• Hey everyone, staff have documented a list of banned content and subject matter that we feel are not consistent with site values, and don't make sense to host discussion of on Famiboards. This list (and the relevant reasoning per item) is viewable here.
  • Do you have audio editing experience and want to help out with the Famiboards Discussion Club Podcast? If so, we're looking for help and would love to have you on the team! Just let us know in the Podcast Thread if you are interested!

StarTopic RPGs |ST| Our Home Base For All Role Playing Game Discussions!

I beat the Reiko and Akira routes in Shin Megami Tensei: if... and I had a jolly good time. I really enjoyed that game. Now I'm continuing to make my way through mainline MegaTen and I have now started Kyuuyaku Megami Tensei, which is a remake of the first two Megami Tensei games on the Famciom. (I will play the Famicom versions eventually now that a fan translation for Megami Tensei II came out recently.)

I'm still in the Megami Tensei I part of Kyuuyaku, and in order to create a more comfortable playing experience, I have resorted to the proud g*mer tradition of cheating my ass off. After finishing the second area of the game, you gain the ability to travel between three of the areas, including the sixth and final area. So I went to the final area and fought demons until I got lucky enough to win a battle, and I gained three levels from that one battle. I did this several more times, and now I'm way higher level than I should be. 😎 It's still not easy, though. There's still plenty of challenge, it's just nowhere near as challenging as it would have been. Maybe I shouldn't have done this, but I can't help it, I'm addicted to the endorphin rush of stat gains.
 
Going on with Voice of Cards the forsaken maiden. Finished all the maidens stories and going to what it's supposed to be the last dungeon. Checking online it seems some people found dissapointing the story on the first game, and while this one is also simple, each maiden story has it's own twist, and honestly wasn't expecting the twist of the third maiden. It made me play till the end of the 4th maiden story which introduced some interesting mechanics. Also the soundtrack is very good.
 
ermitron2 said:
Going on with Voice of Cards the forsaken maiden. Finished all the maidens stories and going to what it's supposed to be the last dungeon. Checking online it seems some people found dissapointing the story on the first game, and while this one is also simple, each maiden story has it's own twist, and honestly wasn't expecting the twist of the third maiden. It made me play till the end of the 4th maiden story which introduced some interesting mechanics. Also the soundtrack is very good.
Click to expand...
So if I was going to get one of the two which one should I get?
 
Realized I should throw this in here too
Still in like chapter 2 with only 25 memory slot, but here’s my team at the moment. Did find grindosaur so I’m not flailing too much on the hunt for my team since the styles I’m after are on the higher evolution tiers

IMG_4704.jpg
 
cyberpunk is a MESS. so many systems and so little incentive to engage with them
 
0
Just finished Voice of Cards the Forsaken Maiden at 20hrs, That last part got stretched more than I expected, but the end battles were very interesting and challenging since it works as a test to see if you actually learnt to use status and fixed damage effects. Overall a decent experience, and the story while simple, makes you care for Laty, and also all the "other side" of the cards for the characters have interesting descriptions for some characters (the Inkeeper was the best).

I watched the trailer for VoC: The Isle Dragon Roars and the marketing and the page for Forsaken Maiden are lying, these are not standalone games! So I'm going to play Dragon now (it seems is shorter so I can finish it before Sophie). And it kinda make sense how they got FM so fast now, I'm pretty sure they have all the general story laid and just are separating them between chapters. I expect a new one in other 4 months without a doubt.
 
@ermitron2

Oh look.

A Samurai Warriors 5 fan.

I guess I'll unironically trust your opinion from now on. :unsure:

...That is all.

(Also, I'm interested in Voice of Cards and may get the games, but as always, there are different games that I want; in fact, it's definitely up there in terms of priorities, but the "list" always has things to try and I hate "promising myself" that I'll get to a game because something else might come up.)
 
Nier Automata is getting a TV anime! I made a thread here.

famiboards.com

Nier Automata Anime Announced. Update: First PV, now called Nier Automata 1.1a. It’s an original story.

It’s been five years since Nier Automata came out and now a TV anime has been announced! Thought people might be interested to discuss this so I made a thread. I’ll add any info I see. Website > https://nierautomata-anime.com/ Twitter account >
famiboards.com famiboards.com

Also I made a thread yesterday if you want to share your top X favorite games of 2021!

famiboards.com

Share Your Favorite Top X Games Of 2021!

With the official Fami GOTY event over (see post 54 here for the winners!), now is a great time for us to share our favorite top X games of 2021! Sharing your top ten is traditionally the most popular, but feel free to share any number. If you had five favorites last year, share your top five...
famiboards.com famiboards.com
 
Hello everyone! I've never played an Atelier game and with the release of Atelier Sophie 2 I'm starting to get interested in the series. I have the option to buy Ryza 2 for 40 euros, unfortunately Ryza 1 is too expensive on the internet now.
Should I start with Ryza 2? Is there a summary of the first game available somewhere? Or maybe I should wait for the latest entry in the series with Atelier Sophie 2?
 
0
Been getting around to finishing all chapter 4's of Octopath Traveler in order.
But I am SO stuck on Olberic 's final boss!!!

I kept Tressa, Cyrus and Ophelia always in my team so they are lvl47, but Olberic is underleveled (lvl31).

But that wasn't an issue so far with other bosses and different 4th character.

So now I'm really stuck without an effective strategy.
If anyone has tips, I'm all ears. 🥲
 
Appelsider said:
Been getting around to finishing all chapter 4's of Octopath Traveler in order.
But I am SO stuck on Olberic 's final boss!!!

I kept Tressa, Cyrus and Ophelia always in my team so they are lvl47, but Olberic is underleveled (lvl31).

But that wasn't an issue so far with other bosses and different 4th character.

So now I'm really stuck without an effective strategy.
If anyone has tips, I'm all ears. 🥲
Click to expand...
What's your job & passive skills setup look like? What's the problem you're having with that boss?
 
