Lurker > Raganork

The beta was absurdly boring, moreso that any God Eater. In fact, coming off God Eater, it feels like they just grounded the combat from those games and increased the damage you take. If melee wasn't floaty as hell, it'd be a tolerable game, but still not impressive.

Lokarin posted...

Wait... what if by episodic they mean something different... Episode 1 is ALL of FF7, but Episode 2 is, like, Crisis Core and stuff, and Dirge of Cerberus (which is totally underrated)

Have you replayed Dirge of Cerberus lately? Because I have - around a month ago, on the hard difficulty. Game fucking sucks.

Cutscenes out the ass in an action game, and theyre so bad that you get that typical walk-cutscene-walk-cutscene-walk loop (with no combat) that Squeenix is notorious for because they dont know how to tell a story outside of hamfisted, shitty cutscenes.

Very little in the way of enemy variety, and the enemy ai is braindead. The enemy design is so poor that, if you shoot them from far enough away, they wont react, and their friends wont be alerted. Some enemies that dont wield guns cant even hit you if you stand on an elevated platform or box.

There are a grand total of three guns. Even with the rudimentary customization elements, thats embarrassing.

Limit break is so broken that you dont even need to learn boss patterns, because the fights will end before you exit limit form. That is, until the last few fights in the game, where the damage output of limit form is worthless, but the health regeneration and damage reduction are still absurd.

A functionless double jump, probably because double jump didnt exist in the original Japanese version. Did they design any new features around its inclusion? No.

Multiple segments where you stand still and shoot moving targets for 3-5 straight minutes. One involves piloting a stationary minigun to gun down 15 of the same exact assault choppers that spawn one at a time. Another involves riding down an elevator and firing at mines. Coming from the company that made the player collect 300 crabs in KH3, they either mistakenly think this is entertaining game design, or they have a sadist on the team that they refuse to fire. Perhaps a possible remake could inject a 3 minute snowboarding segment to waste my time, or maybe a squatting mini game, or a slap fight, or a cpr simulation, or a bike chase, or tower defense, a fucking Mario Party city, or any number of other mini games to attempt to break up the monotonous combat system that they clearly do not believe can keep the player entertained for the entirety of the game because its so shallow.

Oh, and a chapter ripped from the game and sold as a mobile game (through an obscure mobile service) that is currently impossible to play.

Nothing about the game is even remotely interesting. Its the most dull shooter Ive ever played, and in terms of serving as a bridge between the other pieces of FF7 media, its almost completely pointless. Remaking the game would be an utter waste of time and money, but then again, the sort of people that genuinely enjoyed Crisis Core and Advent Children would absolutely gush over a possible remake of either of these games, or the shitty film, so what do I know? Im not even buying the FF7 remake because I think it looks too similar to FF15, KH3, and Type-0 - a trio of some of the worst action rpgs to be released this generation.

Radiant Silvergun. Boring choice, but it's a classic for a reason. Better than Ikaruga in every way aside from maybe presentation - the artists at Treasure were awful in the '90s.

Close second would be Mars Matrix. A brutal shmup that uses one button for everything, but uses bombs/shields in a very unqiue way. Using momentum for bombing feels incredible. Giga Wing is also good, but not *as* good.

Also, Psyvariar Delta recently released, and that's definitely up there - particularly Revision. Hands down the best implementation of grazing I've seen in a shmup.

As an aside, I think Psikyo is overrated to hell and back. With the exception of Zero Gunner 2, I don't care for their shmups. Especially their side scrollers like Sol Divide, which I downright hate. I kinda like the randomized stages, but when I think of generic shmups, I think Psikyo. Boring bullet patterns, boring gimmicks, boring scoring mechanics, and tedious second loops. They're straightforward to a fault.

BTB posted...

(On a completely different note... the 2.0 release of Brave New World - over a year and a half in the making - is almost out. And just to give you an idea of how massive this update is: http://ngplus.net/index.php?/forums/topic/772-coming-soon-brave-new-world-20/ )

Too many crybabbies about the difficulty or something? Shit, I will never forgot IAF during the first beta.

But man, the way you handled espers in BNW makes it worth replaying over the original, to say nothing of the balancing you did for the characters. I still glance at your new patch notes every now and then when you share them, and one of these days I'm gonna have the urge to replay it.

BTB posted...

Raganork posted...

SpeedDemon20 posted...

Hi BTB!

This.

Also, been on a Maiden kick lately and listened to their earlier work for the first time. Somewhere in Time might be my favorite album of theirs. Don't think I dislike a single song on that album.

Also in the process of listening to Killers, which is really good too.

Somewhere In Time is in my top five, along with Seventh Son, Powerslave, Brave New World, and Book of Souls.

I'll give Seventh Son a listen to after Killers. Powerslave was excellent, probably second favorite, even if the title track and Rime of the Ancient Mariner are so long as to be not great for listening too often. I'm saving their new stuff for last, so Book of Souls will have to wait.

SpeedDemon20 posted...

Hi BTB!

This.

Also, been on a Maiden kick lately and listened to their earlier work for the first time. Somewhere in Time might be my favorite album of theirs. Don't think I dislike a single song on that album.

