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Re: RPG's( NOT Falcom,Square,Bethesda,Bioware)

Postby Spokane » Mon Sep 24, 2012 7:34 pm

Dorian wrote:
Spokane wrote: ^ Reminds me, I was thinking about popping that in for another spin on new game +.

Well, it's enjoyable to traverse certain locations and read some funny lines of NPCs. I'll give Xenoblade's gameplay that much.

AG, after you're done, please give me an honest opinion about Xenoblade compared to Xenogears and Xenosaga, mkay?


You know I was talking about RoF right?
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Re: RPG's( NOT Falcom,Square,Bethesda,Bioware)

Postby AnimeGamer183 » Mon Sep 24, 2012 8:35 pm

I can already give you an honest opinion, Xenoblade is a more complete package than Xenogears and Xenosaga, and is probably Takahashi's most focused game to date. But that doesnt neccesarily mean it surpasses them. Gears and Saga have a much better/fleshed out storyline, but they feel incomplete. But game play wise and polish wise, XB takes it. I would probably put them each on level playing ground I like them equally as it stands right now. the stories in gears/saga, especially gears, are not to be trifled with.
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Re: RPG's( NOT Falcom,Square,Bethesda,Bioware)

Postby Dorian » Mon Sep 24, 2012 8:56 pm

Spokane wrote:You know I was talking about RoF right?

No, I missed the point. I totally forgot about mentioning RoF. #-o

I can already give you an honest opinion, Xenoblade is a more complete package than Xenogears and Xenosaga, and is probably Takahashi's most focused game to date. But that doesnt neccesarily mean it surpasses them. Gears and Saga have a much better/fleshed out storyline, but they feel incomplete. But game play wise and polish wise, XB takes it. I would probably put them each on level playing ground I like them equally as it stands right now. the stories in gears/saga, especially gears, are not to be trifled with.

Feel incomplete? They are incomplete. Yet, Xenogears, Xenosaga I and Xenosaga III (because Xenosaga II sucks as hell, let's just forget about it) are far better than Xenoblade IMO. Xenoblade does have more gameplay content, yes, but it's all about quantity over quality in Xenoblade. They've put aside telling a great and expansive story and gave us a watered-down, run-of-the-mill anime mixed with MMO. I don't like that at all. Xenogears and Xenosaga felt unique despite obvious Evangelion, Space Odyssey and Nietzsche inspirations. Xenoblade feels like an utterly generic meterial from top to bottom. Is it done well, technically speaking? Yes, especially for a Wii. But it lacks the spark.
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Re: RPG's( NOT Falcom,Square,Bethesda,Bioware)

Postby AnimeGamer183 » Mon Sep 24, 2012 9:12 pm

I would like to see a true "Xeno" game again, that takes place in space and is actually sci-fi dominant, in the vein of gears and saga. But I think Takahashi needed to get a game like Xenoblade out of his system, and im glad he did, because its spectactular and I would hardly call it run of the mill generic JRPG, its quality is so on a whole other level that jrpgs I would throw in that category. If square was still good, this seems like a game they would have released. I am saying its a classic, in the vein of the PSX era, yes I am going there, its just modern and it was neccesary and needed and having now played the game its even more mind boggling why releasing it abroad was even a question.

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Re: RPG's( NOT Falcom,Square,Bethesda,Bioware)

Postby Segata Sanshiro Jr. » Mon Sep 24, 2012 9:22 pm

I'm singing Go ninja go, except "Go AG GO AG GO"

The man is making some good sense. I studied all three games and i love em all to pieces, but I gotta say, you ever notice most people play the start of Xenogears, stop, then months/years later play the start again? The game has really bad pacing, it takes over an hour to even get into a fight and even longer to get into an exciting fight, and hours to get into a mech fight.