Appelsider said:
Been getting around to finishing all chapter 4's of Octopath Traveler in order.
But I am SO stuck on Olberic 's final boss!!!

I kept Tressa, Cyrus and Ophelia always in my team so they are lvl47, but Olberic is underleveled (lvl31).

But that wasn't an issue so far with other bosses and different 4th character.

So now I'm really stuck without an effective strategy.
If anyone has tips, I'm all ears. 🥲
Click to expand...
Tressa and Cyrus were my dream team too. She just fed him all the BP so he could cast the best spells. It’s been a long time since I played it, but I think there is an advanced mage job that’s super useful for Cyrus, so either grab your best team to tackle that (it’s a tough boss iirc) or do some side quests in some dangerous areas while dragging Olberic along.
 
shoptroll said:
What's your job & passive skills setup look like? What's the problem you're having with that boss?
Click to expand...
Tressa: Merchant + Hunter ( Axe + Side Step + Leghold Trap)

Cyrus: Scholar + Merchant ( Side Step + Elec/Wind)

Ophelia: Cleric + Scholar (Healing + Elec) (+ a summoner that adds poison or blind)

Olberic: Warrior + Apothecary (Axe + Poison)

Passively:
All have extra HP and resistance to ailments I think
Ophelia + Cyrus: recover HP and MP
Tressa: Recover MP

I literally came so close with this set up.. like 1000 hp left, but then the boss decided to do multiple Sweeps and KO-ed 3 of em 😭😭

I guess I'll recheck the passive stats to see if i can add more/better perks... T_T
 
0
Interesting.

I think my setup was
Olberic w/ Hunter
Alfyn w/ Cleric
Therion w/ Merchant
Primrose w/ Scholar

But everyone was in their 50s due to rotating and Olberic’s story was the second to last one. My main focus on secondary jobs was to try and augment each character’s focuses while also making sure I had good coverage on enemy weaknesses.

This might come down to play styles but I would probably try Ophelia with Apothecary to augment the healing options more and putting as much +elem def gear on her as you can. You’ll basically be using her to heal while fending off the terror ailment with Rehabilitate.

Alfyn might be a better pick for the fight if you have a stockpile of ingredients as he can do a +BP concoction which negates the terror ailment entirely.

There’s also the passives for self-resurrect and negating killing blows you can try to give your team more hardiness. I think at this stage of the game the +50 to a given stat are probably less essential since you should have better options at this point.
 
Last edited:
Thanks for your insight! I ended up unequipping everything and started their set up from scratch!
This time the fight felt so easy compared to before!
The strategy stayed somewhat the same, but I did readjust the jobs and passive skills.

My end set up was:
Tressa: Merchant/Scholar
Cyrus: Scholar/Merchant
Ophelia: Cleric/Hunter
Olberic: Warrior/Apothecary

I basically stacked Tressa and Cyrus with more than enough Side Steps, while spamming Leghold Trap with Ophelia + stacking Poison with Olberic so I could break Werner from all sides.
I added Patience as passive skills to C and O so it helped sustaining the strategy of SS and LT.
The summoned help also helped with blinding + poison!

This time he didn't even manage to get three turns to attack XD.

Makes me think the game probably went easy on me after so many failed attempts.. 😅
 
Patience is stupidly useful. I don’t run it on everyone but it’s a must have for my healer and buff roles.

The 4 passive limit is probably the most annoying thing in the game but kinda in a good way? I really wish they gave you ways to earn additional slots but that probably would allow you to break the game wide open.
 
Got the notification that Atelier Sophie 2 finished downloading and just realized, this is actually the first Gust game with worldwide release on the same date (BR Second light was 2 weeks apart)
 
0
Anybody played through the Triangle Strategy demo? If I finish NMH3 in the next few days, I could get started on Triangle Strategy and import my save on release day.

Every little helps when there's only 3 weeks between that and Kirby.
 
MisterSpo said:
Anybody played through the Triangle Strategy demo?
Click to expand...

Yes. I'd suggest to set aside an unrushed 4-5 hours and do the playthrough in one chunk or to keep the times between sessions short if you break it into smaller digestible bites, whatever you prefer. The demo consists of a lot of reading/listening, and understanding the relationships at play between parties will be easier if you have who they are fresh on your mind.

Vital tip: During dialogue scenes, the x-button brings up a portrait and short biography of the character currently speaking. Helps remembering them.
 
Last edited:
Sheldon said:
Yes. I'd suggest to set aside an unrushed 4-5 hours and do the playthrough in one chunks or to break it into smaller digestible bites but keep the breaks between each short. The demo consists of a lot of reading/listening, and understanding the relationships at play between parties will be easier if you have who they are fresh on your mind.

Vital tip: During dialogue scenes, the x-button brings up a portrait and short biography of the character currently speaking. Helps remembering them.
Click to expand...
Grand - thank you!
 
MisterSpo said:
Anybody played through the Triangle Strategy demo? If I finish NMH3 in the next few days, I could get started on Triangle Strategy and import my save on release day.

Every little helps when there's only 3 weeks between that and Kirby.
Click to expand...
Yep, it honestly impressed me quite a bit (and I was already interested in the game)
 
Well friends and Fami, I did it. I beat Kyuuyaku Megami Tensei, and now my strange journey through the mainline Megami Tensei games on the Super Famicom has come to an end. I still have more MegaTen games to play, but they will be on more recent hardware.

The Super Famicom games were really good, and I was expecting not to like them. The idea of first person dungeon crawlers that you were meant to get lost in mazes and die several times due to difficult random battles sounded awful to me. Thankfully, that's not what I got. These were actually pretty easy games, other than Shin Megami Tensei: if..., because that game is short and dying is how you change your Guardian, so they really made sure you died a lot. Due to them being easy, exploration was not frustrating and I actually really dug the dungeon crawling and I looked forward to exploring every new area.

