Various role-playing RPG game stuff not deserving its own thread

[wndrbr]

Pillars of Eternity gets a 10th anniversary patch https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/13457 ... 5-is-live/

The Balance Man forever balancing.

It also says they are adding a turn-based mode later this year. I can't wait to fight hundreds of xaurips very slowly.

took them ten years to make this patch, maybe they used all this time to redesign encounters?

[J1M]

Don't they all have shaolin kung-fu monks?

He's talking about the late-3.5 edition supplement "The Book of Nine Swords" where fighters were given weapon magic "epic abilities" that could do more than just hurt people.
It was the first step into what would become 4th edition class abilities.

"ahhh nooo you can't just make fighters do more than attack, they must be subservient to casters ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh"

It's worse than that. As long as you call it a feat and give fighters extra feats, everyone loves it. If you call it a power they cry videogame.

[rusty_shackleford]

ESPECIALLY because this approach led to 4th edition.

From what I've seen, the main issue with 4E is they use the same language to describe the effects of magical and non-magical abilities. Likely as a way to simplify the system overall, but it makes the magical feel mundane.

[Vergil]

Pillars of Eternity gets a 10th anniversary patch https://forums.obsidian.net/topic/13457 ... 5-is-live/

The Balance Man forever balancing.

This is actual mental illness

[rusty_shackleford]

Can't imagine what would cause someone to look up a guide on how to level optimally in a single-player game

Selection_027.webp

[DagothGeas5]

Can't imagine what would cause someone to look up a guide on how to level optimally in a single-player game

Not sure if this applies to all cases, but I know through a friend that some people do this because it's how they play, which is not much playing than it is a "most efficient way to check all the boxes, get the best result (highest numbers + less time) and get the true-best ending", then they sell the game the second they are "done" with it and have it "gilded platinum" (translated roughly from their saying of "platinato" in Italian, though I am unsure what that means).

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Unexpectedly, the latest Trails game which released last year has had its English localization announced today and will be releasing this fall. That means for the first time in the franchise's history, the English releases will have caught up with the Japanese releases. Maybe we will get a simultaneous worldwide release for the next game in 2026?




Last week I bought the CLE port thinking that Durante's port would be at least a year away, and that the fan translation patch would be completely finished soon, but maybe I will refund and just wait a few months for the better optimized port. Since this game has a lot of returning characters I like from the Cold Steel games, maybe I will play with the English dub this time. I didn't like the dubs of the first two Daybreak games from what brief snippets I heard.

[Tangerine]

"gilded platinum" (translated roughly from their saying of "platinato" in Italian, though I am unsure what that means).

It means they got all the achievements.

[Roguey]

Solo-dev The Outer Worlds-clone is out.


Four years ago on another forum Rusty said this had potential.

[psychic_dream]

Out of all the Fire Emblem entries, I’ve only played Path of Radiance. Are the newer ones any good? If I recall correctly, the story in Path of Radiance was pretty typical by JRPG standards. I’ve always heard this series described as the bedrock of degeneracy in Japanese games—incest, lolis, faggotry, and the like. How much of that is present in the later games? I remember when Engage came out, the graphics looked like something a literal who indie dev would churn out.

[Oyster Sauce]

Truly the worst designs ever seen

[Tangerine]

Out of all the Fire Emblem entries, I’ve only played Path of Radiance. Are the newer ones any good? If I recall correctly, the story in Path of Radiance was pretty typical by JRPG standards. I’ve always heard this series described as the bedrock of degeneracy in Japanese games—incest, lolis, faggotry, and the like. How much of that is present in the later games? I remember when Engage came out, the graphics looked like something a literal who indie dev would churn out.

I don't know if they started trying to appeal to women with Awakening, but the dating sim aspect of it was like cat nip to them and the series has been ultra-faggoty ever since.

