Slumber

In the JRPG realm, there's nothing really super pirate-y, but there are a few pirate themed ones... Actually, now that I think about it, there's not a single one I can think of about actual sea pirates. Skies of Arcadia is about sky pirates. FFXII is also sort about sky pirates, but that's only because 1/3 of the party is sky pirates, and another 1/3 want to be sky pirates. Rogue Galaxy is about space pirates. Xenogears is sort of about sand pirates in that sand pirates drive the plot for a good chunk of the plot. Not really about pirates as a whole, though. Tear Ring Saga has one of the two protagonists be a pirate, but you don't really play that part. Other than that, the only games I can think of involving pirates aren't anything like RPGs. Sid Meyer's Pirates! is more of a management/sim type deal. The Monkey Island series are point and click adventure games. Assassin's Creed 4 is an action adventure game. And Sea of Thieves is going to be an exploration action adventure game. More people need to make pirate games, and pirate RPGs at that.

Leif says hi. Granted, he doesn't suffer the gravest consequence like Sigurd does, but he does effectively get his mother-figure captured, which leads to her being forced to fight her adopted daughter and get turned to stone, it leads to him losing land he fought hard to win over, one of his advisors dies to cover Leif's tracks... Just in general a bunch of bad shit happens to Leif because of mistakes he makes that are inherent to his character. As you'd expect when a 15 year old who has spent his entire life on the run is forced to lead a resistance army. This is true. Female lords with flaws are constantly trashed in the fandom. For as much as people complain about characters like Ike and Ephriam for being giant Gary Stus, it seems like this same portion of the fandom is quick to jump on people like Celica for listening to Jedeh's promises, which are EXACTLY what Celica wanted to hear. Though again, I've never understood the Mary Sue complaints of Micaiah. For as much as she's basically the closest thing to Jesus we've ever had in FE, a ton of bad shit happens to her, and all of her "major wins"(Big air quotes here) are all calculated by other people, and ultimately her actions just lead to more suffering on her own part.

I'll reiterate what I said a few weeks ago in a different thread. Orsin While there are units like Seth, who start out incredibly good, but face stiff competition by the end of the game and/or end up being surpasses completely, and there are units like Athos who are Gotoh archetypes who exist purely to be the absolute strongest unit you'll have, Orsin manages to be both. I cannot think of a single other unit in the franchise who is almost guaranteed to be your best unit in every single chapter in the game(Barring chapters 4-7 where he's not in the party). Throught the entire game, from the very first chapter to the very last, he'll consistently double everything. He has the Wrath skill. This means that every fight will have him critting on the second hit. Unless you're tossing him up against enemy units who are just as fast as he is(Not gonna happen until the final chapter) or boosted boss enemies who are supposed to be defeated in specific ways(IE Reinhardt), Orsin is going to one-round damn near every single encounter he's in for the entire game. For comparison, here's Orsin's 20/20 stats without giving him a single stat booster or scroll: HP: 59/80 Str: 19/20 Mag: 3/20 Skl: 20/20 Spd: 20/20 Lck: 20/20 Def: 17/20 Con: 20/20 Mov: 7/20 For comparison, here's the final Gotoh character you get. One of two characters who exist to be OP and be able to take on the biggest challenges in the game by himself. He's the same class as Othin and starts at max level: HP: 54/80 Str: 20/20 Mag: 9/20 Skl: 20/20 Spd: 20/20 Lck: 17/20 Def: 14/20 Con: 18/20 Mov: 7/20 The only two areas the GOTOH OF THE GAME edges out Orsin is Strength, by one point, and magic(And inconsequential stat for the most part for these two. They would need it as Res, which means Galzus will be better at fighting mages and avoiding staves) by 6. Everything else, Orsin matches or beats Galzus. And that's without tossing in stuff like the Dain or Neir scrolls, which would let Orsin easily cap Def and get an extra point or 2 of Mov, but you'd need to wait to not level Orsin up until mid-game, which defeats the purpose of Orsin's early game effectiveness. Granted, Galzus has the BEST movement star rating in the game(Basically meaning that Galzus will have a reasonably high chance of having multiple turns in a player phase) while Orsin has none, but FE5 is more of an enemy phase focused game, and you'll do the vaaaaast majority of your killing there. Galzus also effectively has Aether while Orsin just has guaranteed second hit crits. With how they work in FE5, I'd actually rather have Wrath than Sol and Luna. Also, if you look at Orsin's base stats and think "Pfft, there's no way he's more effective than the TWO Jeigans you get in chapter 1", units level insanely fast in this game. Orsin with his chapter 1 prf weapon(Did I mention Orsin also has a prf weapon? It's also one of the best weapons in the game, being a Hand Axe on steroids) and Wrath will tear up all of the slow enemies in the early game, which is filled with slow Knights and Bandits as per usual. He'll start off hitting harder than Eyvale, and he'll be hitting more consistently than Dagdar, thanks to the Pugi's 80% hit rate, and thanks to the game's insanely generous EXP curve, he'll gain levels very quickly, and his growth rates that eclipse both of them will cause a snowball effect to where he'll manage to pass both up on their biggest strengths very quickly. He's not even hindered by the 4-5 chapter absence from the game at the start. He'll come back, just as effective as he was when he left. Orsin is absolutely insane. Rather than shining in the early-mid game and eventually losing luster, or only becoming a major force in the late game, Orsin dominates his game for the entire duration.

