Grinding, Dungeons, and Hidden Bosses Galore. RPG Thread

[jinxhand]

Chrono Trigger's music, storyline, and creativity was what made me put that game above most FF games... I mean, sure there were some clichés aplenty, but it I felt the story was more engaging, and you actually had to put in some work in that game... No random battles, you ran into a mob, you'd fight it... Not to mention the time travel...

Fighting Lavos was dope the whole way through... Fighting Sephiroth was dope in the 2nd battle, but I preferred the 1st boss battle song, even though everyone sweated "One Winged Angel"... It pumped me up for a boss battle without feeling like I was at Carnegie Hall or something...

I'm not even gonna front, I love Shin Megami Tensei: Dark Nocturne!!! The music is the first thing that gets me, and how it totally matched the areas you would run/fight in...

But in all honesty, I still feel drawn toward Shadow Hearts: Covenant. Everything about that game was great imo... It was very far from linear, too...

[FataCon]

The lack of Xenogears and Valkyrie Profile in this thread angers me.

[jinxhand]

Oh yeah, it hit me!!! Saga Frontier!!! I can play that game forever!!!

[baccano1932]

The lack of Xenogears and Valkyrie Profile in this thread angers me.

Yeah well the praising of Xenogears makes me angry and i've never gotten around to playing Valkyrie Profile.

Regarding Chrono Trigger i acknowledge that each of it's individual parts were well done it's just that for whatever reason the characters, plot and atmosphere never really clicked with me particularly the time travel elements and strangely I don't mind random encounters in most games so that bit didn't really make a difference to me, I don't really know what exactly it is that keeps it out of the top tier for me exactly.. maybe I just missed out since I didn't play it until long after it's release or what.

Since FF has already been mentioned several times i'll just say that overall I find 12 is by far my favorite with a battle system that integrated elements from MMOs, traditional JRPGs and some brand new elements like the gambits.A story that is more intriguing than other FF games, has depth to it and actually has good english voice acting/translation work. Add in the wide open world which I can distinctly remember just wandering around for hours the night I got it all the way through to the end and just perfectly captured what I've always liked about JRPGs.

[Saitsuofleaves]

I'm the complete opposite...of everything regarding XII.  I don't think it's a bad game per say but...I felt very little connection with the story, the battle system felt way too autopilot, especially once you got more competent gambits, then it was just complete auto pilot.

Quickenings were somewhat fun...until you realized that they'd screw you a lot more than help you unless you were on a deadline to defeat an enemy (like the Demon Walls).

Story didn't feel very deep, it felt like everyone fell into stereotypical roles for better or for worse.

Idk, I just feel there was a lot more potential and they just missed out on it. 

[baccano1932]

I always find it strange when everyone says XII was like autopilot given whenever people have to input attacks themselves in most traditional JRPGs they complain about it saying their just inputing the same thing over and over again or if you give the AI control of other characters then they act like complete idiots and don't do what you want them to do or like in XIII where everyone freaked out about only controlling the party leader.
In regards to quickenings if you used them well enough they were actually pretty broken since as long as one character has a single mist segment full you could start a new chain and just shuffle until you get mist charges and continue the cycle a bunch of times.
The story still had better dialogue/writting than the average game and wasn't overwrought with love stories or stupid character arcs like a lot of other games(particularly most other FF games).
Plus like I mentioned before it had a much more open feel almost like a Western RPG in a sense that most of the world was open to roam about given you can survive the fights.

[Saitsuofleaves]

Except I never really complained about inputting the same attacks or whatever.  If I had, I probably wouldn't have gotten into RPG's in the first place.  As for the XIII thing, it was only weird to get used to.  Only had a problem with it when I lose a boss battle, and have to restart and since the AI doesn't retain the knowledge of the failed fight, they do the wrong magic commands again...slight annoying, but gives you the urge to get it right the first damn time.

And I don't mind the lack of love arcs (pretty much the premier thing that annoyed me about VIII), but the arc itself seemed...listless.  I can deal with it somewhat if at least the characters are fine, but again...I don't think they really stood out all too much, outside of bad ways.  Vaan goes without saying.  Basch wasn't very different from a Steve Rogers type, only with a bit of a wisdom role too.  Balthier's cool, but I don't see him as any more special as any other cool/anti-hero/swag types in other games.  And so on.  I didn't really feel any actual character development, which is crucial in a RPG, or at least a FF game.

