I should be sleeping as i write this, but turns out being disappointed this badly by two praised RPGs in one day isn?t good for sleep.
Well, off to a good start for the week! What are you guys playing right now?
I should say that I enjoy the story in this a lot. The aesthetic is strange, but nowhere near the nonsense of FF10. Amidst all the grim western RPGs of the past few years it feels delightfully upbeat and quirky. The characters and setting have an almost Hayao Miyazaki ?esque feel to them in how colourful and fun they feel, like the king having been turned into a bug. Right from the outset when the princess you?re supposed to be kidnapping asks to be kidnapped herself I felt I was in for something different. I also can?t stop thinking of Vivi as a girl, since it?s clearly a girl?s name, and due to her appearance she could be any gender. It definitely makes her more interesting as a character.
If only I could enjoy the actual game as much.
I don?t know if this port (I?m playing both games on PC) differs much from the original release, but it feels like it?s had a few limbs sawn off and some vital organs removed. Not displaying enemy health numbers, for example. What fucking bass ackwards retard thought that was a good idea? Or how about not signaling when and whom they?re about to attack, making tactical play essentially impossible? Or having any way of discovering weaknesses or strengths of enemies? None of this is present, and there?s no option to turn any of it on or off. It turns the game into essentially trial and error, where the only way to figure out if an enemy is too strong for you is to die to it a few times.
But that?s not the worst of it. In any other JRPG the answer would just be to grind out levels. But here the game limits even that opportunity by having the brilliant idea of not restoring your HP and MP upon saving, but having an entirely different mechanic that uses a rare and expensive resource to do that. And since you have no way of knowing if surrounding enemies are too stron for you, you?re left trying to either luck out with enemy encounters that don?t kill you in 3 hits, or wasting your money on an expensive resource while not knowing if it?s necessary.
If only I could enjoy the actual game as much.
I don?t know if this port (I?m playing both games on PC) differs much from the original release, but it feels like it?s had a few limbs sawn off and some vital organs removed. Not displaying enemy health numbers, for example. What fucking bass ackwards retard thought that was a good idea? Or how about not signaling when and whom they?re about to attack, making tactical play essentially impossible? Or having any way of discovering weaknesses or strengths of enemies? None of this is present, and there?s no option to turn any of it on or off. It turns the game into essentially trial and error, where the only way to figure out if an enemy is too strong for you is to die to it a few times.
But that?s not the worst of it. In any other JRPG the answer would just be to grind out levels. But here the game limits even that opportunity by having the brilliant idea of not restoring your HP and MP upon saving, but having an entirely different mechanic that uses a rare and expensive resource to do that. And since you have no way of knowing if surrounding enemies are too stron for you, you?re left trying to either luck out with enemy encounters that don?t kill you in 3 hits, or wasting your money on an expensive resource while not knowing if it?s necessary.
As pros go, I enjoy the roleplaying aspect. I chose to roleplay as a silver-tongued opportunist dwarf rogue (because I?m a total hipster when it comes to RPG builds), and the game gives surprisingly many opportunities to do just that. The writing?s also quite good (for an RPG about saving the world from monsters anyway), though nowhere near Witcher 3 levels, but I?ll probably say that about every RPG for the rest of my life.
And then I get into combat, and I want to bite the faces off of the entire development team.
I?ll fully admit that it?s partly down to my unfamiliarity with old school western RPGs and having been focused on more action oriented fare for essentially my entire life that this game feels so alienating and clunky to me. I started playing on Normal, having heard at time of launch about both the game?s punishing difficulty, but also it having been scaled down in updates. Apparently it wasn?t scaled down that much, and/or I sucked even harder than I thought, because I had to turn down the difficulty to Easy during the final fight against the ogre in Ostagar. I got through it, and proceeded just fine for a while.
Then I got into combat again in the first town and got my ass handed to me once again. I typed ?Am I playing Dragon Age Origins wrong?? into google, and found similar experiences asking the same question. And I was greeted with all responses essentially saying ?Oh, you?re playing it wrong, you?re supposed to do this and this and this and set points into this and have Alistair as tank and Morrigan casting spells and setting this and that tactic etc.?
