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I am amused by Trails in the Sky giving unique silly text to every single chest if you recheck it once empty, and glad it wasn't my job to come up with a hundred such things.
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JoshuaJSlone said:
I am amused by Trails in the Sky giving unique silly text to every single chest if you recheck it once empty, and glad it wasn't my job to come up with a hundred such things.
rQyJxsP.jpeg
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To be fair I could happily spend a day being paid to write lines for empty treasure chests in Trails.

“Boss music starts”
“You’ve brought it back, that was kind.”
“Another adventurer has already stolen it. One with a terrible memory.”
 
PixelKnight said:
Packed year for rpgs. Although it’s been a while since it wasn’t a packed year for rpgs at this point.
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Considering everything I pick up tends to be in the 60~100+ hour range, it doesn’t take much for a year to be packed.

And I’m still in Ch. 5 of Xenoblade 3 mostly because I’ve been sidetracked by Halo, of all things (specifically working through the campaigns in MCC on my Steam Deck). Has gotten me thinking that a tactical RPG set in the Halo universe might be interesting (unless such a thing already exists).
 
Finished Rebirth on Friday so I guess it's time to start Unicorn Overlord in earnest. Although, I might need a bit of a cool down after finishing a long RPG. Maybe I'll sub to Game Pass and shoot some things in the face in Gears 5 or Halo first.
 
PixelKnight said:
Harvestella is on my ‘pick it up later’ list, along with a couple dozen others :D

Just noticed that SMTV Vengeance coming out a week early on June 14 (presumably so as not to clash with the Elden Rinfg DLC) now also clashes with Monster Hunter Stories on modern consoles. Reckon I’ll pick SMTVV as the new campaign sounds interesting. Would like to revisit MHS later on though.

Just finished Unicorn Overlord, that was great! I liked the pacing that some of the battles are over in a matter of seconds and some much longer, but even the long ones have enough strongholds throughout the map you can use to have your units regroup and break the battle up into more manageable pieces.
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I didn’t need much selling on Unicorn Overlord beyond “new Vanillaware game” so when I do get to it, I’ll be walking in with minimal info. Does Unicorn Overlord have permadeath? I’m debating exactly how quickly I want to jump from Final Fantasy VII Rebirth (which I’m nearing the end of as I’m in chapter 13) to Dragon’s Dogma II as they are both action RPGs and depending on how breezy Unicorn Overlord is or is not might push me into jumping into that next.
 
xghost777 said:
I didn’t need much selling on Unicorn Overlord beyond “new Vanillaware game” so when I do get to it, I’ll be walking in with minimal info. Does Unicorn Overlord have permadeath? I’m debating exactly how quickly I want to jump from Final Fantasy VII Rebirth (which I’m nearing the end of as I’m in chapter 13) to Dragon’s Dogma II as they are both action RPGs and depending on how breezy Unicorn Overlord is or is not might push me into jumping into that next.
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No, but once you beat the game you unlock a difficulty setting that has it.
 
xghost777 said:
I didn’t need much selling on Unicorn Overlord beyond “new Vanillaware game” so when I do get to it, I’ll be walking in with minimal info. Does Unicorn Overlord have permadeath? I’m debating exactly how quickly I want to jump from Final Fantasy VII Rebirth (which I’m nearing the end of as I’m in chapter 13) to Dragon’s Dogma II as they are both action RPGs and depending on how breezy Unicorn Overlord is or is not might push me into jumping into that next.
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UO’s ‘standard’ difficulty has no permadeath, and was a really enjoyable, breezy walkthrough for me. I probably should have played it on hard but to be honest it was already a 50 hour game and I enjoyed it regardless.

Once completed, you unlock the permadeath mode, and given how many battles there are, and that it’s possible to lose units to enemy special moves at range (just as you can do it to the enemy), I imagine it’s pretty tough on hard mode.

I always go for classic permadeath on Fire Emblem though, mostly to have a way to get rid of the units I don’t like but also I like the incentive to play cautiously. Whereas UO has a time limit on battles and so encourages you to be aggressive. You are also fielding up to 50 at once, I only had a few leftover that weren’t regularly getting field time. Despite my issues with the character designs, I also largely found UOs characters a lot less annoying than the usual tropey FE ones and sketched out better.

