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I really liked Tales of Arise, even if I didn't think the plot and characters were anything special.
It's just one of the prettiest game I've had the pleasure of playing and the songs in it were fantastic too.
And for once I actually knew what I was doing in the combat!
The game was so pretty I rarely skipped their combination attack scenes.

It would probably be my favorite Tales of game if I didn't have a weak spot for Tales of Abyss' story and characters!
(Not that I've played many tales of games, only Vesperia next to these two and that one really disappointed me)
 
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Imagine Ys games with Tales budget...
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On topic, played around 10 hours more of chrono cross, story going to crazy places now (and still don't know if it's in a good way or not). Still don't know how "level up" works here, sometimes get 1 stat, sometimes all, sometimes none, wish the game was clearer in this aspect as some of the fights are starting to take more time even with ffwd
 
On topic, played around 10 hours more of chrono cross, story going to crazy places now (and still don't know if it's in a good way or not). Still don't know how "level up" works here, sometimes get 1 stat, sometimes all, sometimes none, wish the game was clearer in this aspect as some of the fights are starting to take more time even with ffwd
Character growth is tied to the story progression / total number of stars you’ve acquired. You really don’t need to worry about stat growth, at a certain point the characters stop growing until your next star is earned.

If fights are taking longer than you want maybe look into upgrading gear or your elements.
 
Sorry for the dumb question, newbie here. What's the meaning of the "ST" at the title?
ST stands for Star Topic (a play off the old Nintendo NES games StarTropics and StarTropics 2). Basically any ST on Famiboards is the official thread for discussion on a topic. In this case, this is the official thread for all RPG discussion. So if you like playing and discussing RPGs, you are in the right place :)
 
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On topic, played around 10 hours more of chrono cross, story going to crazy places now (and still don't know if it's in a good way or not). Still don't know how "level up" works here, sometimes get 1 stat, sometimes all, sometimes none, wish the game was clearer in this aspect as some of the fights are starting to take more time even with ffwd
Yeah as Shoptroll said above, basically for nearly every boss you get a star for beating them. For the next two to five fights or so, you can get small level up bonuses for regular fights. Typically HP, but usually one good stat too. If you want to min-max, make sure you exhaust those mini level ups after each boss with the characters you care about (I just stuck with my main party, but you can swap in reserve members too). Interestingly then unless you are grinding for item drops, regular fights can be skipped once you’ve exhausted your mini level up fights.

Stars btw are also used when summoning and can only be replenished when resting at an inn / Serge’s house etc. You can see your current count on the main menu.
 
I finished my replay of Paper Mario tonight after 23.5 hours! I think this was my first full replay in 20+ years so I was wondering how it would hold up and what it would mean to me today as a more simple RPG. It’s actually a very elegant RPG and it was ultimately even better than I remembered!

I mentioned in my last post, I wasn’t fully feeling the game in chapter 1 especially as you don’t even get action commands for a while. Once I got past chapter 1 the game opens up a bit as you get access to the sewers (an initially optional dungeon with tougher enemies and bosses) and star power (a slowly recharging gauge that lets you cast permanently learned spells acquired following each chapter). Enemies start becoming more tricky here as well, but depending on how you level up you can become significantly more powerful in interesting ways. Perhaps Paper Mario’s most signature feature is the badge system, accessories you can toggle on and off that each cost different amounts of BP. These range from new moves (like a more powerful jump or the quake hammer that targets foes on the ground or ceiling), to abilities, and stat boosts. You can choose to either grow your HP, FP (magic), and BP after each level up which means if you want to increase your BP quickly like I did, your health and FP totals will remain low so you’ll have to always make the most of your turns and blocking becomes even more important. While I never bought any at the store, I was more regularly using attack items as well as making more use of status effects to wipe out bigger groups. I really appreciate how Paper Mario handles XP as you get less from weaker enemies which encourages you to keep moving forward and time your level ups efficiently for HP/FP/SP refills. My favorite part of this playthrough were the tough optional bosses that often encourage you to come up with unique badge loadouts to maximize damage and defense differently than hoards of regular enemies. I loved beating all of them including all three rounds with The Master (one of many elements essentially lifted from Super Mario RPG (the general plot being the biggest)).

