I‘m extremely creeped out by the XC3 thing, and disappointed, and more than a little grossed out too. I don’t know what‘s worse– the thing, or that I’m not surprised by it at all.
On a less shitty note, I continue to be unexpectedly impressed by Live A Live-- I'm past the scenario halfway point, with just near future and ninja left to go, and more than anything else it kinda makes me wonder why we never got more wild west RPGs (_this isn't a request for everyone to tell me that Wild Arms or some other game exists, I know_, I more meant literal old west, not sci-fi old west) and even ninja RPGs. Like I said, I know they're out there, but those two time periods in particular are so compelling that I'm surprised Square Enix wasn't all over them for the last 30 odd years. I also really enjoyed present day, although it felt like the lightest, easiest, and briefest of the scenarios. The only one I didn't especially enjoy was prehistory, because while I appreciate the commitment to it being non-verbal, I think they stretched even my patience for scatological humour with non-stop poop and fart jokes.
That's pretty much all I've been playing, surprisingly enough! I typically bounce between a few games, so the fact that Live A Live has kept my attention so well is pretty impressive.
I started playing Final Fantasy Tactics A2 because I wanted to play an strategy RPG on my DSi XL and I don’t like how the DS Fire Emblem games look.
I’m not sure how I feel about the game as a whole yet and I may end up wishing I started on hard difficulty as the encounters haven’t had too much of a challenge but the gameplay loop (quest, bazaar, job/equipment update, quest) is engaging and the art has me feeling, as @sabertoothalex put it in the hardware show off thread post about the DSi XL, like a real pixel pervert. In fact, 2D or 3D, Square Enix was excellent at making games look great on the DS. In particular, all the Dragon Quests and Final Fantasy 4 Heroes of Light come to mind as games I’ve recently dabbled in that really look dynamite on those screens.
I also like how in A2, at least in the first 10ish hours, there’s basically no plot outside the isekai intro. You go see the wise, ancient wizard about what you should do and he basically says, >!”You need to have the best summer of your life!”!< Very much a hangout game.
@“coreywilliams”#p80674 I‘ve always been disappointed by how Tactics A2 was sort of passed over by FFT fans at the time. It’s strongly my favourite of the series because it‘s so much in favour of the player just tinkering around with it as much or as little as they want to. It makes me want to go back and play it again (it was my early pandemic, "I’m going to have time on my hands" game).
Such an intimate and unique game. They really capture this fun feeling of being a god who only dips in and out of human matters when it involves them. You see all of these snapshots of the world through the eyes of various regular people and monstrous freaks and it makes for a really well sketched place. Also feel like this game is a pretty scathing critique of people in power without having any real moments where someone says Maybe The Gods Are Bad??? As Valkyrie you recruit everyone from former slave traders to forlorn mermaids to fight in Asgard's war. When the powerful need help they will take and use everyone they can to fight for them. In the end it's a love story and a pretty good one.
The gameplay was really fun throughout, was playing on Normal and didn't have too much trouble outside of a couple sections and one sub-boss in the last section of the game that felt like a pretty weird and unfair difficulty spike. Love the almost rhythm game aspect of timing your attacks to bounce enemies around and combo them, and moving different characters in and out. The dungeons are sometimes hard to parse because the pre-rendered backgrounds all tend to not have super obvious LOOK AT ME parts lol so there are times where you gotta activate a switch or something but it's not clear you can actually interact with it. The look in general is really awesome as is the music which, fun fact I learned from the credits, has sound effects done by Keiichi Okabe now of Nier fame!
I'm not super familiar with Tri Ace or if they have a history of making radical games but Valkyrie Profile sure does feel really radical for the era and even still now. It still feels like there's not much out there like it.
In conclusion,
[upl-image-preview url=https://i.imgur.com/Qays688.jpeg]
@“coreywilliams”#p80674 Very fun game with probably the best-aged visuals and sound on the DS, I’d definitely say hard mode is recommended though (not that it’s especially hard). It’s not too late to start over as 10 hours is barely scratching the surface of this game. I never much cared for the limp non-story compared with the surprisingly heartfelt childhood escapism parable in the previous one.
@“coreywilliams”#p80674 Yeah, I‘ve played plenty of A2. Here’s my take:
A2 is better than the nothing we‘ve received since then.
It is the weakest of the FFT trilogy.
It’s still got good mechanics though! Just lacking in direction.
You should always play FFT and FFTA before A2. Once you're totally wrung dry of FFT and FFTA.
I still need to 100% FFTA, and the Ogre series, then one day I may return to A2.
But it's still neato!
And I used the main character extensively in the PSP remake of FFT, since he's an unlockable character! I do like his design quite a bit. It's cool that it's the same designer as from FFTA, and he has that same weird sword that doesn't appear in the game lol
@“edward”#p80707 Oh, I more meant that for every FFT fan I know, like 98% of them loved War of the Lions and Advance, but hated A2 with a white hot range.
It's been a while since I played Advance, but if I remember right the only connection between them is that they both take place in Italic and they both use a very similar if not identical job system and both have the judge/law system, although A2 significantly refines it. The one concrete thing I remember about Advance is that everyone hated the judges and laws. I didn't-- I really like how it challenged the player to work around them, and it added a complexity to the game that I thought was interesting. I did, however, think they could have used some play testing to make things less arbitrary seeming.
I'd say if you have access to both, they're both quite good, and I'd recommend playing both, although there's no real reason to play one after the other. You get some manner of bonus item that I can't remember if you have Advance inserted into the DS's GBA slot, BTW.
@“edward”#p80707A2 is by the same team (sans Yasumi Matsuno), built on the same base mechanics, has a tiny handful of characters from the first game show up in cameos, and as Karasu said gives you a tiny, pretty much useless free bonus (that I’m pretty sure you can obtain other ways) if you have a FFTA game cartridge inserted into the DS. You definitely don’t need to have played TA first to understand it, if anything it makes more overt references to FF12.
@“connrrr”#p80735 I can’t tell if this is a joke question but look at the picture again and the answer will come to you. Also please record your facial expression as this happens.
I use the 2.4 ghz Saturn pad for fighting games, a lot of arcade games and any old sega stuff. I like it a lot. Sonic Mania is definitely a perfect game for that controller. I have even been playing some SATURN GAMES with it on the MiSTer Saturn beta core lately.
@“mindleftbody”#p80772 Right now I kinda wanna use it for everything. It will be fun to play DOWNWELL with. Gonna get a genesis adapter ASAP and use it for everything… comfytown…