it’s up to preference; i love raidou but personally think dante fits the game’s tone a bit better… but it’s also paid dlc, so by no means necessary if you don’t want to fork out for it.
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Also keep in mind that the Merciful DLC should be free even if you get the standard edition. And I think you can swap difficulty levels at will during your playthrough.
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yes, i think that’s true. in terms of rhythm, flow and momentum it almost feels like a turn-based fighting game to me. even the way stuff like passing turns can be really strong because of the resource management in the press turn system almost feels like strategic movement and positioning in fgs.
fwiw, it is a game that can maybe benefit from a guide at certain points, especially if you want to go for the true end.
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I love Dragon Quarter.
Nocturne did nothing for me. I think SMT games coast on their battle systems and shove a 20 hour plot in an 80 hour game. The battles aren’t that interesting! I find recruiting (random) and fusing (skills are random) a complete hassle. I feel like I’m staring too far into the numbers.
Always feel like I have to bite my Tongue when Nocturne comes up because I played it for about 5 hours and put it down and went “okay”. Playing it was functionally the same as dungeons in Persona or SMTIV (which I beat), IVA (got 12 hours in), Soul Hackers (8 hours then had to deal with cycles of the moon and shopping online are you kidding?)
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SMT1 is better than Nocturne because increasing your luck stat actually affects the game.
I wasted like 15 hours of Nocturne pumping luck and it made zero noticeable difference.
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I played through it on some new game + save with a bunch of level 99 satans and quit at the last dungeon cause the constant random battles while trying to navigate the thing were driving me insane and looked up the ending on youtube. all worth it for the mood and atmosphere!
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estoma is really useful at that point ime
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got fed up with the encounter rate in FFIX so I booted up Earthbound instead
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I came around to Need For Speed Hot Pursuit Remastered for Nintendo Switch™️ after I:
Turned off the motion blur
Turned off the depth of field
Turned off the MUSIC🤮
Stopped drifting every turn
Stopped taking every shortcut
Started boosting out of turns
I am upset that it’s showing that I’ve spent 6 seconds playing as the cops when I’ve done no such thing acab
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“JRPG that really wants you to get deeply invested in mastering its combat system” is an absolute nightmare to me. Don’t have anything else to contribute just wanted to stand as an example of the other side of that coin. FF6 rules obviously
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Receiver 2 is very nearly as transcendent as its pretensions and I don’t think anybody gives it nearly enough credit. I started out slightly disappointed at its sidestep toward videogameness relative to the first game, whose stark simplicity I thought served better, but I was completely sold once I gave it a little time. A game that gives you exactly what you put into it.
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This is so affirming to hear. Since I played Receiver last year I have constantly thought of it as Transcendent. I think I will end up liking Receiver 2 as much, but I worry it will make Receiver 1 less special at the same time.
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I think the conversation got away from us a bit because that’s not what I (at least) meant to imply by my critique of FF6 – it’s more that it just feels a mess at the best of times and it’s only
closer to satisfying when you’re resorting to repetitive gamefaqs exploits. I also grew up w/ final fantasy and am fluent in its various idiosyncrasies and am not a big enough fan of jRPGs to want to be deeply challenged by them (most of the time – DQXI is extremely satisfying from a systems perspective and stands out in memory because most dragon quests aren’t in my book), but 6 just doesn’t feel good a lot of the time, the systems are shallow and obtuse and superfluous.
I like to remind people in these conversations that my favourite non-tactics entry by far is 9 which is pretty widely regarded as a sentimental mediocrity, though it has hiroyuki ito in common with 6 and 12 and his work always takes itself slightly more seriously in a way that is usually underappreciated. 9 is much closer to the most fully realized version of itself than 6 or 12 are though
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Oh, I didn’t grow up with FF6 - I was a Chrono Trigger > 7 guy. The vicissitudes of “what my parents will randomly pay for”. Played it for the first time as an adult and loved it. I’d heard it was broken and buggy but did not know any of the bugs or broken strategies, just kind of muddled through fine.
I think I’m over the idea of any turn-based combat that doesn’t involve a map and positioning. I don’t find any frisson in picking things off menus. I’ve felt this way for a very long time now.
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same except I was a 4 > Mystic Quest(?) > Chrono Trigger > 7 guy, and I borrowed the first 3 from my mom’s friends’ kids b/c they were too expensive. I played 5 and 6 via ZSNES in like 1999
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I played FFX first, roll for psychic damage olds
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I have tried to play this game twice and nearly thrown the disc into the wall both times
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it is genuinely repulsive even though I can kind of see why younger people consider it of a piece with 8 at worst, the difference in production design was just… intolerable
ffx is a paragon of bad design, visual ugliness and grating characters that i loathed all the way through but they did pop off with this
then the team leveled up and made ff13, an actually good game
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It’s like you people didn’t even start playing jRPGs with Dragon Warrior. Psh.
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