RPG Progress Report

[Raging Justice]

Alright, I have FINALLY reached a point in the game where it opens up a bit. Thus far, the game has been PAINFULLY linear so this makes me happy. There's a map for me to explore and I can revisit some previous locations. There are still secrets the game is keeping from me as I have been collecting certain items yet having no idea what they do. They're called conch seashells or something. So hopefully some exploring will reveal what they are for. There are also shrines on the map that can apparently give me new powers. That sounds rad.

Speaking of powers, I forgot to mention the game has a time manipulation mechanic so you can fast forward or rewind time to a sunrise or sunset. The game made me do this early in the game for a small number of puzzles and then it's like the mechanic just got discarded. I don't know if the game will make me use it again.

I think I mentioned in my last post that I got a new ability to use for moving around the environment and solving puzzles. I failed to mention that it has completely removed one of my annoyances with the game, the difficulty of sneaking up on enemies in the field. With this ability, you are pretty much guaranteed to get the drop on enemies all the time now.

I've also unlocked an ultimate attack for one character, so I guess ultimate attacks are a thing in this game. I'm happy to have one more thing to add to the battle mechanics. So I mentioned getting a fourth playable party member in my last post. I haven't picked up any additional characters. The game only lets you have three characters in battle, but the ability to swap out one of them for your fourth character at any time (like Final Fantasy X) has added another strategic layer to combat that I have enjoyed. I have had one battle break the three character limit and give me up to five, but it involved two characters I wasn't directly controlling helping me in that particular fight, so it doesn't count.

I have also discovered what seems to be the obligatory kickstarter area that these games always have. You know what I mean. It's some location with a bunch of dedications to a bunch of strangers that you know nothing about with out of context stuff written about them that has no meaning to you. I kind of miss the old days where you just put everyone's names in the end game credits instead of these lame kickstarter areas. I just hate this stuff because it pulls you out of the game. Things like that shouldn't exist within a game's world, but there I go sounding like an out of touch old man I guess.

Speaking of things that pull me out of the game's world, I've also encountered an NPC called "Girard the Constructionist"

His face portrait even looks like you know who. I'm must be getting old, because stuff like this or seeing Jim Sterling as a boss in Streets of Red Devil's Dare Deluxe just kind of makes me roll my eyes. Anyway...

I'm glad to finally be able to explore a little, discover some new things, and maybe find some secrets and chests that I couldn't get before or simply missed. I can start looking for more stories for my story teller to read to me, some more stuff for that wheel and figure mini game, music tracks for my pirate band to play, and there's card packs tied to a quiz mini game as well. Oh, and I've unlocked a stats page and a "feats" page, which basically just tells you what the trophies are. I'm trying not to look at it. I like playing blind.

The story continues to be pretty decent and more and more little things are tying into The Messenger. So that's cool.

Some of the bosses are cool, the last one I fought before posting this was:

Spoiler

An evil ghost pirate aboard a cursed ship stuck in a never ending storm powered by a maelstrom in a cursed sea in a nightmarish parallel hell dimension.....oh, and did I mention that for one of his attacks he jumps on top of a gigantic fucking sea monster that breathes fire on you?

[Raging Justice]

Okay, this game is starting to get awesome. The links between this and The Messenger are getting stronger the farther I get, including some fun similarities between the two games, stuff revolving around time, familiar music tracks (and locations), along with the songs in the game having two variations based on time of day. Plus, the gameplay keeps getting more fun as I find new items (particularly relics), new abilities (the power to control time gets brought back in a big way). The story is getting more and more interesting as more of the lore of the game gets unraveled, and how it all ties into the lore of The Messenger. Some of the stuff in this game's story is kind of dark.

Oh, and I tried my first Ultimate Attack in battle and was not prepared for the awesome cut scene I would get.

I think I'm done posting about it in this thread. If I talk about this game again it will likely be in the Games Beaten thread after I finish it. I can't wait to dive into Chained Echoes when I finish this, as that's the game people keep comparing this too (along with The Messenger of course). Three Must play games

[pierrot]

I started playing Dragon Quest VII last night.
This is the last mainline DQ I haven't beaten before. After finishing it, I will have beaten every mainline DQ (including version 1 and 2 of DQX), and every mainline FF before XV (including all of XI, and up to partway through Shadowbringers in XIV).

The thing I always hear about DQVII when Japanese players talk about it is how long it takes before getting into battles, and the kind of weird map thing.

(I've also heard about Kiefer getting possessed and dying, or something--.)

Generally it's brought up as a negative, but I actually quite enjoy the prologue section. It has kind of a cozy feeling like Shenmue to me, and I enjoy the characters and community of it quite a bit. I'm still just about to welcome the fishing crew back, though. I think the 'real game' is about to start, but I honestly don't actually know how shortly that will be.

The main thing for me from here will likely just be about whether or not the story maintains some cohesive themes or messages that propels the game up toward the top of the series or not. I suppose the gameplay systems could end up hurting the experience, but that seems pretty unlikely since it's Dragon Quest. I'm just a little surprised that I kind of love DQ VII right now, because it's pretty divisive for Japanese fans, and my opinions on mainline DQs (and to a lesser extent, FFs) tend to match with a lot of the Japanese graybeards, generally.

