Serenes Forest's Teehee Thread

[DragonFlames]

9 minutes ago, Armagon said:

No i meant, the areas aren't connected to each other. Gameplay-wise. Only way to travel between most areas is by skip travel. 

That would have been awesome, to freely travel through the cloud sea and discover all kinds of stuff within it... I was kinda sad that that wasn't a thing.
But there was a whole bunch of stuff to see on the Titans themselves, so that balances out, I think.

1 minute ago, twilitfalchion said:

My reaction to Sky FC's ending:

Seriously, what a way for a game to go out, with such a massive cliffhanger.

The game as a whole had some really memorable moments for me, but the ending was a perfect way of leading into the second chapter.

I loved how so many smaller moments throughout the story built on each other to build the world of Liberl and its characters (Estelle has quickly become one of my favorite video game characters ever). I can't say I've seen it done better in any games I've played before (not that I've played many RPGs beyond FE, and Zelda doesn't really count as an RPG).

Final boss was tedious, but still kind of fun in a way.

Amazing game. Great experience. Absolutely spectacular.

Glad you enjoyed yourself!

Edited July 29, 2020 by DragonFlames

[null]

Just now, DragonFlames said:

Glad you enjoyed yourself!

Thanks! Sky FC was the first game I've played in a long while that I've just wanted to sit down and binge on. This week was pretty light for college work so I'm glad I was able to do that.

[DragonFlames]

4 minutes ago, twilitfalchion said:

Thanks! Sky FC was the first game I've played in a long while that I've just wanted to sit down and binge on. This week was pretty light for college work so I'm glad I was able to do that.

Awesome! Always a good sign when a game makes you want to binge it!
Now on to SC or is Radiant Dawn first? ^^

Edited July 29, 2020 by DragonFlames

[null]

Just now, DragonFlames said:

Now on to SC or is Radiant Dawn first? ^^

Radiant Dawn. If I go straight to SC I'll get burned out, even on something as good as Trails. Besides, I want to finish RD before I start something new.

[DragonFlames]

Just now, twilitfalchion said:

Radiant Dawn. If I go straight to SC I'll get burned out, even on something as good as Trails. Besides, I want to finish RD before I start something new.

Good idea. Hope you enjoy the rest of Radiant Dawn, as well!

[null]

Just now, DragonFlames said:

Good idea. Hope you enjoy the rest of Radiant Dawn, as well!

Thanks. Sounds like DQV is going pretty well. What do you think of it so far?

[Lightcosmo]

15 minutes ago, DragonFlames said:

That would have been awesome, to freely travel through the cloud sea and discover all kinds of stuff within it... I was kinda sad that that wasn't a thing.
But there was a whole bunch of stuff to see on the Titans themselves, so that balances out, I think.

That would be one heck of a swim!

 

24 minutes ago, Armagon said:

No i meant, the areas aren't connected to each other. Gameplay-wise. Only way to travel between most areas is by skip travel. 

Oh... duh. I knew that! 😀

I would assume that's so you cant skip areas?

Edited July 29, 2020 by lightcosmo

[Armagon]

19 minutes ago, twilitfalchion said:

Final boss was tedious, but still kind of fun in a way.

Gonna have to disagree there. Final boss was tedious and i hated it for that.

Arguably one of my biggest gripes with the series is how bad the final bosses are imo. They are either gimmicky as hell, massive HP sponges, or both. There's like two exceptions to that.

Still, glad you enjoyed the game.

18 minutes ago, DragonFlames said:

That would have been awesome, to freely travel through the cloud sea and discover all kinds of stuff within it...

Pre-release, i thought the game would be like Wind Waker where you could ride on Azurda's back and travel the Cloud Sea, salvaging things as you go (especially since Azurda gave me heavy King of Red Lions vibes). Alas, was not meant to be.

18 minutes ago, DragonFlames said:

But there was a whole bunch of stuff to see on the Titans themselves, so that balances out, I think.

Yeah, even without having the areas be interconnected, it's still a Xenoblade game so top-tier world design was to be expected.

4 minutes ago, lightcosmo said:

That would be one heck of a swim!

Tbf, the areas aren't a 1:1 representation of how big they actually are in canon.

 

Edited July 29, 2020 by Armagon

[Armagon]

5 minutes ago, lightcosmo said:

I would assume that's so you cant skip areas?

Well no because you can't skip areas in Xenoblade 1. And Xenoblade X's story structure is different from the rest of the series so being allowed to go anywhere once the tutorial opened up made sense there.

