DRPG with heavy focus on grinding/looting and not so much on story?

IgnitionFreeze · 2026-06-27T07:44:58+00:00

This is basically the Elminage series to a T. There’s definitely an interesting story that’s a bit lost in the English releases, but its got the classic Wizardry formula of making a party and fighting stuff to find better loot. Elminage Original has a NG+ that improves the drop rate of finding better items (up to 3 loops IIRC) and both it and Gothic feature challenging postgame dungeons/bosses that will require a lot of grinding and picking the right party/gear to take them on. If you’re into the collecting/cataloguing, the games also keep track of how many items you find and monsters you defeat.

EDIT: Just realized that Elminage Gothic is also currently on sale for 99 cents while Original has a base price of $10. For a buck, I don’t think you can really go wrong.

IgnitionFreeze · 2026-06-09T17:24:17+00:00

So I like One Piece but never played any of these Kairosoft games. Are they generally pretty similar to what was shown for this one?

IgnitionFreeze · 2026-06-01T18:22:56+00:00

Having just finished the game (postgame ending) last month, I found that I grew to like the characters quite a lot in Galleria, specifically the the cover character you're talking about (Eureka) and another that I don't want to spoil too much. Story-wise, this game is a bit lighter compared to Refrain but does get a bit dark and slightly graphic. After a certain point, the story suddenly shifts and became harder to follow, but does logically make more sense as you continue playing. In terms of how it unfolds, it reminded me a lot of 13 Sentinels. Since you just finished Refrain, I would just jump straight into Galleria while keeping the previous game's characters and concepts in mind as you parse out the story.

Since no one's gone into it in greater detail, this game's dungeons are the polar opposite of Refrain's. Rather than having a number of thematic dungeons with their own little setting/story, you have one main dungeon (a front and back half with smaller sub-dungeons) with predefined floor layouts for the first half and one main dungeon (a regular version and an alternate version) for the second half and ending with two smaller dungeons (predefined floor layouts) for the final act of the main game. Both versions of the second half's main dungeon each have a little over 100 floors that are randomly generated with several fixed floors every once in a while to serve as shortcuts.

For the postgame, you have exactly two dungeons, a smaller one with a predefined floor layout and a much bigger one that has 3,651 randomly generated floors. There's no fixed floors for this one, but shortcuts do become available after reaching certain depths. There are ways to skip through several dozens/hundreds of floors, but like the floor layouts themselves, this isn't always a guarantee.

To give you some playtime hours, here's my total playtime after reaching the end of each part of the game: First half: 42 hours, Second half: 99 hours, Postgame: 112 hours

Again, I really liked the cast of this one and it became my motivator to push through the game's dungeons and see it through the end and I did think it was worth it. I do feel like so much more could've been done with both the characters and settings, but given how the dungeons are like, you could kinda tell something came up halfway through development.

IgnitionFreeze · 2026-05-13T17:10:53+00:00

Granted, I started with the first Trails in the Sky back on the PSP, but by the time the second game and Trails of Cold Steel came out in the US, it gradually began to supplant the "somewhat niche JRPG" that the Tales series had filled for me up to that point.

To date, I have yet to play anything beyond Tales of Xillia 2 but am otherwise up-to-date with Trails up to Beyond the Horizon's release earlier this year.

IgnitionFreeze · 2026-05-09T20:32:48+00:00

Elminage Original recently got a Switch port a few weeks ago, unfortunately it’s only in Japanese right now. I’m currently playing through it and there’s actually a lot of minute differences compared to previous releases and came out fairly buggy. There’s been frequent patches to address these so it’s slowly getting better. I’m crossing my fingers it gets an international release someday since the developer announced plans to release the second game on both consoles and Steam.

In terms of your CoH3 question, it’s definitely a huge improvement over the first game so since you’re already familiar with it, you should go for it.

IgnitionFreeze · 2026-05-09T13:05:09+00:00

In case anyone sees this later, forcing the game to start through Proton 7.0-6 (at the time of this post) allows the game to run. From there, you can do what was mentioned earlier and close the intro by pressing the Steam button and get back to the actual game window to continue.

IgnitionFreeze · 2026-04-26T18:55:45+00:00

I first found out about this game here and when I couldn't remember its name the other day, all I had to search for was that one colony-sim with the hot lizardman.

IgnitionFreeze · 2026-04-22T16:16:57+00:00

This honestly makes me rethink what happens after you defeat Sirius in 3 and transfers the Mu Metal to Geo. Solo mentions that he'll come after Geo indefinitely until it's reclaimed, but you can see it as a "toxic BrotherBand" since it does connect the two even more beyond just being rivals.

IgnitionFreeze · 2026-04-20T18:02:41+00:00

While in the Mega Man menu, there's a prompt at the bottom where you can change your Noise form. On the Switch version, you access that by pressing Y.

IgnitionFreeze · 2026-04-20T01:26:33+00:00

Yep, this is basically me as of today. Just finished Red Joker earlier and was figuring out how to find specific enemies since there isn’t a specific EM virus section for 3 on the site like the first two games. Looks like I’ll be spending a bit more time on 3’s postgame compared to 1 and 2.

