4/4A was interesting as far as the whole series went because it was the first one to really embrace the super-fast combat design as far as I know
I played 2 and 3 a little, and both of those seemed to be wrestling with how to treat big metal machines – they seemed to settle on a design where having the boosters on and “skating” along the ground was a big decision to make tactically and ate into your power meter a lot
4A went in almost the complete opposite direction, where boosters on was pretty much the default mode and going faster than that meant either overboosting (super fast travel for a moderate amount of time followed by boosters turning off and needing to cool down) or quick-boosting. I really liked it! at the time it seemed like most mech games were doubling down on the mechs-as-big-tanks idea so to basically be playing a gundam fight in a video game was really great, but getting into high-level play seemed near impossible
V and VD toned it down to kinda-near impossible levels, which is fine for me
Wow, thanks for all the replies and recommendations. In terms of PS1/2 stuff, is there anything I’m missing out on by skipping straight to 4-5? I’m liking the sound of both of these. The only mech title I’ve played is Z.O.E so this is all new territory. Is there an overarching significant plot at all or can I get by?
each is pretty much a revision on the last (that goes for 4A and VD obsoleting the vanilla releases of 4 and 5 too). I think it’s just down to preference between 4 and 5.
eternally promoting: http://lparchive.org/author/ArclightBorealis
would prolly cover 90% of a non-playing xperience of 3 PS1 entries, the rest being
5% the music of the games (dunno)
5% miscellany of understand the physics from extended observation
0% moon punishment
Basically each gen is it’s own thing, one of the prime indicators being how far forward between the games you can transfer your saves for money and parts.
Though the AC1-Last Raven line are the closer to each other than they are AC4/4A and V/VD, but the PS1 games (AC1, Arena, Project Phantasma) are bit different to the first two PS2 games (AC2 and Another Age), then AC3 and Silent Line alter things a little more, and the you get another slight shift for Nexus, Ninebreaker, and Last Raven.
Plot wise tends to follow mechanical shifts to a degree, but often are more just being in the same specific setting, and the games are generally stand alone. AC3 all the Way to Last Raven are basically the longest run single setting, but with Nexus and Last Raven being the most directly linked of those games.
tl,dr; If you want to try the older games, AC1, AC2, AC3, or Nexus are you best starting points.
Kind of, but it really depends on your build, and investing in a good generator and powerful but efficient boosters is one of the first thing you want to do. AC3 to Last Raven in particular are notable for actually giving you a decent starter AC that with just those upgrades and some better weapons can have staying power, and you can still find use for the parts in later builds.
How do you backup a Dezaemon SFC Save? Can a Super UFO 8 do it?
Dezaemon is real cool, but I didn’t pick up the snes version, because I thought any creations would be locked away on the cart until the battery died.
Edit: I found a forum post by Dessgeeega where she posts save data, but she didn’t mention how she backed it up.
Hey Armored Core pros: what can you tell me about Formula Front? As in, similarities/differences to the other games. I recall playing it briefly and finding it fun, but that was years before I actually got more into the AC series.
Anyone know anything about the port quality of the 3DS Megaman Legacy Collection? I’m completely unconcerned about stuff like “it only has MM1-6”. I’m solely interested in where it falls on a scale of old Digital Eclipse hatchet job to blissful M2 level accuracy.
I’ve heard the current Digital Eclipse team basically saying “we’re different now!” and that they’re striving to be the Criterion Collection of games. Quality over quantity, exacting accuracy, etc. But I’ve heard that before from many others only to be disappointed in the results.
There’s been a lot of complaining about bad sound emulation in the console release of that MM collection, with a patch promised months ago… which has never arrived. ~Capcom~
Reportedly, the 3DS version has pretty noticeable hitching compared to the Virtual Console releases. Which it costs the same as. Which is notably more than the console version’s cost.
(1) Apparently the 3DS eShop (US) version is currently mispriced at $29.99 and will be corrected soon to $15, so definitely hold off if you’re thinking of buying that. You’ll pay a bit of a premium for the $30 physical cart, but that seems pretty fair to me.
(2) Digital Eclipse claims they’ve made an “Eclipse Engine” that’s basically emulating the NES on a system level, and then they port the engine to whatever platform: PS4, XBO, 3DS, PS5, whatever… They go into some detail here. EDIT: They SAY it’s not an emulator since on your end you are getting an executable for a specific platform, but I’m having a hard time understanding how that’s not just semantics: they’re basically emulating on THEIR end with their “engine”/emulator reading the input source code/ROMs, and using that to generate a package for a specific platform. It’s still emulation though at some level, even if it’s not strictly speaking “ROMs on a cart”.
Personally, I’m skeptical it’s going to match the quality of the Capcom Generations Saturn/PSX releases (of which the PSX games are available on PSN and playable on Sony portables), which are better than the 3DS VC games (inaccurate resolution issues). So I’m inclined to not want to get the 3DS release since there are already better official portable releases. But I’m still curious.
Fire Emblem fans, how deep is the strategy in the 3DS games? Is it simply a matter of putting the stronger unit on the tile next to the weaker unit and attacking or are there other systems layered on top of that process to make it more interesting?
I am open to playing the games, but I just want to make sure there’s something more to it than putting your dude next to the other dude and attacking.
For that matter, what are some strategy RPG’s that are deep/complex I can get in to? So far, the best battle system I’ve played in that genre is Might and Magic: Clash of Heroes, which I think is a brilliant system.
Perhaps it’s just not wanting to be seen as saying something inaccurate, but emulation and ahead-of-time code translation are two different approaches to the same problem, each having its own technical trade-offs, and I don’t think it would be fair to equate the two.
Never played it, but IIRC it’s deal was you created ACs and the programmed AI to fight in arena matches, so kind of a different beast in many ways, though the US version added the ability to control them yourself if you wanted to.
i can’t speak re: fates but in awakening this is basically it, there’s a relationship/partner system where you can pair two units up but there are no situations where it’s disadvantageous to do this so it’s just busywork
it’s kind of a bummer how few Japanese turn based strategy games are actually good. I think intelligent systems’ hands down best work was on the GBA, everything prior to that was a huge growlanser-y mess (shining force is way better than the early fire emblems purely on the basis of scale) and everything after that kind of has no reason to be there other than otaku crap
Early-midgame Fire Emblem maps are usually pretty amazing (lategame maps are more bloated)
The challenge is mostly in positioning; create chokepoints, protect your healer/archer, go in range of a few enemies but not too many of them or you might die, send that flying unit over the mountain, etc. Turtling is often not a good idea because villages get destroyed by bandits and characters disappear and stuff. And you get a LOWER SCORE.
You might also want to think about long term and put yourself at a small risk just to level a particular character.
Normal mode is about making the most aggressive choices that still has a 0% chance one of your characters could end up dying on an enemy turn.
Cool hard mode maps are about choosing the least worse options (the one that has a roughly 0,1% chance of one of your characters dying).
It’s sort of XCom-ish, but I find good Fire Emblem more rewarding because you can see the entire enemy field and can plan accordingly
I agree that the GBA ones are the best. Especially the two the west got (the japanese only one had bullshit reinforcements that act immediately after appearing)
Here are protips:
do not actually use underleveled characters, they’re not worth it
myrmidons and swordmasters do flips but are not actually very good
cavaliers are actually awesome. Get them javelins
I have barely played the first 3DS one but did not like it. The focus on supports doesn’t make much sense to me.