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I'm into the Dragon Quest Trilogy collection, just started the third game.
What a classic gems, I'm loving them!

I already played the first two on GBC back in the days, but replayed and enjoyed them more right now on Switch. However, I never touched III and originally wanted to wait for the HD 2D remake, but I couldn't resist to give it a try and damn...now I want to play it!
Thats me. I was expecting 3 HD but still not news so just got another playthrough of 3. Did you go for the classic party (Warrior / Mage / Cleric) ?
 
I don’t know how much longer I can go on waiting on 3 HD before I just play the one available on the eshop
I'd just do it. Part of they hype, at least for me, is how they translated the experience to an HD environment and overall it's something you just have to experience in the original form, as I'm sure they are going to add QoL or more things that is going to be harder to go back to the original version. Also it's actually a short RPG (about 30 hours) unless you really want to abuse changing classes
 
Thats me. I was expecting 3 HD but still not news so just got another playthrough of 3.
I don’t know how much longer I can go on waiting on 3 HD before I just play the one available on the eshop
Ye of little faith, we're clearly getting DQ III HD-2D news next week! SE is SE, so they'll announce a release date for the game in the next direct. C'mon now ;P

Basically quoting one of my previous posts:
[...]
The 9th in the west is the 10th in Japan, as @Neves said, DQ III's anniversary, the remake resurfaces in the Direct.
[...]
 
Ye of little faith, we're clearly getting DQ III HD-2D news next week! SE is SE, so they'll announce a release date for the game in the next direct. C'mon now ;P

Basically quoting one of my previous posts:
Alright I’ll give it a week :D
 
Thats me. I was expecting 3 HD but still not news so just got another playthrough of 3. Did you go for the classic party (Warrior / Mage / Cleric) ?
Your screenshots in the dedicated thread influenced my desire to get the trilogy collection 😁

Right now I'm still in the first town.
I have to study how classes work properly, but the gadabout caught my interest since there's a guy who tells you to stay away from that and so I firstly got it :LOL:
Then probably I think I can't miss a mage, but I have to check it out for good before making a decision.
 
Your screenshots in the dedicated thread influenced my desire to get the trilogy collection 😁

Right now I'm still in the first town.
I have to study how classes work properly, but the gadabout caught my interest since there's a guy who tells you to stay away from that and so I firstly got it :LOL:
Then probably I think I can't miss a mage, but I have to check it out for good before making a decision.

Overall the game is very friendly and you can clear it with any party and even if you think you make a mistake you have reclassing with benefits so you can change anytime and still gain something.

Also not having a dedicated magic user is not an issue in the first half of the game (and even then the hero learn attack magic). Though I wouldn't recommend gadabout as a first playthrough though since it's really a joke class which has a very specific function later in the game, and even then I don't think it does a good job at that. But still if you want a challenge do it (keep in mind the gimmick of the class is that sometimes they aren't going to listen to your commands)
 
Thanks for the advice! I just read the manual - I love to search for old manuals in order to learn more about a game, just the way it was when these games came out - and I think I'm going to start with an atipic party: hero, gadabout (don't ask me why, I'm too curious to drop it for the moment), thief and merchant.
The strategy here is to farm money and good items in the early game when you can do good without an healer.
 
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Thanks for the advice! I just read the manual - I love to search for old manuals in order to learn more about a game, just the way it was when these games came out - and I think I'm going to start with an atipic party: hero, gadabout (don't ask me why, I'm too curious to drop it for the moment), thieve and merchant.
The strategy here is to farm money and good items in the early game when you can do good without an healer.
Yeah, thanks to the bag you can stock on herbs for healing in the firts part where you aren't going to have that much hp.

Also that initial party is decent. The merchant is actually a very good initial class as they can use a lot of the warriors equipment and level up faster. The thief also is going to make battles easier as the game balance never expected to have 2 party members that could use boomerangs / whips.
 
