When you make a game, you want to market it at people who're most likely to want that sort of game.
Dragon Quarter was a pretty good, original sort of game, and I played through it multiple times, but I was still disappointed because when I pick up a Breath of Fire game, I'm not looking for the sort of gameplay experience it provided. And people who are looking for a gameplay experience like it provided are probably not concentrated among fans of the Breath of Fire series. It wasn't bad game design, but it was bad marketing. Selling on name recognition is double edged; you've got a ready made audience, but it's a ready made audience with distinct tastes and expectations.
...eventually, we will reach a maximum entropy state where nobody has their own socks or underwear, or knows who to ask to get them back.I can't even remember how I beat that part. All I recall doing was wandering from one place to the next and then it was over, sorta.
Gotta love the huge series' of Fetch Quests that you have to go through before.
and as far as useless characters go, the only ones I found completely useless were Sten, Spar/Aspara and Bow/Boche. Sten at least had an awesome character Arc. Monkeys with knives fighting in freefall. Badass.
i got stuck on that battle with sten for a looong time.
but of course, in the end, what it all came down to was playing the part of a tape worm for a fat lady to become thin.
sigh. i swear there must have been some glitch in that place because there were no encounters happening in the final area, and you cant leave...
Actually, the Tunlan segment always struck me as odd for one reason.
At some point, you can talk to Nina on TownShip, and she'll mention that she plays the piano a little bit. When you get to Tunlan, if you notice, there's a piano hooked to some sort of speaker. I was expecting to be able to communicate with that, BUT NO.
Jean is pretty much useless until you get his Shamanized form and even then he is pointless in boss fight (probably the main source of difficulty outside a few encounters). I wouldn't call Bow useless at all though, he's a great choice for a healer if you don't want to deal with Rand being slow as hell. Plus he has decent offense and is one of sturdier party members.
Politics is the skilled use of blunt objects.I don't know, after I got him back from his huge Clear My Name quest, he was pretty underleveled. And by that point I had Nina, Katt and (I think) Rand, so I didn't really need him.
Plus, I normally had everyone cure themselves. By the endgame, my party was Nina, Bleu and Katt. Bleu and Ryu can cure themselves, So I stocked up on healing items. Never seemed to not-work.
I left this topic alone for a while to calm down, but I seriously don't understand why you suddenly started insulting me. While I'll admit that my last post was a bad idea, I still think that we were in the middle of having a reasonable conversation until you suddenly attacked me no reason at all.
I am interested in having a civil conversation, but your premises have remained completely opaque to me.
edited 6th Mar '12 9:44:01 AM by Clarste
Bleu in the second game is pretty much a Game-Breaker. I feel kind of bad ever using her. She clearly wasn't designed with balance in mind.
Not only does her cost-free innate ability fully heal her, she's got by far the highest stat growth of any character. Most characters' stats start leveling off around level 50. Bleu's keep going all the way up to level 99, and if you get her to 60 or so, every one of her stats will be higher than any other character.
...eventually, we will reach a maximum entropy state where nobody has their own socks or underwear, or knows who to ask to get them back.The first time I finished the game Bleu was so much on Physical God mode that the only thing that made her flinch was Dethevn's "Bonelazer". Because that thing was cheap.
I've never used Bleu despite having the chance to do so...Not sure why. Though now I'm wondering what the lowest level I've beat the game at is...
With the Dragon Quarter debacle and "We don't believe it has enough appeal in the west to make a representative viable..." my girlfriend and I like to joke that Capcom is purposely attempting to kill the franchise. Though it honestly feels like that at times.
Oh well...At least I have the games I have...Those are fun and there's still shit I haven't done in them. Like really raise Pico into a doom machine. I typically just use Rei and Momo in all my playthroughs. And Ryu typically passes healing off to Momo because he's too busy being God.
edited 6th Mar '12 2:39:41 PM by Aondeug
If someone wants to accuse us of eating coconut shells, then that's their business. We know what we're doing. - Achaan ChahI think they pretty much decided it wasn't worth the money.
Think about it, after 3, the series' sorta dried up, money-wise. Which is why they made a Sephiroth lookalike for a villain in 4 (not that they're anything like each other personality wise. Fou-Lu is way cooler), and they tried to change the entire look of the series' twice (4 was way more eastern in its imagery and character designs, 5 was... well, 5), so after this, they pretty much gave up. Breath Of Fire was never a huge hit to begin with. It had its fandom, and it was good, but it was never a huge deal. So, capcom being capcom pretty much pulled the plug on it in favor of Street Fighter clones.
It's probably not no.
At least they don't treat it like they do Megaman...X is just fucked for the most part. Poor dude's a reskin...And I try to pretend Street x Tekken Megaman didn't happen. Along with the Zero series.
edited 6th Mar '12 4:31:55 PM by Aondeug
If someone wants to accuse us of eating coconut shells, then that's their business. We know what we're doing. - Achaan Chah
Yeah, I still can look at the breath of fire series with proud and respect instead of shaking my head sadly at what they did to the mega man series.
One of the things that I liked a lot about the series where the faerie villages, I still remember feeling bad when a lot of faeries died the first time I played because I neglected them in BOF 3. Good thing that I had an early saved game to fix that mistake.
I've got Dragon Quarter and absolutely love it, even though it was balls-hard at first.
Hell, it's still balls-hard to this day! Just gotta make sure to abuse the SOL exploit if you really wanna coast on through, but don't rely on that entirely!
Plus the additional plot scenes for each playthrough aren't half-bad either.
edited 6th Mar '12 7:22:48 PM by nomuru2d
Long live Cinematech. FC:0259-0435-4987I was honestly hoping for more content to open up on successive playthroughs than actually did. Making a long game which operated on Dragon Quarter's system would be insane (imagine hitting 100% on your counter 40 hours into a game scenario,) but the way the game is designed, you're pretty much inevitably going to spend a lot of time playing the same parts over and over. But they could have added a lot of additional content that becomes available once you've brought your D-Ratio down, proving you're capable of handily beating the game, without taking more writing and programming resources than an average game. I put in the effort to get a D-Ratio of 1/4 (without a guide at that,) and I felt kind of underrewarded.
I would have been satisfied if people actually took notice and treated me differently when I had the D-Ratio of a ruling elite rather than a grunt, but that would have required a substantial reworking of the plot on later playthroughs.
edited 6th Mar '12 10:11:21 PM by Desertopa
...eventually, we will reach a maximum entropy state where nobody has their own socks or underwear, or knows who to ask to get them back.I still have difficulty holding my interest long enough to pass the first dungeon. Dragon Quarter is just so dull and hard... I don't know. Maybe it gets better later. Combat is sorta interesting I guess.
My party for BOFII was always Katt, Rand and Nina. Maybe sometimes I'd switch one of those out with Sten, but usually not. Those four were my favorites story-wise as well, so it worked out.
I thought it got much more interesting later on. Partly because the plot started to pick up and partly because I liked seeing how easily I could go through the things I've been through that used to kick my ass.
It's the same sort of joy I get from playing through stages in PSO again and again and on different difficulty levels. You go back to grind that Dragon for a rare and you wreck his shit. When in the beginning he could one shot you.
...after you beat him.
As for Bo FII parties...I tend towards Bow, Nina, and Sten. I liked these three best story wise and I found them useful enough in combat.
edited 7th Mar '12 3:34:25 PM by Aondeug
If someone wants to accuse us of eating coconut shells, then that's their business. We know what we're doing. - Achaan Chah

yeah, its a really good game.