Games you're playing: The 2009 edition.

[kokushishin]

Dissidia:  Backtracking to get Destiny Points stuff I missed earlier and getting materials for the higher level gear. 

[Sierra]

Ok. Just finished that fight I was saying was evil on Flay CQ 5. Turns out that was one of the job fights, and I went to the wrong area. Either that, or he's farther in.

CQ fights are almost always pushovers, so that likely was a job fight you ran into.

[Magetastic]

Yeah, it was a job fight. Definitely made me feel kinda proud I was able to solo that without exhausting all my resources, though. >_>;

[Ultradude]

Finished SRW Alpha. Awesome last battle. SPACE MONSTERS EVERYWHERE AND THEN EUZETH AND THEN LAODEKIA KEEPS HEALING AND OH MY GOD FOUR LAODEKIA'S AND A MULTI-FULL-HEALING EUZETH. Astranagant kind of blunts all of this though by being insane. Fortunately for Euzeth, I didn't have SRX quite beefed up enough for OHKO with HTB Cannon, so he got to spend his full heals. The Laodekia's were nasty though; anyone relying on Focus to survive had trouble evading them, and they did take a few guys out before I got enough firepower over there to smash Euzeth to bits. Even lost Granzon to Euzeth >_>

I'll go over a few points about the game in general later in the week, though suffice to say it was fun.

[Grefter]

...yeah, I won't deny GX is an unappealing game, and it does have a lot of issues, but of them, the Battle System and core gameplay around it are not among them.

It ultimately comes down to, if you can stomach G3 plot and played through Grandia 1 and 2 you have very little reason for just palming off GX.  Sure it is shit, but so were the other three.  It has it's problems, so did the others.  It isn't Great Greed, so harden the fuck up and stop pretending this is Battle Toads shit right there when it is really just generic and long (you know, like all those Dragon Quest games you played you fucking retarded hack.  Or Final Fantasy 1 which you love oh so much).  It was the first Grandia game to actually try.  G3 brought it to another level, but Grandia Xtreme in spite of the amazingly crappy name was worth a look when it was in a bargain bin somewhere.

Edit - Obviously not directed at Meeple which I am sure he could have worked out because he isn't a robot monkey with Down Syndrome and syphilis, but you know, just saying.  Generic swearing statement.

[DjinnAndTonic]

This really brings us back to the argument of "Which is worse: Bad at all points, or good base concept with glaringly bad flaws that ruin it and give you that 'let down' feeling"

Personally, I find #2 to be more offensive, so I loathe G3, Eternal Sonata, and XS3. Whereas Shining Force I'm okay with. GX is probably closer to Shining Force objectively, but I personally really like the Grandia battle system and the characters/setting from G1/2, so it's another example of 'good base concept with too much let down' to me.

[Grefter]

Eternal Sonata and XS3 are not good base concepts.  Eternal Sonata PLOT is a good base concept and everything else about it is a complete and total abject failure.  When your gameplay isn't even remotely competent in design there is no single redeeming factor to your gameplay.  XS3 gameplay is just generic and is backing it up with one of the worst ideas for a plot ever dreamed up (This being a problem exclusively with 3 since so many of the problems are non-existent in the other games in the series).

[Luther Lansfeld]

I dunno how you think G3 is a good base concept that is ruined. It has good gameplay. It has bad plot. It always had both. It never let on that the plot was anything but bad.

[Cmdr_King]

It did?  I seem to recall the earlygame having a fluffy, inoffensive plot involving a boy and his mother on an epic quest to get him laid by an airplane.  Or something like that.  Occasionally funny and, despite any feelings towards Alonso, harmless.  It then spends 20 hours being offensively bad with Emelious before returning to its roots with Xorn.  So I can see being disappointed with it pretty easily.

XS3's base concept is "finish the story of Xenosaga", which more than a few people would have considered a good thing before XS3 came about.  Cynical as it had been on the subject before, I don't think anyone could reasonably have called "humans fail so bad at accepting one another that it's DESTROYING REALITY" as what the main plot was building up to, y'know?

[Luther Lansfeld]

I think you people take the plot too seriously, myself. The over-the-top laughter, the over-the-top sword, the over-the-top emo... there's no way they were being 100% serious with that. Same with Violetta. She spouts S&M quotes in her battle for god's sake.

