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u/Denhonator

▲ 37 r/JRPG

JRPGs that stop introducing new gameplay elements too early

I've been playing a lot of different JRPGs lately, mostly older games, and this is a gripe I've run into with multiple games. If I've seen everything the gameplay has to offer half-way in, the latter half will feel boring gameplay-wise. There may be some new items or skills, but sometimes it doesn't affect how you play so it makes no difference in this regard. I'd rather beat the game without seeing all the gameplay it has to offer than see it all too early.

Some examples:

  • Bahamut Lagoon. About 1/4 in you've probably seen everything the dragons can do. After about halfway point, every level felt the same gameplay-wise. Needed more variety in gameplay.

  • Valkyrie Profile (still playing). By the end of disc 1, I'm running out of things to level up despite getting new characters all the time, you just get some much EXP. Hardly getting new equipment, spells or skills anymore. You get too much too fast and then it slows down.

  • Trails in the Sky FC (original). Loved the story, and the gameplay and Orbment system is fun to play with, but you can get the best spells pretty early and spam them all the way to the end. IMO they could've slightly held back on giving quartz with high elements or just made the requirements for top spells higher.

  • Grandia 3. There are some cool things you get later, but you can get top tier spells about half-way in, and those spells trump pretty much all else. I really loved the combat in early game, but latter half got stale with spell spam. I wish the focus stayed more on physical attacking and aerial combos.

Any games you have this gripe with? Or the opposite, games that had very satisfying gameplay progression all the way to the end?

reddit.com
u/Denhonator — 10 hours ago
▲ 71 r/WorldOfYs

I made a co-op mod for Ys I & 2 Chronicles for PC!

All the necessary instructions, details, and download can be found from the GitHub page, but basically you just extract the zip in the game folder and play.

I got the idea to do this since in both games you have a temporary party member of sorts, and because the controls are very simple. Long story short, the idea worked, and I have finished co-op playthroughs of both games with a friend I was testing with! I think it's great fun, the added quicksave and regen speedup features also help keep the downtime low.

I would recommend having played them unmodded first for the original experience, then doing co-op in Nightmare difficulty, but anything goes. However, testing was done on Nightmare and I haven't worked on Time Trials specifically so they don't fully work.

Let me know if you find any major issues or if you have any suggestions! I could also make a separate mod for just the quicksave and regen speedup if people want that.

Here's a gif from when I was testing boss targeting in Ys 1: giphy

github.com
u/Denhonator — 6 days ago
▲ 0 r/JRPG

Screenshot, Steam

It's honestly wrong that the game has mixed reviews. As someone who enjoys JRPGs with deep gameplay mechanics such as SaGa, this game immediately hooked me. It's top down, tile-based, turn-based like other mystery dungeon games, where every action, even moving 1 tile, is a turn. Positioning is important, there are many effects that affect positioning, the game rewards thinking about your every action, yet the pacing of the gameplay is fast. There are boss fights that challenge you in every way you can expect: learning boss patterns, making appropriate preparations and improvising in the moment. You also first need to get through the dungeon to reach the boss and dying would send you back, so the stakes are high and winning feels very rewarding.

One of the things that make the game stand out is the crafting: you can craft weapons any time, anywhere. You can use the scrap of your previous weapon to carry over what you had into a new weapon. You can gradually build towards stronger and stronger weapons. You can make weapons for different situations. The further you get, the better the materials. There are over 100 weapons. Depending on the materials, you can create different ones, so you constantly keep finding something new. Combined with additional effects you can add, the possibilities are endless and you can create various builds that feel completely different from each other.

I could talk about the gameplay all day with how much depth it has, but as for other aspects, I'd say the story is decent, dialog is decently entertaining and fully voice acted in Japanese, music is mostly royalty free but it fits and there's variety. Visuals are really good, especially the bosses look very impressive and menacing, and there's some really nice art in cutscenes. There are some quests and hand-designed dungeons. Overall it took me about 70h to beat on hardest difficulty, and aside from a few cases, I was always making progress and seeing new content. There's also post-game.

I went back to play the original Shiren The Wanderer to get an understanding of the roots of the mystery dungeon genre, and wow, it's cool what Shiren did back at the time, but also this is a huge evolution of that. I'll have to try some other mystery dungeon games, but man it's hard to imagine anything topping this gameplay-wise for me.

Also, let me address what some might be wondering: yes, it's an Eroge, except the Steam version is censored and completely omits such scenes. And yes, there's a patch to add them in. There's some lore in some of them but nothing important.

u/Denhonator — 23 days ago