SRPGs/Squad-level Turn Based Strategy Games - Dying for some

Games
41

Hahahahahahahaha.

Yeah, I think we’re on the same page here. In terms of what I think constitutes a good JRPG/JSRPG plot, I would argue that Disgaea 1 is pretty much my only positive experience. The fact that a PS2 game managed passable to excellent voice acting alongside a good story and amusing satire and humor despite being translated from Japanese is not something you can downplay easily, although I have made fun of people that get a little too carried away with it. The sequels were not as good in that department, but certainly not failures either. Then aga

Chrono Trigger for me. But then I tend to have a fonder view of 16-bit console RPGS, because the limitations of the hardware meant nobody could throw endless cutscenes at me. The (by necessity) more minimilistic approach to the story meant they tended to either be bland or almost decent, but never appaling. And I never had to sit through cutscene after cutscene after cutscene. Chrono Trigger got bonus points for doing a decent job with time travel and having an unusually high amount of player choice matter in terms of the story (something that typically isn’t seen in Console RPGs, alas).

42

The Bonus DVD that came with Xenosaga II nearly killed me and my partner a few months back.

After 3 hours we thought it was playing with our minds, after 4 hours we just hoped it would finish soon, after 5 it seemed like we were pulled out of time and into some weird timeless part of the universe.

We slept for a few hours as it had beat us down, but in our determination to escape and get back to reality and our real lives we love so much, we got back into it and from starting at 9am, we eventualy finished the damn thing around 8pm, and were so happy that the real world still existed we wept for a short while(well… inside you know…).

Looking back on it we both don’t know what the hell happened, but we are never putting that hellish DVD back on again - shit the universe may pass us by. It was quite awfull, and my partner whom i bought it for, well she hasn’t played the game yet.

sorry for that share - it is ot but wow, what a bonus DVD! and the mention of Xenosaga made me spill it.

43

hahhaha. Nice.

I have to say I am really enjoying Disgaea 3. There are still interface improvements (especially for handling specialists) that thes eries could use. They ditched the dark court which I think may be for the best (it got tedious). Tower stacking is easier than ever which is nice, since it’s so important. I can’t figure out how to get the Shoe group passed (I can’t get my percentage up over 41%, and don’t have enough stuff to bump it up from there to a good place), but it’s really fun so far.

44

If you want SRPG and a great story, Valkryia Chronicles is now $30 at GameStop. Great game.

45

Yes, I did. I broadened my statement to JRPGs at the last moment, not realizing the few stragglers that would leave out.

I skipped Xenosaga II, and only tried Xeno III out of desperation for any RPG (it was in the dark days of the FF12 holding pattern).

Valkyria Chronicles and I did not get along, mostly due to the conditions for victory and high ratings. It may be a small thing for others, but I hate being encouraged to game the system every time. The plot would have been fine, but the game itself was broken for me.

46

Heres 2 I found at matrix games…looks like a JA clone(Hired Guns: The Jagged Edge) and a Xcom clone (UFO: Extraterrestrials)

http://www.matrixgames.com/products/364/details/Hired.Guns:.The.Jagged.Edge.

http://www.matrixgames.com/products/342/details/UFO:.Extraterrestrials

Anybody know anything about them?

47

I liked all of Xenosaga, though I have to say I never actually noticed or paid attention to the upskirt shots. The character models are all so doll-like it’s hard to imagine anyone getting much titillation out of them, so any such attention from the camera seems more like it would be a joke than anything else.

I am very willing to admit that the cut-scenes drag on way too much, especially in the first episode. But unlike most games, they have an awful lot of story to tell, and they spent a lot of time and effort on background, research, and other stuff like that. Of course there is a good amount of silliness, some unfortunately unintentional, but there is some cool stuff as well, including some nifty space battle scenes. But it’s certainly true the games would have been better if they’d found a way to add more gameplay to break up the lengthy cutscenes.

I also liked the gameplay in all three games, though there were gameplay flaws in each episode. The GS path minigame series was rather evil in episode II; while various of the individual minigames were amusing interludes, if you really wanted to complete the full path, which was strongly suggested to be a good thing to do, you actually had to spend hours and hours grinding and even replaying multiple times, which is just ridiculous.

I suppose in the end I like ambitious and pretentious attempts at storytelling in games. I’m more willing to overlook the flaws in such games than I am in crappy off-the-cuff efforts like those of most RPGs, both western and asian, including for example, the possibly worst-ever story in Star Ocean 4. So I also liked the .hack RPG series, for example, with far inferior gameplay, just because of the pretentions of the underlying story, absurd as it might be when considered seriously.

But reverting to Xenosaga, really, three games with subtitles from Nietzsche? I’d have to support this, even if the games sucked, which I really think they did not.

48

But of course this all has nothing to do with turn-based strategy games.