[rusty_shackleford]

Out of all the Fire Emblem entries, I’ve only played Path of Radiance. Are the newer ones any good? If I recall correctly, the story in Path of Radiance was pretty typical by JRPG standards. I’ve always heard this series described as the bedrock of degeneracy in Japanese games—incest, lolis, faggotry, and the like. How much of that is present in the later games? I remember when Engage came out, the graphics looked like something a literal who indie dev would churn out.

I don't know if they started trying to appeal to women with Awakening, but the dating sim aspect of it was like cat nip to them and the series has been ultra-faggoty ever since.

Wonder if jap games had the same issue as western games where women create an extremely vocal echo chamber that developers mistake for lots of fans rather than women just being much more vocal than men inherently

[Oyster Sauce]

Out of all the Fire Emblem entries, I’ve only played Path of Radiance. Are the newer ones any good? If I recall correctly, the story in Path of Radiance was pretty typical by JRPG standards. I’ve always heard this series described as the bedrock of degeneracy in Japanese games—incest, lolis, faggotry, and the like. How much of that is present in the later games? I remember when Engage came out, the graphics looked like something a literal who indie dev would churn out.

I don't know if they started trying to appeal to women with Awakening, but the dating sim aspect of it was like cat nip to them and the series has been ultra-faggoty ever since.

Wonder if jap games had the same issue as western games where women create an extremely vocal echo chamber that developers mistake for lots of fans rather than women just being much more vocal than men inherently

Nah, the series really started doing numbers when they let players pick a lady to knock up.

[Finarfin]

How is it gay to include romances where the male protagonist can marry and knock up a woman of choice?

[rusty_shackleford]

How is it gay to include romances where the male protagonist can marry and knock up a woman of choice?

It's gay because you're sharing your waifu with other men

[psychic_dream]

Out of all the Fire Emblem entries, I’ve only played Path of Radiance. Are the newer ones any good? If I recall correctly, the story in Path of Radiance was pretty typical by JRPG standards. I’ve always heard this series described as the bedrock of degeneracy in Japanese games—incest, lolis, faggotry, and the like. How much of that is present in the later games? I remember when Engage came out, the graphics looked like something a literal who indie dev would churn out.

I don't know if they started trying to appeal to women with Awakening, but the dating sim aspect of it was like cat nip to them and the series has been ultra-faggoty ever since.

I got through the sequel to a certain point and then gave up. It feels cheaply made, Imo. There's no party member banter between chapters, the new cast is uninteresting, the annoying weapon durability mechanic is still present, and so on. Oh, and the character portraits look like something out of a yaoi manga. There's a random blonde **** thief recruit who keeps raving about how much she hates men and can't wait to meet the green-haired princess from the previous game. I assume it only gets worse from there. I mean, is Three Houses at least fun? I can ignore all the diversity stuff if it's only confined to irrelevant random villagers you meet along the way.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Out of all the Fire Emblem entries, I’ve only played Path of Radiance. Are the newer ones any good? If I recall correctly, the story in Path of Radiance was pretty typical by JRPG standards. I’ve always heard this series described as the bedrock of degeneracy in Japanese games—incest, lolis, faggotry, and the like. How much of that is present in the later games? I remember when Engage came out, the graphics looked like something a literal who indie dev would churn out.

Awakening and Fates are genuinely good games. Good aesthetics, decent music, likeable characters, fun gameplay, lots of additional content if you want more. Fates' plot gets unfairly picked on over the rest because it had the misfortune to release in 2015 at the height of CinemaSins'/video essay millennial pedantism when people thought that "worldbuilding" and "plot holes" were the end all-be-all of videogames. Though Xander recruiting that serial killer Peri as is still odd. I think Fates is actually stronger than Awakening due to being multiple campaigns in one. You get to pick between two different factions - whichever aesthetic appeals to you the most - and get a completely different campaign for doing so. Hoshido is cool and quite unique, being medieval fantasy Japan was opposed to medieval fantasy Europe which is ubiquitous in this franchise. And because you are fighting the other faction that you could have (or did) play as, it lends a greater weight to the story since they were humanized as people instead of just being vague throwaway enemies. The later parts of the campaign when people die is a little saddening. And there is a third route with a happily ever after ending if you want that too. The inclusion of timetravelling future children is wonky but it's still satisfying to mix and match your favorite ships and read dialogue and get to see their son and his relationship with them. Birthright has mostly straight forward "kill everyone" missions, but you can raise the difficulty (there are three settings) if you want to engage with the mechanics more.








