The basic way these games work is that you have a shop round and then a fight round. Every turn you get a little more gold and experience, and you can buy better units. Buying three of any one unit will upgrade it, and there's usually synergies between units like all your dogs get more attack if you have 3 of them, or all your cats attack faster if you have 4 of them.
After you buy your units and set them up on the board you face off against one of 7 other players at your table and the boards automatically fight each other according to the rulesets and ai of the individual units. This is a good time to see if you have any weaknesses, and/or get some coffee.
The last person with any health remaining after as many battles as necessary wins.
Currently playing Beyond Oasis and really enjoying it. Kinda like A Link to The Past crossed with a beat āem up (the Koshiro soundtrack and sound fx ripped directly out of Streets of Rage certainly help). Iāve been on a kick lately of Zelda-like gamesā¦Crusader of Centy, Illusion of Gaia, Soul Blazer, Terranigma. I know some people might be annoyed at me calling these Zelda-like because theyāre all got their own vibe, and almost nothing BUT Zelda is exactly like Zelda (probably the closest ones I can think of are Minitā¦.and weirdly maybe Lufia 2?), but the feels are close enough that I canāt help but think of them as a sort of category.
Anyway, I'd love recommendations of more in this same vein if people got 'em.
@ārearnakedwindowā#p42650 If you have not played it before, the first Darksiders game is maybe the only Zelda-like I have genuinely enjoyed. (including any entries from the genuine Zelda series, I just bounce off them (sorry Breath of the Wild fans))
@ārearnakedwindowā#p42650 My personal issue with games being described as āZelda-likeā is the term erases all the imaginative differences these games contain and reframes them as nothing more than inferior copies of Nintendoās work - especially as thereās often scant general knowledge about these alternatives floating around the internet to refute this as it is. It's like calling Halo a āDoom cloneā or every platformer from Kirby to Sonic to Crash āMario inspiredā.
(The above honestly isn't a rant aimed at you, I'm just trying to explain myself)
As for recommendations, have you looked at Sylvan Tale? It's a wonderful game and there's a translation patch available if you need it. Dragon Scroll (Famicom) is another good one too!
@ārejjā#p42651 Iām glad you said that because Iāve always sort of slept on Darksiders, but maybe it's time to give it a second look. Er, well, really a first look, in my case.
@āKimimiā#p42667 Thatās definitely a fair critique, and part of the reason I know itās not a great term. All of these games really do have their own vibe which is part of what I like about trying them out. I guess I struggle to find a better replacement termā¦maybe I just like top-down action RPGs?
I have not looked into either of those games. Thanks so much for recommending them!
@ārearnakedwindowā#p42756 āTop-down action RPGsā āAction adventure gamesā āOverhead exploration adventuresāā¦ the hobby really does need to come up with a more neutral term for these games, but I'm at a loss as to what a good one would be!
I hope you enjoy yourself, whatever you end up playing!
Playing the SaGa Frontier remaster on the Switch and wow. I played the gameboy SaGa games but never any of the sequels and I was not expecting it to work as well as it does. It feels incredibly ahead of its time from the play pattern based leveling system to the side material to the multiple playable characters. They really made an actual factual open world role playing game, not just with Frontier on the Playstation but with the Super Famicom ones too. Itās a miracle it works as well as it does, even if at some points it kind of doesnāt. If you're like me and only know of these games by reputation, check em out.
I need to play SaGa Frontier, it sounds fantastic. This year has just been so good for JRPGs, Iāve been busy with Bravely, NieR, Ys, now Tales of Arise and next SMT, but itās on my list.
Tales of Arise is a game I'm really savoring. The worldbuilding is a treat and it's kind of a fascinating study on methods of control. The first town is very clearly a brutal and militant, inspired by fascist slave states. The second town is a paranoid surveillance state, inspired by authoritarian communist states. The third town is a kind of reformed neoliberal state, where people recognize the their higher quality of life, but they are still slaves to a power structure perpetuates inequity and still poses an existential threat. The conflict started very black and white and has gotten more mature and nuanced, I really hope they are building towards something with that.
