How is your PSOne/PS1 gaming going?

[Exhuminator]

I'm not a big fan of how much of the game centers on raising Kobun, and dealing with the management minutia that it entails.

I barely even messed with that aspect. I didn't bother renaming, training, or even torturing servbots. I was able to beat the game just fine without needing to. I don't think that servbot raising stuff is mandatory, is my point. You will need about 10 decent servbots for the end of the game, and my neglected little crew did just fine.

The different types of missions don't feel all that tremendously fun to me, either. The game is growing on me slightly, but part of that might have been just doing the puzzle missions.

My favorite was the "adventure mode", where you explore the caves with the pig-drone. I loved that stuff. My second favorite was the dock missions, the puzzle-crate loading stuff. I liked it so much I beat every single mission in the game, even the missions I didn't have to due to have way more than enough zenny. My least favorite part was robbing banks / raiding farms for livestock, that stuff did get kinda repetitive.

Oh well, if you end up not liking it, fair enough. I'm glad you gave it a shot at least.

[Xeogred]

Wasn't it still only like 10 hours for you? That's about how long the Legends games were and they were perfect. I didn't 100% fully explore them nor rush at all, casual leisure fun.

There's some good design in some of the games, but in a lot of cases the technical limitations really hold them back. Not always, though.

Well this falls into genres of course. An FPS on PS1 is going to have a hard time competing with an FPS on PS4, so would driving games, flying games, third person shooters, anything that relies on 3D really. But in regards to SRPGs and JRPGs things are not so clear cut. For example earlier this year I beat Front Mission Alternative, which accomplished technically what it wanted to do just fine. I can not think of any PS2, PS3, or PS4 game that offers the same kind of gameplay it has to even compare against. Another example would be The Misadventures of Tron Bonne. A very unique hybrid of game designs, which doesn't have an analog on any successive PS systems (or anywhere really). When you get into the 2D games, like Torneko, Rhapsody, Saga Frontier II, Arc the Lad, Suikoden II, or Valkyrie Profile, they still look and play beautifully. The only thing a PS4 can do is up the resolution in that regard.

It's only in the realm of fully 3D JRPGs do aesthetics and technical polish really start to matter. But even in that instance, a player would find it hard to find analogs to Koudelka, Grandia, Azure Dreams, Chocobo's Dungeon 2, Threads of Fate, Dragon Valor, The Granstream Saga, Mega Man Legends, Parasite Eve, and especially King's Field... in the PS4's library. By all that I mean; there's a lot of unique game designs of the PS1 era that didn't persist into modern interpretation. Sure the PS3 and PS4 games are more refined technically, but their genre offerings are more confined versus the wild west of the PS1 era. All that modern polish comes at the price of vintage variety.

In a lot of ways this is kind of what I was trying to get at with the PSX vs PS2 with JRPG's a few posts back.

[Exhuminator]

Wasn't it still only like 10 hours for you?

9 hours 53 minutes to be exact. That was without using a walkthrough or strategy guide.

[Sarge]

Oh, I'm thinking more about the action games, and others that you mentioned. I think JRPGs have actually taken a step back from the PSX days, the last truly great generation was probably PS2. Not counting handhelds, of course; I still find good stuff to play there. There are some absolute all-timers on PSX.

[Tanooki]

Over at atari age they have a thread going on how maybe older systems perhaps haven't aged so well and a little of it was like stuff here, original 3D gen hardware having problems or looking awful.

I got to thinking about it over the last few days and the more I think about the PSOne (and N64 too) maybe yes and also maybe no. I think in the end it is really down to a game to game basis, even on the 3D stuff.

Some games immediately came off the 2D era and they didn't have any ugly or moderately annoying SNAFUs like 2D run/jump platformers did going into 3D with player killing cameras, blind spots, or other oddness. Sure you have some technical limits in some stuff, but if you pull away from the display quality as long as the genre hasn't changed dramatically in what people want the rust really isn't there. Another factor is that 2D to still 2D conversion from either the PC, arcade, or whatever. The PC games I have that are on there and others I may yet get (like Civilization 2) look fine, and play great still -- some are dead ringers like the Blizzard titles since they already were like 320x200 anyway. Even some of the 3D stuff against the PC releases like Wing Commander III converted very well. Yet you can easily find some stuff where the polygons are garbage or tear, mud on the screen(N64 overkill AA use), wonky cameras/covered views, or just some really bad ideas for control. The RPG genre though really didn't suffer much for it, at least not the 2D stuff -- 3D some did as FF7 wasn't that hot despite the fan orgy over the Square move -- yet years of learning FF9 is pretty solid even still.

[Exhuminator]

I don't mind crusty old polygons and low res textures. But what does bother me with N64/PS1 era 3D games, is when they have intolerably bad cameras. You're right, if the game isn't first person or doesn't have a fixed camera, it's totally a game-by-game basis if the camera is going to be worth a damn or not. That sort of camera thing became far less of a problem with PS2, and with PS3 onward it's practically unheard of.

[Tanooki]

I don't think it got all that much better on the PS4/Cube as there were plenty of rotten angles still. Not as quite wide spread but still common. By the time of the PS3 though it more or less vanished unless someone/team were just fools. It's just weird that the third person platformer camera no one could figure it out for almost 10 years to get it right which almost seems strange. Maybe it was a case of not caring more than to just be good enough, yet eventually it just kind of got fixed.

[Xeogred]

We got plenty of new issues though. Forced walking segments and stripped/muted controls... somebody please kill this phase off forever. I'd rather have cutscenes and just watch the damn thing.

[Xeogred]

King's Field.

CHECKING THE RAM
Walk backwards a few steps and fall to my death.
Restart, controls feel like drowning in jello.
Run around the shallow water areas and climb a tower for some crystal orb thing.
Found an island with a breast plate.
Found someone fishing that said some stuff.
Going in the white cave thing. Found a well that heals HP. Good.
Found a save point. A guidance stone next to it, I have no idea.
Giant snail spit fire or something at me and I died.
Died a lot more. Green transparent blobs, plants with mouths, and octopus. One of them poisons you.
Rooms already have 4-5 enemies that can sandwich you.
Restarts me at the beginning of the game, so I guess you have to manually load every time.
Giant octopus in front of a door one shot me into the lake.
One path led to a bunch of chests, surprise skeleton with a sword in one of them. He one shot me.
Went the other way into area 2 I guess since the BGM changed.
Already fighting a soldier with a spear that decimates my HP. Slowly beat one and hit level 4.
Have to spin around enemies for a few minutes in hopes you can defeat the framerate and get a few hits in. Might barf.
Found the village, bought a Short Sword.
Equipment page shows literally nothing. Have to manually look at main menu stats before and after.
Found a big hallway with multiple doors and another spear solider, tried to take him on and then there's four of them on me and died instantly.

King's Field.

[Exhuminator]

You are experiencing greatness. Greatness the likes of which few men have known.

Swim through the jello and come out a new man. A jello puddin' pop mothafucka

Touch the octopus until you like it.

Let the swirling polygons of the death dance make you barf.

Now barf. Barf for great justice!

All chests are empty. Except the ones with stabby skeletons.

They waited so long for you they died. They stab you with love.

Equipment page shows nothing. Stats are nothing. Nothing can save you.

Just be naked.

How can a man fish here peacefully and not die?

Does his faceless face hide a smile?

Yes. He knows the secret of King's Field!

EVERY DEATH MAKES YOU STRONGER

If you die enough. If you become a faceless naked man of nothingness. If you barf into the octopus.

Someday you too will be that man.