Serenes Forest's Teehee Thread

[Interdimensional Observer]

Decided to stop dragging my heels and start an old game I got for $10 a few years ago- FFXIII. It's the one non-MMORPG mainline I haven't played (excluding XV), and I want to see for myself the enormous controversy that it was. Since I have it, and it's been annoying me that I never played it at all, much like IX. 

I stopped at the end of beginning, which is to say five of the heroes have met and been cursed with their terrible fate. Hopefully said curse is what brings in the gameplay nuance with the Paradigm class system I'm loosely aware of, because so far it's been just auto-battle with the occasional potion. That said, it looks like they might've abolished MP and added full HP restoration after every fight, which are good considering my thoughts on XII. Narratively and character-wise I won't comment yet, other than a handful of VII parallels I've noticed, and that it hasn't become a legendary train wreck up to this early point. Graphically, the jump of a console generation from PS2 to 3 has done wonders for the game's aging, it isn't showing the strain XII HD has.

[Benice]

5 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

Decided to stop dragging my heels and start an old game I got for $10 a few years ago- FFXIII.

I love that this is the first line spoken by the reviewer for this game.

[Interdimensional Observer]

16 minutes ago, Benice said:

I love that this is the first line spoken by the reviewer for this game.

I... No, I wouldn't say I wouldn't mind the drama from letting Rinoa Board the Phantom Train/Enter the Lifestream/Return to the Crystal/Go to the Farplane, I'm not cruel.😇 I'll say she should wait until Squall is less busy with work, and then start a gradual courtship with him.

There is someone who I'd like to see killed in FFVIII, but I would need Squall to traumatize himself.

Edited July 22, 2021 by Interdimensional Observer

[Acacia Sgt]

I'll just be here, enjoying...

 

[Venger_06]

5 hours ago, Armagon said:

But still not as fucked up as episode 9

Eh, it's kinda meh. At least the animators didn't chicken out and actually delivered.

[Shrimpica]

5 hours ago, lightcosmo said:

I gotta say: Shrimpy was right, Sky 3rd Hard mode gave me more of a challenge than this games Nightmare mode. 

I know its still early, but I guess I expected... More?

Told ya

[DragonFlames]

11 hours ago, Armagon said:

(I know that's not why you're asking but it's funny).

It is! xD

---

Also, @Shrimperor: I did the thing.
Out of sheer... I don't even really know the reason... I started playing Ys V yesterday! The SNES version, even. xD
Almost 6 hours and I think I might be at the end, or close to it. And I gotta say, this game is... different! Very, very different from every other Ys game I've seen. It's almost a Zelda 1 gameplay meets Final Fantasy 1 story (with the crystals and everything) kinda deal.
And the magic system needs some SERIOUS work; most magic is utterly useless, and the animations take about as long as your average FE9 enemy phase to go off (Disclaimer: exaggerated for comedic purposes), but I do like the underlying concept of crafting your own magic out of different combinations of elemental stones. It's just a damn shame you are not allowed to use any magic during boss fights, the one time you might actually want to use it...

But the story is interesting and the gameplay is kinda fun (once you get a different sword, that is), so I wouldn't call the game 'bad' by any stretch of the imagination. I have most definitely played worse!

Edited July 22, 2021 by DragonFlames

[Shrimpica]

18 minutes ago, DragonFlames said:

It's almost a Zelda 1 gameplay

Yeah that's the feeling i got from videos as well

19 minutes ago, DragonFlames said:

And the magic system needs some SERIOUS work;

Alchemy needs a buff, eh?

[DragonFlames]

7 minutes ago, Shrimperor said:

Yeah that's the feeling i got from videos as well

Especially early on, where you can only stab with the sword. Though the hitbox on that... has its own will, so to speak. xD
It gets slightly better later when Adol actually swings his sword (though you need a different sword to do that), but it's definitely a far cry from the gameplay later Ys games have.

Not bad, like I said, just different!

7 minutes ago, Shrimperor said:

Alchemy needs a buff, eh?

Yep. Some magic looks impressive for the time the game was made in, but the range and/or damage output is actually pretty pathetic on most of it. xD

Edited July 22, 2021 by DragonFlames

[Shrimpica]

13 minutes ago, DragonFlames said:

Yep. Some magic looks impressive for the time the game was made in, but the range and/or damage output is actually pretty pathetic on most of it. xD

I summon thee

The ultimate magic

Burn everything in thy path

And bring me victory!

-1 damage-

[Saint Rubenio]

4 hours ago, Benice said:

I love that this is the first line spoken by the reviewer for this game.

