Strategy RPG Catch-All

Did anyone ever play Gungnir for PSP? Looking for something new in the genre...I'll be getting Fire Emblem but I pretty much know the score there.

I dig the way Fire Emblem looks, garrion333. *shrug* I don't know much about graphics, so I'm not sure what you mean by the super aliased spell effects. The map screen looks a bit basic but the cutscenes and character animations look great.

Blind_Evil wrote:

Did anyone ever play Gungnir for PSP? Looking for something new in the genre...I'll be getting Fire Emblem but I pretty much know the score there.

I dig the way Fire Emblem looks, garrion333. *shrug* I don't know much about graphics, so I'm not sure what you mean by the super aliased spell effects. The map screen looks a bit basic but the cutscenes and character animations look great.

He means the new game. I'm in the same boat. I wish they'd kept the 2D graphics and animation. The more cheesy hand-drawn animations are part of the charm. I prefer this...

IMAGE(http://lparchive.org/Fire-Emblem-Blazing-Sword/Update%2034/38-E20P28.png)

I understand he means the new game.

I've put a number of hours into Gungnir. I was hoping for a bit more innovation from Sting, but outside of the time mechanic for turns (which is cool) there isn't a lot new in the game. The story is pretty good, but nothing we haven't seen before.

As far as the new FE I'll re-watch it (and other trailers) but the spell effects didn't pop to me and had a ton of jagged lines (aliasing). I hate aliasing.

Okay, so after re-watching the trailer I've got to say that the fire spell used throughout looks terrible to me. Most other animations are fine and have some flash, but that fire spell is a mess. Just my opinion.

garion333 wrote:

Okay, so after re-watching the trailer I've got to say that the fire spell used throughout looks terrible to me. Most other animations are fine and have some flash, but that fire spell is a mess. Just my opinion.

Also that game is going to go so slow if those animations can't be turned off eventually. Pokemon takes a long time to play as it is because of being grindy.

All FE and Pokemon games I've played have allowed animation skipping in the options menus >.>

FE Awakening demo hits the eShop on the 17th.

Also, here's a preview from RPGamer. The most interesting paragraph, to me, is this:

Awakening looks to keep the core Fire Emblem look and feel, but has freshened things up with a combination of new features and some that have only made passing appearances in the series. The turn-based strategy retains the grid and attack-counter systems that have been series staples, while the "My Unit" system from the DS remake of the third game in the series, released only in Japan, makes a return and allows players to create their own avatar character. Players are able to select a number of appearance options, including gender, for their personal unit, who doubles as the party's strategist and plays a key role in the story. Awakening also contains over forty classes and a large selection of skills, of which characters may have up to five equipped at a time, give a wider variety of tactical options than ever before in the series.

While I, like DSG, prefer the classic sprite/art of the earlier games over the newer look, that blurb about the gameplay sounds fantastic.

Blind_Evil wrote:

Did anyone ever play Gungnir for PSP? Looking for something new in the genre...I'll be getting Fire Emblem but I pretty much know the score there.

I dig the way Fire Emblem looks, garrion333. *shrug* I don't know much about graphics, so I'm not sure what you mean by the super aliased spell effects. The map screen looks a bit basic but the cutscenes and character animations look great.

Gungir is a pretty good game. If you've played any of Sting's other games you already have a sense of the art/gameplay of it. I would say its most similar cousin is valkyrie profile covenant of the plume in that the game rewards you for combining attacks and storing special attacks for certain situations. I like game enough but if you are iffy on it then maybe not purchase it.

Farscry wrote:

While I, like DSG, prefer the classic sprite/art of the earlier games over the newer look, that blurb about the gameplay sounds fantastic. :D

Indeed. I'm a bit worried about class changes, though. Just a tiny bit worried. When implemented well (FFT, FFT:A) they can allow you to build custom party members with different skills. Like a strong front line fighter who can also do a little healing. When implemented poorly (Fire Emblem: Shadow Dragon) it can be meaningless. In that game anyone can be any class and there is no carryover of abilities.

garion333 wrote:

FE Awakening demo hits the eShop on the 17th.

Excellent. Looking forward to that. Aside from a bit of dabbling with the Fire Emblem GBA game that came as part of the 3DS ambassador program, I'm completely unfamiliar with the series but would love a good TBS game on my handheld.

ClockworkHouse wrote:
garion333 wrote:

FE Awakening demo hits the eShop on the 17th.

Excellent. Looking forward to that. Aside from a bit of dabbling with the Fire Emblem GBA game that came as part of the 3DS ambassador program, I'm completely unfamiliar with the series but would love a good TBS game on my handheld.

