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SammyJ9 said:
I really thought we would have seen this by now. The only thing I can think of is they're waiting for Octopath 2 to come out before talking about it again? So it could definitely show up in a summer Direct
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No DQ3 news, no news on the Dai game, come on squenix
 
At the Marbule part of my all-endings Chrono Cross run and I gotta say:

The fact that the Lagoonates' move called "Just 4 Kicks" is in execution actually 3 kicks really bugs me
 
I beat Earthbound tonight! It was awesome! This was easily my favorite of the four final Wii U VC games I’ve played so far and it was cool finally playing the other SNES JRPG I watched my brother play growing up myself. I feel like I’ve written a lot already on it, so I’ll just stick to the last bits. Dungeon Man was definitely my favorite part of the last stretch as a welcomely low key joke filled segment. I’ll throw it behind spoiler tags, basically this one guy who really likes dungeons designs his ultimate dungeon and literally becomes part of it. There’s all these signs scattered around about how a dungeon should be built. He’s very considerate about guiding your through it too (“Don’t worry about the enemies on the next floor!”) and I wasn’t expecting to have him as a very brief guest party member lol. One cool thing was definitely Stonehenge for me in this stretch as it was a dungeon I remembered watching my brother play, but I forgot all about it until I walked through it myself. Earthbound’s ending was awesome. I knew how it played out broadly, but it was very cool experiencing it myself and I forgot exactly how Giygas dies out. I love RPGs that have a proper epilogue, so I enjoyed walking through the world one last time. Only mechanical thing I want to talk about quickly as I wrap up here, I have some mixed feelings about how easy the game became as it progressed. Throwing all of your best moves out all at once just melts bosses including the final boss, but that said the last sets of regular enemies were pretty tough which I appreciated and I’ll gladly take this more gentle difficulty curve over the last three RPGs I played.

I hope one day there will be an official version of Mother 3 in English (I forgot this game ends on a cliffhanger), but for now I’m good. Next up on my Wii U Virtual Console project (seven to go!) is Fire Emblem GBA! I haven’t played this game at all before and I know nothing about it. My only other Fire Emblem experience is Awakening from last year so I’m curious what I’ll think about it. I’m likely going to juggle it with Forspoken which I do need to finish before Yakuza Ishin releases. I’ll post again soon :)
 
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👀
 
Posted this in the Labyrinth of Galleria thread, but I have to do a little evangelizing for this game I am pumped about:

Do you need to play the first game (Refrain)?

From This Review it seems like it's not important at all:

"For players who didn’t play Labyrinth of Refrain, you absolutely don’t need to: this is a spiritual sequel and you can leave your inexperience at the door."

And for some hyping of this game (note I haven't played it myself yet):

"If that were all you really saw, Labyrinth of Galleria would be a decent if somewhat forgettable RPG, similar to Labyrinth of Refrain.... And yet there is something truly special that ratchets everything from “good” to “fantastic” in the blink of an eye."

from that review I just linked, and this entire review from RPGSite:

I Hate That I Can't Talk About Why I Love Labyrinth of Galleria

Just... hrgggggh. I have had this review and various hinting comments about twists/really cool things this game does but are spoiler-y living in my head for literally years, and I can't wait to see what all the fuss is about next week.
 
SammyJ9 said:
Posted this in the Labyrinth of Galleria thread, but I have to do a little evangelizing for this game I am pumped about:

Do you need to play the first game (Refrain)?

From This Review it seems like it's not important at all:

"For players who didn’t play Labyrinth of Refrain, you absolutely don’t need to: this is a spiritual sequel and you can leave your inexperience at the door."