I finished Earthbound Beginnings tonight and I liked it! I think I mostly covered what I found interesting about it in my prior post, but what I hadn’t really seen at the time was sort of its bigger moments like riding the train, a big dance sequence, and some of the more unique fights. Also as the game progressed you do get far more PSI powers for Ninten and Ana which does open up the combat a lot. I walked away from this game pretty impressed with how solid it was and enjoyed parts of its ambition that I didn’t expect from an NES RPG.

With Earthbound Beginnings done I’ve crossed off my last NES NSO game I’ve wanted to play and I’m now down to eight games left for my big final Wii U Virtual Console games project. Up next is either Earthbound or Fire Emblem GBA. So basically momentum and interest vs a needed genre break. Whichever I don’t pick will be next for sure. Aside from the big Wii U VC project, I do want to get back to Forspoken eventually too. I’ll post again soon when I decide what I’m doing.
 
So I finished Chrono Cross and decided to go right into new game plus. Partially because I was so overpowered by the end (I had to slow down on whopping the Terra Tower bosses because they were dying before I could trap their higher level elements) and thought it'd be fun to breeze through and finally use all this crap I'd built up, and partially because I just never did it before because the length of the game made it daunting for young me to consider it.

So I tried to go for the developer ending but that ain't happening without the Green Plate (it's the one plate I didn't manage to steal and of course I need it now), and then went ahead and went for the Acacian Empire ending. So since I ended up with Leena and Poshul this run, I gotta say it was really, really satisfying to tackle motherfuckin Lavos with a fluffy dog, and to deliver the killing blow with a frying pan. 🤣
 
I had the luck of buying it right before Hd was announced. I’m still tempted to play it
I still recommend to play the trilogy version. As mentioned is a short one unless you really want to go crazy with reclassing and I think it should help to appreciate the changes they will probably make in the HD2D
 
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I still recommend to play the trilogy version. As mentioned is a short one unless you really want to go crazy with reclassing and I think it should help to appreciate the changes they will probably made in the HD2D
Hm would be a good multitasker, I’ll consider
 
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So I finished Chrono Cross and decided to go right into new game plus. Partially because I was so overpowered by the end (I had to slow down on whopping the Terra Tower bosses because they were dying before I could trap their higher level elements) and thought it'd be fun to breeze through and finally use all this crap I'd built up, and partially because I just never did it before because the length of the game made it daunting for young me to consider it.

So I tried to go for the developer ending but that ain't happening without the Green Plate (it's the one plate I didn't manage to steal and of course I need it now), and then went ahead and went for the Acacian Empire ending. So since I ended up with Leena and Poshul this run, I gotta say it was really, really satisfying to tackle motherfuckin Lavos with a fluffy dog, and to deliver the killing blow with a frying pan. 🤣
Poshul is one of my favorite party members lol. I definitely used them in my last playthrough until the swap with Lynx. I think it’s cool they are the only potential party member that follows Serge into Another World for the first time and Poshul can hit very hard if you keep leveling them up.
 
ughhhhhh I'm trying to follow along with an endings guide and it didn't mention some of the endings are on branching paths. I'm now way past the branch point for one of the endings and there's no way back 😩
 
Ya know what

I still have the save from when I beat the game the first time.

Fuck it, new new game plus, fast forward on, auto attack on, encounters off, I'm gonna speedrun to that ending!!!
 
I've been playing Crisis Core Reunion recently. I loved and I really do mean loved the 7 remake, probably one of my favourite games of all time. With Crisis Core, I hadn't played more than a couple hours of it on PSP years ago so going into Reunion I was really excited and had pretty high expectations for both gameplay and story.

