JRPGs that Aren't Final Fantasy Catch-All 2.0

Yeah I mean I got bored with Bravely Default in the first game when it didn't end and artificially doubled the game length. I've happily avoided both sequels and played several other JRPGs in the meantime.

As a counterpoint, I really enjoyed my time with Bravely Default 2. I thought the characters were delightful, and while it was long it didn’t feel inflated.

Aristophan wrote:

As a counterpoint, I really enjoyed my time with Bravely Default 2. I thought the characters were delightful, and while it was long it didn’t feel inflated.

Same here. It was enjoyable and didn't feel unnecessarily long. Then again, my experience was not marred by the previous games in the series, since I haven't touched them.

Using healing items outside of battle is a thing that should go away, right?

As in, full health for every battle is better than grinding through a bunch of trash mobs who slowly wear away at your overall health. Full health allows them to (potentially) make each encounter more meaningful.

Naturally, certain game types like dungeon crawlers are a different beast, but bog standard JRPGs could feasibly be made better with the removal of outside-battle healing items.

I’m hoping Fantasian comes to other platforms at some point. Just can’t get into iOS gaming really.

Likewise. I'd love to play it, but my latest Apple device is just a year or two too old so it's not compatible. I have no plans to upgrade.

garion333 wrote:

Using healing items outside of battle is a thing that should go away, right?

As in, full health for every battle is better than grinding through a bunch of trash mobs who slowly wear away at your overall health. Full health allows them to (potentially) make each encounter more meaningful.

Naturally, certain game types like dungeon crawlers are a different beast, but bog standard JRPGs could feasibly be made better with the removal of outside-battle healing items.

Actually, yes! It’s just more inventory management and menu navigation; which only interrupts and pulls you out of the game.

garion333 wrote:

As in, full health for every battle is better than grinding through a bunch of trash mobs who slowly wear away at your overall health. Full health allows them to (potentially) make each encounter more meaningful.

Naturally, certain game types like dungeon crawlers are a different beast, but bog standard JRPGs could feasibly be made better with the removal of outside-battle healing items.

I would certainly play more JRPGs if companies followed your advice and made encounters more meaningful. I love the genre, but tedious trash mobs have ruined otherwise great JRPGs for me. Wild Arms 5 had auto-heal after every battle with fewer encounters and that was in 2007. Why haven't other developers copied that approach? We aren't in the NES days any longer. Developers don't need to pad out their 512KB game so kids can't beat it over a weekend rental.

Still annoys me with that "Working Designs" philosphy.

Whoa, Scarlet Nexus $36 on Xbox...already.

Dang bruh. How long before Game Pass?

ccesarano wrote:

Dang bruh. How long before Game Pass?

Exactly what I was thinking.

garion333 wrote:

Whoa, Scarlet Nexus $36 on Xbox...already.

Let me know when it hits that price on PS5

I like the look, but it may be a little too anime-y for me at $60. Half price though? Fo sho.

IMAGE(https://pbs.twimg.com/media/E89YI79VoBcNf2T?format=jpg&name=large)

Grabbed 2 (technically 3?) new JRPGs with the current Switch sale. $20 for Tales of, and $30 for Digimon (AUD). Very much looking forward to diving in, though I'm not sure which first.

In the meantime, I've been absolutely smitten by Crosscode. Probably not quite the thread to discuss it, but I've never played a game with so much care put into every pixel. I typically don't even like puzzly games! I usually hate Zelda-type games! But this...This is magic. Highly recommended.

CrossCode is close enough for this thread.

For some reason I've put about five minutes into it and never went back. No clue what's up with that or why.

I need to get back to my >15 hour game save from two years ago. It's a really delightful concept, and great execution.

An FYI vid on the demo.

Seeing a lot from that guy on Twitter. Sorta tuned out when I saw this gross gatekeeping. Sorry, can't embed on my phone.

http://imgur.com/gallery/MKM3Q5f

I'm not sure what it is about JRPG Twitter, but I see a lot of this. "You're not as good as me because you have a different opinion/haven't consumed enough media".

He's since deleted it, I think. Maybe he's a totally fine YouTuber, or maybe I'll continue to listen to my gut. Just made me feel frustrated about the sort of discourse I see surrounding my favourite genre/hobby so often outside of this forum.

Anyway, play CrossCode.

Yeah, Jay isn't perfect but his vids are clear of that crap.

I now see he's a bit of a dick in general on Twitter (yay, Twitter, still bringing out the best in people) and will likely be avoiding him now.

I'm too distracted by the fact that I can't tell what he's supposedly arguing against. He's complaining that there are people complaining about how enemies react/respond and... uh... the screenshot he's using is not only from the game but a mess of light and pixelization.