And for some hyping of this game (note I haven't played it myself yet):

"If that were all you really saw, Labyrinth of Galleria would be a decent if somewhat forgettable RPG, similar to Labyrinth of Refrain.... And yet there is something truly special that ratchets everything from “good” to “fantastic” in the blink of an eye."

from that review I just linked, and this entire review from RPGSite:

I Hate That I Can't Talk About Why I Love Labyrinth of Galleria

Just... hrgggggh. I have had this review and various hinting comments about twists/really cool things this game does but are spoiler-y living in my head for literally years, and I can't wait to see what all the fuss is about next week.
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Short story: no you don't need to play the first game to play this. There are some eastereggs but they are on the same level of "FF7 and FFX are related thing" and I'm pretty sure the RPG site review is talking about the story of this game, as it's stand alone from Refrain

Long Story: It's... complicated and if the reviewer was talking about the big picture, they are a really HARDCORE fan of NIS


All of this is happening in a kinda parallel worlds. Both Labyrinth games and The Witch and the Hundred Knight form part of the same universe and Niike, the titular Hundred Knight, and Velkuvrana the abomination at the end of Refrain is the same entity just with different names. How this parallel worlds thing works is explained more in Galleria
 
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I’m currently juggling two RPGs now, Fire Emblem GBA and Forspoken, and I’d like to talk about both a bit. The only normal Fire Emblem game I’ve beaten was Awakening which I only finally did last year. It’s another case of I’ve been interested in the series, but the time never felt right. With Awakening last year, what pushed me over the edge was the eshops closing and I had to figure out if I wanted any DLC not. One of the reasons I always bounced off these games prior was I never knew what difficulty was right or for me or not, but last year with my successful playthrough I settled on Normal Casual and tried to make sure no one died, but I could afford not to worry if it happened. I mention all this of course since Fire Emblem GBA only has one difficulty and permadeath always on which is a feature I’m intimidated by and adverse to if only because I refuse to let people die which means lots of reloading. I tend to read a little about older games I check out before I play them and it seems like they made this one a little easier as the first Fire Emblem they brought over and it welcomely has an extended tutorial on top of that. I appreciate that as it’s my first time doing a full permadeath playthrough of a Fire Emblem game. The way this game is set up compared to Awakening is demanding more attention from me as there is no grinding opportunities between maps, money is very tight, and for a while I couldn’t even trade inventory between units before battle. Even with a few painful chapter resets I’m having a great time! I’ve already cleared Lyn’s campaign and have cleared Eliwood’s first map. I mentioned in a prior post, I didn’t really know anything about this game, so I had no idea these two characters and Hector (who was one of my favorite units in the first season of Heroes) came from here. I enjoyed Lyn’s story well enough, especially taking out the main bad guy, so I’m intrigued what Eliwood’s story has in store for me.

I’m only playing a few maps a day so far for Fire Emblem so I don’t get burned out, which works out since it finally gives me the time to get back to and juggle Forspoken! I finally beat the first Tanta and now have the second powerset, which feels dramatically better than the initial one and even better than it did in the demo version. Incidentally, I stumbled upon that demo area again before I was supposed to and it looks extra amazing in the final game. I love getting into trouble in RPGs, so I had noticed very quickly when you beat the first Tanta the world finally isn’t locked off with invisible walls anymore outside of the boss lairs. I feel more comfortable now taking on mutants with my second power set which is cool because they can be very satisfying foes to conquer. I also have some new movement skills including the grapple hook and finally with all of this Forspoken is making more sense. It feels like Infamous meets Final Fantasy and I’m having a good time exploring and fighting enemies while running and jumping wherever I want to go. Excited to keep going finally.
 
I’m stalled on RPGs with kind of falling off Engage, so I’m taking a Metroid Prime break. I’ll be starting up Labyrinth of Galleria tomorrow, though, so the dungeon crawling will commence!
 
Alright, I'm doing it. I'm finally going to play all of the Kiseki/Trails series this year.

I've played Tails in the Sky First Chapter (one of my 10 favorite games of all time) and the beginning of Second Chapter and I've played Cold Steel 1 and the beginning of 2. This year I'm going to just tunnel on Kiseki and finish them all in order since they are all finally readily available. (At least through Trails into Reverie in July.) I played through every Xenoblade and their DLC expansions last year so I think I can do it.

When I get fixated on stuff I like to make dumb mspaint graphics of stuff and I made a series timeline while bored at work. (I'm still playing in release order.)

Video game series timelines are my guilty pleasure.

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Speaking of Galleria, there's something I've been wondering about and if anyone here has some insight on it, I'd love to hear it.

