What RPG are you playing right now?

[BoneSnapDeez]

From what I recall there's just too much going on in Legend of Mana. There's some complicated crafting system that really turned me off. Secret of Mana and SD3 are the peak of the series.

[Zing]

I just played it for another hour and yes, it is starting to get rather boring. The stories are all over the place, which I thought I would get used to. The few quests that feel relevant are interesting and make me want to play. The first handful of quests were like this. Now, the game has boiled down to: drop an AF, go there, trigger some random quest unrelated to anything else in the game, finish it in an arbitrary manner, find items that do nothing, and get more AF to repeat the process.

Every battle is the same. Attack, attack, attack, attack. I bought a steel sword and now everything dies in a few hits, and my NPC/pet feel useless, not that they were ever that useful. It's unfortunate that the developers didn't put any thought at all into the NPCs auto-control. The two-player game would be fun, but I don't want to force my daughter to suffer through all the wandering around looking for a random NPC that might trigger a quest.

I went from looking forward to playing more the game, to not being sure if I want to continue, all in the span of an hour of game play. I just don't enjoy games heavy in arbitrary elements. I have to wander around, exploring and re-exploring areas in hopes that I find something interesting to do. Along the way, I fight in battles that are ultra-easy, and give meaningless rewards. I'm sure these items I find will be useful someday when I am awarded the ability to craft them into something practical.

I see people throw around phrases like "my favourite RPG of all time" and I have to wonder if they have played any other RPGs. I think this is one of those games like Morrowind, where you have to dedicate 100 hours of your life and replay over and over to be able to make such a claim. It's a huge, arbitrary sandbox, with all these deep systems and features, but with everything except pressing the attack button being optional and unnecessary.

[MrPopo]

From what I recall there's just too much going on in Legend of Mana. There's some complicated crafting system that really turned me off. Secret of Mana and SD3 are the peak of the series.

Sword of Mana GREATLY simplifies the crafting. A combination of two seeds plus a day always gives you a particular produce, and the produce determines which stats on an item the material will improve.

[Zing]

What the… they added crafting to the first game in the remake?

[Valkyrie-Favor]

Yeah, but there's not much to it. It's mainly an excuse for another dungeon.

[MrPopo]

What the… they added crafting to the first game in the remake?

Yeah. It lets you make awesome gear and it's pretty easy to do. For just going through the story you can just randomly apply mats to get bigger numbers, so you don't even need to understand it. The basic way it goes is material = new item, then you can improve that item by adding more of the same material + a produce, and the produce determines which particular stat gets bumped. So you can stay at the first phase and never touch the seeds and get benefit from the crafting system.

[Zing]

After putting Legend of Mana back in the case, I decided it was time to finish off Legend of Dragoon. Wow, what a difference. It took me a few minutes to regain my bearings, but I was instantly hooked. The contrast between how I feel playing this, and how I feel playing Legend of Mana cannot be overstated. I actually feel emotion while playing Dragoon. I find myself actually talking to the characters and getting emotionally charged. This is how an RPG should feel.

I played for almost three hours and progressed quite a bit. Finally confronted Lloyd, but still no sign of the final Dragoon Spirit. I am on my way to meet Emperor Diaz, so I guess I may have to take it from his cold, dead hands.

I am finding the later additions to be much more difficult to pull off. Not necessarily because they are more complex, but since they are faster and require more button presses, a counter-attack can catch me off-guard more easily.

[BoneSnapDeez]

Am I the only one who enjoyed Children of Mana?

[AppleQueso]

RE: Legend of Mana. It's a very pretty game, has very nice music, but it's also really repetitive and loses its luster really quickly. I like the game... I think, but I wouldn't call it great. It's tedious.

Anyway,

I've had it sitting on my shelf a while, so I fired up Shadow Hearts: Covenant.

Holy what this game is CRAZY. Battle system is cool, that judgement ring thing is such a nice idea, makes the battles feel a bit more actiony while still staying turn-based.

I mean, Gepetto is a character. THAT Gepetto. He's got this puppet girl thing as his... weapon I guess. He's so far my favorite character. The whole story is completely bonkers and I honestly am mostly kinda confused and intrigued at the same time.

I think I like it.

[prfsnl_gmr]

Am I the only one who enjoyed Children of Mana?

Yes.


(Just kidding. I picked up that game a few weeks ago, but I haven't tried it yet. What did you like about it?)