Jarpig pride worldwide (Let's talk about JRPGs)

[XoPachi]

I've really been fucking up Trials of Mana.
And then I got to Black Rabite and I stopped fucking things up.

This song is really cool.
https://youtu.be/fzveHluPQeM?si=Oj4S2T2181szBG7G

[XoPachi]

Just killed Black Rabbite.

Free magic attacks sounds.....totally not utterly broken.

[Steamflogger Boss]

Dragon Quest II. Yeah this game definitely gets a bad rap. It's bigger and better DQ1 for the most part.

[Sengoku Strider]

Dragon Quest II. Yeah this game definitely gets a bad rap. It's bigger and better DQ1 for the most part.

The part where you actually find the world from Dragon Warrior I would have blown my tween mind to smithereens.

[BryanM]

Since the best part of these games are leveling up right at the beginning, DQ4 is like having five games in one. And it alternates between a DQ1 style one-man party with a DQ2 style three-man party. Coming out of the Merchant's chapter with a stack of malice swords was always a delight. Been thinking a bit about playing the PSX1/3DS remake...

I always feel a kind of malaise after clearing the first stratum in an Etrian Odyssey game. Like I'd have more fun making a new team and running them through a new newbie dungeon.

What's kind of messed up is the feelings I have finishing a DQM game: With no one left with a new ass to kick, leveling up feels hollow and pointless. (This has a side effect of making your final tier monsters not get to hang around long, either. All the more reason to try to climb up the ranks early!) Finishing up a perfect team is fun to think about, but that you don't get to use them against anything ruins actually doing it.

The messed up thing, is after many, many dozens of hours of killed time, I wanted to start a new round of the same game. That's replay value. Or addiction. If you value your game purchases under the lens of $/time played ratio, the upcoming release in the series should be worth it. If you like that sort of thing.

Man, nothing was really the same as picking up a giant jRPG from a flea market for 5 to 10 bucks and then having this family heirloom you could cherish for 5 lifetimes, wasn't there?

The part where you actually find the world from Dragon Warrior I would have blown my tween mind to smithereens.

You were so robbed. Never trust anybody over 30.

[Sengoku Strider]

My goodness, Octopath II is one warm blanket of a nostalgia game. My initial impression was that they'd just made the same game over again, just shuffled the personalities around and added an extra meter. And there are definitely spots where it feels that way. But the storytelling feels better developed here, and they seem to have done a lot more experimenting with lighting effects.

[TransatlanticFoe]

Who did you start with? I like that they kept the old jobs and shuffled things a little so it seems familiar but still there's stuff to learn.

[Sengoku Strider]

I tried a few different scenarios to start - the cleric, the merchant, the scholar, but I ended up going with the thief, she seemed the coolest. But now I kind of miss the locked dungeon chests, lol. The class seems kind of pointless outside battle since you don't need to steal from townspeople, as the dancer can just ask them for their belongings without getting you in trouble.

This is another one of those games where the translation really improves things. I've been playing with English text and Japanese VA, and it's always like:

VA: It ate its friend!
Text: The polluted beast...it would even devour its own companion!?

The localizers did a great job with the original cliche-ridden JP script, even the stock phrase spouting JP voice actors and their generic archetype voices sound like they could've been lifted right out of a Saturn game from 1996.

The music in this game is incredible though, they definitely did a fantastic job on that end of things. The way the overworld theme gains layers and shifts styles as you transition regions is really cool.

[BryanM]

The localizers did a great job with the original cliche-ridden JP script, even the stock phrase spouting JP voice actors and their generic archetype voices sound like they could've been lifted right out of a Saturn game from 1996.

Ted Woolsey used to get a lot of shit in the earlier days of the internet from kids due to not being "faithful". However attitudes have shifted over the years. I remember one reviewer of a romhack made to be faithful to the original saying "Woolsey did something that should be impossible: he gave the game a soul."

When I would read interviews with the developers, they do seem to have a throw-away mentality when it comes to the characters. This is the thief, this is the ninja, this is the wild boy etc etc. (Not much different from how I looked at Octopath Mobile's interchangeable and impossible to remember characters. The three bad guys are the only ones that stand out are any reason. Hell, it's not much different from the paper cut-out people for 2 year old babies the DQM2 Remake used.)