I'm about 6 hours in and enjoying the game a decent amount but it definitely took some time to get used to the PSP roots that are 100% still there, like really stiff animations and the fact that so many characters seem to come up with an excuse for why you should either stay behind or go ahead and leave them during combat sections. And the fact that there's only Zack in combat so no party which makes fighting a bit more boring to me since there's no party management but it's still enjoyable. I find the random encounters really annoying though, especially in some of the side missions when I just want to find the last chest or whatever. As for the story, I think that was the biggest whiplash for me, I genuinely really really like the story and writing in FF7R so the thought of being able to see Zack's story and see more of some of the original FF7 characters was exciting but man this writing is just so much worse compared to the Remake, the voice delivery being subpar for basically every character doesn't help either. It seems like a game that really needed a rewrite alongside the visual overhaul it got because it just does not hold up in that regard, quite disappointing. Like I said though I'm enjoying the game, I've just had to really lower my expectations in a lot of ways and enjoy it for what it is. Some of the cutscenes are still fun and it has been nice seeing some familiar characters but it feels like it could have been so much better.
 
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I've been playing Crisis Core Reunion recently. I loved and I really do mean loved the remake, probably one of my favourite games of all time. With Crisis Core, I hadn't played more than a couple hours of it on PSP years ago so going into Reunion I was really excited and had pretty high expectations for both gameplay and story.

I'm about 6 hours in and enjoying the game a decent amount but it definitely took some time to get used to the PSP roots that are 100% still there, like really stiff animations and the fact that so many characters seem to come up with an excuse for why you should either stay behind or go ahead and leave them during combat sections. And the fact that there's only Zack in combat so no party which makes fighting a bit more boring to me since there's no party management but it's still enjoyable. I find the random encounters really annoying though, especially in some of the side missions when I just want to find the last chest or whatever. As for the story, I think that was the biggest whiplash for me, I genuinely really really like the story and writing in FF7R so the thought of being able to see Zack's story and see more of some of the original FF7 characters was exciting but man this writing is just so much worse compared to the Remake, the voice delivery being subpar for basically every character doesn't help either. It seems like a game that really needed a rewrite alongside the visual overhaul it got because it just does not hold up in that regard, quite disappointing. Like I said though I'm enjoying the game, I've just had to really lower my expectations in a lot of ways and enjoy it for what it is. Some of the cutscenes are still fun and it has been nice seeing some familiar characters but it feels like it could have been so much better.
I played Crisis Core for the first time on PSP after playing and thoroughly enjoying Remake and there is some stuff I enjoy, but I found it pretty underwhelming myself. I know they changed some of the combat in the Crisis Core remake version so I won’t speak to that, but the structure / mission design just isn’t very satisfying and aside from Zack I didn’t really care for the characters. Maybe you just had to be there back in the day. It’s a fairly short game, so if you are six hours in already I will say the story does pick up as it goes and the very end is cool.
 
I gotta say it sucks that recruiting a couple of my favorite Chrono Cross characters require being an absolute shit towards Kid.
I just couldn’t do it for decades lol. First time I did was my last playthrough because I really wanted to see what I had been missing out on.
 
I gotta say it sucks that recruiting a couple of my favorite Chrono Cross characters require being an absolute shit towards Kid.
My last playthrough I basically just ignored Kid and did everything possible to pretend she didn’t exist (since I was going for the other route), and the weird thing is the game lets you do that. Like, there are some scenes she just kinda shows up since she has to, and it really feels like you’re missing a ton of stuff and backstory and lore by leaving her out of it. It just feels wrong. And yet it’s possible! Kinda wild for an RPG from 2000.
 
And how did it feel? Discovering you had been missing out on Leena and Glenn?
I always wondered how to get Leena. I could never get her before I looked it up on my last playthrough so in some ways she was the character I was most happy to have even though I definitely swapped her out early for Guile. Glenn I knew I was missing out on hearing others talk about him over the years, but yeah he was super cool to finally get. I never could beat Dario myself until this playthrough (Can you challenge him without Glenn? Maybe you just need Riddel? I forget. If you couldn’t I was using my brother’s save at the time.) so to see the full story there with Glenn was so cool.
 
Yakuza: Like a Dragon is genuinely amazing barring a difficulty spike later on! I'm replaying it now on Xbox. Even the music is excellent.
 
