lucky, i believe it’s rigged so you’re almost certainly going to get either the beginner friendly overpowered character or the one with no intro on your first playthrough
I played about 45 minutes, which means like two battles and few cutscenes. This game seems cool. I like how breezy the pace is yet imparts a feeling like the world can potentially be very, very dense. Changing traversal and exploration to just a world map with points of interest really does cut out a lot of filler time where you would just be walking around through corridors and lets you cut straight to narrative events and combat encounters.
Installing it on an SSD means I never get to see the loading screen tips though so I constantly have to pause and then go to the Tips menu to see what I missed, which ironically makes things take longer.
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this is far too relevant to work right now
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Have you tried Natural Doctrine? It’s main gimmick is turn order modification controlled by character proximity on the map, and it’s pretty cool to watch the entire enemy team steal turns in front of your entire team because your characters were only faster than every enemy except one. The main problem is that you can make the game easy a bit too early, but it’s a neat system.
I’m going to assume you’re referring to having light bulbs appear above people’s heads and not anything else.
The quick interstials and camera cuts whenever someone glimmers or triggers some other sort of effect is as satisfying as it ever was.
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always disappointed they localised it as ‘glimmer’ and not ‘tech sparking’
It’s $16 on the Square Enix store.
I have a hunch the SE price might be an error due to applying the regular 20% launch discount to what they have incorrectly listed as a base price of $20, or maybe SE just has the game cheaper on their own store. But if you’re interested in the game at all that’s probably the lowest price it’s going to ever be for a long time.
I started as Urpina and after things go down in her starting region it seems like you have a few different options in how you respond based on where you go next. I spent the entire night trying to do battles to save my kingdom and all I have to show for it is a better understanding of the combat system. I’ve finally given up and just gone down the path that is clearly what you’re actually supposed to do if you’re a beginner, which is to not fight any of several battles marked as Hard Difficulty and instead fight the Easy/Normal difficulty fights that open a path for you to run to safety.
It feels bad when victory is right in your face and you have no choice but to turn rail and run.
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have you tried the second steven universe rpg? it’s good (and if its particular genre-blend has been done before i haven’t seen it)
works for very different reasons than what it looks like this game is doing but i’ll take the excuse to plug it anyway
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I like those frogs that do taekwondo.
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Everyone in Scarlet Grace is an adult who knows who they are and what they want in life.
i am also the princess. wonder how different the other plots are. hopefully less… bland than what i’ve seen so far. i doubt any of the other protagonists have an attack as wonderful as Brusque Slash though. i’m coming across landmarks with nothing going on in them so i’m guessing that’s the kind of thing that changes by completing other routes
i’d much rather have actual kobayashi artwork for portraits than the posed 3d model stills but that’s probably a pretty tepid take
there’s a lot of emphasis on tanking but the only healing ability i’ve seen is the impractical-seeming and not-immediately-apparent revive that the protagonist starts with, so that’s a little unusual
the tips menu mentions that many roles require you to multiclass weapons to discover them experimentally which sounds kind of terrible
i really like this game. i don’t know that this game is more focused on story and narrative than any other SaGa i’ve played, though. if anything, it feels like the battle system here is the main focus and the rest is something that feels like a midway point between Minstrel’s Song and Unlimited (which…i like).
i got it on PS4 because i’m a slave to image quality, but i’m surprised that (what was) a Vita game still has framerate issues on a PS4 Pro. it also feels clear to me that the game was really designed for a handheld, and so i’m…maybe partially regretting not getting the game on Switch, where fast battles and interactions that occur in 5 - 10 mins would make a lot of sense for pick up and play.
this sounds like a lot of criticism, but i am actually really enjoying it. Farm Boy’s story is kind of whatever, but i do really like the aesthetics of the game. the nomads and the vaguely-rural-China feel of the game is something i haven’t seen most RPGs try.
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Damn I was definitely going to get this on PS4 but now you’ve got me second guessing if I want it on Switch as well.
How far are you? I just left the second region, Jusitania I think it was called? Where you recruit Ogniana and then leave through the flood gates. After it was over was I just kind of like “Oh, was that it?” Nothing happened with the pirates and the bar on the southern coast, or getting the bees to migrate between the jungles. They felt like setups rather than whole events so it’s hard to tell if there’s payoff is down the line, if there was more to do, or if Urpina can’t trigger the next steps.
With how light that area ended up being I think it’s at least pushed me to maybe take these areas a bit faster, and not everything needs to occupy my attention if it doesn’t seem to be triggering something nee immediately. I helped the miner on the east side several times, increasing the difficulty each time, but nothing seemed to happen so maybe that was just a grinding spot like the regular crystal mines seem to be.
I got a healing skill on that first mage guy you have and I laughed when it spends several turns charging up a full team heal spell and it did around 6 HP for each person. I got Mirane from the Astel Covenant and she also has a full team heal spell that takes 3 turns to charge but did 50+ for each person instead, so I’m not sure what affects heal potency yet. But perhaps the more useful effect for these spells might actually be for healing status effects. Since they can take long, once I know certain kinds of enemies tend to cause particular status ailments I’ll pop a spell charging ahead of time in preparation for a couple of turns later when the enemies have enough BP to start poisoning, sleeping, or paralyzing my party members. Then the heal comes in and cures them right away. This is especially useful for those enemies that do full party status effects.
Also I think I actually like the models. This might be more nostalgia though because it reminds me a lot of the style used in Minstel’s Song. This game’s minstrel is nowhere near as cool as that one’s.
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romasaga 1-3 have no multi-target heal spells/abilities
3 has staffs you can break for a one off multi heal but there are two of them in the entire game, very good
yeah, i mean the PS4 version even has the options for a “handheld mode” in its options menu haha. i do have a Vita, though, so i guess i can theoretically use that with remote play.
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it was pretty funny when it turned out that only the final battle sequence in the second area is required, yeah. i only ended up doing a couple other battles in that area, figuring the extra challenge would be interesting and the game is shaping up to be more than long enough already. well that worked, but when you’re winning battles with one character with a sliver of hp left (these are the best battles) it turns out you end up with LP problems really quickly. not sure i like what that LP system is incentivizing, let me beat my head against walls with an LP benison please 
it doesn’t help that a bunch of landmarks will lie to you about how many battles are in a sequence
i missed mirane, the only character i recruited was the pink haired pirate girl. anyone else i missed?
im pretty confident that sidequests don’t play into other stories, since when the game asks you which you’ve cleared it’s a Yes/No only, but it looks like some of them do have a not-very-obvious throughline into other areas, like the giant worm becoming a recurring boss or (unless i missed it) the undead in the bog still wanting to know what happened to their lord