I'm going to be upset beyond words if they use the shitty Skylanders design of Spyro as the basis for the art direction for this.

He's averaging the growths from both games to make a comparison, and how each of the lords stack up. It's not just "FE2 Alm" vs "FE4 Sigurd". He's putting them in a fictional world where their growths are relative to each other. Also if you base this purely on the max stats from either game, yeah Alm would crush. But the chances of Alm actually hitting the 40 cap for any of his stats are so astronomically low. Even in Echoes with his boosted growths, Alm isn't super likely to do that. Regardless, the way the OP presented this, they're basically even, but since Sigurd has a horse, he has initiative and gets the hits he needs in first. Basically Horse Emblem wins again.

Correction, Xenogears was going to be Final Fantasy 7(Or rather, it was one of the concepts that Square was considering for FF7). However, a lot of their team during Xenogears' development was interrupted near the end of FF8's development to go work on that instead, and to help with development of FF9. Imagine a world where Xenogears was FF7. Also, I'm not quite sure Takahashi has ever given up Xenogears. Every project since has heavy, heavy, heavy allusions to Gears(Xenosaga straight up having Weltall in it going beyond just allusion). He keep revisiting the story concepts that he first explored with Xears, and the one furthest away from that(X) compensated by more or less just having Gears in the game. I don't think there's a single game he's written since Xenogears that you can play and not go "Hey, that's just like Xenogears!" at. Plus, the fact that he's been sticking with the "Xeno" naming scheme 20 years after the fact says a lot. So yeah, I don't think Xenogears is simply a "pet project" from 20 years ago to him. I'm sure it probably bothers him more than anybody else that Gears didn't really pan out the way he wanted. Also, as much as Square doesn't seem to give a crap about Xenogears, they are celebrating its 20th anniversary and they did put Xenogears into World of Final Fantasy, a game that was supposed to just be big fanfare to Final Fantasy. Maybe it was a reference to the fact that Xenogears was almost a full-fledged FF, but it still seems odd to put it in there when other games with "Final Fantasy" in the title got 0 fanfare.

See, the problem with graphic tees is that the vast, vast, VAST majority of them are utterly tasteless. So even wearing a semi-tasteful one will still look tasteless. Especially gaming related stuff. It's why solid colors and simple patterns are generally the go-to for "acceptable" male clothing.

1. Favorite's probably the Xbone controller. I've always liked the Xbox controllers, and the Xbone is just the most comfortable, ergonomically. The rumbly triggers, the grips on the thumbsticks, the finally decent d-pad. Least favorite would probably have to be the Wii Mote. I can't think of a controller that detracted from my enjoyment of 90% of the games I played. The constant waggling that games shoehorned in ruined SO many games. Second place would have to be the N64 controller. Also, it's nowhere near my favorite, but I actually like the original Xbox Duke. 2. Wireless. Just more convenient, and they're good enough nowadays that latency isn't really an issue. 3. Nope. Waste of money for somebody who doesn't care about that stuff.