The 17th of this month? Dayum!

EDIT: oh, the demo -- didn't read carefully and was confused.

The game is out February 4th.

ClockworkHouse wrote:
garion333 wrote:

FE Awakening demo hits the eShop on the 17th.

Excellent. Looking forward to that. Aside from a bit of dabbling with the Fire Emblem GBA game that came as part of the 3DS ambassador program, I'm completely unfamiliar with the series but would love a good TBS game on my handheld.

I wish they would just sell those. It would be amazing to have 4 Fire Emblem games in my 3DS at any given time.

The rumor is that GBA games will be showing up in the eShop sometime this year. One of the overseas Nintendo sites (I think it was Australia's) accidentally posted a GBA section to their online catalog for a few hours.

That first Fire Emblem video didn't feature a lot of in-battle gameplay footage for me to examine, but this one does:

...And I think it looks great.

By the way, how nuts is it that the game allows for a first person camera in battle? Between that and including the Japanese voice tracks, the game has surprised me twice. These aren't very Nintendo-like moves.

I tried the Fire Emblem demo, y'all. It didn't impress me, exactly -- what's included in the demo is pretty generic. But it confirmed for me that the game is gonna be my style, and I'm pretty excited about it.

grobstein wrote:

I tried the Fire Emblem demo, y'all. It didn't impress me, exactly -- what's included in the demo is pretty generic. But it confirmed for me that the game is gonna be my style, and I'm pretty excited about it.

I'm excited for it. Really excited for it. But I think I'll find myself skipping the cutscenes and dialogue. Not that the dialogue in previous Fire Emblem games was amazing, but I prefer this.

IMAGE(http://101videogames.files.wordpress.com/2010/10/fire_emblem_gba_screenshot_1.jpg)

Not sure if this is the right thread, but I could find none that would fit better. This weekend I started playing Metal Gear Acid 2 (PSP). I am very early in the game (3rd mission, less than 2 hours clocked in), and I can feel that it is starting to grow on me. I like tactical turn-based games, though I suck at them. Jeanne D'Arc is probably the only tactical game I've ever beat. I also enjoy card games, though I am terrible at deckbuilding.
I'll see how MGA2 ends up - I think I am slowly starting to learn how the game system works.

New game from NIS that's the spiritual successor to ZHP, which means it's a combination of roguelike and SRPG.

Telepath Tactics is winding down over at Kickstarter. I'm stoked to play with the scenario and map editor cause, well, I like SRPGs and it looks super easy to use.

Cross posting from the JRPG thread.

The Guided Fate Paradox.

So, I've been sick the past couple of days and this evening was the first time I felt well enough to play anything and I fired this up. Boy am I glad I did as they've fixed a number of issues I had with ZHP. Keep in mind I've finished all of one chapter (two hours of play).

First and foremost they changed the way items degrade. Instead of having something equipped and getting, oh, five hits out of it before it was completely worthless in-game now your equipment bursts after gaining enough experience. A burst item then has its stats cut down, rendering it near useless while exploring the dungeons. What you get then is the ability to boost your character (shields give you defense, swords give you attack, etc.). You can also visit the blacksmith and repair the item to a higher level and boost it again. It's very similar to ZHP and reminiscent of the Item World in the Disgaea series. What this does is it makes items way more useful and less throw away, while allowing you to truly invest in certain items (which you can rename to your heart's content). In ZHP I always felt like whatever I was wearing was going to be useless by the time I reached a boss, here I don't feel that way. At least not yet.

Short version: Weapons and gear are more interesting.

Secondly, you can carry a ton of stuff with you into the dungeons and can store a ton of items outside of the dungeon. Holy crap was it annoying how little you could carry on you and store in ZHP. You could gain upgrades to expand said storage but it was a chore that added to the grind without adding any fun. That's gone. Thank. Myself. Err, God.

The last thing I'd like to mention is more minor, but was of great annoyance to me in ZHP. No longer do you have to prime a spell before you use it. I never understood the purpose of that in ZHP or any game for that matter. If I have a piece of equipment on, why do I have to spend a turn activating a spell before I cast it? Perhaps there was some strategic reason for it, but I thought it was needlesly cumbersome and led me to not use spells and abilities as often. In GFP there's an ability wheel you control with the left thumbstick, which makes access to abilities much easier and they start you off with a ton of mana (or whatever it's called. Furthermore, spells and abilities help your item burst, so there's that too.

I enjoyed these first couple of hours, but I also went into it knowing that there would be a TON of dialogue and boy is there ever. ZHP was bad about this, but GFP is probably worse. In those two hours I probably spent a quarter of it actually going through dungeons. Or less. I kid you not. It's crazy. The flip side is that the story is pretty interesting whereas I found myself falling asleep through ZHP's grandiosity. So, caveat emptor.

