holy shit the difference is crazy!
i tried the jp version on normal and i reckon in the international version every enemy has had all its numbers multiplied by 2-4. the fodder you fight at the start take 3 hits instead of 12, and taking damage only reduces your health by about 10% instead of 20-30%. enemy weak-points actually do serious damage instead of completely unnoticeable amounts. i reckon the starting level took me 25% of the time to beat.
it’s a completely different game lmao.
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is there a name for a patch that undoes this kind of thing? i’ve found an undub patch (also there was a pc version??) but like, nothing much in the way of difficulty patches. maybe I’m just not using the right terms.
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UnWorking Designs is the standard I feel like. But I think it isn’t well known just how fucked these lesser Capcom PS2 games were.
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i can believe that chaos legion might have been fucked with, since devil kings (the western version of the first sengoku basara) not only had its story and all its characters changed, but they messed with the way it played so much that they added a whole new mechanic to make the game worse
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Capcom USA sure loved messing with their games in that era. Though I just mainly remember the SF2 bosses being renamed and also Megaman X5 boss names
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i just got to the Arcia level and duuuuuuude she is a way cooler character in every respect (the “trap mode” is awesome i fucking hollered). i’m so bummed i have to play as Sieg again. but now i am also determined to get through to the end and unlock her properly. anyway i’m gonna shut up now and finish this thing so i can do a proper post later.
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Wow, that explains how even teen me could feel disgusted by the sponginess.
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DeMC3-ing would be the Capcom specific name I would go with, after their most famous example of this kind of galaxy brain shit.
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i lol’ed
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Chaos Region Legion (2003, ps2 and windows???)
what a weird object. not like, interestingly weird exactly, but curious. it bears the marks of very strange production decisions.
i beat chaos legion (jp) bang on the 8 hour mark, which is half the time listed on howlongtobeat, so let’s get this out of the way real quick: the international release of this game increases enemy health and damage by around 4 times and increases the prerequisite xp for leveling by around 5 times. no other adjustments have been made to accommodate this. the game is basically the same in all other respects. it’s just arbitrarily way way worse.
i mentioned it further up the thread but the best yardstick for this is that the first enemy you encounter takes three (3) hits to kill in the jp version (not even a full basic combo which is 4 hits) and takes TWELVE (12!!!) in the international version. that’s two fully extended (6-hit) combos! for one enemy!
so that’s strange (bizarre) production decision number one.
thankfully, the plot of this game is A: nonsense, B: unimportant, and C: can be pretty accurately deduced from the cutscenes, even without understanding anything. so you can play it in japanese w google translate open on your phone for whenever there’s a particular input or special technique or item that needs explanation.
the basic structure of the game is thus:
- go to new area
- doors close behind you (there is always a cutscene for this)
- kill the things that spawn in the area
- doors open in front of you (there is always a cutscene for this)
- repeat
- eventually there might be a boss
in between stages there’s a menu where you can level up your “legions” – this game’s gimmick; basically just dudes you summon that can slash, punch, shoot, block, shock, and explode enemies (there’s also special one which can… also punch enemies… but like more and harder. it’s not important).
there’s like, almost something to the legions. you can give them orders and make em line up and attack and retreat and like, it’s kinda giving pikmin or little king’s story or similar, but, at least on normal jp difficulty, you never really have to be thinking that hard about what guys you’re using, especially in the last 5 stages once they’re all leveled up. in the international version i did find myself doing more with the legions, but this is mostly because you can replenish legion health by punching guys, which gives you xp and legion juice. whereas player health doesn’t replenish much without the use of items (or some enemies which semi-arbitrarily drop health). so it wasn’t like, tactically more interesting exactly. it was just kind of a cheap way to solve the problem of having very little health. idk. i can imagine something cool being done with it but i don’t think this game cared that much to explore it seriously.
