Jarpig pride worldwide (Let's talk about JRPGs)

[Sengoku Strider]

Persona 5 Peasant is on sale for $10 right now on PS4, so I picked it up. I quite enjoyed 3 Portable & 4 Golden, but is it just me, or is 5 kind of annoying and boring as f@ck?

Talking Cat: This dungeon is inside your gym teacher's mind!

Best friend who is seemingly part-vegetable: I DON'T SHITTIN' GET IT, SHIT!

Talking cat: It's his thoughts made real!

Same friend, who curses a blue streak but won't cross that F-word Rubicon: I DON'T KNOW THOSE WORDS SHIT YOU AND SHIT THIS SHITTY DUNGEON WHAT DO YOU THINK MAIN CHARACTER

CHOOSE YOUR RESPONSE:
"....."
"Mind?"
"This is complicated."

It's at these moments of extensively over-explaining basic cartoon plots that I become acutely aware that the game hasn't let me save in 30 minutes, and probably won't for another 45. And I remember that the generator in my building likes to blink out every once in a while and I just start getting tense at the thought of having to do this all again. I'm like 5 hours in and it's still putting me through tutorials of what an X button is. I'm not sure if the franchise got way dumber, or if I just became less tolerant of its teen-oriented foibles.

[Sima Tuna]

I have a negative opinion of Persona relative to mainline SMT and Persona 5 seems to exemplify and amplify everything I think is wrong with Persona. I don't want to go into a long rant about Persona though. I've accepted that some people find that series solid gold, and can't get into SMT.

I never played Persona 1 and 2, so maybe I'd like those more. I played the shit out of P3 and P4. I've seen a good bit of P5 and, as stated, it seemed like the exact opposite of what I like in RPGs.

I like RPGs that are:

-relatively short or at least tightly-plotted
-challenging
-deep
-primarily gameplay rather than story-focused
-heavily reliant on strategy, planning and thinking to overcome obstacles, as opposed to grinding
-replayable, meaning usually class-based or role-based with the ability to customize characters

So for me, Persona 5 is the exact opposite of all that shit, whereas something like Devil Survival Overclocked fits in perfectly. Both under the banner of SMT (kinda,) but a completely different way of making a game.

[BryanM]

I never played Persona 1 and 2, so maybe I'd like those more.

The first two games are not Tokimeki Memorial. They're standard jRPG dungeon crawlers. Go over there and crawl that dungeon, cutscene, go to the next one. Possibly more linear than Lufia 2, 'cause that game has an Ancient Cave roguelike minigame, and also a Casino I believe... They're not as liminal as Digital Devil Saga is, but fundamentally they're the same thing.

One major difference between the two franchises is how supernatural elements are handled in both. Nusona has a single supernatural doo-dad going on, a single secret world. Which has a hard separation from the real, brutal, harsh Tokimeki world: in the fun fantasy world of monsters, you can get shot in the face a hundred times and walk away from it, but in the real world you can get shot in the ankle, go into a coma, and die.

Ole'sona.... have a theme of every urban legend being true. Everything from bringing Hitler back to life to that toilet demon that leaps out of the toilet to grab your soul out of your bum. There is no delimitation there; reality and fantasy continually intermix until everything flies off the rails eventually.

Ah, but talking to demons to gather tarot cards is like the draw mechanic in Final Fantasy 8. An annoying little extra layer of grind there. Since it's a jRPG, you can probably ignore it but it does trigger the paperclip maximizer instinct in me..

I'm not sure if the franchise got way dumber

Obligatory.

[Sengoku Strider]

Funnily enough, the teen banter put me off the original Persona as well. Once I got stuck in one of those first-person dungeons at some point I just gave up and traded the game in. One of my many 90s trade-in regrets, that thing's worth $500+ CAD now.

[BryanM]

One of the things I appreciate about the dating targets is they're not all idealized caricatures of what's supposed to be a "likable" person. Like your class buddy who really wants to boink his teacher and you can act as the worst enabler for a self-destructive asshat, or all the old ass people who just want to reminisce about all the dead people in their lives. Ah, so light and refreshing.