I always wondered how to get Leena. I could never get her before I looked it up on my last playthrough so in some ways she was the character I was most happy to have even though I definitely swapped her out early for Guile. Glenn I knew I was missing out on hearing others talk about him over the years, but yeah he was super cool to finally get. I never could beat Dario myself until this playthrough (Can you challenge him without Glenn? Maybe you just need Riddel? I forget. If you couldn’t I was using my brother’s save at the time.) so to see the full story there with Glenn was so cool.
You don’t need Glenn for that fight, no, just Riddel. He’s very hard unless you cheese him, since he has very exploitable AI, I’ve honestly never beaten him legitimately
 
I never could beat Dario myself until this playthrough (Can you challenge him without Glenn? Maybe you just need Riddel? I forget. If you couldn’t I was using my brother’s save at the time.)
yes you can, you take Riddel with you and it triggers the whole battle. And it's a tough battle, nearly impossible without a White Plate. I've seen some builds/strategies pull it off early but it's rough.
 
yes you can, you take Riddel with you and it triggers the whole battle. And it's a tough battle, nearly impossible without a White Plate. I've seen some builds/strategies pull it off early but it's rough.
It’s actually pretty easy if you:

Abuse red elements. He’s hardcoded to counter with Numble if hit with a red element, so you just have to completely load up characters with nothing but red attack elements and then he’ll waste every single turn using Numble. It’s slow and annoying, but you can beat him without even taking damage if you set it up right.
 
I was a bit torn yesterday whether I would play Earthbound or Fire Emblem GBA next and decided I’d play an hour of each before picking one. I’m not sure I even played thirty minutes before I said yes, it’s finally Earthbound time. Fresh off Beginnings, it’s amazing seeing such a dramatic leap forward for the sequel. The rough sketch of Beginnings is fully realized here with a big adventure across a modern but wild world, there are tons of quirky characters to meet with lots of fun writing to enjoy, and plenty of forward thinking ideas that make the journey smooth. Some of this stuff I knew walking in, I had watched my brother play Earthbound back in the day and I do remember some key sequences like Fourside and the ending, but walking around Eagleland yourself is a personal experience. I like the structure so far of heading to each town and solving its problems before moving on. I especially enjoyed tackling the cult obsessed with the color blue as that was something I’d heard about over the years.

I’m currently in Threed and have three party members on their way to beat Master Belch so I’m making great progress already. I’ll save talking about combat for another time, but already I’m pleased the difficulty curve is much smoother and less mean. I knew about weaker enemies being instantly defeated as you out level them which is great, but somehow I never learned you can see all the enemies on the overworld. Not many you can dodge, but I appreciate you aren’t caught off guard with combat and in certain cases you can despawn some enemies.

Of the four RPGs I’ve played so far for my final Wii U VC project, this is easily the most excited I’ve been about the games I’ve been playing. Excited to play more soon!

Actually one last thing, you can order pizza delivery in this game which is amazing.
 
I’m currently in Threed and have three party members on their way to beat Master Belch so I’m making great progress already. I’ll save talking about combat for another time, but already I’m pleased the difficulty curve is much smoother and less mean. I knew about weaker enemies being instantly defeated as you out level them which is great, but somehow I never learned you can see all the enemies on the overworld. Not many you can dodge, but I appreciate you aren’t caught off guard with combat and in certain cases you can despawn some enemies.
Yea, EB's handling of combat was definitely a bit ahead of the time with the time-saving stuff. I think SaGa was also doing visible enemies instead of random encounters at this time.

Both are examples as to why I'll point at either approach and say they're a design choice vs. one version being outdated or not. Having enemies visible on the field has always been possible and isn't some sort of new innovation. It all comes down to the style of game the developers wanted to make.

Actually one last thing, you can order pizza delivery in this game which is amazing.
I would always leave a slot in the inventory free and place an order before heading into the dungeon :) I also remember as a kid being a little annoyed that the Escargot Express could arrive in seconds while I think Mach Pizza would take about 3 minutes?
 