While they mostly only have their moments in the chapter that introduced them, I really enjoyed the partner system. I made sure to play with everyone at least for a decent while this playthrough (a lot of challenges are most geared towards your most recent addition), though Bombette (my favorite character) and Watt with her armor piercing attack were my MVPs. Again there’s a great amount of choice here as you regularly decide turn order between Mario and your partner, who you’ll bring into battle (swapping a character wastes a turn), and also which characters you’ll upgrade first.

Beyond that I really enjoyed the big adventure with the connected world (no world map you travel on here!) and talking with all of the unique NPCs (they really need to bring unique NPCs back). I totally forgot Paper Mario was like a Trails game where NPCs regularly get new dialogue between big events and chapters. I made sure to talk to everyone in Toad Town at least between each chapter and did all of the sidequests I found (including all of Koopa Koot’s favors…which might not have been worth it lol). While not my favorite part of the game, I appreciated the Princess Peach interludes more this playthrough since it gave her something to do and made the ending more impactful (Incidentally, I baked the cake right on the first try!). My favorite part of the story I completely forgot about was definitely the penguin murder mystery since the dialogue during and after this section is especially funny.

So yeah, I’m really glad I stuck with my Paper Mario replay. It’s an awesome game. Looking forward to replaying The Thousand Year Door (my favorite!) and Super Paper Mario in the near future and I’ll continue hoping Color Splash will come to Switch eventually too so more people can play it.
 
I finished my replay of Paper Mario tonight after 23.5 hours! I think this was my first full replay in 20+ years so I was wondering how it would hold up and what it would mean to me today as a more simple RPG. It’s actually a very elegant RPG and it was ultimately even better than I remembered!

I mentioned in my last post, I wasn’t fully feeling the game in chapter 1 especially as you don’t even get action commands for a while. Once I got past chapter 1 the game opens up a bit as you get access to the sewers (an initially optional dungeon with tougher enemies and bosses) and star power (a slowly recharging gauge that lets you cast permanently learned spells acquired following each chapter). Enemies start becoming more tricky here as well, but depending on how you level up you can become significantly more powerful in interesting ways. Perhaps Paper Mario’s most signature feature is the badge system, accessories you can toggle on and off that each cost different amounts of BP. These range from new moves (like a more powerful jump or the quake hammer that targets foes on the ground or ceiling), to abilities, and stat boosts. You can choose to either grow your HP, FP (magic), and BP after each level up which means if you want to increase your BP quickly like I did, your health and FP totals will remain low so you’ll have to always make the most of your turns and blocking becomes even more important. While I never bought any at the store, I was more regularly using attack items as well as making more use of status effects to wipe out bigger groups. I really appreciate how Paper Mario handles XP as you get less from weaker enemies which encourages you to keep moving forward and time your level ups efficiently for HP/FP/SP refills. My favorite part of this playthrough were the tough optional bosses that often encourage you to come up with unique badge loadouts to maximize damage and defense differently than hoards of regular enemies. I loved beating all of them including all three rounds with The Master (one of many elements essentially lifted from Super Mario RPG (the general plot being the biggest)).

While they mostly only have their moments in the chapter that introduced them, I really enjoyed the partner system. I made sure to play with everyone at least for a decent while this playthrough (a lot of challenges are most geared towards your most recent addition), though Bombette (my favorite character) and Watt with her armor piercing attack were my MVPs. Again there’s a great amount of choice here as you regularly decide turn order between Mario and your partner, who you’ll bring into battle (swapping a character wastes a turn), and also which characters you’ll upgrade first.

Beyond that I really enjoyed the big adventure with the connected world (no world map you travel on here!) and talking with all of the unique NPCs (they really need to bring unique NPCs back). I totally forgot Paper Mario was like a Trails game where NPCs regularly get new dialogue between big events and chapters. I made sure to talk to everyone in Toad Town at least between each chapter and did all of the sidequests I found (including all of Koopa Koot’s favors…which might not have been worth it lol). While not my favorite part of the game, I appreciated the Princess Peach interludes more this playthrough since it gave her something to do and made the ending more impactful (Incidentally, I baked the cake right on the first try!). My favorite part of the story I completely forgot about was definitely the penguin murder mystery since the dialogue during and after this section is especially funny.