Wall-Mart Persona 5 has a lot of character slots to fill, so quite a few aren't highschoolers. The 44 y/o neighbor lady is currently rather popular in the comment sections.

Hah... remember in the first game when the rich kid's dead butler comes back to life as his persona, and he like, flies around, riding this kickass metal surfboard? That's like one of the most Persona things ever. Besides statuesque arty monsters, a certain kind of musical vibe, or wearing a bag on your head.

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Funnily enough, the teen banter put me off the original Persona as well.

Don't feel bad. The original one wasn't particularly well localized anyways if we're talking the NA release (it cut out an entire questline and ending). Persona 2 is actually the best one in the series by a longshot in my opinion as it has a plot that's largely driven by adult themes with minimal high school harem/dating sim elements (the second game in the duology has a party consisting overwhelmingly of adult characters). It also doesn't do the thing P3 onwards did where if the main character gets killed it's an instant game over (in a series chock full of instant death attacks that are randomly targeted, lol), something that always makes games feel like anyone who joins is merely a guest rather than an actual functioning, competent, independent team member. The difficulty is still plenty high without this.

[BryanM]

It also doesn't do the thing P3 onwards did where if the main character gets killed it's an instant game over

I had completely forgotten this was a thing, and I still don't believe you in my gut or heart, though my brain agrees it's true. They go to some major lengths to make it unlikely to happen.

As opposed to Strange Journey where the final boss can just randomly eat you. Spend 20 minutes into the fight, and then beat a 1 in 4 rng check one to six times.

It kind of ruins immersion that the boss doesn't eat you every time.

[Lander]

Blegh, MC death being a game over makes naff all sense in a genre rife with ways to resurrect fallen party members. It was mostly manageable in P3, but irritating on principle.

Being the chosen one doesn't seem like much cop if it gives you an allergy to Phoenix Down.

[cfx]

Noisy Pixel is relaying information from a Dengeki article of impressions of a demo version of Persona 3 Reload that found the cards you draw from after the battle results aren't being shuffled. Hopefully that's just something not implemented or a bug in the demo, because otherwise what's even the point of having it in the game if you can just choose the card you want?

I keep hoping that Atlus isn't dumbing down the game's difficulty like they are wont to do every time they remake one of their RPGs.

It has a release date now, February 2, 2024, and Granblue Fantasy Relink is dated for February 1, 2024.

As far as the MC death equalling game over, given that in the existing versions of Persona 3 MC is the only character you control, doesn't that make sense though?

[Lander]

It makes some sense through a purely mechanical lens I guess, since you'd otherwise be sat there waiting for a party member to random you a res. Though you spend a lot of time watching them act anyway, so it doesn't fit intuitively like in single-character games where player agency is constant.

Beyond the moving parts, I can't come up with a justification that avoids seeming contrived. So the party just leaves you there? Pretty out of character to not at least attempt a save if the resources are available.

[SuperDeadite]

Went home to visit my folks for a few weeks and went through some of my old boxes, and I found my original legit copy of Brave Soul. After installing it, I was shocked to discover this silly game has two sets of MIDI files for the music. A simple GM set for compatibility, and a set specificly for Roland SC-88! This must be the only game officialy sold in the USA with a true 88 Native mode soundtrack.

So, I started playing this dumb poor man's Diablo clone again for the first time in 20 years, and now I'm totally addicted. Has a strange sense of charm to it that makes me keep playing it. Lol.

[BryanM]

Noisy Pixel is relaying information from a Dengeki article of impressions of a demo version of Persona 3 Reload that found the cards you draw from after the battle results aren't being shuffled. Hopefully that's just something not implemented or a bug in the demo, because otherwise what's even the point of having it in the game if you can just choose the card you want?

That would be a lowest priority task on the stack. A subgame completely isolated from the rest of the game.