While modern Megaten games will often go into a character's sense of humor, ideology of how the world should be (aka, political beliefs), hobbies, etc. Some actual attempt to inject a little character into the games.

I think that's a weakness of Squeenix's design guys, and their most beloved games come from when they fail at being boring.

Here's something I only realized when talking to the language model Bard. I was trying to get it to write out some stories using some of the Final Fantasy 7 characters, so of course I specified that Cloud only cares about getting his money, which no one will ever give him. In some of the content it generated, it came up with a perspective I had never-ever once thought of: Maybe the reason Cloud is so obsessed with getting paid, is he feels like he's being disrespected. That he's not being appreciated or valued.

It had never once occurred to me that Cloud might have feelings.


He's Cloud, after all.

[Sima Tuna]

The most memorable square-enix protagonist is Y Burn from Final Fantasy V, followed closely by Butz.

[Sengoku Strider]

Ted Woolsey used to get a lot of shit in the earlier days of the internet from kids due to not being "faithful". However attitudes have shifted over the years. I remember one reviewer of a romhack made to be faithful to the original saying "Woolsey did something that should be impossible: he gave the game a soul."

I think part of it is that Google Translate, a bottomless supply of subtitled anime and the like have made everyone into an instant Japanese expert. Back in the day all people had to go on was listening to the voice actors, who were clearly putting way more into it than their amateurish Western counterparts of the time. So when a script sucked and was clearly full of expressions that didn't feel Japanese, it was obvious that some dilettante Westerner had mucked up the Japanese master's finely crafted script, honed through days of painstaking effort and sleepless nights.

The reality is that Japanese popular dramatic convention has been full of stock characters, phrases and tones of voice going back to the middle ages. Even classical Japanese poetry, the height of cultural attainment, is an exercise in well-deployed familiar reference, rather than a voyage of original expression. Those passionate Japanese voice actors are using well-trodden verbal tics and gasps taught as standard in local evening and weekend theatre classes, they're trained elements of a trade like any other.

That's not to say there isn't tons of wildly creative Japanese art that shatters every conceivable mould, only that these are products expressly created to meet specific expectations and desires, and that familiarity is not considered unwelcome. Hell, half these doramas write themselves, you know exactly what the shy but virtuous heroine is going to do by the end.

[Steamflogger Boss]

I have also noticed opinions on Woolsey really softened over the years.

[BulletMagnet]

I have also noticed opinions on Woolsey really softened over the years.

By this point the games he localized are well within the Nostalgia Zone for those (myself included) who played them as kids, so thanks to their association with "the good old days" it's much easier to either ignore the translations' shortcomings and/or ascribe a sort of distinctive charm to them; I imagine that growing awareness of the near-impossible deadlines he was frequently working under have played a part as well.

[Sumez]

I remember reading about Woolsey's "misdoings" in temporary magazines well before even playing any of the games he translated.

Maybe there's some truth to it, don't know, but some of those games became immediate all-time favourites of mine. Although the dialogue doesn't "feel" particularly well worded, it sure was effective enough for the stories (and that's Video Game stories with a capital VG) to affect me massively and draw me into the games. Sure there's some goofy stuff in there, but it was enjoyable at worst. But without knowing anything about the exact nature of how the original Japanese text fares (and it's really impossible without complete understanding of both the language and culture), it's not really possible for me to fairly judge how well or poorly the localization was handled.

But even to this day, few video game stories have managed to be as impactful to me as FF6's. It did hell a lot with relatively simple dialogue, rather than characters just blabbering away.

[BryanM]

I really have come to loathe the overly long "visual novel" style nothing stories many gacha games use. Two characters blathering on and on to each other; you can feel the engineered operant conditioning as they try to get their customers to form an emotional attachment to any of their products. (See how Tokimeki is better? Dialogue is brief, they're talking to you instead of it being someone else's conversation you have no business listening to, and there's a response with consequences at the end. (Which just modifies the affection level. It's a monogamy simulator so higher isn't always better.) Simplest thing in the world, but so many games choose not to step over this low bar.)

Comedy routines work well in that format.... everything else, action... drama.... not so much. That stuff is better in the game part of the game. (Moments like going through a campaign on a doomed ship infested with lovecratian sea horrors, reaching the climax of the final stage with the final boss, and getting smacked in the face with a sea shanty out of nowhere... That's something I'll remember forever. The walls of text I sagely skipped getting there, I recall none of.)