So yeah, I’m really glad I stuck with my Paper Mario replay. It’s an awesome game. Looking forward to replaying The Thousand Year Door (my favorite!) and Super Paper Mario in the near future and I’ll continue hoping Color Splash will come to Switch eventually too so more people can play it.
I’m playing it for the first time right now, just finished chapter 2. It really is an elegant little rpg, isn’t it? It’s impressive they were able to balance around such low numbers. I just got a hammer upgrade and being able to do 3 damage is a game changer, especially when compared to the more incremental upgrades you get in most rpgs where enemy HP scales from 50-1000.
 
I started my next RPG yesterday, I’m replaying Final Fantasy VI, my favorite Final Fantasy game! I had a good deal of time yesterday so I’m already at Zozo! The last time I played FFVI was on GBA, so it’s been well over ten years since I last played it. This time I’m playing on my Wii Virtual Console copy, so this is the NA SNES FFIII version I grew up with.

I’ll definitely write more posts as I continue to progress deeper into the game, but already I’m having an awesome time revisiting it. The big story beats I’ve encountered thus far like the poisoning of Doma, The Phantom Train, and Edgar and Sabin’s coin toss still hit strongly today. I’m having a lot of fun on the gameplay front too. While I’ll probably slow down a bit once I get Espers to learn spells, I’ve thus far been pushing ahead quickly this playthrough which is making it tougher especially in boss battles. While you do keep XP when you die, which is great so you don’t get completely stuck, I have been reloading for deaths to try to overcome tough spots. Ultros in particular was very tough for me since I accidentally took the shortest path to him so he was able to wipe out party members with one hit. I’ll definitely go into it more in a future post, but already I love the party building / customization features of Final Fantasy VI. Everyone has unique strengths to begin with, but relics and espers can really expand your possibilities. My favorite character is Sabin and already I have him armed with the Black Belt to counter attacks and I’m looking forward to when he’ll be able to dual wield down the road once I get the right relic.

Last thing for now, yes, I did suplex the Phantom Train so this playthrough is already on the right track :)
 
Played all the weekend Chrono Cross and finally finished it at 24 hours (FFWD mostly active all the time). After I finished it I checked a FAQ and saw that I missed A LOT of sidequests, items and characters (also funny to see the second disk were just the last 2 dungeons). Regarding the ending (the normal one) my initial reaction was:

dDKjCc5.gif


I totally felt this was another game and slapped the "Chrono" at the end, adding all the infodump at the last part like "HEY LOOK!! This is actually related to Trigger!!"(insert ghosts of characters from the other game). I'm guessing I missed some info based on all the missing sidequests (like the masamune or more info on Guardia or Porre) but I just didn't "feel it" like more Chrono. Not that it's a bad thing, the dual worlds work well for the main part of the story, the battle system does shine once you have a full party and even with the wierd level up system, you can always manage with the correct elements and try to use new characters and some of them are very creative (like mojo) not to mention the quality soundtrack.

I'll probably replay it during winter to get all the endings, but it was a nice experience now that I had the chance to play it relaxed.
 
I totally felt this was another game and slapped the "Chrono" at the end, adding all the infodump at the last part like "HEY LOOK!! This is actually related to Trigger!!"(insert ghosts of characters from the other game).
What's goofy is the game Cross is based on is actually more overtly Chrono. Or at least it didn't take as long to get to the Chrono stuff as Cross did. Plus they took a RD character that was definitely Magus and removed his history in Cross so as to not betray the "massive cast of interchangeable characters" idea. So in a way, it started out as being more Chrono, and they whittled the connections down and moved them to the back half so it could stand better on its own.
 
Hey fellow RPG lovers. It's been a minute since I posted here so it is time to change that.

After getting back from vacation last week I decided to start Xenoblade Chronicles 2. Since 3 is coming out in a couple months, and it has been a little over a year since I finished XC 1, I figured it was time.

So far, I am 20 hours in, I'm guessing halfway through chapter 4. It has been mostly a breeze so far, especially one I realized that I didn't have any accessories attached to my characters. I went with easy mode, mainly because I knew that it was a 60+ hour game and I still have bad memories of XC 1's difficulty spikes. I kind of want to just breeze through this game for the most part.

So far it is fun. I'm enjoying the exploration, even if trying to get from point a to point b is just a little frustrating at times. I had to look up at one point how to get on the airship. Story is fine so far. The blade concept is ok. I'm mostly sticking with what the game gives me though. I'm curious as to where the Pyra/Mythra dynamic takes the story to.