... I got God of the Hand because I thought it'd be good on a Monk. I haven't done much crafting since hitting level 70 on everything. Most of my time the last few weeks has been assisting our FC's main crafter. Also, my FC and I got through O5S on week 1, and we're close to clearing O6S, so I'm happy at that. We didn't start doing Omega Savage until level 340 gear was out, so doing brand new Savage content with appropriate ilvls is a nice sign.

Honestly there's no understating the Smash Bros Boost. Same thing happened with FE7. The very first FE to make it to the west after interest in the series spiked due to Roy and Marth in SSB. Two years people were going "What the hell is a Fire Emblem?" then boom, a game called "Fire Emblem" comes out. It was a brand new, untested franchise in the west. It was the best selling FE to make it outside of Japan until Awakening. Unfortunately, Tellius never got a bump due to Ike's presence in Smash for a variety of reasons(FE9 came out too late for a Melee boost, and too soon for a Brawl boost. FE10, being a direct sequel to it+FE9 having sold poorly, it having AWFUL marketing, and a limited production run were all a kiss of death for it and FE9.) A lot of it has to do with marketing. Marketing for FEs prior to Awakening were piss poor. FE7 had probably the best marketing, and it had a release that coincided with Smash with 0 barrier to entry. Lo and behold, it was a success. No release after that got the same treatment, and they got middling to bad sales. Until Awakening brought the FE name to a broader audience. If Nintendo makes it known that a new Fire Emblem is coming out, people will likely buy it. Look at Echoes. It came out very late in the 3DS' lifetime, Nintendo already effectively had a new handheld out, and it came out roughly a year after the last new Fire Emblem. By all means, it should have been another flop. And while it wasn't a smashing success, it did meet Nintendo's expectations because Nintendo did a decent job reminding people in the period between its reveal and its release that it was coming out. Even as the Switch was flying off the shelves and nobody could get enough Zelda, Nintendo was still going "Yeah, but don't forget about Fire Emblem". I do think you're right, in that some of these features that Awakening and Fates have brought to the franchise added to the success, but I think they're far from the sole contributors of the success Awakening and Fates saw. It's really hard to say how much they contribute, honestly. I'll reiterate that I think IS handling these mechanics the same way they did with Fates will only push people away, rather than bring more people in. Fates is a trashy, trashy game(ESPECIALLY when it comes to the match making stuff). Some people are totally cool with trashy, but I'd wager more people don't want something as trashy as Fates. There's tons of things the developers did right with Fates, but for everything they did right, there's something that just feels dirty and wrong about Fates. Just scrape off a ton of the scum on Fates' surface, and I think there'd be another huge hit in the franchise. I don't even know if that means scrapping the match making stuff, but it might.

Even so, in a game where hybrid units could be viable, I'd prefer if there weren't upwards of 10 hybrid classes. Even 5 is a bit too much for me. I know this has never really been a problem, and it'd be the flipside of "Oh, all hybrid classes are pretty worthless", but I don't like it when it feels like a bunch of units are effectively prepared for EVERY scenario. Kind of takes out the strategy part when everyone could carry weapons and magic, swap on the fly, and be effective at both. So if they were limited to something like a Lord promotion(IE Robin, Corrin, Lachesis and Leif), I think I'd be fine, while everyone else has to make due with the weapon types they're given. I wouldn't mind there being more magic weapons to compensate for this, though. So you could still have a physical unit with a respectable magic growth that could make use of it in certain scenarios. Basically I just want a bit more care and thought into when IS decides they want to toss in classes that can do more. Same would go for a bunch of physical classes that can wield every type of weapon also isn't ideal, and nearly a class type for every weapon combo. I like when it feels like every class type has a role. It becomes muddier when you start giving classes more tools at their disposal. Instead of a giving us a few really good tools to build a house, it feels like we're getting a bunch of cheap Swiss army knives. TL;DR: I think "Less is more" would be a good philosophy going forward after Fates for IS. In many ways, but especially in regards to classes and class balance.

