JRPGs

Vorph

Vorph

Bronze Baronet of the Realm
10,984
4,706
Anybody playing BD2? What's the verdict?

I loved the original game despite the repetition halfway through it, never got far into Second because reading about how they gutted the English localization ruined it for me, and having played the final demo on the Switch I'm still not sold on the game. A lot of things seem cool, but the combat switching over to some sort of ATB-esque abomination that feels completely out of place alongside Brave and Default is a real buzzkill that I'm not sure I'll ever get used to.
 
Derkon

Derkon

Trakanon Raider
2,449
1,187
I thought BD2 was pretty good overall.

It's a bit rough around the edges in the UI department(no quest log to see what quests you completed, and there is no minimap in dungeons which can make navigating a few of them a pain). The story is pretty basic tbh, it doesn't have a big twist like BD1. The characters are good though, and there are sidequests that help develop the characters further.

I played on Hard and bosses are rough, especially early on. The ATB thing is kinda strange; it's not like FF6 or something like that were the boss can attack you while you choose your action. When a characters turn comes up you just tell them what to do and it moves on to the next character(there is a speed stat so that effects how fast your turn comes up). Pretty much every boss will have abilities that it will counter attack you if you use them(such as using a monk ability), and these are usually the hardest thing to work around. Later on you get abilites to make you dodge counters and there are some really OP job combos that kind of trivialize things. Difficulty felt good though, would rather shit be on the harder side personally.

Will add that grinding almost feels a bit necessary at points, there are some tricks you can youtube to make it easier(later in the game there are items that make it go much faster). Job points feel a lot easier to earn in this compared to BD1 though, can get a job to max pretty quick with some of the tricks out there.
 
Vorph

Vorph

Bronze Baronet of the Realm
10,984
4,706
Uriel said:
I don't understand why all JRPGs aren't released on PC, it's where all the hardcore weebs are.
Click to expand...
Pretty sure Nintendo has permanent exclusivity on all things SMT (note that Persona is just Persona now, the SMT prefix was dropped a while ago) and there's zero chance of Nocturne or SMT5 on other platforms.

Definitely looking forward to playing Nocturne again either way. I'd never have the patience for some of the PS2 version's ball-busting mechanics now, but the game itself is still worth revisiting. Hopefully we'll see DDS 1&2 remastered next, ideally merged into one complete game. Never actually got through those on PS2, the goddamn encounter rate was just insane.
 
  • 1Like
Reactions: 1 user
Derkon

Derkon

Trakanon Raider
2,449
1,187
Nocturne will be on PS4 as well as Switch but yeah, probably getting the Switch version as I've heard it's not visually much different than PS4.
 
Vorph

Vorph

Bronze Baronet of the Realm
10,984
4,706
Ah, didn't realize it was on PS4 as well. Maybe some residual thing from it formerly being a PS2 game, Nintendo seems to have a complete stranglehold on SMT otherwise. Edit: looking into it more, it seems data miners found references to a PC codebase in the Nocturne (JP) files, so maybe there's some hope for people who want to get it on Steam.

And yeah, still wouldn't even think about getting it on anything but Switch, it's a game that I will definitely play in portable mode much more than I would ever play it at home.
 
Last edited:
AladainAF

AladainAF

Best Rabbit
<Gold Donor>
12,860
30,808
Intrinsic said:
Yeah my review came off as a little overly critical but it was for sure a very fun game. The only difficulty I had was with the last boss for.... reasons.

Only a tad bit in to VIII on PS4 Pro now but it seems to occur directly after V and before VI. I’m also getting some bad graphical slow down when multiple skills are used at the same time. Anyways, only a couple hours in so we’ll see what happens. Still looking forward to IX.
Click to expand...

You didnt have a problem with the fucking bird boss thing? Surprising. I beat Ys7 long ago, but if I recall the only boss that truly kicked my ass repeatedly was that fucking bird. I died constantly on that thing.
 
Intrinsic

Intrinsic

Person of Whiteness
<Gold Donor>
14,214
11,595
AladainAF said:
You didnt have a problem with the fucking bird boss thing? Surprising. I beat Ys7 long ago, but if I recall the only boss that truly kicked my ass repeatedly was that fucking bird. I died constantly on that thing.
Click to expand...

Not that I remember. I think I had invested so much in to arrow chick with the Hornet skill that I just kited and spammed that. It has been a minute at this point though!
 