BTW- People were not exaggerating when talking about the sexuality in the game. Monilith really turned it up to 11 with some of those character design choices and dialogue. Wow.
 
So far, I am 20 hours in, I'm guessing halfway through chapter 4. It has been mostly a breeze so far, especially one I realized that I didn't have any accessories attached to my characters. I went with easy mode, mainly because I knew that it was a 60+ hour game and I still have bad memories of XC 1's difficulty spikes. I kind of want to just breeze through this game for the most part.
Regarding the difficulty I found that replaying it in easy was a nice experience since it gives you the opportunity to enjoy the world at your pace
 
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Played all the weekend Chrono Cross and finally finished it at 24 hours (FFWD mostly active all the time). After I finished it I checked a FAQ and saw that I missed A LOT of sidequests, items and characters (also funny to see the second disk were just the last 2 dungeons). Regarding the ending (the normal one) my initial reaction was:

dDKjCc5.gif


I totally felt this was another game and slapped the "Chrono" at the end, adding all the infodump at the last part like "HEY LOOK!! This is actually related to Trigger!!"(insert ghosts of characters from the other game). I'm guessing I missed some info based on all the missing sidequests (like the masamune or more info on Guardia or Porre) but I just didn't "feel it" like more Chrono. Not that it's a bad thing, the dual worlds work well for the main part of the story, the battle system does shine once you have a full party and even with the wierd level up system, you can always manage with the correct elements and try to use new characters and some of them are very creative (like mojo) not to mention the quality soundtrack.

I'll probably replay it during winter to get all the endings, but it was a nice experience now that I had the chance to play it relaxed.
A lot of the most interesting Chrono Trigger connections are off the beaten path in side quests and clicking on everything in the Sea of Eden and Chronopolis. There’s a major one too right at the end if you save Kid at the orphanage (Lucca’s house!) with the Chrono Cross or Masamune. I was really impressed how it ties into both Trigger and Radical Dreamers on replay. Though I can totally see why it wouldn’t work for people either.
 
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I’ve been making good progress in my Final Fantasy VI replay. Last night I cleared the Floating Continent, waited for Shadow, and finally saved Cid by catching a ton of fish before stopping.

Overall, the World of Balance was great! I love the journey around the world and the constantly shifting party keeps the battle system feeling fresh. Getting Espers and magic is the big game changer in this section as items become deprioritized. You get a lot of MP in this game for everyone, so teaching everyone Cure quickly means you don’t need to worry about potions anymore. Even for characters that don’t focus on magic, learning level 2 healing and elemental spells makes everyone more relevant. While I like to teach my favorite characters every spell and I’m already making great progress on that front, not every spell is terribly useful which is relatively disappointing since they see no use, but nice since there are 13 characters who can learn and use spells. Speaking of party building, my dream team of Sabin, Cyan, and Mog is coming together. They’ve learned nearly every spell possible in the World of Balance and Sabin, now armed with the Genji Glove, is often doing significantly more damage dual wielding than with his still powerful Blitz attacks. This team crushed the Floating Continent together, so I’m definitely going to re-recruit everyone quickly and recruit Gogo as the fourth member. I forget how I build out Cyan, but the plan for Mog is to get dual casting and the 1MP cost accessory and then teach him Ultima. Gogo will be there to Mimic that.

As for story beats since I last posted, I think the Esper backstory, the Magitek Research Facility, and the Floating Continent are definitely my favorite parts. I especially enjoyed the minecart escape sequence from the Magitek Research facility which felt extra special at the time making use of Mode 7 to look somewhat 3D. When I was playing it, I was thinking about how far we’ve since come when comparing it to Final Fantasy 7 Remake’s spectacular motorcycle finale. The General Leo scene was a bit less spectacular than I remember since I thought he fought more than Kefka, but it was still good. Kefka definitely steals the show here and when he throws Gesthal off the Floating Continent. Weirdest part of the end of the World of Balance is that Banon just straight up disappears after being a major character early on who was never allowed to get KO’d at all. Nobody at all is in Vector where he was last seen and he isn’t in Narshe or in the Returners hideout. You’d think someone would say something beyond one Returner at the hideout lazily wondering how he was doing lol.

I have to put my playthrough on pause until next week, but I’m looking forward to tackling the World of Ruin! The open second half of the game has always been my favorite and what makes FFVI one of my favorite games of all time, so I’ll definitely be planning my way through it in the meantime until I can play again.
 