Getting to read the text should be a reward, not a chore or punishment.

... this made me remember that story arc in Xenogears told through a text scroll. A synopsis is the worst way to tell a story, immersion is impossible with anything that superficial. Imagine a wrestling match being told like "Two guys wrestled and the one guy pinned the other guy down and won."

--------

The game that maybe got it the worst during the Woolsey era was Secret of Mana. He's lamented about how they weren't able to expand the text banks, so he had to butcher that game.

Imagine trying to make a post while limited by the twitter character limit. A living hell.

[BulletMagnet]

The game that maybe got it the worst during the Woolsey era was Secret of Mana. He's lamented about how they weren't able to expand the text banks, so he had to butcher that game.

Considering how much else was cut from that one after the SNES CD add-on was cancelled I suppose it wound up being a perfect fit.

On a personal note, to this day the line I remember most vividly from SoM is the main character's 90's-tastic reaction after obtaining the Mana Sword: Say what?!"

[Sengoku Strider]

Coming across a reference to From the Far Reaches of Hell (the evil untranslatable book the scholars are all fighting over in Octo I) in Octo II left me feeling kinda bad for not finishing the first game's TLB, so I went back to the grind.

After 2-3 hours and getting my main party up to levels 75-81 I was able to beat the Dire Wolf, only needing a few revives to get through it. Alright, I'm ready for the Gate of Finis! I sliced my way through the boss rush without too much struggle, and then was suddenly reminded I needed all 8 characters for the final battle. No problem, split up into two teams, with two of my mains on each. Nope. Still got 1-shot like 3 damage phases in because I needed to waste too many turns on heals/revives :/ So now it's back to the grind for the other four. It's a darn good thing I really like this game, otherwise I'd have given up a long time ago.

It's funny Xenogears' novella interlude came up, because you get a text lore drop after each of the final dungeon bosses explaining the motivations of the characters mixed up with the main villain, and how their plots tied together. It seemed almost like an afterthought, I wonder if internal reviews told them the story needed more connective tissue, or if they just ran out of time before they could do a more fleshed out scenario.

[Sima Tuna]

Xenogears is, rather famously, a case of a game running out of budget and time. That's why the last disk is the way it is. Some people like that disk and wouldn't change it. I'm not one of them. I see the 2nd disc as very flawed. I think the first disc is an example of the 10/10 game Xenogears could be, while the 2nd disc is more the 7/10 game Xenogears actually is. Not that even the first disc was free of flaws. Xenogears has a very high encounter rate and some obnoxious dungeon design, which combines with the sometimes-glacial pace of random battles to eat up time like nobody's business.

In gameplay terms, it's a lot easier for me to convince myself to go for a replay of Chrono Cross or Suikoden (sticking with ps1 game examples) because those feel so much breezier in a gameplay sense.

[Steamflogger Boss]

Coming across a reference to From the Far Reaches of Hell (the evil untranslatable book the scholars are all fighting over in Octo I) in Octo II left me feeling kinda bad for not finishing the first game's TLB, so I went back to the grind.

After 2-3 hours and getting my main party up to levels 75-81 I was able to beat the Dire Wolf, only needing a few revives to get through it. Alright, I'm ready for the Gate of Finis! I sliced my way through the boss rush without too much struggle, and then was suddenly reminded I needed all 8 characters for the final battle. No problem, split up into two teams, with two of my mains on each. Nope. Still got 1-shot like 3 damage phases in because I needed to waste too many turns on heals/revives :/ So now it's back to the grind for the other four. It's a darn good thing I really like this game, otherwise I'd have given up a long time ago.

Skill loadout felt pretty critical for that sequence from what I remember. I played the game near launch so it's been awhile. It was awesome and really satisfying though. I died once at the very end of that boss rush.

Man, I really should play Octopath II...

As for Xenogears. I've touched on this before but that soundtrack FUCKING CLEARS. So good. I'll just listen to it whenever really.

[BryanM]

In gameplay terms, it's a lot easier for me to convince myself to go for a replay of Chrono Cross or Suikoden

Oh man, those gigantic cast lists. I used to think Shining Force games had a lot of dudes with ~32 characters, but yowzers. ~150 guys is more than the average lazy template gacha game has on its release day. (~60 is enough for a minimum viable product, and they build up from there.)