If it was a physical unit that gained staves, it might have worked a bit better, but as a magic/staff healer that gained axes? It was a bit wonky, and I can't say I ever kept Libra as a War Monk, and didn't really bother making Lissa one, either. The thing with Master Knights is that their potency wasn't really dramatically impacted by being hybrid units. For the most part, you could entirely ignore them as magic users(Though there were situations where it'd come in handy) and just keep them as powerful physical units that could also heal on the front lines. In that regard, I don't think they were good hybrid units. Neither of the Master Knights were anywhere near as effective as magic units as they were as physical units. I think they were better hybrid units than most, purely since you didn't really need a particularly good magic stat to deal damage in FE4, but they weren't ideal.

One thing I really like about Xenogears is that it dips really heavy into a horror atmosphere at times. Fei's first trip through Blackmoon Forest, ANY time Id shows up, Elly's psychotic breaks from using Drive, the sewers in the Kislev prison, any time Grahf gives somebody power, dealing with the Wels, the final dungeon, and of course, discovering what Solaris' food supply is.

It's the curse of being there being main characters. Also, you leave Bart's clothing alone. Just make his vest a little longer, and it'd be fine.

Glad you loved it. It's one of my favorite games, and definitely my favorite of the Xeno games. I'm always wary when I see people who got into the "series" starting with one of the Xenoblades go back to it, because while I love it, I grew up with it. I can bring myself to understand that it's a 20 year old game, and it definitely feels like like it at times, especially with the platforming and gameplay pacing. So my enjoyment likely won't reflect everyone who started with Xenoblade. I do think that for people who really enjoy the story and themes of Xenoblade 1 and 2(At least from what I've heard), Xenogears has a lot to offer, as you pointed out. I think it's probably the most "focused" of the Xeno games(Again, haven't played Xenoblade X or 2, basing my opinions on those based on what I've read), and it starts scratching the surface of the themes that will define the game very early. The fact that when weighed with the option of cutting gameplay content or rushing the story for a better paced experience overall, the developers chose the former, says a lot about the priorities of the game.

Alright, then the developers didn't intend on it being a story based thing like I thought.

I might be wrong, but I'm 99% certain his model has the complete Shield of Seals. I remember thinking this way back when I was binging Awakening and replaying it over and over again, thinking how odd it was, but I might be recalling things a little wrong.

As far as I know, it was not a myth. It might be exaggerated, but a lot of the Gears/Chrono team is listed in the FF8 and 9 credits, meaning that there were quite a few people pulled from the projects to make sure those games were completed on time. Plus, the team that made Xenogears and Chrono Cross was the team that mostly handled Chrono Trigger and various other smaller Square titles that weren't Final Fantasy. The team was more or less Square's B team(A- team might be more appropriate, given that they were up for consideration when developing FF7. Xenogears was a rejected FF7 concept. The project ended up back in the hands of Sakaguchi's main team that handled FF up until partway through X's development). Definitely not rookies or amateurs. But since Final Fantasy was Square's big bread winner, when it came to crunch time, other teams would get reshuffled to put more resources into Final Fantasy. It might have been that the Xenogears team mismanaged time and missed the deadline by a bit, but they missed the mark by so much that I don't really don't think it could be simply explained as "Oh, they didn't know what they were getting into". Xenogears had all these concepts down for the second disc, they just didn't have the time to develop it, and had they managed to make the half a dozen important plot threads that end up being infodumps, I don't think people would be hounding for a remake nearly as much. Cross needs something a bit more integral to the core of the game added for a remake. I love Cross as is, but while I feel like the backbone of the game is solid and there are plenty of well realized ideas in it, it feels like its body is missing a limb. I'm not quite as desperate for a remake of Cross for this reason. As nice as it would be to get that extra thing that it needs, I'm not quite sure what that thing really is beyond "Oh, develop the characters". It's not like with Xenogears where you see this fully realized concept that had to cut corners to come to an end, and the logical additions to a remake are a no brainer. Cross is a bit trickier to really figure out what exactly is needed to make a worthwhile remake.