I played Crisis Core for the first time on PSP after playing and thoroughly enjoying Remake and there is some stuff I enjoy, but I found it pretty underwhelming myself. I know they changed some of the combat in the Crisis Core remake version so I won’t speak to that, but the structure / mission design just isn’t very satisfying and aside from Zack I didn’t really care for the characters. Maybe you just had to be there back in the day. It’s a fairly short game, so if you are six hours in already I will say the story does pick up as it goes and the very end is cool.
Yeah I was definitely a bit disappointed by the structure of the game, feels quite simple which I suppose makes sense since it's a handheld game originally but it took me some time to get used to. And yeah with the characters it sort of feels like every character that's new to Crisis Core just isn't very good haha. I know a little about the ending but not much so I'm looking forward to seeing it for myself.
 
Ygdra Union is now available on steam, I totally recommend this as its an interesting concept (as most of Dept. Heaven) regarding strategy rpg if you've never played. And if you have played them, well it's an opportunity to show some pc support

 
Ygdra Union is now available on steam, I totally recommend this as its an interesting concept (as most of Dept. Heaven) regarding strategy rpg if you've never played. And if you have played them, well it's an opportunity to show some pc support


Played this on PSP, loved it! It’s a bit odd but a very fun SRPG, and unique. It looks great too, its pretty timeless.

I respect Sting’s experimentation with genre (even if Knights in the Nightmare left me somewhat befuddled!)
 
Played a great chunk of Earthbound today as I reached the 3rd and 4th sanctuaries. I enjoyed tackling Fourside or more specifically Moonside which was one of the big parts I remembered from decades ago. Love the visuals there and how hostile it feels. Prior to that I also enjoyed seeing Saturn Valley and tackling the cave with the moles. The 3rd best mole joke was excellent especially with the unique boss battle background lol. One mechanic thing I want to call out, I really like the rolling health bar system since it feels satisfying to take a mortal blow and survive by ending the battle quickly. I stopped today right as I entered Summers and I’m looking forward to exploring it and getting my last party member soon.
 
Now that I finished FEE I can continue with my current DQ3 gameplay and it's finally time for the real dark souls of the jrpg: the pyramid and try to get the golden claw. Granted this time with the thief I have a party with more defense and HP so it should be easier.

Also didn't know we were going to get the Ninja Jajamaru kun RPG localized (the pack says 2 rpg but the Legend of the Golden Castle is more an adventure zelda type game than a full JRPG). Gonna have to try them

 
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Played this on PSP, loved it! It’s a bit odd but a very fun SRPG, and unique. It looks great too, its pretty timeless.

I respect Sting’s experimentation with genre (even if Knights in the Nightmare left me somewhat befuddled!)

Their final games in those styles that were released into English were Gungnir and Generation of Chaos: Pandora's Reflection and they were both. So. Good. As well.

Real tragedy they never found an audience, but then again, they released at the very end of the PSP's life. Pandroa's Reflection was like a modern take on Ogre Battle and Gungnir was very much their take on a classic Tactics Ogre game. Gungnir was one of the hardest SRPGs I've ever played but I did manage to beat it.

Really good dev back in the day.
 
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Recently played Neptunia: Sisters vs Sisters and overall, I really liked it! Been excited for this ever since the Japanese release... while VII is still my favorite Neptunia, this one is pretty high up there!

The new battle system took a bit to get used to, but I ended up enjoying it - only issue is during the parts where you only have one character in your party, having to run around waiting for your AP to charge so you can attack at all is a bit of a pain when you otherwise always have another character to switch to.

The series also properly gets back to its roots of parodying the game industry - with the plot starting with the Candidates (the handheld consoles) being trapped for years and waking up to a world taken over by "rPhones". There are a bunch of jokes about and references to events and games of the past years, which is always fun. (Though speaking of references, I wish we got some new fun enemies and "Scout/Chirper" characters - I always love playing "spot the reference" with those and there's a lot of new games to take inspiration from!)

The areas look nice, though in true Neptunia fashion there's a lot of reusing stuff. The environments also feel less varied compared to older main series games, and I miss the more wacky/whimsical-looking areas. On the other hand, Planeptune is H U G E and pretty fun to explore, wish you could do this for the other nations too!