The degeneracy in 3DS Fire Emblem was minor. Fates introduced a side party member who can be made a couple with a male player character, but if you don't do that then he just reads as a normal guy. I don't think there is actual full blooded brother/sister incest. IIRC you are cousins or not even related at all. You had the same mother but different fathers. Ryoma in retrospect comes off as manipulative because he tried pressure Corrin to join his side by playing up "we are fullblooded brothers" thing when he knew that was the not the case. Anyway, you can still marry Hinoka which is all that matters.

The main issues with Fates is the English lolcowlization by Nintendo Treehouse, which considerably butchered the script. A lot of the plot holes and inconsistencies that people tunnelvisioned on turned out to be the result of Treehouse's meddling. An entire conversation was torn out because the lolcowlizers thought that they were being funny. There is fortunately a fan translation patch but you will need to do some work to apply it. The English dub is lackluster, there are some decent voices in there but also a lot mediocre takes, apparently because Treehouse didn't let people even see let alone hear details about what character they were voicing or what the situation was.

[ArcaneLurker]

Out of all the Fire Emblem entries, I’ve only played Path of Radiance. Are the newer ones any good? If I recall correctly, the story in Path of Radiance was pretty typical by JRPG standards. I’ve always heard this series described as the bedrock of degeneracy in Japanese games—incest, lolis, faggotry, and the like. How much of that is present in the later games? I remember when Engage came out, the graphics looked like something a literal who indie dev would churn out.

Engage is definitely one to ignore, but Three Houses is enjoyable, it's got less of what you mentioned, but it's still ultimately anime.

@Kowe has been playing it and discussed modding it.

[psychic_dream]

I don’t understand why people are so fond of Dragon Quest. I played 1, 2, 4, and 11, and they all felt uninspired and boring. Especially XI—it’s the most vanilla JRPG experience you could expect from a relatively recent release. It also doesn't completely escape my nitpicks with anything made by the Japanese, like the "she may look like a little girl, but she's actually much older than she appears" trope. The melodramatic and overly drawn-out departure scene between the mermaid and the fisherman didn’t help either. In addition, There's this flaming homo party member, Sylvando, who keeps pestering you to ram his butthole. Like ****** I’m not interested, **** off. But aside from that, it’s pretty average across the board. Maybe
The fans make countless excuses for it because it’s one of the few JRPG franchises, if not any big established game franchise in general, that has stayed true and authentic to its original formula. At it's core, a homage to old Final Fantasy games and traditional JRPG fandom.

[rusty_shackleford]

I don’t understand why people are so fond of Dragon Quest. I played 1, 2, 4, and 11, and they all felt uninspired and boring. Especially XI—it’s the most vanilla JRPG experience you could expect from a relatively recent release. It also doesn't completely escape my nitpicks with anything made by the Japanese, like the "she may look like a little girl, but she's actually much older than she appears" trope. The melodramatic and overly drawn-out departure scene between the mermaid and the fisherman didn’t help either. In addition, There's this flaming homo party member, Sylvando, who keeps pestering you to ram his butthole. Like ****** I’m not interested, **** off. But aside from that, it’s pretty average across the board. Maybe
The fans make countless excuses for it because it’s one of the few JRPG franchises, if not any big established game franchise in general, that has stayed true and authentic to its original formula. At it's core, a homage to old Final Fantasy games and traditional JRPG fandom.