I played through most of Refrain, but ended up dropping it before the end. The gameplay was basically fine, some dungeons I enjoyed more than others but overall I had a pretty good time. But I had a really hard time with the writing, specifically with the way it handled a lot of sensitive subject matter (the sexual assault scenes and child abuse scenes, among others) really flippantly and in ways that ended up straight-up triggering some trauma stuff for me. I had a similar problem back when I tried playing The Witch And The Hundred Knight (where sexual assault is treated as a funny joke) and dropped that game like a rock, but people had assured me Refrain was better about it. Which... it technically was, but not by enough for me.

I've seen a lot of people say a lot of good things about Galleria, and specifically in the context of saying it has better gameplay and writing than Refrain, but not really anything about the subject matter. So if anyone is familiar, I'd love to know if that also includes how it handles sensitive topics or if I'm better off just giving it a pass.
 
paranoodle said:
Speaking of Galleria, there's something I've been wondering about and if anyone here has some insight on it, I'd love to hear it.

I played through most of Refrain, but ended up dropping it before the end. The gameplay was basically fine, some dungeons I enjoyed more than others but overall I had a pretty good time. But I had a really hard time with the writing, specifically with the way it handled a lot of sensitive subject matter (the sexual assault scenes and child abuse scenes, among others) really flippantly and in ways that ended up straight-up triggering some trauma stuff for me. I had a similar problem back when I tried playing The Witch And The Hundred Knight (where sexual assault is treated as a funny joke) and dropped that game like a rock, but people had assured me Refrain was better about it. Which... it technically was, but not by enough for me.

I've seen a lot of people say a lot of good things about Galleria, and specifically in the context of saying it has better gameplay and writing than Refrain, but not really anything about the subject matter. So if anyone is familiar, I'd love to know if that also includes how it handles sensitive topics or if I'm better off just giving it a pass.
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It's better, but think it as an improvement going from Witch and Hundred Knight to Refrain. There are still sensitive topics and some really weird stuff going on, but it's treated seriously this time. Some things that appear (putting it in spoiler as unfortunately are story related, but going to be as vague as possible)

  • Rape attempts
  • Torture
  • Mind control
  • Prostitution

Some of this are implied, only are back story and others do happen in game but are not descriptive or gross like Refrain and everyone gets their punishment
 
paranoodle said:
Speaking of Galleria, there's something I've been wondering about and if anyone here has some insight on it, I'd love to hear it.

I played through most of Refrain, but ended up dropping it before the end. The gameplay was basically fine, some dungeons I enjoyed more than others but overall I had a pretty good time. But I had a really hard time with the writing, specifically with the way it handled a lot of sensitive subject matter (the sexual assault scenes and child abuse scenes, among others) really flippantly and in ways that ended up straight-up triggering some trauma stuff for me. I had a similar problem back when I tried playing The Witch And The Hundred Knight (where sexual assault is treated as a funny joke) and dropped that game like a rock, but people had assured me Refrain was better about it. Which... it technically was, but not by enough for me.

I've seen a lot of people say a lot of good things about Galleria, and specifically in the context of saying it has better gameplay and writing than Refrain, but not really anything about the subject matter. So if anyone is familiar, I'd love to know if that also includes how it handles sensitive topics or if I'm better off just giving it a pass.
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Unfortunately I don’t have a definitive answer for you but I’ve heard it’s better than Refrain and a bit less whiplash-y and jarring, at the least. I too was put off by the writing in Refrain sometimes for exactly those reasons, although I thought it got better when it took things a bit more seriously nearer the end.

EDIT: Beaten, sounds like Ermitron has a better answer!
 
ermitron2 said:
It's better, but think it as an improvement going from Witch and Hundred Knight to Refrain. There are still sensitive topics and some really weird stuff going on, but it's treated seriously this time. Some things that appear (putting it in spoiler as unfortunately are story related, but going to be as vague as possible)

  • Rape attempts
  • Torture
  • Mind control
  • Prostitution

Some of this are implied, only are back story and others do happen in game but are not descriptive or gross like Refrain and everyone gets their punishment
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SammyJ9 said:
Unfortunately I don’t have a definitive answer for you but I’ve heard it’s better than Refrain and a bit less whiplash-y and jarring, at the least. I too was put off by the writing in Refrain sometimes for exactly those reasons, although I thought it got better when it took things a bit more seriously nearer the end.