[DragonFlames]

20 minutes ago, twilitfalchion said:

Thanks. Sounds like DQV is going pretty well. What do you think of it so far?

It took a good while, but I warmed up to the game.
The story is interesting, albeit it doesn't feel as in the foreground as it does in many modern JRPGs. The gameplay, especially the combat, is rather slow, though that might just be my DS emulator being garbage rather than an issue with the game itself. What definitely isn't the emulators fault is that it takes a while to really get going. The beginning five or six hours (I initially needed twelve because of grinding and getting lost - then I lost my save and the rest is history (thanks, Caster!) are not too great.
I like that you can recruit monsters, but it seems to happen at random, which is a bit of a shame, but by no means a dealbreaker.
EDIT: Monster recruitment is random, but you can influence it a little, Caster told me. It's actually deeper than I thought.

Music-wise, it is a tad bit disappointing, particularly in the battle theme department. And the high amount of random battles in dungeons can get frustrating, especially when you want to go back to heal or if you got lost.

17 minutes ago, lightcosmo said:

That would be one heck of a swim!

Good one! XD
They could have used that Titan boat that one Nopon gives you relatively early on. Or get a new one later on.

13 minutes ago, Armagon said:

Pre-release, i thought the game would be like Wind Waker where you could ride on Azurda's back and travel the Cloud Sea, salvaging things as you go (especially since Azurda gave me heavy King of Red Lions vibes). Alas, was not meant to be.

Would have been great, for sure!

Edited July 29, 2020 by DragonFlames

[Lightcosmo]

7 minutes ago, Armagon said:

Well no because you can't skip areas in Xenoblade 1. And Xenoblade X's story structure is different from the rest of the series so being allowed to go anywhere once the tutorial opened up made sense there.

Right, good point. That's probably for the best, though! 

5 minutes ago, DragonFlames said:

Good one! XD

They could have used that Titan boat that one Nopon gives you relatively early on. Or get a new one later on.

That's possible, your right! Not sure how I would feel about that, though.

[null]

11 minutes ago, DragonFlames said:

It took a good while, but I warmed up to the game.
The story is interesting, albeit it doesn't feel as in the foreground as it does in many modern JRPGs. The gameplay, especially the combat, is rather slow, though that might just be my DS emulator being garbage rather than an issue with the game itself. What definitely isn't the emulators fault is that it takes a while to really get going. The beginning five or six hours (I initially needed twelve because of grinding and getting lost) are not too great.
I like that you can recruit monsters, but it seems to happen at random, which is a bit of a shame, but by no means a dealbreaker.

Music-wise, it is a tad bit disappointing, particularly in the battle theme department. And the high amount of random battles in dungeons can get frustrating, especially when you want to go back to heal or if you got lost.

Good to hear that it got a bit better for you, although I can imagine how frustrating it would be to get lost or have to grind. And random encounters are no fun, in my opinion at least. That's one of the things I heard (and noticed when I played the demo) about Bravely Default 2, that they scrapped the random encounters from the first Bravely Default in favor of enemies you can see on the map. I definitely prefer that way of handling it.

Edited July 29, 2020 by twilitfalchion

[DragonFlames]

6 minutes ago, twilitfalchion said:

Good to hear that it got a bit better for you, although I can imagine how frustrating it would be to get lost or have to grind.

Especially when you don't really have a grasp on the game mechanics yet or lack a full party, and enemies tend to kill or weaken you really, really quickly, so you have to go back and heal again.

6 minutes ago, twilitfalchion said:

And random encounters are no fun, in my opinion at least. That's one of the things I heard (and noticed when I played the demo) about Bravely Default 2, that they scrapped the random encounters from the first Bravely Default in favor of enemies you can see on the map. I like that quite a bit better.

I don't mind random encounters, I tend to be fine with them, but having enemies be visible on the screen adds to the immersion (and I'm used to it from modern JRPGs), so I'm happy about that change, too. But in the older Bravely games, you could adjust the frequency of random encounters or even turn them off entirely, which was a stroke of genius, in my opinion.

---

One thing I want to add to my "rant" above is that up until this point, I am oftentimes left with the feeling of "now what?" (right now, in fact). And finding the next objective tends to happen randomly for me, as well. I had one or two moments where I was like "why am I doing this right now?", as well. But I like to think that this is entirely my fault.

Edited July 29, 2020 by DragonFlames

[null]

Just now, DragonFlames said:

One thing I want to add to my "rant" above is that up until this point, I am oftentimes left with the feeling of "now what?" (right now, in fact). And finding the next objective tends to happen randomly for me, as well. I had one or two moments where I was like "why am I doing this right now?", as well. But I like to think that this is entirely my fault.