Are there any old games like that I missed out on, besides the obvious ones? Besides monster catchers like Megaten, Digimon, etc?

Destiny of an Emperor for the NES+Gameboy is one that comes to mind.

[Sima Tuna]

In gameplay terms, it's a lot easier for me to convince myself to go for a replay of Chrono Cross or Suikoden

Oh man, those gigantic cast lists. I used to think Shining Force games had a lot of dudes with ~32 characters, but yowzers. ~150 guys is more than the average lazy template gacha game has on its release day. (~60 is enough for a minimum viable product, and they build up from there.)

Are there any old games like that I missed out on, besides the obvious ones? Besides monster catchers like Megaten, Digimon, etc?

Destiny of an Emperor for the NES+Gameboy is one that comes to mind.

Arc the Lad I and II are the big ones I didn't mention, when it comes to ps1 rpgs. Arc 1 is a glorified prequel for Arc 2, but Arc 2 is big enough to make up for that. There are probably other games I'm forgetting, but Suikoden and Arc the Lad are two of my absolute favorite ps1 RPG series. Star Ocean II isn't bad either.

[Sengoku Strider]

I ended up spending way too much time grinding, but I finally 100%ed (I believe) Octopath 1. I'm sure I could have done it quicker with a min/max guide, but figuring out that brutal FF6 reprise TLB on my own was half the fun. It was that last steep path that actually gave me the most nostalgia vibes; even though the game as a whole is most heavily referencing the 16-bit Square rpgs, long-buried sensations of Final Fantasy 1 on NES' late game started emerging (luckily, no magazines talked me out of asking for that for my birthday back in the day). I feel pretty comfortable calling this one a modern classic, though it's so referential it won't hit everyone the same way.

[Necronopticous]

It has been almost exactly a year since I posted about RPGirl. Here's a new 4-minute look for anyone interested:

RPGirl: First Slice - New Game

Well, we have been working on RPGirl for about 3 years now and we're finally almost ready to privately release our first ever playable demo. If you would like to try it out, add yourself to our mailing list:

Signup for RPGirl Closed Demo

Aiming for Jan/Feb timeframe!

[ryu]

It has been almost exactly a year since I posted about RPGirl. Here's a new 4-minute look for anyone interested:

RPGirl: First Slice - New Game

Well, we have been working on RPGirl for about 3 years now and we're finally almost ready to privately release our first ever playable demo. If you would like to try it out, add yourself to our mailing list:

Signup for RPGirl Closed Demo

Aiming for Jan/Feb timeframe!

Looks good, although I'm not sure yet if it appeals to me personally. Any estimate for how long the demo might take to play? Since there's probably no point signing up when I might not have the time to play even 5% of it.

[Necronopticous]

This first closed demo will be quite short, and not particularly goal-oriented. This is mostly a way to let people play around with the core mechanics we have developed over the last 3 years and provide us feedback on what works and what doesn't. We're trying some new and different things with the turn-based RPG formula, and we're particularly interested in how those decisions will feel to other people.

In the demo you will be able to explore most of the planned space for the first region of the game, recruit 3 enemies, and battle a 4th enemy as a kind of surrogate boss encounter. You can outfit your team with equipment found in the field and crafted at the merchant. You can also have your team members learn each others' abilities in battle, and modify your equipped ability set with growable ability boons.

We expect most players will engage for no more than an hour or two, but we're going to have a few surprises for overachievers/psychos!

[Steamflogger Boss]

I'm finding Octopath Traveler II to be very enjoyable. Basically more of the first game, which is a very good thing.

[Sima Tuna]

Finished Cassette Beasts. Overall, I'm still positive about the game. The sticker system is a revolutionary upgrade over standard poggermans customization. The built-in character upgrades for traversal are also a fantastic alternative to HMs and very closely mirror my own ideas I've had on this topic for years. Aka that capturing a 'mon with an ability should just let you use that ability. No need for HM Slaves.