Normally I wouldn't have played these games because, like I already said, they sounded bad, and my earlier experiences with the franchise didn't sell me on it. I decided to play SMT 1 back in December out of a curiosity, and because I did not have a backlog at the time. After years of having a massive backlog, I managed to finish what was left of it last year. So I was free to play some games that I was interested in but didn't necessarily NEED to play. Even right now, the small backlog I do have is made up of games I got for cheap and that if I never got to them I wouldn't feel bad about it. But I'm thankful that I had the time to experience these games.

My path through MegaTen games has so far gone:

1. Tokyo Mirage Sessions
2. Persona 5
3. Nocturne
4. SMT
5. SMT IV
6. SMT II
7. SMT: if...
8. Kyuuyaku Megami Tensei

Next will be Apocalypse, then Strange Journey Redux, and finally, after 10,000 years, I will play my copy of SMT V.

Below are my current rankings of the franchise, and since Kyuuyaku is a remake of Megami Tensei I and Megami Tensei II, I will rank them separately.

1. Persona 5
2. SMT IV
3. SMT II
4. SMT
5. Kyuuyaku Megami Tensei II
6. Nocturne
7. SMT: if...
8. Kyuuyaku Megami Tensei I
9. Tokyo Mirage Sessions

So yeah, good games. Play them if you get the chance.
 
WhyS said:
Well friends and Fami, I did it. I beat Kyuuyaku Megami Tensei, and now my strange journey through the mainline Megami Tensei games on the Super Famicom has come to an end. I still have more MegaTen games to play, but they will be on more recent hardware.

The Super Famicom games were really good, and I was expecting not to like them. The idea of first person dungeon crawlers that you were meant to get lost in mazes and die several times due to difficult random battles sounded awful to me. Thankfully, that's not what I got. These were actually pretty easy games, other than Shin Megami Tensei: if..., because that game is short and dying is how you change your Guardian, so they really made sure you died a lot. Due to them being easy, exploration was not frustrating and I actually really dug the dungeon crawling and I looked forward to exploring every new area.

Normally I wouldn't have played these games because, like I already said, they sounded bad, and my earlier experiences with the franchise didn't sell me on it. I decided to play SMT 1 back in December out of a curiosity, and because I did not have a backlog at the time. After years of having a massive backlog, I managed to finish what was left of it last year. So I was free to play some games that I was interested in but didn't necessarily NEED to play. Even right now, the small backlog I do have is made up of games I got for cheap and that if I never got to them I wouldn't feel bad about it. But I'm thankful that I had the time to experience these games.

My path through MegaTen games has so far gone:

1. Tokyo Mirage Sessions
2. Persona 5
3. Nocturne
4. SMT
5. SMT IV
6. SMT II
7. SMT: if...
8. Kyuuyaku Megami Tensei

Next will be Apocalypse, then Strange Journey Redux, and finally, after 10,000 years, I will play my copy of SMT V.

Below are my current rankings of the franchise, and since Kyuuyaku is a remake of Megami Tensei I and Megami Tensei II, I will rank them separately.

1. Persona 5
2. SMT IV
3. SMT II
4. SMT
5. Kyuuyaku Megami Tensei II
6. Nocturne
7. SMT: if...
8. Kyuuyaku Megami Tensei I
9. Tokyo Mirage Sessions

So yeah, good games. Play them if you get the chance.
Click to expand...
Curious to see what you think about Apocalypse, I like it but it's a controversial release to say the least. Also impressive how you can play all of these (seemingly) pretty shortly after one another without burning out on them.
 
Leica said:
Curious to see what you think about Apocalypse, I like it but it's a controversial release to say the least. Also impressive how you can play all of these (seemingly) pretty shortly after one another without burning out on them.
Click to expand...
I don't know much about Apocalypse, but I do know that there are people that absolutely hate the story of the game, which has me a bit worried. I would guess that I'm still going to like the game, but one of the reasons I liked SMT IV so much was because of the story. It wasn't the greatest story ever told or anything, but I liked the feeling of going around with your bestest buddies (even if you all did just meet like a week ago). I know the characters weren't deep, but I just liked them being there. (I actually like FFXV a lot more than most people for that same reason. Like many people, I didn't like the four bros before playing the game, but they nailed it and I feel like they justified because of how great the relationship was between them. The relationship between the group is much better in FFXV than in SMT IV, but I'm just saying that I like this sort of stuff.) So it will be interesting to see if having a worse story is balanced out by the better gameplay that Apocalypse is supposed to have, because I really liked the gameplay of SMT IV already.

As for the second part of your message:

I played SMT 1 from December 14 to December 19.
SMT IV was from December 28 to January 9.
SMT II was from January 19 to January 25.
SMT: if... was from February 14 to February 18.
Kyuuyaku Megami Tensei I was from February 20 to February 22.
Kyuuyaku Megami Tensei II was from February 22 (it starts immediately after the credits of the first game) to February 28.

So yeah, they have been played pretty close to each other, with those last three being played back-to-back-to-back. That's surprising to me and something that I have been thinking about while playing these games. Turn-based JRPGs are my favorite genre, but I don't usually play so many this close to each other, as I need to break it up with action-oriented games. However, not only am I playing a lot of turn-based JRPGs this year, but most are from the same franchise with mostly the same mechanics. Maybe it's because the story of these games aren't too prevalent. I adore good stories in video games, and I like the stories in MegaTen, but when there is a big, grand story in a game, I feel like I need time to digest it afterwards and can't go straight to the next game in the series. For example, when I played through the Yakuza games, that took about a year to finish them all because I felt like I needed to space the stories out a bit. Meanwhile, SMT: if... and Megami Tensei I have close to no story, so it was kind of easy to just go from one game to the next and feel like I was picking up where I just left off.

