Tag: jrpg

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Game Ramblings #16 – Star Ocean: Integrity and Faithlessness

More Info from Square-Enix

  • Platform: PS4
  • Genre: JRPG

So I’m a bit of a sucker for JRPGs, and the Star Ocean series has never been any different.  However, it’s been a while since The Last Hope, and that one was already a pretty big step down for the series.  The unfortunate thing is that, while SO5 showed some promise in my playthrough, it’s not reversing the slide.

If you’ve played a Star Ocean game before, this one pretty much follows the pattern.  You’ve got a cast of people on a usual nonsense JRPG story.  You’re on a backwater planet that happens to be thrown into the midst of fighting between the advanced civilizations in the galaxy.  The characters themselves are probably an overall step up from The Last Hope, including an often entertaining, but definitely hilariously dressed mage. The battle system is still a solid action battle system, pretty similar to past titles.  In what could have even been an improvement, you get up to 7 active party members at one time, which is one of the larger JRPG parties I’ve seen.  However, the game ended up feeling like it was rushed to shipping, and never really pulls into a very cohesive whole.

On the surface, this is a very short game.  I ended up clocking around 20 hours to completion, though that was admittedly not a 100% run.  What it ends up doing though is progressing the plot extremely quickly, so the story is over as soon as you really feel like you’re growing into the characters.  It also means that leveling is EXTREMELY fast.  I ended the game just short of level 80, so you can imagine the leveling pace as I was actually fighting through the world.  The unfortunate thing is that unlike other Star Ocean games, you’re effectively rooted to one planet.  There’s a few excursions to space stations, but nothing permanent.  To combat this problem, the enemies scale in the world after certain plot points, but traversing the same areas definitely grows dull.

There were also some very distinct points that drew me to annoyance.  In general, the main healer for the party was pretty incapable of staying out of trouble, so I always kept a lot of healing and resurrection items on hand.  There were also a handful of boss fights that were effectively the worst kind of escort mission.  One in particular had me facing waves of enemies while one of my party members was hacking a door.  However, if she alone died, it was a game over.  She also would not defend or heal herself, and the enemies would beeline towards her without being able to be tanked by the rest of my party.  To say it was frustrating would be a massive understatement.

The unfortunate thing in the end is that I did legitimately enjoy playing the game.  Individual fights were just fun, the little side story moments that the series often has were generally just funny, the game generally looked pretty visually solid (if not a bit busy at times).  This is just one of those games that very clearly could have benefited a lot from more cycles of iterating on what they had going, because it’s so close to really being a great RPG.  At this point I’m just hoping that tri-Ace is now setup with the technology they need for the next few years, so they can truly just spend time working on a next-gen game, rather than next-gen technology.

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Game Ramblings #8 – Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King

More Info from Square Enix

  • Genre:JRPG
  • Platform:PS2
  • Also Available On:Android, iOS, 3DS (Japan Only)

Progress

  • Full Story Completion
  • Roughly 75 hours

Dragon Quest 8 is really a classic of a very core RPG.  It has a simple turn based battle system, but a good story, entertaining characters, and decent voice acting, all in a bright and large overworld.  If someone was to point at a great example of what the core mechanics of any JRPG should start at, it would be this one.  While it hasn’t necessarily aged that gracefully in the last 10 years, it’s still a fine example of the type of JRPG that was coming out at the tail end of the PS2 era, and any fans of the genre would benefit from playing this one.

What I Liked

The gameplay overall is simple, but pretty fun.  The battle system is a standard turn-based affair.  There’s some entertaining moves, particularly Jessica who has an entire over the top sex appeal category of moves to distract enemies.  In addition, the characters can essentially save up turns to pump themselves up and do enhanced damage in subsequent moves.

Visually the game has also held up really well.  It’s similar to Wind Waker in the sense that the cel-shaded style really helped simplify the visuals of the original, but have ended up holding up a lot better than “realistic” attempts of that era.

What I Didn’t Like

Unfortunately also a stand-in of older JRPGs, there were some grindy segments of the game, particularly in the late game.  As I got to the last boss, I basically had to grind to a point where I had near-max gear, as well as three characters to revive.  Once I got the three revive, the final boss was fairly trivial, but until that point I couldn’t keep up with healing to save my life.  To some extent I expect it within the genre to have to grind, but this game felt a bit overboard.

What I Was Indifferent To

The largest side-quest thing I found was the monster arena, where special monsters you defeat in the world can battle out against each other.  There’s some good prizes to be had, but I honestly couldn’t be bothered to run around finding the strongest monsters and run back to fight them out.

There is also an alchemy system for gear and item production.  I used it a handful of times for gear, but without going to gamefaqs to come up with specific recipes it’s a lot of finding books in the world that give vague descriptions of recipes that may or may not be of any use.  Helpful for end-game gear, but really only if you know specifically what you’re trying to make.

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Game Ramblings #7 – Omega Quintet

More info from Idea Factory

  • Genre: JRPG
  • Platform: PS4

Progress

  • Roughly 25 hours of story
  • All available side quests up to that point
  • Shelved in favor of other games, gameplay fun but repetitive

Omega Quintet can best be described as an idol JRPG.  Per the story, you are putting together a Japanese idol group in order to save the world (or at least the city you’re in), and fighting lots of monsters in doing so.  You hit all the JRPG/anime stereotypes, but the lighthearted story and interactions, and pretty solid game mechanics make this an overall solid experience for PS4 gamers looking for a new JRPG to fill that niche.

What I Liked

The battle system itself was pretty fun.  It takes the time/turn-based gameplay of a game like Final Fantasy 10, and adds some range and AoE mechanics that add a lot of depth.  Moves can be single target,  horizontal or vertical line AoE, or circular range AoE, so finding the right moves and right target to maximize full party damage adds some interesting quirks to the battle system.  In addition, the full party can engage in combo mechanics for particularly large damage.  On top of that there is a pretty nice elemental system for additional damage bonuses, with the addition of individual weapon types per-character that act as elements.  Overall the battle system takes some well established gameplay from other games, and adds a lot of potential depth possibilities to really round out the battle situations.

The characters and interactions between them are also fun.  For the most part the game doesn’t take itself very seriously, so a lot of the dialogue ends up being pretty light hearted.  However, for the type of slice-of-life in a post apocalyptic world that the game takes place in, it adds a very non-serious tone that I feel fit the game well.

What I Didn’t Like

Missable side quests bug me in most games.  In this case, the side quests are time limited, but not always in the most obvious way.  My tendency ended up being to crunch on side quests until I finished them all, while avoiding story triggers that I knew about.  In some cases, missing the side quests meant missing moves that aid overworld navigation and interaction, blocking some additional treasures that would otherwise be available in hidden spots.  It didn’t end up penalizing me particularly much, but I prefer games that allow side quests to be done at leisure, particularly when they can have long-term negative consequences in the game.

What I Was Indifferent To

Overall the individual zones were pretty average.  The world consists of a 2D world map, then a bunch of smaller 3D zones with more or less linear paths.  As the game progresses, different environmental interactions open up the areas a bit more, but the maps still tend towards being pretty compact, with usually 3-5 enemy types per environment.

Side quests also tended towards being just kill x monsters, collect y items, etc.  Overall they were simple objectives, but to some extent felt necessary for character growth to at least be grinding them out a bit.  They provided for the bulk of easy points for gear purchases and upgrades throughout the game, so doing side quests was beneficial enough to worry about keeping them completed, but didn’t add much to the experience.