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

[Acrux]

Bahamut Lagoon is all about human and dragon companions.
War of Nephilim has dragon riders.
Shining Force (can't remember if it's 1 or 2).
Final Fantasy Tactics, Ogre Tactics, and the Ogre Battle games.
You can get a fairy dragon familiar in BG2.

[UltraFan123]

Also, anyone who is serious about trying Owlcat's Wrath of the Righteous should definitely install the Wokeless Wrath mod of this site.
viewtopic.php?p=92769-wokeless-wrath-1- ... ous#p92769

[Oyster Sauce]

Are there any RPGs where you can have a dragon as your companion?

DragonFable

[Vergil]

Also, anyone who is serious about trying Owlcat's Wrath of the Righteous should definitely install the Wokeless Wrath mod of this site.

There's deep lore regarding this you couldn't possibly know or understand.

[Vergil]

Also, anyone who is serious about trying Owlcat's Wrath of the Righteous should definitely install the Wokeless Wrath mod of this site.

There's deep lore regarding this you couldn't possibly know or understand.

Lol you actually joined like a couple weeks after
viewtopic.php?p=93114-administrative-action#p93114

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Are there any RPGs where you can have a dragon as your companion?

Final Fantasy XI has the Dragoon job (you become the last dragoon ever, their order long extinct), which gets a baby wyvern pet. This pet is a large portion of your dragon, which is very convenient for preventing yourself from ripping aggro off the tank since you (your character himself) isn't the source for all of your high damage going out (as opposed to something like samurai or dark knight, where the player alone is dealing so much damage he often rips aggro and can get hurt pretty badly or killed). The wyvern also has breath attack with functionally that depends on what your equipped subjob is. If you equip a melee class subjob like samurai, the wyvern will use an elemental breath whenever you cast a weaponskill (usually once you have built up 1,000 TP). However, you can equip a mage job like Red Mage which gives your wyvern a healing breath, and if you fast cast a spell like bio, your wyvern will use a healing breath on the lowest HP party member. You can use macros to swap in and out equipment during battle that will boost the power of the healing breath.




Tactics Ogre has the Dragon Tamer class, which can get a dragon pet.

Suikoden 3. After his dragon having been shot down in the first game, and acquiring a dragon egg in the second game which hatched into Bright in the visual novel, Futch in Suikoden 3 has a fully grown Bright. If you have both Futch and Bright in the party together, Futch will ride Bright. Futch has also inherited Humphrey's huge sword too. One of the highlights of S3 to see how far that character had come.







The main character of Fire Emblem Fates, Corrin, is part dragon and can turn into a hoofed dragon during one mission. I don't recall if he can transform in the rest of the game.




The main character in Shining Resonance Refrain can transform into a dragon.




In the Final Fantasy games, the Summoner class can often summon a dragon named Bahamut. FF10 is unique in that summon is not a cutscene spell, but is actually a playable/controllable character like a party member, replacing your other party members on the field. Final Fantasy XIII and VII Rebirth also have summonable Bahamuts, but they last on the field for only a short time and it can be pretty difficult to meet the conditions to summon them.




World of Warcraft: Dragonflight introduced the Evoker class, exclusive to the new Dracthyr race. Dracthyr were draconic supersoldiers engineered by Neltharion to be the vanguard of his armies. However, Neltharion by this point was paranoid, and used a mind control artifact to ensure the Dracthyr's loyalty (even though they already truly believed in Neltharion in their leader and weren't going to defect anyway). When his artifact broke, Neltharion became fearful and put the Dracthyr in stasis because they were too powerful, rather than risk that they might one day turn against him. So they were asleep for several thousands of years until DF happens and they get awakened. Gameplay wise, Evokers mainly stand around casting magic, and occasionally use wing flaps to blow back their enemies or use breath attacks. The Augmentation specialization is unique in being support focused like paladin in that you spend a lot of your time buffing other players. A recent patch allowed Dracthyr to play as other classes like warrior and hunter, and to be able to transform and remain in human form while doing so, but Evoker dracthyr must remain in their dracthyr forms during gameplay.




Guild Wars 2: Rangers can tame two little wyvern pets.