Another surprise I had with myself is how much I liked SMT IV. I didn't know what to expect going into it, but once I was playing it, the overwhelming feeling I had about the game was that it was very much a 3DS game. It looked like a 3DS game, the music was 3DS era music, the dialogue was typical of a 3DS game, it played like a 3DS game, and everything else about it screamed 3DS. I played a lot of 3DS games, and I was sick of it by the time the system died. Even now, a few years later, I'm still not ready to play the 3DS game. I loved the 3DS at the time, but I grew tired of it, and I'm not back to the point where I miss the 3DS or am even neutral to it. However, despite that, I had a great time playing a game that was obviously made during the 3DS era and for the 3DS. Even if SMT IV had an HD remaster that I played first without knowing about the 3DS version, I would have figured that that it was originally a 3DS game while playing it because it felt so very much like one.

But anyway, it might be a bit until I get to Apocalypse. I could play another MegaTen game at the moment, but Apocalypse is such a long game and I feel like knocking out some shorter stuff before I dedicate weeks to just one game.
 
I am a gigantic tri-Ace fan. Even got a tri-Ace tattoo (for more than just me liking the games, but that's personal). I have beaten all of their titles, including their Japan only titles such as Danball Senki W, Beyond the Labyrinth and more

So damn excited for Star Ocean 6.

I recently replayed Star Ocean 4 for the first time since launch. Was the biggest disappointment ever at the time and hadn't touched it since (also the only tri-Ace game besides their Japan only titles I never replayed).

I gotta say it was much better than I remembered. Of course Lymle, Sarah, Meracle and Welch are unwatchable, and the depressed Edge/Faize parts are REALLY bad, but overall story and several cutscenes are better than I remembered.

I still would not give it above an 8 out of 10 though due to how awful most of the writing and characters are. And the post game dungeons are very bad by tri-Ace standards.

Still, some of the most fun combat in the entire genre and visually its pretty amazing for a 360 JRPG of the time. The 4K remaster does wonders for the game visually.
 
I've unexpectedly landed a copy of Bravely Default 2, so I'll look forward to that. I seem to remember people didn't like the character models, but I think they're cute? Something straightforward and traditional will serve as an excellent palette cleanser post-Elden Ring.
 
0
I beat the Famicom version of Final Fantasy II, and I liked the game, but I'm going to spend most of this message complaining about stuff that doesn't matter and embarrassing myself by showing that I play way too many video games.

The main reason I played this game is because I like playing the original version of games. Before now, I had only played the Dawn of Souls version of Final Fantasy II and I, but had been meaning to fix that for a while. I beat the NES version of Final Fantasy I on the NES Classic, and last year I finally beat the Famicom version of Final Fantasy III, which I had wanted to do for a long time because I really wanted to play a 2D version of that game (and apparently I'm not alone seeing how Square charges more for the Pixel Remaster of III than for I and II). With Final Fantasy II done, I have finally finished the NES/Famicom trilogy of Final Fantasy games.

So I was always going to play Final Fantasy II for the Famicom, but there's a reason it sort of jumped in line ahead of other games. That reason being gaming YouTube. I don't watch much gaming YouTube anymore, but for some reason YouTube has been constantly suggesting to me a five hour video about why Kingdom Hearts III is bad. The only Kingdom Hearts videos I watch are by Just A Pancake, who hasn't uploaded anything since September of 2020, so I'm not sure why YouTube thought I would be interested, but I was. I ignored it for a few days, but after seeing it suggested at the end of every video I watched, eventually my curiosity got the best of me. What could they possibly have to say for five hours? So I clicked, and it was absolutely positively dreadfully awful. I barely made it through the intro. He had nothing interesting to say. It was generic and bland and like the script had been written by an AI that was programmed with thousands of other gaming YouTube videos.

I then looked through the timestamps of the video, and saw that it was just the names of all the worlds from the game. Not wanting to watch the whole video, but wanting to at least know where the video goes after the intro seeing how I was already invested and the term sunk cost fallacy means nothing to me, I clicked on the Monsters, Inc. section as it happened to be in the middle. All he did was go through the Monsters, Inc. part of the game, summarizing the story and saying, "I liked this part, but I did not like this part." They showed cutscenes with no commentary during it and would just say afterwards whether it was good or bad. There was no analysis at all. They were just going through the entire game, world by world, and pointing out what they liked and didn't like. No deep dissection worthy of a five hour video. It was essentially an abridged let's play, but a lot worse than what Tim Rogers did in his Tokimeki Memorial review.

And that's my issue with gaming YouTube. So few people have anything of value to add to the conversation. They don't think and just repeat the same stuff over and over and over. Yes, we all know that the west did not get the real version of Super Mario Bros. 2 on the NES, stop saying it. This is where it relates to Final Fantasy II. Every video I've ever watched about the game mentions how grindy the level up system is. How you're never going to get your weapon and magic to high levels without grinding. How hitting yourself is the best way to gain HP. How they use the target-cancel bug to level up quickly. But they never mention if they had to do any of that stuff. Whether or not the game was hard enough to necessitate either grinding or exploiting the system. They just say they did it and then complain about it.

Now then, I never grinded in Final Fantasy II, but I played the GBA version while every review I've ever seen was the PlayStation version. Maybe that version was harder and required such methods. So I wanted to test that, but instead of playing the PlayStation, I would play the hardest version, the Famicom version, and see what happened.