New update from me on my playthrough of Xenoblade DE. Played another 20 hours and am at the end of the Alcamoth chapter. Satorl is as magical as I remembered it to be. Funny thing, there is a quest where you have to get on top of a ruin via a "secret" door, and like my younger self, I couldn't figure it out without looking it up. Some things don't change I guess.

The next area, Makna Forest and Frontier Village, might be one of my most favorite in the game. I just love the tropical forest setting, and the rainbow over the waterfalls are beautiful. Also, Heropon and Melia join the party! Sorry, I know many people hate the nopon, but I find them funny. Also, the music in Frontier Village is so carefree and happy. It's a contrast to the rather melancholic music, which I do like too. (The melancholic music fits the theme of the game perfectly, if you ask me.)
I don't want to spoil it, but knowing the story, it's fun to see the foreshadowings about the Monado, the Telethia and High Entia. And don't forget Alvis.

Eryth Sea looks magical at nights with shooting stars. The vistas are just stunning, and you feel a real achievement reaching the Bionis' top. What I felt very quickly is how big Eryth Sea is when you consider how long it takes to swim from one point to another, in contrast to Satorl Marsh and Makna, which felt smaller on my replay.
The story is ramping up again here and Shulk is about to get the true power of the Monado.

What I clearly remembered correctly is the abundance of quests like "kill x of y" or "collect x,y and z". Knewing that, I didn't explore the map and killed only a few mobs on the way to the main hub of each area, so I get the quests first and don't waste time doing things twice. These collector and monster kill missions are exhausting, and I feel this in Alcamoth more than before. Thank god that they marked enemies and items you need for quests with exclamation marks.
 
Ok, I'm ready to throw a pro controller at something. At the end of chapter 5 in XC2 and this boss is driving me nuts. I think I've spent the better of two hours on this one.

Seriously, I get the Power cables HP down to lie 75% and then suddenly it goes crazy on me. I'm sitting in the low 40's on all of my players but it doesn't matter.

Time to go to sleep and try again tomorrow night I guess.
 
Ok, I'm ready to throw a pro controller at something. At the end of chapter 5 in XC2 and this boss is driving me nuts. I think I've spent the better of two hours on this one.

Seriously, I get the Power cables HP down to lie 75% and then suddenly it goes crazy on me. I'm sitting in the low 40's on all of my players but it doesn't matter.

Time to go to sleep and try again tomorrow night I guess.
Oh, Aeshma's Core? Yeah that boss suuuuuccckks
 
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I've recently been playing original FFVII on Switch. Forgot how much weird experimental stuff they probably spent too much time on. Recently hit the point where I had to chase down one submarine with another. Looked at the controls and instructions and it seemed a bit obtuse, but I ended up beating it in about 10 seconds. Hope somebody didn't spend too many days programming it!
 
I held off on buying Switch Sports until earlier this week to play some games from my backlog, so I've been playing Tokyo Mirage Sessions for the past few weeks and just finished it tonight. I'll probably post more detailed thoughts later, but I've always expected this game would be my shit since it was properly revealed in the April 2015 direct...and it mostly was. That being said, I had the same problem I have with a lot of JRPGs where, regardless of how much I'm enjoying the game, I'm kinda over it by the last few hours because I've put so much time into it.

It felt weird in a kinda bittersweet way to be done with this game. Since this game never found much of an audience and will most likely stay as a one-off, the ending really did feel like I was saying goodbye to these characters. As an aside, I was going to comment in that thread about buying habits of Nintendo fans saying it didn't make much sense to complain about that in the Switch era, but maybe OP had a point haha
 
Ok, I'm ready to throw a pro controller at something. At the end of chapter 5 in XC2 and this boss is driving me nuts. I think I've spent the better of two hours on this one.

Seriously, I get the Power cables HP down to lie 75% and then suddenly it goes crazy on me. I'm sitting in the low 40's on all of my players but it doesn't matter.

Time to go to sleep and try again tomorrow night I guess.

Xenoblade sucks at visual communication of special properties of enemies and their attacks. Aeshma's Core is the prime example and probably the game's most notorious wall for this very reason. I think the fight even came up here on Fami before. Back then, by the time I got around to offering advice, the person had already beaten the boss on their next day attempt, so hopefully you'll follow the same trajectory, but the boss basically boils down to the cables reflecting damage at a certain HP threshold, so you have to blow them up in a giant overkill combo once it gets to that point.
 