World of Warcraft: we can now tame two models of dragon pet (pictured below). Requires grinding Valdrakken Accord reputation on your hunter to buy the item to learn to tame dragonkin.

[DagothGeas5]

Are there any RPGs where you can have a dragon as your companion?

DragonFable

I remember seeing this game as it was some sort of "pre-alpha" where it was only about a red dragon (I did not speak English at the time so I barely understood what I was clicking or what what happening). To see this again is beyond beautiful, thank your for linking it! I can finally read what it was all about though it looks quite different now

[Vergil]

Big day for the autism community https://www.nexusmods.com/fallout4/mods ... escription

[Vergil]

Guild Wars 2: Rangers can tame two little wyvern pets.

This is tempting me to try Guild Wars 2....

DragonFable

I loved the dragon guardian interrupts in Adventure Quest back in the day. I played a little bit of DragonFable (and MechaQuest) though I don't remember too much about it tbh.

[rusty_shackleford]

Are there any RPGs where you can have a dragon as your companion?

https://mightandmagic.fandom.com/wiki/Dragon_(MM8)

[Val the Moofia Boss]

This is tempting me to try Guild Wars 2....

You should go in with a few head's up:

The vanilla base game (which is free now IIRC) has lackluster first impressions. The maps look unimpressive (I guess the Ascalon maps look kinda pretty, and Shiverpeaks has some atmosphere with the snow and Jeremy Soule's music playing), don't have interesting design to them, and you are running around roflstomping mobs by yourself. There is some fun to be had in exploring the world, hearing an NPC crying for help and running to help them and feeling like an adventurer and absorbing the lore. Helping a Charr engineer test his catapult for hurtling cows and delivering beef to besieged territories. Stumbling upon a jumping puzzle and getting rewarded with a sparkly treasure chest and earning a hero point is fun.




However, I think the game most shines when you have the three main expansions, when you are going through the story and constantly visiting a new high fantasy zone every 2 to 3 hours. Gameplay wise, the Heart of Thorns maps are by far the most fun to play, with the multilayered design that makes them feel much more expansive and labyrinthine, and better designed meta events, and generally increased difficulty from the base game that makes you sit down and pay more attention to your build and what's going on. There are also some spectacular huge outdoor "raids" called meta events, where you have dozens and dozens of players across a map coordinating at multiple different locations to kill bosses and push down lanes simultaneously, climaxing in a big cool battle.

The story isn't a JRPG masterpiece, but I think there is some fun to be had here. I think the base game storyline is underrated. The Charr level 1 through 30 story is neat in how you are are working in this sorta Roman, sorta Klingon culture where being fierce and loyal to a conquering state is everything. I choose the shaman father background so that was a neat story arc. I quite liked the second half of the story when you are a commander trying to run a military campaign and working with Traehearne. For some reason a lot of people apparently hate Traehearne because he's the general and you are his right hand man, but I liked his character and liked the set up.




Seasons 1 and 2 are kinda meh. Heart of Thorns is a pretty exciting 4 hour long adventure all the way through. Season 3 is also kinda neat. Path of Fire's story had a lot of standing around and talking but at least the campaign was only 6 hours long. Season 4 is where I got pretty invested into the story and had a satisfying ending. The game could have ended there and it would have been okay, which it was written to be because there was turmoil happening behind the scenes at the studio, no third expansion had been greenlit, so season 4 could have quite possibly been the actual ending of the game. But it got greenlit for another season of patch content. Icebrood Saga had a very interesting start, but sadly more development trouble kicked in and it was aborted. The End of Dragons expansion was a disappointing conclusion to the storyline, though you do get one last Elder Dragon meta event, get some cool new elite specs, and the aesthetics of the maps were neat. I haven't bought the two smaller expansions yet, because so far the story sounds unappealing and they don't seem to offer as much content and features.



Some of the English voice acting was pretty good. Matthew Brenher as Trahearne, Steve Blum as Rytlock, and both voice actors - Ron Yuan and later Lex Lang - for the male Charr player character. I didn't like the recasted male Charr PC voice at first, but then warmed up to him and think he's great.


