RPG Progress Report

[BoneSnapDeez]

DQV on PS2?

Word up playa:

Don't forget this:

Or this:

[Exhuminator]

DQV on PS2?

As Bone showed, yes it's on PS2.

You can play it fully translated in English:

http://www.romhacking.net/translations/1482/

[pierrot]

Sorry I meant to say the law route. Chaos route may perhaps have the worst lineup of the 3.

Yeah, I had a feeling that's what you meant, and you could be right, but I just like the story bits surrounding those two main neutral path characters too much. Also, I don't think I could even bring myself to go law route.

Ozma

The Temple Commander? Is this exclusive to the PSP version?

Ravness

This is a character in Tactics Ogre: LUCT?

[Jmustang1968]

Sorry I meant to say the law route. Chaos route may perhaps have the worst lineup of the 3.

Yeah, I had a feeling that's what you meant, and you could be right, but I just like the story bits surrounding those two main neutral path characters too much. Also, I don't think I could even bring myself to go law route.

Ozma

The Temple Commander? Is this exclusive to the PSP version?

Ravness

This is a character in Tactics Ogre: LUCT?

Correct on both accounts. Ozma wrecks as you might imagine. Ravness is a cool addition as well.

Law route is very interesting to me. Different perspective than most standard save the world hero tropes. I played the Chaos route on the PS1 port, and I started with the Law route on PSP (as you can go back and do all of the routes...) I should probably do a fresh neutral run to really get the feel and attachment for the characters.

[Kuruwin]

Do you mean scaling enemy levels? Because I know that the SFC based versions of the game often scale the levels, of most non-leader units, within a certain range.

Story missions do scale on the PSP versio but only if you go beyond something like 10+ level over the enemies. Random battles are always scaled to the highest character on the battle.

So i guess the "easy way" to level up classes is get a bunch of characters to turn to one class and do a random battle.

But that's just a pointless chore that could have easily been avoided by making the new classes to start with certain level.

Like for instance the swordmaster is gotten from a fight with level 14 enemies. Instead of starting the class level 3 it should have been 14 from the beginning. There's no other reason to it start from level 3 than waste your time grinding.

And if i had to guess the side quests don't give you enough exp to make you ready for the last fight. I checked and according to one walkie at least the enemies go up to level 25 on the last dungeon. I'm nearing the end of chapter 3 and i'been doing grinding now and then yet i think my highest class is still only 15 (archer which i sometimes have 4 on the field)

There's not many side quests and most of them are short (and it seems like not everything is even available on one playthrough)

The exp gain from missions tend to stay at the same range so chances are i will be still several levels short at the end too.

[Jmustang1968]

Do you mean scaling enemy levels? Because I know that the SFC based versions of the game often scale the levels, of most non-leader units, within a certain range.

Story missions do scale on the PSP versio but only if you go beyond something like 10+ level over the enemies. Random battles are always scaled to the highest character on the battle.

So i guess the "easy way" to level up classes is get a bunch of characters to turn to one class and do a random battle.

But that's just a pointless chore that could have easily been avoided by making the new classes to start with certain level.

Like for instance the swordmaster is gotten from a fight with level 14 enemies. Instead of starting the class level 3 it should have been 14 from the beginning. There's no other reason to it start from level 3 than waste your time grinding.

And if i had to guess the side quests don't give you enough exp to make you ready for the last fight. I checked and according to one walkie at least the enemies go up to level 25 on the last dungeon. I'm nearing the end of chapter 3 and i'been doing grinding now and then yet i think my highest class is still only 15 (archer which i sometimes have 4 on the field)

There's not many side quests and most of them are short (and it seems like not everything is even available on one playthrough)

The exp gain from missions tend to stay at the same range so chances are i will be still several levels short at the end too.

There are a lot of side areas. Phorampa, Pirate Isles, Palace of the Dead, and some special character side battles. BY the time I did the hanging gardens, I mopped up the enemies. The truly hard battles are Palace of the Dead and Pirate Isles. Some nice loot there too.

There is a trade off with the classes, while you do have to level up a class, it is nice that any character you switch to that class auto gains that level. What I liked is that you dont have the issue with making the healer get kills to get significant EXP, nor do you have to really struggle to get kill shots with a low leveled character. One of my gripes with the Shining Force and Fire Emblem games and some others was having to weaken an enemy to low life, so my work in progress character could come get a kill shot to level.

[Kuruwin]

Well i do think so too that is nice that all the characters on a class are on the same level but i just don't think is done well in this game. The more you spread out in this the more you are punished because using wide selection of different classes means that the exp is spread thin. In any other game like this the XP would get so highly adjusted to the low characters that they would catch up quickly but because the XP gain and XP needed to class to level up is static (no xp multipliers for low level classes) and same for all classes it means that you have to work as much for the new class as it did for the old class.

I agree that the killshot exp systems can be annoying too (Disgaea 1 was awful when it came to that) but at least you don't have to carry several useless characters with you in Fire Emblem. I don't like the XP cap system in Fire Emblem but that's to ensure you having even party.

[MrPopo]

Guess who got cocky, forgot to check if the enemy was a high level, and got full party wiped by a single damage spell, losing 30 minutes of progress.

[pierrot]

Dragon Quest V did not wait nearly as long as III to punch me in the guts with its story. That was harsh. I was pretty sure something significant was going to happen, but that was a little more ruthless than I had anticipated.

So, my character is ten years older, and Prince Henry did a complete 180, personality-wise. He feels like a little bit of a liability, in my party, but at least I can recruit monster friends now. Nothing will ever replace Borongo, though. I must find Borongo! I went back to the starting town, and did the requisite spelunking in the parts of the cave I wasn't allowed into as a kid. Speaking of playing as a six-year-old in the first part of the game, I find it kind of amusing that shopkeepers are fine with some kids, and a baby killer panther just suiting up with armor and weapons. I can only imagine their responses, on being challenged about it, would just be, "They had plenty of gold--. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯"

I want to go on record saying that... the SNES DQ games look ugly as heck. Is it just me?

I missed this before. I think V looks like total ass on the SNES, and the remakes of I and II don't look too much better (though better than the NES versions, I feel), but the remake of III looks pretty good, and VI is done in a similar style. So, I would not agree, with respect to those two at least.

[Kuruwin]

The trick i was talking about earlier does wonders. I tried it with Dragoons and i think it might have taken less than hour to go from 7-8 to 19. There's a random battle spot on chapter 3 where it's really easy to make your AI do leveling for you and it takes only 5-10 minute per battle.

Does this makes everything right? No for several reasons but at least there's way to cheese through grinding.