[superaielman]

Eternal Sontana's plot is meant to be taken seriously which is one of the reasons it's not a good game in spite of all the potential it had on the gameplay front. BLAH to just how bad it was there. And I haven't finished the game.

G3 just feels like a step down from G2 on plot/characters, which is where I think Djinn's frustration is coming from.

[Luther Lansfeld]

GOD IS ACTUALLY EVIL! (ALL OF A SUDDEN) PLUCKY BOY AND INNOCENT SWEET MAIDEN GO ON A QUEST TO STOP THE EVIL GOD!

Truly, G3 has to live up to high standards.

[superaielman]

And it fails miserably to meet those. G2 did go into the crapper in the second half, but the first half of the game was damn good.

[DjinnAndTonic]

Oh, personally, I have no problem with Violetta, and yes, Emelious is funny. But Slayers is also over-the-top and funny and it's not full of plot holes. Grandia 1 and 2 are both pretty light-hearted but by the end, they at least tell a cohesive story without dropping plot threads left and right. (ES and GX does this too). Actually, I can probably pinpoint all of my frustrations with game plots based on the number of inappropriately dropped plot threads.

And personally, I found the Harmony Chains from ES to be pretty fun. The dark/light concept could have been awesome too... just didn't come into play often enough to matter.


VPDS: Complete! Woohoo, finally finished another handheld game. It takes me so long to finish these things. A Path final boss was fun. More stylish than I expected. Ancel was a nice addition. Ending was kinda meh, but taking all three Endings into account, it's nice that he gets some measure of happiness.

Anyway, started Seraphic Gate. Verdict: Awesome. Tsudere Tilte makes her existence validated, at least. Overall, it was pretty amusing to get slapstick humor out of the goth-and-grim VPDS cast. My first opponent is Gabriel Celeste? Man, this is gonna a slaughter. ^_^

Current plan is for Wyl + Mage harem (Fauxnel is girly enough to count to me). Anything I should be worried about with using 3 mages?

[DjinnAndTonic]

GOD IS ACTUALLY EVIL! (ALL OF A SUDDEN) PLUCKY BOY AND INNOCENT SWEET MAIDEN GO ON A QUEST TO STOP THE EVIL GOD!

Truly, G3 has to live up to high standards.

Truly the most realistic view of religion ever.

[Dark Holy Elf]

G1's plot was outright bad (go to hell, Guido), G2 had its moments but also has flaws, and I think in some ways plays into the very "letdown" Djinn talked about, with Ryudo and Millenia in particular wasting away as the game goes on. It's still the best plot game in the series, but the series was never about plot (sounds like GX backs me up, here). Basically, you don't go into G3 thinking "Man I bet this game will have a terrific plot; that is why I will play this game!" unless you are seriously uninformed or forgetful about the previous games bearing the Grandia title. I don't really see much room for letdown unless you have extremely bizarre expectations.

[Luther Lansfeld]

And it fails miserably to meet those. G2 did go into the crapper in the second half, but the first half of the game was damn good.

Because of MELFICE?

[DjinnAndTonic]

Grandia 1 always felt like an evolution of Lunar. Light-hearted adventure. You start the game by -playing pretend-. It's childish and charming. The plot pretty admirably holds this throughout the game. Personally I still find it the most focused story of the series.

[Shale]

It definitely has a charm that the later games lack (part of the problem with G3 is that it tried waaaaaaaaaay too hard to make Yuki into Justin: Now With Airplane Fetish). The charm just gets balanced out by Guido.

[superaielman]

And it fails miserably to meet those. G2 did go into the crapper in the second half, but the first half of the game was damn good.

Because of MELFICE?

Because it does a good job with characters and yes, the plot does have something going for it. G3 has nothing in that department. G3 lives and dies on the gameplay like you said, but it should've been more. Age does play into things some. I expect a bit more from a game released later on. G3 has what, ten years on G1 and it isn't an improvement on anything on the plot or characters front. Gameplay has better execution thanks to challenge level. 


G1 I liked and feel no shame for doing so, the sense of exploration the game did was neat and the battle system was very cool. There's plenty you can hold against the game, from Guido to the challenge level, but it worked.