Ok, I'm ready to throw a pro controller at something. At the end of chapter 5 in XC2 and this boss is driving me nuts. I think I've spent the better of two hours on this one.

Seriously, I get the Power cables HP down to lie 75% and then suddenly it goes crazy on me. I'm sitting in the low 40's on all of my players but it doesn't matter.

Time to go to sleep and try again tomorrow night I guess.
This is the boss that breaks people in Xenoblade 2. I think it took me three tries? IIRC it has spike damage after a while which you can take steps to mitigate or burst it like Sheldon suggests.
 
This is the boss that breaks people in Xenoblade 2. I think it took me three tries? IIRC it has spike damage after a while which you can take steps to mitigate or burst it like Sheldon suggests.
Yes. Very yes. The spike damage is what was getting me, too. I forgot how I managed to tank that shit but @Josh5890 if I beat it, you can!! Even though I forgot how I did it, sorry 😅
 
YALL

Been a while since I was convinced to buy a game based on the talent and one screenshot. What does the RPGfam think?

The staff involved definitely has me intrigued and their goals for it definitely speak to me! Looking forward to seeing more of this one!
 
I finished Lost Judgment.

So far the best rpg of the generation. What a game… Incredible!
Does it improve on Judgment's "Detective" minigames? I was enjoying the story of the first game, but the tailing, and taking pictures, and all the other detective stuff they tried fell flat for me.
 
The problem I have with Furyu is that they love throwing names out for their RPGs. I'll keep an eye on it though.
Yeah this remember me of IF with Fairy Fencer havign Yoshitaka Amano (just the logo) and Nobuo Uematsu an Earthbound papas (for like 6 tracks)
 
Xenoblade sucks at visual communication of special properties of enemies and their attacks. Aeshma's Core is the prime example and probably the game's most notorious wall for this very reason. I think the fight even came up here on Fami before. Back then, by the time I got around to offering advice, the person had already beaten the boss on their next day attempt, so hopefully you'll follow the same trajectory, but the boss basically boils down to the cables reflecting damage at a certain HP threshold, so you have to blow them up in a giant overkill combo once it gets to that point.

This is the boss that breaks people in Xenoblade 2. I think it took me three tries? IIRC it has spike damage after a while which you can take steps to mitigate or burst it like Sheldon suggests.

Yes. Very yes. The spike damage is what was getting me, too. I forgot how I managed to tank that shit but @Josh5890 if I beat it, you can!! Even though I forgot how I did it, sorry 😅

Yea, I've read some strategies while at work today and I'll have to tinker with my set up when I get home. Also, from what I've read, this is one of the most frustrating moments in the game so hopefully it is smooth sailing after this boss tonight.

Thanks everyone!
 
Does it improve on Judgment's "Detective" minigames? I was enjoying the story of the first game, but the tailing, and taking pictures, and all the other detective stuff they tried fell flat for me.
I feel tailing, investigating, running after and sneaking are all better. And you don’t get «injured» anymore.
 
This is completely ramdom, but I just remembered Atlus had announced an Etrian Odyssey sequel and I need it asap.
 
BOO YEAH!!!!

Second try this evening and I beat the titan ship. I didn't have any ingredients to manifest the spike defense cores so that was out of the question for now. I basically hit the core enough to load up the chain attack meter. Then I went for the Power Cables. Once I got it down to ~60% I just unloaded specials and chain attacks to KO the cables before it could react. It was beautiful. It took two tries to finish off Jin, but he wasn't much problem. Same with the core sans its shield.

Chapter 5 is finished on XC 2. I assume I'm about halfway through the game at this point.
 
This is completely ramdom, but I just remembered Atlus had announced an Etrian Odyssey sequel and I need it asap.
It’s been so long.

I remember feeling like the EO games came out faster than I could play them across DS/3DS.
 
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I'm gonna give XC2 another shot. Not super optimistic but we'll see how far I get now. How long is the game if you just kinda mainline the story?
 
I'm gonna give XC2 another shot. Not super optimistic but we'll see how far I get now. How long is the game if you just kinda mainline the story?
How Long To Beat says about 64 hours, I'm seeing on Reddit people saying 50-60 when they just focused on the story and ignored side content.
I personally did it in about 80 but I meandered and explored and did a ton of side stuff so I'm a bad metric
 
Just finished chapter 7. Gotta be honest. There were some frustrating parts in that chapter, like being forced to create/level up blades' mastery levels just to advance the story. I get it that it is part of the game and all, but I guess it just isn't my cup of tea. Luckily fast travel and Google allowed me to figure out my steps quickly.