What did I not like? Eh, the story is kind of mediocre. It feels like a saturday morning cartoon show mixed with scott pilgrim. I'm tired of monster battlers with overpowered, world-threatening villains. I prefer the simpler stories about personal growth. The way I see it, these "monster taming" stories are comparable to sports stories. It's supposed to be more about your own growth as a trainer, your personal adventure and a lot of small-scale, slice-of-life interactions. Heartgold really embodies this. The evil, mean team rocket are engaging in such villainous acts as... Cutting off slowpoke tails to sell for profit! And... Sending out a radio signal that makes animals really pissed off! And... Stealing a part from the power station! DAMN U TEAM ROCKET!

It makes sense in those circumstances why a little kid with an electric mouse is able to solve the problem. Adults are busy doing adult things. One assumes the cops are too busy arresting poke drug dealers to care about Don Giovanni's poke gym fronting for protection rackets and dice games.

Let's see... Cassette Beasts is really unstable on switch. Guess that should go without saying. Crashes all the time and quite reliably on certain screens. Fix your shit, guys.

There are a couple puzzles that are pretty obnoxious. Typical for monster taming games. At least these didn't make me ragequit like the nexomon extinction teleporter puzzle. FYI I never ragequit the Sabrina's gym teleporter puzzle or any of the tele puzzles in pokemon. The nexomon one was just extra, extra shitty.

I loved everything else about Cassette Beasts. Excellent music, amazing gameplay. Every 'mon feels viable. A lot of the early 'mons are strong as heck, which is great. There are nuzlocke and randomizer options built in. You either enter a code or beat the game once to unlock them. You can also modify how you want the scaling to work. There are MANY grades of scaling, so you can set it exactly where you want it. From 1-1 scaling across the entire game to NO scaling at all, and everything in between. Perfection.

Edit:

Forgot to mention where I'd rank this one compared to other knockoff creature battler games I've played recently. Top tier for sure.

Top Tier:

Coromon
Cassette Beasts

Good Tier:

Siralim Ultimate

Sucks Tier:

Nexomon
Nexomon: Extinction

[Lander]

On a whim, I booted Tales of Destiny: Director's Cut back up for another attempt, and am currently in the second half.

Enjoyed the first act a bit more this time; I've finally broken the habit of forcing myself to sit through all the spoken dialogue and skits, which greatly improves the experience, and made a point of maining each party member when they join to get a fuller grasp of the systems.

I've decided that I find it a very frustrating game. Not in the moment-to-moment play as such - though there are moments here and there - but in the broader sense of how it's designed relative to what it represents. It's framed by many as the Greatest Tales Game Ever (I think in part due to being inaccessible for so long,) but fails in so many axes of being a good JARPG despite having some really great stuff in it.

The dungeons are awful; crammed full of identical L-corridors and annoying puzzles that inevitably involve popping a Holy Bottle and running between distant switches.
The towns are well-realized, but full of fluff; a title skit here, a minigame there, but nothing really toothsome in the way of sidequests.
And the narrative is a mediocre goose chase for much of the runtime; meet locals, chase baddie to dungeon, get distracted, baddie escapes, repeat on the next continent. Which is to say nothing of the literal Deus Ex Machina that follows

The characters are alright - a fairly standard tropey RPG party that doesn't immediately tip over into obnoxious mascot pandering as per the newer games, but nothing exemplary. Skipping most skits probably doesn't do it any favours, but I'm from the school of Tales that wove its core character growth into the main story proper, rather than detonating it at a high altitude and letting the shrapnel fall where it may.

Which leaves combat. Indeed, it's the crown jewel, but has been misrepresented by COMBO MAD videos for so long that the caveat of it reaches full potential in NG++ gets swept under the rug, and ends up crashing headlong into the aforementioned campaign and dungeon problems; I'd love to have access to the full suite of low-gravity triple-super sky high gameplay, but the idea of having to loop the World Tour Of No Consequence again to get there is quite unappealing.

I think that's what had me fall off previously; the latter half goes pretty hard on the dungeoning, and it reached a point of not feeling worth the slog.

This time I'm somewhat more determined, and also getting on better with the systems, so the main appeal is stronger. Though I'm starting to think they're wasted on a JRPG format; going into the arena and getting destroyed until I learned how to exploit everything available to a solo character was both incredibly frustrating (status ailment projectile mosh pit, anyone?) and an edifying eye-opening, since the defensive game and CC rotation management aren't forced out of the player as they would be in a straightforward action title or modern Fromlike gameplay-first RPG. You have to seek it, but your means to seek it is significantly limited until playthrough 2.

