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Post by kaoru on Oct 17, 2019 9:11:20 GMT -5
Oh I absolutely get that. But you also have to remember that those games did hit it big, just not in the West. You think twice to change up the winning formular if even without chaning much your game franchise sells 2 to 5 million copies in Japan alone, against a (mostly) handheld budget, and does still do big numbers when you regularly re-release the same game expanded a year later. I love all the QoL of World, but I can see why Capcom took so long for that big upheaval.
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Post by dsparil on Oct 17, 2019 13:33:53 GMT -5
Just finished the first part of DQXI after about 30 hours, and it's been okay but fairly unremarkable so far. I don't really understand where all the "best RPG of the generation" stuff comes from. Does it get significantly better?
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Also, played about two hours of Little Town Hero. Reviews have been mixed, but I like it so far. It really isn't an RPG though. It's more like a Magic-esque card battling game which I wasn't expecting. No equipment or levels either just upgrading your attacks and "shield". It's not supposed to be super long either. Interested to see where it goes.
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Post by Snake on Oct 17, 2019 15:32:31 GMT -5
Just finished the first part of DQXI after about 30 hours, and it's been okay but fairly unremarkable so far. I don't really understand where all the "best RPG of the generation" stuff comes from. Does it get significantly better? I wouldn't say "best RPG of the Generation." Honestly, I still think of Dragon Quest XI to be more of a niche game. For fans, it's one of the better comfort foods of Dragon Quest games. For non-fans, I can see them falling off and losing interest. Gameplay doesn't really change for the most part -- I was more interested in the direction of the plot. It takes an interesting twist once it gets into post-game, and starts paying lots of homages to all the past Dragon Quests. The only thoughtful fight for me in the whole game was the last, last boss. Maxed out levels, weapons, and armor, and I still had to really strategize and think ahead.
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Post by kaoru on Oct 18, 2019 1:22:36 GMT -5
Just finished the first part of DQXI after about 30 hours, and it's been okay but fairly unremarkable so far. I don't really understand where all the "best RPG of the generation" stuff comes from. Does it get significantly better? Took me a couple of hours to get into it, but shortly after Hotto, I started really liking it a lot. If it doesn't grip you by now, I doubt it'll still happen. Act 3 is cool for series veterans, but that's quite a niche, and basically amounts to "after 60 hours, the final 20 are really cool" which is anything but a playing recommendation to begin with xD
The only thoughtful fight for me in the whole game was the last, last boss. Maxed out levels, weapons, and armor, and I still had to really strategize and think ahead. Calasmos? Only til you find out that Veronica's "Channel Anger > Magic Burst" Combo can obliterate everything in the game within a few turns if you have MP-restoring items with you
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Post by lurker on Oct 18, 2019 11:03:01 GMT -5
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Post by Snake on Oct 18, 2019 11:21:29 GMT -5
Kaoru - Ha! Veronica is the 1 character I rarely ever use! Should've known!
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Post by jorpho on Oct 18, 2019 22:57:51 GMT -5
How very frustrating. I missed the final USUM tournament and can't get a Shiny Tapu Koko. :-(
Of course, these are technically distributed by codes, so in theory I could find someone with a code to trade. It doesn't seem possible to mass-generate these codes very easily since they're tied to Trainer Club accounts – or have people found a way around that?
In any case, would someone here have any suggestions as to where I might go to find a Shiny Tapu Koko giveaway? I would be quite happy to trade Steam games in return.
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Post by Apollo Chungus on Oct 19, 2019 15:50:33 GMT -5
For the last few days, I've been playing Castlevania: Aria of Sorrow, which is generally considered the best of the handheld Castlevanias made during the 2000s (side note: it's kinda insane that the team responsible for these games managed to put out SIX of them within seven years, often becoming a yearly series in the process). It was my first time playing it and I hadn't really heard of much else beyond that fact, so I found myself pleasantly surprised at how good it was.
It really does feel like playing Symphony of the Night on the go in terms of what you do, how big the castle is, and even aspects like the fluidity of the animation (it obviously can't match that game considering the tech, but it gets close). It even makes a few improvements such as letting you choose which warp room to go to, making the shop very easy to access once you unlock it, and not making the game ridiculously easy with certain power ups. I also really dig the Soul Absorption mechanic, where you get what amounts to sub-weapons and new powers by absorbing the souls of random enemies, since it offers plenty of new ways to play the game and even more incentive to keep grinding and backtracking when I normally wouldn't want to.
My only real issue with the game is that the music isn't that great, at least to me. The music didn't really stand out, and what did stand out was how repetitive it got - that's a bit of a big problem when I'm spending plenty of time in each locale killing enemies or exploring. It bugged me enough that I ended up spending most of my playthrough listening to Symphony's music, which worked out quite well since most of the areas share environmental themes with that game.
(Though I did also dislike that aspect since it made discovering new sections feel less enjoyable since I'd seen very similar versions of them in Symphony; yes, I know they both take place in Dracula's castle and that's why certain places keep showing up, but I just wish they weren't so alike.)