"From Shakespere to The English Patient to Titanic, death has proven to be the most effective instrument of high romantic drama."

George Wood is a genius.

[DragonFlames]

54 minutes ago, Shrimperor said:

I summon thee

The ultimate magic

Burn everything in thy path

And bring me victory!

-1 damage-

XD

Something like that!

[Saint Rubenio]

Okay, so that wasn't the direction that I was expecting this game to take.

Gotta say, the level design in this game is superb. Not only is every level way different and unique, this also applies to their day and night versions. There's basically two levels for each level. It's great stuff, really great.

[Lightcosmo]

2 hours ago, DragonFlames said:

and the animations take about as long as your average FE9 enemy phase to go off

Sounds pretty accurate to me! XD

[Lightcosmo]

7 hours ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

Decided to stop dragging my heels and start an old game I got for $10 a few years ago- FFXIII. It's the one non-MMORPG mainline I haven't played (excluding XV), and I want to see for myself the enormous controversy that it was. Since I have it, and it's been annoying me that I never played it at all, much like IX. 

I stopped at the end of beginning, which is to say five of the heroes have met and been cursed with their terrible fate. Hopefully said curse is what brings in the gameplay nuance with the Paradigm class system I'm loosely aware of, because so far it's been just auto-battle with the occasional potion. That said, it looks like they might've abolished MP and added full HP restoration after every fight, which are good considering my thoughts on XII. Narratively and character-wise I won't comment yet, other than a handful of VII parallels I've noticed, and that it hasn't become a legendary train wreck up to this early point. Graphically, the jump of a console generation from PS2 to 3 has done wonders for the game's aging, it isn't showing the strain XII HD has.

Missed this: but enjoy!

imo, the gameplay is the best in the series in terms of uniqueness\fun. Just wait till you hit XIII-2

[Interdimensional Observer]

7 hours ago, Acacia Sgt said:

I'll just be here, enjoying...

Man with the Machine Gun is good, can't deny that. VIII's ost sails above whatever other issues it might have.

Though I'm not a fan of the plot, I wish 3H had copied the flying school idea. Set Garreg to Mach 3!

 

3 hours ago, DragonFlames said:

but I do like the underlying concept of crafting your own magic out of different combinations of elemental stones

Reminds me of a lesser Square title of the 16-bit era Rudora no Hihou- The Treasure of the Rudras. The game lets you enter words to cast spells, with the exact words you use determining the effects. Instead of learning Maziodyne from simple leveling, you have to have to play around and experiment by entering the combination of Ma-zio-dyne to see what does yourself, to try to explain the system using a typical SMT spell. 

Since it involves mess with language, the spell system is a pain to translate, and hence it remained stuck in Japan until fan translation. Can you imagine the look on the faces of the Square legal department if the localizers accidentally let "ph-all-us" or other such phrases be entered as legitimate spells?

 

15 minutes ago, lightcosmo said:

imo, the gameplay is the best in the series in terms of uniqueness\fun. Just wait till you hit XIII-2

I was wise enough not to purchase it, just in case the first game ended up being a mess and I didn't want to continue the saga.

Although, could it be worse than X-2? I played a couple chapters of that before all my data went goodbye, and while I like the Dresspheres, the mini-games aren't exactly my thing.

[Lightcosmo]

26 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

I was wise enough not to purchase it, just in case the first game ended up being a mess and I didn't want to continue the saga.

Although, could it be worse than X-2? I played a couple chapters of that before all my data went goodbye, and while I like the Dresspheres, the mini-games aren't exactly my thing.

FF XIII ----> good! XIII-2 ----> a literal copy of XIII but putting the actually good protag in a narrators role and having a giant mess of a story with gameplay thats a shadow of the first ones (as i said, it's a literal copy)

At least X-2 has gameplay uniqueness to consider... XD

Edit: Okay, to be fair: XIII -2 isn't that bad (i at least 100% completed the game) but the first one is strictly superior imo, and there really isn't a "stellar" reason to play the 2nd one unless you loved the first one as i did or your simply curious to watch the disaster unfold! XD

One of the gameplay ideas that XIII-2 had turned me off at first but i got used to it: wound damage. Everytime the player gets hit by pretty much anything, they get "wounded" and their max HP goes down a bit, the enemy can do this to you until your max HP is so low you can't take a hit without dying, and the only way to heal this is using a potion that heals it. It's annoying af at first but once you get used to it, it's not the worst to deal with.