anyway so that’s weird production choice number two. then there’s the actual player character:
you play as Sieg Wahrheit (literally german for “Victory” and “Truth” lmao) and you press square on guys until they fall over. you have a basic melee combo, a ranged magic “attack” which is really just a way to select which enemy you’re locked on to (and which enemy your legions prioritise); it doesn’t do much in the way of damage, but you can use it to interrupt some enemies, which i thought was neat. you also have a jump (and later a double-jump) and a four-way dodge with i-frames. Sieg is like, really normal. by the end of the game you’ll unlock a “parry” (press square while being attacked to counter-attack; just mash) a cool lightning backflip which hurts enemies as you retreat, a shoulder bash that knocks enemies over, and some other niche stuff, but he never really comes together. he’s kinda “complex” (not the same as “complicated”), but like… weirdly aimless.
then there’s Alicia Arcia who, in the normal course of the game, you play for exactly one level. she is way cooler than Sieg. she has two modes: kick, and gun. you can toggle between those modes in the same way that Sieg toggles between… having summons and… not.
anyway her gun mode is extremely cool: you fire a shot with every button press (dreadful for hands but damn it feels good; just a touch of hit-stop on each shot you land 
) and you can shoot while jumping and dodging; it’s very enter the matrix or tomb raider. it’s good! you can also enter something called “trap mode”(?) in which Alicia Arcia lays down on her back and shoot up, juggling any enemies in a very generous region around her. you can enter this mode after a launching kick (very cool), or by simply dodging backwards.
she has a few other subtleties, probably most notably a “firing range” mode where, if you hold square in gun mode, the camera changes to an over-the-shoulder-ish perspective, and you fire constantly, moving an aiming reticle around with the left stick. it’s neat! she’s neat.
anyway i mention all these details because it’s so weird to me to have two fully realised character controllers and to only really use one of them? like, technically once you beat the game on normal you do unlock the ability to play again as Arcia (this is not indicated in any way. you would only discover this if you try to start the game over from the beginning, at which point it asks which character you want to use) but why one would do this is kind of unclear; nothing else seems different, and she can’t be leveled up as far as i can tell. you just get to play through the same levels as a slightly more well-rounded character. it’s weird!
idk maybe i’m making a big deal out of pretty-normal-for-the-time production artifacts, but i don’t recall encountering anything like this in other stuff i’ve played. and in combination with this game being so forgotten – even idiot games like gungrave get terrible hateful UE5 reboots – it just makes the whole thing very mysterious.
anyway i recommend finding a 100%'d save and playing around w the two characters for a bit then doing something else.
cool game. glad i went back to it.
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nah, mining an interesting-to-you evolutionary dead end is healthy for your reader, as well
thread never die
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Been playing Two Worlds. Been thinking about this thread again.
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two worlds being the best western RPG of 2007 easily is so wonderful, sorry bioware, there’s real gaming happening over here
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I’m glad to hear that. I’ve heard it’s terrible and bad and all that, but I’m over here going… uhhh why am I having so much fun with this? Why am I looking forward to playing this so much tonight?
The community seems really fun as well.
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wow. i mustn’t have looked at this properly all those years ago. this is… transcendent.
i’m determined to go back through this thread and re-evaluate many of its entries, but also i have so many new entries that i want to go through. here’s my current list:
(this list has immediately become inaccurate by my scrolling back up through this thread and adding things but whatever)
there’s already a few in there that i’ve played before but either don’t feel i gave a fair enough shake or don’t have strong enough memories to confidently judge.
also mega bummed at how there are already images in this thread that have flaked away 
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what the hell is that god damn n64 pugilist game where u learn moves from enemies by being hit by them… >:(
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just a complete guess, but flying dragon/hiryuu no ken?
nah it’s not a fighting game. it’s technically a shooter! except your gun only stuns enemies.
i think also you maybe play as a native american?.. that can’t be right i must be confused. i coulda sworn i played this recently but i can’t find a rom of it anywhere. which makes me suspicious that it’s not actually an n64 game… but coulda sworn! that texture filter…
Time and Eternity is mostly an RPG, just so you know.