Worth mentioning is probably that this is clearly the A team over at NIS. While Disgaea D2 is a good production, GFP is a step above as the writing tends to be a tad better, the animated characters in cutscenes are back and every line is voice acted, which is also quite good (so far). The music is also enjoyable and different from the Disgaea music, I especially like when the guitars come into play for the battle theme.

My biggest hesitancy to recommending this game (other than not being too far into it) is that the game might not have the legs that a Disgaea game can have and I think that may stem from the overall system and not necessarily from the story or characters. Combat in the dungeons isn't as fun for me as in something like Cladun as it's more of a straight roguelike in those terms, but we'll see. If you have played games like Pokemon Mystery Dungeon and enjoyed them then I heartily recommend giving this a shot in the future. If you haven't played any roguelike dungeon crawling grindy things then I'm not sure what to tell you at this point. I'll just have to play more! Oh poor me.

Raising this thread from the dead because I have a question for people who have played Tactics Ogre and FFT and FFTA. What games are the most similar to those? I've played a ton of Fire Emblem recently. I finished Awakening a number of times and I finished Fire Emblem 7 and most of 8. I'm thinking of taking something like that with me on vacation, but I'm kind of inclined to pick a game like FFT or Tactics Ogre. I'm just trying to sort out what that game is most similar to those. I'm thinking again of FFTA2 because I want to play another game with that design sensibility.

It's been sitting on my pile for a long time and I haven't tried it, but I picked up Generation of Chaos on the android specifically because it looked like Tactics Ogre.

Fire Emblem is sort of its own beast because it focuses on relationships. The Square games are similar in most other aspects, but they're a bit more complex mechanically overall. For instance, Tactics Ogre has seven (I think) elements in lieu of Fire Emblem's weapon triangle.

FFTA2 was substantially worse than FFTA in the story department. Mechanically it's fine.

Other games would be SMT: Devil Survivor or the Disagea series which can both be found on handhelds.

What is it you like about the FE games? Strategizing? Relationships? Story?

garion333 wrote:

Fire Emblem is sort of its own beast because it focuses on relationships. The Square games are similar in most other aspects, but they're a bit more complex mechanically overall. For instance, Tactics Ogre has seven (I think) elements in lieu of Fire Emblem's weapon triangle.

FFTA2 was substantially worse than FFTA in the story department. Mechanically it's fine.

Other games would be SMT: Devil Survivor or the Disagea series which can both be found on handhelds.

What is it you like about the FE games? Strategizing? Relationships? Story?

In all of these games what I generally like is building up a party and watching my characters progress. I didn't like Advance Wars as much as FE, for example, because it's just strategy without the RPG. My first ever SRPG was FFTA and even though that game has a weak story I really loved building up the characters and watching them progress until eventually they could dominate maps.

I can't really explain why general I prefer the Quest / Square line of games such as Tactics Ogre, FFT, etc. I've finished every one of them outside of FFTA. It's something about the polish, the gameplay perspective (Isometric view, etc.).

DSGamer wrote:

Raising this thread from the dead because I have a question for people who have played Tactics Ogre and FFT and FFTA. What games are the most similar to those? I've played a ton of Fire Emblem recently. I finished Awakening a number of times and I finished Fire Emblem 7 and most of 8. I'm thinking of taking something like that with me on vacation, but I'm kind of inclined to pick a game like FFT or Tactics Ogre. I'm just trying to sort out what that game is most similar to those. I'm thinking again of FFTA2 because I want to play another game with that design sensibility.

Jeanne d'Arc was well recieved when it came out but it is PSP only.

Well, Growlanser Wayfarer of Time, Valkyria Chronicles 2 and SMT: Devil Survivor (1&2) all mostly fit that bill. Oh and Gungnir.

I can't remember what of those you've played. The Devil Survivor is probably the best overall game but I have a place in my heart for Gungnir because I enjoy Sting games so much.

Admittedly, I haven't played any of the Generation of Chaos games, even the latest one that Sting worked on, in large part because Idea Factory and I don't get along very well.

That said, if you're looking for something new then Idea Factory and Sting released Hyperdevotion Noire: Goddess Black Heart back in February. It's a spinoff SRPG in the Hyperdimension Neptunia world. Beware of chibi characters though.

You could always play Front Mission 3 or whatever one is available on PSN.

(Btw, I'm on record multiple times saying that I don't like Jeanne d'Arc. It's entirely too simple of a game.)

Jeanne d'Arc is in the PSN store and can be played on the Vita.