Oh, silly me, now I understand. I thought this was an RPG. You know, a game about choice. But apparently my choices were wrong. Tell me: if you?re supposed to play with only certain characters in a certain way anyway, WHY GIVE ME OPTIONS IN THE FIRST PLACE, ************?! If I?m required to set characters to use certain tactics to be able to survive to begin with, why don?t those tactics come as a default? And apparently archers are really weak in the vanilla game. Good to know I?m punished for wanting to break convention since I wanted to play as one.
I?m also not fond of the real time combat. For a long time I thought turn based combat systems in JRPGs were simply a remnant of technological limitations, but turns out they also serve to let the player know what the fuck is going on. Trying to be tactical in any way in the 3rd person view is essentially pointless, since the combat from that angle is an incomprehensible clusterfuck of numbers, flailing limbs and spell effects. I don?t even know what I?m supposed to be looking at. The character panels to see who?s low on health? The combat itself to keep an eye on positioning? Or the skill bars to see what skills are on cooldown? What is nature resistance and where is it useful? To what degree am I expected to micromanage every bloody thing my companions do? It feels like trying to play Diablo in 4-player co-op, except I?m the only player and have to pick every action of every character.
What is even the end goal here? I feel like I, as a player, have very little in the moment input on how combat plays out. Is it to get the tactics so precisely right that the characters don?t need my input? To get the game to essentially play itself? At least with turn-based systems like X-COM or Final Fantasy i can tell where things go south. Here it could be any number of things: is it because my rogues aren?t properly positioned for backstabs? Am I not making use of the environment? Is my warrior not drawing enemy aggro to themselves enough? Is my gear too weak? Are there skills that could be more useful? Are my stats allocated wrong? Fuck if I would be able to tell any of these things based on combat thus far.
And then I get into combat, and I want to bite the faces off of the entire development team.
I?ll fully admit that it?s partly down to my unfamiliarity with old school western RPGs and having been focused on more action oriented fare for essentially my entire life that this game feels so alienating and clunky to me. I started playing on Normal, having heard at time of launch about both the game?s punishing difficulty, but also it having been scaled down in updates. Apparently it wasn?t scaled down that much, and/or I sucked even harder than I thought, because I had to turn down the difficulty to Easy during the final fight against the ogre in Ostagar. I got through it, and proceeded just fine for a while.
Then I got into combat again in the first town and got my ass handed to me once again. I typed ?Am I playing Dragon Age Origins wrong?? into google, and found similar experiences asking the same question. And I was greeted with all responses essentially saying ?Oh, you?re playing it wrong, you?re supposed to do this and this and this and set points into this and have Alistair as tank and Morrigan casting spells and setting this and that tactic etc.?
Oh, silly me, now I understand. I thought this was an RPG. You know, a game about choice. But apparently my choices were wrong. Tell me: if you?re supposed to play with only certain characters in a certain way anyway, WHY GIVE ME OPTIONS IN THE FIRST PLACE, ************?! If I?m required to set characters to use certain tactics to be able to survive to begin with, why don?t those tactics come as a default? And apparently archers are really weak in the vanilla game. Good to know I?m punished for wanting to break convention since I wanted to play as one.
I?m also not fond of the real time combat. For a long time I thought turn based combat systems in JRPGs were simply a remnant of technological limitations, but turns out they also serve to let the player know what the fuck is going on. Trying to be tactical in any way in the 3rd person view is essentially pointless, since the combat from that angle is an incomprehensible clusterfuck of numbers, flailing limbs and spell effects. I don?t even know what I?m supposed to be looking at. The character panels to see who?s low on health? The combat itself to keep an eye on positioning? Or the skill bars to see what skills are on cooldown? What is nature resistance and where is it useful? To what degree am I expected to micromanage every bloody thing my companions do? It feels like trying to play Diablo in 4-player co-op, except I?m the only player and have to pick every action of every character.
What is even the end goal here? I feel like I, as a player, have very little in the moment input on how combat plays out. Is it to get the tactics so precisely right that the characters don?t need my input? To get the game to essentially play itself? At least with turn-based systems like X-COM or Final Fantasy i can tell where things go south. Here it could be any number of things: is it because my rogues aren?t properly positioned for backstabs? Am I not making use of the environment? Is my warrior not drawing enemy aggro to themselves enough? Is my gear too weak? Are there skills that could be more useful? Are my stats allocated wrong? Fuck if I would be able to tell any of these things based on combat thus far.
Well, off to a good start for the week! What are you guys playing right now?