep session. While i figured something would probably go awry up there, I then forgot all about that as the game's serenity lulled me to drifting off again, controller in hand.

What happened next definitely woke me up
Team got rekt, world basically ends and you get turned into a fish.
fucking awesome lmao

So Jasper's turned.. and Hendrik had been trying to uncover and prove this to the King.. that would've been cool to see some actual evidence of, of Hendrik's work that is. Maybe there'll be flashbacks when I reach Last Bastion

Mordegon looks like some oldschool punk-rocker

The brutality of yggdrasil falling and dying, with all those leaves representing real lives etc was super jarring compared to the colourful tone the game has had so far.

then we're taken out of knowledge of world-affairs as Hero falls and waking up as a fish was the icing on the cake. I did think i was in for a part two, as I'd noticed rendered inaccessible areas in Manglegrove and Nautica. then there was the item/weapon shop ran by a shark who human hero hadn't been able to talk to before.

Blue John, lol.

I'm sure you've played FF6 Sumez. I hope this game isn't teasing me with a "world ends, go find your friends."
Because i've never seen it done as well as FF6 did (hell, even attempted). But the idea that i might be in for a similar experience, even if it's very brief.. has me hyped!

[Sumez]

For sure. I'm very fond of FF6, and playing DQ11 and discovering what it does, made me similarly hyped. I don't think anyone should be ashamed to "steal" this element - in fact I wish every story driven game with a party of characters did something similar.

[...] super jarring compared to the colourful tone the game has had so far.

Man, I love it when the DQ games do that. Lull you into a false sense of security with its cute tone, and then suddenly, wham, terrible things start happening. I think it's in pretty much every game in the series, and it makes me kinda worried about what the deal with the "more mature tone" of the next main series title essentially means.

[Sima Tuna]

Dragon Quest V is notable for the sheer amount of Very Bad Things that happen. Almost hilariously so.

Dragon Quest IV is my favorite dragon quest game though. The DS version fixed a lot of jank from the nes version. The game doesn't have much padding, isn't too long and features some neat gimmicks, like the shop management minigame.

[Steamflogger Boss]

Funny enough I've started Dragon Quest VII again recently. It's growing on me. Well over an hour in and have not been in a fight yet. I'm not using a guide so there is a lot of talking to NPCs and figuring out where to go etc...

[Blinge]

For sure. I'm very fond of FF6, and playing DQ11 and discovering what it does, made me similarly hyped. I don't think anyone should be ashamed to "steal" this element - in fact I wish every story driven game with a party of characters did something similar.

*fistbump*

Man.. did you play Red Dead 2? (sorry jarpig thread I know)
I'll spoiler tag it just in case but -

Spoiler

but it fucking...argh. I thought it was gonna do that thing Arthur on his own.. I thought the gang had split completely and you'd have to track them down, reunite them.

It even plays this dramatic song as you ride solo to their last known destination. I was hyped, I loved the idea of tracking my gang through the west and getting them back together.
Nope. Literally next mission you find them in a cutscene and that's it.
absolute shite. pointless.

[BryanM]

Man, I love it when the DQ games do that. Lull you into a false sense of security with its cute tone, and then suddenly, wham, terrible things start happening. I think it's in pretty much every game in the series, and it makes me kinda worried about what the deal with the "more mature tone" of the next main series title essentially means.

Yeah, this has always been core to the genre. It isn't just "go have fun and kill the demon king, children". You're in a fuckin' war, you're fighting monsters, giant swathes of civilians get murdered, there used to be people in that burnt out town, from game #1.

The darkness is something most clones of the theme abandon. You don't have to go as grimdark edgy as Rokka no Yuusha, but something as far as Overpowered Cautious Hero has a decent balance. There has to be some stakes and motivation to hype up the threat, or you're just viciously murdering a harmless innocent little videogame creature. Like crushing a defenseless goomba that didn't do nothin' to no one.

I've often thought about making a jRPG war-sim that focuses more on this, where you're a hero running around doing your best to influence the outcome of a war between two armies. Being little better than a cat's paw when you're weak at the beginning, and begin to become a decisive wrecking ball as your power level snowballs through the game. It'd be incredibly hard to do, the NPC's and political elements would take so much work, so much of it unseen in a single playthrough. Without AI, I think it can only be done in a single fixed world, with no randomized elements. Even the geography has to be fixed, as supply lines, war strategy and the like are determined by that. Can't have ship captains without rivers that go somewhere that matter, etc.

Dragon Quest VII

Drag-on quest 7! : D

An unfortunate little game. Many steps back in presentation, nothing new in its combat or power-up systems. But there's content in there, by god!

I'm still convinced the playstation could have done better sprites, and they could have had something that looked closer to Octopath. The modern lighting and bloom stuff Octopath does is obviously impossible, but there was no reason to have worse sprites than 6 had.

[Steamflogger Boss]

Yeah I don't think it will surpass 8 as my favorite, but it sure has things to do. Dragon Quest is kind of the Robert Jordan of JRPGs anyway, and this one takes it a step beyond. For those wondering about the Trails games, I'd go with Steven Erikson.

I've finished enough of the rpgs (some more than once) on PS1 and this is one of the more notable ones that I never finished and don't despise (sorry, never finishing BOF3). Completely agree the game could have looked better. Given how long it is, I wonder how long it spent in development. It certainly looks more like a PS1 title that would have released 2-3 years earlier.