I also just did the post-game content. There’s an extra battle that gives you some units for your army you didn’t have before and that’s about it. I mainly had a look at it to clear that ‘explore 100% of the map’ mission that you can’t complete before the credits roll! If I hadn’t already completed every side mission and the arena before the final battle the post-game maybe it would have been more interesting to keep exploring, but I felt it was more rewarding to do everything as you go. As it is, anything you havent finished before endgame (outside the extra arena battles) is pretty easy compared to the final battle, making the new high level units you gain in the one new postgame mission complete overkill. I guess they are designed for people to keep playing the arena online? I’ve got no interest in that.

Anyway, I was happy to do the extra battle and stroll over to the right city to tick off that map achievement and call it a day.
 
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First time long time, etc etc.

I'm curious what y'all think about this: Where do you stand on split inventories (i.e. DQXI or Earthbound, where each character has an inventory that only they can draw from)? I kind of hate it! I started Golden Sun and was immediately put off by the decision.

Also, Golden Sun doesn't automatically change your attack target if they die.

I swear I don't just want to pile on Golden Sun. I like it! But I hate this!
 
shoptroll said:
www.eurogamer.net

Final Fantasy 9 references in Final Fantasy 14 Dawntrail are "secret", says director

Yes, there are a lot of references to Final Fantasy 9 in Final Fantasy 14 Dawntrail's collector's edition… and no, that…
www.eurogamer.net www.eurogamer.net

Square-Enix remake machine goes "brrrrrrrrr"
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I know the remake was in the nVidia leak, but are we sure this is a remake thing? FFXIV regularly cribs and reworks story beats from other games and some of the stuff revealed so far has led to speculation there's some equivalent of Gaia/Terra going on in the expansion continent.
 
ngpdrew said:
First time long time, etc etc.

I'm curious what y'all think about this: Where do you stand on split inventories (i.e. DQXI or Earthbound, where each character has an inventory that only they can draw from)? I kind of hate it! I started Golden Sun and was immediately put off by the decision.

Also, Golden Sun doesn't automatically change your attack target if they die.

I swear I don't just want to pile on Golden Sun. I like it! But I hate this!
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I like it in Dragon Quest. You still have access to the full inventory when not in combat (as it’s assumed you’ve got your wagon/horses with you) but in dungeons it’s down to what everyone has immediately on hand. Which usually amounts to their equipment and an extra handful of emergency items each, rather than 99 of every consumable.
 
Zellia said:
I know the remake was in the nVidia leak, but are we sure this is a remake thing? FFXIV regularly cribs and reworks story beats from other games and some of the stuff revealed so far has led to speculation there's some equivalent of Gaia/Terra going on in the expansion continent.
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From the reports it’s not clear. It could be to coincide with the leaked IX remake, it could be they’re giving IX the same treatment as IV and III got, or maybe it’s both.
 
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PixelKnight said:
I like it in Dragon Quest. You still have access to the full inventory when not in combat (as it’s assumed you’ve got your wagon/horses with you) but in dungeons it’s down to what everyone has immediately on hand. Which usually amounts to their equipment and an extra handful of emergency items each, rather than 99 of every consumable.
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My true chaotic preference is for strict inventory limits like Paper Mario, thus you never have 99 of anything!
 
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I booted up Tales of Arise at long last (physical purchase, although it's now also on Game Pass) and gave it a go last night.

I'm still very early, obviously, but the combat feels terrible on normal difficulty. Regular attacks and even artes seem do minimal damage, and enemies don't seem to suffer from hitstun (and only a few can be launched). It seems like I have to rely entirely on charging boost attacks, which is already becoming tedious.

Vesperia was the last Tales games I really liked, so maybe I shouldn't even bother with the series anymore. There's still this charm to the characters, though, that keeps me coming back to Tales.

I likely won't play through to the end of the Arise, so my question is how much should I play to get a full taste of ToA? Like, what's the point where I'll have seen what the game has to offer? I'd mark the Garuda fight in FFXVI as an equivalent (with Typhon as the second break point).
 
Elementary said:
Heh seeing Harvestella here is really funny because a friend of mine just this minute decided to download and finish the game because of a discussion about Square's AA releases last year.