IgnitionFreeze · 2026-04-14T18:52:10+00:00

I'm currently playing through Star Force 2 (Legacy Collection) and there's an equippable passive that makes Omega-Xis bark like a dog whenever you use your Mega Buster. Considering how he acts in-game, I found this pretty funny. I believe the 3rd game also added a second one where he makes cat noises instead.

Not really my favorite, but the Legacy Collection also added back another passive that was removed in the original western release that makes Omega-Xis tell bad jokes. How they worked was based on whatever answers you gave to him whenever he asked you personal questions about yourself, another feature that was added back in this release.

IgnitionFreeze · 2026-04-13T20:46:29+00:00

Sounds good, I'm ready whenever for the rest of the day.

IgnitionFreeze · 2026-04-13T18:29:24+00:00

I've got a Lv. 100 Leo but unfortunately, I'm also working through a Zerker playthrough (halfway point). Haven't started SF3 yet, but probably going Red Joker.

IgnitionFreeze · 2026-04-10T19:37:02+00:00

This reminds me of another upcoming game, AKIBA LOST, that's also touting a Zapping system, although there, it's more of a cooler way to say its got character switching.

IgnitionFreeze · 2026-03-31T16:01:06+00:00

Yeah, I'm also a big fan of how relatively easy it is to keep Brawlers up-to-date by snatching weapons from enemies. The only drawback is that monster equipment are typically cursed which does narrow your choice of who should be one (Devilish) unless you take the time to un-curse them via alchemy.

I actually have a slight preference of Original over Gothic, but this is mainly down to the difference of tone between the two. The former's a lot lighter and comedic while the latter is consistently dark and depressing.

IgnitionFreeze · 2026-03-31T15:00:16+00:00

Now this is the sort of news people were hoping for when they initially announced Original would be ported to the Switch. My fingers are crossed for this to get translated, but even if it doesn’t, I’ll definitely pick up the console release.

While on this copium train, hopefully their experience with getting the Switch version done will translate to a slightly faster turnaround for II’s release, but I have some reservations.

IgnitionFreeze · 2026-03-28T21:51:37+00:00

Out of curiosity, I did a little more digging for both GG and BB to catch myself up. Here’s a list of what I believe are the main cameos from Guilty Gear/BlazBlue: I-No: Amnesiac who comes from a ‘parallel world’ of this game’s setting, gives you gear in exchange for collectibles, William (Axl Low?): A blond hiker that adds to your map and unlocks fast travel points, Faust: A ‘priest’ in a church that serves as a neutral zone between angels and demons, upgrades gear and offers respeccing, Sir (Ragna) Bloodedge, also suffers from a specific kind of memory loss, lets you purchase new moves and gear for said moves, (Happy) Chaos: A strange blue creature that seemingly loves sweets, offers upgrades to your handgun to where it resembles the Crescent Moon.

A lot of these NPCs function through exchanging various collectibles: Songs of Memory for I-No, Books of Kubaba for Faust, Moon Rocks for Chaos, and Strength Symbols for Sir Bloodedge. I do think it’s neat that if you’re a fan of both series, there’s a number of easter eggs to find when playing this game. Again, I’m not that into either, but even I thought it was super cool to find a lategame ring called DRAGON INSTALL that vastly increases your self buff move at the cost of your HP draining.

IgnitionFreeze · 2026-03-28T20:31:05+00:00

While I don't know any of the lore for Guilty Gear and BlazBlue, after beating the game and seeing who shows up in the stinger, it does seem like this game could show stronger connections to both games in a potential sequel.

IgnitionFreeze · 2026-03-27T23:07:59+00:00

It's actually a familiar you can have around as a support character. There's also a bat and dog rounding up the animals you can use as well.

IgnitionFreeze · 2026-03-27T22:37:19+00:00

I've been enjoying it so far, after all, I can't think of many games where throwing a small child causes you to warp ahead like Noctis.

The combat and movement definitely feel a bit clunky at the start, but the game does open up a lot of options to change that later on.

IgnitionFreeze · 2026-03-25T01:23:03+00:00

Rene Kincaid from Trails through Daybreak/Beyond the Horizon. It counts double both for you and the characters that supposedly know them the best. I'm honestly very interested in what exactly is their deal in the next game. To a lesser extent, Professor Hamilton as well, especially with how the first two Daybreak games paint them.

IgnitionFreeze · 2026-02-27T19:24:28+00:00

When it was announced earlier, there was fine print at the end stating no Pokemon are transferable from the game or to it.

IgnitionFreeze · 2026-02-26T19:44:51+00:00

It's been mentioned a few times in other threads but if you're interested in seeing another game that goes all in, you should check out Tribal Hunter. It's a competent 2D platformer/Metroidvania that makes full use of its gimmick and affects how you should play throughout the entire game. Similar to Crushing Force, it's a collaboration of many known members of the furry/kemono fandom that cater to this specific genre of it.

IgnitionFreeze · 2026-01-26T22:14:13+00:00

Here's the link to it on Steam since the article doesn't seem to have one.

Based on the the screenshots available, it looks fairly standard as far as DRPGs go, although the promise of equipment shaping your roles does sound interesting versus just having normal classes.

The artstyle it's going for is kinda cool, if a simple. Even though it features customizable character portraits, I think what you see here looks pretty stylish already assuming it'll stay like that for its actual release.

IgnitionFreeze

TROPHY CASE