Gotcha. I had read somewhere about defeating bosses to unlock abilities so you can go back to previous areas and pass previously-blocked passages.
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Can anyone here comment on how good the following are on consoles (I have a PS4):
Lord of the Rings Adventure Card Game
Faeria
Both are on sale and I am tempted. I enjoyed Faeria for the brief time that I played it on my iPad before it was (stupidly) pulled and I am intrigued by the shift to the new purchase model. I havenāt played LotR but am passingly familiar with FFās LCGs having played Arkham Horror once and Marvel Champions once.
My biggest concerns are 1) The always-online requirements, which clearly mean that these are $10 game rentals as they will lose functionality when the service ends, and 2) is LotR frustratingly difficult? I donāt like card games that seem to stack the odds against you too quickly (Sentinels is the bane of my existence).
Thanks for any input.
Iām in the Middle of The Witcher 3 and I think Iāve hit WRPG burnout. The game is superbly written and quests are all engaging, but like every single WRPG of at least the last decade there is so much to do - and so much to pick up - that it just becomes overwhelming. I donāt know why it is because these games - on paper - should be my favorite things ever, yet all these Western RPGs fail to hook me for the long haul. From Dragon Age to the Elder Scrolls, Fallout and this game, I like them all less than I feel I should.
Perhaps it is because Iāve spent so much of my life aging JRPGs that Iām more comfortable with their scope, pacing, items, etc. I donāt know.
So Iām getting Tales of Arise on Friday.
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Everything in moderation, even moderation applies here. I have had the same problem the other way around. I was always trending more to the J not the W side of RPGs. But too much āanimeā bullshit in some of them drove me a bit crazy in the head, maybe the reason that my Final Fantasy series playthrough hit some major snags with FF12 and FF13. Funnily enough, I devoured FF7Remake the last 2 weeks (including the Yuffy DLC) and now I am finally playing (enduring is the better term) FF Crisis Core on the PSP this week (Crisis Core came out in 2007 as part of the 10th FF7 Anniversary project and plays as a prequel to FF7 with the events leading up to FF7 a couple of years prior.
Anyways I had pretty much reached Jrpg burnout last year. The solution? Finally playing lesser-known other JRPG stuff, namely stuff by Falcom. I had a blast with Trails in the Sky FC and Trails in the Sky 2nd Chapter. I am currently playing Ys Origins and will play Trails in the Sky 3rd probably next year in preparation for the western release of the missing Trails games; Trails of Azure and Trails of Zero (both are the missing 2 PSP Trails games between Trails in the Sky trilogy and the Trails of Cold Steel games). They are even incorporating the unofficial fan translations of both games in the official localization, how cool is that?
āAnime bullshitā with sprite graphics and without Square-Enix CG spectacle porn and walls of texts instead of squeaky grating English voice acting of yesteryear seems to be much more a thing I can plow through / have fun with.
I find this funny, remembering how rabid I was for all the early /mid CG stuff from the late 90 onwardsā¦I remember rewatching Blizzardās Warcraft 3, Diablo, and WOW Intros/Trailers a billion times.
I still plan to play through Witcher 3ā¦I have finished the first 2 games at least. I had way more fun with them in comparison to anything Bethesda vomited out the past 2 decades at least.
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I am doing the Pathfinder thing with what seems like everyone at the moment!
I go more to W than J for RPGs. The emphasis on being a part of the story compared to just having it inflicted on you (and oftentimes it being, truth be told, not great; for every Chrono Trigger or EarthBound there were several Tales-level games or the interminable later FF titles), the focus on organic growth for characters, it was just a revelation when they started showing up on the scene. That being said, I am not sure that the genre is in great shape right now. CD Projekt Red sucked a lot of the fun out of it.
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I thought CD project red was supposed to be the saviour of rpgs. What happened?
Hereās a small re-iteration of my issue. To be fair, I think the writing in most Western RPGs is far, far superior to most JRPGs. Just using Witcher 3 as an example, Iāve found every quest - even the smallest of side quests - to be well written and purposeful. I truly appreciate that.
For me, it is very much about the general over-abundance of stuff in the WRPGs. Characters often have huge, branching ability trees sometimes with multiple categories. In traditional JRPGs, growth is usually more linear, even in the systems where you get to make choices.
Then there are the items. I mean, good grief. Again using Witcher 3 as an example, the very first merchant you come to has a couple dozen different items, from Gwen cards to potions to foods to crafting materials to alchemy materialsā¦it is instantly overwhelming. I like the familiarity of traditional JRPGs where you can almost guarantee that the next shop you go to will have the same items youāve seen before, plus maybe a couple new ones. Weapons and equipment is probably going to be the next step up from what you already have. Like leveling, there is a linearity to it that makes it easily digestible.
