General JRPG topic

As far as JRPG's are concerned, in spite of frequently having silent protagonists you don't really get much opportunities to do any substantial roleplaying, that's really more of a WRPG thing.

So, I'm having some trouble with Noel in Lightning Returns. I manage to get him below half health but I get beaten in the end. I'm wondering what I should do. Should I go to other places and do more quests?

Yes, that is the end boss of that zone, you should do at least the first half of all 4 zones before taking on a boss IMO.

Try going to the wildlands and get your Chocobo up and get him healthy then visit the crashed ship in the south. Or go to the desert and find the leader of the bandits.

Made some more progress in DDS 2. Just got past the Heat fight. Annoying that you can't skip the cutscene before it since it goes on for a while, but the fight itself is pretty simplistic. Void Fire makes Heat and his flunkies completely ineffective.

edited 21st May '17 7:24:04 PM by Draghinazzo

What's everyone playing this week? I'm focusing on finishing Tales of Vesperia. What's everyone else playing?

Atelier Sophie. (Mostly finishing up the piano quest at this point.) Wondering if Firis is worth the buy.

I was playing Tales of Zestiria but Persona 5 has consumed my life.

I had a fanfic chapter to work on the last two weeks, so I've not had time for Trails. But now I'm looking forward to finishing the last chapter of FC.

I'm up to a particularly obnoxious boss in DDS. The fight seems to mandate that you have Mediarama and probably the second tier of elemental spells to hit his weaknesses but most of my characters aren't really there yet, he hits with you -dyne level spells and can flat out remove one of your party members for a turn which makes things even more difficult.

Been procrastinating in Trails 3rd. The final sequence uses all 16 characters but there wasn't an auto level up feature so 75% of my team is behind, sure there is exponential growth for lower level party members but bleh I just need to sit down and grind.

Geez DDS 2's hit me with several bombshells.

The way I played the first DDS was, I didn't really level up anyone I didn't plan on using. This didn't prove to be a problem at all, so I did much the same and stuck to my DDS 1 party of Serph, Gale and Argilla.

And then I lost Serph. This meant I had to grind up Cielo (who was a good 20+ levels below and with little to no mantras), just after all the grinding I'd done to give my current party all the second tier spells and Mediarama/Recarm so I get past the boss fight I was having trouble with. Cielo was still about 10 levels lower (or more) when I got to the boss, but since I had all the spells and shields I needed that wasn't really an issue.

So after getting through that dungeon and beating all the bosses, I lose Argilla too. This isn't really a big deal though Sera inherited all of Serph's mantra like I expected. I'm glad I knew Roland was leaving ahead of time, I probably wouldn't have leveled him up anyway even if I didn't know but it means picking Cielo was worthwhile, at least for now.

The scale of Trails is incredible. In any other RPG, the protagonists' home would be a humdrum little kingdom with the capital town, maybe a village or two, and would just be the stopping point along the real journey across the ocean or to an empire. Here, the kingdom is the entire world map and you have to look off the edges of the borders just to get a view of everything else.

It's almost as if Cassius is the real RPG protagonist, running around the continent, taking names, and getting things done on a larger scale. It really makes this a frighteningly large world.

Started playing Tales in the Sky FC on PC. I own the PSP version but wanted a JRPG on a system I actually play.

This was a mistake, because I can't STOP playing Tales in the Sky, having gotten past the Early Game Hell prologue. It's basically everything I want in a RPG, and I LOVE how the NPC dialogue changes with every story event. Favorite character is Joshua so far, but Olivier cracked me up. Estelle cracks me up since she has all the traits of a male JRPG protag. Somehow that makes her fresh and interesting.

Looking forward to the escalation I've heard so much about.

I noticed that, actually. That seems to be Falcom's thing with all their games going back to... what, Dragon Slayer? Xanadu?

edited 25th May '17 2:37:54 PM by Watashiwa

Here is the thing, it never stops stop with Trails .

That Empire to the north, Trails Of Cold Steel takes place there. That other state sandwiched between the empire and republic? Zero No Kiseki takes place there. It doesn't stop as those countries have borders too. All interconnected and it just never stops, the world just gets bigger and bigger. Those little details you learn in one game have great effect in another and not always in a nice way too.

What chapter?

edited 25th May '17 3:46:17 PM by Memers

Holy shit...

In a better timeline, this franchise would be getting the kind of respect Dragon Age and Mass Effect do, because this equals, if not surpasses the detail of Worldbuilding in those series. It's got the save importing too. It's like if Dragon Age is the Western large-scale world RPG, Kiseki is its Eastern counterpart.

I've never played a lot of Falcom's stuff, though I plan to get around to it. Aside from FC, I've played Ys 1 and 2 and working my way through a joint playthrough of Wanderers and Oath in Felgana to appreciate the differences. In Ys, it does something similar to Zelda, but like Kiseki it's all in a large world with sections you only get to explore in each installment rather than what's basically a new world each game.

Ys isn't really a plot-driven series. It's much more about fast-paced action gameplay and the rockin' music.

I only really played much of Ys Seven, and I really enjoyed it but got stuck on an asshole boss and couldn't progress. It's a shame because my PSP doesn't work anymore, I'd like to finish it properly someday.

And now I'm sad that the Trails in the Sky vs. Ys fighting game has no chance in hell of being localized.

edited 25th May '17 3:54:00 PM by LordVatek

Wait, that's a thing?

Yep, here's the opening. Some pretty big spoilers for Trails in the Sky.

edited 25th May '17 4:17:06 PM by LordVatek

@Memers: I already said: first chapter! But seriously, I'm on chapter 2, made it to Ruan.

@darkabomination: Yeah, that'd be cool. The larger market would have to want tightly linked, slow burning, mechanics heavy roleplaying games and that hasn't been true... basically ever if we're honest. But that's okay! Because these games exist anyway and they're coming out overseas and you can help other people get excited about them.

edited 25th May '17 4:01:48 PM by Watashiwa

Yeah Dragon Age is very comparable to Trails, their writing style is different though in how they write the world, time skips and their main characters.

Tempted to write a long comparison but I would have to spoil Sky 3 and Cold Steel 1 and 2 so I won't.

Do not watch that video... it's got one hell of a big Sky spoiler! Well more like 5 big ones but still do not watch.

edited 25th May '17 4:11:28 PM by Memers

The reactions I've seen to Trails have been pretty interesting. You do of course hear many people singing its praises and saying it is one of the best-written and most engaging JRPG series out there and that it even puts many other games to shame, but I've also heard quite a bit of Hype Backlash where people went into FC and were pretty disappointed.

I guess that's not really surprising though, when a game is hyped up that much it's gonna be impossible for it to live up to that for everyone.

edited 25th May '17 4:13:41 PM by Draghinazzo

The 'typical anime stuff' is true on the surface, all the characters look and feel to type but once you start getting into the details things become a lot different and far more 3 dimensional.

Hm? Who brought up typical anime stuff? Draghinazzo just mentioned Hype Backlash, which is inevitable with a series so hyped up.

It was in my post before I edited it, sorry about that :x