Intro cutscene>
BOOMBOOMBOOM>
"I iz Dunban, I rape mechanical Vagina">
*GAMEPLAY*

thats just plain better pacing, theres a lot of stuff like that.
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Re: RPG's( NOT Falcom,Square,Bethesda,Bioware)

Postby AnimeGamer183 » Mon Sep 24, 2012 9:46 pm

For the record I played Xenogears all the way through the first time, without taking long month breaks like many people did, back in like... 2002 or 2003 was the first time i played it. I couldnt put it down, and really the second time I played it is what really put that game high on the favorite list for me. I have also played Xenosaga I and II multiple times, 3 is the only one I havent played more than once, sadly because it deserves another play through (all of them do). But I just lack the time.
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Re: RPG's( NOT Falcom,Square,Bethesda,Bioware)

Postby Segata Sanshiro Jr. » Mon Sep 24, 2012 10:15 pm

AnimeGamer183 wrote: For the record I played Xenogears all the way through the first time, without taking long month breaks like many people did, back in like... 2002 or 2003 was the first time i played it. I couldnt put it down, and really the second time I played it is what really put that game high on the favorite list for me. I have also played Xenosaga I and II multiple times, 3 is the only one I havent played more than once, sadly because it deserves another play through (all of them do). But I just lack the time.


Its just like that for some reason I've played 1x6 times, 2x5 and 3x2. anytime I want to play 3 I feel like going through all of em and start back at 1.
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Re: RPG's( NOT Falcom,Square,Bethesda,Bioware)

Postby AnimeGamer183 » Mon Sep 24, 2012 10:35 pm

When Xenosaga I came out, I played Xenogears in preparation for a second time. when Xenosaga II came out I played through Xenosaga I again, and when Xenosaga III came out I played Xenosaga I and Xenosaga II.
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Re: RPG's( NOT Falcom,Square,Bethesda,Bioware)

Postby Dorian » Mon Sep 24, 2012 10:39 pm

Xenoblade also has bad pacing. Many people leave it for months or forever. Argument from ass, Manny.

Monolith makes awkward gameplay. I loved them for the story. Xenoblade is a total letdown in this regard. Without that, Xenoblade became a very generic, MMOish experience for me. Nintendo gave them some serious cash and staff help so the game is big. Yeah, I know it the best since I've played it for countless hours. But it was a choir. I just wanted to see where that 'genius' is hiding. Well, it isn't there. The game is not what people make it out to be. It surfaced because of the JRPG drought. It would die otherwise.

Skies of Arcadia and Panzer Dragoon Saga are godlike JRPGs. Xenoblade is mediocre (being big is nothing on its own).
Last edited by Dorian on Sun Sep 30, 2012 11:12 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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Re: RPG's( NOT Falcom,Square,Bethesda,Bioware)

Postby AnimeGamer183 » Mon Sep 24, 2012 10:59 pm

Actually, the pacing is fine because a good majority of the content is optional, its about as personal a game as you can get, from specing your characters to how much time you actually dedicate to it, even down to the way the character looks, even in cutscenes. Running through the game doing just the story missions and bosses I would imagine it only takes 40-60 hours which is about average for a jrpg. Its pacing is all up to the person playing it, and that is perfection if you ask me. Its accessible to the hardcore completionist and to the more casual RPG player.

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Re: RPG's( NOT Falcom,Square,Bethesda,Bioware)

Postby OL » Tue Sep 25, 2012 12:09 am

Segata Sanshiro Jr. wrote:The man is making some good sense. I studied all three games and i love em all to pieces, but I gotta say, you ever notice most people play the start of Xenogears, stop, then months/years later play the start again? The game has really bad pacing, it takes over an hour to even get into a fight and even longer to get into an exciting fight, and hours to get into a mech fight.


I still haven't finished the game, but I can't say the reason I've started/stopped/started again is because of pacing. In fact, my absolute favorite part of the game is still, even after having finished over half the game, the very beginning in Lahan village before the fighting even starts. And that's just because of the totally innocent atmosphere.
Not saying you're wrong about the pacing, just that that's never been the problem with it for me.

Personally though, I'd still say the idea of good or bad pacing in an 80+ hour long RPG is kind of a joke anyway. What with the presence of level-grinding, exploration, item hunting, and side-questing, the pace is dictated very much by the player. Can't really see why an RPG fan would have a problem with that anyway, since progressing at your own pace has always been one of the appeals of the genre itself.
EDIT: ...like AG said. Sorry, only skimmed his post befre typing that.