Apart from Valkyria Chronicles, which I have some mixed feelings about in retrospect due to the lame boss battles, I thought the best recent Japanese game of this type was Front Mission 4, and of the various NIS games, the one with the best gameplay was IMO La Pucelle: Tactics. I admit Disgaea has a better and more amusing story and characters, but the gameplay in the Disgaea series just annoys me.

But really, nothing has come close to JA2 as far as I’m concerned. It had just the right mix of humor, “cool stuff” and quality gameplay.

49

Konami just announced a new Vandal Hearts game for XBLA / PSN. I’ve never played any of them, but people have expressed liking them here.

50

I will not let my vendetta against Xenosaga take hold of me completely. Not this time. I will just note that a cardinal difference between a mediocre effort like .hack and a failed effort like Xenosaga 1 is that in the former the grade school philosophy wanking is fully integrated into the game structure and gives the story and mechanics their shape, for better or worse, and in the latter it is just stapled on top of generic jrpg stuff done better elsewhere and combined with a loathsome aesthetic, terrible voice acting in unskippable cutscenes (IIRC), and user-unfriendly pacing.

Oh, shit, there I go again. ANYWAY. I guess I’ll finally check out JA2 on steam sometime this week since I have some free time coming up. I don’t know why I haven’t looked into it before, but it seems a good/cheap enough classic to warrant dealing with steam. Would you expand on Front Mission 4, it never seemed RPG enough for me based on past impressions I have of it.

I may have to get it just to see what all of the fuss was about.

51

It’s because you are a failure. Some of us were there once, too, and regret waiting so long. Let me know if you need to talk about it or anything.

52

Yes. They suck.

53

UFO Extraterrestrials isn’t awful, but it’s close. Search the forums and you’ll find some impressions with screenshots that I put up a couple of years ago.

54

Really, I don’t think of JA2, any NIS* game, or FM4 as RPGs of any kind.

But for what it’s worth, Front Mission 4 has an escalating series of skills and equipment that unfolds as you play, so your characters at the end of the game are uber compared to their states at the beginning, it has cut-scenes (the worst ever animated cut-scenes, by the way, with South Park style paper-cut-out animation – no really!) and so it does have similar RPG-ish qualities to many of the other games mentioned here. Oddly, FM4 has beautifully well done animated opening sequences, so the contrast with their laughable Terence-and-Philip-style cut scenes is just amazing.

By the way, in Xenosaga ep. 2 they made the cutscenes skippable, for what it’s worth :). The voice talent in the series is pretty much jrpg/anime standard. Most of the actors they chose, such as Crispin Freeman, appear in many other games and animations. But anyway, however you rate Xenosaga, Star Ocean 4 was terribly worse. You might moan and groan a little watching hour-long Xenosaga episode 1 scenes, but Star Ocean 4 makes you want to kill someone after just ten seconds or so.

*Edit: Er well, they have made some honest to god RPGs, haven’t they? But I mean Disgaea, Phantom Brave, La Pucelle, that kind of game where you go from tiny contrived arty level to tiny contrived arty level and kill things in a grid pattern with move+attack plots, or occasionally not in a grid when they are really showing off their mastery of 2D. I say those aren’t RPGs, not even with some funny letter like “S” stuck on in front.

55

I thought Hired guns was a semi-ok take on JA 2. Its only deficit is thats it takes ages for the enemy to do their turn, and it gets seriously boring to wait for em.

That was a problem with Jagged Alliance 2 aswell. hired goons shoots hired goons - misses x 2342342342342

56

For me the purpose of that term is just to distinguish strategy games with a deep levelling/equipping/whatever progression for characters/troops versus those that encourage you to work with a relatively static troop set with some kind of external progression (eg, upgrading from musketeers to infantrymen in Civ). I understand why it’s controversial for some, but much like with the old roguelike debate, I don’t really care so long as people clarify what they personally think are the salient characteristics of the games they are talking about.

Which you just did, with FM4, and I’ll look into it. Thanks.

57

Yeah, that was a problem for JA2, but it improved I think on a faster machine.

i think JA2’s worst problem was bad AI tactics, so they had to balance the more advanced areas with mortars and tanks that could be one-hit kills, which made things annoying. But it was great fun in the intermediate scenarios where you had just gotten some decent rifles to supplement the amazingly crappy starting pistols and SMGs you tend to start with. I remember one early base assault with my South African commando sneaking around the rooftops and the German sharpshooters – Buns, and umm, umm, Grunty – picking people off at range… good times.

58

Rondo of Swords!

59

I was going to say. I thought you pretty much adored both of them. :p

60

It would be crazy talk to get Front Mission 3 (PS1) over Front Mission 4, right? It was much better received, it seems, and I suppose I could pretend it was an XBL game or something.