Huh. I’d say it has very little in common with da gadfater. I was mildly interested in Trevor which makes it more than I was in anyone in Corilonos story.
yeah it’s not my most coherent critique but it’s definitely a shitty pastiche of gangster movie cliches.
I hate that they want me to empathize with the characters as “good guys” but then immediately have me kill like 300 mostly innocent people. But hey that’s vidjagams
EDIT: ALSO there’s like absolutely no character growth so far. God I wish this game had good writers.
But what about that political commentary they are taking it to both sides!
In Pokemon, a tackle that does 8 damage one turn, will do 8 damage the next, unless a stat has been buffed or debuffed, or there is a critical hit. Why does Pokemon do this? Why is it doing the exact same amount of damage? I can’t think of another JRPG that does this. It’s been that way from the beginning of Pokemon, and yet this has never been questioned. I point this out because the battle speed also seems to be exactly the same as it was 20 years ago, and I’m wondering if this is part of a design philosophy.
pokemon doesn’t work like that!
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Randomness can be interesting in strategy games but it doesn’t need to exist everywhere. Pokemon does have moves with a miss chance and it allows players to opt for safer choices. There are enough other factors – do I understand the opponent’s elemental weakness? Do they have an item? What if they switch Pokemon? – that the game remains sufficiently interesting, when it wants to be. Of course, using Tackle against wild Pokemon in the start isn’t very interesting! But maybe it’s not supposed to be. It’s supposed to be playable by 6 year-olds, every game.
Another way of looking at it: if Tackle did random damage, the spread would be low enough that it wouldn’t impact the result of the battle. Tolerable randomness on a basic move (critical misses and hits), in abbreviated digital form (physical dice, and friends, make extreme randomness much better) is very low – you’d want 90, 95% success rate to feel comfortable, and then you’re just talking about extra noise when you look to see how much damage it did that turn.
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yo, tackle does do random damage
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So far I’m enjoying Moon way more than X just based on the environments, characters designs etc. alone.
I got Mad Max for 20 bucks! You gonna give me JC3 for 20 bucks?
well, yes, er, well…
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This is the biggest sticking point in this series for me. They really need to add a fast forward button and replace all the “it’s super effective” messages etc with small text that floats up next to the pokemon, without needing to be skipped through by hammering the A button. Same with status effects, I don’t need to be told every turn that a pokemon is asleep, especially since I can see the Zs floating out of it
is turning off battle animations sufficient? i think a fast forward button is probably too much to ask for, in this case
I think I tried that briefly, but found it slightly confusing just having the text without the animations.
Without the animations, the battles feel a bit unengaging and pointless.
I want to be able to see the animations, but be able to skip them or at least skip the text messages on the fly when I feel like it. I guess it might be too much to ask for Pokemon, but Bravely Default and Golden sun have both managed it, so I don’t really see why Game Freak can’t incorporate something similar.
I just assume they haven’t really bothered to think about it. The slowness of the battles is probably considered some sort of tradition at this point.
my unfounded theory is that it’s just a result of wanting to be very particular about game flow
or, it could be that slowing down the battles allows the player to give sufficient consideration to the sanctity of a Pokemon’s life
but then a five second battle in SMT4/4A never feels unsubstantial, at least for me
See I think the game flow and presentation of the battles would actually be improved if they replaced all the dialogue boxes with just a quick graphical representation. If I am going to be doing around 1000 battles over the game length, then they should less of a slog.
Phantasy Star IV did it pretty well back in the day. Those battles felt very slick and snappy, and as a consequence it is one of the only non-Pokemon JRPG with random encounters that I can still play to completion these days.
and I super agree with you
as it is, it feels fluffy and hollow
for some reason I recall Black/White improving on this somehow but maybe I’m just thinking of the animated Pokemon
Text descriptions feel like Dragon Quest heritage, yeah? But I’ve never seen it well done in this format besides Dragon Quest and Mother – it’s so hard to keep people reading it as words and not bare info, you have to throw in tons of jokes and descriptions to characterize monsters or its just a static-filled damage report.
Obviously less-graphical games like roguelikes need that for representation but again I think most of that info could be represented on the main screen.
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Battle speed is all over the place in Pokemon. Gen 3 was pretty fast w/o animations; gen 4 was painfully slow before Platinum. Gen 5 sped things up a lot, then 6 slowed it down again.
Tracing the series from a design perspective is really weird in general, it doesnt always feel like a linear progression. Some design concepts get introduced in one generation, then backed down from in the next (day/time from 2 to 3, for instance). Some get created then totally dropped for no reason (why doesn’t every Pokemon game since HG/SS have running shoes toggle!!) What’re you on, Game Freak??
Gen 4 was the most bloated and awful but from then on they’ve gotten much better. I am finally getting to play my own copy of Pokemon X, and – for example – you can just catch Combee and Eevee for once. The latter used to be exclusively one-per-game gifts, and the former were an unbelievable stupid chore when they were introduced (slather honey on a tree, then go check that tree after a certain amount of real-world time and hope to get lucky. Want a Vespiquen (the female-only evolution of Combee (females only appear 12.5% of the time (WHICH ISN’T HOW BEES WORK)))? GOOD FUCKING LUCK).
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wow I do not remember having trouble with getting a vespiquen at all, that is wild