I finished Deltarune chapter 2 the other day and what struck me was that, unlike Deltarune ch1 and Undertale, I was struggling to stay in the game for longer than 15 minutes at a time, Iād always want to quit and do something else, and was kind of playing it because everyone in my immediate internet circle is into it therefore I want to be into it. I canāt explain why, maybe I was having an off week, but I wasnāt as into it as Iāve been other Toby Fox games. Iām starting to think like Iāve aged out of this kind of thing, which is something I donāt want to admit. I found Ch2 to be more saccharine than I wanted it to be. The gameās systems and puzzles are pretty short lived and arenāt really as deep as Iād want them to be. There is something to choosing which action to take when, and trying to balance that with avoiding enemy attack patterns, but that didnāt feel as fleshed out as Undertaleās battles were (or maybe Iām mis-remembering). So Iām starting to wonder if these games are even for me anymore. Part of me played it and was like āok, which one of these songs is going to be turned into a meme this timeā. I do feel like Toby Foxās games accomplish what they set out to do, which is maximize what some people really like about JRPGs (Character moments, story, weird stuff happening) and things they donāt like (Endless grinding/battles).
I have a post in mind to make one day in the games that had a profound impact thread about UNDERTALE and how the avalanche of meme stuff that came out of it diluted and obfuscated what is actually extraordinary about that game. Itās the biggest example in my mind, and it certainly fits a pattern with how internet fandoms take
in and spit things back out.
Havenāt played ch. 2 yet but Iām dying to. Iām hoping Iām not in a similar position but in all honesty I might be! Iāve certainly outgrown plenty of stuff at this point.
@āMichaelDMcGrathā#p43638 Itās a miracle it works as well as it does, even if at some points it kind of doesnāt. If youāre like me and only know of these games by reputation, check em out.
Out of curiosity, do you play it without any guide? Despite the nice (or rather necessary) UI improvements of this HD remaster, I find the game pretty much inscrutable if you donāt refer to a guide to even understand how it is supposed to be played.
My ideal SaGa experience would be the setting and characters of Frontier 1 with the battle system and party mechanics of Scarlet Grace.
@āchazumaruā#p43658 Iām googling every once in a while. The mechanics really are inscrutable a lot of the time. Case in point, playing Emiliaās storyline and ran into Asellus as my first mystic and jeez was that confusing. Just randomly every once and a while getting āMystical transformation!ā popping up on the screen with no context and never glimmering is enough of an alert that Iām probably missing something though and I figured it out eventually through some stray GameFaqs posts. But on the other hand Iām kind of shocked whenever this happens that thereās even mechanics this nuanced in a game of this era in the first place that itās hard not to be charmed by it even if it wouldn't have killed them to add a tutorial or at the very least a manual into the remaster nevermind the original game.
wellā¦.i finished hollow knight. itās the best game that i donāt really want to play! the scope of the world is just incredible. so much to admire in the visual design, tightness of the action, how cohesive it all isā¦however, i think itās just too hard for me! i just find the punishment of having to run from the bench back to the boss every time such a chore and really arbitrary, even after it started to click for me and i would pass the point of frustration with the boss and it became just something i was chipping away at little by little. just let me restart at the boss door man! i donāt get why every boss deals contact damage! all those decisions are purposeful of course and i really admire that about the game but maybe itās just not for me even as i admit itās just outstanding. iām reminded of a line from an old Tim review, DQV i think, about how the game doesnāt LOSE when the player WINS
i got 67% completion and it took me just under 50 hours. i did explore the world to my satisfaction though. once you get the || monarch wings and the super dash ||, exploring feels like a victory lap since you can finally visit all the unexplored places that have been staring at you the whole game. looking at the wiki now, i did not get || the shadow cloak, i did not find the secret that makes the watcher knights easier, i did not get the awoken dream nail. i had about 900 essence and saw that it takes 1600 i think. so i never got into the palace or down to the abyss. i love all the obvious dark souls influence, intentional or not. the hollow knight holds its sword like Artorias. one thing i didn't understand...why does the player character WANT to defeat the hollow knight and become the vessel? is that ever explained? ||
@ātapevultureā#p43718||i never got into the palace or down to the abyss||
It would be an exaggeration to say the ||White Palace|| is ||a kaizo platformer|| but it doesn't sound like anything approaching that is what you'd want anyway (I didn't like it that much). The part of the game you didn't do is generally overdifficult, so I'd say you stopped at the right place.
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@ātapevultureā#p43718 is that ever explained?
lol i wish i could tell you. Is it something like you're drawn to defeat ||the Hollow Knight|| in order to ||rid Hallownest of the orange plague goop?||