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Post by Sketcz-1000 on Jul 20, 2012 1:27:24 GMT -5
Welcome to the forums! And thanks for taking the time to post. Yes, I think that may have actually been the FAQ where I got the information of where to find the Valhalla reports. There's only 2 faqs on the site. But if anyone is having trouble, a quick peek at a guide should help prepare for subsequent waves.
I suppose my definition of strategy is rolling with your mistakes and turning a bad situation around. But I know that some players feel the need for a "perfect" run through of a given mission, hence the reloading statement.
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Post by blackdrazon on Jul 21, 2012 7:38:38 GMT -5
But why are you against it? If it can be done within a game's system, then what's wrong with doing it? Sometimes to enjoy the story (acknowledging that the computer is not just a computer but a very, very stupid computer makes that kind of immersion impossible, like in Evil Genius, a game where you can ignore half the game's features because the best trap to "repel" foes is a series of movement traps placed in a perpetual loop, so that they can never move), sometimes for variety (there are whole walkthroughs of Advance Wars 1 that boil down to absolutely nothing but "throw an APC in front of your troops, the computer would shoot through its own mother to kill an APC but, ironically, will be so distracted it will never shoot you" - the game, when played ideally, is a tragic bore), partly out of sympathy for the programmers (like the face palm moment in Command and Conquer when you realize the CPU GDI player will always air strike whatever is most to the northwest. Placing a 50 cent gunner out in the woods to the northwest of my base is not a strategy, it's at worst an exploit. Consider, as well, outright cheating, something else that is "done within a game's system". While I am off the Strategy genre with it, consider the Duke Nukem 3D glitch that lets you walk through solid corners and walls, even in a Deathmatch. Not fair at all). One AI gaffe that combines the three is an odd AI decision in Shining Force 1. In SF1, beating a designated boss ends the entire sequence. To improve the player's playing experience, the boss is programming to not charge across the battlefield at the start of the battle, even though that would be strategically ideal, because if the player fights them just to survive, they will end the entire fight and lose all enjoyment they might have gotten from the game's (rudimentary) strategy. Unfortunately, the short-sighted programmers - struggling with early nineties tech and confronted with one battle in particular that takes place in a very small church - decided to never let bosses move, ever. Ergo they can be easily killed so long as you shoot them from a distance. Any distance. A step away. This is particularly bad for the story (but, okay, completely hilarious) during a fight against an honourable general that wants to die courageously in battle, only for you to pepper him with tiny pointed sticks as he just stands there and takes it. Not worth it for the story, dull as all hell (arrows suck in SF1) and having been stuck in the chapel fight for a long time once as it's actually challenging if you fight off all the zombies, I can't help but sympathize with the programmer(s), who probably wanted to strangle the map designer. But oddly enough, unless the AI gaffe is particularly bad, ignoring a computer's egregious faults isn't something I care much about outside of the Strategy genre. When I fight Spark Mandrill in Mega Man X, the chump doesn't get to move, because I just keep freezing him like an asshole. I suppose it's because Strategy is asking me to think, and as soon as I realize the computer is bad at thinking, it stops being satisfying. Even if the enemy is supposed to be stupid, like in Tower Defence. There's nothing at all satisfying about watching the entire enemy army walk back and forth in place as they're riddled with bullets so long as you're willing to delete and replace the nearest tower in your TD maze. "There's a hole!" "There's no hole." "There's a hole!" "There's no hole." "There's a--gyugggg." "Paul, where'd you go? We've got to turn around, someone just found a hole!" Forget it. EDIT: You know, I was thinking about it, but I think it might be because, in Strategy, exploits and AI errors have consequences that sprawl out from their origin points and are game-wide, whereas in Action games, for example, the problems are localized to whichever game entity has them. If the computer can be easily duped using Method 1 against Agent A in a platformer, the problem lasts all of five seconds. If the computer can be easily duped using Method 1 against Agent A in a strategy game, it will always be duped, every time Agent A appears, negatively impacting the success of Agents B-Z in the nearby area. Worse (indeed, if it was just the above, I'd probably be fine), because in-game entities tend to follow a much more unified set of rules in a Strategy game, the AI errors are often shared by the entire set of of computer-controlled agents. If a computer had (unintentionally) bad aim in all instances in an FPS whenever you crouch, I'd be just as disappointed in it as I would in a Strategy game with a similar fault (like the TD juggling example, above). So though it would be ideal to go through the entire FPS crouching all the live-long day, I wouldn't do it. It just wouldn't be fun. Funny, maybe. But not fun.
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Post by chaoticgood on Jul 27, 2012 6:58:08 GMT -5
Shining Force is a complete joke anyway, if played normally, because of the system where you get to keep all the experience from fights you lose.
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Post by Allie on Jul 27, 2012 7:17:22 GMT -5
Hell, technically all strategy RPGs are jokes, since the last boss (or mid-game "kill everyone" battlefield thing like Shining Force's Laser Eye or Prism Flowers) doesn't come traipsing across the first battle and wiping everyone out before they have a chance to get in motion.
That doesn't mean I can play them as is, but still.
They may as well have characters with fixed levels, perma-death, easy one-hit kills against the player from the opponent side, ruthless AI that takes advantage of the fact that they outnumber you and don't have to do a damn thing until you get close enough to be mobbed to death, overpowered enemies on every battlefield, fixed equipment with a high chance of breaking (and a fixed budget for replacing/repairing it), and Wild ARMs XF style mission goals where it's more important to avoid the enemy and get to an escape point.
You want to cut the wheat from the chaff, cut the wheat from the chaff (mind you, I wouldn't be able to play this game at all, but at least you'd _have_ to be good to get anywhere in it).
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Post by lanceboyle94 on Dec 21, 2012 10:59:42 GMT -5
Bump, I know, but I found this after going through the Atlus site with the Wayback Machine, since their newer site doesn't have the Jack's Den section: www.atlus.com/pd2.phpOne of their "production diaries", about most of the historical connections of the game's storyline.
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