Glad that these games aren't just completely flying under the radar.
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it's funny how Square ended up releasing so many games i'm sort of interested in(Harvestella among them) so close together that I just ended up....not getting any of them

some definite decision paralysis there since there was no way I was playing all of them
 
em said:
I booted up Tales of Arise at long last (physical purchase, although it's now also on Game Pass) and gave it a go last night.

I'm still very early, obviously, but the combat feels terrible on normal difficulty. Regular attacks and even artes seem do minimal damage, and enemies don't seem to suffer from hitstun (and only a few can be launched). It seems like I have to rely entirely on charging boost attacks, which is already becoming tedious.

Vesperia was the last Tales games I really liked, so maybe I shouldn't even bother with the series anymore. There's still this charm to the characters, though, that keeps me coming back to Tales.

I likely won't play through to the end of the Arise, so my question is how much should I play to get a full taste of ToA? Like, what's the point where I'll have seen what the game has to offer? I'd mark the Garuda fight in FFXVI as an equivalent (with Typhon as the second break point).
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Please, do continue a bit more so that the world opens up and you can explore more. Change difficulty if you must. I feel the game is really worth it. If by then you really don't feel the game it's just not for you maybe.
 
em said:
I booted up Tales of Arise at long last (physical purchase, although it's now also on Game Pass) and gave it a go last night.

I'm still very early, obviously, but the combat feels terrible on normal difficulty. Regular attacks and even artes seem do minimal damage, and enemies don't seem to suffer from hitstun (and only a few can be launched). It seems like I have to rely entirely on charging boost attacks, which is already becoming tedious.

Vesperia was the last Tales games I really liked, so maybe I shouldn't even bother with the series anymore. There's still this charm to the characters, though, that keeps me coming back to Tales.

I likely won't play through to the end of the Arise, so my question is how much should I play to get a full taste of ToA? Like, what's the point where I'll have seen what the game has to offer? I'd mark the Garuda fight in FFXVI as an equivalent (with Typhon as the second break point).
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Combat doesn't really improve from my experience (I finished the game), enemies get spongier and spongier as it goes on even on the lowest difficulty, the camera is far from ideal, the over reliance on the boost attacks and pair finishers that makes most combat encounters feel repetitive. I would say is the worst combat in the main games easily.
 
rickyson33 said:
it's funny how Square ended up releasing so many games i'm sort of interested in(Harvestella among them) so close together that I just ended up....not getting any of them

some definite decision paralysis there since there was no way I was playing all of them
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I hear you. I passed on all of SE's recent AA offerings until a few months ago and I've been continually impressed by them. The Team Asano games in particular are spectacular, "best in genre" tier games. I've heard more mixed things about Diofield but that's one out of like eight games that was less than great.
 
PixelKnight said:
UO’s ‘standard’ difficulty has no permadeath, and was a really enjoyable, breezy walkthrough for me. I probably should have played it on hard but to be honest it was already a 50 hour game and I enjoyed it regardless.

Once completed, you unlock the permadeath mode, and given how many battles there are, and that it’s possible to lose units to enemy special moves at range (just as you can do it to the enemy), I imagine it’s pretty tough on hard mode.

I always go for classic permadeath on Fire Emblem though, mostly to have a way to get rid of the units I don’t like but also I like the incentive to play cautiously. Whereas UO has a time limit on battles and so encourages you to be aggressive. You are also fielding up to 50 at once, I only had a few leftover that weren’t regularly getting field time. Despite my issues with the character designs, I also largely found UOs characters a lot less annoying than the usual tropey FE ones and sketched out better.

I also just did the post-game content. There’s an extra battle that gives you some units for your army you didn’t have before and that’s about it. I mainly had a look at it to clear that ‘explore 100% of the map’ mission that you can’t complete before the credits roll! If I hadn’t already completed every side mission and the arena before the final battle the post-game maybe it would have been more interesting to keep exploring, but I felt it was more rewarding to do everything as you go. As it is, anything you havent finished before endgame (outside the extra arena battles) is pretty easy compared to the final battle, making the new high level units you gain in the one new postgame mission complete overkill. I guess they are designed for people to keep playing the arena online? I’ve got no interest in that.