[pierrot]

I'm still occasionally plugging away at DQ VII, but have been kind of preoccupied with a number of other things. I seem to be close to about the halfway point, I think. I'm on the new map after just unlocking professions. I spent one huge play session going through the Darma quest mainly because I just wanted to have professions unlocked already, and had no idea that it would keep going for about six hours of play time. I'm not really impressed with the options for professions. They seem kind of uninteresting so far, and this game is already balanced in a way that it feels like maybe the most annoying DQ in terms of combat gameplay. I generally like DQVII so far, and the thing with Kiefer before the Darma quest got me in the feels a bit, but I am starting to feel like it's a bit of a drag to play now. It just kind of feels a little brutal to be in the middle stanza of the game, 35 hours in, and still only be in the mid-teens in level, rolling as just a party of three. Also, gold is a serious fucking issue in this one. Upgrading equipment hasn't been affordable at any point in this one.

Otherwise, I've been playing Shenmue II on SteamDeck. Got my duck for racin' with. I have the personal duck on my DC saves too, but now I can go duck drivin' from practically anywhere in the world! I've also been talking a lot with Fang Mei waiting around for her birthday event, which I've never actually done before. The conversations do resemble the Shenhua conversations in Shenmue III a fair amount, but it seems like I already hit a wall in conversation patterns much earlier. I had the timing confused a little bit and ended up with about a month of in-game time to spare before hitting any of her major birthday triggers, though, while also being past the Wude events (there's one of them that can be used to skip whole days by failing a QTE). So, it's been a lot of pilfering money from lucky hit stand owners, sparring with Jianmin, and now I'm skipping through some blocks of time with Chawan Sign tables. One thing I was actually happy to find for the first time was a couple of gacha machines in Wan Chai, that I had previously thought only existed in Kowloon, after wandering into an electronics store I never knew could be entered. This is actually the first time I've played Shenmue II this slowly, though, so I have just been wandering around bumping into random shit more. It's a good time.

I also started playing a tiny bit of Alliance Alive (GOG) on the SteamDeck. It's a game scenario written by Murayam Yoshitaka of Suikoden fame. After playing through Eiyuden (also a scenario written by Murayama), and being pretty lukewarm about the execution, I've been wanting to play through the one RPG Murayama worked on in between Suikoden (III) and Eiyuden; That being Alliance Alive. Early impressions are pretty good. I really like the atmosphere, the dialogue is nice (very Murayama-esque, though maybe somewhere between Suikoden and Eiyuden in terms of 'seriousness'), and the setting is interesting to me. It seems to have a familiar central theme for Murayama of a class of people quietly rebelling against an authoritarian regime, but this time it seems like the anthro-people are actually the oppressors(!). The combat and mechanics also seem really quirky and interesting. I don't know that I'll be continuing on with this any time too soon, but I did enjoy the short time I put into it testing out the very beginning of the game, and would like to play it in earnest before too long.

[MrPopo]

Alliance Alive has a lot of SaGa DNA in it, which makes sense considering the game designer is a SaGa veteran. So that's what you're seeing in the combat system.

[pierrot]

Ah neeto! That makes sense. I remember hearing something about Furyu having some people somewhat well known in the JRPG space with one of them directing Legend of Legacy and Alliance Alive. I also remember seeing something about Legend of Legacy being much more mechanically quirky, and Alliance Alive being more story focused than system focused, so that kinda seems like it's probably better for me to start with Alliance Alive.

I don't really like FFII much in practice (much less its ugly stepchild, Anearth Fantasy Stories, where there's a finite number of enemy encounters), and I had a really poor introduction to SaGa with Unlimited Saga, but I've been interested in going through the SaGa series for a while now. I always get kind of stuck at the idea of starting SaGa1, but theoretically I find those kinds of growth mechanics more organic and engaging than the typical JRPG leveling system, so I feel like there's a lot about at least a few of them that I would like.

[MrPopo]

My recommendation, when it comes to getting into the SaGa series, is to start with the Romancing SaGa games. SaGa 1 is incredibly primitive and bare bones. SaGa 2 is a solid starting point, but then SaGa 3 pulls back on much of the SaGa DNA (it was done by the team that would do Mystic Quest), with really only the character transformation from enemy drops remaining. But the three Romancing SaGa games is when the series really hit its stride. They introduce the Glimmer mechanic that would be used by basically every SaGa game after that and serve as the core, with each game then exploring other components to be unique, like the generational story of Romancing SaGa 2 or the independent stories of SaGa Frontier 1.

[pierrot]

That's always where I get kind of tripped up. I would rather start with the Romancing SaGas, but I tend to like playing through things in release chronology and I have so little interest in the original SaGa. In the past I've flirted with playing the DS remakes of SaGa, but they only made them for 2 and 3.

Also I have a little bit of an attachment to Saga Frontier 2 from watching a friend play parts of it in middle school. It was what prompted me to pick up Unlimited Saga a few years later, thinking it would probably play similarly, but I've still always wanted to play Frontier 2.