The Open World was fine, I liked the open world, but shit got brutal.  Too much grinding, now let me explain.  When you play a RPG, mostly a JRPG, you're going in knowing, somewhere down the line, grinding's gonna be happening.  I felt like I had to do it much too often in the game.  I shouldn't have to spend as much of the game grinding as actually progressing through the story.  That probably didn't help my disposition towards the story either.

[FataCon]

Yeah well the praising of Xenogears makes me angry

Because..?

[baccano1932]

Yeah well the praising of Xenogears makes me angry

Because..?

Okay for starters Tetsuya Takahashi always has this bad tendency to a) be more needlessly convuluted than Hideo Kojima b)He also presented many vague plot events and scenes that really only end up confusing people and just muddle the overall plot and pacing, kinda like the last 4 seasons of Lost c)He shoehorns in "psychological" or "philisophical" elements that yell out I once took a class on this and now I can write these grandiose characters who really just come off as cliche like Fei's split personality was just unessecary . Also the actual gameplay became repetitive after you knew the best combos and the gear battles also usually came down to is my equipment good enough? did I make enough money to win? Also the Tower of Babel was abyssmal and is among the worst dungeons ever.

[FataCon]

Okay for starters Tetsuya Takahashi always has this bad tendency to a) be more needlessly convuluted than Hideo Kojima b)He also presented many vague plot events and scenes that really only end up confusing people and just muddle the overall plot and pacing, kinda like the last 4 seasons of Lost c)He shoehorns in "psychological" or "philisophical" elements that yell out I once took a class on this and now I can write these grandiose characters who really just come off as cliche like Fei's split personality was just unessecary . Also the actual gameplay became repetitive after you knew the best combos and the gear battles also usually came down to is my equipment good enough? did I make enough money to win? Also the Tower of Babel was abyssmal and is among the worst dungeons ever.

Point A: Takahashi's first majorly credited work is Xenogears. Afterwards, he's only done Xenosaga and Xenoblade. While I will agree that Xenosaga isn't very enjoyable from a story standpoint, I felt that Xenogears was a lot more simplistic than people make it out to be.

Point B: It was actually a lot of the minor plot elements that really fleshed out the story and characters in-between major plotlines. If you didn't find the scenes where Elly learns the truth about Solaris' food processing plant conceptually disturbing, or Billy's revelation of the truth behind the Ethos, well then I can see how the story might have bored you.

Point C: You have to realize that themes in Xenogears are nowhere near as blatant as they are in MGS. They are undertones rather than propaganda. A good story has to have themes; Xenogears just happens to be centralized around religion and existentialism. Perhaps it's not your cup of tea.

As far as the whole Fei/Id thing, I'd say it was pretty reasonable for the psychological theme to come into play. After all: [spoiler] Karen/Miang tore him up as a kid through torturous experiments.[/spoiler] Besides, it's better for characters to have faults rather than become major character archetypes/stereotypes. Most of the characters, protagonists and antagonists alike, had pretty well done personalities, to be honest. There are enough twists and turns in the story which allow for emotional diversity for the cast over the course of the game.

Point D (you didn't make a Point D but gameplay seemed separate so I will discuss it as such): I'd wager that 90% of RPG's are repetitive and simple after grinding. Through a good amount of Xenogears, you don't have access to the whole playable cast until near the end of the game. This meant that you had to keep learning the best way to utilize your party under given circumstances throughout the game. You might have to handle only having 2 or 1 character in your party. Deathblows were also learned through experimentation (although characters shared the same commands for them), and some boss battles like Ramsus/Miang weren't simply "spam your strongest attacks". Fuel management also gets pretty important near the end of the game, regardless of having fully upgraded gears. I'll admit, the Tower of Babel wasn't that great, but I still think the Chrysler Building from PE and Ultimecia's Castle in FFVIII (a game which I hate) were infinitely worse.

Xenogears is not a perfect game, and I can definitely understand that you just might not have enjoyed it. I do think it is a great game though, and one of my favorites as far as personal experience goes. I am just saddened by the fact that it was overshadowed by a lot of other games at the time (ironically, FFVII, which is also a SquareSoft game).