On to chapter 8!
 
Just finished chapter 7. Gotta be honest. There were some frustrating parts in that chapter, like being forced to create/level up blades' mastery levels just to advance the story. I get it that it is part of the game and all, but I guess it just isn't my cup of tea. Luckily fast travel and Google allowed me to figure out my steps quickly.

On to chapter 8!
Yuuup. Those points where progression is gated behind field skills is a very common complaint. You're not alone. Glad to hear you're progressing, though!
 
Just finished chapter 7. Gotta be honest. There were some frustrating parts in that chapter, like being forced to create/level up blades' mastery levels just to advance the story. I get it that it is part of the game and all, but I guess it just isn't my cup of tea. Luckily fast travel and Google allowed me to figure out my steps quickly.

On to chapter 8!
I feel like chapter 7 is the last rough patch for the game. IIRC the remaining chapters are pretty smooth and focused.
 
I feel like chapter 7 is the last rough patch for the game. IIRC the remaining chapters are pretty smooth and focused.
I have really mixed feelings on Chapter 7, because while it does a lot of things that are annoying (limiting your buildup, etc.) I LOVE the idea behind it and actually having a long-ish dungeon to go through. While Xenoblade games are most known for their large world exploration and usually have few to no dungeons, the few times that they've tried to do dungeons of a sort I've always really liked them, even if the execution isn't always great. I hope that XC3 throws in a few but manages to make them work better.
 
I have really mixed feelings on Chapter 7, because while it does a lot of things that are annoying (limiting your buildup, etc.) I LOVE the idea behind it and actually having a long-ish dungeon to go through. While Xenoblade games are most known for their large world exploration and usually have few to no dungeons, the few times that they've tried to do dungeons of a sort I've always really liked them, even if the execution isn't always great. I hope that XC3 throws in a few but manages to make them work better.
There was once or twice where I got lost, and not in a good way, but otherwise I loved the exploration aspect. That is definitely an aspect I'd love to see expanded on down the road in XC3. I just don't want to waste time fumbling around with blade level mastery mechanics.
 
I have really mixed feelings on Chapter 7, because while it does a lot of things that are annoying (limiting your buildup, etc.) I LOVE the idea behind it and actually having a long-ish dungeon to go through. While Xenoblade games are most known for their large world exploration and usually have few to no dungeons, the few times that they've tried to do dungeons of a sort I've always really liked them, even if the execution isn't always great. I hope that XC3 throws in a few but manages to make them work better.
I forget where the chapter splits are exactly but iirc you have the underground area where blade use is restricted right? I like that section personally. I don’t care for this stretch, mostly for story reasons where you lose Pyra and Mythra breifly.. I think that’s where chapter 7 ends from memory. Everything after you get cool pants I like.
 
Close to dropping XB2 again. Feel the story still hasn't really started and I honestly think it might have the worst combat in a jrpg I've played, even after watching 90 minutes of video guides.

It's actually made me want to want replay XB1, I first played it in 2014 and I thought it was an incredibly good, top 10 level game but I wonder if my tastes have just completely changed. Maybe I'm just completely misremembering the tone and gameplay of the first title and letting nostalgia influence me.
 
I finally beat Fire Emblem: Path of Radiance over the weekend. I think I started playing it in November or October of 2021. The first half of the game was very challenging! I was committed to two things that made the game extra hard: 1. Keeping everyone alive, which meant that a reset was required when I made a mistake and 2. Prioritizing growth and experience points for lower-level characters.

Focusing on lower-level characters meant that characters died pretty often, which led to lots of resets and frustration, leading me to often take breaks from the game for weeks at a time. Somehow this method of play worked on the GBA games, but it clearly wasn't appropriate for PoR. I'm not sure why. Maybe the group size is smaller?

Anyway, somewhere around the halfway point, I gave up on growing those baby characters and decided to lean into strengths. Learning about the weapon forge helped too. This led to fewer deaths and resets, less frustration and more success overall. I did end up losing the chubby knight (owen, i think?) on one of the last few levels. I shouldn't have brought him along, but I could taste the endgame and didn't want to lose momentum.