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Re: RPG's( NOT Falcom,Square,Bethesda,Bioware)

Postby Segata Sanshiro Jr. » Tue Sep 25, 2012 12:33 am

RPGs can 100% have bad pacing. Look at Tales of Symphonia which has a section where the player spends 20 hours doing nothing else but looking for a survivor in order to find out how he made his escape with the solution being "move that really obvious rock" or when the game makes the player spend 5 hours going from town to town with scripted sequences just so that they can learn to make curry. You can't skip em, you can't even make the quests shorter you have to see every cutscene in the quest line and because of that it will always take that long. Now THAT is bad pacing and it absolutely exists in 40+hour RPGs. Its just that the best ones give people the choice.

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Re: RPG's( NOT Falcom,Square,Bethesda,Bioware)

Postby OL » Tue Sep 25, 2012 3:08 am

That's a good point actually. I think in the case of Symphonia, I just never actually realized that those parts were required, because I was also in the process of working on side-quest, level-grinding, and exploration at the same time anyway, so they either just came off as more side-stuff for me to do, or didn't seem quite as long because I was doing other things along the way.
Still, it's always seemed to me that if you sit down and dedicate yourself to playing through an RPG, you have to know that you're going to be there for a very long time. It's always felt to me that frequent lulls in the progress of the story are just a given. With the exception of shorter ones like Parasite Eve, I could swear I've run into sequences like that with almost every RPG I've ever played. Out of everything that could go wrong with an RPG, pacing problems feel, to me, like one of the absolute lesser complaints one could have about them. I go into an RPG expecting that kind of thing to begin with. By their very nature, long-form RPGs tend to be slower than most games anyway.
Which kind of goes back to what I was saying about the player creating their own pace; while someone simply going from point A to B in Symphonia might get irritated with how slow those parts in the story are going, I never really noticed it because I was filling that time with side-questing and level-grinding, making it so the pace didn't really feel like it slowed down much.
One of the risks with an interactive medium, I suppose. Not everyone comes out with the same experience.
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Re: RPG's( NOT Falcom,Square,Bethesda,Bioware)

Postby Segata Sanshiro Jr. » Tue Sep 25, 2012 3:26 am

You're definitely right, but theres something thats becoming a lost art (that a lot of new games don't do and kind of weakens the genre as a whole) is that the narrative has become more important then the interactivity when in reality they should be used together.

The reason the opening scene in Final Fantasy Type-0 is more meaningful is because you control the unnamed soldier. you have a link with him because you've been put in direct control of him before he died. this spills over into a lot of games, in Breath of fire 2 when you and Bo get beat up by the demon of avarice, in final Fantasy 6 when you play as Terra killing the Narshe guards or Phantasy Star 2 where you walk up to the bandit that kills his daughter giving the player control that leads into a cutscene or directly get the story changed because of an action is the two working together. You don't get that from a long drawn out scene, or a group of scenes that don't let you do anything.

Letting the player see how normal and gear battles worked in that first cutscene with the fire wouldn't have changed the laid back pace of trying to sort out the wedding, but it would have satiated anyone who wanted to understand the battle system, so more people would have continued knowing they'd be rewarded with more of that awesome battle system.

Its odd, it really isn't the core of an RPG, but the pacing (ie introducing new abilities, allowing the player to progress, moving between gameplay and cutscene) isn't the first thing you'd think about when looking at what makes an RPG fun but in the years it's been the thing thats changed the most and the reason so many people feel RPGs aren't as engaging can be attributed to it in some way.

the truth is when you spend 80 hours playing something, you don't think about what happened before the cutscene, or when you got an item for the first time, or saw an attack for the first time.

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Re: RPG's( NOT Falcom,Square,Bethesda,Bioware)

Postby Dorian » Tue Sep 25, 2012 8:05 am

its about as personal a game as you can get

I've seen games being far more personal than Xenoblade, and its pacing is bad for more than half of the game. But I agree with OL and Manny that's not a problem because JRPGs are like that. I don't know why that pacing part was brought by Manny in the first place.

Its accessible to the hardcore completionist and to the more casual RPG player.

Hardcore gaming completionists die out of boredomn in Xenoblade because there's no challenge to be had. You can't even die in this game. Collecting things for the sake of collecting things doesn’t make a hardcore gaming completionist. Challenge is the key. The SMT series is the best when it comes to this. Even Raidou games are very hard despite what people say. Just complete the game once and unlock the 'HELL' mode... :lol:
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