Maybe, but in older games I often find that if the player doesn't pay close enough attention to the dialogue that they'll be left without much of an idea of what to do next, a bit of a design flaw if you ask me. That happened to me a few times when playing through Sky FC. Even though it was my fault for not paying as close attention as I should have, there usually wasn't a very good way for me to be reminded of my objective apart from trying to leave the area and trigger some kind of dialogue about it from a character. I don't have many criticisms of Sky FC, but that's among the things I disliked about the game.

[DragonFlames]

5 minutes ago, twilitfalchion said:

That happened to me a few times when playing through Sky FC. Even though it was my fault for not paying as close attention as I should have, there usually wasn't a very good way for me to be reminded of my objective apart from trying to leave the area and trigger some kind of dialogue about it from a character. I don't have many criticisms of Sky FC, but that's among the things I disliked about the game.

I see, I see.
I'll have to take not of that for when I play the game.

5 minutes ago, twilitfalchion said:

Maybe, but in older games I often find that if the player doesn't pay close enough attention to the dialogue that they'll be left without much of an idea of what to do next, a bit of a design flaw if you ask me.

True. While I don't like having my hand held by a game, an easy to access reminder of what to do next goes a long way, I think.

[Acacia Sgt]

Tsk, gamers these days...

[Lightchao42]

When I mentioned playing Okami earlier today, I didn't think I was basically at the end already... But the final boss was probably the best part of the game, so that's good.

5 hours ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

Interesting, I wasn't aware of this. The trope of friends turned eternal rivals, this would've needed to seriously amp up Reyn to work, and invent a strong reason for the turn of a human to misanthropy. As I am with other beta storylines, I'd be interested in seeing a completed version of this that would never happen.

The passage in question is (see pages 226 and 227 of The Secret File for the source):

Quote

In the “Iwata asks Xenoblade Chronicles” interview on the official Nintendo website, there is a passage detailing some of the ideas that were proposed in the early stages of development. These words sparked a lot of debate among the fanbase! We therefore asked Tetsuya Takahashi and scenario writer Yuichiro Takeda to clarify some of the details. These weren’t simply ideas that were brought up and quickly dismissed, as they come to explain: "Reyn, after losing his beloved Sharla, decides to go back to the past. But taking this course of action would lead to countless people losing their lives. Knowing this, Shulk opposes Reyn. The former uses the power of the Bionis and the latter, the power of the Mechonis. The two of them fight to the death to defend their vision of the future."

As you have probably guessed just by reading this passage, this scenario has little in common with the one we know today! If there is any reason the idea of a close ally betraying you in this story was scrapped, then it was, “because after building so many connections and overcoming the odds together, it would have been too hard to conclude the story this way.” (Tetsuya Takahashi).

I imagine this idea was a very early one and that most of the modern plot wasn't firmly established yet. We know the initial concept for the game was "people live on the bodies of two dead titans," but proto-Shulk, Reyn, and Sharla might not have much in common with their finalized versions.

(Now that I think about it, I don't think Xenoblade 2's artbook had interesting factoids like this. Maybe it'll be translated one day and we'll find out.)

Edited July 29, 2020 by Lightchao42

[Armagon]

35 minutes ago, DragonFlames said:

One thing I want to add to my "rant" above is that up until this point, I am oftentimes left with the feeling of "now what?" (right now, in fact). And finding the next objective tends to happen randomly for me, as well. I had one or two moments where I was like "why am I doing this right now?", as well. But I like to think that this is entirely my fault.

Yeah i've had the same issue with older games. I love Xenogears but damn, the navigation in that game is non-existent half the time. Had to look up a guide a lot of times because i was just like "what do i do". 

33 minutes ago, twilitfalchion said:

That happened to me a few times when playing through Sky FC. Even though it was my fault for not paying as close attention as I should have, there usually wasn't a very good way for me to be reminded of my objective apart from trying to leave the area and trigger some kind of dialogue about it from a character.

I didn't have that problem in Sky but i did not like the lack of a mini-map in dungeons, which is one of my pet peeves with the genre overall. Cold Steel fixes this.

6 minutes ago, Lightchao42 said:

Now that I think about it, I don't think Xenoblade 2's artbook had interesting factoids like this. Maybe it'll be translated one day and we'll find out.)

iirc, there wasn't anything like that. The main factoid we know is that Torna was originally meant to be a flashback chapter between Ch.7 and 8 (glad they didn't do that, that would've fucked with the pacing). I think that's about it.