Once you beat the story, there isn't that much left to do besides to farm some of the masteries. You can pretty easily get to mastery level 400 without having to do the obscene icebrood saga or vanilla mastery grinds (if you see other people running around with a three digit number next to their character, that is their account's mastery level. Their character level is capped at 80). I had fun doing a lot of 5v5 rated PvP, but eventually you can only PvP on the same maps for so long and the devs stopped adding more. I think WoW's rated battlegrounds have more depth to them due to needing to ride a mount for a while to reach the objectives, so there is more importance on strategy in deciding where to commit people to, whereas in GW2 you can easily just wander around between points very quickly. The huge WvW zergs are fun at first, but again you run into the issue where you can only play on the same maps for so long, and it is hard to care about the war when you are not invested into a faction and the war takes place in an isolated pocket dimension as opposed to fighting over a world you care about. There are also some immersion breaking oddities like everyone stacking on a pin to share buffs.




Lastly, you need to be aware about the true cost of playing GW2. It is at least $120 for a good experience. You can buy the three expansions for $50, but that only gets you half of the zones and story. The other half of the game's content happens in the patches, called the Living World seasons. There are 5 seasons (1 through 4, and Icebrood Saga, which was a patch season billed as being "expansion level" but that is another kerfuffle). That costs $50. Lastly, you will need to buy some microtransaction/cash shop/P2W conveniences like more inventory space (starting with the Silverwastes zone in season 2 and the HoT map, your bags fill up fast with tons and tons of trash), a salvage o'matic so you can reduce inventory bloat very quickly on the spot, maybe another bank tab to help store key items, maybe three equipment sets so you can swap swap from berserker physical DPS glass cannon build to bulkier marauder build to a condi DoT DPS build to a WvW celestial stats (these extra inventory bag slots and cash shop equipment tabs are character specific by the way, so try out every class and race first and settle on a main before buying). If you play a big character like a Charr or a Norn, then you will want to buy a couple cash shop skins (Dreadnought Raptor, and Broad-Horned Bull for the Skyscale dragon) so you don't look like you are breaking the back of a small pony and feel stupid. Lastly, most of the best cosmetics in the game are on the cash shop, like cloaks and scarves, so you will need to pony up a little extra for that too.

This might all sound like a deterrent, but I have sunk a thousand+ hours into GW2. I would say that I got many hours of fun for the amount of money spent.

[rusty_shackleford]

The living world/expansion stories suck IMO, and @Vergil would especially hate it. Of what I played, anyways.
it's just "HAHA WE'RE LESBIANS!!!!! DID I TELL YOU WE'RE LESBIIIIANNNS IN LOOOOOOOVEEEE?" along with "GENIUS SUPER SMART CHILD SAVES EVERYTHING!!!!"

I didn't get past the first expansion because I was done by that point

[edit]
Here's my posts from when I was playing it:

I'm just forcing myself to play GW2 because there's a good game buried here and I'm hoping it improves. I really dislike the combat(hate guitar hero MMO ****) and themepark design tho.
Excellent world events, stories, AI(not combat AI but 'general' AI) makes the world feel rather alive. I aggro'd a raptor and kept running past a neutral emu-looking bird and the raptor switched targets to the emu, which felt like something a predator would actually do by judging how difficult its prey would be.
High attention to detail e.g., was doing a world event after I retook a base to rebuild the north/south gates, the north gate finished before the south so the NPCs helping guard the engineers at the north gate ran to the south to bolster its defenses. Nice touch.

Also, the animations are extremely good, perhaps some of the best in any game. Maybe they don't look the best individually, but it feels good, and I don't really have a word to describe this.

Also 2, as I was typing this the guards and chef got into a fight over the lack of any food and an event to go hunt wurms for meat with some of the defenders started.

So, is it worth playing?
Meh.

It's a real shame that, for whatever possible reason, such a lively game world is stuck behind such a mediocre game. Guild Wars had similar stuff going on, but it was actually a good game too.

They change the entire 'cast' of characters for the story content after the base game story and they're all annoying, btw.
Vaguely mixed race Norn(you know, the race that's just fantasy vikings? Yeah), an alright-I-guess charr, an annoying as **** child genius, and two lesbian lovers whose writing is they're lesbians who love each other. Yeah, it was at that point in gaming where they realized they could put gay romances in by having two attractive women kiss each other. I'm sure they're replaced with gay males as you go further into the content.