(As an aside, what does the average gamer mean by grinding? This is another gaming YouTube problem I have. Whenever a YouTuber complains about RPGs, they mention how you have to grind. Do they consider just regular fighting in general to be grinding? There are very few games where I think you have to stop and fight random battles so you are strong enough to continue. The vast majority of RPGs will have you at the right level if you just fight normally as you go along. Are these people running away from most battles and then can't beat a boss until they grind? I don't know what the definition of grinding is for most people, but with my definition even most old games don't have much grinding. Of course Dragon Quest I is basically a game entirely dedicated to grinding, and Dragon Quest II requires it because they didn't have time to balance the later parts of the game, but most of the time with old games you have to grind a little bit at the beginning but then you're good to go for the rest of the game. Like in the first Phantasy Star game where at the start you can only survive one battle before having to go back into town to heal, but once you do that a few times and are properly leveled, the rest of the game is smooth.)

After having beaten Final Fantasy II, I can say that you don't have to grind at all, even at the beginning. It is by far the easiest of the NES/Famicom Final Fantasy games. Don't worry about the leveling system, it will all happen naturally. You are not meant to get your weapon and magic to the max level. What JRPG actually expects you to be the max level to beat the game? Even the previously mentioned Dragon Quest I, a game about grinding, only expects you to get about two-thirds of the way to the max level. By the end of Final Fantasy II, other than my Cure spell, my highest level magic was Thunder at level four and it didn't matter. This game is easy. I even put myself at a disadvantage in the beginning by using Maria as a fighter and Guy as a mage, therefore losing out on the benefit of their initial stats.

I didn't grind for gil, I didn't grind for stats, I didn't use the target-cancel glitch, I didn't use the Blood Sword on the final boss, and I didn't struggle, I just kept progressing. There was one time when I thought I had to grind, but then I remembered I could show the Pass to get onto the Dreadnought instead of fighting the Captain, which I was not expected to be strong enough to beat at that time.

Final Fantasy II is not a masterpiece. There are plenty of flaws (the game doesn't even have an airship theme 😢), but the leveling system is not one of them. Think of it like a rudimentary class system. You're deciding what you want your character to specialize in, and without thinking too much about it, the game is going to handle the rest. You will level naturally simply by playing the game, it will just be presented to you in a different format.

Yes, I am someone that posts on a video game enthusiast forum, so I'm deep into gaming, I have played a lot of video games, and I'm better than most people at them. (The most embarrassing flex possible.) However, I feel like someone that dedicates a YouTube channel to video games would also be decent at video games. Even the ones that say they're bad at video games usually aren't bad. You watch their gameplay and they're typically just making beginners' mistakes that everyone made while calling themselves bad. So these people don't need to abuse the systems of Final Fantasy II. It feels like the issue I talked about earlier, one YouTuber mentioned it so they all have to mention it and it feels like the same script over and over and over again with no thought put into it. Just reading off the Wikipedia page and adding the same commentary that everyone else has.

My point is, if YouTube also recommends the five hour Kingdom Hearts III video, don't watch it. It's really bad. I'm not saying that as a salty fanboy, I haven't even play Kingdom Hearts III. I'm saying it as someone who really regrets giving that video a view.

Thank you for reading about my petty annoyances and how I beat a game entirely out of spite. 🙂
 
WhyS said:
I beat the Famicom version of Final Fantasy II, and I liked the game, but I'm going to spend most of this message complaining about stuff that doesn't matter and embarrassing myself by showing that I play way too many video games.

The main reason I played this game is because I like playing the original version of games. Before now, I had only played the Dawn of Souls version of Final Fantasy II and I, but had been meaning to fix that for a while. I beat the NES version of Final Fantasy I on the NES Classic, and last year I finally beat the Famicom version of Final Fantasy III, which I had wanted to do for a long time because I really wanted to play a 2D version of that game (and apparently I'm not alone seeing how Square charges more for the Pixel Remaster of III than for I and II). With Final Fantasy II done, I have finally finished the NES/Famicom trilogy of Final Fantasy games.

So I was always going to play Final Fantasy II for the Famicom, but there's a reason it sort of jumped in line ahead of other games. That reason being gaming YouTube. I don't watch much gaming YouTube anymore, but for some reason YouTube has been constantly suggesting to me a five hour video about why Kingdom Hearts III is bad. The only Kingdom Hearts videos I watch are by Just A Pancake, who hasn't uploaded anything since September of 2020, so I'm not sure why YouTube thought I would be interested, but I was. I ignored it for a few days, but after seeing it suggested at the end of every video I watched, eventually my curiosity got the best of me. What could they possibly have to say for five hours? So I clicked, and it was absolutely positively dreadfully awful. I barely made it through the intro. He had nothing interesting to say. It was generic and bland and like the script had been written by an AI that was programmed with thousands of other gaming YouTube videos.

I then looked through the timestamps of the video, and saw that it was just the names of all the worlds from the game. Not wanting to watch the whole video, but wanting to at least know where the video goes after the intro seeing how I was already invested and the term sunk cost fallacy means nothing to me, I clicked on the Monsters, Inc. section as it happened to be in the middle. All he did was go through the Monsters, Inc. part of the game, summarizing the story and saying, "I liked this part, but I did not like this part." They showed cutscenes with no commentary during it and would just say afterwards whether it was good or bad. There was no analysis at all. They were just going through the entire game, world by world, and pointing out what they liked and didn't like. No deep dissection worthy of a five hour video. It was essentially an abridged let's play, but a lot worse than what Tim Rogers did in his Tokimeki Memorial review.

And that's my issue with gaming YouTube. So few people have anything of value to add to the conversation. They don't think and just repeat the same stuff over and over and over. Yes, we all know that the west did not get the real version of Super Mario Bros. 2 on the NES, stop saying it. This is where it relates to Final Fantasy II. Every video I've ever watched about the game mentions how grindy the level up system is. How you're never going to get your weapon and magic to high levels without grinding. How hitting yourself is the best way to gain HP. How they use the target-cancel bug to level up quickly. But they never mention if they had to do any of that stuff. Whether or not the game was hard enough to necessitate either grinding or exploiting the system. They just say they did it and then complain about it.

