RPG Progress Report

[noiseredux]

The main character is Yuma who can turn into the Shining Dragon. And all of this plays out as sort of an Incredible Hulk type trope. Like, Yuma wants to suppress the dragon, but sometimes it's needed in battle. The problem is that the more time he spends as the dragon, the more he seems to lose himself; the harder it becomes to control it.

That sounds fairly cool. Your description reminds me a bit of the D-Counter in Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter, and I loved that mechanic, even if most people hated it.

I think it's cool that you were so excited for this new Shining game, Noise. Personally, if I were picking it up, and decided to play it, I probably wouldn't be expecting much. Part of that might be that I'm not even the biggest fan of the Shining Force games, but I also tend to view series that change out most or all of the high level designers and directors as having a break in the series. For instance, everything after Ys III, in my mind, essentially begins a new series that may as well not even be called "Ys." Same with Fire Emblem; Once Fire Emblem loses its driving force in Kaga Shouzo, after Thracia 776, there's sort of a dichotomy between Fire Emblem proper, and games that emulate Fire Emblem proper. So, without Camelot, I kind of look at any subsequent entry in the Shining series as needing to stand on its own merit. I won't give it any inherent credibility based on the capital established by the Shining games that Camelot made. All that said, your thoughts on this new Shining game make it sound a bit interesting. It's technically on the PS3, so I could actually play it. At some point I really need to play the Shining games by Nextech, just because I love Nextech, but it looks like Amusement.Vision took over for the last handful of Shining games. That could be good or bad, I haven't played enough Wild Arms to say much about them, personally. I didn't care much for Wild Arms 3, though.

Honestly, it really is an interesting game. I think I'm being slightly harsh because I allowed my expectations to get a little inflated just because I was so excited about a new Shining game coming out in the west. Which is unfair. Given that you can read Japanese, I'd suggest that you check out the PS3 release.

As far as the stuff about series sort of ending when the developers change - I 'get' it, but it's not how I view things. I mean I 100% understand your reasoning, but at the same time I find histories of various series really interesting when they change hands throughout their chronology. I guess the same way that I think it's interesting to see what different directors do with entries in a long-running movie franchise. Anyway, the Shining series itself was always interesting because of how the sub-genre itself changed often throughout. Shining In The Darkness and Shining The Holy Ark were dungeon crawlers, the Shining Forces games were SRPG's, Shining Wisdom was a Zelda-ish ARPG, and so on.

[BoneSnapDeez]

The main character is Yuma who can turn into the Shining Dragon. And all of this plays out as sort of an Incredible Hulk type trope. Like, Yuma wants to suppress the dragon, but sometimes it's needed in battle. The problem is that the more time he spends as the dragon, the more he seems to lose himself; the harder it becomes to control it.

That sounds fairly cool. Your description reminds me a bit of the D-Counter in Breath of Fire: Dragon Quarter, and I loved that mechanic, even if most people hated it.

I think it's cool that you were so excited for this new Shining game, Noise. Personally, if I were picking it up, and decided to play it, I probably wouldn't be expecting much. Part of that might be that I'm not even the biggest fan of the Shining Force games, but I also tend to view series that change out most or all of the high level designers and directors as having a break in the series. For instance, everything after Ys III, in my mind, essentially begins a new series that may as well not even be called "Ys." Same with Fire Emblem; Once Fire Emblem loses its driving force in Kaga Shouzo, after Thracia 776, there's sort of a dichotomy between Fire Emblem proper, and games that emulate Fire Emblem proper. So, without Camelot, I kind of look at any subsequent entry in the Shining series as needing to stand on its own merit. I won't give it any inherent credibility based on the capital established by the Shining games that Camelot made. All that said, your thoughts on this new Shining game make it sound a bit interesting. It's technically on the PS3, so I could actually play it. At some point I really need to play the Shining games by Nextech, just because I love Nextech, but it looks like Amusement.Vision took over for the last handful of Shining games. That could be good or bad, I haven't played enough Wild Arms to say much about them, personally. I didn't care much for Wild Arms 3, though.

I tend to consider Shining Force III as being the last "true" entry in the series. That said, I'll certainly check out this Switch game when I have the chance.

[noiseredux]

I started up Octopath Traveler last night. Lovely game. I have to imagine that others are playing right now as well? I know Fast is at least. Anyway, I picked Ophelia to start for no real reason other than I didn't want to spend much time making a decision on who to start with. Made my way over to that cave, decided to grind a few levels before going in. Got her up to level 5 which apparently unlocked some skill opportunities. Then I used her ability to lead to bring one of the dudes outside the cave in with me for backup. The boss inside the cave beat me on my first attempt - or rather that little purple thing did because I didn't understand what the countdown timer was about at first. On the second attempt I had my strategy down.