It's insufferable tbh

I did enjoy how lively the game world felt, tho.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

In 2022 I replayed the entire GW2 story from beginning through End of Dragons, and did a review of every expansion and season on the codex. I had a good time. Again, season 1 and 2 are pretty meh, busywork you have to go through because it introduces the new cast of characters (because the original voice actors were too expensive, before Anet changed their minds and brought them back), but the rest was overall entertaining.

The Marjory and Kasmeer lesbian stuff is only brought up three times throughout the 200 hour long story. First in season 1 or 2 when they are introduced as a couple, and then they have a lover's spat in one scene of a season 3 episode when Marjory comes back after tailing Lazarus, and then the wedding at the very end of End of Dragons. Taimi the valley college girl is pretty annoying, though, but fortunately she gets phased out and replaced by the more likeable Gorrick in season 4.

[rusty_shackleford]

In 2022 I replayed the entire GW2 story from beginning through End of Dragons, and did a review of every expansion and season on the codex.

Selection_023.webp

This guy has good opinions, I like him

---

I'm just telling you how I experienced it. I did the whole living story stuff, I found the lesbians to be ultra annoying and forced into the story repeatedly.

[rusty_shackleford]

@Val the Moofia Boss I quit playing at some point in a desert area(expansion) if that helps identify where I was. I did all the living story stuff that was prior to it.

I remember there being an area with quicksand that you had to hop across or something.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

@Val the Moofia Boss I quit playing at some point in a desert area(expansion) if that helps identify where I was. I did all the living story stuff that was prior to it.

I remember there being an area with quicksand that you had to hop across or something.

If it was before the Path of Fire expansion which added mounts, then it was probably Dry Top, the first ever Living World patch zone. It has a quicksand area near the beginning of the map. If it wasn't that, then the second desert map with quicksand is the second Path of Fire expansion zone, the Elon Riverlands, which has a quicksand area in the north part that you have to use the manta ray Skimmer mount to fly over.

[rusty_shackleford]

@Val the Moofia Boss I quit playing at some point in a desert area(expansion) if that helps identify where I was. I did all the living story stuff that was prior to it.

I remember there being an area with quicksand that you had to hop across or something.

If it was before the Path of Fire expansion which added mounts, then it was probably Dry Top, the first ever Living World patch zone. It has a quicksand area near the beginning of the map. If it wasn't that, then the second desert map with quicksand is the second Path of Fire expansion zone, the Elon Riverlands, which has a quicksand area in the north part that you have to use the manta ray Skimmer mount to fly over.

Path of Fire sounds about right, it's with the mounts yeah.

[Roguey]

Been going through the Dark Brotherhood quest in Oblivion recently and one of my targets had the infamous Barenziah biography in her inventory that Bethesda had to censor starting in Morrowind because it contained actual smut. I never paid much attention before to look up or remember who actually wrote it, fortunately the UESPWiki is well-documented. A woman of course (and Jewish no less). https://en.uesp.net/wiki/General:Marily ... an's_Posts

I wrote the Real Barenziah, then the Official Version to condense it since not everyone wants to read a novella in the middle of a game.

Had some amusing opinions on the races as well.

1) High elves look down on everyone else, but pity them more than hate them. Think Greeks to the Romans. The culturally superior people got conquered by louts (Cyrodiil who are a cross between Romans and the English of the Empire).

2) Dark elves think of the beast peoples (Khajiiti and Argonians) as inferior to elves and humans. They believe they know the one true way to live (and die) and view others as outsiders. Try a cross between **** (for their history) and Indians (of British colonial India) for their present situation.

3) Wood elves think other races are good -- to eat.

4) Bretons are intelligent and individualistic. They have ancient rivalries with the other human races but I doubt they actually hate anyone except orcs.

5) Nords are well organized but really not that smart. They don't hate anyone which doesn't stop them from warring with them since they enjoy a good war. They were an aggressive and expansionist people and were prone to genocide along the lines of European colonists (and the Borg): assimilate or die.

6) Redguards are survivors who fled their old country and found themselves in a new and harsh environment. They fight with the Bretons, more or less like England and France.

7) Cyrodiils: think Roman or English empire. They don't hate anyone, they just want to exploit everyone through trade on terms favorable to themselves.