Also, kinda disappointing you can't play as Higurashi or Shanghai Alice unless you do a NG+ - there isn't even a postgame to clear up stuff like the Neptral Tower (100-floor dungeon with randomly generated maps)!

Overall, I did really like it despite my complaints, but also couldn't help but feel it was missing something overall. But I do appreciate them trying something new and think this is a good basis for the next game - hoping they'll come back even stronger for that!
 
Yakuza: Like a Dragon is genuinely amazing barring a difficulty spike later on! I'm replaying it now on Xbox. Even the music is excellent.
I started it on PS5 recently since I never quite finished it on PS4 and I'm loving it even more this time. I wish we could get more RPGs with parties like this.
 
Just started XC3 aftr playing all the others. Really liking it so far, just got to the larger desert area and I think narratively its much tighter so far. Very very anime, but its really cool
 
Just started XC3 aftr playing all the others. Really liking it so far, just got to the larger desert area and I think narratively its much tighter so far. Very very anime, but its really cool
XC3 is a great game, enjoy! It has probably the fastest, tightest intro of any of the games and really gets you into things quickly. I found the overall pacing and some elements to fall off some later on, but YMMV. It’s really interesting to compare the three games in that way
 
XC3 is a great game, enjoy! It has probably the fastest, tightest intro of any of the games and really gets you into things quickly. I found the overall pacing and some elements to fall off some later on, but YMMV. It’s really interesting to compare the three games in that way
Yeah, Im digging it so far. It has a much clearer reason for all the events happening so far than the other two games IMO. I also really like the battle system, though I cannot beat any of the monsters that have special names yet. They all wreck me at some point!
 
I started it on PS5 recently since I never quite finished it on PS4 and I'm loving it even more this time. I wish we could get more RPGs with parties like this.

Hope you enjoy! If you stick with it, please spend some time grinding when you hit
chapter 12 because there's a HUGE difficulty spike for one boss. When you get to a location and you're told "this is the battle arena, you can get stronger" please spend time in there.
 
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Yakuza: Like a Dragon is genuinely amazing barring a difficulty spike later on! I'm replaying it now on Xbox. Even the music is excellent.
Barring a few combat quirks and kinks. It is an excellent game and they made a great switch to RPG with very few faults
 
It's Dragon Quest 3 35th anniversary! WHERE'S MY DQ3 HD2D INFO SQUENIX??


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
 
Cool thing for Kingdom Hearts fans, the Kingdom Hearts 1.5 and 2.5 soundtracks finally hit itunes and other music services! At least for 2.5 which I snagged immediately, it's basically exclusively Kingdom Hearts II's soundtrack which is fine with me though I hope we get BBS' soundtrack one day. Regardless, so many awesome tracks here that I'm so happy to finally have. Twilight Town's songs and Hollow Bastion's songs in particular are incredible!

The Direct (and life stuff) interrupted my Earthbound playthrough as I mostly wanted to post here the last few days, but I'm making good progress nonetheless. I got Poo and cleared the fifth and sixth sanctuaries the other day. Tonight I'm starting out exploring the pyramid. Poo is definitely a strange character. He's a monk who you can only equip very specific items for and pretty much can use no food items with him. I had no intention of level grinding, so I sort of just kept moving forward with him. He's underleveled, but catching up quick. Still not sure exactly how he fits into combat, but it's nice to have another healer at least.
 
Cool thing for Kingdom Hearts fans, the Kingdom Hearts 1.5 and 2.5 soundtracks finally hit itunes and other music services! At least for 2.5 which I snagged immediately, it's basically exclusively Kingdom Hearts II's soundtrack which is fine with me though I hope we get BBS' soundtrack one day. Regardless, so many awesome tracks here that I'm so happy to finally have. Twilight Town's songs and Hollow Bastion's songs in particular are incredible!

I Vectored to the Heavens myself all the way to work today, will probably do the same tomorrow.
 


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