It's bog standard JRPG. If you're a hardcore JRPG fan I guess it's fun. Otherwise, pass.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

I don’t understand why people are so fond of Dragon Quest. I played 1, 2, 4, and 11, and they all felt uninspired and boring. Especially XI—it’s the most vanilla JRPG experience you could expect from a relatively recent release. It also doesn't completely escape my nitpicks with anything made by the Japanese, like the "she may look like a little girl, but she's actually much older than she appears" trope. The melodramatic and overly drawn-out departure scene between the mermaid and the fisherman didn’t help either. In addition, There's this flaming homo party member, Sylvando, who keeps pestering you to ram his butthole. Like ****** I’m not interested, **** off. But aside from that, it’s pretty average across the board. Maybe
The fans make countless excuses for it because it’s one of the few JRPG franchises, if not any big established game franchise in general, that has stayed true and authentic to its original formula. At it's core, a homage to old Final Fantasy games and traditional JRPG fandom.

The Dragon Quest fandom I feel is somewhat defensive/embittered. DQ along with FF and Ys are the grandfathers of the JRPG genre, but only FF got parroted in the popular history in the West. Ys being unknown in the West is understandable because Falcom largely ignored the West until the mid 2010s, by which point the window of opportunity for them to become a household name here had long since elapsed. But DQ was Enix's flagship series, and when Enix merged with Square there was the potential for DQ to get promoted just as heavily as FF did, but SE didn't do that. It also became popular to beat on FF during the late 2000s/2010s and talk about how it has declined, thus creating a window of opportunity for DQ fans to claim that their favorite series has been hanging on to tradition and all that.

[UltraFan123]

I think the late Akira Toriyama was also a key figure in the design of the OG Dragon Quest, so now that he passed away his hardcore fans would obviously be quite defensive of the work he left behind.

[rusty_shackleford]

I don’t understand why people are so fond of Dragon Quest. I played 1, 2, 4, and 11, and they all felt uninspired and boring. Especially XI—it’s the most vanilla JRPG experience you could expect from a relatively recent release. It also doesn't completely escape my nitpicks with anything made by the Japanese, like the "she may look like a little girl, but she's actually much older than she appears" trope. The melodramatic and overly drawn-out departure scene between the mermaid and the fisherman didn’t help either. In addition, There's this flaming homo party member, Sylvando, who keeps pestering you to ram his butthole. Like ****** I’m not interested, **** off. But aside from that, it’s pretty average across the board. Maybe
The fans make countless excuses for it because it’s one of the few JRPG franchises, if not any big established game franchise in general, that has stayed true and authentic to its original formula. At it's core, a homage to old Final Fantasy games and traditional JRPG fandom.

The Dragon Quest fandom I feel is somewhat defensive/embittered. DQ along with FF and Ys are the grandfathers of the JRPG genre, but only FF got parroted in the popular history in the West. Ys being unknown in the West is understandable because Falcom largely ignored the West until the mid 2010s, by which point the window of opportunity for them to become a household name here had long since elapsed. But DQ was Enix's flagship series, and when Enix merged with Square there was the potential for DQ to get promoted just as heavily as FF did, but SE didn't do that. It also became popular to beat on FF during the late 2000s/2010s and talk about how it has declined, thus creating a window of opportunity for DQ fans to claim that their favorite series has been hanging on to tradition and all that.

Disagree react because I disagree with this:

and when Enix merged with Square there was the potential for DQ to get promoted just as heavily as FF did, but SE didn't do that

DQ got ignored in the west because it did nothing special. There were plenty of dungeon crawlers with sparse stories available already.

Final Fantasy games were popular because they told a story with a coherent narrative in a time when few games had much dialogue at all. Referring to e.g., Final Fantasy IV which was very ahead of its time in terms of narrative. Hard to think of other contemporary games with a similar game-spanning narrative with influential characters, etc., Wasteland and Star Control 2 come to mind, for sure. But there definitely weren't that many.

Dragon Quest wasn't even close to being on the same level as that. I don't know if it really ever caught up, but if it did, it was way too late.