Also in the process of listening to Killers, which is really good too.

The game is actually about the Occuria manipulating the political state of the world thoughout the centuries, and Ashe's struggle to wrest control from the race to bring humanity back under autonomous control, whilst also resisting their temptations. The struggle against the Occuria draws parallels to Matsuno's other games, such as the Ogre race from the Ogre Battle series, the Church of Glabados from FFT, and the Crimson Blades from Vagrant Story. I'd recommend every single one of those games, just as an aside.

Most people that played FF12 couldn't get over Vaan's passive role in the group, making it difficult to get invested in the plot when your direct representation in the world has seemingly little to do with any major events that transpire. That is a failure of storytelling - no arguement there - but the setting has a rich history, the characters exhibit moral dilemmas and interesting character growth, and the numerous political plotlines are rife with tension. And yes, it's a Final Fantasy, so most of your time is spent hunting for magic rocks. These factors make up for the lack of a strong protagonist, although, admittedly, the story can be difficult to follow on a first playthrough. The cherry on top is that, in a stunning change from the norm, the writing is of surprisingly high quality for a Japanese game, accompanied with quality performances from great voice actors like Gideon Emery and Simon Templeman.

It's easy to distill the story to a simple good guys must stop evil guy from taking over the world simplification, but could you not do the same for the vast majority of video game storylines? FFXII doesn't have a great story, but I feel like the strength of the dialogue and the rich backstory support the plot's shortcomings. For me, that's good enough.

The very first time youre given control, during the chase scene, you must go out of your way to a dock to talk to Yuna, who is crouching while wearing a mascot outfit, or you will miss out on 100% completion in the first 5 minutes of starting the game. That right there tells you how much of a pain in the ass 100%-ing the game is. Its a waste of time anyway, since the secret ending isnt any better than the normal one. Hell, anything related to the storytelling in X-2 is not worth your time.

25 hours in, and I only have one major complaint:

The maps suck.

Looks like they're sticking to the map design of the 3DS games - excluding Conquest - which is a shame. We've got fog of war and damage floors, and while those are nice, we're still dealing with too many open, rectangular maps where you need to route the enemy or kill the leader.

Look at Radiant Dawn, which people shit on for no good reason. You've got that iconic defend the throne mission, another chapter where you need to escape pursuers in a dark forest under fog of war, another chapter that's divided into two parts, where the second requires you to approach a crew of ballistas while an army arrives to support you from the north. All in the first half of the game.

Here, the team is playing it way too safe when it comes to map design and mission structure.

Even when the map layouts could potentially be interesting, that potential is squandered because of baffling design. There's a chapter where you need to circle around to the center to face the boss, and there's a zig-zag route with teleporters on the right that lead to treasures and variors levers. Turns out the levers alter evasion panels on the left side of the screen, where your main force traverses, but why would you want to disable those beneficial tiles? Worse, by the time your unit reaches that lever, your team is past that segment anyway. There's also no rush to get the treasures because there are no reinforcments, and the turn limit is too generous. AND the units protecting the boss can be sniped from the very beginning without fear of counterattack.

Another map that springs to mind is a paralogue involving thieves congregated in the center of town. The premise is to split your group into four to secure the escape points and then defeat the thieves for their treasure. Cool premise, but it doesn't work because the thieves do not ever move until you enter their field of view, so you can take your time instead of splintering into tiny factions. When the escape points are sealed, they don't even attack when you are right next to them. They run into a wall and do nothing. Design oversight.

Another one involving Ingrid gives you two victory conditions: escape or rout the enemy. By the time you reach the escape point, you will have killed most enemies and are better off killing them all anyway for the experience.

Most maps have potential, but the difficulty is tuned way too low for hard mode, and the objectives are squandered by poor enemy placement or map design.

That said, it's still enjoyable, but I hope the second half picks up because I was expecting better.

Had it preordered since August of last year, back when Amazon was doing 20% preorders, and they're honoring the discount. Looking forward to it.

Trolling this board takes no effort. Thank you for proving that point, OP.

I wish I had the time to edit this for you, or that you could afford a proper editor. I enjoy the concept and setting, but to give you an idea of how much editing this could use, I would cut the first two chapters in their entirety.

There are too many characters vying for the reader's attention at the onset. Too much dialogue. That's an issue of taste, and will not bother every reader, but for stories involving strange races, names, and concepts, I prefer when a writer introduces these elements at a slower pace, giving me time to familiarize myself with the setting. I'm not exaggerating when I say the first two chapters can be striken, and the story would not suffer in any way. The third chapter is when you begin to exhibit qualities of a more seasoned writer

Your prose is wordy, with some paragraphs that could be reduced to a single sentence.

For example:

Dylan saw the woman who entered the room. Instead of pointed elf ears, she had a pair of elongated, hairy ones like a rabbit. Had it not been for those, Dylan would have sworn she was looking at a human from eastern Asia.

Could be written as:

A woman with rabbit-like ears entered the room.

