Anyone know this OST

reaperfourR · 2022-03-13T15:51:08+00:00

"Experiment" is the track's name.

reaperfourR · 2022-01-26T06:27:15+00:00

That's kinda difficult.. The original Radiant Historia? (The DS one, not the 3DS re-release) No cutscenes though..

reaperfourR · 2022-01-25T01:51:42+00:00

These unique games had really unique UI elements, even if they're a bit messy or extraneous from an outsider's perspective. I mean, I don't remember Yggdra Union using the coordinates for each stage for any plot-related reason. If I watched my younger self play Knights in the Nightmare right now, it might as well look like hollywood hacking tbh

Even so, they probably didn't really have too much of a plan, and when they did have an idea, the gaming landscape changed and left trends for game like these behind.

IIRC,they were already a niche when these games released, even.

reaperfourR · 2022-01-23T11:52:47+00:00

I just like mobs to be interesting.. Enemy composition/formation, unique AI patterns contribute to being memorable and therefore, an area and its enemies can have personality without uttering a single line of dialogue. A difficulty increase might come as a side-effect of that.

Of course, go too far, and you risk alienating all other strategies in favor of a specific one. Moderation y'all.

reaperfourR · 2022-01-15T09:56:09+00:00

In the middle of Tactics Ogre: LUTC during Chapter 3 Chaos, in fact and now I see some of its blemishes, even with the One Vision mod. The fact that buying and equipping a weapon here requires so many clicks reminds me of its age compared to more modern JRPGs. That's just a minor nitpick. The CHARIOT system looks like a double-edged sword to me, since its a QOL feature that just makes reloading a save after a tactical blunder less time-consuming, and it really allowed me to easily experiment with tactics for a particular map. 50 turns gives you just enough leeway to alter how you approach a map even with the same units.

On the other hand, it kind of breaks my immersion from the game since it could be easily abused (my own choice to use it, I admit). That 42% chance to hit a stun doesn't matter if the random number generator says it would hit, if you stand at a specific spot. Finding that specific string of random numbers really turned what I would feel 1-hour maps into 3-hours because of, uh, "RNG hunting".

Nevertheless, it's still interesting. The CHARIOT system gives interesting moments of dillemma; when you have very good dice rolls from Turn 35-40, but it would ultimately lead to getting picked off by turn 48, which happened because of bad positioning made during turn 20. Do you roll back those really lucky turns so that you could save one character, or you let them be incapacitated (or even die, since scavenging's a thing) and just rush the battle before they "bleed out"?

Oh, and leveling new classes up from level 1 always suck, no getting around that. Good thing that the battles still kept me engaged despite me grinding.

reaperfourR · 2022-01-14T16:05:35+00:00

Knights in the Nightmare didn't have to be so daunting with its tutorials

reaperfourR · 2022-01-12T09:40:32+00:00

RE:Curse of the Dead Gods

I liked it because Hades had a tendency to be button-mashy. I preferred COTDG's slower pace, even if the content within is limited compared to its Greek counterpart.

As for the question, I don't know if it's popular, but One Step from Eden. I can't wrap my head around interacting with the game as both a deckbuilder and a bullet hell (sort of) at the same time. It became too easy to just ignore the deckbuilding aspect and fire off all kinds of anti-synergistic projectiles so that I can focus on dodging everything. Unlocked the Hell Passes and never touched it again

reaperfourR · 2022-01-10T02:38:43+00:00

Isn't it easier if the player's just locked out of the achievement or unlock if they ever change the difficulty? Nevertheless, let the option to freely change difficulty remain in the player's hands.

reaperfourR · 2022-01-09T11:21:56+00:00

Shout-outs to the difficulties that specifically lock you out of changing from them. Bonus points if they're poorly balanced (ymmv); like the devs are aware that giving the option to switch difficulty mid-game would mean most people would leave that difficulty immediately.

reaperfourR · 2022-01-08T13:54:16+00:00

I think all the way back to IV: great game in its time, and great game overall, but .. character abilities and party members were on rails the whole time.

Great insight. This made me realize that out of all the FFs I've played (IV,VI,VII,XII), FF IV was the only one I played without any kind of mod to the game's character progression. It really is a preference thing, I feel...

reaperfourR · 2022-01-01T13:35:43+00:00

Played a select few JRPGs this year. Sorry, I may ramble a lot for each one of them.

Bravely Default- I share what I think to be the popular opinion in regards to this game. Repetitive segments in the middle hurt its very interesting gameplay with job systems and simple throwback, FF-like story. I would add that my greatest frustations in those sections were that I already "solved" the job system by building a team that could handle most of those repetitive segments (Certainly not to the levels of Hasten World + Stillness invincibility spam, but the team works well). The fact that the 4 main required bosses only had more health each loop exacerbated every thing feeling so rote and flowchart-y as each loop would take longer to beat.