Now then, I never grinded in Final Fantasy II, but I played the GBA version while every review I've ever seen was the PlayStation version. Maybe that version was harder and required such methods. So I wanted to test that, but instead of playing the PlayStation, I would play the hardest version, the Famicom version, and see what happened.

(As an aside, what does the average gamer mean by grinding? This is another gaming YouTube problem I have. Whenever a YouTuber complains about RPGs, they mention how you have to grind. Do they consider just regular fighting in general to be grinding? There are very few games where I think you have to stop and fight random battles so you are strong enough to continue. The vast majority of RPGs will have you at the right level if you just fight normally as you go along. Are these people running away from most battles and then can't beat a boss until they grind? I don't know what the definition of grinding is for most people, but with my definition even most old games don't have much grinding. Of course Dragon Quest I is basically a game entirely dedicated to grinding, and Dragon Quest II requires it because they didn't have time to balance the later parts of the game, but most of the time with old games you have to grind a little bit at the beginning but then you're good to go for the rest of the game. Like in the first Phantasy Star game where at the start you can only survive one battle before having to go back into town to heal, but once you do that a few times and are properly leveled, the rest of the game is smooth.)

After having beaten Final Fantasy II, I can say that you don't have to grind at all, even at the beginning. It is by far the easiest of the NES/Famicom Final Fantasy games. Don't worry about the leveling system, it will all happen naturally. You are not meant to get your weapon and magic to the max level. What JRPG actually expects you to be the max level to beat the game? Even the previously mentioned Dragon Quest I, a game about grinding, only expects you to get about two-thirds of the way to the max level. By the end of Final Fantasy II, other than my Cure spell, my highest level magic was Thunder at level four and it didn't matter. This game is easy. I even put myself at a disadvantage in the beginning by using Maria as a fighter and Guy as a mage, therefore losing out on the benefit of their initial stats.

I didn't grind for gil, I didn't grind for stats, I didn't use the target-cancel glitch, I didn't use the Blood Sword on the final boss, and I didn't struggle, I just kept progressing. There was one time when I thought I had to grind, but then I remembered I could show the Pass to get onto the Dreadnought instead of fighting the Captain, which I was not expected to be strong enough to beat at that time.

Final Fantasy II is not a masterpiece. There are plenty of flaws (the game doesn't even have an airship theme 😢), but the leveling system is not one of them. Think of it like a rudimentary class system. You're deciding what you want your character to specialize in, and without thinking too much about it, the game is going to handle the rest. You will level naturally simply by playing the game, it will just be presented to you in a different format.

Yes, I am someone that posts on a video game enthusiast forum, so I'm deep into gaming, I have played a lot of video games, and I'm better than most people at them. (The most embarrassing flex possible.) However, I feel like someone that dedicates a YouTube channel to video games would also be decent at video games. Even the ones that say they're bad at video games usually aren't bad. You watch their gameplay and they're typically just making beginners' mistakes that everyone made while calling themselves bad. So these people don't need to abuse the systems of Final Fantasy II. It feels like the issue I talked about earlier, one YouTuber mentioned it so they all have to mention it and it feels like the same script over and over and over again with no thought put into it. Just reading off the Wikipedia page and adding the same commentary that everyone else has.

My point is, if YouTube also recommends the five hour Kingdom Hearts III video, don't watch it. It's really bad. I'm not saying that as a salty fanboy, I haven't even play Kingdom Hearts III. I'm saying it as someone who really regrets giving that video a view.

Thank you for reading about my petty annoyances and how I beat a game entirely out of spite. 🙂
Click to expand...
I agree with your general point here, a lot of it comes down to what becomes the ‘meme’ information nuggets about games, so you get a lot of ‘you must do x!’ and ‘you must use a guide!’ and ‘this game is broken if you follow this plan for optimum strategy y!’.

A game being able to be exploited isn’t some proof that it doesn’t work, just proof that 30 years of people playing something designed in months and tested by a handful of people will continually hone the ‘optimal’ path (mechanically) and spread it online as the true way to play it.

Thing is, I don’t play rpgs for optimal paths. I don’t play them to turn up at the final boss at max level with all the best equipment that I’ve read how to find without having done so myself, so that I can just kill them in three turns and then claim the game was easy. A bit like, when I play tabletop games, I don’t build characters for maximum damage just because it’s feasible and those guides exist. I build the characters I want to play with the kit and skills that feel right for them.

I quite like finishing an rpg, talking to someone else and realising that I missed x sidequest and didn’t get magic weapon y, or that the party member I recruited, if I had turned them down, would have lead to a different one. It means the campaign feels more like my campaign that I muddled through rather than an optimal gamefaqs run where having stepped in every area and gained every item is deemed completion at the expense of having actually enjoyed the sense of discovery and exploration at your own pace.
 
Last edited:
DaaaaaaaaAAAAMN, Tales of Arise REALLY took off now. What a twist! I was prepared for a good, if grounded, JRPG and now it became SO much more hype!
 
WhyS said:
The main reason I played this game is because I like playing the original version of games
Click to expand...
My man. I thought I was the only person who did this. Looking at games and understanding why changes are made later on in re-releases is like a thing for me.

Pixelknight said:
I agree with your general point here, a lot of it comes down to what becomes the ‘meme’ information nuggets about games, so you get a lot of ‘you must do x!’ and ‘you must use a guide!’ and ‘this game is broken if you follow this plan for optimum strategy y!’.
Click to expand...
I think it was in the SaGa series OT on Era where I first saw push back on the whole "you have to hit your own people, this game sucks" narrative which I thought was really interesting because I remember that was the prevailing wisdom back on GameFAQs when II was finally playable for people with the fan translation. There was an interview with Kawazu on either Retronauts or USGamer where the topic came up and it was the first he'd heard of people doing that 😆
 
Pixelknight said:
I agree with your general point here, a lot of it comes down to what becomes the ‘meme’ information nuggets about games, so you get a lot of ‘you must do x!’ and ‘you must use a guide!’ and ‘this game is broken if you follow this plan for optimum strategy y!’.