If we take the above example and rewrite both that paragraph as well as its preceeding one (which I'd post but I can't highlight the text on my phone), you could distill two paragraphs to:

A woman with rabbit-like ears slipped into the room, stopping to cover her mouth in disbelief.

You can see why I never finish my novels...

The story is interesting, and I'm not saying that to soften the blow. I think there's potential, and more than that, you accomplished something I could not. Congratulations. I hope your future works receive the editing they deserve.

Doctor Foxx posted...

Yeah, no. Nothing? No.

Good to see the standards for being made a mod have never decreased thoughout the years.

I played Kingdom Hearts 3 from start to finish. I also played most of the mainline KH releases from start to finish, starting from the first one the day it launched in North America. I will say, unequivocally, that Kingdom Hearts 3 is the worst RPG I've played in the past 2-3 years, and should be studied by aspiring game designers as a textbook example of how you can fail in most aspects of game design.

Terrible voice acting, extreme fanservice to the detriment of competent storytelling, incompetent storytelling, mindless combat that encourages spamming magic, special attacks that involve watching lengthy animations, drawn-out gimmick fights, multiple mandatory collect-a-thons, and poor cutscene distribution which interrupts pacing.

What's funny is that, despite my criticisms, it's still better than any Final Fantasy offering that was released this decade, including the much-loved 14, which I could pen a novel as to how that game is an insult to competent game design.

miki_sauvester posted...

Also, to highlight the rigidity of the fact that any new job HAS to fit into one of the three archetypes, they made bards and dancers DPS in this game. Seems silly to completely kill the identity of a job just so you can force it into the "tank/healer/dps" triangle.

Great point. To add, all gear progression in this game is vertical in nature - that is, the only function of gear is to increase your various numbers, so as a consequence there will always be a best in slot. The game does not encourage build diversity; it stifles it. Every class will always have optimal gear and an optimal rotation. A black mage cannot specialize in either fire or ice spells; every single black mage will follow the same rotation. What, then, separates two players playing the same job?

Worse, what separates one melee dps from another when damage output takes precedence over utility? You run a parser, see which jobs have the greatest damage output, and create the exact same party compositions for raid progression as everyone else. Every raid group will look the same and act the same. Since thats the case, why have jobs at all?

This new expansion is planning to homogenize jobs further - an attempt to lessen the communitys attachment to preferred jobs for raids. Due to the nature of skill properties and combos, this is a goal that is impossible to reach without distilling the game to exactly three jobs and eliminating the rest. Square Enixs stubborn adherence to the formulaic 2 tanks/2 healers/4 dps party composition is stifling game design and creativity. And people have argued with me throughout the years that they dont care - the game is fun, and theyre having fun playing dress up. Its one thing to appreciate a game for its depth of cosmetic customization, but when I play a computer game, Im looking for gameplay depth, which to say FFXIV lacks is an understatement.

There's one issue I have with the remake that stands above any other complaint I have, and it's the sole reason why I have no faith in the title, and that reason is that Squeenix openly admitted that they're attempting to flesh out the lore and story.

This is an issue because we're talking about taking a 30 hour game that already had pacing issues, and dragging it out into a 100+ hour experience. Not only that, but we're dealing with modern Square Enix writers who have proven themselves incapable of telling interesting tales.

Plus you've got the cutscene-ification of everything that drives me up the wall. Take the Aeris flower-selling scene for example. In the original, you had the choice of buying a flower from Aeris or telling her no, and when you meet her later on your action will alter her dialogue. This remake forces a canon choice that Cloud gets the flower.

Another example would be turning the tutorial boss fight into a cutscene-laden, 10 minute affair where you must watch the scorpion jump about on walls and peform special attacks until he lands back on the main platform. This entire game is a drawn-out mess that spits on everything that made the original good.

Looks like shit.

AwesomeTurtwig posted...

Dynalo let's play L4D2.

We getting the band back together?

Still, I wish you nothing but luck. You're a good friend :)

I can pretty much guarantee you a job here in Arizona for $15-17/hr. My managers are begging me daily to bring someone in. Just a casual 500 mile bike ride through the 9 circles of hell. But you do not want to live in this shit hole.

Entity13 posted...

My novel, "Elysium Shining," is almost 100k words in length. It is also an estimated 5/6 of the way complete on the first draft. If all goes well enough then I will likely publish it online through eBooks and Amazon.

A buddy of mine suggested that I decline any exclusivity deal that Amazon tries to present, because they will (and it'll be a bad deal).

Best of luck. Been trying to finish a book for years, but every attempt ends with me dragging the file to the recycle bin 60k words in. Couldn't complete a story if my life depended on it.

I'm always reading novels and researching writing tips, and when I compare my work to published material, I realize how terrible my prose is and scrap the projects I'm working on. If I'm not satisfied with my work, why should I expect others to read it?

The damage I caused when I learned about adverbs, and how proper word choice for verbs should eliminate the need for most adverbs, was nuclear. Went to look at several stories, did a ctrl+f for the words "just," "very," and words ending in "-ly", and wound up trashing 200k+ words in under a minute because the stories were not salvageable. I love writing, but releasing published work is something I doubt will ever happen.