Anyway, I was happy to do the extra battle and stroll over to the right city to tick off that map achievement and call it a day.
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I didn’t get to circle back and respond last night, thanks for the big write up PixelKnight! I just finished Final Fantasy VII Rebirth last night after 94 hours, so something half the length in a different genre that’s fairly breezy sounds appealing. I’m going to start Princess Peach Showtime later today which is apparently quite short, so I’ll be rolling into Unicorn Overlord soon then.
 
I just found out Eiyuden Chronicle has a song by Sarah Àlainn, the singer/violinist Mitsuda's been working with for a while. She sang on Mitsuda's "Beyond the Sky" for Xenoblade and on several of his songs for Valkyria Revolution, in addition to performing vocals and violin for the Chrono Cross live concert (while cosplaying as Schala!). So needless to say, I'm even more excited for Eiyuden Chronicle now.
 
xghost777 said:
I don't know when it happened exactly, but at some point the Octopath Traveler II Soundtrack did finally hit US itunes for purchase. I'm downloading it right now.
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WHAT. Okay now I know what I’m doing when I get home tomorrow! (I know it was streaming already but I’m a Neanderthal and like buying digital tracks or the whole thing)
 
xghost777 said:
I don't know when it happened exactly, but at some point the Octopath Traveler II Soundtrack did finally hit US itunes for purchase. I'm downloading it right now.
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Yup! Now we just need Bravely 2 to land, I’m starting to think there is a weird Spotify exclusivity thing going on?

The Alliance Alive dropped recently too probably to coincide with the HD re-release. Better late than never and you can never have too much Hamauzu:

 
All right I give up: I really want to put a bunch of time into Wandering Sword. Sorry Alain, I'll finish saving your world some other time. I have pointers to trade and faces to slap in the Central Plains.
 
Elementary said:
All right I give up: I really want to put a bunch of time into Wandering Sword. Sorry Alain, I'll finish saving your world some other time. I have pointers to trade and faces to slap in the Central Plains.
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I really want to play that, the art style reminds me of Octopath. I hope it comes to Switch later on
 
PixelKnight said:
I really want to play that, the art style reminds me of Octopath. I hope it comes to Switch later on
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That's pretty accurate. It's Octopath but set in a fictionalized China and you're locked to playing Olberic/Hikari. The game's linear but you can challenge basically anyone you meet to a practice duel if you're on their level (after you bribe them), and there are quests and event scenes all over. Like, I wandered into a random nature zone at the start of this playthrough and found a midgame ally casually chatting and prepping for a fight with one of the villains, only for both to walk away when they noticed me.

I recommend it wholeheartedly. The one thing to keep in mind is that it's based on classic wuxia novels, so if you're not used to those tropes a few of the quests can feel like traps. Case in point: one of the early party members is incredibly jealous of the main character, to the point where if you raise his affection too high he decides he can't take being in your shadow and fights you to the death after you get a good ending to his quest. You have to both keep his affection at a minimum and lower it during his quest to keep him alive..

And yeah a Switch version would be great. My understanding is that there might even be one in the works, but the devs are working on post-launch support for the next while.
 
Elementary said:
That's pretty accurate. It's Octopath but set in a fictionalized China and you're locked to playing Olberic/Hikari. The game's linear but you can challenge basically anyone you meet to a practice duel if you're on their level (after you bribe them), and there are quests and event scenes all over. Like, I wandered into a random nature zone at the start of this playthrough and found a midgame ally casually chatting and prepping for a fight with one of the villains, only for both to walk away when they noticed me.

I recommend it wholeheartedly. The one thing to keep in mind is that it's based on classic wuxia novels, so if you're not used to those tropes a few of the quests can feel like traps. Case in point: one of the early party members is incredibly jealous of the main character, to the point where if you raise his affection too high he decides he can't take being in your shadow and fights you to the death after you get a good ending to his quest. You have to both keep his affection at a minimum and lower it during his quest to keep him alive..

And yeah a Switch version would be great. My understanding is that there might even be one in the works, but the devs are working on post-launch support for the next while.
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I’m so on board for this now, that sounds amazing!
 
Finished Trails in the Sky. Enjoyed it quite a bit. Won't go directly into the next, but I did grab it in the recent Steam sale so I'll be ready whenever the fancy strikes.

I noticed my clear save data says 44 hours, but Steam says I've only played 36 hours. Trying to reconcile those other than "ONE SCREWED UP", does the in-game fast forward also speed up the time counter?