A game being able to be exploited isn’t some proof that it doesn’t work, just proof that 30 years of people playing something designed in months and tested by a handful of people will continually hone the ‘optimal’ path (mechanically) and spread it online as the true way to play it.

Thing is, I don’t play rpgs for optimal paths. I don’t play them to turn up at the final boss at max level with all the best equipment that I’ve read how to find without having done so myself, so that I can just kill them in three turns and then claim the game was easy. A bit like, when I play tabletop games, I don’t build characters for maximum damage just because it’s feasible and those guides exist. I build the characters I want to play with the kit and skills that feel right for them.

I quite like finishing an rpg, talking to someone else and realising that I missed x sidequest and didn’t get magic weapon y, or that the party member I recruited, if I had turned them down, would have lead to a different one. It means the campaign feels more like my campaign that I muddled through rather than an optimal gamefaqs run where having stepped in every area and gained every item is deemed completion at the expense of having actually enjoyed the sense of discovery and exploration at your own pace.
Click to expand...
Honestly, this works for me.

To this day, I'm glad that I never kept Alistair in my party during my first Dragon Age: Origins playthrough. I'm so glad that Loghain became my companion and that he became a companion (if briefly) again in Dragon Age Inquisition. I hated Alistair but loved Loghain. I wouldn't say I'm necessarily "anti-Alistair" but I liked Loghain. I also befriended Sten and maxed out the relationship. This was when nobody else seemed to do so because Sten "rebelled" or something (I like it when companions rebel). And I gave my dwarf brother the throne in that one place (everyone gave it to the "good guy" at first).

Honestly, I was making all the right calls because on everyone's second playthrough, they were doing more-or-less what I did (though the Loghain thing was still rare).

Without coming off as a "hipster" or something, I do feel somewhat of a sense of pride that I seemed to make my own decisions in games, even sometimes resisting what I thought the game devs "wanted" me to do.
 
I’m surprising myself by playing and enjoying Assassins Creed Odyssey. I got a physical double pack along with Origins, and I started Odyssey first since it got a 60 fps patch. Very nice story so far. I don’t think I’ll attempt much side content though.
 
shoptroll said:
My man. I thought I was the only person who did this. Looking at games and understanding why changes are made later on in re-releases is like a thing for me.


I think it was in the SaGa series OT on Era where I first saw push back on the whole "you have to hit your own people, this game sucks" narrative which I thought was really interesting because I remember that was the prevailing wisdom back on GameFAQs when II was finally playable for people with the fan translation. There was an interview with Kawazu on either Retronauts or USGamer where the topic came up and it was the first he'd heard of people doing that 😆
Click to expand...
This need to be efficient in various FF/Saga games where the growth is based on what you do was a mystery to me when I first read about it too. I played through several of them without that ever occurring to me, as the idea of a 30+ hour roleplaying game spent doing the exact opposite in order to maximise stats, and then to complain about having somehow felt that you needed to, is just strange to me. It’s like some would rather hate-play a game than field a slightly unoptimal build through the element of chance.

For more recent games in a similar vein, I really enjoyed the party development in Legend of Legacy and The Alliance Alive and their unusual stat growth for similar reasons. Sure, you can try to game it, but if you just play it normally it works really well.
 
Tailzo said:
I’m surprising myself by playing and enjoying Assassins Creed Odyssey. I got a physical double pack along with Origins, and I started Odyssey first since it got a 60 fps patch. Very nice story so far. I don’t think I’ll attempt much side content though.
Click to expand...
Is Jesper Kyd's music still good?







Oh God, I miss the atmosphere of the first Assassin's Creed...
 
Apparently, Pathfinder: Kingmaker (finished it recently) and Pathfinder: Wrath of the Righteous (playing right now) didn't make it on the list...


 
0
shoptroll said:
My man. I thought I was the only person who did this. Looking at games and understanding why changes are made later on in re-releases is like a thing for me.
Click to expand...
I love playing the original version of a game. What you said is certainly part of it, but so often it's a drastically different experience than the modern version, and I want to see what it's like. I would never say that a remake replaces the original version of a game because they each provide something unique.

I could go into my thought process more, but something you said is related to what I might dislike the most in video game discourse. People saying that a game aged poorly. Games do not age. They are the exact same experience that they always were. Your modern perspective is not revealing problems that were never seen before in the past. (When I say "your" I don't mean you, I mean the hypothetical person I'm complaining about right now.) Changes in game design were made because people saw these problems in the first place.

For example, Final Fantasy VII. Someone might say that the game aged poorly, just look at those graphics! Well I was a kid back then and a huge Nintendo fanboy. I didn't play Final Fantasy VII until I was a teenager, but until that time, I hated the game. I mocked everything about it, especially those graphics. A lot of people mocked those graphics. If everyone thought those graphics were perfect, then no game would ever look better than Final Fantasy VII. People played Final Fantasy VII and loved Final Fantasy VII while seeing all the same problems that you would see playing it today. Changes are made to address problems. But guess what? Just because changes in game design are made for future games, that does not age older games. It does not change them. If you play Final Fantasy VII in 2022, it is the same exact game that it was in 1997. You will adapt to issues in the same way people adapted back then, or be constantly annoyed by them in the same way people were back then. Just because a certain problem doesn't exist in modern games does not mean people were okay with it in older games. If they were, then that problem never would have been fixed in the first place.

The reason this bothers me so much is because the way this argument is used is rude. It's typically used in a review context, and instead of simply saying that they don't like some popular game as much as the average person, they say that they don't like some popular game as much as the average person, and they're objectively right because they are able to see the game with enlightened modern sensibilities while others are stupid. It's such a dismissive attitude to take. Dismissing both others' opinions and the validity of a video game.