[DjinnAndTonic]

It definitely has a charm that the later games lack (part of the problem with G3 is that it tried waaaaaaaaaay too hard to make Yuki into Justin: Now With Airplane Fetish). The charm just gets balanced out by Guido.

Guido exists for like half a dungeon? I honestly forget anything he did. My impression of him was "whatever", but harmless to the overall feel of the game.

[superaielman]

Guido is around for most of the game and gives Alonso and Emelious a run for their money for worst character in the series.

[Meeplelard]

G2 had a good base for characters to work with.  Ryudo was a dick of a main who was actually fun about it, and Elena's naivete bounced off it nicely.  Roan was a kid who wasn't annoying for once, and Millenia was Millenia.  Issue is...as the game goes on, characters start losing these traits.  The Melfice arc completely degrades Ryudo's character; he no longer has his snappy lines and he's being totally serious.  I'll grant that you could argue its reasonable HERE, but he doesn't have the rebound you'd expect (as in, the shit is over, now time to get over it and get back to his usual self); he instead DEGRADES FURTHER.  ANd thing is, G2's core plot itself was NEVER good; its basically "Run around the world beating up parts of the devil!" Pretty bland, though it had decent ARCS, the core plot was always bad, and Melfice didn't do much but add to Ryudo backstory, at the cost of hacking away at what made his character actually fun.

G1...I dunno; I wasn't fond of the cast from the get go.  Seeing Justin get tossed out of a building from the start, and then get repremanded...that made me go "...this is going to be a long game" instead of "Oh how cute!"  Justin was unbelievably stupid about things.  The worst part about Grandia, as I've stated before, is that its not just Justin is an idiot...

His idiocy gets PRAISED by everyone and everything barring like one or two fo the villains and Lily.  He says something completely naive and stupid, and then game is like "Oh! THat's so insightful and spiritual! To be young again!"  Worse yet, Feena has quite possibly the quickest slam of Chickification ever.  Here we have the self proclaimed World's Greatest Adventurer, and it seems based on her previous actions, people actually accept that she is this, and she even shows she's got experience at this stuff despite her age...
THen she meets JUstin, and after one dungeon with him, she's already turned into a Damsel in Distress, and the rest of the game is just bawling over Justin.  Now it is possible to make a character like that work...but you need to be gradual about it.  Look at FF6's Celes if you want a similar style of development, for someone who actually pulled this off successfully (not perfect comparison, but best one that comes to mind.)

There's a difference between "Light Hearted" and "downright bad writing."  Grandia falls under the latter.  A game like La Pucelle is Light hearted, while being overall serious, but it doesn't just sort of spit on its characters.  And I refuse to give credit to Grandia for being parodies, cause well, they fail at that too.  Again, Feena's moment chickification isn't a parody, its a face palm inducing moment.

[DjinnAndTonic]

I remember being angry about the Chickification thing when I first played Grandia. At least initially, I had that same reaction to when Feena got kidnapped by the lamer from the Adventurers' Guild who wanted to marry her. But honestly, once they get out of that situation (hey, anyone can get caught by surprise, right?), it's not as if Feena suddenly loses Adventurer competency. She's still basically instructing Justin along, but now she's treating him a little more like an equal. Though admittedly, the romantic plot does subsume her character development, and it's not a particularly deep romance. Not the worst by far, at least Justin and Feena interact and the game makes attempt at showing them as a healthy couple who actually have something in common (besides dead parents or the fact that they share a grudge against the final boss...).

Justin's idiocy... honestly, I just don't remember it being all that bad. He's young, but really not that much worse about falling for stupid traps or acting recklessly than most young male mains. Not that I particularly approve of this trend, but it's not innately bad. The personality type can be charming, and in Grandia, this works really well with the tone of the story.

[Talaysen]

Man, Guido isn't even the worst character in Grandia.  Justin and Feena are both worse (Justin because he's just fucking stupid and Feena for basically what Meeple said).  And they're around for a lot longer.  If you're going to bitch about Grandia characters do it right.

Granted, a lot of the issue was also due to the plot just going in directions that made the characters react really stupidly.  Basically fucked up everything there.

There's a difference between "Light Hearted" and "downright bad writing."  Grandia falls under the latter.

Yeah, there's a difference because they're completely independent of one another. Grandia doesn't only fall under the latter, it falls under both.