Downloading demo now, plan to play it after work.

I kinda get what he's saying, but don't really care. And, yes, the images he chose were bad.

Well, played the demo myself, and the combat's fine. It feels better than Symphonia or Abyss, the only other two Tales games I've beaten. It feels better to me than Scarlet Nexus, but I also had to do some button remapping to be more comfortable. Having your base attack set to RB and then dodge to RT is just not comfy, so I changed to RT for attack and LT for dodge, RB for target and LB for party attacks.

It's interesting enough in regards to checking the UI for cooldowns, monitoring your Artes charges, and learning to time your dodges, but the UI is also incredibly busy and it took me a while to better learn where to find the health of the character I was controlling, as opposed to everyone else's static, easily visible health. There's probably more depth once you control other characters, but I didn't play other characters and probably won't since there's not much to the demo.

It's actually a bit tempting to snag the game, but I think I'll wait. More likely to purchase it whereas Scarlet Nexus I'll wait for Game Pass, but at the moment... I'm good holding off.

Oh yeah, there's inconsistent framerate and texture pop in on Xbox One X, so it's probably best on PC and next-gen hardware.

Vrikk wrote:
garion333 wrote:

Whoa, Scarlet Nexus $36 on Xbox...already.

Let me know when it hits that price on PS5

I like the look, but it may be a little too anime-y for me at $60. Half price though? Fo sho.

Same price for PS4 and PS5.

I did finish SN last month, and I really enjoyed it.

So the second half of Fantasian. It's got a Mass Effect 2/second half of FFVI sort of structure, where it's freeform wandering between missions that spotlight and upgrade individual party members. It makes good reuse of the existing areas and some of the new ones are really impressive and pretty.

It's also pretty hard. It gives you level guidelines for the quests and you do not want to be much below that. Most of the boss fights have a gimmick that is punishing enough that I haven't been able to adapt to on the fly, and have had to reload, change equipment and try a second (or third) go. The fights are long and the 3-person party size limit means that the action economy is really pressured and when things start to go wrong it's hard to recover.

Is FANTASIAN good on mobile? iPhone not tablet.

ccesarano wrote:

Well, played the demo myself, and the combat's fine. It feels better than Symphonia or Abyss, the only other two Tales games I've beaten. It feels better to me than Scarlet Nexus, but I also had to do some button remapping to be more comfortable. Having your base attack set to RB and then dodge to RT is just not comfy, so I changed to RT for attack and LT for dodge, RB for target and LB for party attacks.

It's interesting enough in regards to checking the UI for cooldowns, monitoring your Artes charges, and learning to time your dodges, but the UI is also incredibly busy and it took me a while to better learn where to find the health of the character I was controlling, as opposed to everyone else's static, easily visible health. There's probably more depth once you control other characters, but I didn't play other characters and probably won't since there's not much to the demo.

It's actually a bit tempting to snag the game, but I think I'll wait. More likely to purchase it whereas Scarlet Nexus I'll wait for Game Pass, but at the moment... I'm good holding off.

Oh yeah, there's inconsistent framerate and texture pop in on Xbox One X, so it's probably best on PC and next-gen hardware.

I finally got around to the demo and it's OK. Plunking you a few hours into the game with a full party made combat seem like a bad combo of Xenoblade and Dragon's Dogma chatter during combat.

I stick with the controls and found them surprisingly effective. Overall feel was still lite which is something Bamco just can't seem to get away from. I don't need Souls heft, but it's all spectacle attacks and little oomph impact feel.

Since I picked up Scarlet Nexus I'll probably see how far I get with that before fizzling put. By then Arise might be on sale.

The story in Scarlet Nexus is so tropey and obvious. I don't mind the static cutscenes, it's clearly a budget decision, but the overall effect is done with enough flash that it's clear the team worked on Tales games and their skits.

But the beats in the skits is hilarious in how predictable they are. It's in stark contrast the enemy design which is way out there.

The Tales of Arise demo sure is pretty. I had fun with it, but it didn't quite tip me into purchase territory.

I've never played a Tales game. What would be a better first Tales to try between Berseria and Vesperia? I think I have access to both of those between PS+ and Game Pass.

Sounds like a win win to me.

Dyni wrote:

The Tales of Arise demo sure is pretty. I had fun with it, but it didn't quite tip me into purchase territory.

I've never played a Tales game. What would be a better first Tales to try between Berseria and Vesperia? I think I have access to both of those between PS+ and Game Pass.

Vesperia is older, so probably there. It's battle system is not quite as fluid and slick as Berseria, retaining some of the linear part of the older system (as in 2d movement) instead of full, free 3d combat movement.

That sentence probably won't make any sense until you play Vesperia.

Berseria is more like Arise than Vesperia is.