Just got into the pokemon fan game “Pokemon Eclesia” last night, so I’m probably gonna be playing through that demo throughout the week if I don’t get bored of it. Pretty cool game so far, but has a fair bit of swearing.
Otherwise, I was getting back into Gemcraft: Chasing Shadows. Being the idiot I am, I just now found out how to quickly power level. Don’t know how much more if the game is left, let alone how to unlock the higher difficulties, but definitely wanna finish it on the easy difficulty at least once before I die.
This week I played Xenoblade Chronicles 2 which I started a while ago. Compared to the first one which I did not like at all, both story and gameplay are a huge improvement. I actually am interested in the characters now and the combat is pretty fun, altho I still haven’t had a chance to experiment much with it.
I have however a few minor complaints: the blade gacha is a terrible concept and I can’t understand why it was put in the game; on handheld, performance is generally good but the graphics are ruined by a really strong sharpening filter; Pyra’s outfit is dumb and doesn’t fit the character.
I’m also playing Chants of Sennarr and it’s really good! I especially liked the design of the first three languages. The artstye is also really nice.
I’m back to Trails of Cold Steel 2. It is better than the first one. It still feels a bit like padding but it doesn’t feel as pointless. The game structure doesn’t feel as formulaic and repetitive, there’s less quests and it moves much quicker. The characters also finally look different from eachother, as they are no longer in uniform.
The issues tho are still mostly the same: the combat is a downgrade from the Crossbell game (the orbment system in Cold Steel is basically materia from FF7, instead of the much more interesting previous implementation) and I don’t care about any of these characters as they barely have a personality (I blame this on the social link-style mechanics and bloated cast).
Bloons Tower Defense 6. I’m mildly ashamed but it’s easy to pick up and put down when I’m busy. I can’t dedicate large blocks of time for gaming anymore
I finished Final Fantasy 7. Compared to Remake or Rebirth this thing just moves, and doesn’t constantly waste your time. However, that also leaves little time for character interaction or development, so that’s where the new games are much better.
Next was Mushroom 11. I played it about halfway almost 10 years ago, and finally decided to go back and finish it. This is a game, where you control some mushroom blob, by erasing parts, causing it to regrow somewhere else, e.g. you erase the backside, and the blob regrows in the front, which makes you move forward. The first three levels are great, but the four levels after that, sometimes require precision, that the game just isn’t build for. I still like the concept, but it really can be frustrating.
Then I started playing through Final Doom’s TNT: Evilution episode. It took me a bit to get my FPS legs back and the first half dozen or so levels were a bit rough, but nothing too bad. I’m playing on Ultra-Violence and with a Pistol Start, so a lot of times, I have to re-play the beginning a couple of times, to get oriented, and look for weapons, while the game just throws Shotgunners and Chaingunners at you to shred you.
Lastly, I returned to Final Fantasy III (Pixel Remaster). The game is basically a bigger and improved FF1, with most of the changes in FF2 removed, for the better I think. The characters are back to being a cardboard cutout though, just like FF1. That’s the one thing FF2 did really well, compared to these first games.
No, I don’t think so. They are just different and people don’t like change. For context, I’m a massive JRPG fan and I’ve played: 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 9, 10, 12 and 15. And of course tons of spin-offs. Planning on playing 7, 8 and 13 - don’t care for MMOs and 16.
Out of these, I love of course the obvious early ones: 4 and 6.
However, 10 is my favorite overall. It has the most solid gameplay (fuck ATB tbh) and a great story, even though we sideline Sin way too much for Seymore who I don’t care for. It’s biggest problem are the minigames though, I hate Blitzball and especially the Cloister of Trials.
9 could be better, but the steam version crashes so much I didn’t get to finish it.
Now, after 10 we got a lot more experimental:
12 was fun but had massive problems. It’s biggest was the autobattle mechanic alongside the speed up in modern releases. You basically don’t play the game and you don’t even strategize. It’s always faster to sprint a few minutes around the map and get back with more levels which ultimately killed any interest I had in the battle system. But I dislike programmable party members in every game, so your milage may vary. The world building on the other hand was awesome.
15 was a great game. I think it’s reception isn’t wrong necessarily because of how much it differs from trailers and such. However, I played it years after release and without having seen a single trailer. I had a blast throughout. The writting is among FF’s best, not because it’s such a great story, but because the relationships between the main party are so strong. I even liked the battle system - it’s different and has a lot of potential, I think. It’s biggest failure is that you need to watch a series, a movie and read lots of other material to grasp the story - a lot of it isn’t in the game.
16, I can’t say much about. I’m honestly not very interested in basic medieval fantasy settings, they’ve stripped out the RPGs mechanics and quite frankly I just don’t own a system I could play it on. Maybe I’d like it after all, I don’t know.
Any rgg game is a game I buy. It’s dumb but I love them, especially the action ones where you actually fight (versus the more persona combat oriented ones like 7 and 8). This one is not exceptionally good but the boat parts at least add something new. It’s not bad at all (so far, I’m only a few hours in) but tbh if you don’t like these games you won’t suddenly like this one and if you’re new to the series this definitely isn’t the jump in point
Add a Sniper Elite like xray slow mo for when you hit enemies with a long range shot or ricochet so you can appreciate breaking the pelvis of a mentally ill man with a boxing glove arrow after aiming for his balls.
I'm just disappointed in the way Square Enix seems to think turn-based combat is anathema for some reason. The series has abandoned its roots, it just isn't FF to me.
I thought it was a really nice change. They kept the ATB system all the older games had, and it didn’t break between overworld and battle screens constantly, making for a seamless transition between the two.
I tried to like 12, but I found it painfully tedious. I couldn't carefully ration my MP the way I wanted to with gambits, and I don't want to automate the game anyway, I want to actually play it myself. But manual takeover just felt way worse than a normal turn-based system too, the way it grinds the pacing to a halt and takes forever made it apparent that the game isn't designed to be played manually.
I think that is what made that battle system interesting: More focus on delegation over micro management.
The main portion of the battle played outside of the battles themselves and was all about how you essentially “programmed” these workflows for each character to work in harmony together to win battles. You could get in the fray to fix any unintended outcomes of these flows, but was mainly to observe the outcomes and make adjustments.
I was actually very cold to the idea of the gambit system early on because “the game plays itself” sounded like such a cheap style of gameplay.
Later, though, when I got a better sense of what it was trying to accomplish, it made a lot more sense, especially when thinking about the game in the context of sharing the same world as Final Fantasy Tactics.
Tactics is all about troop strategy, simulating that experience of being a military commander. The gambit system in 12, meanwhile, is like taking that concept and moving it down to the ground level, where you have to strategize with your allies before an engagement and then trust that people know what to do in the moment, with the player intervention happening one character at a time being more like real-time improvisation than strategizing.
It's not like Square Enix doesn't know how to make good turn-based games. They've been hitting it out of the park with their smaller budget projects like Bravely Default and Octopath Traveler. So I don't know why they've rejected it for FF, imagine what they could do with a big budget title if they tried.
I joke about how halfway through development, someone at Square Enix must've realized that Bravely Default was actually a good game, and thus too good for the FF name. So instead they had to throw darts at an English dictionary to rebrand it.
16 is absolutely fantastic. I haven’t read any reviews for it so I don’t know what they are saying but I had an absolute blast playing it. Had a smile on my face from beginning to end. Well, I enjoyed it atleast I found the ending very sad.
bin.pol.social
Aktywne