8) Khajitti: natural stealth predators with an ancient rivalry with the Bosmer (they view each other as dinner) and a fear of the slave raiding Dunmer. It's believed that they were once Bosmer but have gone even more feral than the wood elves.

9) Argonians prefer to live deep in their swamps so little is known of their native culture. However they are highly intelligent and physically strong and agile and capable of viewing the world with detachment and objectivity. Btw my personal theory is that they evolved from crocodiles, who are social and waterloving and care for their young, not lizards.

10) Orcs. Hate everyone but they respect strength. Klingons? Welcome to the Empire, guys. Imperial gold coins had dragons on them long before Tiber Septim.

Slutty chocolate **** huh...

[maidenhaver]

Orcs are the Swiss. Cyrodiils are Americans. Nords are literal nazis. Argonians sleep with their eyes open. Dunmer are jeeter heebs.

[Roguey]

Doing more wiki-digging on TES lore

https://en.uesp.net/wiki/General:Michae ... ca_2004.29

On the Redguards (circa 2004)

[Editor's note: Kirkbride regrets saying this and remarks it should not exist at all, see below]

No, I was actually referring to The Black Panthers and their radicalism.

As some people know I'm not really a fan of the United Colors of Beneton approach to Tamrielicreation, which smacks of white guilt and offensery rather than some holistic form of beautiful inclusion. Thus, it's my fault that the Asian analogues got eaten. Oops. Looks like others are bringing 'em back, though. But I promise my choice had nothing to do with Yellow Peril, it had to do with co-opting "coolness of color" without thinking about it intelligently and compassionately.

(Hunkers down for the flame.)

That said, when I started writing Redguard I really thought about how unique the black people of Tamriel were: they came in and kicked *** and slaughtered the indigenes while doing so. They invaded. It was the first time I had encountered the idea of "black imperialism"...and it struck me big time, as something 1) new, 2) potentially dangerous if taken as commentary, and 3) potentially rad if taken as commentary.

Who knows. AVault did say it had a story worthy of being on stage, and Michael Mack (Cyrus) once thanked me for giving him words that "Black folks don't get to say" (referring to Cyrus' speech and the reversal of Son to the Father)... which broke my heart and made me puff my chest all at the same time.

Which is a long way of saying: panther-love.

https://en.uesp.net/wiki/General:Michae ... 0-06-16.29

On his "Beneton approach to Tamrielicreation" quote (2020-06-16)

[Editor's note: for the full quote, see above]

FWIW, this was a ****** decision on my part based on a ****** reasoning. I was younger and didn't realize how important it is for everyone to have someone that looked like them in any media. Being half-Pacific Islander myself, you'd think I would've been more sensitive and responsible that all cultures should be represented in a fictional setting that's far too white. This quote is one of the many I wish I could take back. I think it's from around sixteen years ago but straight up know it shouldn't exist at all.

More like Cuckbride, am I right?

It's also pretty funny how Redguards can look sub-saharan, but culturally, they're North African/Middle Eastern. Similar to how the Oceanfolk in Pillars are Italians, no libs actually want to do sub-Saharans in fantasy settings, the ick is just too strong.

[maidenhaver]

I was looking for his beneton quote a few years ago, and of course he walked it back. The edgiest devs sour like milk, that's why hasbeens need to leave game dev.

[Statesman]

► Show Spoiler

This is tempting me to try Guild Wars 2....

You should go in with a few head's up:

The vanilla base game (which is free now IIRC) has lackluster first impressions. The maps look unimpressive (I guess the Ascalon maps look kinda pretty, and Shiverpeaks has some atmosphere with the snow and Jeremy Soule's music playing), don't have interesting design to them, and you are running around roflstomping mobs by yourself. There is some fun to be had in exploring the world, hearing an NPC crying for help and running to help them and feeling like an adventurer and absorbing the lore. Helping a Charr engineer test his catapult for hurtling cows and delivering beef to besieged territories. Stumbling upon a jumping puzzle and getting rewarded with a sparkly treasure chest and earning a hero point is fun.