 

[Lightcosmo]

43 minutes ago, Armagon said:

iirc, there wasn't anything like that. The main factoid we know is that Torna was originally meant to be a flashback chapter between Ch.7 and 8 (glad they didn't do that, that would've fucked with the pacing). I think that's about it.

 

Yikes, that sounds like it would have been a mess.

 

[Interdimensional Observer]

1 hour ago, Armagon said:

The main factoid we know is that Torna was originally meant to be a flashback chapter between Ch.7 and 8 (glad they didn't do that, that would've fucked with the pacing). I think that's about it.

That definitely would've lead to problems, not just for the pacing of XC2, but for Torna too.

Although Torna could be longer, in ways it could've benefitted from that (and more resources) you could argue, fitting it into the base game says to me that it would've been less than it currently is. We wouldn't have gotten every little line and scene of characterization, maybe no playable Team Hugo and less gameplay overall, less of Torna itself would have been seen. This giant flashback would've had to have been shorter and more streamlined overall unless Monolith was trying to break the "world's longest JRPG" record.

Making Torna optional DLC gave it room to breathe and grow more -so I would speculate.

 

1 hour ago, Armagon said:

Yeah i've had the same issue with older games. I love Xenogears but damn, the navigation in that game is non-existent half the time. Had to look up a guide a lot of times because i was just like "what do i do". 

Thinking of dated quirks of Xenogears, the water level puzzle in the one of the Anima Dungeons was visibly hard to understand because poor graphics IIRC. And the Tower of Babel- the whole "when the game decides to get you into a random encounter, it stops you from jumping, but not moving and falling beforehand"- that mix was not good.

 

---

I've got mad Skillz. I made this only to discover I could've almost done it in Tiermaker in less time.

And curse the near-indivisibility of 94! If I wanted to make a collage/poster with no black filler space to the right and an equal number of icons in every row, I'd have to get rid of a few of these.

Edited July 30, 2020 by Interdimensional Observer

[Armagon]

25 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

Although Torna could be longer, in ways it could've benefitted from that (and more resources) you could argue, fitting it into the base game says to me that it would've been less than it currently is. We wouldn't have gotten every little line and scene of characterization, maybe no playable Team Hugo and less gameplay overall, less of Torna itself would have been seen. This giant flashback would've had to have been shorter and more streamlined overall unless Monolith was trying to break the "world's longest JRPG" record.

I imagine that in the original script, the Torna flashback was just gonna be the final battle+shortened version of the ending. Given that the main game uses Tantalese soldiers to represent Tornans, i can see Niall's model being used to represent the at-the-time unnammed Ardanian emperor and the fact that Hugo looks near identical to Niall could be a remnant of that.

Also Minoth and Aegeon probably wouldn't have even shown up at all in this hypothetical scenario.

I still see some people recommend to play Torna in between Ch.7 and 8 of the main game and i'm like "noooo, not only was Takahashi likely refering to Torna before it was expanded upon, it would mess up the pacing if you do".

31 minutes ago, Interdimensional Observer said:

And the Tower of Babel- the whole "when the game decides to get you into a random encounter, it stops you from jumping, but not moving and falling beforehand"- that mix was not good.

Oof yeah. Tower of Babel was probably my least favorite point in the game, although Zeboim and Solaris have maze-like sections that can be annoying to navigate. As for more dated quirks, the camera could be wonky at times, which hurt the already bad navigation.

Should the game get remade by the right people, i would hope one of the things they do is make it way clearer how Deathblows are unlocked. Because i feel like the Deathblows i did unlock was by chance. Also the Gear combat could benefit from being like Xenosaga III's E.S combat, which has aged pretty well all things considered.

 

 

[Lightcosmo]

32 minutes ago, Armagon said:

Also the Gear combat could benefit from being like Xenosaga III's E.S combat, which has aged pretty well all things considered.

 

 

Bad memories of the E.S. Dan intensify. 

 

[MisterIceTeaPeach]

The site still doesn't work properly since the pages don't load.

And it's not my Internet because other sites work fine.

It's extremely annoying to post and edit my profile atm.

 

Maybe I should contact the mods.

[Lightcosmo]

2 minutes ago, Julian Teehee said:

The site still doesn't work properly since the pages don't load.

And it's not my Internet because other sites work fine.

It's extremely annoying to post and edit my profile atm.

 

Maybe I should contact the mods.

Hmmm, I dont have any issues at all, that's strange.

and considering my internet speed, that's saying something.

Edited July 30, 2020 by lightcosmo

[MisterIceTeaPeach]

I contacted the mods.

(took me five minutes to get to this page)