JRPG general discussion

Doodah7

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120291247#Comment_120291247

Put in over 100 hours of the first one and loved every minute of it. The final boss section took over two hours with no opportunity to save which was quite stressful!!! I’ve the second one arriving tomorrow.

I’ve to finish Ys VIII before I can move onto it.

sniper_samurai

Apparently there is a rumour going around that SMT 3, 4, 4 Apocalypse and 5 will be getting released on Xbox Game Pass this year with the announcement to come in May.

If this is true expect these games to be ported to PS 4/5, PC and Switch as well where not already available

megaten

Been playing Labyrinth of Galleria and have put in 70 hours over the course of a single month which is extremely unusual for me. Love that NIS still have the ability to make a legitimately great rpg in them.

Retr0gamer

SMT 5 was on the GeForce now leak so is definitely coming to pc. Could see it being a smt release blow out to celebrate as you say there and smt4 is way too good to leave stranded on 3DS.

sniper_samurai

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/120387322#Comment_120387322

It's also the 30th anniversary of the series, which is being celebrated on May 6th, when these are rumoured to be announced. There are presentation slides showing this, but their authenticity is unknown.

https://twitter.com/JayWood2010/status/1638250388234072072?t=u6vlDPAXKpPhWitNu6R2kA&s=19

Retr0gamer

Will be good to have smt 4 available to a wider audience. I absolutely adored the game and it has far and away the greatest overworld music ever.

sniper_samurai

The Persona 3 Remake, subtitled Reload, trailer has leaked ahead of the Xbox Showcase on Sunday. It's out early next year.

https://twitter.com/ScrambledFaz/status/1666934712412131330?t=cLHcpDcWBnm2ialtbzz_FA&s=19

A trailer for a new Persona 5 spinoff, Tactica, was also leaked. This is out in November.

https://twitter.com/ScrambledFaz/status/1666935792403468288?t=W7Z-xwsMA_UruyVMEDRvJg&s=19

Both games appear to be going into Game Pass day 1.

johnny_ultimate

Ah Atlus, always guaranteed to milk Persona dry between actual mainline games. Those two games have every chance to be good, but the sheer volume of spin offs and re-releases instead of Persona 6 is exhausting. But it was much the same with Persona 4.

sniper_samurai

It seems that Persona 3 Reload will only contain the main story, while the extras from FES will be included The Answer and the FeMC from Portable will not.

I'd also be very surprised if the battle system isn't the updated version from Portable allowing you to control your allies as well as the MC.

Retr0gamer

Fem MC is a big loss but the FES second quest isn't worth playing and adds nothing to the characters and story.

Doodah7

Will be shocked if they are not paid DLC at a later stage.

johnny_ultimate

As expected, Metaphor also coming to PS and PC. Wish they’d just say that upfront rather than the weird days-long period of exclusivity after an MS event.

https://www.eurogamer.net/metaphor-refantazio-is-a-new-game-from-the-persona-creators

megaten

Zero interest in Metaphor. Don't really need fantasy persona. Escpially since games take so logn to make now I'd prefer any brand new game from atlus to have at least some meaningful differences from their exisitng series.

sniper_samurai

Looks like Persona 3 Reloaded is getting a big CE, no word on European pricing yet but VGP have it available to order for $280 CAD.

johnny_ultimate

Nothing quite like an over-expensive crappy plastic statue to hilariously inflate the price of a collector's edition!

I would really love to play a Persona 6, but I just struggle to generate much enthusiasm for all the other stuff happening in the series (although obviously great to see multi-platform releases). It feels like Atlus have really over-egged it with spin-offs and 'upgraded' editions (and now remakes) over the years.

sniper_samurai

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121016510#Comment_121016510

You could probably blame Sega for that alongside the reception of Persona 5 making Atlus games more in demand.

I'd say P5 probably wouldn't have been as big a success outside Japan if FFXV wasn't a steaming pile of crap.

Retr0gamer

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121016569#Comment_121016569

I really do think Persona 5 did well on its own merits. The Persona 4 anime generated a lot of interest and it being the best game on the vita helped introduce the series to a lot of people. It also helped that it released on the PS4 when it was starved of a decent jrpg.

I can't begrudge the game success. I just wish P3 and P4 got as much acclaim as they were so damn good.

ShaneU

Sea of Stars on gamepass tomorrow. Getting great reviews

Doodah7

Finished Legend of Heroes: Trails into Reverie last night and thus completed all ten of the games in the series that have been translated.

This game was...fine. The story itself was quite interesting and the multiple paths system being a nice gimmick but the 'final' boss of the normal game was a disappointing cakewalk. However I found the sheer volume of characters available (FIFTY ONE at the end!!!) and trying to manage even half of them was a pain as well as finding that the post-game dungeon crawling was a complete drudge to get to the final boss, for very little additional story reward.

A wait now of how many years until Kuro I and Kuro II come West...

quokula

Finally got round to starting Sea of Stars this week, I was really looking forward to it with all the hype and positive reviews, and the fact that this kind of thing is just my cup of tea. Chained Echoes is possibly still my favourite game of the last year or two.

