I know multiple people who complain about every release and then buy it, preferably both versions. A few even complaint there’s no third edition to buy anymore.
If anything, GF could reduce their quality even more.
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.
I love almost everything about this, apparently 100h+ in Infinite Wealth was not enough for me. Although, having discovered Like a Dragon only because of their switch to turn-based combat, I’m not sure the brawling is a good fit for me.
I’ll probably pick it up eventually, assuming a new main game doesn’t drop till then.
Not entirely, however, I feel as though proper resource management got less common over time. While the ideas are still present in modern games, they tend to be easy enough that most resources can just be horded. Most people don’t even use consumables nowadays. Games are seemingly balanced around ignoring entire systems.
From my point of view, you’ve got it wrong, but so do many developers. A good JRPG is all about resource management. Your HP, MP, items, money and the balance between these and your EXP and equipment. Combat is simply a drain on your resources up until the final boss, which should require more strategy. This needs something akin to a dungeon without constant healing and money being a thight resource. Once you’re in a dungeon, you should either be prepped or doomed.
You mostly see this done in dungeon crawlers, think any Etrian Odyssey game for example. Persona 5 goes for the same thing, as do most Shin Megami Tensei games.
Most modern games, however, are overly lenient with either money or healing. Often times, combat is easy enough to not even drain your resources. That’s when endless grinding becomes an option. Once you’ve destroyed this balance, you need something else to keep attention and that’s where I think your observation comes in.
Level scaling is never fun and never will be, I think. There is no progression if your fights with early enemies are just as hard as they were 50h ago.
You could probably design around that by providing in-depth build options such that optimized builds outscale other entities of the same level. Later game enemies themselves would be optimized better and better. But that’s really hard and I’ve never seen it done. Why even provide a dynamic build for each enemy with each level if you could just have a normal non-scaling progression?
These systems often lead to me avoiding combat altogether. While not exactly a crpg, Oblivion was more fun to me without ever leveling up (which was optional, but made fights kinda pointless).
As for me, it used to be 50/50 back when I studied. However, ever since I’ve entered the workforce I mostly stopped watching videos.
I need to constantly learn new things, tackle new problems and optimize stuff. I usually go for the highest difficulties too. In theory, my job provides these tasks for me, however, I get a lot of satisfaction from trying and failing things over and over until I’ve figured them out myself. I can’t usually do this professionally, as most problems have already been solved and I’m just learning how others did it. The same as playing with a guide or watching a video on a game. It just doesn’t scratch the itch.
Yeah, I somewhat agree. Collecting full sets in the game is kinda fun, just because opening card packs is inherently fun. But I play the game precisely because this isn’t worth any money to me.
Having cards that are only obtainable with money ruins this. It’s kinda killing my interest in anything else they do since I can’t complete the promo set anyway.
The worst part is, they would make millions without it. People already pay for regular packs, just to collect their digital cards faster. Heck, the increased attention to the actual card game alone probably already offset the developing costs.
Do you mean quick time events (QTEs)? The game has at least one cutscene I remember where you’re prompted to activate an ability to change the outcome, however, I think that’s it. The games usually doesn’t have them.
Although, it does commit an entirely different sin in terms of unskippable cutscenes: There are several ‘immersive’ cutscenes with you suddenly walking at a snail’s pace or climbing slowly around while the cutscene plays out.