Rezz

Rezz

Mr. Poopybutthole
4,486
3,531
Uriel said:
I don't understand why all JRPGs aren't released on PC, it's where all the hardcore weebs are.
Click to expand...
Localization effort for hardware that only affects people outside japan. Last I checked, there's still a fairly large cultural bias against PC gaming in general (one of our resident japan living folk can correct me) so it needs to be like a no-brainer big seller vs. a fairly niche game like the SMT series (compared to say, like FFXV or DQ11, etc).
I think there's still some social pariah type viewpoint for PC gamers, because that is where the majority of h-games/weird shit is at in Japan. Here in the west, japan largely brought the weird shit before we started mimicking it.
 
Pyros

Pyros

<Silver Donator>
11,049
2,256
They port a lot of smaller games and a lot of them do pretty well, but they still need to often look into a partnership to port them because they can't do it themselves and in some cases due to issues with contracts for VAs they can't port them with the original VAs but don't even have english VAs instead and stuff like that so it's not worth the cost of voicing the game again to be able to sell it in the west or to pay the VAs to sell it again on a different platform.

Overall it's better than it used to be, but some studios still don't do that much. Atlus being one that's very selective about what it ports, which might be due to their exclusivity contracts and such, so we got P4 years late not too long ago but still no P3 or P5, got the old Catherine but not the new one, got games like The Alliance Alive which is a 3DS port and the fighter Persona games in simultaneous releases but not games like the Vanillaware games or Etrian/SMT. It's pretty confusing what they decide to port tbh.

Meanwhile Square will port most of their stuff eventually, although they have lenghty wait times between releases for stuff like their FF series(but DQ11 wasn't delayed for example, other than the normal japanese > western delay).

Anyway personally my list of JRPGs to play is still long as fuck, so I'm not too worried. Cleared Tales of vesperia earlier this week and now player FF7R, and still have over a dozen of games to play, plus close to another dozen of games to buy and play(including some on Switch but I've been holding out on buying a Switch for a newer model, hopefully they'll announce it soon).
 
Lodi

Lodi

Blackwing Lair Raider
1,440
1,445
I thought I heard that with the success of P5 on Steam that Atlus would now be porting way more titles to it?
 
Pyros

Pyros

<Silver Donator>
11,049
2,256
Lodi said:
I thought I heard that with the success of P5 on Steam that Atlus would now be porting way more titles to it?
Click to expand...
They released P4, not P5. Still better than before when it was nothing though, but yeah it's not consistent so you can only hope they'll port stuff, maybe.
 
Last edited:
Lodi

Lodi

Blackwing Lair Raider
1,440
1,445
Pyros said:
They released P4, not P5. And Atlus has had a bunch of successes before when porting things, that hasn't really moved them to release more stuff, they kinda do whatever they feel like. Still better than before when it was nothing though, but yeah it's not consistent so you can only hope they'll port stuff, maybe.
Click to expand...
Sounds like it's coming out on the Epic Games Store as an exclusive at the end of the month?
 
Rezz

Rezz

Mr. Poopybutthole
4,486
3,531
DS/3DS games would be the biggest no-brainer to port to PC, specifically because you can just create a viewer for both screens. (Emulators have this shit down pat, the actual companies can just ape it and call it a day) It's tied heavily to having a dual screen layout, which you can do in emulation a lot easier than in hardware. It likely has the licensing issues as well, but games like Etrian Odyssey scratch a super specific itch and would make decent money on a reasonable investment. Part of the problem is, when you lag 10+ years behind localizing and porting your games to PC, emulators pick up that pretty quick. Your audience of potential buyers shrinks the longer you keep a game exclusive to a platform that nobody is playing but you can emulate fairly easily. The type of people to really go for those games are also the type likely to pirate it after several years of no-port news.

I can see the issues with trying that for a lot of games. I loved Nocturne, but I'm pretty sure it wasn't a blockbuster hit in the west when it first came out. Develop for what exists at that point; your weeaboo fanbase already has a PS4 to play it.
 
spronk

spronk

FPS noob
22,567
25,576
people seem excited about this remaster, its already up f or preorder on psn/switch and steam i think, $50-80 and will be physical editions too for consoles

 
  • 1Like
Reactions: 1 user
Vorph

Vorph

Bronze Baronet of the Realm
10,984
4,706
If it's anything like past SMT games, they'll make a pretty limited number of physical copies. Wonder if there will be any special physical editions for people who want the Maniax addon that comes with digital deluxe, or if it'll just be a $20 DLC you buy on the eShop. (Amusingly, the new game-journalist difficulty setting is locked behind the $20 deluxe addon too.)

Glad I was never interested in getting it on PC at all, SEGA assholes are still cramming Denuvo into their games.
 
spronk

spronk

FPS noob
22,567
25,576
this looks cool, coming to gamepass (and ps4/pc). devs worked on bravely default, nier, final fantasy

 
  • 2Like
Reactions: 1 users
You must log in or register to reply here.