RPG Progress Report

[isiolia]

Hm, stupid question, I was trying starting Final Fantasy on the GBA release (I've also tried starting on the PS1 version, the grindy nature is not that appealing). However, on that one, I have two RDMs, and one of them basically stopped getting HP/MP when leveling up. I only went to around level 5, but there's a pretty large gap between the two.

Is that a known bug or something, or working as intended?

[Xeogred]

Red Mages?

I would love to see a good argument to why Red Mages are good in any of the FF's. I always love using them, but they always hit a wall early on and ultimately seem like a big waste. Especially in FF5, you're way better off with a beefed up Knight or Black Mage in the long run. I had more success using the Monk early on for some big physical hits while learning a bunch of stuff on the side haha.

[MrPopo]

Red Mage in V you use for X-Magic.
Red Mage in I is actually decent; the late game magic isn't really worthwhile so you end up with a decent attacker who can cast Fast and also has some healing available.

[Xeogred]

Oh yeah, guess I did learn X-Magic at the very end.

It's all about the Time Mage in the end!

[isiolia]

They seem to get a far larger HP pool than the other mages for the first one which is mostly what I was looking at.

It's usually ranged from highly desirable to solid job in FFXI, but it'd depend on what era of the game for group use. At 75 cap it was often the most desired mage due to Convert as general MP recovery was crap. Also typically -the- high end solo job, albeit often very slow.
Fell off substantially in the Abyssea era when the level cap went up, /RDM got access to a lot of key stuff, far more Auto-Refresh became available, event structure changed, etc. Where RDM's "specialty" lies in enhancing and enfeebling, those weren't as important for Abyssea and Voidwatch, and it did not have a comprehensive set of procs for either.
Adoulin/Job Point era has seen it come back some though, Distract/Frazzle II are strong, solid Job Point gifts like Temper II. Ludicrous amounts of +Enhancing duration and stuff too.

It's still one of the stronger solo jobs, but SCH, BLU, and others tend to be more common/popular last I've seen. I dunno, I was a RDM main for years at 75 cap, but last I played I was getting Job Points for RDM on my secondary character instead.

[PartridgeSenpai]

It's midterms time, so I have a lot less reading to do and a lot more time to play the Vita in between classes at school, so I've been putting some more time into Tales of Innocence. Still digging it, especially the Great War/Interwar Period aesthetic of everything. Not enough games have industrialized fantasy settings! I just wish more of the skits were voice acted. The characters are so charming: I like hearing their vocal delivery when they do lines

I remember Popo mentioning that he didn't really like how hard the encounters were, but I like that kind of thing. It reminds me a lot of the older games, like Tales of Eternia, where it's very much a "block or die"-scenario, especially for boss battles. It makes the whole thing feel much more tactical and more like an ARPG rather than just run-into-battle-and-press-attack-a-lot like a lot of the more recent games have (not that there's anything wrong with that, it's just that it's nice for a shift in the battle focuses between games so they don't feel samey playing them in short succession).

[MrPopo]

So in my case I felt like the issue with the combat for Innocence was a lot of the enemies had high priority attacks that move them around the battlefield a ton. So while initially it feels like a combo-oriented combat system it ends up being, as you said, block or die. And more specifically, block everything or die. I think Xillia ended up having a decent balance of "make sure you block these few fuck you attacks, otherwise go hog wild".

[Exhuminator]

I've ended up in a particularly silly situation, that being having 3 RPGs going in tandem at once. I used to make fun of Sarge for doing this, but now here I am.

Persona 3 (PSP)
Despite all the griping I did in the Persona 3 thread the other day, I found myself last night still wanting to play it. This proves two things; I am an incredibly fickle bastard, and despite all its failings (and it does have failings) there's something addictive about the Persona formula. So chances are I'll keep on trucking along with it despite myself. I'm sitting at about 10 hours in this now.

7 Mages (Android)
I like to have one smartphone RPG going, that I can bounce in and out of, when I'm waiting on things (typically this means waiting on my wife). Right now 7 Mages is it. This is a first person dungeon crawling / WRPG hybrid, which I've talked about on this forum a few times about now. It is extraordinarily impressive, and has a really awesome combat engine. I've only got about 4 hours in it, but I've been consistently enthralled so far. One of the very best Android games I've played.

Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together
I first became aware of this game via its USA PS1 port, way back in 1998. A friend of mine was playing it, and he showed it to me. I remember thinking I'd like to play TO someday, but then quickly forgot about it. Twelve years later in 2010, when the SFC English translation released, I was reminded of TO again. A year later when the 2011 USA PSP remake/port debuted, I decided that would be the version I'd actually play. Now six years even past that, in 2017, I've finally started playing TO. All it took was 19 years from first interest to actual playing, not too shabby!

Anyway I put three hours into this last night. Being a Matsuno title it's of course initially confusing with a learning cliff. You get dropped into an immediately intricate plot full of strange people and place names you don't know, concerning a complex political war you only barely grasp the meaning of, all while trying to come to grips with who your protagonist even is. TO:LUCT includes a built in glossary to help the player make sense of it all, which is nice, but wouldn't be necessary if the story was more gradually introduced, rather than dumping it all on the player at once. However, it's always nice to see a plot in a video game that's written on an adult level, and the PSP localization is spectacular.

Gameplay is what I expected more or less. I've already beaten Final Fantasy Tactics before this, and it's much the same, although FFT is a bit dumbed down compared to the PSP version of TO:LUCT. There are a lot more complex subsystems and dilatory tactical effects available to the player here. But, I grasped it quickly enough to win a few battles thus far. If I have but one real complaint about the gameplay; the shopping system SUCKS. You're expected to buy equipment wholesale for up to twelve party members, with no real bearing as to how each piece of equipment will effect any given member. Worse yet, you're not shown immediately if the item you're considering is actually better than any of the gear they currently have. It becomes either a trial and error crap-shoot, or a constant swapping between multiple menus to get a bearing on the statistical differences at hand. The shopping system is wholly inelegant, but it is what it is. Outside that, I'm very intrigued by this experience so far, and am looking forward to the deep and absorbing SRPG bliss I've heard for years upon years TO:LUCT provides.

[Sarge]

Heh. Heh heh.

No, of course I don't do that anymore!

(Looks at backlog, sees partial playthroughs of Baldur's Gate, Final Fantasy XV, Dragon Quest VII, and others.)

Dang it.

[PartridgeSenpai]

So in my case I felt like the issue with the combat for Innocence was a lot of the enemies had high priority attacks that move them around the battlefield a ton. So while initially it feels like a combo-oriented combat system it ends up being, as you said, block or die. And more specifically, block everything or die. I think Xillia ended up having a decent balance of "make sure you block these few fuck you attacks, otherwise go hog wild".

I've only just beat that bloke in the long black cloak for the first time, so I ain't too far yet (only like 5 hours-ish), but I'm not at that bit. I will admit that it's far harder to deal with the block-or-die of the old games in a free-running 3D environment. It seems that at least one of the AI will always go for your mages, so keeping you guys strats up to defend their weaker friends is a major key. What version did you play, btw? A translation of the DS version?

ALSO NO WONDER CHEF ;A; (that I can find). I never care about cooking, but I LOVE collecting shit, which includes recipes, and this is by far the weirdest Tales game for recipes I've played. You can buy them in grade shops around the world, get them through plot events, and even FIND THEM IN CHESTS O.o