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Post by windfisch on Oct 19, 2019 17:16:31 GMT -5
I really liked the music in Aria. It cetainly sounds considerably better than Harmony of Dissonance. And while sound-quality-wise Circle of the Moon is slightly superior, Aria features more original tunes (Circle recycles many tracks from older games). I guess after a while it'll become repetitive, most of the tracks seem to loop after about 1,5 min, but I'd have to actually replay the game to remember how it actually feels. The limited memory of a GBA cart compared to a CD-rom (SotN) is probably a deciding factor here, since the latter allows for longer and more comlex pieces.
However, repetition is a general problem for the genre, because you're likely going to spend a lot of time in any given area. And no matter how good the indiviual tracks are, sooner or later they will get old. I think a good way to address this is using more ambient-noise, instead of just musical compositions.
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Post by zerker on Oct 19, 2019 17:44:21 GMT -5
(side note: it's kinda insane that the team responsible for these games managed to put out SIX of them within seven years, often becoming a yearly series in the process) Technically, Circle of the Moon was from a different team. Still a lot of output, though.
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Post by Apollo Chungus on Oct 19, 2019 17:51:02 GMT -5
I'm not sure if I'd agree with that. While I think many games in the genre suffer from repetitive music, I've often had more of a problem with games that use ambient or atmospheric music in that regard than games with more melodically driven soundtracks (Super Metroid and Dust: An Elysian Tail come to mind as examples of the former). They may not grate so obviously as games with very short loops, but they tend to become white noise a lot more quickly for me and kill a lot of emotional impact - I usually end up creating my own custom soundtrack or listening to podcasts to stop myself from going mad.
While it's true that any tune can become grating after a while, but there are plenty of games that ensure that each tune is not only memorable but enjoyable to listen to for long periods of time. Heck, playing through Aria with Symphony's soundtrack has been an excellent example of that, since I'd spend upwards of 15-20 minutes while listening to the likes of Crystal Teardrops, the Coliseum theme or Dance of Pales without getting even slightly annoyed, and it's because those tracks are very well composed, memorable and stay engaging throughout their duration without getting irritating. My problem with Aria is that I feel like its themes didn't really accomplish that and only served to annoy me whenever I was having a tricky time or needed to backtrack.
This is definitely a subjective thing considering how subjective music is in general, but I prefer my Mapformers* to have soundtracks that stand out for their melodies, and if that's the style of soundtrack you're going for, I think you really have to make sure that any track can be listened to for very long periods of time without hassle by making the best damn tunes possible. (It's a very obvious solution with not much guidance, I know - "Just make the songs really good" - but it's the only thing I can think of for dealing with this problem.)
*This is an alternate term for "Metroidvanias" coined by YTer ShayMay, and one I'm gonna try to use more often since I don't like "Metroidvania" as a genre name
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Post by windfisch on Oct 19, 2019 18:25:58 GMT -5
Sure, Aria can't compete with SotN music-wise. When it comes to ambient noise, it has to be done well, of course, using many layers of indiviual noises and ideally randomly generated patterns. I prefer a good mix of those and music tracks. That way we get some breathers in between. Good luck with the term "Mapformers" - I bet you'll always have some explaining to do when using it. "Metroidvania", for better or worse, is here to stay.
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Post by JoeQ on Oct 20, 2019 6:42:25 GMT -5
How about "search action game"?
I just recently played Aria of Sorrow too. I liked it, but Order of Ecclesia is still my favorite. Soul droprates were horrible.
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Post by windfisch on Oct 20, 2019 7:56:44 GMT -5
There's already a thread for that.
And who knows, maybe in the year 20XX we'll be saying: "Remember the days when we used to call Mapformers "Meteroidvaianas"?"
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Post by Apollo Chungus on Oct 20, 2019 8:32:34 GMT -5
I've never played Order of Ecclesia, or any of the other DS Castlevanias for that matter. I don't even know that much about the game beyond having heard it was very difficult from an old GamesMaster review I read over a decade ago. That lack of knowledge is rather interesting to me, when I think about it. Considering I'm fairly into Mapformers, you'd think I'd at least be somewhat aware of more than a few things about the Castlevania games in this sub-genre, but I'm really not: Circle of the Moon has the card system, Harmony's got pretty iffy music, Dawn goes for an anime artstyle, Portrait has smaller levels instead of an interconnected area, and Ecclesia's the hard one. And that's all I really know about those games.
But I honestly find that kinda cool and even pretty exciting, since it means I can go into these games with no expectation of what's going to happen and can be genuinely surprised by whatever I find. Same thing happened when I played Mega Man Legends for the first time a couple of months ago; I had no knowledge of anything in the game beyond its cult following and Tron Bonne, and that allowed me to really be taken in by whatever I came across to the degree where I ended up falling in love with it. I'd honestly consider it my favourite game that I've played this year, I adore it that much.
Maybe at some point, I'll check out one of the other Castlevania Mapformers, but I'm good for now after finishing Aria. That said, I can't think of anything else to play at the moment, and I would like to play something in between various college things I've got going on at the moment. I'll happily take any suggestions, just for the hell of it. (But I'd like it to be something older, since I don't have any new consoles and my PC's pretty old.)
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