Replacing the placeholder animation they originally used for that old lady navigator I linked to is the kind of thing that has higher priority; the characters are the product and optimizing them for advertising/imprinting purposes is very much highest priority.

Beyond the moving parts, I can't come up with a justification that avoids seeming contrived. So the party just leaves you there? Pretty out of character to not at least attempt a save if the resources are available.

Why, the MC is the special chosen one and immediately gets nom'd by the yandere higher power that's keeping an eye on them, the second their soul gets put on the buffet.

Canonically the healing isn't really Dragon Quest powerful. Fight sequences in stories would be completely farcical if they were; stuff like The Bottom-Tier Baron's Accidental Rise to the Top illustrates how problematic potent healing magic really is dramatically. Nothing really means anything....

Video games always have very odd and arbitrary lines between realism and game elements.

"I give u 30 MP, you give me 3,000 HP. This is very fair and balanced."

[Lander]

Why, the MC is the special chosen one and immediately gets nom'd by the yandere higher power that's keeping an eye on them, the second their soul gets put on the buffet.

Well, it's internally consistent, but still contrived!

Canonically the healing isn't really Dragon Quest powerful. Fight sequences in stories would be completely farcical if they were; stuff like The Bottom-Tier Baron's Accidental Rise to the Top illustrates how problematic potent healing magic really is dramatically. Nothing really means anything....

Video games always have very odd and arbitrary lines between realism and game elements.

"I give u 30 MP, you give me 3,000 HP. This is very fair and balanced."

The old unwritten rule of damage and death only being meaningful if they happen within prescribed story bounds. Also a capitulation to mechanics, but easier to swallow imo, since it tends to line up with the player's agency being temporarily removed so the plot can progress.

Does DQ actually canonize the RPG healing? My experience with the series is mostly round the edges, but I guess it fits coming from the mangaka that invented the Senzu Bean.

[TransatlanticFoe]

Blegh, MC death being a game over makes naff all sense in a genre rife with ways to resurrect fallen party members. It was mostly manageable in P3, but irritating on principle.

Being the chosen one doesn't seem like much cop if it gives you an allergy to Phoenix Down.

Yep I feel this way too.

I was happily going through Front Mission 1st Remake the other week, when in one mission the main guy's mech got trashed. Game Over. WTF? There's no permadeath, literally everyone else can explode and is fine after the battle (except your girlfriend at the beginning, lol). But the main guy? He apparently is the only one who doesn't know how to eject

[BareKnuckleRoo]

Final Fantasy 6 does this too with Banon; he's NOT a main character but apparently he's such a frail old man that any death is an immediate gameover. And unless he's levelled, he's always a potential one shot away from an Ultros tentacle unless he's blocking. :/

Final Fantasy Tactics does this a little unusually, sometimes good, sometimes bad. If Ramza dies in combat you have 3 turns to res him or end the fight. It's only gameover if he suffers a permadeath (and you don't have to use him in non-story battles). Guest characters can't be permakilled... unless they're a protection target in which case if they die it's an immediate gameover, even if you can easily end the fight or revive them. The worst offender's the Riovanes Castle Roof fight where unless you tweak your party's speed stat before the fight (making everyone ninjas seems to be the popular way) it's possible for Rafa to get murdered before you even get a single turn. Granted, it's sort of justified by the story that Rafa is holding something the enemy wants, and you want to keep them from running off with it, but why can't you just have Rafa run like hell or have a separate mission where you recover the thing in that case? Protection missions suck way too much in many games.

[Lander]

Granted, it's sort of justified by the story that Rafa is holding something the enemy wants, and you want to keep them from running off with it, but why can't you just have Rafa run like hell or have a separate mission where you recover the thing in that case? Protection missions suck way too much in many games.

Tactics Ogre Reborn is guilty of this in a few places. Notably ones that involve optional named characters acting independently during their recruitment quests. You have to be playing five or ten turns ahead from the get-go or doom is inevitable.