However, I think the game most shines when you have the three main expansions, when you are going through the story and constantly visiting a new high fantasy zone every 2 to 3 hours. Gameplay wise, the Heart of Thorns maps are by far the most fun to play, with the multilayered design that makes them feel much more expansive and labyrinthine, and better designed meta events, and generally increased difficulty from the base game that makes you sit down and pay more attention to your build and what's going on. There are also some spectacular huge outdoor "raids" called meta events, where you have dozens and dozens of players across a map coordinating at multiple different locations to kill bosses and push down lanes simultaneously, climaxing in a big cool battle.

The story isn't a JRPG masterpiece, but I think there is some fun to be had here. I think the base game storyline is underrated. The Charr level 1 through 30 story is neat in how you are are working in this sorta Roman, sorta Klingon culture where being fierce and loyal to a conquering state is everything. I choose the shaman father background so that was a neat story arc. I quite liked the second half of the story when you are a commander trying to run a military campaign and working with Traehearne. For some reason a lot of people apparently hate Traehearne because he's the general and you are his right hand man, but I liked his character and liked the set up.




Seasons 1 and 2 are kinda meh. Heart of Thorns is a pretty exciting 4 hour long adventure all the way through. Season 3 is also kinda neat. Path of Fire's story had a lot of standing around and talking but at least the campaign was only 6 hours long. Season 4 is where I got pretty invested into the story and had a satisfying ending. The game could have ended there and it would have been okay, which it was written to be because there was turmoil happening behind the scenes at the studio, no third expansion had been greenlit, so season 4 could have quite possibly been the actual ending of the game. But it got greenlit for another season of patch content. Icebrood Saga had a very interesting start, but sadly more development trouble kicked in and it was aborted. The End of Dragons expansion was a disappointing conclusion to the storyline, though you do get one last Elder Dragon meta event, get some cool new elite specs, and the aesthetics of the maps were neat. I haven't bought the two smaller expansions yet, because so far the story sounds unappealing and they don't seem to offer as much content and features.



Some of the English voice acting was pretty good. Matthew Brenher as Trahearne, Steve Blum as Rytlock, and both voice actors - Ron Yuan and later Lex Lang - for the male Charr player character. I didn't like the recasted male Charr PC voice at first, but then warmed up to him and think he's great.


Once you beat the story, there isn't that much left to do besides to farm some of the masteries. You can pretty easily get to mastery level 400 without having to do the obscene icebrood saga or vanilla mastery grinds (if you see other people running around with a three digit number next to their character, that is their account's mastery level. Their character level is capped at 80). I had fun doing a lot of 5v5 rated PvP, but eventually you can only PvP on the same maps for so long and the devs stopped adding more. I think WoW's rated battlegrounds have more depth to them due to needing to ride a mount for a while to reach the objectives, so there is more importance on strategy in deciding where to commit people to, whereas in GW2 you can easily just wander around between points very quickly. The huge WvW zergs are fun at first, but again you run into the issue where you can only play on the same maps for so long, and it is hard to care about the war when you are not invested into a faction and the war takes place in an isolated pocket dimension as opposed to fighting over a world you care about. There are also some immersion breaking oddities like everyone stacking on a pin to share buffs.




Lastly, you need to be aware about the true cost of playing GW2. It is at least $120 for a good experience. You can buy the three expansions for $50, but that only gets you half of the zones and story. The other half of the game's content happens in the patches, called the Living World seasons. There are 5 seasons (1 through 4, and Icebrood Saga, which was a patch season billed as being "expansion level" but that is another kerfuffle). That costs $50. Lastly, you will need to buy some microtransaction/cash shop/P2W conveniences like more inventory space (starting with the Silverwastes zone in season 2 and the HoT map, your bags fill up fast with tons and tons of trash), a salvage o'matic so you can reduce inventory bloat very quickly on the spot, maybe another bank tab to help store key items, maybe three equipment sets so you can swap swap from berserker physical DPS glass cannon build to bulkier marauder build to a condi DoT DPS build to a WvW celestial stats (these extra inventory bag slots and cash shop equipment tabs are character specific by the way, so try out every class and race first and settle on a main before buying). If you play a big character like a Charr or a Norn, then you will want to buy a couple cash shop skins (Dreadnought Raptor, and Broad-Horned Bull for the Skyscale dragon) so you don't look like you are breaking the back of a small pony and feel stupid. Lastly, most of the best cosmetics in the game are on the cash shop, like cloaks and scarves, so you will need to pony up a little extra for that too.

