JRPGs

DQ11 kinda dragged on too long, some parts were a bit boring too, although there was some good stuff in the later parts unlike say Bravely Default where once you start the filler shit it's really pretty fucking bad until the last cycle. I have 145hours on it on Steam, and while a fair bit of that was hunting achievements and shit at the end, it was still like 100+hours for the main story+postgame(which is pretty much part of the story too, so it isn't really postgame).


On Trials of Mana, played it a bunch, I will agree with some aspects mentionned by D Droigan but overall I'm having a good time. The english dub is absolute dogshit but that was no surprise since it was shit in the demo too, the japanese voice acting is mostly fine though(no name side NPCs tend to have pretty bad voice acting but all the main stuff is solid). I always play japanese games with japanese voice acting so doesn't really affect me. Dialogue/story is childish but that just follows the original, it's nothing groundbreaking, it's just your typical hero story.

Combat is a bit limited early on but opens up a fair bit once you start generating the bar stuff faster so you can get more specials in. Normal attacks are still a staple though, this is similar to Secret of Mana too where you mostly cast spells sporadically for burst damage on tougher enemies or to buff/debuff, and then mostly use weapon attacks. That's why even the casters do decent melee damage/can invest in STR.

That said I'm playing Angela as my main character and I can cast quite a lot of spells too, especially on trash mobs since I gain mp back for every kill so I can more or less cast one spell for every 2 trash mobs and break even, but can generally cast 1 spell per mob and reach a statue before I run out. Bosses there's no regen sources but with mp regen item I can cast quite a lot. The other characters don't really have spammable spells though I think, basically Angela is the only "true" caster, even Charlotte is still pretty hybrid.

And loading times I could see being terrible on PS4, since there's a lot of loadings and black screen transitions. On PC with a SSD though it's whatever, can't read most of the tips on the loading screens and black screen transitions are less than a second, so it hasn't bothered me at all. The main annoyance is cutscenes being disgusting 30FPS, but only the prerendered ones so it's not that bad.

Derkon said:

Berseria is pretty good, characters aren't annoying kids which is great. Stay away from Zestiria, it's regarded as one of the bad ones.

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I know some people didn't like Berseria "brooding heroine" kind of thing and to some extent it was pretty boring how every other scene was her being all emo, but the game was definitely fun. Also has the best caster gameplay in an action jrpg I've played, the witch girl is insanely fun to play lategame, not so much early game mind you, need to get cast speed and whatever repeat thing she has later one, but once you have them around midgame she's just a treat. Once she started getting fun I basically stopped playing the main character and just played the caster.

And yeah Zestiria is meh from what I heard, didn't play it as a result. They're technically part of the same universe and there's some winks in Berseria, but not too much more, game takes place like 200years later or before or whatever it was so it's more world stuff(religions, past events and so on) than actually sequel.


Side note, finished Trials of Mana with postgame+secret boss, 25hours so it's pretty much on the short side, was pretty fun although difficulty is kinda all over the place, starts easy as shit, then spikes in difficulty around the midgame, then gets easier again. Postgame with my team setup was a joke, I fully expect it had to do with Angela being broken as fuck though. Postgame last challenge is fighting the last boss on hard in under 2mins, and I did it in a bit over a minute without any specific grinding(had to redo my passives stuff a bit though, first attempt was 2:10 before I went more glass cannon).