EDIT: Beaten, sounds like Ermitron has a better answer!
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Thank you both! I'm glad to hear it's a further improvement on that front. Given what ermitron wrote I think I'll still put it off for now to be safe, but maybe try it at some point later down the line if I feel up to it and can get a clear idea roughly what to expect and when. I'll worry about that when it's relevant.

In the meantime I already have Theatrhythm and Octopath II preordered this month and those are going to be keeping me busy for a while :D
 
paranoodle said:
Thank you both! I'm glad to hear it's a further improvement on that front. Given what ermitron wrote I think I'll still put it off for now to be safe, but maybe try it at some point later down the line if I feel up to it and can get a clear idea roughly what to expect and when. I'll worry about that when it's relevant.

In the meantime I already have Theatrhythm and Octopath II preordered this month and those are going to be keeping me busy for a while :D
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Yeah Octopath 2 is looking amazing and it launching a week after Galleria is cruel, lol. On the plus side Galleria is the perfect kind of game to take slowly and it’s not too hard to dip in and out of, so I’ll probably switch over to Octopath when it’s out and then just see which game grabs me more. Too many RPGs is a good problem to have!
 
paranoodle said:
Thank you both! I'm glad to hear it's a further improvement on that front. Given what ermitron wrote I think I'll still put it off for now to be safe, but maybe try it at some point later down the line if I feel up to it and can get a clear idea roughly what to expect and when. I'll worry about that when it's relevant.

In the meantime I already have Theatrhythm and Octopath II preordered this month and those are going to be keeping me busy for a while :D
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Yeah ,for what it's worth it doesn't get to the description or misery levels of Refrain.

Also hope anyone ready to play it have a lot of time, cause you gonna need it
 
Never mind the long JRPGs, I'm going to spend hundreds of hours on Theatrhythm, have you seen that song list chef kiss
 
ermitron2 said:
I really want to see how many people manage to get the full ending in Galleria. That's a fulltime job lol
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Im glad this game is coming out west. I powered through Refrain last year (granted I was near the "final" dungeon) to ready up for this one. I might picked up later, I don't want to started near Octopath and then Azure comes out😞.

I want to enjoy my time with the game. And who knows by then NIS might have a golden week sale so I'll wait. But I'll be glad to read impressions and tips from everyone.
 
Hm, currently trying to decide if I’m starting FFVIII, P3P(FeMC) or getting back to Ryza 1… thoughts?
 
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SirArthur said:
Im glad this game is coming out west. I powered through Refrain last year (granted I was near the "final" dungeon) to ready up for this one. I might picked up later, I don't want to started near Octopath and then Azure comes out😞.

I want to enjoy my time with the game. And who knows by then NIS might have a golden week sale so I'll wait. But I'll be glad to read impressions and tips from everyone.
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Yeah, this game is bigger than that.

So for anyone who is going to play Labyrinth of Galleria, keep in mind you need to do the post game in order to see everything in the story. And if you are going to commit to that be prepared. Not kidding

Thats a 3650 floor random dungeon. Yeah, you read right 3.6.K floors. It's not that long as there are elevators and other things that help you make the traverse quicker with checkpoint ever 360 floors but it's gonna add time )
 
ermitron2 said:
Yeah, this game is bigger than that.

So for anyone who is going to play Labyrinth of Galleria, keep in mind you need to do the post game in order to see everything in the story. And if you are going to commit to that be prepared. Not kidding
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Oh wow that is way more than I expected. I guess that might be my entire summer game lol. While it might not mean much, the size of the game (at least on switch) is almost twice as big: 2.1 to 3.8 GB.
 
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Mandos said:
Oh also P3P will be my intro to persona
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In that case, maybe give P3P a shot. I think it’s cool trying out new series. P3P was my first Persona and I had a generally good time. It is a commitment though. I think it took me 100 hours to roll credits? I agonize over the time management lol. The way it is structured though there are good break points.
 