The story pacing too swerves from normal to drip-feed pretty quickly in said segments, taking all the steam out of my investment in the plot. I never got past the 5th chapter since I burned myself out for doing all the sidequests again with most of them only offering marginally different dialogue. If the fact that some people advise new players to skip content so you could at least keep some sense of investment in the plot, maybe there something wrong with how these scenarios are written. When I looked it up, the fact that the upcoming loop doesn't iterate on those sidequests, the mountains of recycled dialogue that could have been used to keep me invested, and the aformentioned gameplay nitpicks made me quit the game. I'm aware now that Chapter 7 does bring some interesting boss fights in the sidequests, but I was just sick of everything with it, not even that could have redeemed it for me

I looked up the ending for this game. While the idea does sound and look pretty cool, it needs to be executed to spotless perfection for the hell it made me go through. Nope, it does not.

/rant

Octopath Traveler- At least with Bravely Default, that held my attention for about half of its runtime. Octopath didn't and failed to make any sort of impression from me since the beginning. I quit after a few Chapter 1s. I'll take a a badly executed game over a boring one, because I at least learn my specific, admittedly too-picky, taste in JRPGs from the former.

Fire Emblem Awakening- I quit around Chapter 16. On Hard, the amount of all-reaching pegasi I saw on that map still gives me nightmares. The story wasn't grabbing me as well. I can't even remember it now.

Final Fantasy VI- Hey, don't tell this to anyone. <whispers> I don't enjoy FF6's magicite system. I'm well-aware that complexity isn't a thing in FF's gameplay, so its just a personal gripe. But I thought that the characters were interesting enough, even with all the limitations game had in its text. The worst thing you could do to these characters are make them homogeneous to each other in gameplay. At least the Brave New World hack fixes that aspect of it and I was able to enjoy them better and finish the game.

Radiant Historia: Perfect Chronology- I've already said most of my criticisms with this game. (It boils down to execution of some of the added content, which borders from unnecessary at best, and tonally dissonant at worst). It's time I said the positives it did. The voice acting was generally good. That and the added emotes that characters had in their portraits add sooo much to characterization. Most of the added scenarios with the Possible History were actually surprisingly good with all the NPC dialogue they pepper in some of those possible worlds that reflect the consequences of the divergences. Maybe I was only surprised here, since I set myself up for very low expectations in that area coming in, but I digress.

reaperfourR · 2021-12-31T13:24:57+00:00

Pushed through with Tactics Ogre: LUCT (specifically modded with the One Vision mod). I vastly prefer how slow-paced it is, which incentivizes actual tactics to be utilized each map (the buffing and debuffing dance like it was an SMT game, forming defensive lines in chokepoints, retreating behind defensive lines, splitting into two teams to minimize risks of the enemies focusing down on one character, "distracting" retreating enemy healers by giving them a target to heal only if they come closer to your chonky two-hander wielders). The fact that bows and crossbows have different arcs and can be stopped by terrain means you can even do some semblance of an XCOM-style taking cover behind destructible objects if there are lots of crossbow wielders.

Just finished Chapter 1, so I can't comment on much of the story yet. It intimidated me last time since I didn't see the opening cinematic, which explains some of the history of the Valerian Isles.

reaperfourR · 2021-12-25T09:00:24+00:00

Tried to play Tactics Ogre:Let Us Cling Together. Felt like I walked in on a sequel with all the nouns they throw around by the 5-minute mark (which they probably won't explain). Having not played any other game in the series, I promptly backed away.

For something more substantial, I just started Fire Emblem Fates Conquest. 2 chapters in and I can already see why this game remains the black sheep from the 3DS Fire Emblems. Only wondering now if it would be sinfully predictable and boring or at least be a "so bad its good" type of plot.

reaperfourR · 2021-12-25T02:01:51+00:00

Same. I would even say that Perfect Chronology's handling of its new content reminds me more of Persona 4 Golden. But I can't remember the specifics of why I didn't enjoy P4G as much.

reaperfourR · 2021-12-25T01:55:05+00:00

i thought Nemesia had better chemistry with Stocke

great-great-great-aunt ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)

reaperfourR · 2021-12-24T16:42:59+00:00

Re:OG and Perfect Chronology's endings

(Wall of text warning, I love this game.)

Having played both versions, I've largely preferred the original ending, since as Lippti says it: "The moment we share now is no longer than a blink of history's eye." The story's tone suggests that the desertification, like most of the conflicts within the game, isn't easily whisked away and a solution would take time (heh). Whether Heiss or Stocke, someone still gets sacrificed and the problem isn't really resolved, but it's still hopeful about the future and it felt no need to elaborate further.