But so far I'm really not feeling it. The music and visuals are absolutely fantastic, but the story and writing have done nothing to grab me. I've been through the first major plot twist and it had no impact at all because I just wasn't invested in the characters it involved, and outside of those characters "bad thing happens that has dire consequences for the world" doesn't hit that hard when you've only been to one real town and you've yet to form any real concept of what this world is or who its inhabitants are.

And the pacing feels terrible, you spend exponentially more time trudging through dungeons than moving the story along. So far there's only been that one real town I mentioned and a couple of other very small one note villages, while I've spent hours getting through at least 6 or 7 sizeable enough "dungeon" areas, most of which pad out their length with "do a thing 3 times in 3 different areas to get the three doodads to progress". Most of them also have an annoying tendency to have you backtrack through them to get back to the entrance after defeating the boss.

I guess I'd be ok with that if I enjoyed the combat but it feels very strategically limited compared to Chained Echoes - that game had a complex web of buffs and debuffs and effects over time that you needed to utilise to be effective, while this game has no concept of buffs or debuffs at all so far. Instead you get the reels system, which basically prescribes exactly what moves you need to do, and the only question is if you'll get the timing right to get the multiple hit you need. And I hate taking away tactics in favour of making timed button presses an essential part of battle.

I'll stick with it and hope it gets better, if only because I don't want to let Garl down. That and I must complete my Wheels set...

skerry

Tactics Ogre Reborn is down to £20 on Amazon. Picked it up a few weeks ago and really great game so far. Hadn't played the original. Only gripe so far is that when you meet characters that are joining your party as a guest and are going to be recruitable in a few missions, they seem determined to get themselves wiped out in the next mission and I end up just having to focus healers on them. Awesome game so far though

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121326557#Comment_121326557

Just wondering how you’ve gotten on with this since then? I’ve had me eye on but disappointing steam only took 10% off in the sale. Hesitant to spend 30 quid on it when I could get 2 pixel remaster FFs for roughly the same price.

interesting that you found chained echoes combat intricate, I couldn’t disagree with more, I found the sky armour fights to be dreadful in terms of RNG especially at the higher difficulties if you had a bad roll at the start of the fight it was an instant restart.

As soon as your at the last 1/4 of the game, it became using the same skill with Glenn and Lenne every turn and the same buff with Victor, sure you could swap Rob for Sienna depending on fights but I found the combat and overdrive system to be quite dull towards the end.

the game was brilliant for first 75% I’d say then the ending felt way to rushed and the story turned to absolute dross at the end. But for 20 quid I really can’t complain too much.

anyways, let me know. SoS yay or nay?

quokula

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121405126#Comment_121405126

Nah I stopped. I think I'd got to maybe 20 hours in. I was hanging on because I heard it gets better later, but I'd been to every major island that I could see on the world map, and the story still hadn't gotten interesting or made me care about the characters or world. So much of the "story" was just being ushered from place to place by elders or prophecies or whatever to get magic doodads without any of it ever really getting explained or given context and with no character development or motivation. And like I said, I disliked the combat so the game really wasn't giving me anything.

I do seem to be in the minority though, lots of people loved it. The plus points for me are the art style and music which are both fantastic, and the traversal mechanics and puzzles are really well done in terms of finding your way through the very intricate dungeons with little button pushing or block pushing puzzles or turning valves to raise and lower water levels and that sort of thing - fairly cliched stuff but executed extremely well.

Retr0gamer

I'm kind of finding these so called saviours of the jrpg genre to be the same generic rubbish. Ni no Kuni first, I am Setsuna, etc. Seems chained echoes is the as well. I really can't trust the popular opinion on them because the popular opinion seems to be to praise the worst kind of JRPGs. They always go on about how the game is like the great RPGs on the past and when I play it it's every cliche about how jrpgs are bad.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121406317#Comment_121406317

Don’t get me wrong, I thought value for money wise chained echoes was a decent game. It looked pretty, unforgiven in terms of insta restart on fights when wiping and to change setup before fight if you lose. But to compare it to some of the greats like Chrono Trigger or FF-FF6 is insulting to the genre. The story wasn’t bad at all, but anyone who says it’s a masterpiece id be seriously questioning how or why they came to that conclusion and the developer seems to have purposefully left it in a weird place so they can go into a new game or DLC which I can’t stand!

Sephiroth_dude

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121406027#Comment_121406027

I didn't like it either, very over hyped game.

Doodah7

Bounced hard off Chained Echoes. The mechanic of hiding certain treasures in extremely obscure areas of the map annoyed me greatly.

I also thought that some of the encounters were extremely unfair if you were even moderately levelled.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121414892#Comment_121414892

Yeah I won't spoil it but there was a certain boss that had a sky armour fight about half way through the game that I couldn't beat on normal and it kept restarting you from the beginning of the fight, so had to use an older save to beat it as I never grinded.

really annoying.

megaten

Hi Haven't played chained echos yet but I heard great things about it and that its battle design is much more considered than a lot of 90s era jrpg insprired indies.

https://www.boards.ie/discussion/comment/121441669#Comment_121441669

It’s a great game, for 20 quid you can’t go wrong but it’s definitely overhyped it’s nowhere near any of the great titles from the 90s. As far as an indie game it’s up there with as good as any in its category, but it’s not anything special imo.