Edited July 22, 2021 by lightcosmo

[Saint Rubenio]

6 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

Reminds me of a lesser Square title of the 16-bit era Rudora no Hihou- The Treasure of the Rudras. The game lets you enter words to cast spells, with the exact words you use determining the effects. Instead of learning Maziodyne from simple leveling, you have to have to play around and experiment by entering the combination of Ma-zio-dyne to see what does yourself, to try to explain the system using a typical SMT spell. 

Since it involves mess with language, the spell system is a pain to translate, and hence it remained stuck in Japan until fan translation. Can you imagine the look on the faces of the Square legal department if the localizers accidentally let "ph-all-us" or other such phrases be entered as legitimate spells?

That sounds awesome.

[Armagon]

3 hours ago, DragonFlames said:

It's almost a Zelda 1 gameplay meets Final Fantasy 1 story (with the crystals and everything) kinda deal.

I mean, retro Ys is basically that. The famous bump system? It's just 2D Zelda if you had the Pegasus Boots permanently equipped.

I mean, Ys probably took inspirations from Zelda anyway, as the latter predates it by three years.

4 hours ago, DragonFlames said:

And the magic system needs some SERIOUS work; most magic is utterly useless, and the animations take about as long as your average FE9 enemy phase to go off

Long magic animations in ARPGs is a very no no (unless it's like, a super or something).

It's one of the main things that killed my interest in Tales of Phantasia. Because every single time something cast a spell, i had to wait until i could play the game again (the entire screen freezes until the magic is done). Which meant there were times i just couldn't play because spells kept being spammed.

2 hours ago, Saint Rubenio said:

Gotta say, the level design in this game is superb. Not only is every level way different and unique, this also applies to their day and night versions. There's basically two levels for each level. It's great stuff, really great.

Haha i know i recommended it to you despite not even touching it but i might be playing it myself one day.

[Saint Rubenio]

10 minutes ago, Armagon said:

Haha i know i recommended it to you despite not even touching it but i might be playing it myself one day.

I would recommend it. The controls are fluid, each level is unique and throws some sort of gimmick to keep things fresh, there's a crapton of collectibles to go after, and the graphics and music are charming. Only real flaw I can see is that there's a bit of technical weirdness, like resolution options aren't saved (you have to set it to fullscreen every time you boot the game), ESC shuts off the game without warning or confirmation, and you can't change or even check the keyboard controls. There were also some performance problems, but they've been patched already.

Then there's the day and night cycle, which basically makes every level (except boss levels, which are set in stone) contain two levels for the price of one. There's a couple of levels where this just opens up the path to this or that collectible, but for most of them, both versions are radically different. For example, there's one level where, at night time, the gimmick is that there's flying enemies that explode if you don't kill them and platforms that drop at set intervals, so you have to watch your jumps. At day time, you have to win a race against some asshole over boats, fishing nets full of fish and buildings. Yeah, that's the same level.

So yeah, the game's great. Not too complex, but not braindead either - it keeps itself interesting while being easy-to-pick-up fun. Also, there's no lives or anything of that sort. If you die, you get put back on the latest checkpoint and that's it. You even keep the collectibles you grabbed, the game's that nice.

Plus, you use your beard to attack. How awesome is that?

[Lightcosmo]

Oh and if it sounds like i make XIII-2 sound messy, XIII-3 is that on alot of steroids. The third game in the series has virtually no direction with the story, the writers took character emotion out of 95% of the storyline, big mistake. The only redeemable thing about the third one is it's gameplay yet again! They fleshed out the "switching" mechanic very well here (switching doesn't go to a "cutscene"), and threw in alot of fun ideas which surprised me.

Gameplay has an outfit switching gimmick (akin to X-2) that determines your abilities and such depending on what you have setup. It allows for quite a bit of options to play around with, and they have alot of neat stuff tied to switching as well. (graphics, quotes, etc.)

[Shrimpica]

this doesn't look half bad...

Now remains to be seen if monster & Boss design is good or shit. I expect shit tbh.

[Shrimpica]

wtf

[Saint Rubenio]

You guys think Google has a sense of humor?

[Armagon]

I love the implication that Kanna actually has no reason to be in this game and she's literally only here just because.

As of right now, she's the only other returning character from Blaster Master Zero 2, the other of which actually had his arc in this upcoming game setup already.

54 minutes ago, Shrimperor said:

this doesn't look half bad...

I deadass went "since when does Trails have DmC music" and then found out the guy just edited it in lmao.

34 minutes ago, Shrimperor said:

wtf

Oh yeah, Blizzard has officially become like the worst in the industry.

And the state of California itself is going after them, a state that takes it's workers' rights very seriously so Blizzard is in deep trouble here.