[edit]
Also, the decision to use an anime artstyle definitely hurts its marketability in the west. FF7 having a more realistic style had great western appeal.

[Cipher]

Unexpectedly, the latest Trails game which released last year has had its English localization announced today and will be releasing this fall. That means for the first time in the franchise's history, the English releases will have caught up with the Japanese releases. Maybe we will get a simultaneous worldwide release for the next game in 2026?




Last week I bought the CLE port thinking that Durante's port would be at least a year away, and that the fan translation patch would be completely finished soon, but maybe I will refund and just wait a few months for the better optimized port. Since this game has a lot of returning characters I like from the Cold Steel games, maybe I will play with the English dub this time. I didn't like the dubs of the first two Daybreak games from what brief snippets I heard.

Hopefully we get the Sky 1 remake, as well.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Unexpectedly, the latest Trails game which released last year has had its English localization announced today and will be releasing this fall. That means for the first time in the franchise's history, the English releases will have caught up with the Japanese releases. Maybe we will get a simultaneous worldwide release for the next game in 2026?




Last week I bought the CLE port thinking that Durante's port would be at least a year away, and that the fan translation patch would be completely finished soon, but maybe I will refund and just wait a few months for the better optimized port. Since this game has a lot of returning characters I like from the Cold Steel games, maybe I will play with the English dub this time. I didn't like the dubs of the first two Daybreak games from what brief snippets I heard.

Hopefully we get the Sky 1 remake, as well.

A new company made up of former XSEED staff, GungHo, is localizing the remake and it has been slated for a worldwide release this Fall.

[rusty_shackleford]

If I had to pick a similar western RPG series to DQ, it would be something like Might & Magic. Never highly influential, rather derivative, has a dedicated fanbase that enjoys it for what it is but it would never get near the top of any serious ranking lists.
IIRC, unlike Wizardry, Might & Magic was never that popular in Japan for some reason as another parallel.

[Cipher]

Out of all the Fire Emblem entries, I’ve only played Path of Radiance. Are the newer ones any good? If I recall correctly, the story in Path of Radiance was pretty typical by JRPG standards. I’ve always heard this series described as the bedrock of degeneracy in Japanese games—incest, lolis, faggotry, and the like. How much of that is present in the later games? I remember when Engage came out, the graphics looked like something a literal who indie dev would churn out.

IIRC, the 4th game, Genealogy of the Holy War is the one that has all that medieval incest stuff with the children system that is required to pass on the holy blood to use the holy weapons. I heard that Sacred Stones has more sexual/romantic undertones in the relationship of the protagonists who are twins, but the english version feels just fraternal as siblings that love each other.

It was the 10th game, Awakening that started with the real degen stuff and the focus shift into more of a visual novel romance with some fights in-between. The latest one has very solid and fun gameplay but the story is garbage and amongst the worst writing the franchise has seen. Granted, FE has never been about deep storytelling and more of a fantasy anime with tacticool fights in between.

If you want to check out the Switch ones, which are the 2 most recent ones, just use a Switch emulator and pirate them.

[Cipher]

Unexpectedly, the latest Trails game which released last year has had its English localization announced today and will be releasing this fall. That means for the first time in the franchise's history, the English releases will have caught up with the Japanese releases. Maybe we will get a simultaneous worldwide release for the next game in 2026?




Last week I bought the CLE port thinking that Durante's port would be at least a year away, and that the fan translation patch would be completely finished soon, but maybe I will refund and just wait a few months for the better optimized port. Since this game has a lot of returning characters I like from the Cold Steel games, maybe I will play with the English dub this time. I didn't like the dubs of the first two Daybreak games from what brief snippets I heard.

Hopefully we get the Sky 1 remake, as well.

A new company made up of former XSEED staff, GungHo, is localizing the remake and it has been slated for a worldwide release this Fall.

And there was much rejoicing!

[Cipher]

Truly the worst designs ever seen

What, you don't like Colgate Sue and Stu?