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ermitron2 said:
I really want to see how many people manage to get the full ending in Galleria. That's a fulltime job lol
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We'll see if I make it, I'd like to go for it if I'm enjoying the game enough. I didn't do the postgame in Refrain, though. But Galleria is also the kind of game that I'm anticipating playing over a very long period of time; again, depending on how much it's grabbing me. I haven't played a game like it in a long time, so I've had the itch recently
 
SammyJ9 said:
We'll see if I make it, I'd like to go for it if I'm enjoying the game enough. I didn't do the postgame in Refrain, though. But Galleria is also the kind of game that I'm anticipating playing over a very long period of time; again, depending on how much it's grabbing me. I haven't played a game like it in a long time, so I've had the itch recently
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The main difference is that in Refrain you do have a conclussion at the normal end game. In Galleria the postgame is necesary to get the full story but its a big hurdle that not all players are going to be able to clear
 
ermitron2 said:
The main difference is that in Refrain you do have a conclussion at the normal end game. In Galleria the postgame is necesary to get the full story but its a big hurdle that not all players are going to be able to clear
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Well then we'll see how it goes! I'm definitely prepared to be in it for the long haul, I guess it just remains to be seen how long of a haul!

My plan was to probably break up the length with other games, since even within a couple weeks after Galleria, I've got Octopath 2 and Wo Long coming out. After that it's quieter for a while, depending on whether I grab Trails from Azure right away or not (right now leaning toward picking it up but playing it later down the line, maybe April)
 
SammyJ9 said:
Well then we'll see how it goes! I'm definitely prepared to be in it for the long haul, I guess it just remains to be seen how long of a haul!

My plan was to probably break up the length with other games, since even within a couple weeks after Galleria, I've got Octopath 2 and Wo Long coming out. After that it's quieter for a while, depending on whether I grab Trails from Azure right away or not (right now leaning toward picking it up but playing it later down the line, maybe April)
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yeah this is a good plan, the postgame is long
 
Labyrinth of Refrain was a great surprise in that it was one of the few DRPGs to really grab my attention outside of Atlus' titles; It's so exciting that we are finally getting the next game in the series so soon.

That being said I'm getting the itch to tackle and finish the postgame in Refrain before moving onto Galleria, but what kept me from doing so before was reading about needing to grind in order to have units capable of fighting the postgame bosses. I remember reading earlier in either this thread or the general discussion thread that one of you completed it, so my question is did that require a lot of grinding or was all that talk I previously read overblown?
 
Seven said:
Labyrinth of Refrain was a great surprise in that it was one of the few DRPGs to really grab my attention outside of Atlus' titles; It's so exciting that we are finally getting the next game in the series so soon.

That being said I'm getting the itch to tackle and finish the postgame in Refrain before moving onto Galleria, but what kept me from doing so before was reading about needing to grind in order to have units capable of fighting the postgame bosses. I remember reading earlier in either this thread or the general discussion thread that one of you completed it, so my question is did that require a lot of grinding or was all that talk I previously read overblown?
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In Refrain postgame there is grinding, how much it depend how you built your party and equipment but I wouldn't say it's that crazy, maybe a couple of hours. You can always put Gentle World if you are more for the story than the challenge (it's still hard though)
 
Welp

xxfjRgD.gif


I've gotten every ending in Chrono Cross.

Genuinely didn't think I'd ever do it. Can't believe I did it. Geez.
 
xghost777 said:
That’s cool! I’ve only ever youtubed a few of them myself years ago.

Been meaning to ask, did you view the new ending scene in the Remaster’s credits? What did you think?
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I did, actually! It was nice to confirm something I was pretty much already convinced of. Also
Chrono Trigger DS all but confirmed it on that end as well, so we now have both games confirming in post-credits additions that Guile is an amnesia'ed Magus, almost like the team is apologizing for not sticking with that idea in the beginning. 😅
 
Speaking of Chrono Cross, everyone ought to check out the 20th anniversary concert if they haven’t already. It is absolutely amazing. The album is available on digital storefronts and the full concert is up on YouTube.