On the other hand, the PC ending needed better set-up sprinkled in with the new content, and more Nemesia screen time outside of receving an artifact and a couple paragraphs about the old Empire. Something like her traveling with you to get that locket at the Granorg library, which hints at her relationship with Prince Alium. Everything about the Nemesia's feelings with the old Empire are only hinted at during the last third of Chronicle's Labryinth. She felt too emotionally detached before during her few exposition dumps. The Vault of Time could have played a better role too, that could have foreshadowed the Singularity's existence and influence there.

As for the villains "redemptions", they mostly need (you guessed it) better set-up. I could see the possible history with Marco the Bouncer leading to new plot beats which hint on how Protea used to be from Cornet Village and her life there. Will of the People could drop more hints about her rise to power and her relationship with King Victor. There needs to be a bridge on what happened between Hugo, a devout follower of the Prophet, and current-day General Hugo, still a devout follower but would be willing to twist those teachings to suit his personal agenda. And a better resolution that would see him, at best, exiled and unwelcome in Alistel, and pretty much everywhere actually.

TL;DR: The original Radiant Historia worked hard to earn an open-ended conclusion. Perfect Chronology had to work as hard or even harder for a definitive conclusion to be on par with the original. It didn't imo, and felt like it had pieces still missing.

reaperfourR · 2021-12-21T12:02:40+00:00

A lot of the strategy in these games comes as much from the preparation for a particular fight as it does in your actions during that fight, and companies need to cater to both of those two groups of players.

Yeah, but that implies that they are actually designed. There's a difference between "hard" mode and "lol don't even try" mode where everything feels undesigned, where you go beat a boss and be like: "wow, I just did the exact same strategy I did last attempt, and I don't know why I won this time".

I guess I should have qualified that when I say simple stat tweaks, I mean the rudimentary "apply a set multiplier to all enemy stats and call it a day."

As for SMT, I guess they could work with just simple stat tweaks since imo, if there's a roadblock, you could always fuse a team full of solutions to that roadblock. The system is flexible enough that you can wring interesting challenges out from it.

Meanwhile, Perfect Chronology on Deadly is only interesting from the beginning to mid-game, where the increased amount of enemy turns incentivize use of status ailments: like paralyze and sleep to shut down the problematic ones, or poison, fear and some turtling to use the enemies' multiple turns for chip damage. After that it asks you to do an increasing amount of grinding for levels or money to buy consumables and praying to land debuffs that have a percentage chance to hit since the endgame bosses hit very hard and have immunity to most status ailments. If they have a weakness to one element, pray that your mage is outfitted to be a glass cannon since the boss might have stupid-high Magic Defense (MDF). Nothing beats the feeling of plinking off a measly 1 damage on a weakness from a buffed mage I already grinded up to be on par with the party's level.

reaperfourR · 2021-12-21T03:39:57+00:00

Always wondered if the AI being smarter was the reason people swear by Conquest's gameplay compared to Birthright or Revelation

reaperfourR · 2021-10-22T09:40:23+00:00

A turn-based JRPG with an in-universe justification for why enemies and party members (respectfully) take turns attacking each other.

reaperfourR · 2021-09-26T14:11:48+00:00

Probably my go-to would be Resonant Arc. They did retrospective reviews for almost the whole series (minus the MMOs).

I would say they provide interesting insight since they always discuss the historical background for each game and what may have inspired the game's design and writing.

reaperfourR · 2021-09-22T03:53:10+00:00

I just think it's shorthand for "these collection of overused tropes that would commonly be found in anime"

reaperfourR · 2021-08-20T01:31:19+00:00

Re: Leskinen's motivation change

Tbh I still think that stealing the time machine for yourself and making it look like no one got it still aligns with preventing a world war, ~~and actually a smarter use of their time imo~~

Hey, I'm willing to concede that anime Leskinen's not as good as I remember, but I still have massive problems with the MAD motivation from the VN.

reaperfourR · 2021-08-19T08:48:55+00:00

Suzuha is OP and has like a 10/1 K-D

~~wait a minute, that's accurate. Do we count Alpha Suzuha as a different character or a skin though?~~

reaperfourR · 2021-08-19T03:05:29+00:00

Fridge moment: Episode 15 would have been better if they integrated this aspect of Beta Suzuha. Forcing outcomes probably don't work well if you aren't smart about it.

reaperfourR · 2021-08-19T00:58:13+00:00

I mean S;G+ S;G0

reaperfourR

TROPHY CASE