This might all sound like a deterrent, but I have sunk a thousand+ hours into GW2. I would say that I got many hours of fun for the amount of money spent.

Was going to comment that this post was a few steps away from a full blown review and then I saw this :

In 2022 I replayed the entire GW2 story from beginning through End of Dragons, and did a review of every expansion and season on the codex.

Regarding the last two expansions, they are IBS-tier. Great start, nice concepts but then they jump around completing a checklist with somewhat coherent plotpoints. Feels like they had enough story for two expansions compressed into a single LS Season. Feature-wise Spear/Weaponmaster is great, but outside QoL upgrades for the Skyscale/Warclaw and easy Legendary Armor they are not worth full price.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Can't believe Resonant Arc is shilling for this. I expected better from them.

“The Best RPG in 20 Years”

Opinion immediately disregarded.

I have no words to describe such retardation in such a statement.

On that note, what is your favorite JRPG so far, @Val the Moofia Boss ?

Solely based on your personal enjoyment and opinion and not accounting for any other metric like sales, relevancy, etc.

At the risk of sounding like a broken record ("gosh! It's the only thing he ever talks about! He must haven't played a lot of games! etc"), but Trails of Cold Steel 2. I had a lot of fun playing it on nightmare difficulty and getting really deep into the shopping, building my team of favorite characters, and doing the hard fights. I loved the soundtrack. I really liked the romantic setting of fantasy 19th century Europe with the trains steaming through picturesque rolling hills, nobles wearing trenchcoats and cravats practicing their family's brand of anime swordsmanship and that being applied to climatic mech duels, cool airships flying over the Kaiser's grandiose castle, the escalating cold war with an expansionist "republic", etc. I got very invested into the main character and the story, and really enjoyed the unexpected fourth act of the second game in which the bad guy won but life goes on and you still have several more hours of play exploring the fallout of that and the heroes moving on with their lives. I can't think of any game that did that. It is one of the very few games I have replayed at least three times.






Runnerup would be Aselia the Spirit of Eternity Sword. I really liked the bitter, melancholic tone of the character being enslaved and forced to help conquer other countries and his late night reveries as he wonders about everything that went wrong in his life, the things he did, and is apprehensive about whether or not he has a future. It's paired with Aki Hata's soundtrack which is very memorable. I thought that the way the grand strategy elements were coupled to emphasize the story was really neat. However, the game is very, very hard (particularly the last stretch of chapter 3) and you need to savescum a lot. I actually dropped this game after 60 hours the first time I played it, but I am glad I came back to it a couple years later and started a new playthrough and finished it. I have the sequel installed, but apparently the creators of the first game were fired and went to found a different company (which also went under), so I haven't been eager to play it yet.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

Dumbed down in every way, streamlined (in the worst sense of the word) and monetarized.
But let's not drag this here. Tag me in the appropriate thread or pm me if you're interested in an honest discussion.

Well I already gave an overall review of its strengths here a few days ago. I can see how fans of the first game would be disappointed since GW2 is pretty much a completely different game with the same brand name slapped on top, and can also be infuriating to Prophecies fans given the historical revisionism in GW2 with the loser Ascalonians being framed as being bad and the apologism for their Charr butchers/invaders/replacements. But otherwise, I think that the game is an overall very good high fantasy action RPG, certainly amongst the best high production value Western games of the 2010s. The cash shop with mount skins and all of the good looking items being locked behind a paywall is irksome, but when you sit down and math it out, you do ultimately save several hundred dollars as opposed to if you had been subbed to WoW or FF14 year round for a decade.

[fork]

That reads like a defense of the great replacement.
If you're that kind of guy, nothing to discuss rly. :p

[rusty_shackleford]

@Val the Moofia Boss did you play GW1?
Seeing Charr in Lion's Arch triggered vietnam flashbacks

[Val the Moofia Boss]

@Val the Moofia Boss did you play GW1?