No, bad Pirate Sean Connery, stop swashbuckling and run away from the angry mob!

[BryanM]

That reminds me of the protection stages in Tactics Ogre. The blind swordsmaster guy specifically. Such a dogshit class, extremely weak. Classic paper defense, and his dodge rate wasn't high enough to compensate. I get if it wasn't difficult there would be no point, but try to let them survive two hits, designer guy >_> (At least it's memorable, I guess..)

Fire Emblem 4 has this one early battle where a rogue is isolated from your squad, but if you keep him in the forest he'll do fine. That's how you make a dodgy guy.

Tactics Ogre Reborn

I'm sure it's not nearly as bad.

God was the original game antagonistic to every melee class that wasn't Terror Knight. The auto-counters were a big part of that, I mentioned that in my Majin Tensei rants. You're either a rock crushing eggs, or throwing eggs at rocks. Terror Knights weren't just thic, they had a "make the target softer like an egg" aura, a passive skill that like nobody else got that was similar. (It's a really cool class, but c'mon! FFT was way better at this, having viable classes; removing the defense stat is a pretty ace design decision. FFT's PvP scene is cool and fun to watch in a way Tactics Ogre, or pretty much *every* other tactics-y game, could only hope to be.)

Blind Old Man Jedi was ineffectually dueling Dragons for like 18 points of damage (with two hits!) and taking like 30+ in return.

[Steamflogger Boss]

Anyway, I've had Lufia on the mind lately. The perverted things they did in that Lufia 2 remake, sigh. So many questions: Who is this for? What were they thinking? It's a franchise that can't get a break. Chaos Seed is far better at recreating Lufia 2's vibes than any other game in the same franchise ever did. That's the Feng Shui dungeon master realtime strategy game, not the HR Giger adventure game where you play a schizophrenic loser who has to win a rigged ring toss game in order to save the world.

Never heard of Chaos Seed before. Grabbed the fan translation patch.

Has the same developer (Neverland) as the first two Lufia games so yeah.

As opposed to Strange Journey where the final boss can just randomly eat you. Spend 20 minutes into the fight, and then beat a 1 in 4 rng check one to six times.

It kind of ruins immersion that the boss doesn't eat you every time.

SMT is full of bullshit like this tbh.

[BryanM]

Neverland began to crank out Rune Factory games as their core franchise, before getting snapped up by Marvelous.

It seems like they were forced into a shovelware role before the acquisition: Shining Force Neo, Shining Force EXA, the Lufia 2 remake (a partnership with Squeenix's legendary shovelware division!). I dunno if they were forced into that position to pay the bills.

Never a good sign when you find yourself having to make games bigger companies don't think are worth their time. Dead franchises they just happen to have in the vault, and hope to squeeze a couple bucks out of. (The Wallmart Persona 5 game is rather unique in that Atlus is VERY hands-on, and cares very much about the franchise. It isn't a Liberation Dx2 thing.)

I'm glad they found a niche with the Rune Factory franchise, but wish they could have kept something like Lufia alive.

Some RF5 reviews:

Find own Waifu, grow on crops, evade real life dystopia. 10/10 recommend

Can be gay

The NPC's lack soul. Game-play mechanics and story lacks depth.
Maybe having played RF 3 & 4 on DS set the bar really high for me.
It's a hard neutral from me but I'll give it a thumbs up as I would like to see the next iteration of the RF series.

Not as good as RF4, but I very much enjoy this game

User reviews are great, aren't they. Get 5 different opinions in as many seconds.

[XoPachi]

Were there any good side scrolling action RPG's on 3DS that people just don't talk about? Originals. Not virtual console.

[Sumez]

Final Fantasy 6 does this too with Banon; he's NOT a main character but apparently he's such a frail old man that any death is an immediate gameover. And unless he's levelled, he's always a potential one shot away from an Ultros tentacle unless he's blocking. :/

I don't think it's entirely comparable. It's an escort mission, and a very very short segment in the game. Many RPGs have similar segments where a character must be protected, and it informs your combat strategy in those battles rather than just writing off potential tactical challenges the way MC death=game over does.
I've replayed FF6 more than any RPG, and I don't remember ever having an issue with Ultros killing Banon. Just keep him healed and obviously back row.