Square Enix is so weird though. For the Chrono Cross 20th anniversary concert, they made the soundtrack album available, but not the concert Blu-Ray. Meanwhile for the Xenogears 20th anniversary concert, they made the concert Blu-Ray available, but not the soundtrack album.
 
ermitron2 said:
In Refrain postgame there is grinding, how much it depend how you built your party and equipment but I wouldn't say it's that crazy, maybe a couple of hours. You can always put Gentle World if you are more for the story than the challenge (it's still hard though)
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Thanks for the reply, after thinking it over I decided to finish the postgame in Refrain before jumping into Galleria.
 
Over the past week, I have been playing Super Paper Mario on the Wii. After last night, I am at the game to world 8 so I am on the doorstep to victory!
 
oh dang

Chrono Cross sits in the #4 spot on my longest played games on my Switch. More than Xenoblade DE, Octopath, Splatoon 2, CrossCode, the Final Fantasies.. jesus. Had no idea I sank that much into it.

I'm still mad the icon is just a white square with the logo, though.
 
I want play other stuff beside From Software games and Etrian Odyssey so I started Octopath Traveler on my Xbox, though I played a bit just to get a taste of the combat but I liked what I saw. Because I have a soft spot for pilgrimage stories in games I choose Ophilia as my first character, I'm intrigued by her unique skill "Guide".
 
Started Labyrinth of Galleria, and it’s pretty addicting already. Bit of a steep learning curve but some of my knowledge from Refrain is coming back to me! And at least in the opening several hours this game is very different tonally than Refrain, no harsh tonal shifts (at least not yet)
 
Final trailer of Redemption Reapers!



A shame this is going to be obscured by other rpg releasing on the week, but still, going to give it a chance before Octopath 2
 
Finished Super Paper Mario last night. Solid 7.5/10.

This was a change from previous games in the series that I had played. Going from turn-based to action was done well. It still encourages engaging with the enemy as it allows for leveling up. Being able to use multiple main characters and their individual abilities added to the variety. Flipping between 2D and 3D with Mario was the big hook of the game. Also, Bowser was OP in terms of attack, especially when you threw him an item or two. The main complaint I have with all of that is switching between characters was a little cumbersome. This is where you miss having shoulder and trigger buttons with the Wii remote set up. Same thing that goes with switching between pixls. The variety that you get with each one is awesome, but it would have been nice to keep the flow of changes smooth.

Level structure was fine. Each sub level mainly served as a save point IMO. The levels felt too enclosed and not connected. I didn't explore Flipside/Flopside as much as I could have since I felt it was too spread out. I think a couple more warp pipes could have gone a long way. Still though. the art style was good and there were some great characters to run into throughout the game. The mazes/puzzles in world 8 did provide a challenge, but I would be lying to you if I said that I never used a guide.

Story/script had that typical Paper Mario shtick, which I love about the series. That collector chameleon gave me some hard truths lol. Count Bleck served as a solid bad guy in the game. There was a distinct lack of Toads though.

Ranking the series at this point, I'd go TTYD>SPM=64>>>>>>>>>SS. It has been nearly a decade since I've played 64 though. I might look upon it differently now. Either way, three very good games were made here. I plan on playing Color Splash very soon as I am trying to wrap up my Wii-U backlog once and for all.

My next game is something I have had circled for a long time. Final Fantasy X! The last mainline game that I have yet to play.
 
Mandos said:
Question is it more fun going through FFVIII and cheesing it with a guide or just rolling with it and cheesing it with the “near” invincibility cheats?
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I never found the combat to be all that good in FF8 back in the day, IMO the appeal of the game is to 'break' it with the junction system and just blast through battles quickly; especially since enemies level up with you it's not even a good idea to gain too many levels as you can make things harder.

I still really like FF8, but it's for most everything other than the combat: The world is interesting and has a cool look and vibe, some of the characters are endearing and I'm kind of a sap for the love stories in it, the music is great, and the REAL combat system of the game is the GOAT Triple Triad
 
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