For the first time since I first played the game sixteen-ish years ago, I finally finished Final Fantasy Legend II. I’ve played, and beaten, the DS remake, and was surprised to find that the original, as intent as it is in torturing for making the wrong decisions because the game provided absolutely no guidance, is objectively the easier version–like, exponentially so. Not only did stat upgrades occur with more frequency, bosses, lacking the ability to overwhelm through sheer numbers like regular enemies, were largely pathetic, even during a semi-conservative playthrough with minimal safe-scumming. The remake, though, rejiggers the game balance so that bosses are vastly tougher, and even clever character-building will often just not be enough to beat the beefed-up final boss. This time around, I did it in my second try. I did not expect that to be the case.
Dead rising sucks
i said it when i played it a couple of months ago, but tokyo jungle takes its concepts and does them a lot better.
of course, dead rising is the one that get fancy new ports and sequels, while tokyo jungle is stuck on ps3 forever rassum frassum
Hmmm, I’ve never thought of Tokyo Jungle as a continuation of Dead Rising, but I thought of both as independently applying some roguelike concepts to action games (I love them both).
The only fanboyism I’ll cop to is when I sat at a table across from the designer/founder of Crispy’s and asked him if he like Dobutsu Bancho/Cubivore as much as I did while we both tried to not harass our tablemate Yu Suzuki.
there’s a lot of similarities!
they both take place in a confined map split into areas, they both have time-sensitive missions that largely involve going to a place to do something, they both have very gradual stat progression that carries over into future playthroughs.
tokyo jungle refines it by having a smaller map, and by not being exactly the same every time. the way dead rising is the same every time but also you keep your stats means that you might as well just ignore the missions and grind for level ups until you’ve hit maximum, then you start the missions.
in tokyo jungle, doing the missions is the only way to increase your stats, so every play has to be an attempt at completing the missions. plus, expecting arcade-style playing over and over in a game like dead rising that’s a few hours long and full of pretty lengthy cutscenes is terrible.
Oh man I have pretty much zero complaints about the Switch port. It runs so steadily at 30fps (the way Dark Souls is meant to be played!) and the Switch is such a god dang Video Game Console!
I recall beating the story right after I hit max level, but making a lot of progress on it well before then. Did people really grind for levels before doing the missions? That would take all of the fun out of it and I have no idea why anyone would play it like that.
i gave up long before getting to that point, but it was frustrating how slow and fragile frank is at the start of the game
He’s pretty much always fragile and not particularly fast. Levelling gives you more health and some more combat moves, sure, but then by the end of the game, I recall you were fighting things that could still just destroy it. I never felt like he became a tank, and that was a good thing. It was more about knowing how to maximize what you were doing and get certain weapons reliably.
I certainly disagree that Tokyo Jungle lent itself to healthier player-game relationships. It’s hard to see grinding because you want a chainsaw hockey stick and grinding because you want to be a sika as anything more than aesthetically different.
Call me a phillistine, but I thought the voice sample that Digital Foundry picked to illustrate the audio compression sounded better on Switch than on whichever version they compared it to.
This is reminding me I sank a few hours into Supet Adventure Islsnd 2. Adventure Island cloning later Wonder Boy games is an incredible concept from an aesthetic standpoint.
It doesn’t hurt that’s is a pretty competent Wonder Boy clone at that. But Master Higgens in armor never stops being weird.
I never felt to hindered by the starting stats in Dead Rising but the real power play is learning item locations and routes. I feel the first time you play should is to go as far as you can until you mess something in the story up (miss a deadline, let someone important die etc) with out dying and just get a feel for the game and get a few quick starter levels. Get a health pip and item slot at least and then start in earnest and should be much smoother. I always thought of DR as just one single Mario level but it’s the whole game in context of the time limit. You just keep trying till you get through, just over a larger space and time.
Yes I’m going to quote myself:
As previously stated Dead Rising is about learning the mall and the times of events while Tokyo Jungle wouldn’t even land in the top 5 DS roguelikes. I think at least those all have run buttons.
Having returned to it and finished it after a hiatus, actually I’m going to lean toward “don’t play it.”
There’s geegaws to collect that I suppose will earn me a “better” ending but the prospect of playing a mechanically unrefined exploration game to find all of them is completely unappealing. The game also goes for a lot of completely unearned pathos in the final act in a way that was kind of insulting, even for an easy emotional mark like me. And that final act is sort of completely phoned in anyway!
It’s got maybe two portions that show some promise, but the promise is never lived up to. Skip it.
I quit Dead Rising because I got sick of those phone calls every five god damn seconds, also when I killed those guys in a jeep only to find they respawn the next day, plus all the clunkiness.
I loved the second one, though! I finished all the missions in that one.
I wanna play dead rising again god damn
The second one ruined everything wonderful about the first, turning a quirky Japanese good time into boring Western AAA bleh. That it was so easy to finish every single mission on one run through is indicative of so much that is wrong in DR2. I kept hoping it would get better but…nope.
I AIN’T GOT TIME FOR MULTIPLE PLAYTHROUGHS
AND PHONE CALLS EVERY FIVE SECONDS
Jill’s Sandwiches