I completely understand that the Western formula lends itself far more to the ārole playingā elements by letting you craft your characters far more in depth, but then I feel like Iām playing a bunch of systems rather than a narrative.
I think some of the older CRPGs like Baldurās Gate did a pretty good job of balancing the two extremes and not going too far down the rabbit hole of āif you can see it you can loot it and maybe some day youāll figure out why youāre carrying around a jar of thyme in your inventory.ā
End blog.
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I can see that. The amount of inventory I carry around in these games because āI just might need it laterā is a bit overwhelming.
It got so bad in Skyrim (before I stopped playing it) that I had locations in my house specifically for groups of individual things. āThis container is for ingredients, this for weapons, this forā¦etc.ā
I do like how games nowadays wonāt let you drop quest items and if the game has weight limits, quest items donāt weigh anything (oh, that Hammer of God you need for the Ragnarok quest? Sure, itās made of titanium, but it doesnāt weigh anything)
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Iām playing Why The Heck Does My PC No Longer Recognize My Graphics Card and Why Does Every Windows Update Fail and Why Wonāt the Microsoft Store Work. Good times.
And for a brief moment I wondered why I donāt play more PC games.
Back to Tales of Arise on my PS4. Itās quite good:
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I have put 8 hours into Legends of the Keepers the past couple days and damn is that boring. I am not even sure why. Interestingly this is related to the recent conversation in the Journalism thread about having a lot of games that I have little time played on. There is a part of me that wants to unlock the last 2 Masters, but to be honest, I am not sure the difference between the first Master and the 2nd justify the time to unlock the others.
Finished Ys Origin yesterday (with all 3 characters). And boy I had a blast playing the game.
Howlongtobeat.com gives a (rather short for JRPGs) 22 hour-ish timeframe for completing it that way, but since I always tend to be 25% - 75% over that estimate I am pretty satisfied with my 33 hours playthrough.
Adorable Sprite characters with a 3D-background presentation from the early 2000s, fast-paced Action combat, no wasted inventory management BS, an energetic Soundtrack, 7 different ābiomesā, interesting boss fights, and a tiny weeny bit of grinding here and there (which was surprisingly fun doing while listening to some podcasts on the side) makes this my favorite JRPG of 2021 (released originally in 2006).
Since my favorite JRPGs of 2020 were Trails in the Sky first and the second chapter it seems that Falcom is replacing Square Enix as my favorite Japanese JRPG developer.
Now back to good old scary Mt. Backlogā¦
What aspect(s) do you find boring?
For me, Iām finding it a bit too easy on the default difficulty and have yet to lose a monster. Granted, Iāve only played the first Master and just completed the first area, but the heroes managed to reach the Master only twice, despite me always choosing the most difficult encounter.
I hope it gets more challenging, but I do enjoy deciding which monsters to use in which positions against which heroes and unlocking new content. I currently have four of five artifacts that work well together, so maybe thatās why the first region was a cakewalk?
I am not sure actually? Yes, I am also finding it too easy, I played through to unlock the 2nd Master without dying. The heroes do make it to my Master sometimes, but that does not matter much to me. I also chose the hardest heroes each time.
I think the pacing is slow, and I think all of the choices between battles are boring. Since there are not a lot of opportunities to level monsters and traps, you kind of just need to commit to a few early, so not even a lot of choices there. Just stick to your guns.
The two teams kind of just need to be distributed between offense and defense elemental types for balance.
To go after Morale, instead of health you have to overcommit and there are not enough monsters really to make it viable consistently, so why bother?
I think it is just uninteresting choices throughout.
I agree.
I do likewise, although I do prioritize offense over defense; I want to know I can choose between multiple types of elemental attacks when determining which monsters to deploy against a particular hero.
Interesting. For my first run of the first region, I emphasized monsters and traps with Morale attacks, because those were the ones I was offered most often. So I figured, fineāIāll concentrate on Morale attacks.
Have you run into any events that negatively affected you? I havenāt, which is disappointing.
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No, I have not really run into anything that would hurt me in the events.
Ok, I picked up Thea the Shattering today. I think I like it, but I have no idea what is going on. Am I just wandering around gathering and crafting and fighting?
Pretty much. I really enjoyed that game.
You have your city or base / you send you team out to quest and gather and hunt monsters.
There is a clock that increases difficulty every turn.
I think you have to finish your quest line to win.
Ok, cool. I have not even setup a base yet. I was reading that setting up a base can also be a disadvantage?
Deathloop
Eastward
Psychonauts 2
Getting slaughtered repeatedly by the Pirate Lord in Hero Realms.
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