Yes. I played an Assassin/something, I forgot what the second class I chose was. I was running around with a scythe. I started on the boring island on Cantha. That was a tedious slog for several hours, but then once I got onto the mainland and started running around the huge dying urban city of Kaineng I was really liking it. I then jumped ship to the Nightfall campaign because I wanted to acquire the better party members (called heroes, as opposed to henchmen). The intro sequence where you are doing ancient Mediterranean warfare like in Ben-Hur or a Troy movie was neat. Then it was a lot of running through boring deserts. I remember I got stuck on the Drought and got pretty frustrated with that mission but after four or five retries and several hours wasted, I finally beat it. I then got walled on the mission where you infiltrate a party and have to duel Joko with no backup, after a few retries and hours wasted on that I wound up losing interest.

[rusty_shackleford]

@Val the Moofia Boss did you play GW1?

Yes. I played an Assassin/something, I forgot what the second class I chose was. I was running around with a scythe. I started on the boring island on Cantha. That was a tedious slog for several hours, but then once I got onto the mainland and started running around the huge dying urban city of Kaineng I was really liking it. I then jumped ship to the Nightfall campaign because I wanted to acquire the better party members (called heroes, as opposed to henchmen). The intro sequence where you are doing ancient Mediterranean warfare like in Ben-Hur or a Troy movie was neat. Then it was a lot of running through boring deserts. I remember I got stuck on the Drought and got pretty frustrated with that mission but after four or five retries and several hours wasted, I finally beat it. I then got walled on the mission where you infiltrate a party and have to duel Joko with no backup, after a few retries and hours wasted on that I wound up losing interest.

You didn't play the original campaign? If not, you should consider it, it's pretty good.

[Val the Moofia Boss]

@Val the Moofia Boss did you play GW1?

Yes. I played an Assassin/something, I forgot what the second class I chose was. I was running around with a scythe. I started on the boring island on Cantha. That was a tedious slog for several hours, but then once I got onto the mainland and started running around the huge dying urban city of Kaineng I was really liking it. I then jumped ship to the Nightfall campaign because I wanted to acquire the better party members (called heroes, as opposed to henchmen). The intro sequence where you are doing ancient Mediterranean warfare like in Ben-Hur or a Troy movie was neat. Then it was a lot of running through boring deserts. I remember I got stuck on the Drought and got pretty frustrated with that mission but after four or five retries and several hours wasted, I finally beat it. I then got walled on the mission where you infiltrate a party and have to duel Joko with no backup, after a few retries and hours wasted on that I wound up losing interest.

You didn't play the original campaign? If not, you should consider it, it's pretty good.

No, I didn't play Prophecies/Ascalon. I wasn't feeling the gameplay. Buttons didn't feel good to push, lots of running across maps with finnicky henchmen who attack or pull the wrong mobs and aren't there when you need them, constantly having to alt+tab out do research, and then there were issues such as the UI scaling, and iirc the difficulty of taking screenshots (I might be wrong on that last part). Anyway, I did my time. I don't like the game.

[rusty_shackleford]

Yes. I played an Assassin/something, I forgot what the second class I chose was. I was running around with a scythe. I started on the boring island on Cantha. That was a tedious slog for several hours, but then once I got onto the mainland and started running around the huge dying urban city of Kaineng I was really liking it. I then jumped ship to the Nightfall campaign because I wanted to acquire the better party members (called heroes, as opposed to henchmen). The intro sequence where you are doing ancient Mediterranean warfare like in Ben-Hur or a Troy movie was neat. Then it was a lot of running through boring deserts. I remember I got stuck on the Drought and got pretty frustrated with that mission but after four or five retries and several hours wasted, I finally beat it. I then got walled on the mission where you infiltrate a party and have to duel Joko with no backup, after a few retries and hours wasted on that I wound up losing interest.

You didn't play the original campaign? If not, you should consider it, it's pretty good.

No, I didn't play Prophecies/Ascalon. I wasn't feeling the gameplay. Buttons didn't feel good to push, lots of running across maps with finnicky henchmen who attack or pull the wrong mobs and aren't there when you need them, constantly having to alt+tab out do research, and then there were issues such as the UI scaling, and iirc the difficulty of taking screenshots (I might be wrong on that last part). Anyway, I did my time. I don't like the game.

Shame, I loved it other than it being designed around PvP so the RPG elements are very light.
The worldsim stuff was cool.