I'm only 1-2 hours in so far, but super impressed. Art style is great, writing is solid, music is nice, battle system is excellent. I remember really wanting to like Bravely Default, but bouncing off of its systems kind of harshly. In fairness, I don't think I gave it a lot of time to change my mind. But then again, Octopath feels really inviting immediately. I also kind of like that the game is basically little chunks by design. I can knock out one clear "piece" of the story in a sitting and feel like I've made some obvious progress.

Anyway, I'm not gonna read anything about the game so I'll just kind of make my way to whichever traveler I happen upon next.

[MrPopo]

I've got a trip coming up this weekend and I'm saving Octopath for that. Four hours each way by plane.

[noiseredux]

So you'll be TRAVELING... for EIGHT hours? Cosmic.

[noiseredux]

Four hours into Octopad Traveler and just wow, this game is fantastic. Ophilia met up with (I'm bad at remember names of characters) the hunter (edit: H'aanit) who can command animals. The overuse of fake ye olde Enlisheth was kind of annoying, but otherwise that whole chapter was really cool - the going off into the woods to hunt that big creature. Y'know, there have been games over the years that I've enjoyed and considered a sort of 'love letter' to like 90's JRPG's (I Am Setsuna comes to mind), but Octopath just nails it. It's not like it's trying to be an homage to those games as much as it's just a really good ONE OF THOSE games that just happens to have been released in 2018.

The battle system is just great. I'm having a blast just messing around with the various combinations now that I have a second party member. For instance the hunter can capture enemy creatures a la Pokemon. And I've upgraded some of Ophilia's spells so now she hits pretty hard. Honestly, the battle system is fun enough that grinding isn't annoying at all. I spent a while outside the first town just to get enough money to get Ophilia new armor, helmet, shield, and a better staff. Then did the same in the second town with the hunter, who is now at lvl 8 and Ophilia is 10 if I recall. We're on our way to the next town.

[noiseredux]

My third traveler was Cyrus. It's cool just how varied in tone the game gets from one story to the next. H'aanit's story was all filled with that weird faux middle English or whatever, and then you jump over to Cyrus' story and it's like a mini-episode of Sherlock Holmes or something. I'm not sure how useful his interrogation skill will be concerning NPC's, but we'll see. His skills in battle on the other hand are certainly helpful with his various spells. As such, the battles in this game remain a total joy. I'm having a blast experimenting with discovering weaknesses, and how to best stack attacks and skills to get some crazy combos going. I also really appreciate the bite-sized nature of the chapters. Octopath is great in the sense that I know I can pick it up for an hour or two and knock out the next little chunk of story. I know I'm still early into the game, but I feel like this is easily one the best 'modern retro' JRPG's I've ever played.

[noiseredux]

And now I've got a full four-heroes (OF LIGHT!) party. Tressa joined us, and I quite enjoyed her story. That little fishing town also had a ton of opportunities for really pretty screenshots. You've got those little 2D sprite characters and then this sort of 3D Dot Game/Minecraft 3D world, and then this gorgeous water reflecting the sun... just such a great looking game. I've been working on opening skills for everyone. I find Cyrus' ability to reveal enemy weaknesses super helpful. I decided NOT to use his passive skill that reduces the rate of random encounters because that seems counter intuitive to natural leveling. But yeah, all these little systems - both the battle system and all the skills just really work to the game's benefit.

[Ack]

Pool of Radiance

After an aborted start to learn the system, I have finally begun a legitimate run in PoR. I'm running a party of six humans so I can avoid late game alternate race shenanigans. The team is composed of two fighters (Ack and Popo), two clerics (Bone and Sarge), a wizard (Key), and a thief (Exhum).

After a rough beginning as the party deals with being strapped for cash, gear, and spells, I managed to scrape up enough dough to gear up the party with weapons, shields, and armor by using Key's Sleep spell to wipe the floor with my enemies. Once I had explored and taken out some of the preset fights as well as the random encounters, I had enough experience and money to buy my first round of levels. I also had snagged some magical gear and got it identified to better prepare my party.

The slums present a small side quest to retrieve a potion for a wizard, but I made sure to handle all of the fights north of the Rope Guild before venturing down to the shop to get the package. Along the way, more levels were earned, and when I finished the quest and reported back to town, the city clerk that I'm taking quests from declared the slums cleared of monsters...which isn't true. There are some trolls stuck down in a corner that I'll have to dislodge, but later.

In the meantime, my levels went up again, so now my troops are all between level 3-4. I have moved to a keep on an island that needs to be cleansed of undead. I've made a little progress, but the quest is just beginning. So is the game, from what I can tell.

[MrPopo]

Yup, you're still in the "learning how to not get murdered" phase of your adventurer's career. And look forward to level 5; that's when you get Fireball.