[Sumez]

Having now played the entirety of Trails in the Sky Second Chapter (henceforth referred to as TITS2), I absolutely stand by what I said earlier. The game relies entirely on the excellence of the first game, while repeating very, very little of what made the storytelling in that game so great.
I respect Squire Grooktook's take on the game, even though I don't understand his reasoning at all. There are very few if any "big character moments", and most of the characterization established throughout the "early" hours doesn't really build towards anything at all, and feels more like filler.
But obviously, I can't respect people wasting long posts on telling me I'm a terrible person for pointing out obvious flaws in what is apparently just the indesputately best entry in a series, while offering absolutely nothing to present any sort of counter-argument at all.

I'd like to preface that I'm not turned off on the series (yet). Having invested all this time in the characters, just spending time with them at all provides a nice familiar satisfaction, similar to the effect you get from following a long runnning soap opera years after any kind of exciting intrigue has already been played out (spoiler alert: I've already played quite a bit of TITS3, and that game banks entirely on this effect). Ultimately I liked TITS2, but looking critically at the game it's honestly hard to justify it as a particularly good game, especially compared to the massive impact TITS1 made.


The story really feels like an endless chain of events which turn out to just not matter at all, because they were just a tiny (and probably optional) step in the villain's grander plan, which is honestly a really ineffective narrative hook. Although the same twist is used as a cliffhanger from the first game into the second, the things that actually happen in TITS1 all feel like they truly matter to everyone involved, with each chapter making up a resolved story of its own. TITS2 gives me little reason to care about any of the events of the first four chapters (ie. the first ~40 hours out of roughly 60), nor even any indication that the main characters should care either.

There are two plot threads which are the exception to this! Unfortunately, both are resolved literally within minutes, if not seconds, making up way too small portion of the game.

1

One is Estelle's ongoing mission to find Joshua and get him back. This is the only real potential drive of the story for a while and the only thing you're really drawn to care about, although it is never a focus of the actual events you play through. Which means it takes backseat for 85% of the game until it's suddenly the focus - at which point it becomes resolved just as suddenly when he just shows up out of nowhere, the two have a really good character moment, and then just decide to forget about any potential intrigue, and move on like nothing ever happened. A bit of an anticlimax.

2

The other is when Erebonian forces show up on the borders of Liberl and herald a potential political plot twist, involving an interesting element of subterfuge and betrayal.
However, that whole situation ends up being represented entirely by a single short cut-scene (especially for this game's standards) where everything turns out to be a red herring, and have no relevance to the story, serving instead as the much anticipated character beat for Olivier, except even this just comes out as a one-off gag, rather than a twist. Another wasted potential, sadly.

There is one new location in the game - a farly large place, with a few story-oriented areas connected via small dungeons, and exploring it is interesting, if only because it's actually something new, but also because it hits a nice pace between world-building and player interaction. But by the time you get there, you have already been playing for over 50 hours and are approaching the end of the game. It's a satisfying way to wrap it up, but I really wish they'd done something like this earlier on.

The villain, frankly, is pure trash . The game really traps itself in an all-too-common scenario, by creating a story-heavy world where every character is fleshed out and their motives justified.
That means that the more evil they need a character to be, the harder it becomes to make them believable. There's really only two ways that can go - either they will become so relatable that they stop being villains, or their motivations get elevated to nonsensical anime tropes. The latter is true not only for every minor villain in the game, but doubly so for the big bad.
Dragon Quest (outside of 9) has it right by forcefully omitting any sort of justifications for their bad guys. There's an evil demon lord, wants to destroy the world, and that's about it. No need to justify their evil, simply accept it as a force of nature, and it's all fine. I think an elaborate story like the one in Trails can only really work if such a threat is represented by a similar unmanageable outside force, rather than an established character who just comes across like a lunatic as a result. They pulled it off in the first game by making the villain simply misguided, but the second one just stumbles in this regard due to its attempt to increase the stakes.
Yahtzee amusingly had it right - you don't need to save the world in order to create an engaging plot as long as your characters are well developed. And frankly, few RPG characters are as well developed as Estelle Bright. This is why I like TITS1 hell a lot more.