[baccano1932]

Well the food processing plant part was good its just that throughout it the line "Soylent Green is PEOPLE!" kept going through my head reminding me that this isn't exactly a brand new idea and in regards to Billy his story arc was well done and it stripped away most of the things I felt bogged down the majority of the game it's just that it accounted for a very small portion of the game .Also I don't have any issues with a plot centered around things like religion it's that Takahashi tried to incorporate too many things at once which in my opinion led to a very muddled message that you had to unravel opposed to naturally making sense. To clarify the Fei/Id part it felt like a bit slapdash since most of the time Id was around was when Fei was flipping out and killing people and felt like something out of a second rate anime opposed to an attempt at psychological depth. In terms of gameplay I just feel like it did little to diversify your options in terms of magic or varying physical attacks outside deathblows

Except I never really complained about inputting the same attacks or whatever.  If I had, I probably wouldn't have gotten into RPG's in the first place.  As for the XIII thing, it was only weird to get used to.  Only had a problem with it when I lose a boss battle, and have to restart and since the AI doesn't retain the knowledge of the failed fight, they do the wrong magic commands again...slight annoying, but gives you the urge to get it right the first damn time.

And I don't mind the lack of love arcs (pretty much the premier thing that annoyed me about VIII), but the arc itself seemed...listless.  I can deal with it somewhat if at least the characters are fine, but again...I don't think they really stood out all too much, outside of bad ways.  Vaan goes without saying.  Basch wasn't very different from a Steve Rogers type, only with a bit of a wisdom role too.  Balthier's cool, but I don't see him as any more special as any other cool/anti-hero/swag types in other games.  And so on.  I didn't really feel any actual character development, which is crucial in a RPG, or at least a FF game.

The Open World was fine, I liked the open world, but shit got brutal.  Too much grinding, now let me explain.  When you play a RPG, mostly a JRPG, you're going in knowing, somewhere down the line, grinding's gonna be happening.  I felt like I had to do it much too often in the game.  I shouldn't have to spend as much of the game grinding as actually progressing through the story.  That probably didn't help my disposition towards the story either.

Well my point with the inputs was that the traditional alternatives were also flawed and that a new system was better than simply applying the same stales system. I don't think it's fair to say there was no character development particularly in Ashe's case where she developed from being narrow minded about things like the Archadian empire to a more well rounded thinker who didn't simply pursue destroying them. Also in the case of several other characters they were already fully developed like Basch who had a fleshed out backstory and the palyer was aware of his struggle fairly early on in the game and unless they made him into a cliched sort of Knight desperatly seeking redemption role there wasn't very much room for development.Also the villians weren't simple minded people who were pursuing countlessly repeated nihilistic plans to reduce the world to nothing and had more distinct and unique plans that didn't feel terribly stereotypical.In addition to this I didn't have any trouble with grinding and I can only think of a few points in the game where grinding is usually needed and also to further my point regarding the open world there were rewards for going out of your way like espers and game hunts in areas that you don't even go to in the main story.

[Proto Cloud]

Man, I'm playing Xenogears right now and it's incredibly awful. I hate the forced platforming sections (especially the Tower of Babel being one of the worst dungeons ever made), a completely pretentious story that has a hard time finding a consistent tone, or even make sense and a battle system that is horribly repetitive and that is a chore to deal with.

Yeah, I can't help but think that it's another one of those overrated RPGs like FFVII was, but even in that case I could see where people enjoyed it. Here, I really can't.

[jinxhand]

Man, I'm playing Xenogears right now and it's incredibly awful. I hate the forced platforming sections (especially the Tower of Babel being one of the worst dungeons ever made), a completely pretentious story that has a hard time finding a consistent tone, or even make sense and a battle system that is horribly repetitive and that is a chore to deal with.

Yeah, I can't help but think that it's another one of those overrated RPGs like FFVII was, but even in that case I could see where people enjoyed it. Here, I really can't.

Well, the music was great at least

[Xxenace]

anyone round here play grandia?

[jinxhand]

anyone round here play grandia?

Yeah the first one for the PSX was crazy imo, in terms of combat... So much over the top attacks... Grandia 2 was good, but for some reason I like Grandia 3 alot...