I'd argue Persona 5 made its series mainstream, and it's arguably a dating sim with otaku stuff. Granted, it also sold about 2 million, but it also became a huge internet meme and was present at all sorts of GotY awards. It certainly wasn't some hidden thing that only its fanbase knew about. Difference being, I think Persona 5 handled the dating sim and otaku stuff much, much, much, MUCH better than Fire Emblem has in recent memory. Fire Emblem, I do think is going to have to evolve or change its style if it wants to have another big jump in sales. I don't think the games being... as "tasteless" as Fates is going to be good for the series if they try to do it again. It's going to either stagnate at 2 million with the same fanbase, or it's going to lose people.

He's not the sole writer. He usually has 1 or 2 others working with him, and they vary from game to game. Yes, he's the father of the Xeno games, but he's not the sole writer for any of them. Though from looking at Wikipedia, 2(Including Takahashi) of the writers are consistent from XC1 to XC2, so it might just be "Oh, they were in entirely different moods when they wrote each game" type of deal.

Namco's admirable in that they seem to embrace their franchises, even if they're flops. Xenosaga was overall a huge flop, but goddamn if KOS-MOS wasn't everywhere for the early-mid 00s, and still shows up frequently enough to this day. I'm sure way more people know of KOS-MOS than the actual games she appeared in.

Yes, yes, a million times yes for Xenogears. Xenogears had a notoriously rushed production so that the team's resources could be put towards Final Fantasy 8 and 9(Same thing happened with this team with Chrono Cross, which is part of why the Xeno/Chrono team left Square to go form Monolith). Omnigears were cut, and 50% of the second disc was recapped through exposition instead of you experiencing the events in full. There's certainly an atmosphere that gets built up as the event leading up to the endgame are treated as these "If only we knew what we were getting into" stories being told in hindsight, but it doesn't really mean anything in the end, and it was clearly just a way for the developers to put in the full story of the game at the expense of the gameplay. A full on remake that put back in the cut content would be one of my favorite things ever. I just would want whoever wrote Xenoblade 1 over X or 2 to write it instead. There's something subdued about Xenoblade 1 that fits more with the tone of Xenogears than X or 2, which were more anime flavored. Obviously the plot and characters are already established, but the tone could get lost. I know the Xeno games are still Testuya Takahashi's babies, but the tones and contexts have varied wildly. Also, make the combat more of a traditional JRPG with some brawler/action game elements to reflect combos and Deathblows. I don't think the MMO-lite style of the Xenoblade games would work with Xenogears. Come on Square. Partner up with Nintendo and make it happen. I could take or leave Xenosaga.

I'm gonna say Vagrant Story. A remake that was more fast-paced in the vein of Dark Souls would be nice, since it's more or less the game that invented the template. Obviously, it'd keep its own quirks, it's have its own combat system, just something to speed up the process. Really I just want Square to do ANYTHING with Ivalice aside from just pushing a raid in FFXIV, and some kind of revisiting of Vagrant Story would be perfect.

I think there should be a soft-lock on Lord promotions. As in, you have to reach a certain point in the story before a Lord can promote, and they can choose not to until they're ready. And obviously the opportunity should be given early enough that you won't be running around with a level 20 lord for 10 chapters. I feel like Awakening intended on doing this, but at some point the developers said "Fuck it" and let Chrom promote using normal methods. I say this because Chrom can be running around with the completed Shield of Seals in his promoted state well before that happens in the story.

Oh, that reminds me. WarCraft 2 was my first real PC game, and I don't recall beating it, but I recall getting fairly far and playing it often when my family got our first PC. I think I was 5 or 6. Judging this and FFT, I think strategy games were a bit beyond my grasp for a while, but I was determined to try at least. Also, I think Paper Mario counts. While I was primarily a Sony kid, my best friend had an N64, and I think he got pretty far in it. It is a bit simpler and less heady than something like Xenogears or FF, but the fundamentals are there. He did beat Ocarina of Time at a pretty young age. He was probably 7 or 8 for that. Majora's Mask stumped both of us for a good while, though.