Which is really the root of my frustration; I can have that knife-edge action gameplay in the arena, where the encounters are punishing memo-heavy gauntlets, but not in the rest of the game where the fights are short and relatively fair. Even with my newfound knowledge, battle is inevitably going to remain a looney tunes dustball due to the mandatory full party setup.

In a sense I'm dreading that post-credits GRADE shop just as much as I'm excited to see what sort of mechanic-upturning goodies it has on offer, since I suspect I won't be able to afford the fancy stuff (low grav, solo, switching) and also carry over important progression bits.
Ah well, having that finished save is the goal here. I doubt I'll have the stamina to immediately roll into NG+, but access to the really cool stuff will be good to keep for a rainy day.

Edit:
Slogged my way to arena rank 4 to get Lilith. Shit's broken; for all my struggling against mobs of lethal debuffers and unblockable magic spammers, the actual solution was crafting a cure gem to get free heals on a button, and walking through it
On the upside, Lilith is really good despite coming in slightly underleveled. Broad elemental variety, huge hitboxes, and high base CC. How can my little sister possibly be this powerful

Embarked on the Act 2 dungeon marathon proper, and this plus the arena may have broken some personal record for the amount of times an entertainment product has made me verbalize "you have to be fucking kidding me dude". Teleporter maze after teleporter maze, contrived puzzles everywhere... The combat is coming into its own now I'm keyed in - that considered do-not-mash push pull of defense, CC rotation, and big combo that I remember from Graces - but conversely, I've never used so many Holy Bottles in a Tales game. Burned through all 15 and started running from fights on principle by the time I reached the keycard puzzle.

And the following boss was just anti-fun in every way it possibly could be in this combat system. Insane DEF, no exploitable weaknesses, resists everything, laser drones everywhere, gigantic 70% life AoEs without nearly enough windup to be avoidable, and a health readout that suspiciously goes to ??? after you finally manage to beat down the alleged 3400ish HP it shows at the start. Presumably so it can cheat and throw out some desparation mega-waves of adds for a last-second party wipe. Handily prevented with foreknowledge and one of those KONO DIO DA items I never use, but not a very satisfying solve...

Which is another thing. Bosses in these CC games scale like crazy as their health goes down; most titles employ a tiered system where extra aggression and more dangerous attacks are unlocked at specific health thresholds, but here it seems like a fully analog sliding scale. If you don't pick them up in a combo around 2/3 of the way down the bar, and take it all the way to the kill, you're going to eat hyper armored supers all day and burn through heals to eke out that last damage window.

Though for all my grousing, I do seem to still be playing at hour 23. Despite the veritable mountain of bumph piled on top of the combat system, and wildly questionable design choices, it's still compelling. And this is from someone who's already had their just fucking grind it out man, it has to end sometime tolerance destroyed by way of .hack://G.U.: Definitive Play The Same Game Four Times Edition

[FinalBaton]

Hello again everybody,

I've almost cleared Lunar SSSC on PS1, a game that flew under my radar back then.

And I'm : highly impressed by it!

The combat is just right for my tastes : turned based yet spiced up, with the walking variable, and also the "useable weapon elemental attack" that doesn't need to be equipped as weapon, to be used (yes!)

The dialogues from NPCs, surprinsigly, have gotten me frequently choked-up with semi-deep yet frequent quips about common-yet-harsh subjects like " expectations from relatives towards your personal-life ", "expectations towards ourselves that are perharps too lofty ", "remeinders to love ourselves and our entourage" and other stuff that got me frankly disharmed! I thought it was all very touching, despite Working Design's veneer. I was not ready for this dose of realistic, kitchen-sink-philosophy-yet-hyper-effective self-introspection, I swear! It was all too real and hitting too close to home.

It has risen amongst my very fave JARPIGs ever, no doubt. (But this is my opinion only - not a review)

[Blinge]

Holy shit do we need to talk about Pokémon Scarlet/Violet

I got it as an xmas gift for the missus and Jesus Miltank Fuckin' christ. what a travesty of a game this is!
I genuinely can't get over it.



It has been named a 'comprehensive technical failure' by Digital Foundry

Arceus wasn't about to win any beauty pageants but Scarlet/Violet look like a bootleg ps2 "we have pokemon at home" made in a Shanghai basement.