Overall, I thought it was a really fun game. The story was epic and the feeling of exploiting the weapon triangle/other weaknesses or successfully executing a Crit (or the thrill of nearly surviving one) was just like I remember it on the GBA. The 3D Fire Emblem games get a lot of criticism for not quite matching the art of the pixel art games (especially in the flash and pizazz of the battle screen), but I thought the graphics were charming in their early 3D-ness (despite PoR being a relatively late cube game).

Some of the new additions didn't really work for me. I liked the role of the laguz (animal people) in the storyline, but I didn't use them much in battle, due to their need to take breaks to recharge and the number of laguz-targeting weapons among enemy soldiers. I also would have liked to understand the skill system a bit better. I probably could have found the information online, I suppose.

(Side note: it was very odd to see that Crimea was used as one of the fictional countries in Path of Radiance, especially in light of the war in Ukraine. I wonder what led the team to choose that name.)

All in all, it was great. If you haven't played it yet, I recommend it. I know it's hard to get your hands on - I bought my copy for $75 in 2013 and I think it's worth quite a bit more at this point. Hopefully it gets a port or a remake. I'm looking forward to revisiting this world and these characters later this year with Radiant Dawn.

Until then, I've just started Little King's Story and it's completely charming.
 
I've been playing TearRing Saga: Yutona Eiyuu Senki recently, and it's a jolly good time.

First some backstory about the game. Shouzou Kaga came up with the idea for the first Fire Emblem game and was a designer for it during development. He then acted as the director for the next four games in the series before leaving Intelligent Systems in 1999 for form his own company. They quickly got to work making TearRing Saga, which was essentially Fire Emblem but for the PlayStation. In fact, it was so much like Fire Emblem that Nintendo sued before the game even came out and a bunch of changes were made to the game to lessen the connections to Fire Emblem a bit, though the end result is still VERY Fire Emblem.

So having played every Fire Emblem game, but wanting to play more Fire Emblem games, I finally decided to play TearRing Saga. I'm over halfway through the game at this point, and right now I would put it in the top half of my rankings for every FE game. If you have the means and desire to play the game, I suggest you do so. If you're ever played a Fire Emblem game before, there will be no adjustment period necessary as everything will be familiar to you.

Even though I keep mentioning how similar the game is to Fire Emblem, it does do some interesting things.

1. The game has the Save Staff item. This allows you to save whenever you want during a chapter and reload that save. That way you don't have to start a chapter over from the beginning if you reset. There are three of these in the game, each with 18 uses. That's 54 total uses in a game with 40 chapters. Use it freely. Seriously, use it three times in a chapter if you want to. There is literally a chapter with only two enemies. I doubt you're going to use the Save Staff during it, so that's even more Save Staff uses to spread out among the rest of the game.

2. There are two protagonists, Runan and Holmes. At various points in the game, you have the option to transfer items and units between their two armies. Runan follows the more tradition FE formula, mostly going straight from battle to battle, while Holmes has an open map where you can do skirmishes to grind experience between battles. I'm enjoying Runan's chapters more so far as some of Holmes' chapters feature annoying swamps.

3. Early in the game you get a sniper who is quite overpowered at that point. However, she refuses to kill any human enemies, so she'll only ever get them down to 1 HP and it's a fun little idea.

4. There are a ton of optional items and conversations that you are not going to see the first time if you are playing blind. For example, if you put a certain unit in Holmes' army, they might get an item that they wouldn't have gotten in Runan's army. Or having two specific units in the same army can lead to a conversation either during or between battles. There are so many of these that no matter what you do you are bound to find some of them on your own. However, it's completely understandable if you do not like this idea and want to be able to get everything on one playthrough without looking things up. I'm not saying that it's a good idea, I'm just saying that it's interesting due to the fact that the game is stuffed with this optional content, meaning you will see and get a bunch of it no matter what. (And if you want to play this game but are scared about missing stuff, someone made a guide that goes chapter by chapter on how to get everything and posted that guide on GameFAQs, so you can follow along that way.)

You know those memes where it's like, "Mom, can we get X?" "No, we have X at home." And then the X at home is way worse than what the child was asking for? Well TearRing Saga is the Fire Emblem at home, except it's really good and better than like half of the other Fire Emblem games. You should play it.

#TeamJanuary
 


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