A word I wasn't expecting to run across.
 
PixelKnight said:
I’m so on board for this now, that sounds amazing!
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It's one of the better "why not" purchases I've made in the last few years. Dunno if I'd double dip on a Switch port, but I've really enjoyed my time with the game.

Two warnings, the translation's like 90% there but there are still some grammar/tense issues. If you've read any translated webnovels you'll have definitely read worse, but it hurts me like dropped frames hurt spec-obsessed types. And secondly there are some flag issues where things can not happen when they're supposed to. This is separate from the obscure triggers and missable content, which sure doesn't help. Try and keep at least two separate saves and one more at the start of each new main story event. It's annoying but I wish I had done that my first playthrough.

I'll also say, the game's absolutely worth going in blind. You'll make mistakes and you'll feel bad about missing things. You'll bang your head against walls that you know you should be able to get past, or spend 20 minutes hunting for the exact right "further solution" to a problem. You'll stumble into quests way past your level and have to give up and come back later. This is all fine. Let it happen, because you'll remember the screw-ups. Let it happen and do a new game plus run where you get everything right. It's worth it.
 
meatbag said:
The fact that they implemented those tropes into the gameplay is freaking hilarious. Hopefully this comes to Switch at some point.
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One thing I really like is how Yuwen Yi is supposed to be a martial arts genius and actually acts like one. Not only is he the one character who can learn every weapon type, he also has story moments where he analyzes techniques for weaknesses, where he helps people reach deeper understandings of their own techniques, or recreates lost secret techniques through compiling sources and grasping the original intent behind it. It's incredibly gratifying, and it doesn't feel like he's some gary stu magical protag since he puts in the work for it.
 
I was originally planning to start Unicorn Overlord today to have a proper break between Final Fantasy VII Rebirth and Dragon’s Dogma II, but after beating Princess Peach Showtime last night, I took a look at my Switch and noticed the top of it was dramatically coming apart. After showing pictures to friends, they quickly diagnosed it’s my launch Switch’s battery failing so that’s out of commission at least until my replacement battery arrives. Instead then since it’s on the shorter side, I’m going to be playing Granblue Fantasy Relink. There’s no ST on Fami, so I’m looking forward to sharing my thoughts here as I go!

Granblue is a bit odd for me since I haven’t played the main game, but I did enjoy enough the first season of the anime and again I enjoyed enough of the first version of the fighting game (still need to check out the sequels to both). Maybe Relink will make me more of a proper fan who knows haha. The various trailers over the years always looked interesting, so I wanted to take a chance on Relink. Curious how it turned out.
 
Seven said:
From what I understand there is no filter in Tactics Ogre; everything was redrawn for HD consoles.
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Don't know where you heard that, but the battle sprites at least absolutely look like they've been put through a fairly high quality sprite filter to smooth things out, they'd look different and have extra detail if they were properly redrawn at several times resolution. The UI has been redone and the portraits use a higher quality source than a PSP game would've had, though.

Here I've taken one of the official 1080p shots from the Steam page, and beside the characters pasted PSP versions nearest neighbor resized to similar size.
xNplk8t.png
 
JoshuaJSlone said:
Finished Trails in the Sky. Enjoyed it quite a bit. Won't go directly into the next, but I did grab it in the recent Steam sale so I'll be ready whenever the fancy strikes.

I noticed my clear save data says 44 hours, but Steam says I've only played 36 hours. Trying to reconcile those other than "ONE SCREWED UP", does the in-game fast forward also speed up the time counter?

A word I wasn't expecting to run across.
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Until Trails of Cold Steel IV (when Falcom started implementing Turbo Mode themselves), turbo mode always speeds up the in game timer too.
 
JoshuaJSlone said:
Don't know where you heard that, but the battle sprites at least absolutely look like they've been put through a fairly high quality sprite filter to smooth things out, they'd look different and have extra detail if they were properly redrawn at several times resolution. The UI has been redone and the portraits use a higher quality source than a PSP game would've had, though.

Here I've taken one of the official 1080p shots from the Steam page, and beside the characters pasted PSP versions nearest neighbor resized to similar size.
xNplk8t.png
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Had to check my tablet since I tend to save interviews that interest me, but it was in this interview by IGN where I remembered reading that they remade the pixel art for the game.
 
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