Years in the future, someone will make a YouTube review about Fire Emblem: Three Houses and say, "Man, this game did not age well. Look at the graphics on that fruit! The side quests are just running back and forth in the monastery. These menus are literally Hell on Earth." As though this wasn't known back in 2019.

Sort of related is how the term "overrated" gets used. I have never seen it used properly. People will simply say that a game is overrated, but not go into any details about what is happening that is causing a game to be overrated. Even if they did, they would still need evidence to support their claim, and it would probably go as deep as saying people are caught up in the hype, or blinded by nostalgia, or were swayed by the pretty graphics as though people give bad games a pass if they look nice. That's why everyone loves The Order: 1886. Just because your rating for a game is below the average rating of a game, that does not make the game overrated.

And don't even get me started on "expectations." That's the worst part of Direct season, people going around saying, "keep your expectations in check," and dismissing complaints after a Direct by saying, "your expectations were too high." We are on a Nintendo enthusiast forum. Before we were on a video game enthusiast forum. We have all seen plenty of Directs and know what to expect. If a Direct doesn't have any games that you're interested in, and you say it was a disappointing Direct as a result, that's perfectly valid and not an expectation problem. If you expect a Direct to be 40 minutes of nothing that you care about, and it is, in fact, 40 minutes of nothing that you care about, it's not suddenly a good Direct because you expected it to be bad for your tastes.

I think it was at its worst with the September 2019 Direct. I enjoyed the Direct (and can't remember the last Direct I didn't enjoy actually), but a lot of people did not, and there was so much anger in the old place, and a lot of "your expectations were too high" getting thrown around. Then about a week later it became generally accepted to say that it wasn't a good Direct and no one would say anything. However in the first few days after that Direct, no one was willing to listen and they broke out the expectations excuse every chance they got.

It's so demeaning to people. You have no idea what their expectations were, but you're claiming you do and that they were too high. You're claiming that they're stupid and should be more like you, someone who is superior and able to keep their expectations in check due to your vast intellect regarding all things Nintendo Directs. In fact, if you were to expect someone to poop on your face while you were sleeping, and then they did that, you would actually be cool with it because that's the Monado's power / the power of expectations.

Yes, if someone were to expect Nintendo to give them a million dollars during a Direct, and they were upset when Nintendo didn't do that, then that was an expectation problem. But it's not an expectation problem when a video game enthusiast doesn't like any of the video games shown during a 40 minute video game presentation by their favorite video game company. That's just going to happen at some point, especially when a Direct caters to a certain crowd. Nintendo has a diverse lineup of games. Despite not caring too much for platformers, I still eat well as a Nintendo fan, but if they did a Direct that is as platformer centric as the last Direct was RPG centric, that would be the first disappointing Direct in a long time for me. That's not an expectation problem, that's a taste problem.

The common ground with all three of my complaints in this post, saying a game doesn't age well, calling a game overrated, and claiming peoples' expectations were too high, is that I think they're used in rude and dismissive ways. It's like inviting someone to a debate, but also telling them that no matter what they say, you win. The only thing that always wins is Team January.

#TeamJanuary
 
Tailzo said:
Except for story cutscenes, I never hear the sound of the game, so I couldn’t say, sorry.
Click to expand...
Damn. I guess the music is either too ambient (maybe Jesper Kyd overdid it) like BOTW's or it's just musical notes and motifs here and there...
 
merp said:
Damn. I guess the music is either too ambient (maybe Jesper Kyd overdid it) like BOTW's or it's just musical notes and motifs here and there...
Click to expand...
No, I just use it as a «podcast game». And I often just play in short bursts with one ear ready to hear children needing me anyway.
 
Josh5890 said:
Ok, I am giving myself one last shot to finish Octopath Traveler. I have an 85-hour playthrough with only two character storylines finished. I have three characters in the mid 50's, one at 44, and the others in the upper 30's.

The last time I put serious effort into the game, I made it to the final boss in two storylines, but I hit the wall. Right now, I am going through and doing all of the side-quests. Hopefully that will level me up more and give me enough decent equipment.

One last time...
Click to expand...

Ok so I've actually made some decent progress in this task. I am up to five storylines completed after finishing Olberic's and Alfyn's on Sunday. I actually came close to beating the boss in H'aanit's storyline as well. Right now my party consists of

Ophilia (Cleric/Scholar) Lv 59
Tressa (Merchant/Warrior) Lv 58
Olberic (Warrior/Apothecary) Lv 58

I have fallen into a trap where most of my attacks are hinging on Olberic's ultimate move which does 12k in damage and Ophilia's double magic with scholar which can do 6k. The problem is that Olberic's ultimate isn't hitting 100% of the time, even with the accuracy boost. Everyone else is just focused on breaking the bosses. The strategy kind of works, but it makes everything longer and tedious.
 
Josh5890 said:
I have fallen into a trap where most of my attacks are hinging on Olberic's ultimate move which does 12k in damage and Ophilia's double magic with scholar which can do 6k. The problem is that Olberic's ultimate isn't hitting 100% of the time, even with the accuracy boost. Everyone else is just focused on breaking the bosses. The strategy kind of works, but it makes everything longer and tedious.
Click to expand...
Are you using Werner’s Sword by any chance?
 
It's been too long since I played Octopath, so I don't remember specific strategies, but I can say I beat every boss with whatever characters were required to trigger the banter immediately preceding it. The game allows for flexible group compositions and multiple paths to victory. If one thing ever stops working for you, there'll be other solutions waiting for you, ready to be discovered.
 
Josh5890 said:
Yup
Click to expand...
There’s your problem with the divine skill since I ran into the exact same problem a couple weeks ago. Werner’s Sword is the age-old equipment trope of “higher than usual damage, secret junk accuracy” 😂

(AKA why you don’t run Casey Bat in EarthBound)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.


Back
Top Bottom