[BIL]

TITS

TITS

TITS

I can't believe the intensity of this TITS Superplay 3ALL/NoMiss

[BulletMagnet]

The Suikoden 1 and 2 remake has been delayed to an unspecified date.

[Sima Tuna]

Speaking as someone who loves Suikoden (particularly 1,) the new remake/remaster was looking pretty fucking lazy, honestly. They uprezzed some parts of the game, but left others looking extra-blurry by comparison. Man, you can't just put half the game in HD and the other half at 240p. Based on what I saw, the new visuals looked worse than the old psn version, because that old psn version retained the same visual quality across the entire package. You didn't have hd sprites on sd backgrounds, or vice-versa.

Seems to me that if you want to upscale a game's visuals, you have to do a complete job of it. Meaning HD redraws of every sprite in the game, as well as HD pictures (maybe even an engine change for full 3d modeling) for all the pre-rendered shit.

[Steamflogger Boss]

Speaking as someone who loves Suikoden (particularly 1,) the new remake/remaster was looking pretty fucking lazy, honestly. They uprezzed some parts of the game, but left others looking extra-blurry by comparison. Man, you can't just put half the game in HD and the other half at 240p. Based on what I saw, the new visuals looked worse than the old psn version, because that old psn version retained the same visual quality across the entire package. You didn't have hd sprites on sd backgrounds, or vice-versa.

Seems to me that if you want to upscale a game's visuals, you have to do a complete job of it. Meaning HD redraws of every sprite in the game, as well as HD pictures (maybe even an engine change for full 3d modeling) for all the pre-rendered shit.

That's really odd, hopefully they fix that.

[cfx]

Seems to me that if you want to upscale a game's visuals, you have to do a complete job of it. Meaning HD redraws of every sprite in the game, as well as HD pictures (maybe even an engine change for full 3d modeling) for all the pre-rendered shit.

I agree totally, but with the number of people who seem to love Square Enix's terrible looking "2DHD" games with ugly low-res blurry filtered sprites in higher-res backgrounds, I'm sure they think they can get away with such.

[XoPachi]

Ugh. God. Feel like I complained here about that before.
I'm so glad I'm not alone in hating the HD2D look Square is vomitting onto every game. Its as tasteless as those god awful Unreal engine Ocarina of Time/Mario 64 "remakes".

[Lemnear]

Speaking as someone who loves Suikoden (particularly 1,) the new remake/remaster was looking pretty fucking lazy, honestly.

85% of the "remaster/remake" are lazy.
Some filters applied to the original game most of the times...and it ends there.
Something that most emulators today can do without spend 20 $$ ...

This laziness denotes that Konami doesn't give a real shit to their Suikoden series...nor Square with some chapter of FF..or Star Ocean...even Chrono Cross Remaster is maded in this way!

[BryanM]

I personally would prefer if they put that kind of work into a new game in the spirit of the old one. How many people think of Mario All-Stars as the ultimate version of its games?

What's a real mess is the wonderful world of Dragon Quest and Final Fantasy remakes. At this point there's five to ten variations of each, none of them "definitive" especially when it comes to Final Fantasy..... Mainline DQ/FF games at this point have enough games to be called their own genre, there's hundreds of the things. You could play a new one every week and you could spend an entire lifetime playing them. Don't worry about running out; they'll make more of them for you while you're grinding through.

Dragon Quest 3 remakes get a bit of a pass, though. Someone up high was responsible with that one. Or it just gets special treatment from me.